WhozYourMama

Beyond the Smile: Oral Health as the Gateway to Whole-Body Wellness

• Michelle Kreft

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Have you ever considered that your child's teeth grinding might be connected to their overall health? Or that the dental issues you've been experiencing could be symptoms of something more fundamental?

Dr. Joel Gould, with 35 years of dental experience, takes us on a fascinating journey from conventional dentistry to groundbreaking insights about how our oral health connects to sleep quality, immune function, and overall wellness. His story begins with pediatric dentistry in Canada's mobile treatment program, where he observed patterns in children's dental development that traditional education never addressed.

The turning point in Dr. Gould's career came when he discovered his own sleep apnea, sending him on a quest that would challenge mainstream medical perspectives. Having suffered from childhood health issues including allergies, asthma, dental decay, and eventually Crohn's disease at age 14, Dr. Gould spent over three decades managing symptoms without addressing root causes. His personal experience mirrors what many patients experience today – treatments that mask symptoms rather than resolve underlying issues.

Most surprisingly, Dr. Gould reveals that common childhood conditions like teeth grinding (bruxism) are warning signs of what he calls "the modern epidemic" – a lifestyle syndrome with nutritional components that few healthcare providers recognize. He challenges conventional wisdom about vitamin D, explaining it's not actually a vitamin but a hormone our bodies produce when exposed to sunlight, and connects this to historical practices where sunlight exposure was used to treat serious bacterial infections before antibiotics became available.

For parents, educators, and anyone concerned with optimizing health, this conversation offers practical insights that could transform your understanding of wellness. Dr. Gould's approach demonstrates that sometimes the solutions to complex health issues might be simpler and more natural than conventional medicine suggests. By connecting the dots between dental health, sleep quality, nutrition, and environmental factors, he provides a roadmap for addressing root causes rather than just managing symptoms.

Ready to discover what your dentist never told you about your health? Listen now and gain insights that could change how you approach wellness for yourself and your children.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to who's your Mama, a podcast focusing on tomorrow's future, which are our kids, educators, teachers, parents, all encompassing, with the goal of understanding that our brain is a muscle that we can exercise to control the speed in the direction that we want. Let's go, y'all. The time is now so, dr Joel Gold from Modern American Dentistry, thank you for welcome to who's your Mama.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, I'm extremely excited to be here.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's our pleasure and I could introduce you, but I feel like there's not enough words that would do it justice. And who better than you to introduce yourself? You are so many hats and are in so many lanes, as far as beyond just dentistry, but using technology and science music. You have a huge passion, as I do, and those that have tuned into who's your Mama know about making a difference when it comes to community and kids and how you've incorporated that and continue to, so please take us on this journey with you.

Speaker 2:

Great, all right. Well, I love your background with the hats there. It definitely makes me understand your perspective. So I'm Dr Joel Gould. It's great to be here with you. I'm a dentist and I'm in my 35th year of dental practice.

Speaker 2:

I started my career in Canada, working for the government of Canada in the school systems and I was the mobile dental treatment program, and so that was my first year of practice and I was literally take my dental equipment into a school and see every single child in the school take their x-rays, do all their dental work and then pack up my things, move on in the school, take their x-rays, do all their dental work and then pack up my things, move on to the next school. So my origins are in pediatrics and public health dentistry. It was a really great program to provide underservice areas for the dental needs of the kids in the community, and it's really where I got my feet wet with the idea of that. You know, kids are very different than adults when it comes to dentistry and we can see so many things in a child's development based on their dental development, and that's really one of my main topics that I like to speak about. So I spent 10 years in Canada, in private practice in Vancouver, british Columbia, and about 25 years ago I followed my passion beach volleyball and came down to Los Angeles where I settled in this current place that I'm in Manhattan Beach, and what you see behind me is has modern sleep solutions. So after about 15 years of practice, I was introduced to the concept of sleep apnea, and this is something that people aren't really thinking about, but it was something that affected me because in the process of me learning about sleep apnea, I discovered I had it myself.

Speaker 2:

And then I went on a journey of discovery to find out what is sleep apnea and how does it relate to our health, which brought me to a completely different understanding of dentistry, and I found many things that I hadn't learned in dental school and still really isn't taught, and that became the basis for the next phase of my life, and I basically created a media company to be able to share this really unique, simple, organic information about our health. And when I started this journey, the world was a very different place, and 10 years ago I seemed like a lunatic standing on the street corner screaming at everybody, and day by day, the world has come around to a more organic understanding of our health. I think we can all see that traditional medicine has a lot of limitations that have become very clear in the last couple of years, and I think that people are really wondering what is it that doctors don't know about our health? And I want everyone to keep in mind that I'm a doctor and I didn't know anything about all of the information I'm really excited to share with you, and specifically in this journey I came across many different people who maybe didn't believe me or didn't think that a dentist should be speaking about overall and general, and none of that concerned me, because my focus is kids and the reason is that I suffered profoundly as a child and we'll get into my story because I want to really use it as an example to discuss the things that are affecting kids these days, much more in the in the early days. So many years ago I was rare, so I had autoimmune disease at the age of 14. These days, kids are coming down with this, adults are coming down with this. This is really where health is going off the rails, and the information I found is just so interesting and easy that I'm really excited to share, so I want to let your listeners know that you're going to come away from this with real, specific examples of how you can make changes in your life.

Speaker 2:

Now I want to also explain and I want to preface this by saying I'm not your doctor. This is not medical advice, but everything I'm saying is supported by science and I'd love it. If anything interests you, you can go ahead. I think that most people are using AI. Check my material with AI. It will support me and I'm just really excited to be able to do something for all the kids who are out there suffering where I didn't have any choices.

Speaker 2:

Way back in the day, before the internet, I was a victim of the medical paradigm that's now showing signs of its failure. So, from a background perspective, you have me with 35 years of experience, and what I do is I'm a clinician, and what that means is that I literally put my hands on people every day and I treat them. I see something broken and I fix it. It's a very unique perspective to be in and every six months, I see my patients, I see their family, I see their kids. I get to know people over many years and, being in this location for 25 years, I've been able to see health on a longitudinal basis.

Speaker 1:

That has really given me the insights that give me the confidence to be able to present this to you today, yeah, so that's a perfect place for us to just pause and thank you so much for that very thorough background. I look forward to so many questions. I know my mind is spinning with questions, so let me zone in on a few things that you said. One having that perspective, because at who's your Mama we talk about brain health is life health, and we exercise, and you mentioned volleyball. You and I have that in common. That was a very, very big part of my life for several years.

Speaker 1:

I think a lot of people don't associate oral health with overall body health and how it's all intertwined. And so the fact that you brought up sleep apnea I think that's something that doesn't get discussed that often. I think it's also naturally associated with people that are not physically fit and active, have core morbidities. It doesn't mean that it can't be, but that misconception too. So you touched on those things. And then, really you know this marks the one year anniversary of when we launched who's your mama and part of the reason that I was so passionate about it. Again, you and I are passionate about making a difference and starting at the foundation of not only ourselves but with kids and with knowledge is power. Brain health is life health. So setting that foundation to be able to do that from a community standpoint. So all those things that you touched on, and and how can we set those, those, um, good habits earlier on and also make it fun. So the the toys, squishies that you have I know that you've developed that that represent something in the background.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes well to interrupt you, so that that it's the understanding that information is useless if no one listens to it. And how do you get it into popular culture is you have to make it fun, and kids, they want to have a good time. So if they can learn something at the same time as have fun, that's really the basis for what I want to do.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and music and laughter is therapy for the soul, as we talk about on here a lot. So the fact that you're combining all of that, so where you left off before is where your passion came from your background and your passion. So a lot of people will have these thoughts and then they don't, for whatever reason or reasons. Don't take the time to then put them into action. You touched a little bit on your own personal health experiences. Was that a pivotal moment for you and if so, how did you then take that to the next step?

Speaker 2:

Sure. Well, I want to give a little background, and the reason I want to sort of start this way is because I know there's going to be a lot of your listeners who are going to start to recognize what my life was like. Right, I am the middle child. My brother was born completely healthy, not a sick day in his life. He was fit, he was a great athlete and right from the time I was born I came home with all kinds of skin irritations and rashes and I was a very skinny child.

Speaker 2:

I wouldn't eat anything other than plain pasta, that's it. I wouldn't eat any vegetables. I would eat no meat nothing. Plain pasta, that's it. I wouldn't eat any vegetables. I would eat no meat, nothing. So my mother would always try and cook a special meal for me and I kept on.

Speaker 2:

Basically, issues I started having was allergies, asthma and then, probably about sixth grade, oh and terrible dental decay. So every time I was taken to the dentist, the dentist was just shaking his head saying you know your son, he's dentally, he's a mess. And I was extremely delayed and I had a ton of dental work, always needing tons of fillings, and that I had my tonsils removed at age four, and that's a big giveaway. Chronically inflamed and swollen tonsils this is something that we're seeing a lot of and, you know, there's the antibiotic fatigue If kids chronically inflamed and swollen tonsils this is something that we're seeing a lot of and there's the antibiotic fatigue If kids, every time they get sick, they have to have antibiotics. This is not good.

Speaker 2:

So in those days I had my tonsils out at age four and then, probably about fifth or sixth grade, I started to put on weight. And why are some kids fat? And I'm gonna use that word, I don't care if I offend anybody, but I turned into a fat kid and I remember I had to go to the Husky department in Sears to get jeans and I don't know. You know, when you're in fifth or sixth grade, what are you really doing? You're hanging out with your friends, you're, you're at a sleepover, everyone's having pizza. We ate pizza and drank Coke back in those days. But I got heavy.

Speaker 2:

I was in a cast. I had nonspecific pain on my knee. They put me in a cast for a couple of months. I couldn't find anything wrong with it Strange nonspecific bone pain. So at the age of 14, I got pretty sick and it was very embarrassing. So being 14, and I hadn't gone into puberty yet, not even close. So I was completely underdeveloped, I was fat and I started having issues with the bathroom and I got sicker and sicker until they put me in the hospital, um, and it was a long journey. Initially I couldn't find anything wrong, but the diagnosis in those days was rare, was Crohn's disease, and that was a huge relief. So that's a very common diagnosis these days with young adults and kids, and the medication they put me on is still. The first medication they put you on today is prednisone. All right, that is corticosteroid, and it had disastrous effects on my body.

Speaker 1:

A lot of inflammation it would have caused.

Speaker 2:

On a positive note it took care of my symptoms, but it's a very damaging medication.

Speaker 1:

It's a band-aid. Do you feel like it was a band-aid, not getting to the root of the cause?

Speaker 2:

Very much, and you know, your body starts to change and it was pretty rough for me. So once I had the Crohn's disease diagnosis, I cycled on and off all kinds of medications and every time a new medication would come out I would try it. I would have maybe some success. Nothing really worked for me and I remember specifically, I went from doctor to doctor over the years. First doctor says whatever you do, don't eat any vegetables. This is the worst thing you can do. The next doctor says only vegetables. So there still is not a consensus of Crohn's disease with the right diet is because, truthfully, the mainstream medical community has no clue what Crohn's disease is. They don't know the root cause. And one of the things I like to say is if you don't know how something works, you can't fix it. If you don't know the root cause of a disease, how are you going to repair it?

Speaker 1:

You can't find what you don't know what you're looking for.

Speaker 2:

And doctors really don't know this syndrome, and that's the world that we're stuck in. A doctor will prescribe a medication. Now, when I saw my last gastroenterologist, maybe about 12 years ago, he wanted to put me on some very powerful immune suppressing drugs and I said no because I was managing my symptoms. Now I didn't have much of a life in that. All I did all day was worry about my symptoms. There's a huge psychological component to not having control of your body A grown man who can't control his bowels. That's very embarrassing. It changed everything about my life. I didn't go into medical school because I could never be in an operating room for a long period of time and every decision I made was based around the bathroom. It's like one of those commercials where they show the inside of a porta potty. That was literally my life.

Speaker 1:

So were you saying, did you have extreme? Are you relating to IBS?

Speaker 2:

Well, so imagine yes, really. So the Crohn's disease is like a very severe case of IBS and sometimes it's colitis if it's in a lower part of the body. I was very lucky I was only hospitalized once and I never needed surgery, so always maintain just enough health to keep me functional in society. But it wasn't good psychologically for me because I was just basically managing my symptoms and hiding my disease from everyone around me. I didn't want anyone to know how sick I was and how it had affected my life, right. So it got me to the point where I was managing myself and and, um, I started to have anxiety and I'd never had that before and I didn't know what was wrong. I thought everything was okay with my life, I was successful in my career, and then I got infected with MRSA, methicillin resistant staph aurea.

Speaker 1:

What age? I'm sorry to interrupt you. What age did you make that transition to? To, like you said, in some way there was shame and embarrassment with what you were going through. So how long was that period of time when you said so 14, and did you say till 40?

Speaker 2:

48.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so so like over over three decades, yeah, okay yeah, you know, and and I thought that this was my fate because, you know, I had created a life for myself that was functional and it was the best that I could do and I just accepted this I was told all along this is a genetic disease and it's not. It's environmental, there's a genetic component. So, at the age of just a bit prior to 48, I had all these really weird symptoms. I had methicillin resistant staph aureus and these were infections over me that I couldn't resolve and around that time I was getting into the sleep apnea thing.

Speaker 2:

Now the sleep apnea um, when I found out I had sleep apnea, I was at my fittest because I had really tried to beat the weight off myself. Having been 250 pounds at one point in time, I was down to probably 225. I was still heavy. It didn't really make any sense, but the sleep apnea diagnosis was very interesting because, of course, my sleep was terrible, but I didn't know it and so many people have undiagnosed, untreated sleep apnea. That may or may not include snoring, and talking about apnea on a deeper level is something that we can do a little later, because a lot of your listeners either they snore or their bed partner snores, and there's a lot of information I really want to share on. What is this syndrome? It's not what anyone thinks, okay.

Speaker 1:

So I think that would definitely be. We could just do one episode on that, because the more people I know that have opened up and again, this is the whole point of this is sharing. So you don't have to be a mama to be you know, tune into who's your mom or have kids. It really is a platform to share, especially post pandemic, when people have been dealing with more and more and we've seen more things pop out for various reasons, and sleep apnea has been a common theme that I've been hearing about.

Speaker 2:

So, yes, yeah, and most people are very embarrassed. They're, you know, when I asked. You know I can tell by looking at someone's mouth how they sleep, and most people that they'll. I sleep great, you know, and I know they don't, but it's okay, so I.

Speaker 2:

So, as I go down this journey into sleep apnea, I found it fascinating, because what dentists can do? Everyone knows about the CPAP. That's the mask that you put on and it blows air down your airway and it works and it's a lifesaver. But it's an allopathic treatment. It's treating the symptoms of the disease. Now, these CPAPs have saved millions of people's lives around the world and to anyone listening to this, you should not stop. But I want everyone to understand how did we get to this point? And that CPAP? That's the end stage of this disease.

Speaker 2:

This disease starts as early as a newborn and the reason that I created all of the images you see behind me is that I'm telling a story about humanity through different ages where you're going to see different symptoms of the same syndrome. It's very strange, right? So as I dug into the sleep apnea, I started to travel around the country to the different groups of dentists, because we make an oral device and it's an alternative to the CPAP. So if somebody can't wear a CPAP for many reasons, they can also wear an oral device. That's called a mandibular advancement device and it brings the lower jaw forwards to open the airway. They can be very successful and they can stop snoring in one night. Now there are some issues with it. It can move your teeth, it can damage your jaw. It's also another allopathic treatment, treating the symptoms of the disease without addressing the root cause. Now I wore one myself and I got really good at making them and a lot of my patients wear them and people still come to me for those. But I'm really interested in the prevention and the root cause of the disease, which again can start in childhood.

Speaker 2:

So during this period of time I went to the different camps. One group of dentists said, oh, it's going to have to be surgery. Another group said, oh, it's a tongue tie. There's all. These people have these symptoms and they're trying to put them all together.

Speaker 2:

Now one of the most important symptoms I want to mention right away is called bruxism. Okay, bruxism is the clenching and grinding of teeth, and to everyone in the audience I should have mentioned this earlier, because if your child grinds their teeth in sleep. They already have the syndrome that I'm calling the modern epidemic and I kind of say you're infected, but it's not like a virus that you catch. This is a lifestyle syndrome and one of the main symptoms is clenching and grinding your teeth. If your child grinds their teeth loudly in sleep, there's a problem, and we're going to address that right away today and you're going to leave here with a solution. Within two to three days that grinding noise will stop.

Speaker 2:

And that's probably the most interesting part of this is how this is such a big deal. I made my first grinding guard in dental school 40 years ago and ever since then I was grinding my teeth. So here I am, going to these different dental conferences and something is bothering me. None of what they're saying makes sense to me, and I come across a neurologist by the name of Dr Stasia Gomenak and she said hey, everyone, I know that you think that you know snoring sleep apnea is caused by obesity, but it's not. It's a vitamin D deficiency.

Speaker 1:

That's one of the areas that really struck me you know all the you know research I was doing about you and having the pleasure to meet you a handful of times as well is again your approach to dentistry and just overall body and brain and mental health. But of course your area especially is in dentistry. In that area, but from a technology and science and the science part being specifically about vitamins, I've never heard any dentist around I've lived all around the world ever mention that inquire, kindly, encourage anything around what my vitamin intake has been or should be. So it's a very, like you said, preventative approach that when I was doing all my research of the things that you've done, I've never heard anything like it.

Speaker 2:

Well, and it's kind of shocking, so you know. So the first time I heard that, I thought well, vitamin D. I drink juice, I drink milk, it's in there. I'm in the sun all the time playing beach volleyball, but you don't know what you don't know. Vitamin D is not a vitamin. It's a hormone that we make on our skin in sunlight. There isn't any in milk or juice. It's placed there artificially just the tiniest amount to prevent rickets. So that brings me back to this idea of what rickets. For people who don't know this, rickets was a disease that children in the industrial revolution got, where their bones became soft and malformed and terrible dental decay and teeth falling apart. This was something that was discovered to be caused by a lack of vitamin d. This information has been going out there for more than 100 years and you'll see in my Instagram feed I posted an ad in the 1920s of Schlitz, the sunshine beer.

Speaker 2:

They put vitamin D in beer in the 1920s. Now people don't know this, but antibiotics were not widely available until the early 1940s available until the early 1940s and prior to that. The massive epidemic that um the, the, the bacterial skin and lung infection okay, um, there's actually an outbreak right now of it, um uh, is caused by lack of sunlight that people would go to sanatoriums to lie in the sun. Um, sorry, it's just escaping me. It's the major uh uh illness.

Speaker 2:

Um uh, shoot okay well, during the pandemic, I mean yes, we were all bunkered down so that's that that's I'm sure that's part of it too is that you, we, were all caged in for a very, very extensive period of time and not having that modern day medicine, which is natural sunlight that fuels us, the way you're talking about yes, um well, so back in the day people would go to a sanatorium to lie in the sun um tuberculosis okay it is making it yeah, tuberculosis.

Speaker 2:

It's a bacterial skin and lung infection. It was called consumption I'm sorry I blanked on that and the treatment prior to antibiotics was to go somewhere sunny and lie in the sun. I have pictures of people in hospital beds being treated for tuberculosis by lying in the sun. That's bizarre. Now, once the antibiotics were created, the idea that you would get sunlight and it would make you healthy is ridiculous. That that would actually clear up an infection and that goes to tell you how important sunlight is, and it's not just the vitamin d. There are so many things that are important about getting sunlight, but we have to understand that modern medicine has warned us that the sun is dangerous, almost toxic, and we have to protect our and again, that's a whole different discussion.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for tuning in to who's your Mama, and I look forward to collaborating from a community standpoint for the next episodes.

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Michelle Kreft

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