But that’s a medical advice.
Here’s what’s really killing us – the refusal of the medical insurance industry to consider dental to be classified as “health” or “medical”…
Dentist here. No root canals don’t cause cancer or diabetes. They save teeth that would otherwise need to be extracted. They also help in the treatment of dental abscesses.
While few dental infections would actually kill you they would be very unpleasant if left untreated.
I’ve had six root canals and probably done about 2000 in my 28 year of doing them. My oldest is 41 years old and I am still okay.
As for fluoride, like many things too much is definitely bad for you. However in the right dose it is good for your teeth and bones. Chlorine in water at its usual concentration kills lots of bad germs but a greatly increased dose would kill us.
Speaking of dubious information, do you have a cite about otherwise-healthy people dying from tooth infection?
It sounds like the kind of exaggeration found in those quack sites.
I think the point is that Mercola’s credibility is absolutely certain: it’s utter bullshit. The point is that his status is certain, no one should doubt what it is.
That pisses me off.
I think what the OP was really looking for was a refutation of the claims made in the site she linked to:
Further, the site doesn’t advocate leaving an infected tooth untreated (as an alternative to getting a root canal), but having it extracted.
While I, too, am inclined to dismiss such claims until/unless I see them repeated on reputable sites, I would be interested in knowing why they’re wrong.
I don’t have a cite off hand, but IIRC, the infection can find it’s way to your heart.
ETA, instead of linking to a few articles, here’s a whole bunch.
It’s ridiculous on the face of it.
“Hide out?” What are they, ninjas? If there are bacteria left in the tooth, you will get an abscess, and you will know it - believe me.
Speaking of deja vu all over again.
Nope, root canals are not killing us*, any more than amalgam fillings are slowly poisoning us.
The totality of the evidence is also overwhelmingly in favor of the proposition that water fluoridation at recommended levels prevents tooth decay, and has not been found to cause any of the myriad diseases that anti-fluoridation activists claim it does.
As for Mercola, this is the guy who’s promoted the claim (via a quack named Simoncini) that cancer is a fungus, and can be cured by taking bicarbonate.
You can’t make this stuff up.
*if there was a grave risk of infection due to root canals, surely by now someone would have convincingly demonstrated an association. Hello? Where is this evidence?
And how exactly do these bacteria “morph” into much more dangerous forms (which no one has yet seen either)?
Unless you’re Mercola/Simoncini. 
I’ve had a couple of root canals, didn’t cause any problems. OTOH, I had an impacted wisdom tooth pulled and got dry socket. Then an infection, which was quite literally eating away my jaw bone and spreading up my sinuses to the rest of my head. A 6 week course of IV antibiotics finally got it under control, which was a relief for me. The next step was cutting out large parts of my jawbone and doing bone grafts to try and rebuild it. Leaving aside the immense pain I was in, it could have easily killed me if it had been left to spread.
The bacteria that did this was the same bacteria that has lived in my mouth my entire life, that still lives there, and is present in pretty much everyone’s mouth. It got into a new environment and went to town. Any of the strains of bacteria in your mouth can do that, just as they can cause an abscess if they get into a different section of you mouth, then spread from there.
actually we disinfect them with a bleach solution prior to filling them. In dental school we took a culture from the canal and incubated it. Could not obturate(fill) the canal unless it was negative.
So if I’m taking 15 meds from four different doctors and find a webite that says there may be an unwanted interaction between a couple of them, I should ignore that because my doctors are infallible and I don’t have a lick of sense myself. Good to know.
Asking your doctor to look into it for you seems very reasonable. Changing what you are taking without first discussing it with your doctor seems a bit foolish.
all your doctors should know all your medications including over the counter.
there is a benefit to going to a single pharmacy where they might notice medication problems.
If you get a serious tooth infection, you may not die, but you may wish you were dead. I once had an abcessed tooth. Gives kidney stones a run for their money.
I am glad go hear that! I take bicarbonate twice a day ( doctor’s order). That means I can’t get cancer, right? 
I woul say that there are several clear and evident relationships between root canals and illnesses such as diabetes of cancer:
- You’re a lot more likely to have time to develop diabetes or cancer if you haven’t died of a tooth infection than if you did.
- If you have access to the medical care involved in getting root canals, you’re likely to have access to the medical care involved in being diagnosed with diabetes or cancer: you may even get treated for them, rather than dying of “the breezes” after feeling not quite well for a while.
Apparently the bloody moron whose work resulted in an abscessed tooth and an emergency root canal for the same tooth she’d treated a few days before skipped that step. Then again, she was busy dissecting her colleagues’ vacational plans.
I heard from a couple of dentists that teeth, especially molars, don’t come in standard shapes. Sometimes they have unusual number of roots sticking out of weird places that could be missed. They are supposed to follow up on you to make sure all is well. Luckily, while my tooth was exposed, it had no sign of infection.