Dental Allergies May Be More Common Than You May Think

It seems that a lot more people have food allergies than they used to. Maybe more are diagnosed today. They recently had a "peanut free day" at the ball park here in St. Louis. I guess a lot of people are allergic to peanuts.

There is a warning on a lot of the candy products that "the machine used to process this product was also used to process products that contain peanuts."

It's pretty bad when you are so allergic to peanuts that if a little bit of peanut dust is floating around a huge national league ballpark, it causes you to have an allergic reaction. Food allergies are very common.

So are allergies to pollen and mold. A lot of us wake up every morning coughing and sneezing with red, itchy, watery eyes.

I once took my mom out for lobster on her birthday (she had never eaten them before) and it turns out that she was allergic to shellfish. She broke out in hives and spent the next day in the hospital. She asked me to never take her to a restaurant again for her birthday.

I have an allergy to MSG, that stuff that the Chinese put in a lot of their food to enhance the flavor. It is sold under the popular name of Accent flavor enhancer. The stuff makes me itch all over for several hours if I eat enough of it.

Some people are so allergic to latex that they have a reaction just driving on a road where the latex rubber comes off of the tires on the car that is ahead of them and they breathe tiny amounts in.

I also have allergies to other food that I don't know about. Every time I go into a supermarket, I start to sneeze and my eyes water and my nose starts to run. I don't know why that happens, but as you can guess, my grocery errands are very short.

All of the above are very common allergies that we all have heard about. But what about other allergies that are not so common, where the symptoms may be mistaken for other conditions? Could you be allergic to things found in a dentist's office?

According to The Healthy Planet Magazine:

"Common sense dictates that in order to remove the symptoms you must remove the source of the problem. Even in dentistry these same principles can apply. Is there such a thing as dental allergies? Can we actually be sensitive to dental materials or dental procedures that also cause systemic sensitivities?"

One thing that a lot of people don't realize is that teeth are living bone with their own nerves and blood supply. Once a tooth is opened for a filling or root canal, whatever is introduced during that process goes directly into the blood stream.

Not only does the poisonous mercury-based fillings of old cause a reaction, some people are even sensitive to the new tooth-colored composite materials as well. The only thing that can be done in a case like that is to do a blood reactivity test to see which one the patient is least sensitive to.

So if you experience head or neck pain and a general "foggy" feeling after visiting the dentist, you may need that test to see if you are allergic to any of the materials that were used.

Source: http://www.thehealthyplanet.com/jan2011_dental.htm