Detox Your Dentures
Toxic-Free Talk Radio
Archives of radio interview transcripts with leading toxic-free innovators recorded 2013-2015
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Detox Your Dentures
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Merinne and Melissa Mesku
Date of Broadcast: September 17, 2015
My guests today are Merinne Mesku and Melissa Mesku, sisters and co-founders of Pure Cure Dental Technology, LLC, the first company to address the toxins and allergens in dentures. Their flagship product, Pure Cure Denture Detox, reduces the residual toxic and allergenic substances that have been shown to leach from dentures and into the mouth. Merinne Mesku, CEO, graduated summa cum laude from Loma Linda University School of Dentistry and is a practicing Registered Dental Hygienist. Melissa Mesku is a writer, editor and designer with a degree in Environmental Science from UC Berkeley. The two sisters founded the small family company after their father, an award winning dental technician, was diagnosed with demyelinating toxic neuropathy from working with denture chemicals. In 2010, the company became the first to offer denture detoxification as a dental lab service. Since then, they’ve become the leading provider of information for the general public on denture toxicity and offer their research findings via their Free Report on Denture Toxicity. www.purecuretechnology.com |www.denturedetox.com
Transcript:
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio, where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free.
It’s Thursday, September 17, 2015. And today, we’re going to talk about something we haven’t talked about before.
But before I introduce my guests, I just want to say that I’ve been researching all these subjects about what are the toxic chemicals in products for more than 30 years. And one of the things that I run into sometimes is that there are products where I just can’t get the information, that it’s not available in public sources.
Some products like food products are required to list their ingredients on the label. But there are a lot of products that aren’t required to be labeled. Some of them, like cleaning products, for example, are extremely toxic, yet they’re not required to be labeled by law. So you can’t even look on the label and find out what the toxic chemicals are.
So today, we’re going to be talking about a product where I’m so happy to have these guests on among other reasons. They’re going to be telling us about some toxic chemicals in a product that many, many, probably millions of people use on a daily basis. And there’s just not a place to find out what is toxic about them and we get to learn about that today.
So the product that we’re talking about today is dentures. My guests probably know how many people use dentures. They are Merinne Mesku and Melissa Mesku. They’re sisters and co-founders of Pure Cure Dental Technology. Hello!
MERINNE MESKU: Hi, nice to be with you.
MELISSA MESKU: Hi, there.
DEBRA: Thank you. And did I say your name right, Merinne?
MERINNE MESKU: I’m Merinne.
DEBRA: Marin County, California.
MERINNE MESKU: Exactly like that just spelled differently.
DEBRA: These two sisters are actually on two different phones in two different places. One is in New York and one in California. Is that right?
MERINNE MESKU: Yes.
DEBRA: Okay, good. So why don’t you start by telling us your story about how you became interested in toxic chemicals in dentures.
MERINNE MESKU: Well, the story of our family company really starts with our dad, Mark Mesku. And it really starts back in the 1990s.
This is when we were kids.
My dad had been working for the California state’s largest dental HMO for about seven years. He was in a really high production environment where he was making as many as 20 dentures a day just by himself.
And after about seven years working with these chemicals day in and day out, he started developing these strange symptoms we couldn’t really explain, things like panic attacks, irritability, mood swings, things that were very uncharacteristic for him. We didn’t really know what to chalk it up to until he started developing numbness and tingling in his hands. And that’s when he started seeing the doctors.
Eventually, he was diagnosed with toxic demyelinating neuropathy, essentially nerve damage. He was blindsided by this. And so his doctors helped him figure out what was the cause of it. And it turns out, it was the chemicals that he was working with.
Now, he had never heard any warning signs like, “Watch out for these chemicals.” And he had gone through the training program himself.
He was even an instructor teaching people how to make dentures. And he’d never come across this information. So he started to do the research himself.
Now, at the time, he wasn’t able to work. That was really devastating for our family. It plunged us into poverty and we had a really hard time.
Fortunately, my mom was able to make ends meet. But it really had a huge impact on the whole family.
While he was out of work and trying to recover, he started doing an incredible amount of research. What he found was really shocking. The fact that there was a growing body of research devoted to these denture-making chemicals and that these pieces of research were showing that not only are the people who are making the dentures affected, but the people who are wearing the dentures as well, that really shocked him. Here he thought he was making a product that people were wearing that was improving their quality of life and it turns out, it might be harming them.
So he wanted to try to get the word out. And this is back in the ‘90s before social media, so it was hard to get the word out about these things.
DEBRA: I remember that.
MERINNE MESKU: I think we all do here.
And what really bothered him deep down was that he was used telling people, “Hey, watch out.” There’s a problem, but he didn’t have a solution. So people were getting scared, but he didn’t have a place he could tell them to turn to.
Flash forward about 10 years, he had built his own laboratory up here in Northern California. He started to spend a lot of side time working on ways to fix the problem.
Now, at this time, I was finishing up my Bachelor’s Degree in Dental Hygiene and my sister had already been out of UC Berkeley and she had been involved in environmental policy. And we started to jump in with him and work on this problem together.
Now, he was able to develop a way to take toxins and allergens out of existing dentures without changing the way they fit and can make dentures that were safer for the people wearing them than what was on the market currently.
That was great. We were happy to help people. But that was just in our small community. We wanted to help more people. We were starting to get requests from all over the country like, “Hey, can you help me? I have these dentures. It’s causing problems.”
And there were a lot of laws especially in California that say, we, as a laboratory, can’t directly help patients. We have to go to a middle man, the dentist. And so we couldn’t have people just send us their dentures. We had to jump through a lot of hoops. And that adds up a lot of dollars and cents for people.
So we wanted to find a way to make this more available to people, so that for one, it’s not breaking the bank. Two, they don’t have to be away from their dentures for weeks at a time. And three, we can help more people faster.
So we all put our heads together and developed a way to do that so the people can take care of this problem at home.
DEBRA: Good! So you’re providing something that people can do themselves at home instead of sending their dentures to you.
MERINNE MESKU: Exactly!
MELISSA MESKU: Yes.
DEBRA: I am so interested in hearing about this. Let me ask you a question first because I have my attention on this. How many people wear dentures?
MERINNE MESKU: About [inaudible 00:08:11].
MELISSA MESKU: I’m not sure how many here.
There’s a lot of estimates but the most consistent one that’s been given is that there are 35 million people in the United States alone who wear some type of denture. And that estimate goes as high as 45 and as high 55 million. So we’re not entirely sure. But that’s just in the US and dentures are quite common abroad all of over world too.
So it’s a pretty decent segment of the population who may be exposed to chemicals that can be [inaudible 00:08:44] with dentures.
DEBRA: Well, let me just ask you about that sentence that you just said because I was about to say, “And they’re all being poisoned by these toxic chemicals.” I guess we could say there may be a question as to whether or not these chemicals are leeching out of these dentures. But virtually, all dentures have these chemicals in them, right? There isn’t a non-toxic denture you can buy. Is there? Can I ask a dentist for a non-toxic denture?
MELISSA MESKU: True. The phrase ‘non-toxic’ (and I’m sure you’ve come up against this in your show a number of times), the phrase ‘non-toxic’ is bandied about quite regularly. It’s a great marketing term.
DEBRA: Again, it’s not always. Things labeled non-toxic are not always non-toxic.
MELISSA MESKU: Yes, exactly, because something might not going to give you cancer if you use it, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have toxic chemicals in it that can somehow get into your system depending on what the product is.
And so the thing with dentures is dentures are essentially a form of plastic. So we know that plastics have the ability to leech.
For example, BPA is a really common thing that leeches out of water bottles, children’s toys, et cetera. And a couple of years ago, there was a big hubbub about it in the media. And now, products are being made that don’t contain BPA, but they contain some other ingredient that serves the same purpose in the product. But it hasn’t yet reached the point where people have figured out that it is also a toxin or an allergen.
DEBRA: I want to hear all about this, but…
MELISSA MESKU: And so, a product can come out and say that it’s – oh, go ahead.
DEBRA: We need to go to break in about two seconds. So let’s go to break and then come back. We’ll have plenty of time. I want to hear all about the toxic chemicals that are in dentures.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Merinne and Melissa Mesku. I’m looking at the wrong line here. They are from Pure Cure Dental Technology. They co-founded this company to help people get the toxic chemicals out of their dentures. We’ll be right back to hear about what the toxic chemicals are that are in dentures that you want to remove. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA:You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Merinne and Melissa Mesku, co-founders of Pure Cure Dental Technology. You can go to their website at DentureDetox.com.
Okay, tell us about those toxic chemicals in dentures.
MELISSA MESKU: Sure. Earlier, we were talking about how my sister and I founded this company because my father, who was a denture technician, developed demyelinating toxic neuropathy because he was exposed to the chemicals in making dentures.
So that caused us to do a lot of research. And it turns out, there is quite a bit of information out there scientifically, it’s just not the in the hands of the general public. And to the best of our knowledge, it’s not really being acted upon.
So what we found, in a nutshell, is that dentures have the ability to leech toxic and allergenic substances. There are residual chemicals that can seep out of the denture. And if these substances are coming out of the denture, where are they going? You wear your denture in your mouth. So these are substances that have the ability to reach into your system through the dentures that you’re wearing.
Well, in all of this, it’s important to remember that what we’re talking about is your typical, hard, resin-based denture. So if you’re not very familiar with dentures, when you think of a denture, the little pink piece of plastic with some teeth in it, that’s what we’re talking about.
DEBRA: Are there more than one type of denture?
MELISSA MESKU: Sure, there are other kinds. No, there are flexible partials. There are other types of dentures. But those are less common and they’re made from different materials.
So we focus on the most common type of denture, which is just your garden variety pink, half or full denture that’s made of the most common materials used to make dentures, which is called methyl methacrylate or MMA.
So methyl methacrylate is also the primary substance that’s shown to leech from dentures. It’s the pink base of the denture. It’s essentially the gums of the denture.
Now, numerous studies agree that methyl methacrylate is the most significant allergen for denture-wearing patients. In this context of dentures, methyl methacrylate is also referred to as residual monomer because it’s an un-polymerized substance that is residual in the denture. It doesn’t get converted into the hard plastic. It’s what’s left over that doesn’t get converted.
DEBRA: It doesn’t bond with everything else.
I was going to say when you’re making a plastic, they bring together these different chemicals and they bond together with little molecules that get all bonded together. And so then, this residual is the stuff that didn’t get bonded, but it’s still there.
MELISSA MESKU: Exactly! And there are different types of denture materials. There are different types of denture acrylic.
The process to make a denture, you have to start off soft so that it can be sculpted to shape to fit the mouth. And then it has to become hard so that you can actually do it. And the process of going from a soft to hard, that’s called polymerization.
Ideally, for your health, you would want to make sure that the denture had been polymerized surely as early as possible. Unfortunately, that’s not something that a patient can know just by looking at the denture. And often times, dentists have no way of knowing either. You’d have to submit your denture for chemical analysis to even find out. So that’s a huge problem.
There’s a big question that a lot of people have. “Was my denture made properly? Is it surely polymerized?” These are not questions that people generally think of, but as we’ll see, it’s definitely something that every denture-wearer should be concerned about.
So the main substance that leeches out of dentures is methyl methacrylate. It’s considered cytotoxic, meaning toxic to cells. So in this case, cells in the mouth, cells that the denture is in contact with. And it can cause irritation, sensitization and a number of other things. And there are a lot of other chemicals that have been found to leech from dentures as well.
By the way, all of this information can be found in our free report on denture toxicity, which is on our website at DentureDetox.com. We’re really excited to share this information with the public because everybody should know. This should be common knowledge.
DEBRA: This should be common knowledge. Right before the show, I just downloaded it, so I’ll have my own copy. I would recommend everybody else do that too.
MELISSA MESKU: So we can look at what some of the chemicals are that are –
DEBRA: Tell us some of the chemicals, yeah.
MELISSA MESKU: – known to leech from dentures, sure.
Some of the substances that have been shown to leech from the conventional acrylic resin dentures include formaldehyde and hydrophenol, methacrylic acid, benzilic acid and phthlates. Phthlates are really a big deal and you start to hear more about phthlates right now. And what we’re finding out is that pthalates are not just in the dentures, but they’re actually able to come out of the dentures too.
That’s really serious.
Now, we do want to say that, yes, these things are coming out in small amounts, but some of the substances, even at very small, small concentrations, are known to cause problems. They’re known to be toxic to cells even at small concentrations.
DEBRA: And another thing about that too is that we’re not just being exposed to this small list of chemicals that you’ve just read or other ones you might tell us about. We’re being exposed to all kinds of chemicals all day long and from all kinds of different things.
And so these small amounts of chemicals are combining with other chemicals that we’re being exposed to. And there’s a lot of literature about how chemicals combine with other chemicals can get even more toxic. You’re putting all these substances in your body like making soup. They all mix together. And then you end up with something else at the end. These chemicals are reacting with each other.
Chemists know that if you put chemical A and chemical B together, they might react. We’re being exposed to all those chemicals. We’re being exposed to all those chemicals that the chemists are being exposed to in a chemistry lab without all the lab coats and the ventilation and all those things. It’s all outgassing in our mouths if we’re wearing dentures and breathing regular, ordinary consumer products.
Let’s talk more about this. We need to go to break again, but we’ll be right back and we’ll learn more about dentures and the toxic chemicals and what you can do about it. My guests are Merinne Mesku and Melissa Mesku. Their business is Pure Cure Dental Technology at DentureDetox.com.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA:You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guests today are Merinne Mesku and Melissa Mesku, co-founders of Pure Cure Dental Technology. And their website is DentureDetox.com.
Just during the break, I was looking through your report. Let me just say that if any of you listening are finding this very interesting and think that it applies to you, just go the website, DentureDetox.com, and download the free report because there is so much detail and information in this report about the toxic chemicals that it’s something that you really need to know.
Great job. Great job, ladies.
MERINNE MESKU: Thank you.
MELISSA MESKU: Thank you. That’s a lot of work.
DEBRA: It was a lot of work. I can totally tell that having spent all these years doing this kind of research myself. I know. I can tell that you did a really great job.
MELISSA MESKU: Thank you. We appreciate it. It’s the product of over a decade of research, heartaches and a lot of figuring out how to convey these things to the non-scientific public.
So we tried to make it friendly and easy to read, but also pretty hard-hitting because it’s the product of a lot of research and a lot of scientific studies.
Some of what you’d find in the free report is a list of the substances that we found to leech from typical dentures. And this is – again, I’ll just say. It’s so hard to find this information. There are essentially no sources that just give you a nice, clean list of what could be in your denture.
So we have done a lot of cross-checking and we cite all of the things that we found so that people continue to do their own research if they’re interested.
As for the chemicals that have been shown to be able to leech from typical dentures, we’ve talked about methyl methacrylate. Merinne mentioned formaldehyde.
Also something just to color the denture to make it pink, we found that sometimes just may contain forms of cadmium, like cadmium sulfide or cadmium selenide. That’s generally not done anymore. However, an old denture could have that.
Our denture is made in – not in the United States, which could even be a denture that you buy in the United States but it could have been made elsewhere.
There’s no testing done on dentures, so there’s no way to know what’s inside, but there have been dentures found to have cadmium, dentures found to have copper.
Also, as Merinne has mentioned, phthlates. Common phthlates are bisphenol A, DDT, pesticides. Now, those things aren’t in dentures, but certain phthlates are found in dentures.
Interestingly, one of them, which is dibutyl phthalate, the National Toxicology Program concluded that phthalate, specifically, may adversely affect human reproduction or development. That substance is actually banned from children’s toys that are imported to the United States.
DEBRA: But they’re still allowed in dentures.
MELISSA MESKU: Yes. The ban is specifically for children’s toys that might be put in the mouth. And so, these dentures that go in the mouth –
DEBRA: And so it’s okay for adults and elderly people to put them in their mouth, but not children. This is something –
MELISSA MESKU: Well, not necessarily that it’s okay. It’s just something that there hasn’t been a lot of backlash about because people don’t know about it.
DEBRA: Well, I think that there are a lot more people who are concerned about children being exposed to toxics than are concerned about adults being exposed to toxics. Not that there aren’t, but this is a very specific thing, dentures. It’s for a very specific population. It’s a very specific product.
There are groups. There are whole organizations about getting children to not have so many toxic exposures, but there’s not a lot of organizations about denture wearers not being exposed.
One of the things that I found in looking across the board, at products, and even labeling is not consistent from product type to product type. And so you can have something like formaldehyde that requires warning label on a piece of particle boarding. Then you cut that piece of particle board and make a table, and the warning label is no longer required.
And this is how erratic our labeling system is in the world today. And so you can have something that’s banned in children’s products and that very same chemical be in another product like dentures.
MERINNE MESKU: Right. [cross-talking 00:31:41] in dentistry, specifically in dentistry.
Now, in California, we have Proposition 65, which states that in every dental office, you have to have a warning sign that says we use products know to the State of California to cause cancer or other reproductive harm.
Now, that’s the case in other states. You don’t have to tell people that. But all they’re saying – in the dental office, tell people before they get a filling, “This contains chemicals that are known to the State of California to cause cancer or reproductive harm.”
And we don’t tell people that when they get dentures either.
Now, most of the time, dentists aren’t even aware of this.
I’ve mentioned that my dad, going through his training program, wasn’t made aware. If the people who are making the dentures aren’t even being told that these chemicals cause problems, then dentists certainly aren’t being told that. And I know that from experience having gone through dental hygiene school.
We were in a clinic. There were tons and tons of dental students at the same school. I worked in tandem with them. They didn’t get any information on this. I didn’t get any information on this. Nobody in the dental field is really even being taught about this.
So we can’t expect to be going to our dentist and saying, “Tell me about this problem” because they don’t even know it exists.
DEBRA: There’s a special field called biologic dentistry. I think that probably some of those dentists. Well, they certainly know a lot about mercury in fillings. I don’t know how much they know about dentures.
MERINNE MESKU: [cross-talking 00:33:14]
MELISSA MESKU: Mercury and fillings seem to be the most popular topic that I’ve noticed that people may be generally aware of that relates to dentures.
That relates to oral care. It is important but there’s also this other thing.
DEBRA: Yes, which I’m so glad that you discovered.
MELISSA MESKU: Definitely. And as you were saying, Debra, with the labeling, how that would correlate to dentures, we have to remember that when you buy a product, it’s in a package. It’s mass-produced.
When you buy a denture, it’s something that’s handcrafted. It’s made by an individual who’s custom-making it to fit your mouth. It is a unique product that has everything to do with the particular materials and expertise that the craftsman is using on your particular denture.
So the quality can vary widely. You’re getting a custom made item from materials that you may not know anything about, and the dentists may not know anything about. The unfortunate fact is that there is no way for a patient or a dentist, in many cases, to ascertain the quality and safety of a particular denture.
DEBRA: We need to go to break, but I want to ask you when we come back – I’ll ask you the question now and then you can answer it when we come back.
So if these are custom-made, then can somebody who needs a denture – I don’t have dentures, but if I needed one, could I be in communication with that person who’s making it to find out what is in my denture? And you can answer that when we come back.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guests today are Merinne Mesku and Melissa Mesku, sisters and co-founders of Pure Cure Dental Technology. Go to their website, DentureDetox.com, and download the free report that has a lot more information than what we’re going to have time to cover today.
That’s DentureDetox.com. Get their free report.
We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA:You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guests today are Merinne and Melissa Mesku.
I’ll get both of your names pronounced –
MERINNE MESKU: No worries.
DEBRA: Merinne and Melissa Mesku. I can say it.
I don’t know how old you are. I think you’re probably much younger than I. But there used to be this show on TV called the Mary Tyler Moore Show. There were a lot of reruns (but it’s not being rerun right now). And it had a news broadcaster on. He was always mispronouncing everything. And some days, I feel that way.
Merinne Mesku and Melissa Mesku from Pure Cure Dental Technology, DentureDetox.com. There!
MERINNE MESKU: Woo-hoo!
DEBRA: So tell us about your product now.
MERINNE MESKU: Sure. When people get dentures, they’re concerned about how they look, and how they fit. But when you consider that dentures have the ability to leech residual chemicals, you need to add in a third metrics so the denture needs to look natural and fit right, but it needs to be biocompatible so it’s safe to wear.
So the two things that we found that could be done about it is to remove residual chemicals from the denture, and also to prevent the denture from continuing to leech. And that’s what our product is for.
So originally, we developed a way to detoxify dentures as a laboratory service. We started that in 2010. We had a network of participating dentists and a lot of happy patients. But we also had a lot of people who were interested in getting the product, who needed the service performed on their denture, but they couldn’t afford trips to the dentist that it takes to get the service.
Or they lived in an area where there wasn’t a participating dentist near them.
So we decided to – we researched and we figured out another way of performing denture detoxification that didn’t require the lab but was rather something that people can do at home, and something they can do affordably. So it was within reach of any denture wearer if they’d like to use it.
DEBRA: I think that’s so great.
MERINNE MESKU: When we first came out with this, and we have the lab service, it was wonderful that all these people just found us because they were researching their own denture problems. And then our site pops up, and there’s nobody else talking about these issues.
They found that what we’re saying is resonating with them, describing problems that they were having. And so they’re like, “Okay. I want this done to my denture.”
We’re like, “Sorry. We can’t help you. You’re in a region that’s too far away.” Or, “You’re around the world or whatever, and we can’t get this service to you.”
So we were really keen to come up with something that people could use at home.
DEBRA: So how would somebody know if they were having a problem? What will the problem look like that would then motivate them to be looking for you?
MERINNE MESKU: There are all sorts of – you name it really. A lot of people suffer from what they think might be allergic reactions to their denture. There’s burning mouth syndrome, just sensation of your mouth burning. There’s a lot of reasons that could happen, but one of them is that it could be your mouth reacting to the substances that are leeching from your denture.
There’s denture-related stomatitis.
You could be suffering from inflammation. You could be suffering from irritation. Cheilitis, which is acute inflammation of the lips.
There are all sorts of problems, and a lot of times, people could just get a new denture and then be uncomfortable, or have irritation, or feel like something is wrong.
And a lot of people have described a weird taste in their mouth.
We’ve heard everything. But the research we’ve stuck with – instead of just anecdotal evidence, but we’ve stuck with what scientific studies have shown that a lot of these problems go away when the exposure to the substance stops.
If we can create something that stops those substances from getting in your mouth, then we are actually able to handle this issue instead of having dentures be something that harms people. It can actually improve their quality of life, which is what they’re supposed to be.
DEBRA: In addition to those kinds of symptoms being caused, those chemicals that you’ve listed can easily go through the skin, in your mouth, in the mucus membrane, and then get into your bloodstream pretty quickly.
And so it could be causing all kinds of illnesses that are associated with the [inaudible 00:43:36] chemicals.
So we only have a few minutes left, about six minutes left. So I want to make sure that you have time to describe to us your product. If the box were to arrive at my house, what would I find, and what would I do?
MERINNE MESKU: Sure. So it’s called Pure Care Denture Detox, available at DentureDetox.com. Right now, that’s the only place that you can get it.
You order it and we ship a little box to you. What you get in the mail is seven packets. Each packet contains our patent-pending purifiers. It’s all natural.
Every night you take some warm water, and you put the packet in, and that’s the solution that you soak your denture in overnight.
It does two things. It helps remove the residual substances that exist in the resin denture base. And it renders the denture less able to leech.
DEBRA: How does it do that?
MERINNE MESKU: It’s called a post-polymerization process, something that’s recommended in a lot of studies, but we have seen no evidence of anybody actually practicing this.
Again, the denture is essentially a plastic product, and the process is when it is polymerized from a soft material to a hard material, the material gets reacted so that they don’t react with your body. They’re finished reacting.
What’s residual that doesn’t – and every denture has some degree or residual chemicals. Every denture has them. You don’t know how many. You don’t know exactly what chemicals, but every denture has residual chemicals.
So at post-polymerization process is another process to help remove toxins and allergens from the denture. And hopefully, to make it less able to continue to leech at all, to finish the polymerization process much early.
DEBRA: I’m starting to understand this because in other types of plastic – I know things that leech like other plastics that would leech into the air, outgas is the term for that or leech is the word they use for a plastic leeching from a water bottle into the water. We’re talking about the same thing.
MERINNE MESKU: It’s the same idea.
DEBRA: It’s almost the same idea. So if you had something like a house full of particle board and you wanted to remove all the formaldehyde from it so that it didn’t out gas, then what you would do is you would apply heat. And what that would do is finish the curing process and all those chemicals would come out, and then you would have it there, and it wouldn’t be leeching anymore.
So I can understand it.
MERINNE MESKU: The best thing that can be done. It doesn’t make it non-toxic necessarily but it makes it far less toxic.
DEBRA: Far less, yes.
MERINNE MESKU: The ideal is the materials in the world couldn’t contain these things but in a world of plastics, that’s what we’ve got.
So we do the best we can.
DEBRA: There are so many questions I want to ask you. You couldn’t possibly answer them all in the next three minutes. But the things that I’m thinking are, well – I hope I never need to wear dentures. But if I did, I wouldn’t want to put those plastics in my mouth. I would say what other materials could we use? What did people use before plastics were invented? All these different questions.
And I would assume that probably the ultimate solution for those of us who don’t yet have dentures would be to do everything that we can to preserve our teeth so that we don’t have to put this plastic in our mouth.
But for people who are past that point and have dentures, and need the convenience and comfort of having dentures, being able to look better cosmetically and chew your food and all those things, that if you’re going to use a denture that this is an excellent thing to do.
I would say that – I don’t even know how much it costs, but whatever it costs, it costs less than the health effects that you could have from being exposed to those chemicals.
MERINNE MESKU: Definitely. And even without using our product, our free report has lots of tips of what people can do, people who wear dentures, what they can do to help safeguard their health.
DEBRA: This is great. I’m so glad I found you. Actually, I didn’t find out. One of my readers found you. And when I went through your site, I thought, “This is missing data.”
This is data that is needed about toxics that hasn’t been available before. You’ve have it when it hasn’t been as widely available as it probably needs to be.
So I’m so happy that you are on the show today, and then I can help you spread the word.
MERINNE MESKU: I’m very honored to be on the show. Thank you, Debra.
MELISSA MESKU: Thank you very much.
DEBRA: Thank you. So we only have about a minute left. Any final words?
MERINNE MESKU:We’re just happy we could bring this to the public. This is a lifelong endeavor. It’s something that affected our whole family at our core. And it’s just such an honor to be able to spread what we’ve learned and to actually have a solution that can help make people’s lives better.
And at least it brings peace of mind even if they’re not having any problems with their denture that they’re aware of. Just to bring the peace of mind that they’ve done everything they can to improve their chances, to improve their health, and just to be a part of that is just amazing.
DEBRA: I understand. I feel that way about my work as well. It’s so great.
Well again, thank you so much. And again, we’ve been talking with Merinne Mesku and Melissa Mesku. Pure Cure Dental Technology, and go to DentureDetox.com. Get their free report. Get their kit if that’s something that you think would be helpful to you.
You can also go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and listen to this show again if you want to. You can tell your friends to listen to this show if they wear dentures. All the shows are recorded and by the following Tuesday of most shows, there’s also a transcript.
You can also go and listen to any of the past shows in the archives.
So tell your friends. And you can also leave comments on the shows because each one has its own little blogpost.
So go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, find out more and be well.