I just spent my Saturday afternoon with one smart MD

I just spent my Saturday afternoon with one smart MD. He is a Electrical Engineer graduate of MIT who then went to medical school. He practiced at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angles until he set up his private practice in Los Angles. He became skeptical of traditional medicine and decided to study alternative medicine. He has independently come to the conclusion that antibiotics are ineffective for treating many chronic inflammatory diseases. He had read my book and wanted to meet me and discuss what he called “Oral Lyme Disease”.

Interesting to me is that this extremely intelligent physician knew nothing about periodontal disease. He had no idea that there were spirochetes in the mouth. Something is wrong with Medical School. We meet at my office in San Diego and since it was lunch time, our first communication was at lunch and I found out he had some dental issues.

To make a long story short, he has severe bone loss on teeth #18 and #19. #17, was partially impacted and in a horizontal position butting up to #18 and causing a deep pocket behind #18. He brought an x-ray with him and when I saw the bone loss, I told he I would find spirochetes. I did a microscopic examination on him and sure enough he was teeming with small fine fast moving spirochetes. Again, this MD had no idea that there were spirochetes in the oral cavity. He was shocked to say the least. I have found that the majority of MDs have no idea about periodontal disease. When he realized he had
what he called “Lyme” in his mouth, he was motivated to hear everything I had to say about periodontal disease. I had to re-define “Lyme” to Lyme Disease as Borrelia borgdorferi and oral spirochetosis as sixty-plus oral sprirochetes with one major player called Treponema denticola.

Since he was an engineer, he was interested in the electronics was was working with on electro-magnetic pulse. He noticed on my blog that I had stunned spirochetes with this device. Unfortunately, I had to report to him that I have had very little success with this electronics since it is very difficult to find the exact wavelength that any particular spirochete is sensitive. Almost all the spirochetes are different from one patient to the next. To be effective, it would be cost prohibitive and expensive to spend hours and hours searching the thousands of wavelengths until you find the one that will effect the particular spirochetes you want to effect. He said he would take the problem to MIT and see what the professors have to say.

We also discuses his interest in treating Lyme disease patients using the gingival sulcus as a test site for Lyme spirochetes. I told him that so far every confirmed Lyme disease patient I have tested also have a variety oral spirochetes. I also told him that there is cross-reactivity of oral spirochetes to Lyme in the Western Blot test for Lyme. He was extremely interested in this fact.

This MD was so motivated, since he himself was now tested positive microscopically for oral “Lyme” (periodontal disease spirochetes) by the time the afternoon was over, he was committed to purchasing a microscope “like mine” and is going to immediately start studying his spirochetes and see if he can effect them with some of his alternative medicine regiments. We also discussed whether Physicians have the right to treat
Oral Lyme Disease (Periodontal Disease). He felt that he had the legal right since it was a systemic disease and Physicians are responsible for the whole body, not just everything other than the oral cavity. Also, he is looking into getting an Hygienist. This is a very significant step for a Physician, but he realizes the systemic implications of oral spirochetes. If we can get these individual Physicians interested in treating Periodontal disease, maybe we can get some rational treatment for the disease in the future.
Dentistry sure hasn’t treated it effectively. Move over Periodontists, here come the Physicians.

William D. NOrdquist BS DMD MS