Why Oral Health Matters for Postpartum Moms, Busting Myths, and Finding Wellness with Holistic Dentist Dr. Spelman

*The advice and information shared on this episode should not be considered medical advice. Please consult your own medical providers for medical advice*

"IF YOU IGNORE YOUR TEETH LONG ENOUGH, THEY WILL GO AWAY"

Join me on the crunchiest conversation yet with Dr Chris Spelman DDS on why postpartum moms especially, need to get back to a good state of oral health, build our overall health back again, and find wellness.

Critical Notes on this Episode: Top 4 things for postpartum moms

1. Inside out first. Get access to bioavailable and bioretention-heavy supplements and multivitamins. Omegas, electrolytes etc. Designs for Health brand and also the DoTerra brand provide high quality products. 
2. Good oral health routine: floss first; brush with a non-fluoride toothpaste with hydroxyapatite; DO NOT RINSE the toothpaste off. Try for 30mins. Dr Spelman uses a water-powered floss; Sonicare electrical toothbrush with a bamboo brush head made of charcoal and coconut oil from Amazon. 
3. Watch what you eat and drink. NO COFFEE SIPPING FOR HOURS. COFFEE IS ACIDIC and we want our mouths to get back to a neutral pH faster, and for longer. STOP SNACKING, SIPPING SUGARY AND PROCESSED FOODS CONSISTENTLY AS THIS MAKES OUR MOUTHS ACIDIC FOR 2-3 HOURS. STAY AWAY FROM PROCESSED FOOD. Sorry about the all caps. This is just super important.
4. Gut/probiotics: The KKK: Kimchi, Kombucha, Kefir. Dr Spelman takes a Kimchi 1 supplement at the moment. DoTerra also makes a great probiotic. 

Other products/tips mentioned: Detox/gut cleanse/total body cleanse with DoTerra’s 1-month long cleanse is very gentle. 

Xylitol and hydroxyapatite chewing gums after a meal can actually help your mouth return to a good pH level.

DO NOT BRUSH TEETH IMMEDIATELY AFTER MEALS! You could be brushing the acidic meal right into your teeth. JUST rinse your mouth thoroughly with water. 

Lastly:

**I know my opinions on religion and politics in particular are loud, conservative, and can be offensive to some. Please do not assume that my guests share the same opinions as I do. Any episodes with guests should be taken as standalone, solely in the context of their episode only.**

Lastly fr: You are not alone.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Like envision yourself being 95, and there's a choice. You're either going to be slumped over in a nursing home, drooling on yourself, not knowing who anybody is, or you're the person that's going and visiting your great grandkids, bringing a bunch of gifts, and then taking a walk in the park and eating ice cream. Like those are the extremes. But if you make that your vision, you at least know, like you have an aim point. If you know what you're aiming at, like everything else just starts to align with that. You have to have that defining vision that's way out in the future and keep aligned to that, and then just bring other things in your life in alignment to reach that goal.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Okay. Today I have another amazing guest. He is literally the most conscious person I know. And he happens to be a dentist. Uh, Dr. Chris Stellman. He is a dentist of 25 years, I think. You finished in 2001. That's a quarter century. That's that's a big milestone to celebrate. He is a dentist out here in central Jersey. Would you say like in the Ringos area or like what town is Hopewell area? Hopewell, Hopewell, New Jersey. Um, and right now it's called Orlando Family Dentistry, and he's gonna help us moms take care of our teeth. And the big thing about moms is we lose so much of ourselves and we lose so much bone density and we lose so much nutrients as we have our children and then as we feed them with nursing, often we overlook the health of our teeth. So, my biggest question and the first question is can you kind of explain why? Like, yeah, what's the case for postpartum moms to take care of our teeth? And has anything bad happened to our teeth that we are not aware about over the last, you know, over the pregnancy, the birthing, the labor?

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Yeah. So you really have to look at what has happened to your body as you've been involved in creating this new human, right? So pieces of you have been infused into this new life that is growing inside you for months and months and months. And um, I would say most of most of the women that I've known have been taking prenatal vitamins, have paid a lot of attention to doing that throughout pregnancy to make sure you're fortifying yourself, but you're still at a net loss, right? You're still behind the eight ball. Once the even once the baby comes and you're not sleeping really well and you're feeding, whether it's breastfeeding or bottle feeding, all of your time, all of your effort, all of your energy is going into this new little precious life that you're trying to make sure survives.

SPEAKER_05 2:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

And um, usually massive mineral loss, nutrient loss, protein loss, which isn't talked about a whole lot. Um, but you're in these major deficits. Not to mention you also have these major hormonal fluctuate fluctuations that you've just been through. And it's one set of fluctuations during the pregnancy, and then it's a whole nother shift after the pregnancy. And those have massive um consequences for a lot of parts of the body. And we see it in the mouth, but we see it throughout the whole digestive tract, we see it in immune health. It's it's so comprehensive. Um, so we know for sure with all these hormone fluctuations, the microbiome. And when I say microbiome, it's just the bacteria that are normally growing in certain parts of the body. Like we usually talk about the gut microbiome and all the bacteria there, those shift dramatically because of stress and because of hormonal changes. The uh microbiome in our mouth, there's different bacteria that are in our mouths that are supposed to be there, and those change over time. So I also find that beyond all those changes, habits change, right? Cravings change, they drive a lot of the pregnancy, food cravings, especially. And then just the sheer exhaustion that you're going through leads to um deficits in your self-care in general, and oral care is part of that, right? So exhausted at night, you forget to brush and floss your teeth before you go to bed, or it's the last thing you can think of in the morning because you're up with the cry of a baby and you're running to the room, and mom's got to be last, taking care of all these other things. So, all of those things are playing a role, and some really suffer with a lot of um issues with the mouth, whether it's cavities, gum disease, or just inflammation in general. Some people sail right through it. So it's something that everybody needs to pay attention to. Um, I've had so many moms experience their first cavity right after having their first baby, or they've had cavities in the past and then they have a baby and they have five at a time. And they're like world, like everything is so out of sorts and it's very unsettling because even the people that think they're taking care of themselves have missed some things along the way and are now dealing with all these deficits.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Yeah, I feel so seen right now because it it's weird for me to hear this coming from a man, first of all, and then also also a health professional. But like, you know, it helps because you've been married and you've seen your wife have your two beautiful kids and all the things that she went through. But like, for real, uh exactly what you said. Not only do we fail to brush our teeth in the first, you know, really first couple months of having the baby, because it's like you're not sleeping, the day is the night, the night is the day, you don't know what day of the week it is, you're just on survival mode. And like brushing our teeth is like one of the last priorities. We need we need to eat something. Like we are hungry, we're thirsty, we're nursing. And for me, and I know a lot of mums, a ton of mums, have a lot of nausea during pregnancy, and that's a long time, nine months. And whether you have nausea for just one month or two or three, that's still a significant bulk of time. And I I can't tell you how many of my friends, including myself, we just could not brush our teeth because that motion would make us throw up. So a lot of throwing that up with brushing teeth, that being such a difficult thing to do. And just um, I heard somewhere a crunchy dentist on Instagram, I don't know who he is, but there was some talk about how having your microbiome or like your situation in your mouth super acidic is not a good thing. Is that is that true?

SPEAKER_00 6:04

Yeah, correct. So I know we're gonna touch on this a little bit later, I'm sure. Um, just talking about how cavity cavities form in the in the teeth themselves. They the teeth being in an acidic environment was what causes breakdown to begin with. Everybody thinks, well, sugar causes cavities. Sugar actually doesn't cause cavities, it's what is produced by the sugar. It's the bacteria that convert that sugar into acid. You know, they use the sugar as their own form of energy, and the byproduct is acid. It's the acid that's expressed from the bacteria plus the acidity of the foods that we eat. It's like pouring a can of coke on the hood of a car. Eats through the paint, and then it's going to start damaging the metal next, right? So it's just layer by layer, just ripping these minerals out of the teeth. And that's where you get a cavity, which is literally like a hole bored into your tooth, and it's just mush where it used to be nice and solid, it's now soft.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Is a huge problem.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

What are the three really simple things that we can do in those, you know, early months postpartum, or as soon as we can gain our sanity back to some extent, to make sure that we're doing something to reverse some damage or kind of go back to a good maintenance routine for our teeth?

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Yeah, great question. How would it feel? I'm gonna speak directly to you as a mom. How would it feel to have some solutions that would actually connect with total systemic health so it doesn't get overly complicated and you don't feel like you're trying to put fires out everywhere? Would that help be a little helpful? Okay. Yeah. So I came up with, I know you asked me to think of three different things a moms could do. I I had four. I had the short. Yeah, you go for it. Um, my first thought is is inside out first. And that's always my answer for everything that's going on in the body is always an inside out first. What is going on with your general metabolism? How is your body operating? How are you producing energy and getting rid of wastes efficiently? Um, so again, we talk about prenatal vitamins and supplements. We talk very little about postnatal, like what happens after the baby comes, how do we fortify our bodies? Taking a really, really, really good multivitamin that's both bioavailable, and there's a new term that I've kind of become acquainted with over the last year or so is bioretention. It's like how long are these vitamins staying in your body so that you actually utilize them? Because so many of the vitamins we take and minerals we take are are water soluble, right? So you take a supplement and within two hours it's out of you already. Your body uses what it needs, and then bang, it's it's just immediately out. So there's ways now that we've made vitamins that are, you know, packaged inside lipids so that they stay in your body longer. It's called bioretention. You keep it longer and then you can utilize it throughout the day. So vitamins and supplements are absolutely huge after having that baby because now I look at prenatal vitamins as like fortifying and trying to stop the loss as rapidly, almost like putting a finger in the hole in the dam.

SPEAKER_03 8:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Afterwards, it's it's not just stopping the decline, it's now fortification. Now you have to rebuild all those rungs of the ladder that you've now gone down. You have to go back up. Okay. So supplementing and that that's like a whole nother podcast is like, how do you do that? Um it's so overwhelming.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

Yeah, I I am the first one to say I'm guilty of that. I did not take any postpartum vitamins. Also, the mainstream market doesn't advertise that. It's all prenatal, prenatal, prenatal. And then after the baby, it's like, bye. Like we forgot about you, we don't really care about you, just focus on the baby. And so, do you have any specific brand recommendations of like these? And and you've already shared your affiliation with DOTERRA, and that's fine if you can recommend that too.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

And there's that's not the only one. Um, but doTERRA is my primary, and I I'm a heavy supplementer myself. I my philosophy is because of our mass production of food in these in this day and age, and because of the way we farm, all of our food is nutrient depleted. None of it is what it used to be 50 or 100 years ago. Yeah, everybody has deficiencies because of that. Everybody needs to supplement. So I'm not just like preaching to you guys, hey, do this. I'm doing it. And I would tell you you're gonna do something very similar to what I do. So again, if you want to do a deep dive, like multivitamins, omegas, which are the fish oils, um, let's see, electrolytes, because most people are not getting enough minerals, and electrolytes are minerals that we need um to fortify ourselves so systems operate properly. And then there's a bunch of other things that you can add on to that to make sure that you're getting that daily boost. Another brand that we've used is called Designs for Health, but it's it's more of like uh doctors have better access to it than everybody else. So a lot of doctors will sell it out of their offices. So you see designs for great brand. It's just harder for lay people to access it. DOTERRA is direct selling, you buy it right from them, it's super easy.

unknown 10:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

So that's usually another reason why why I go to that. Um, so that's that's my philosophy is that everybody needs to supplement. We all need to fortify, we're all in this together, and that actually makes things a lot easier because the the blueprint for it becomes more universal and easier to follow. And then there's personalizations you add to it to make it yours. So everybody's got a Christmas tree. Your ornaments are gonna look a little different than mine, but they're all Christmas trees, right?

SPEAKER_03 11:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

So that's my my base level philosophy. So then I would move into you gotta solidify a really good oral care routine, and I'll break it down and make it super simple. And I'll just tell you what I do, and then again, make it make sense for you. Um, flossing first, you know, get the stuff that's in between your teeth loosened because the brush can't reach it. Yeah, have become married to my water flosser, yeah, and it's it's so simple because it just shoots out a stream of water, and you just hold it between each of the teeth for like literally like half a second or a second, and just let it shoot the water through, spit it all out, and then I brush afterwards, and I use a non-fluoride toothpaste because it can be ingested without causing any problems. So it's a remineralizing toothpaste. I brush all my teeth with it. I actually swish with my toothpaste like it was a mouthwash. Get it in between the teeth, get it everywhere over all the surfaces for about 15 seconds, spit out the excess, done. Don't rinse. Everybody rinses it off their teeth. Well, guess what? These toothpaste that are designed to remineralize or rebuild your enamel need to be on your teeth for a certain amount of time or they don't work.

SPEAKER_03 12:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

As soon as you go in and wash it all off, you've just lost all the benefit. Leave it on there about half an hour, no eating, no drinking, no rinsing.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Wow, half an hour.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

In the morning, after you eat, do all your stuff, even if it's just brushing, just brush.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

Slit it all out, go about your business. In about half an hour, don't eat or drink anything.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

Do you have like any issues with like specific types of flaws? Because I know people get like really nitty-gritty about it. Like, oh, don't use like plastic flaws because you're gonna get microplastics inside you. And then there's this whole conversation about like, oh, don't use the oral bee plastic bristles that plastic is gonna get inside of you. And it's kind of like, well, what are the alternatives? And there's this, I know this one brand was like, oh, we we're a bamboo electric toothbrush, and it's kind of like, and then someone else is like, Well, bamboo will go moldy, and you're like, So what do you use, Dr.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Scott?

SPEAKER_00 13:28

So I use an electric brush. I definitely recommend electric because it's more efficient than getting plaque off the teeth. Um, I have a Sonic Air toothbrush, but I found bamboo replacement heads that have charcoal bristles. So they're charcoal and coconut oil bristles, and they're very soft. I think most bristles on toothbrushers are too abrasive. They are plastic, they're nylon by and large, they're too abrasive. And yes, microplastics are becoming more and more of the conversation, right? How much is our exposure? Are we able to get rid of these things in our bodies? So I've moved to the bamboo with the charcoal bristles because number one, they're super soft and non-abrasive and not going to wear my gums away, but also not exposing me to the to the plastics. Just replace your brush every few months. Like every three, three to six months is the range. Replace your toothbrush head so that you're getting freshness in there. You can get little UV cleaners that you clip onto the end of your brush and have UV light that shines on the bristles, and it kills everything. It kills viruses, kills bacteria, kills fungi. So if you're concerned about the cleanliness, do that or dip them in mouthwash. Like there's there's plenty of ways to keep things clean so you're not exposing yourself to it. There's also a brand called Coco Floss. I don't know if you've heard of that one.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

I guess I've heard of it.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

And they actually put like remineralizing agents in the floss itself so that as you're flossing, you're actually wiping some of these minerals in those critical areas between the teeth. And I think that's a brilliant idea. They actually make a toothpaste as well. So yeah, um, that's another there's so many great toothpaste out there now that are ultimately. Oh, is it brut is it bring it with you? It's I I go into Amazon, I type in Sonic Hair replacement head bamboo, and it just pops up, and I'm like, that's the one. There it is. It's the I'm older.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

He's normal, just like us, you guys. Um, okay, so that was the second thing. Like gloss and brush and keep that hydroxyapetite toothpaste on you for as long as you can. Absolutely. Number three.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Watch what you eat and drink. So I find, and I've struggled with this immensely, so I'm not gonna pretend that I am like above anybody else. Establishing a dietary strategy is really difficult. I don't like diets because they they're fattish and they're short term, right? They don't stick. They're like, I'm gonna do this for three months and it's gonna be like any cardboard, but it's gonna make me healthy. That's garbage. What you need is a dietary strategy, like how am I gonna eat strategically to help all parts of my body? What am I gonna avoid? What am I gonna include? I would say most of us at this point know get rid of the processed foods, like as much as you can. Stay away from the processed foods, and they're everywhere. But if you're eating chips and crackers and cookies and things like that all the time, you're going to have problems systemically, and as long as I would say, along with problems with your teeth, you're gonna struggle with both, right?

SPEAKER_03 16:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

So being careful, um, even about what you drink, though, there's so many people that'll just sip on coffee throughout the day because they're so tired and exhausted, they're just trying to keep their eyes open. And they're usually sweetening it with something because coffee is so bitter and you got to make it taste better. And every little bit of that, the coffee's acidic, so it's creating this acidic environment. Um, here's another thing to keep in mind when you're eating sugar, especially if it's a processed sugar and really available, like corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, things like that, even just um cane sugar, they're all readily available to the bacteria in your mouth. When they start processing that acid, your mouth stays acidic for two to three hours before your saliva can get it to rebound to a neutral pH. And that's from every time you sip or every time you snack. So if you're sipping your coffee and then 15 minutes later you have another sip, you just went back down and you're now at the beginning of that two to three hours. And then you go and you sip it again. So some people stay in an acidic environment all day long because they're eating and drinking and snacking on things that are either acidic in their own right or giving fuel to the bacteria to make acid. So being conscious of those things, um, I do want to share this one thing that I just learned a few months ago is the order of the foods that you eat makes makes a difference.

SPEAKER_03 17:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Eat your fibers first at your meal. So fruits and vegetables first, and it really makes sense. You're like, well, we've done this for years intuitively, but now with the advent of all these uh fast foods and things we just got out of sorts. So fiber first. So eat your salad, right? Then you eat your proteins and fats. You have your meat part of the meal, and then carbohydrates are always at the tail end.

SPEAKER_03 18:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

So when you do it in that order, the cool thing about fiber is not only is it really good fuel for your gut, but fiber binds carbs and slows their absorption and sometimes reduces their absorption, helps to carry them through the gut and and eliminate them, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:20

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

So part of our general health is how much we're causing our blood glucose to spike, which causes our insulin to spike. And every time we make that spike, we're actually accelerating our aging process. Yes. Total body. Total body.

unknown 18:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

We're also ruining our teeth. So making sure we're doing those things in the right order slows down and softens those glucose and insulin spikes and actually helps us to age slower and more um, I would say, in a more gentle manner, a gentle form of aging. I call it maturing. I don't talk about aging anymore. I talk about maturing.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

Yeah. Okay. And then you had an extra fourth point. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

Um, dull in gut probiotics. So we're very aware of how important it is to rebuild our gut microbiome, keep good bacteria going down into our guts all the time. The same is true for our oral bacteria. And there's ways we can do that with foods. You know, eating a lot of fermented foods are really great for both microbiomes. They're really just different ends of the same tube, right? Starts here and ends on the other end. Um, but there are supplements as well that are really helpful. Gut, gut supplements that are great probiotics. And then there's also oral dental probiotics that are like lozenges that you let dissolve in your mouth that help to repopulate with very healthy bacteria.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

Yes. And what gut probiotics are you taking? Or like, are there foods like because we know people generally know like, okay, like yogurt has probiotics, or like some that have that added in, or like fermented products, but also some fermented products can be worse for you than good for your oral health. So is there a recommendation there on like what type of probiotics you could take or eat?

SPEAKER_00 20:02

It's a great question. So I'm a I'm like a sourdough breadaholic right now.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

I mean, who doesn't like a good sourdough?

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Yeah, gotta be real. Um the K's, the the kimchi, kombucha, and kefir are all good probiotics. I actually, full disclosure, I just started taking a kimchi supplement after listening to it.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

I have never heard of this, and I'm Korean. What is a kimchi supplement? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

So kimchi has over 900 different kinds of bacteria in it. So kimchi is like massive super probiotic, hugely, huge, hugely helpful. Not everybody can eat it every day, but that's the recommendation. They're like, get it in your diet every day. So I was listening to a podcast and they said, listen, um, I think it's called kimchi one is the name of the um supplement. The the company I remember is called Brightcore. Brightcore. And um, yeah, you take one a day and it's got like a full like daily dose of kimchi in it. And I'm I just started like a week ago, so I'm gonna give it about three months and see where this goes. So I'm trying myself, like I'm paying attention to the garden. I'm tilling the garden, I'm fertilizing. Um, I take doTERRA actually makes a probiotic and I take that on a daily basis as well. Um, interestingly enough, I here's where I'm letting my hair down. I grew up with a massively messed up gut, and I never knew it because I grew up with it. I didn't know, like I didn't know how messed up it was until I was about 40. And I started taking some supplements, and I was like, wow, so this is I guess this is what normal is. I never really I just thought I was that was the way I was, and I was different than other people, but that was just me and I couldn't do anything about it. So once I had that epiphany, I was like, man, this is something that I'm gonna have to really pay attention to. Um and I started taking probiotics supplements. Um, it was only recommended to take them for like a few. Weeks at a time when I started, and I said, you know what? As messed up as I am, I'm just gonna take it every day. And I took them for like a year and a half, and I was like, This is awesome. And then I stopped. I was like, why am I taking these all the time? Maybe, maybe this isn't helpful, or maybe I don't need it anymore. And within like a week or two, I was like, no, my gut was telling me right away, I was like, get back on the stuff.

SPEAKER_03 22:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

So the science has changed since then. Now they're saying it's better to take them on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_05 22:28

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

But foods for sure are helpful. Sauerkraut, pickles, even like simple things. There's a lot of things that taste great. Just try to incorporate these in your diet. Um, and even look for recipes where they can help you with these things and be creative so that it's not just I gotta eat a bowl of fermented cabbage. Like, no, look for a meal that has it incorporated as part of a grander plan, but doesn't overload you with something that you're not going to be able to get used to over time and enjoy eating. If you're not if you don't enjoy it, you're not gonna be able to keep it long term.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I I'm not a kombucha girl, like no one could ever make me that, but I I can take sourdough any day. I do like kimchi, but I like it's a little too spicy for me sometimes. But like you can really get a big range, like speaking from a Korean myself. Um, but because this is not on our list of questions, but because you mentioned the whole gut microbiome thing, this has been on my mind lately, and um it's I just see it on Instagram so much. Have you ever done a parasite cleanse before? And what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 23:32

I have not done a parasite-specific cleanse, but I've done a general gut cleanse. Actually, it was no, it was more a total body cleanse. Um it wasn't as a gut-specific cleanse, it was a total body cleanse. And I did it, doTERRA actually makes a total cleanse. It's a month-long process of taking different supplements for 10 days, 10 days, and 10 days.

SPEAKER_03 23:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

And I I avoided it like the plague for a few years as I'm like, uh-uh, I'm a working guy and I cannot. And they're like, no, no, no, it's not that kind of cleanse. Like, you're not just gonna be sitting on the toilet for a month.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

I tried it and it it was very mild and very gentle, but it just does help to reset your body, and really it's about opening up the natural detoxification pathways your body body already has in place. Like God made this stuff and he made it very specifically. And what we do over time is it's like not changing the oil in your car, right? It just gets gunked up. But what you need to do at certain points is undo the cap and let all the bad oil out and replenish it with good oil. And that's what I like to think of these cleanses as is like, let's open up those detox pathways, help your liver, help your kidneys, help your skin, help your, I mean, even your airway, you're getting rid of toxins on a regular basis. So, yeah, how do we optimize the functioning of these natural processes? And then how do we rebuild and fortify so that they're gonna keep humming and not get so gunked up over time?

SPEAKER_02 25:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

So I think it is helpful to do cleanses periodically.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

Yeah, because I'm I feel the same way. I've never done one before. It scares me. Like I'm a busy mom of little kids, I don't have time to sit in the toilet for a long period of time. But also, like my worry was you know, a lot of old school detoxes, they just got rid of everything, like the good stuff and the bad stuff. But I think nowadays there's much better education and also research that helps you retain as much good as possible and like does it more selectively. I don't know how they do it, but like I guess that's the direction that we're moving towards.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

I'll give you one caveat though. If you're gonna do a parasite cleanse, do it under like follow a specific protocol of someone that's going to guide you through it. And you have to, have to, have to use binders when you're doing a parasite cleanse. Because when you're killing off parasites, you're releasing tons of toxins that are inside these parasites. And if you don't have binders that are going in and grabbing those and packaging them so that you can excrete them, you're going to get like a Herxheimer type reaction, which means um you get massively worse before you get better. I mean like mass, it's like an outburst of like you have a parasite that you're kind of living with, but you can get by with, and then when you start to kill them off and release all this stuff, you're in bed for a week.

unknown 26:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

It's not bad. So you have to be super careful with parasite cleanses. They must be done with binders. Tudka is one of the most popular ones. I'm not even, I haven't done enough research to even know what it is.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

Yeah. But I know that's for me. Like, I don't know anything. It's just like so I'm just so bombarded with it, especially with like children. Like some a lot of people online are saying, like, oh, if your child has eczema or they have this and you can't figure it out, or they're look, they look like this and you can't, you've tried everything, try a parasite cleanse. But it's like it's a bit scary, especially to do on your child. They're a very small person and they're still developing. Um, and like I don't even know. Like, does everyone have parasites in them? Like in the same way that we all have bacteria living on our bodies and inside our bodies?

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Like you're asking an incredibly deep question. And I love that because this is how we get to better answers is by asking better questions. Um, there's a really cool quote that it's actually from a song in the 80s. Um it says, We uh we thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong. And I was like, dude, that's a sermon in a sentence, but it is deep. Because if you're not asking the right questions, you can never get to the right answers. And so many times we're not we're just getting to answers, but we're not going backwards to say, were we even asking the right question to begin with? And yeah, I think you're touching on that. We now understand that there is a natural virome, which means there's good viruses that live in and on our bodies that are actually helping us. Um probiotic supplement that I take from DOTERRA has four different viruses in it that are specifically targeting the bad bacteria that tend to overgrow in your gut. So they're called bacteriophages, and they target these really nasty bacteria and kill them, but they don't do anything to normal bacteria and they don't do anything to our human cells. So viruses are not all bad. They can be very beneficial to us. Now the parasite issue is different. Do most people struggle with parasites at some point in their lives? I would say yes. And it's is it from undercooked foods typically, undercooked meats can be from other sources as well. But do most of us have to encounter parasites at some point in our lives? Yeah. And are most of them subclinical? Like you don't know you have them? Yeah, most of the time it is. It's things that you can, your body learns to wall off and live with. So it is important to go through those cleanses at some point or another, but I would do it under the guidance of like an integrative medicine practitioner, holistic health practitioner, someone who's really well versed and can watch out for the pitfalls so that you don't do it in a dangerous way, especially with a child. Like I would never want to do it with a child myself without having that guidance professional that's done it to many, many kids and can do it safely.

SPEAKER_03 29:18

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

But I will say just one other thing about the parasites is that there's a lot of crossover between what parasites do in the body and what cancer does in the body.

SPEAKER_02 29:28

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

And if you look at a lot of the solutions that we figured out, and we figured these out because of COVID. We heard of things like ivermectin, and then we heard of methylene blue, and then it was mebendazole and fibendazole, those are antiparasitic agents. And then we figured out, oh, wait, these also are antiviral and they're um anti-cancer.

SPEAKER_03 29:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

So it's like some people are now saying that a lot of cancers are actually of parasite origin or at least kicked off by parasites, and it's it's still muddy water. I'm not saying there's a direct correlation at this point, but that's where the evidence is pointing. Like if you're taking a medication that kills parasites but also kills cancer cells, what's the commonality? So that's where explanation needs to happen. And I'm just gonna leave that as a general question. I don't have the answer, but those are the types of questions. And your question was so brilliant because it's like, is this a normal thing to just have parasites, or is it another area of focus where we need to be more aggressive eliminating these things? I would say there's there's probably elements of both. Some of them are probably not so bad, but some of them do need to be targeted because they might be fomenting some systemic illnesses that we are not getting to the bottom of because we haven't gotten to the root cause.

SPEAKER_02 30:45

So we talked about, you know, the things that you could do, the four things we can do for moms who are kind of in that postpartum freshness and needing to get back on track with our oral health, but like just general health. And then, you know, since you're a dentist, there are some of us, like me, who have a lot of problems with our teeth historically. I've had a root canal, I have two crowns, I have a million fillings, and we are now, you know, aging or maturing, as you say. And so there's a group of people who already have issues with their teeth. We're so behind the eight-ball. How what is like some other stuff that people like me can do to prevent further damage? Um, is it kind of the same as what you've already mentioned, or is there something extra?

SPEAKER_00 31:34

Yeah, first off, don't ever say you're behind the eight-ball. It's never too late to change your game. And I've seen some people that have had terrible dental histories turn into some of the most fantastic caretakers of their oral routine and become all-stars that have very, very few problems the rest of their lives because their past shaped their seriousness about their habits and how much they needed to change. And then I've had other people who had really great histories and never got cavities until they were like 50 and then have dealt with problems the rest of their lives because those habits that they built for the first 50 years didn't manifest as disease until much later, but their habits were 50 years old and they didn't want to change them. They're like, I'll die with it, forget it. So it's never too late to up your game. And what this is where I need to talk about the difference between health and wellness because health and wellness get thrown around as like these twin terms, and I think there's a big difference between the two. Health to me is like a report card. It's like, what are you are you passing or not? It's pass fail. It's a pass fail report card. You go to the doctor, how am I doing? Well, your lab work was fine, you're in the normal limits, you're good. It's like, okay, do you want to talk about my habits? No, the everything looks good. The metrics look good, you're fine. And then they wait until the metrics are way out of whack, and then they're like, oh, well, now we need to do either medications or do major lifestyle changes because now you're in pre-diabetes or now your blood pressure is out of control or whatever, you know? So health to me is not a helpful term. I love the wellness term. Well wellness to me means this. Wellness is when I get my report card, I want straight A's.

unknown 33:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

I don't want a C, I don't want a D. I definitely don't want any F's, but I don't want to be anywhere near failing. And I want the strategies in place that are going to keep me in the A category for as long as possible. And then maybe at the very end of life you can slip down and just, you know, go go down the go down the hill really quickly. And that's fine. At some point, this life has to end and we got to face our maker. Um, but we we want to stay in that a range for as long as possible. So to me, wellness is a pursuit, and it is with oral care as well. It's a pursuit. What can I add to my routine? What can I refine over time? How can I push myself to get a little bit better? So it's not like you're gonna go from bad habits to perfect habits overnight, but it's like, what can I do for a few weeks to change something? What's one thing I can do? Can I brush a little bit longer? Can I time myself and do it for two minutes? Can I switch to an electric brush instead of a manual brush and try that for a few months? And if that sticks, then what can I do as a next step? So it's this process of pursuing greatness, and it just takes some planning and it takes discipline. Like you got to give it a few weeks and see if you can make things stick. Um, another thing is again, going back to what we were talking about, what you eat matters. Like I heard someone describe it really well. They said when you go to eat a meal, you should eat what the bacteria and your body need first. Like eat what your gut wants, eat what your oral environment bacteria want, eat according to the microbiome, and then work backwards from there. Um, and that's gonna help you to eat fewer sugars and because sugars destroy not only your teeth by the bacterial conversion, but it's encouraging the bad bacteria to overgrow, and then it's causing the bacteria in your gut to overgrow and candida, which is a yeast that you get yeast overgrowth in the gut. So you're fueling these horrible processes, but that's that's something that you can change, and you can even change your cravings. That's one of the most empowering things you could possibly hear. If you go on a different regimen and you're like, for four weeks, I'm gonna do these meals for these four weeks, and they're gonna be totally different than what I'm doing right now. They're gonna be low carb, they're not gonna have seed oils in them. I'm gonna get rid of as many processed elements to it, I'm gonna eat real clean for a month and see what your body feels like. You're gonna find at the end of that month, you're like, oh man, I saw that donut and I was like, ew. Because I know if I eat that, I'm gonna feel like garbage and an hour later I'm gonna be starving again. I'm gonna go back and eat some, I'm gonna go eat some walnuts and some cheese because I know when I eat those for snacks. I'm satisfied for hours and I feel great. And I don't feel like my mind is getting foggy.

SPEAKER_03 35:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

So planning that out strategically and just making, like again, you don't have to do it overnight. You can make small changes or you can do something radical, but do something to move yourself forward in that in that arena. And then we did touch a little bit on fiber. Fiber is like an unsung hero in our diets. It's just it's so massively helpful because anybody with any kind of gut issues typically are way underdoing it on the fiber. And there's there's two different kinds of fiber in our diets there's soluble and insoluble. And I heard a really great guy, um, his name's Robert Lustig, L-U-S-T-I-G, is an M D. He's a pediatric endocrinologist out of California, and he talks a lot about gut health. He talks a lot about sugar, about cholesterol, just busting all these myths left and right. And he said that these fibers are like a fishing net and then like plugs that go in between the holes in the fishing net. So you have your like insoluble fiber that kind of forms that barrier, and then you plug the holes with the soluble fiber and you repair the whole gut lining. And if you don't have enough fiber in your diet, the bacteria that are dying for this fiber, that's their main nutrient source, they actually start eating away at the lining of your gut and they cause that leaky gut problem.

SPEAKER_03 36:56

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

Right. So eating fiber is just so, so important. Um, it's great for your teeth because it cleanses the teeth, just the action of chewing on these things that are fibrous. Great for the bacteria in your mouth, great for the bacteria in your guts. Um, and then another uh strategy that you can use, and I've been doing this since actually I was doing this in high school, believe it or not, is after meals, I would chew a sugarless gum because I just felt like I got to cleanse with something. And it does a couple of things. If the gum has xylitol in it, which is a natural sweetener, it's a sugar alcohol, so it doesn't get processed the same as sugar. It interferes with the bacteria in your mouth, making acid. So it slows that process down. Plus, the flavor and the chewing action on gum stimulates saliva, and saliva has buffers in it and things that are great for cleansing the teeth. So for like 15, 20 minutes after a meal, especially you can't brush, get a piece of sugarless gum. Like grab your orbit, grab your trident, chew it for 15, 20 minutes, chew it till it loses its flavor, spit it out. And that alone helps to keep your oral environment in a more neutral pH and reduce the acid production that's going on there. Wow, that's really interesting. Strategies, but um, again, just try to try to grab a couple of things, just grab a couple of nuggets and just put them into action because it's it's so much fun to learn. And I'm a learner, I just love grabbing all this stuff. But the problem is I would gather all of this information, it would just sit there on my desk, and then I didn't do anything. But when you pick up one of those things, one of those post-it notes, and you're like, you know what? I'm just gonna give this a shot. I'm just gonna put this into action. Massive change. One thing you can pick up and change makes a massive difference in your life.

SPEAKER_03 38:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

So that'll be my encouragement to to you and to your whole audience is just do just do one thing, just pick something for a couple weeks and then pick some other things.

SPEAKER_02 38:45

Perfect. So, speaking of people with a lot of cavity history like me, cavities are something that people are scared of, which is like a good thing, I think. It's like sometimes we need these healthy fears to motivate us. If it's not gonna be something positive, let something scary like push you into something. And there's so much conversation on social media about like what causes cavities and are they really that bad? Or like how can you reverse them? And there's like all these methods to doing it. So, can you give us the true rundown on like what causes cavities? Can they actually be reversed and how?

SPEAKER_00 39:23

Yeah, so the cavity process is actually called demineralization, just stripping minerals out of the teeth, and it's the acid that does that, right? You typically see it in areas of the teeth where you have plaque that's growing on the teeth, and all plaque is, is it's kind of gross, but it's a colony of bacteria that are growing on your teeth, and they adhere themselves to the surface of your tooth with these protein sugar chains. So they're called proteoglycans or glycoproteins, but they're protein and sugar chains, and they're like glue. They're not a really good glue though. They're like they're like scotch tape, not like duct tape. So they're loosely on there, but just by brushing and flossing, you wipe that plaque right off.

SPEAKER_03 40:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

But in that little area, if so, think of it as like this little cup that's suctioned on the side of the tooth. If you're eating sugar, it's penetrating in there, and then they're eating it, and that acid is being focused in a little point on your tooth underneath that piece of plaque. So it's this microenvironment they create that's super acidic that starts pulling those minerals out and it's just stripping them out of the tooth. And that's what causes the initial cavity. And then the process continues into the surface, and the bacteria will actually follow. As they soften a layer, they'll go into the next layer and they'll follow, follow, follow. Once you get through the enamel and into the underlying part of the tooth, which is called dentin, once you get into that dentin, like you got to drill and get it out. You can reverse stuff at the surface. And the enamel, you got a war zone in the enamel. That's your battlefield. Protect the enamel at all costs. And that's why, you know, keeping things in a neutral pH, keeping the sugar out of there, keeping the plaque off the teeth, protect the enamel at all costs. When it's deep into the dentin, like you got to get in there and get it out because it's not gonna heal itself. Yeah. So people are like, I have a hole in my tooth that you could like stick a pencil eraser in, and I took some coconut oil and then it rehealed itself. I'm like, it didn't. It's full of food right now, and it's gonna be an abscess. Yeah, gosh. Get it chilled out and cleaned. There's times when you need medical intervention, don't deny it. Just go get it done, get the disease out, get healthy stuff in there. So it are they reversible? Yes, to a degree. You're not gonna reverse something that's super deep in the tooth. Um, sometimes you can be less aggressive cutting into it and cleaning it out and you know, put a barrier there so that you're not going down into the pulp of the nerve of the tooth, but you gotta go in there and mechanically get it out and replace it with something that's gonna seal it off so that no more food is gonna get in there to feed the bacteria to cause cause it to go deeper in the tooth.

SPEAKER_02 41:54

Like you said, keep keep your mouth like as less least acidic as possible, neutral pH. And you can do that by chewing these good gums, not the bad gums. Um, you can continue brushing and flossing. There's also like uh some Asian people, like Korean people in the mainland, not here in America, they have this habit of like after every meal, they will brush, they will completely brush their teeth and goggle and all that kind of stuff. Is that necessary? Like, is that gonna help? Like the anti-cavity situation?

SPEAKER_00 42:29

It can actually be harmful. So, yeah, listen to this. This is kind of a mind-bender, and there's not like a clear definitive on this. But if you have a lot of acidic food, say you're brushing after a very acidic meal, you're actually brushing that acid into your teeth. Ooh, wow. So, one of the things that I like to do after a meal is just rinse your mouth thoroughly with water, just get water in there and really, I mean, really swish it vigorously, and then chew your gum after that to get your saliva flowing because your saliva is going to be your best, um, your best friend in encouraging that that is crazy. I never mineralizing gums now that they have that have the hydroxyapetite in them. And those are tremendously helpful because you're getting the right minerals in place to help. So you got to realize it's a balance, like decay in the teeth is a balance between demineralization, pulling the minerals out, and remineralization is just putting the minerals back in. It's it's a tug of war. So, whatever you can do to push it one direction, that's your influence, right? If you can stop the demineralization and encourage remineralization, you're going to encourage the tooth to heal. If you don't pay attention to remineralizing and you're letting it the demineralization happens, the cavity is just going to run like wildfire.

SPEAKER_03 43:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:39

So the battle is there, but you get the influence. Like we get the say on what happens with that. We're not passive in this. We're we're and if you're not doing anything, you're losing.

SPEAKER_02 43:48

Yeah. And and we've talked about how, like, you know, you know, highly processed food, high carb, high sugar, all this kind of stuff, like sipping your coffee that has vanilla syrup in it all day long, all that. Causes cavities. I've also heard one more thing, which now I think is it makes sense. Some people like mouth breathing can cause cavities. Is that true?

SPEAKER_00 44:09

So mouth breathing doesn't cause the cavities, but it creates the right environment for cavities to form. So mouth breathing dries out your mouth. So no, no saliva flow, right?

SPEAKER_02 44:19

And the saliva is what's protected.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

Saliva's the cleanser and the protector. So it happens a lot with people that are very mature. You know what I mean? Who are taking a ton of medications. If you look at medication packets and their list of side effects, I will bet you 95% of them, if not more, list dry mouth as a side effect of the medication.

SPEAKER_03 44:39

Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 44:40

Hugely influential with all these medications that we're taking, dropping our saliva flow. So when there's no saliva there to protect, the plaque grows like crazy and it's unchecked. There's no buffers there. It's just plaque is there. And if there's any sugar whatsoever, they're making the acid and they're just pumping it on the teeth.

SPEAKER_03 44:56

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

So you'll see people in their 80s that are on a lot of medications and they come back and they might have 12 to 15 cavities at a time. And it's because they have like no saliva flow at all. And the bacteria have, you know, they have a field day. They're just sitting there on the teeth with nothing cleansing them off. They're not brushing their teeth enough and just it's rampant. It's scary. It's scary to see it because it happens within months, you'll see like all the teeth start to get decay in them. So yeah, mouth is a contributor. It doesn't cause it, but it contributes to it very greatly. You also see in autoimmune disorders, like um Shogren's disease is a is a typical one that attacks the salivary glands and it attacks the eyes. So you don't produce enough tears, you don't produce enough saliva. Those people get cavities like crazy. Lupus is another one that tends to attack saliva glands. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:44

Oh, I'm I'm really learning so much. I'm like, oh, now so many things make sense. Like people I know who have lupus and people I've seen that have this. Okay, makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

It's spider webs, because you talk about one topic and then it starts applying. I mean, I've had to convince doctors of this over the years, but the mouth is actually connected to the rest of the body. It's controversial, I know. I controversial.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

That's crazy. It's literally connected, like our whole body is connected.

SPEAKER_00 46:09

But they treat it like it's not. And I would say our whole medical system is so fragmented now that a cardiologist is only looking at the cardiovascular system and then a pulmonologist will only look at the lungs, and then a rheumatologist is only looking at inflammation. I'm like, you guys understand that all of your processes are crossing over and interacting with each other, and you need to talk and communicate and collaborate. So that's what we're trying to do. That's that's my whole shtick is trying to bridge those gaps and bring people into a better understanding from a holistic um approach. How do we how do we approach these things um more comprehensively?

SPEAKER_02 46:43

Yeah. Okay, so now we're gonna do this like rapid fire of what does and doesn't work. And we've already like debunked a ton of stuff. But okay, so a couple years ago, charcoal powder as toothpaste was super popular. Does it work and or not? Yes or no, or maybe.

SPEAKER_00 47:00

Um eh, if you're gonna use a tooth powder, use a hydroxyapatate tooth powder. There's plenty of them out there. Tooth powders can work, get the hydroxyapatite in it.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

Is fluoride good for our teeth? Yes, no, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 47:12

Can be helpful, can be dangerous for your general health. So it can be helpful to the teeth, yes. Very I I I know you want a yes or no.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

Um you can actually, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

You know what? We're gonna do it. We're gonna do this. So here's the deal with fluoride. In general, when we're talking about anything that we're putting in the body, and I I would treat fluoride like a medication, number one. It's a medication. You gotta treat it with the seriousness of a medication. Medications in our bodies have what's called a therapeutic index. Don't get lost in the term. I'm gonna explain it so it's really easy to understand. How much of it do you need to take to have an effect? How much more do you have to take to make it toxic? That's the window. Okay. So when you have a really big window, very high therapeutic index, it's very safe because you take a little bit, you get an effect. You have to take a ton of it to be toxic. That's water. Water is great for us. If you drink too much, you'll have a seizure and it can kill you. You can actually die from drinking too much water. Huge therapeutic index. We would never say, like, don't drink water, it's toxic, it's not safe. It's very safe, big, big, big window. Fluoride's got a tiny window. So very effective at like one part per million, one part per million can be helpful, ten parts per million, and you start getting digestive problems, neurological problems. So, you know, you gotta be very careful with it. I don't like using it myself because I want to leave toothpaste on my teeth that's gonna help to remineralize my teeth, but I don't want the systemic impact from it.

SPEAKER_02 48:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 48:42

Do I still give it to certain people? Yes. If people are in that dry mouth category or just have like I see them as a new patient and they have 15 or 20 cavities, I'm like, listen, there is a wildfire burning in your mouth. And if we don't start bringing massive buckets to the thing, we're gonna lose. We're gonna lose back. So let's just do this for a few months as a stop gap to help slow things down and then let's find other long-term strategies that aren't that. But let's treat the medication as just a short-term solution and then get you out of the medication and into better lifestyle habits, uh, natural solutions, things that can help support you.

SPEAKER_03 49:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

So can it be helpful? Yes, but be very cautious because it can be harmful in in slightly higher amounts. And that's why I'm I'm cautious with it. I'm kind of going fluoride-free in my practice. I'm I'm moving that direction.

SPEAKER_02 49:28

Awesome. Okay. So you talked about xylitol gum, but there's like this new kind of category of gums that are coming out that have like mastic gum, spruce gum, acacia gum, myrrh gum, bentonite clay, and xylitol. And it's a brand called Nathan and Sons. They claim it's gonna remineralize our teeth. Does this sound legitimate?

SPEAKER_00 49:48

You missed an ingredient. Yes, you missed an ingredient, so it's it's a yes, but you missed an ingredient.

SPEAKER_01 49:55

What did I miss?

SPEAKER_00 49:56

Hydroxyapatite.

SPEAKER_01 49:57

Oh, yes, hydroxyapatite.

SPEAKER_00 49:59

Do they have that in there? Yeah, I looked up Nathan and Sons and they have that in there in their smart. That's a really, really smart thing to do. And I even think that I'm pushing for mouthwash with hydroxyapatite in it because I think a lot of people love to use a mouthwash after they brush. Why not put remineralizing agents in it that are going to help to rebuild the teeth? So I'm a fan of the Nathan's Sons concept. I think that's a brilliant thing. Get the remineralizing agents on the teeth and let you chew on it for a while. That's good. Keep it in the mouth as long as possible.

SPEAKER_02 50:31

Okay. Last one. Uh, some people say oil pulling, which is really swishing around oils in our mouths, help our oral health. Yes, no, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

Uh maybe. Is it helpful to the teeth uh indirectly if it helps to control the bacterial population and get the numbers of the bad bacteria down that cause cavities? More helpful for the gums because it's I think it's more helpful in controlling inflammation and creating a nicer environment for the better bacteria to thrive around the gums in that regard. So, can it be helpful? Yes. Is it a solution for everything? No. Is it gonna help remineralize remineralize your teeth? Probably not. You need to get some hydroxyapatite, some heavy minerals in there.

SPEAKER_02 51:14

Like I said, scaring people is very effective sometimes. So I'm trying to scare myself and some other people who are listening who are not convinced at this point to truly take their teeth seriously or or health in general. So, like what's something that if we had a horrible, like like you said, wildfire in our mouths, just cavities everywhere, cavities everywhere, about to have a root canal, needing an implant, all this kind of stuff, and we're in our 30s, 40s, or 50s. If we just leave it that way, like what are the critical kind of diseases or even cancers or some horrible things that could happen if we really, really, really don't take care of our teeth?

SPEAKER_00 51:59

Yeah, that's an awesome question. So I saw a great billboard years ago. It said, if you ignore your teeth long enough, they will go away. And that's that's kind of the least like I mean, the idea of not having teeth terrifies me. There's some people would be okay with it, but yeah, not being able to smile or chew efficiently would be pretty terrible existence. Um, but we see it all the time. We see abscesses with teeth that are not cared for. And an abscess is an infection that starts in the tooth and then goes into the jawbone, and we take x-rays and we can actually see a change in the jawbone where yeah, you're losing bone. That abscess is growing and actually eating away at the bone. In extreme cases, if it's an upper tooth and you leave it long enough, those infections can travel to the brain, and they have killed people in the past. Um, especially with the lower teeth, if they abscess, they can go down the neck and even into the heart. There's a sack around the heart, then these can travel down into that area. It can actually make your heart stop. It's uh a scary thing, but it happens. Um, and I've seen plenty of people with you know massive swellings, whole side of their face is like twice the size that it should be because of neglect and an abscess that just got infected. And um, I I do have to go back to there is a systemic component to these things too. You have to have a really crappy immune response or a very worn down immune response to allow something like that to really take hold. Yeah, but it still is not uncommon, even in this day and all the all the things that we have, it's not uncommon. Go go get your teeth checked like at least once a year, if not twice a year. Um because we're seeing more cancers. I've seen more cancers in the last since COVID than I've seen in the previous 20 years before that. We're seeing more of these things, and they have to be caught early. So um, yeah, cancers, and that's not even from neglect. Cancers happen even in healthy people now.

SPEAKER_03 53:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:50

And it's because our environment has changed and we're experiencing these different toxins that we're not taking um taking seriously or or paying attention to at all. So um yeah, things can kill you. You can lose teeth very easily if you're neglecting them. They can break off. I see a lot of people are like, yeah, that one broke off a few years ago, but it didn't hurt, so I didn't think about coming in. And I'm just thinking, like, if that was my I'd be terrified. I'd be on the phone right away, like, I don't know what it did, I'm sorry, but I'll fix it, I'll pay you whatever you need. Like, get this fixed. So everybody's got their different, different feelings with that. But do we put ourselves at a health risk? Yeah, absolutely. We know that inflammation, especially, and I would say even beyond tooth decay, people really ignore their gums. They don't pay any attention to the health of their gums. When your gums are inflamed, whether it's gingivitis, which is just inflammation, or periodontitis, which means that inflammation is now traveled around the tooth and is eating away at the bone. Yeah, there's a chronic inflammation that's happening there. And that allows, I want you to think of it like this. Someone told me this a long time ago. They said if you have gum disease untreated, it's like having a scrape from the crux, the uh crux of your elbow down to your wrist, like road rash, like wide open skin, that you're just letting dirt hit it all the time. Wow and you're not doing anything about it. It's that level of surface exposure that's happening in the mouth. Now, those bacteria have free reign to travel into your system because they're getting into your bloodstream, but all the inflammatory, all the immune response, that's going everywhere else in your body too. The circulation takes it everywhere. And we know that inflammation is the root of so many systemic illnesses.

SPEAKER_03 55:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 55:30

I've had patients that have had their inflammatory markers in their blood checked, and when they don't floss, they go up. And the doctor's like, your C reactive protein is high. That's a cardiac disease monitor. It's good, like the bells are going off. Where is this coming from? And then they start flossing and brushing better, and they're like, hey, your numbers went down again. Wow. So, like the the levels of inflammation, if you're leaving them unchecked, are gonna lead to things like heart disease for sure. But we also know that it's contributing to cognitive decline. So all these diseases you think are, oh, that Alzheimer's dementia is just what happens when you get older. No, it's not, it's not normal. That's an a chronic inflammatory, that's a metabolic disruption and a and an inflammatory um fire that's been going on for years unchecked. And they say those diseases start 30 to 40 years before the symptoms show up. So as young as we are, yeah, those like if we're not actively working against Alzheimer's and dementia from the age we are now, we're probably gonna be losing later. So again, let's be proactive, let's do those little steps now so that we can live better now, feel better now, but we're also gonna feel better in like 40, 50 years when we're getting up to those more mature ages.

SPEAKER_02 56:43

Yeah. You've literally just slipped into my last question. So I'm like really trying my best to like figure out how I can age as healthily and as well and as strongly as I can so that I'm not having dementia, that I don't have Alzheimer's, that I don't crack my bone um or my hip and then die within 12 months after doing that. Um, and so in terms of oral health, we've talked so much about all the things we can do, and they are so simple, what you've mentioned. Just force, just brush, just use xylodol, just um do these things, eat well. Is there anything more that we can do really to prepare us and set ourselves up for success in our 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, even? Because I know you're gonna live forever. You and Jamie, like you're too crunchy to die. Like you're gonna live forever.

SPEAKER_00 57:39

I think I think the goal is just to live well as long as possible until the good Lord calls us home. You know, we don't know it's a sobering reality that we don't know the number of our days, um, but they're all they're all in his hands, so I don't have to worry about it. But I do want to do my best to be a caretaker for the body that he gave me so that and it's not just for me, it's not like I want to live forever. I want to be able, I want to have the ability to minister to other people and be a blessing in their lives as long as I possibly can.

unknown 58:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:09

And I've seen it with my own parents as they got to a certain age when they couldn't, they were a blessing to so many people, and then they got to a point where their health wouldn't allow them to do that anymore.

SPEAKER_05 58:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:17

And they had to be receiving care and not being able to give the care that they wanted to others. And it was, it was a heartache because they're like, well, we used to cook and we used to host and we used to do, and they couldn't. And that to me was a big driver of you, like, you know, I want to be, I want to give of myself to others for as long as I possibly can. So what do I need to do now so that it's not just this like self-worship, which I I want to avoid at all costs. Like, I don't want my health to be so concerning that it's all I think about. I just want to make the right choices now and know that when I'm in when I'm in my 80s or 90s, I can look back and say, you know what, doggone it, those workouts were hard, but I'm so glad I put the time in because now I'm still able to do X, Y, and Z. I can still serve in my church, I can still go and help somebody cut their grass, I can still go and cook a meal for somebody because I've taken care of myself. I'm able to serve and give and love others. Because that's my ultimate aim, is to do that. It's my heart cry. Like I want to be able to give and pour myself out for the benefit of other people as long as possible so that I'm not a burden to anybody. So it's I've just over the last like 10 years, I've just gone through this journey of just over time learning more and just incorporating more things into a routine and just building this, I hope, a resilient lifestyle. Um, but I and I know even if I did get sick in the next five years, I would look back and say, you know what? I don't regret a thing because maybe I would have gotten sick 15 or 20 years earlier if I wasn't doing all these things. I can at least look back and say, I did something. Like I was fighting, I was stemming the tide. I was fighting back against this aging thing or whatever you want to call it. Um, so I think even working out is such an important part of it. Like three to four times a week, I'm doing like high high intensity interval training. Like it's some cardio, but it's a lot more lifting for me now, resistance training, because after the age of about 40, they said cardio really doesn't have that much of a benefit for you. It's about how strong your muscles are.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:22

And something like I think they said your the strength of your legs and your grip strength are what will determine your longevity and your quality of your years.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:32

Think about that. Like, so even for women, like women don't like, they're like, no, no, no, I'm just gonna walk on on the on the stairmaster, I'm gonna do the treadmill. I'm like, that's great, but you have to be exercising and using your muscles and stressing your muscles out because that's how your bones are gonna stay healthy. There's this super cool thing called Wolf's Law. And Wolf's Law is that when you put pressure on bone, when you push on it, it it eats away. And when you put tension on it, when you stretch bone or pull on bone, it creates more and it gets more dense. Well, that's what muscles do. Every time you contract a muscle, you're pulling on the bones because they're anchored to bones. You're strengthening your bones. Do you have to have the right minerals in place and the right like vitamin D levels? Absolutely. But you have to be stressing those muscles out and strengthening the bones that way. So um, again, it's it's all about just creating a mindset of I am gonna pursue this wellness journey um with as much gusto as I can. And I'm just gonna continue to look at areas where I can say, you know what, I'm kind of getting a C in that area and I haven't been paying attention to it. Let's try to bump that up to a B and then eventually an A. And then once I get that one, I'm gonna go look at the next thing and I'm just gonna start incorporating these things. So it's it's something that's built slowly over time. It takes patience, but overall it just takes dedication. You have to know your end goal. Like envision yourself being 95, and there's a choice. You're either gonna be slumped over in a nursing home drooling on yourself, not knowing who anybody is, yeah, or you're the person that's going and visiting your great grandkids, bringing a bunch of gifts and then taking a walk in the park and eating ice cream. Like those are the extremes. But if you make that your vision, you at least know, like you have an aim point. If you know what you're aiming at, like everything else just starts to align with that. But if you don't have an aim, you try something and you're like, well, I didn't really like the way this is it, it doesn't stick. You try something and it just goes out of fashion, and you just let it go and you do something else, and that that lets go. You have to have that defining vision that's way out in the future and keep aligned to that, and then just bring other things in your life in alignment to reach that goal.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:38

Yeah, that's such everything you've said is incredibly wise. Um, and I think for in my season, it's so tempting to slip into the I want to be well for me. You know, there's a lot of selfishness in there. But at the end of the day, like you said, it's like, well, how much happiness are you gonna get by living for yourself? And obviously, you know, that has transitioned for me into I want to live so that I can see my kids, so that I can protect them, so that I can help them, so that I can just be with them because I love them, you know, and they're so little. And I feel like a lot of women now we're having babies late or definitely later in comparison to when women in the 80s and 70s had their kids. So it's a very different dynamic of like, well, I'm not gonna see my grandkids until I'm at least like 70 or something, because we've we've kind of passed a lot of time doing other things. So thank you for saying all that. Um, that was the last official question, but I also just want to ask one thing, which is you do so much, you are like the most crunchy person I know. You are working out three to four times a week, you are like doing all of the right things. I think like my husband said, You've taken methylene blue, or you currently take it? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:58

I take ivermectin though. I take that on a just once a week, just as a like a maintenance anti-parasite but anti-cancer type approach.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:05

Yeah. Is there something like kind of more in the okay, this is really optional. This is really bonus, but I I'm just I tried this.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:14

Here's a really simple one, and I would I would love to see most of your audience, if not everybody, take this every day. And it's not newer to me, but I think it's foundational, and I didn't get to talk about it a whole lot, is vitamin D3 K2 complex.

unknown 1:04:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:28

So vitamin D3 is the active form of vitamin D. Vitamin D normally has to be activated by UV light in your skin. This is already in its active form. Um, and K2 is a vitamin that most of us are just not getting enough of. It comes a lot from like organ meats and like beef, like liver and heart and things like that. So we're just not eating a lot of those things. But getting D3 and K2 together is so critical. And you can get it. I buy mine at Costco. It's so easy to get. You can get it on Amazon, like Dr. Berg makes a good one in Amazon. Um, and it's it's so critical in getting your bones healthy, but also keeping like mobilizing the calcium that would be growing in arteries and getting it into the bones instead of letting it grow in the arteries, right? So for me, that's important because that runs in my family. I want to make sure that I'm doing that. But also for my immune health, like if you want to have a really rockin' immune system, you don't want to be getting sick. And think about it when you're kids, your kids are I I love my kids, they're little petri dishes, they just are, they get you sick all the time. If you want to have a rockin' immune system, D3, K2 all year round. Um, I think I take it's a 5,000 unit vitamin D3, 125 microgram K2 complex.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:45

And I've been doing that for several years, and the vitamin D levels in your blood, they will tell you normal is anywhere from 30 to 100. That's garbage. If you're under 50, you're behind. I've gotten mine up into the 70s right now, and I think in the 70s and 80s is ideal, but they used to say, Oh, watch out because over 100, it's toxic, it's not. It's so hard to overdose on vitamin D. Like you have to actively try to make you have to make an effort. But if you could just get people taking D3K2 complex, massive difference in your immune and even for energy, for focus, the whole nine yards, like your just sense of well-being is so much better. But you're just building a more resilient body. And then from there, build other things. Like the habits that I've talked about today, they're all stackable. Like you just take something and you're like, you know what? I'm gonna try something else, and I'm gonna stack that and put it on top of what I'm already doing, and then you stack the next thing. It's like compound interest in a bank account. You're just improving your health exponentially by stacking these things on top of themselves. So, yeah, if if I was to tell people to try one thing, that's where I would start. Just get that in there, get that in your system on a regular basis, and then let's talk about a more comprehensive approach to make sure that you're not dealing with a multitude of vitamin deficiencies, because most people are deficient in both minerals and vitamins. And there's strategies for that that I could build out, but it would, you know, it's another podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:10

Thank you so much, Dr. Chris Spellman. Everyone, the ladies who are listening in New Jersey, because I know you I see you. Um, if you need a holistic dental uh dentist, he's the one for you. Drive down, even if it takes an hour, it's worth it. I mean, listen to the guy, like it's worth it. But he is currently in Orlando Family Dentistry, which the name will change to Stony Brook Dental in Hopewell, New Jersey. Stony Brook Dental in Hopewell, New Jersey. Find him. Um, and there's a website too. If you just Google Orlando Family Dentistry for now, you'll find it. Uh, he's also obviously a board member of DoTERRA Essential Oils and Supplement Company. So you can probably find information on him there and other places on the YouTube website. Thank you so much, Dr. Stall.