Our annual Dental Mercury Awareness Week is coming up in a few days, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to talk to Dr. Carlo Litano. Litano has been practicing dentistry for nearly 20 years. His journey into this particular field of medicine began with a desire to help his mother, who was struggling with dental health issues.
“I graduated from school in Fort Lauderdale and didn’t have the skills to help my mother. It took me about 10 years to feel comfortable enough to help her and move forward on my journey.” He says.
One of his strengths is that he trained with a holistic dentist mentor when he started his career. He trained and practiced dentistry in Portland, Oregon, and then returned to Florida a few years later to establish Natural Smiles, a holistic dentistry practice in the Tampa Bay area.
“I have been fortunate to have had several mentors who have helped shape the way I provide dentistry, but the greater benefit is that I have gained a lot of perspective.” He says. “It was the Swiss who put everything together into a unified protocol, and that was with Dr. (Dietrich) Klinghardt and Dr. (Karl Ulrich) Volz. And that really changed the way we start, perform and follow up dental care.”
Ritano clarifies the role of the biological dentist compared to a traditional dentist. Basically, instead of viewing oral health as a separate component, a biological dentist uses a comprehensive and holistic approach, recognizing the connection between the patient’s dental health and the rest of the body, including organs and systems, and recognizing the health issues the patient is experiencing.
“In biological dentistry, we don't look at the leaves, we look at the forest. These people come in with a number of health problems, chronic diseases that are getting worse and worse.” He explains.
“So I look at the X-ray, I look at the teeth, and I start talking about the body. 'This tooth is connected to this group of organs. How are you doing?' 'Oh, that's terrible.' 'Hey, what's your sleep pattern, your prayers, how are you doing?'
And these people are always tired, chronically exhausted, and their bodies are exhausted because they can't go into deep parasympathetic mode and heal themselves, having endured so many barriers and infections.”
Litano cured my severe dental infection several years ago.
I met Ritano by chance in March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was in its early stages. I had just returned from a health retreat in Mexico, where I had a diagnostic workup, including a dental evaluation. To my surprise, they told me that I had a dental abscess and needed dental surgery as soon as possible.
However, with travel restrictions in place, it was impossible to fly out of state to see a qualified dental professional. Luckily, my good friend Charlie Brown (who most people know as the president of Consumers for Dental Choice) referred me to Ritano, who performed the surgery and implants for me.
I was immediately impressed by his practice, as it has a variety of specialized equipment that helps provide an accurate analysis of dental concerns. Today, their team cares for patients from all over the country and even other parts of the world.
“Patients come in from other states. They fly in from other countries. We assess them… We triage them primarily. What's the worst that can happen to them?
We usually try to do the metal first because we don't want to heal when there are metal ions around. We're just creating dirty bone. Our goal is to remove these blockages, remove the metal, remove the mercury, remove the metal crowns that are blocking these meridians, and hit the reset button to start healing.” He explains.
According to Ritano, once the cleaning and healing process begins, the patient will begin to see noticeable changes in their chronic symptoms and feel better. At this point, the root canal is removed, replaced with an implant, and the cavity is cleaned, but the process is built slowly so that the patient can tolerate the changes.
Using 3D imaging to help diagnose dental problems
One of the most amazing tools in his practice is the 3D computerized beam computed tomography (CBCT) scan. Also known as 3D cone beam digital imaging, this cutting-edge piece of equipment gives biological dentists the ability to provide more accurate dental diagnoses. Less than 5% of dentists in the United States have this equipment in their practice.1 As Ritano explains:
“(CBCT) gives me the ability to map the brain in 3D, like the entire skull. So I can see the jaw, the airway, the lump in the jaw, the upper teeth, how they go into the sinuses… A lot of infections happen in the upper teeth that go into the sinuses. So this person has an ear problem, things like that. And we can slice the image in multiple planes, multiple dimensions, to capture things that might otherwise be missing.
What we often find is that when we remove the wisdom tooth, we leave the root tip, we take out the root canal, we take out a piece of the root canal, and it's still there. So it's still embedded in the bone and it's a source of inflammation that's causing an autoimmune situation. And it's amazing what we find in people's jaws.”
Recent studies support the benefits of using CBCT in dentistry. A review2 A paper published in the Journal of Pharmacy and Bioallied Sciences highlighted the advantages of CBCT over conventional radiography, stating, “The diagnostic efficacy of CBCT has been demonstrated to be significantly higher than other methods for accurately detecting complex oral and maxillofacial diseases.”
Ritano’s clinic also features equipment that eliminates the need for traditional dental molds. Instead, it uses digital analysis, such as a 3D CAD (computer-aided design) scanner, to create an accurate 3D model of the patient’s mouth and teeth, which is then sent to a lab where the implants are made. This not only provides more accurate measurements, down to the last micron (or 0.001 millimeter), but also speeds up the production process.
“It’s cut down a lot of time… The lab is digital, so we make a copy of the mold. So now we have a copy of the copy. (We) go to the source, take an impression on the chair, and that goes straight to the 3D printer, and it’s done on-site, so what used to take two weeks now takes an hour.”
Most dentists are not trained to safely remove mercury fillings.
Ritano and I also talk about the dangers of amalgam fillings and having them removed by non-biological dentists. This is a mistake I made in the 90s. At that time, I had at least 20 mercury fillings removed by a general dentist, which was a mistake.
As a result, they suffered lifelong adverse effects, including impaired kidney function, because the fillings were removed without vacuuming, rubber dams, or other precautions.
“Mercury fillings are 51 percent mercury, beyond the metal, and metal is a conductor, so the effects on the body are very serious. They still do mercury fillings in children, and less so in adults, but they remove them every two days. They remove the crowns, and … there's a mercury filling underneath.” Ritano explains.
“So now you've put a positive new metal on top of the negative mercury metal, and you've got your own little battery right here on this meridian. And a year later, the patient has IBS or some other condition. In many cases, the front teeth in women cause infertility, irregular periods.”
Ritano also uses Oracle ceramic fillings made from silicon dioxide extracted from sand or glass in his practice. They avoid white composite resins because they are plastic petroleum derivatives that release bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine disrupting chemical that can have a wide range of effects on hormones and reproductive health.
Analysis for 20233 A paper published in Cureus highlighted the potential cytotoxicity of dental resin composites, stating:
“Despite being a very promising dental material, its monomer components have some drawbacks. They are well known to leach during incomplete polymerization, which can result in cytotoxicity. Bis-GMA (bisphenol A-glycidyl methacrylate) is the most cytotoxic of all monomer components that exhibit synthetic estrogenic effects.”
Ritano explains that composite resins degrade much faster than ceramic fillings. “The problem is that after 10 years, the margins start to degrade. The filling is fine, but the bond starts to break down, and you have microscopic gaps where bacteria and bugs can get in,” he says. Oracle ceramic fillings, on the other hand, can last up to 20 years.
New dental technology provides patients with a pain-free and stress-free experience
Ritano also shares that his team rarely uses drills anymore. Instead, they use something called an Erbium and Nd:YAG laser, which is less invasive and quieter because it uses light. He explains:
“(T)he Erbium laser is a burst of energy. It's like a candle, if you hold it, it'll burn, but if you circle it, it won't burn. So it has really cool thermal properties, and it can put a hole in bone without piercing it.
The drill removes the tooth through friction, and friction creates heat. So sometimes it's not the force, but the heat buildup in the tooth that causes the nerve to become trapped and die… after a month or two.
The light laser is focused on the water. There's water between the teeth cells, between the crystals, and it targets the water behind it. It pops out. It doesn't burn, it doesn't evaporate. And when it gets to the bottom of the hole, the sound changes.”
Another advantage of this laser is that even for major procedures, only light anesthesia is required. “A lot of people go to the dentist and get shots. The dentist is fine, but it takes a week to recover from the shots,” says Ritano.
Along with these modern advancements, Ritano also makes room in his toolbox for more traditional techniques, such as thermal imaging, which he uses to map cavities, areas of chronic infection that occur after root canal treatment or when wisdom teeth are improperly removed.
“I've been exposed to dental cavities for over 10 years. One of my mentors in Clearwater put me on it, and then I followed other mentors in Ohio and Washington. It's a toxic reservoir.
So people end up getting root canals on their last teeth. And the root canals have been releasing toxins for a long time, and the body stores those toxins in the bone pockets where the wisdom teeth were improperly removed. So that's a source of inflammation.
(T)he CVCT can map cavitations and see cavitations. Okay, but is it active? Some people can't afford this surgery. It's expensive and invasive. So the tool I've been relying on is thermal imaging.
And when we do that, we can see that only one of those four cavities is active. There's still a cavitation, but it seems like there's a hot spot that's more active chronic inflammation… Let's continue to focus on that and see if we can get a solution.
And we track patients' thermography every two years and schedule additional surgeries to see if they need them. So we try to do fewer surgeries and more.”
More information
In addition to these developments, Litano and I discussed other holistic strategies that can help maintain oral health, such as the importance of diet, body pH levels, and vitamin D levels. I encourage you to watch this interview in its entirety, as it provides valuable insight into the benefits of consulting a biological dentist.
If you live in the Tampa Bay area and are looking for a biological dentist, visit Natural Smiles in Ritano, located across Mirror Lake from downtown St. Petersburg. You can also learn more about their services on their website, Natural-Smiles.com. Finally, don’t forget to share this information with your family and friends to help them understand the importance of choosing a biological dentist.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time and I think more dentists will take notice. I hope it continues to happen.” Ritano said. “We're not good enough for the population we have, the amount of chronic disease, the long-term bad stuff and bad stuff. We're not good enough. So our reach and our education are big issues.”
