I was watching a rugby game earlier in which the monstrous outside-centre Manu Tuilagi tore his hamstring while making a break. The co-commentator described a “strange fact” about him: he said that when Tuilagi was 17 and 18 he experienced a lot of hamstring problems. His doctors - the story went - eventually realized that they were being caused by a filling Tuilagi had in one of his teeth, which was causing “imbalances” in his body and leading to frequent hamstring tears. Once they removed the tooth filling the hamstring problems supposedly stopped (until today, and given that he’s only 20 now the achievement doesn’t seem all that impressive).
How on earth is that supposed to work? Is there any mechanism by which it’s even theoretically possible for a tooth filling to cause hamstring tears?
Nope. Though maybe if you were told that your body’s “imbalances” were magically relieved, you might feel more relaxed and less prone to injure a hamstring. :dubious:
The usual garbage about amalgam fillings is that they are toxic because of the scant amount of mercury released into the body over time, which according to devotees causes myriad problems. Many have (at great cost, not to mention the pain involved) had their fillings yanked out and replaced by resin fillings, which themselves are composed of toxic compounds, but as long as it’s not the Dread Mercury, no one seems to notice.
It’s just about concievable that a badly-occluding filling could cause stress that might also cause the individual to tense muscles in a certain persistent way that could make them prone to injury, however…
a) It’s unlikely
b) It’s really unlikely anyone would diagnose such a link
c) I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s being claimed here
This is going to be some chiropractic-type non-evidence-based stuff, I think.
I heard a very simalir thing about Tony Adams (England and Arsenal soccer player whose career spanned from the mid 80s to the early 00s) i.e. that an untreated impacted wisdom tooth had caused a muscular imbalance that led to recurring injury problems (it was either his back or his hamstring, I don’t recall).
I’ve mentioned this before in a few threads, too. Fluoroquinolones are industrial-strength antibiotics that should be used only as a last resort, and maybe not even then. Instead, doctors often seem to prescribe them like they were candy M&M’s. Besides causing long-term tendon damage, they also sometimes cause serious and irreversible neurological damage, both central (i.e., serious brain damage) and/or peripheral.
See the book Bitter Pills by Stephen Fried. The first chapter is on-line here.
Think twice next time your doc prescribes Cipro. Some others in this class are ofloxacin and levofloxacin (Levaquin), and any drug with “floxin” or “floxacin” in the generic name.
Before this turns into a full-fledged rantfest about how Fluoroquinolones Are Bad, it should be noted first that tendon rupture associated with use of this class of antibiotics is quite unusual and does not fit the injury profile of this rugby player (who according to news accounts strained a hamstring (a teammate suffered a similar injury)):
“Rupture of tendons or tendonitis is a rare event associated with fluoroquinolones (44). Such events tend to affect the Achilles tendon, and are bilateral in 50% of cases. Predisposing factors are reported often, which can include corticosteroid therapy, renal disease, hemodialysis and transplantation (45,46). Usually symptoms resolve within weeks, but in a small proportion of patients, they may persist for months.”
Anyway, it is highly speculative that this player received antibiotics recently or at any time. The claim highlighted in the OP was that having a tooth filling created an “imbalance”, which is hooey.
Right, the co-commentator was claiming that the filling itself had been causing the hamstring tears due to “imbalances”. There was no mention of antibiotics. Although I suppose it’s possible the commentator, or whoever he heard the story from in turn, simply misunderstood what they’d been told by medics. Maybe the original story did involve antibiotics.
The injury Tuilagi picked up a few days ago was indeed a hamstring “strain” according to news reports, although the tooth filling issue was supposedly sorted out years ago so this new injury isn’t connected. It was just the prompt for the commentator to tell the story in the first place.
From my reading, and including the results in the linked article, the overall relative risk for tendon rupture associated with quinolone use is about three or four-fold increased (i.e. around a 300 to 400 percent increase). That is a rather small absolute risk since the background rate of tendon rupture (esp. Achilles) is quite low, around one case in 3000 persons per year.
IMO, though, what is missing from essentially all the studies is long-term follow-up. This is concerning since I am not alone in having a patient with an Achilles tendon rupture occurring years after fluoroquinolone use. Obviously, that’s anecdotal but, given the low background rate of such injuries, any subsequent rupture, even years after quinolone use, could well be due to the antibiotic. Bottom line is ‘more research is needed’.