How to Improve Oral Health & Its Critical Role in Brain & Body Health

welcome to the huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday [Music] life I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Opthalmology at Stanford school of medicine today we are discussing oral health now when most people hear oral health they immediately think tooth health and appearance and presumably fresh breath or lack of bad breath as well and while of course two and breath freshness whiteness and health is a critical component of oral health today you will learn that oral health including the oral microbiome the health of your pallet your tonsils

indeed the entire oral cavity is an extremely important component of General bodily health so much so that today we are going to add a seventh pillar to the so-called six pillars of mental health physical health and performance this is not a trivial step to add a seventh pillar to these six pillars if some of you have been listeners of this podcast for a while you may recall that the six pillars of mental health physical health and performance that is the six things that everyone needs to invest specific protocols into each day are in no particular

order by the way sleep sunlight and light exposure generally which by extension also includes dark exposure nutrition exercise which we could also call movement both cardiovascular exercise and resistance training stress management and relationships and social engagement including relationship to self and today we are going to add oral health and microbiome health and I suppose we could generally call this oral and gut health because as you know if you think about it your mouth your oral cavity and your gut are contiguous with one another we are going to add oral and gut health as the seventh

pillar of mental health physical health and performance because as you will learn today there are so many aspects of oral health and daily protocols for oral health that extend to cardiovascular health to metabolic health and indeed to brain health and to staving off diseases in all of those bodily compartments I cannot overemphasize enough how much oral health influences your general bodily health so today you will learn about Oral B biology and health we won't go tooo deep into the biology but we will go deep enough into the biology that you will learn some incredible things

such as your teeth have the ability to literally fill back in cavities that have formed provided those cavities haven't gone too deep into the teeth layers yet you will learn that saliva While most people think of it as just spit is an incredible substance fluid that contains all sorts of interesting and important things that allow you to rebuild the strength of your teeth and indeed to support the health of your oral cavity and gut microbiome and body generally so saliva is super interesting and important and today you're going to learn many many protocols including zeroc

cost protocols protocols that will actually save you money as well as some lowcost protocols to both restore improve and maintain oral health and in doing so maintain and improve your overall bodily Health before we begin I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford it is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast our first sponsor is matina matina

makes loose leaf and ready to drink yerba mate I often discuss ybba mate's benefits such as regulating blood sugar it's high antioxidant content the ways that it can improve digestion and possible Minal protective effects I also drink yamate because I love the taste while there are a lot of different choices of yamate drinks out there I love matina because again they have the no sugar variety as well as the fact that both their loose leaf and their canned varieties are of the absolute best quality so much so that I decided to become a partial owner

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but also total body Health as I mentioned a little bit earlier oral health is inextricably linked to all aspects of brain and bodily Health both in the short term and in the long term and it is perhaps the most overlooked aspect of mental health and physical health so today I'd like to start off with a quiz I'm going to ask you which of the following three categories you believe you best fall into okay the first category is those of you out there who brush and floss every day probably twice a day and who make some

effort to try and keep your teeth clean who like the feeling of your teeth being clean and who pay a fair amount of attention to whether or not your teeth are getting whiter or not getting whiter maybe whether or not your breath is fresh or not fresh maybe okay these aren't requirements for being in this category but maybe you're somebody who also uses a mouthwash or uses mints or gums in order to try and keep your mouth smelling and looking fresh and your mouth clean okay so this first category uh does not require that you

do all of those things but let's just make a basic requirement of participation in this category that you routinely brush at least twice a day and that you floss at least once a day okay if you fall into that category you are in category one and by the way if you're in category one and you do those things and you do a bunch of other things like tooth whitening and maybe you go to the dentist especially often more than the recommended twice per year that still puts you in category one okay second category are those

of you out there who are let's say a bit more blasé about your oral and tooth care those of you that perhaps just brush your teeth in the morning so that your breath is fresh you clean out that kind of sticky feeling in your mouth that's accumulated overnight that sometimes brush and maybe floss at night but you know a lot of times you fall asleep without doing that or you don't feel like doing it or perhaps that don't really floss at all okay that perhaps go to the dentist once every 6 months maybe a little

less maybe once a year once every couple years so while there's a bunch of different things that could put you into Category 2 let's make a basic requirement for belonging to Category 2 that you brush your teeth once a day but not twice a day on a regular basis or that you brush twice a day but that you rarely floss okay that would put you into what I'm calling category to and then of course there's the third category that maybe some of you out there fall into and this is the CATE ategory of people who

are extremely diligent not just about tooth care but also about oral health generally about maintaining the microbiome of your mouth about making sure that your gums are very healthy about making sure that your soft pallet and hard palet is very healthy about making sure that yes your teeth are clean that they're devoid of as much bacterial buildup and other stuff in there that can cause cavities but also that you're paying careful attention to your oral micro probiome and the overall milu of your health in the mouth and the fact that your mouth is linked to

all these different aspects of brain and cardiac and metabolic Health okay if you fall into that third category great but let's be honest most people I would argue 95 maybe even 98% of people or more fall into either category one or category two so as you're hearing this you're probably thinking okay well if I'm in category one I'm good right I go to the dentist twice a year I brush in floss use some mouthwash I even brighten my teeth I you know I make sure that if I had a sugary meal I'll rinse out my

mouth I try not to drink acidic Foods things that we'll discuss today as to whether or not they actually have relevance for cavity formation or not but guess what if you are in category one as I described it or category two chances are you are doing things to really deplete and disrupt your oral health that's right even if you're paying a lot of attention to tooth Health chances are if you're like most people out there simply because you don't have the latest information on what oral health really is and how to best support it chances

are you are doing things that yes might be keeping your teeth white and clean and you're not getting cavities or you're not being told you have cavities that need to be filled when you go to the dentist twice a year or more but that you are disrupting your oral health in ways that are depleting other aspects of your brain and bodily health and I'm not here to scare you I'm just here to tell you that if you're in category one okay you're clearly doing some things that are beneficial for you but that there's some additional

things that you can do and a few things to avoid doing that very likely will improve your overall bily health very quickly and the good news is those things are also zero or low cost or in some cases can save you substantial cost now if you're in category two chances are you are depleting both your oral health and your overall bodily Health but here's what's interesting some of the folks in Category 2 that are not doing as much for the let's say hygiene and freshening and whitening of their teeth actually have a healthier overall oral

microbiome that's not always the case but often it can be the case so what you're going to discover today is whether you're in category 1 or Category 2 there are some wonderful and easily accessible practices that are well backed by science and by the way in preparation for this episode I also consulted with no fewer than five dentists including a pediatric dentist I talked to a periodontist I talked to people who fall into the functional dentist category I talk to people with a bunch of different orientations who are all heavily qualified to talk about and

to make recommendations about oral health and tooth Health Etc and what I'm going to deliver today is essentially the overlap in the vend diagram of what they all agreed on I'll highlight a few differences that they each had and that several of them they do fall into different camps but I was positively surprised how much overlap or consensus there was in terms of best protocols for tooth and oral health and by the way if you're in that third category of the person that's doing a lot for their tooth health and appearance and breath Etc but

also oral health and microbiome I'm sure that today you'll also learn some new health practices and some things that will allow you to expand on your already terrific practices for oral health so let's get into the material about oral health focusing first on two tooth anatomy and health and some a little bit about mouth Anatomy I promise to not go into this in too much depth but we really need to have a firm basis a foundation of understanding of what the mouth cavity really consists of and I'm not just going to throw a bunch of

names out there for sake of nomenclature I don't need to Cloud your hippocampus with that sort of information unless it's functional information but it is critical functional information for the rest of our discussion where we'll talk about ways that you can really build up the strength of your teeth even if cavities have already started to form and how to really get your saliva to be the best healthiest saliva for your overall mouth and for your gut and for your brain your heart Etc okay so let's talk just briefly I promise briefly about the anatomy and

a little bit of the physiology of the this stuff okay the teeth we're all familiar with what teeth are and the tongue the tonsils in the back of the mouth we have our soft pallette hard pallet gums let's talk a little bit about how all that fits together centering around the thing that most people think about when they think about oral health and that's the teeth it's just a good jumping off point for us your teeth are layered structures like pretty much every structure in your body is a layered structure it's just the way those

structures form cells are born at one location they migrate out and form Stacks or layers those different layers have different cell types and your teeth are no exception so while there are different kinds of teeth in your mouth teeth have an outer layer which is the enamel the enamel believe it or not is not white it is translucent light can make it through but it's not transparent it's not like a clear window it's translucent light can make it through but it's a bit opaque okay beneath the enamel is a structure called Dentin Dentin is important

for today's discussion because as it turns out cavities form not surprisingly from the outside of teeth Inward and Cavities as the name suggests are holes that bacteria burrow down through the enamal and if you're unlucky make it down to the Dentin our goal meaning your goal goal is to engage in Daily protocols that's right daily protocols that are simple and fast and zero or very low cost that allow you to avoid the formation of those cavities yes but also that can allow you to fill in those cavities this is one of the most important things

to understand about oral health that frankly I didn't know until I started researching this episode and talking to all these experts in the field which is that you can repair cavities that have started to form that's right your mouth environment based on its chemistry and some things that are mechanical but mostly based on its chemistry in particular how acidic it is or how basic it is is always in a state of what's called either demineralization or remineralization now those words are hard to say and they're especially hard to say fast so demineralization remineralization it's a

little bit of a tongue twister today I'm going to use a shorthand that's a convention in the Dentistry field which is De Min or remin to refer to demineralization or remineralization remineralization is good it is the process by which within the enamel and to some extent in the deeper Dentin layer of the tooth but especially within the enamel there can be the addition of new minerals that form very robust essentially chains of crystals okay if you've ever looked at a crystal of any kind under a microscope or you've seen a picture of it they are

incredibly well organized they form a lattice of very strong often although they're weaker crystals too very strong bonds and structure it's like the structure of a really well-formed building okay remineralization is the process of putting minerals back into that crystal structure and it's actually possible to fill back in those cavities that bacteria have started to form especially when those cavities have burrowed down into the enamel but have not yet made it into the Dentin layer of the tooth or teeth okay this is very important to understand it's especially important to understand the context of the

fact that typically not always but typically if you have a cavity formed at one tooth and let's say it's just halfway or 3/4 of the way through the enamel layer that if you have cavities elsewhere in your mouth chances are that they are at the same depth or level not always but chances are and that's great news if those cavities have not yet made it into the dtin layer why is it great news well I don't know about you but I don't like having my teeth drilled I don't like having cavities drilled and filled I

had a very traumatic childhood with respect to dentistry and oral health I'll talk about it a little bit later in the episode it's not that I had tons and tons of cavities I actually had this other issue where my adult teeth came in behind my baby teeth I had have all my baby teeth pulled I had to get a bunch of injections of Novacane in my mouth I didn't like getting injections into my mouth so I opted to have any cavities I had drilled without Novacane it's not cuz I was a tough little kid although

that definitely toughened me up it was because I hated having syringes in my mouth I might have even bitten a dentist or two or three I don't bite the dentist anymore I thank the dentist by the way I think dentists are wonderful regular cleanings are wonderful we'll talk about frequency of cleanings but here's the point if you are somebody who enjoys getting your teeth drilled well then I don't know what to say but if like most people out there with proper wiring of your neurology well then you don't like getting your teeth drilled and you

can avoid it in many cases by remineralizing that enamel layer of your teeth now if there's a demineralization down to the deeper Dentin layers of the tooth then most often you're going to need it to be drilled drilled and filled as they say or as some people say which is a bit more cynical drill fill and build because you get charged for that or your insurance gets charged for that okay back to some tooth anatomy and mouth Anatomy we talked about the enamel layer of the tooth on the outside I told you that it either

can demineralize demmin or remineralize remin this is a key Point your teeth are always in a state of either demon or remen that's right either demon or remen it's not both at the same time it's one or the other and it is largely dependent on the p that is the acidity of your mouth which is largely dependent on how much saliva you're producing and the mineral content of that saliva keep that in mind I think it's a very important point now another key point is that next to your teeth right you have your gums the

gingiva as it's called now the gingiva provides a really important role in keeping the teeth stable we don't often think of it like that but even though that stuff seems gummy and soft it is soft tissue it is very important for fixing the teeth to the Bone it's not just about the roots that extend down into the Jawbone below the gums are very important for keeping the teeth where they are there's actually a little ligament too between gums and the teeth that resides a little bit deeper but the gums form a critical barrier between the

oral cavity and the deeper layers of what eventually is bone and into the general blood flow or bloodstream of the body now this is so important to understand that the gums are a seal around the tooth this is why when you go to the dentist they're paying attention with that little pick they're paying attention to how high or hopefully low the tenting is the the the little recesses or pockets of gums along the the here in my mouth yes I'll try not to do that during today's episode point to my teeth so much so that

I'm then you know you can't understand what I'm saying that the gums are providing a seal between the oral cavity and essentially the bone and the general bloodstream now this is so critical because let's just take a step back and think about the oral cavity and what a remarkable place it is think about it this is a gaping hole in our body okay we have some other gaping holes in our body but those tend to be sphincter based holes yes I realize there probably some Chuckles as soon as you say sphincter like yes the anal

sphincter okay we're anatomists we're biologists we can talk about that stay shut stuff is generally not going up there and if it is not very often okay your nasal passages yeah those are holes but you know there's a lot of stuff there there's mucus to catch stuff there's a CRI form plate there's a bone there's a bunch of things that act as barriers between the nasal cavities and the Brain which sits right behind it the olfactory bulb and yes we have eyes and then you know we have the outside of the eyes and there's a

you know a susceptibility there but we have our blink reflex there's a also an ocular microbiome there's a bunch of things there but think about the just this gaping hole in the front of our face that we use to eat and speak and breathe okay it's a huge hole and as a consequence it's filled with bacteria from our outside environment all day long all day long sometimes at night although we're going to talk later about the critical critical need to be a nasal breather at night and not a mouth breather not just for sake of

staving off sleep apnea but also because turns out the dryness of the mouth is one of the ways that you really can throw off your oral health in major ways in fact it's one of the leading causes of tooth decay in people like methamp addicts or if you see people that are mouth breathers their oral health and their teeth generally but certainly their oral health is severely depleted so you've got this big hole in your front of your face and you're talking and eating and moving about during the day even if you're a nasal breather

when you're not talking or eating and all this bacteria is getting in and it's a really moist environment and it's really warm so the combination of bacteria moist and warm means that this thing is like a petri dish for growing stuff that could potentially be really bad for us but but it has this incredible feature which is that if the pH is right then the bad stuff is killed off doesn't make it into our system doesn't disrupt our oral health or our bodily Health it also has a critical feature which is that the bacteria that

are good for us proliferate and supports the sealing process of the gums against the teeth and tooth health and tongue health and pallet Health Etc okay so the oral cavity is Amazing by virtue of how vulnerable it is but also how robust it is and the way it stays robust is by keeping the saliva healthy now there are other ways too but that's one of the main ones and it's a huge portal into the rest of the body and if the oral cavity isn't amazing to you already based on what you've heard thus far think

about this if you get a cut on your arm or your hand or your shin unless you're one of these remarkable people that always heals up without a scar as long as you're about 25 years or older typically you'll form a little bit scar there'll be something noticeable there the oral cavity also can take cuts and burns and things like that unfortunately those things occur but with rare exception heals up with nearly zero scarring sometimes there's a scar but nearly zero scarring which is remarkable why well it's basically an open wound with a bunch of

bacteria in it and it's warm and it's moist so clearly there's something special going on in this thing that we call the oral cavity indeed there is and it's anchored in the fact that if we treat it right you can encourage remineralization how do you do that by keeping the saliva healthy how do you do that by supporting the proper bacteria within the mouth and making sure that you're eliminating the bacteria that you don't want or at least limiting those bacteria and today we're going to talk about how to do that and by virtue of

doing all the things that support tooth Health you're also going to support gum health okay those gums are critical because they form that barrier that if it gets too big if those Pockets those recesses get too big and you're not taking care of the bacteria in your mouth when you're not getting rid of the bad bacteria those bacteria worm their way down into the deeper recesses near the roots of the tooth sometimes into the tooth we'll talk about that and can get down into the bone and then can cause serious serious issues this is so-called

perodontal disease and perodontal disease is associated with all sorts of really bad stuff including Alzheimer's okay this is not just some Wellness culture woo science leap to alzheimer's there's literally evidence that the specific bacterias that cause recession of the gums can cross the blood brain barrier if they make it into the general circulation and potentially cause Plax and Tangles some of the Hallmark features of neural degeneration in Alzheimer's okay probably not the only cause of Alzheimers but potentially one of the major causes this is a new Theory but it's one that a lot of people

are starting to pay attention to and it's also very clear that bacteria make it down into these deeper recesses near the roots and into the bone that you can end up with issues related to cardiac health and certainly metabolic Health okay so again the goal today is not to scare you it's not to spend too much time um on all the terrible things that can happen but rather to emphasize the positive which is that if you do the right things at the right times especially if you do them on a regular basis that you can

really improve the health of your total oral cavity and your teeth and your breath and all the other stuff that people care about for Aesthetics and interpersonal interactions will flourish as well I'd like to take a brief moment and thank one of our sponsors and that's ag1 ag1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens I started taking ag1 way back in 2012 the reason I started taking it and the reason I still take it every day is that it ensures that I meet all of my quotas for vitamins and minerals and it

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to get from Whole Foods or at least in sufficient quantities so ag1 allows me to get the vitamins and minerals that I need probiotics prebiotics the adaptogens and critical micronutrients so anytime somebody asks me if they were to take just one supplement what that supplement should be I tell them ag1 because ag1 supports so many different systems within the body that are involved in mental health physical health and performance to try ag1 go to drink a1.com huberman and you'll get a year supply of vitamin D3 K2 and five free travel packs of ag1 again that's

drink a1.com huberman okay let's talk about how cavities form because I think this is the major question that people ask when asking about or thinking about oral health as I mentioned before cavities are literally holes they're fenestrations as the uh nerds call them nerds like me call them little fenestrations little holes down into the enamel that if they make it down to the Dentin layer of the tooth most likely do need to be drilled and filled and presumably build okay but your goal I think all of our goal is to try and keep our teeth

in a state of remineralization by keeping the pH that is the relative acid alkaline balance of the mouth such that the saliva supports remineralization now let's think about how a cavity actually forms turns out that no specific food not even sugar causes cavities cavities are not caused by sugar cavities are caused by bacteria that feed on sugar and now that's not just a little bit of a Twist in the mechanism that's a critical point there's no specific food not even pure sugar not even like a hard candy like a delicious Jolly Rancher I used to

like those when I was a kid they get stuck in your tooth that causes cavities no it's the bacteria that feed on sugar that then produce acid that burrows down through that degrades that demineralizes the tooth in this very focal area that we call a cavity okay now if that isn't surprising enough get this the bacteria that causes cavities by eating sugar and releasing this acid while there are several of them the major one is called streptococus mutans or what I'll call strep mutans for short strep mutans is not something you're born with it's actually

a communicable bacteria that's right you give it to one another through how sharing of glasses sharing of bottles kissing on the mouth Etc now I am not here to tell you not not to do any of those things I'm certainly not here to tell you that however and by the way in researching this episode I did learn that there is a specific category of person out there typically they are a dentist or married to a dentist that have opted believe it or not to never kiss their children near or on the mouth so as to

help their children not get streptococus mutans because almost all adults carry it not all but it's communicable like a STI or like a flu or like a it's communicated between individuals we are not born with it now that's a whole area of U let's just call it biosocial ethics decision-making that I think most people are not going to be too concerned with or at least act on because let's face it most people are not going to change their overall behavior of kissing or usage of bottles or glasses in order to avoid getting strep mutans most

people in the world have strep mutans or will get strep mutans and it lives in the mouth okay it just resides there strep mutans is there and it's hungry what's it hungry for sugar when there's sugar present it eats it it produces acid the acid produces cavities taking teeth from a state of remineralization to demineralization or and by the way this is really important if your mouth is already in a state that's more demineralization mode so to speak well then it will capitalize on that and it will cause cavities much faster okay so keep in

mind that acidity is bad for the mouth does that mean that you should never consume a lemon or and by the way yes I'm guilty of everyone a while chew a lemon slice or drinking water with lemon in it or carbonated drinks or sodas or tea or anything that has acidic flavor no likewise should you completely avoid ingesting any kind of sugar because strep mutans love sugar no turns out strep mutans like sugars in the form of complex carbohydrate sugars too so if you eat pasta or rice or oatmeal and some bread every once in

a while as I do I'm an omnivore I eat meat and fish and eggs and also starches and vegetables and fruits I'm an omnivore as most people are well then strep mutans has an opportunity to eat the sugars that come from those other carbohydrates does that mean that if you were to have a zero carbohydrate diet no sugars no starches Etc you would reduce the opportunity for strep mutans to consume sugar and release acid maybe maybe however most people won't do that and strep mutans is a very clever maybe even diabolical bacteria and if you

are on a zero carbohydrate zero sugar diet there's some evidence that strep mutans will figure out ways to feed on other components of food in order to create this acid to then create cavities in your teeth so the key thing to understand here is that cavities form form not from foods not from sugars per se but from strep mutans and other bacteria that eat those sugars and create acid hence the critical need to keep your mouth as alkaline as possible which does not mean that you can never drink some lemon water or coffee or tea

here's the key point that everyone needs to remember because this dovetails beautifully into how often you should brush and floss and when you should brush and floss specifically the key point is the degree to which your mouth is in a demon state or a remin state and the degree to which cavities have the opportunity to form is dependent on the amount of time the amount of time in which your mouth is net acidic or net alkaline the amount of time that you are in a demineralization mode or remineralization mode okay so it's the amount of

time no one no one can avoid having their mouth be acidic every once in a while or ingesting a sugar or a food that strep mut mutans can feed on and produce acid the key is to try and reduce the amount of strep mutans and reduce the amount of acid in the mouth that's the best way to reduce cavities and even reverse cavities that have started to form now in a moment I'm going to tell you about fluoride because I know there are a lot of questions about fluoride but in order for you to understand

what I say about fluoride and to make the best decision about fluoride both in drinking water and toothpaste etc for you you have to understand the remineralization process just a little bit just a little bit so a little bit of chemistry here a little bit of structural biology and this will be fun I promise even if you know no biology no structural biology no chemistry you're going to like this part and it's very simple those minerals that form the crystals within the enamel and some of the deeper layers of your tooth or teeth rather those

crystals form through a specific type of bond and those bonds are very strong think of them like Lego chains but these are not you know just conventional Lego chains these are Lego chains that when they stick when two pieces come together things are tough to pull apart they're not indestructible but they're tough to pull apart and they're also special because unlike a string of Legos like a single string of Legos these bonds that form during remineralization of the teeth are interdigitated with one another or rather are at angles with one another that make those bonds

especially strong any architect or somebody that understands structural biology will understand that bonds can be weak or strong depending on whether or not they're linear whether or not they're crossed whether or not and lates there's a whole bunch of interesting you know angled forces stuff that the Architects will understand and the the construction workers will understand at a very intuitive and and concrete level no pun intended and on and on but just think about it a bond is only as strong as the number of different points at which it can resist shearing and pressure so

the way that these re remineralization bonds form is through the addition of specific minerals at specific angles and the naturally occurring mineral mineral that's responsible for the majority of these Bonds in the enamel and teeth is called hydroxy appetite what a great name if you're talking about oral health right because we use the mouth for a lot of things you can think of the small list or long list of those things there are many of them you know depending on who you are and what you like to do with your mouth but the point being

that we do indeed eat with our mouth appetite is part of eating so you just remember hydroxy appetite bonds and they are very strong but they're not indestructible acid can actually break those bonds okay that's the mineralization process now fluoride is a substance that is not a vitamin it's not a mineral it is not an essential nutrient but that in the last century it was discovered can actually replace some of the hydroxyapatite bonds in teeth and actually make those bonds hyper strong super physiologically strong now we'll talk about the safety considerations with fluoride in a

little bit because there are some safety considerations but it was decided in Mass in the United States and Europe that the addition of fluoride to the drinking water and to many toothpastes or tooth powders would be useful because it creates these super physiologically strong bonds within the minerals of the teeth and indeed it does it does fluoride gets between those Lego pieces and makes them extra extra strong and this is why fluoride is added to the drinking water but and this is very important to emphasize but nowadays there's a really polarized debate about fluoride because

some people out there believe that fluoride can disrupt thyroid Health might be disruptive for brain health certainly if fluoride levels are too high in drinking water or any substance it can be very dangerous it can be a poison but of course the dose makes the poison right fluoride itself may not be poisonous at very low levels but there really two camps now that have formed and I'll just illustrate those two camps by virtue of what's happening right now right now in the state of California there is a major lawsuit against the government because people want

fluoride removed from the drinking water because of the long list of bad things that excessive I want to highlight excessive fluoride can do for bodily and brain health especially in kids but also in adults at the very same time meaning right now there is also a major lawsuit this one in Buffalo New York from Mostly parents who are suing the City of Buffalo saying that there was not enough maybe even zero fluoride in the drinking water for some period of time and as a consequence their children's teeth or oral health or both is depleted and

they are suing for damages okay so there this is a really polarized camp now I did a full episode of The hubman Lab podcast all about water and I talked about fluoride levels which levels are thought by the CDC to be safe which levels are not thought to be safe I talked about some of the theories as to how fluoride might disrupt function of the thyroid and some considerations there please check out the time stamp in that episode I link to that time stamp in the caption for this episode but the important Point here is

that if you are at all concerned about fluoride in the drinking water the simple answer is to just filter the water that comes out of the tap if you're concerned about fluoride then I suppose you'd probably want to avoid toothpastes that have fluoride indeed there are some I will provide links to some of those in the show note captions for this episode there are a variety of these zero fluoride toothpaste that have started to accumulate but keep in mind that when fluoride is introduced into the bonds of the mineral of the teeth they do make

the teeth really really strong but and all the dentists I spoke to emphasize this point the bonds that form are not the natural bonds now the fact that they're not the natural bonds doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't good for us or that they're bad for us but the bonds that form when viewed under what's called electron microscopy look different they look wavy they're not smooth bonds and they do increase the so resistance to different forces including cavities or acid that would create cavities to be specific they make the teeth stronger structurally so resistance to

chipping Etc but there is a growing concern about excessive fluoride which by the way if you drink a lot of tap water you're going to be exposed to more fluoride than if you drink less tap water that's just kind of stands to reason but people don't really talk about this right when you talk about x amount of fluoride by concentration in a given liter of water or gallon of water you also have to ask well how much tap water are you drinking every day okay you have to ask that question right it's not simply the

concentration it's how much you're Ines overall and that's something that's much harder to control for again in the water episode I talk about ways to eliminate or reduce fluoride in the drinking water if that's a concern of yours but if you want to know why there's fluoride in drinking water it's because government's figured out hey well if we want to reduce tooth decay what's the simplest lowcost method to do that well it's to put fluoride in the drinking water and you now also now know why there's fluoride in a lot of toothpaste but given the

concerns about thyroid Health potential concerns about brain health now you also know why many people including some dentists that I spoke to are not big fans of fluoride both for children and for adults so you just have to make a decision for you I'm not here to tell you what to do you just have to decide are you Pro neutral or against fluoride in you're drinking water and if so are you going to filter are you going to completely avoid drinking any water maybe even cooking with any water from the T and on and on

but now you know why fluoride is in drinking water and fluoride is in toothpaste if you're somebody who's concerned about fluoride in either or both of those sources well then what you really want to think about and what most of us probably should be thinking about anyway is trying to increase the remineralization state of our teeth and mouth in ways that don't create the opportunity for any other health hazard and I will say this as well which is that there's some data not a lot but some data that fluoride might not be so great for

our oral microbiome and as we'll soon learn the oral microbiome is critical for our oral and overall all Health I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor insid tracker insid tracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you reach your health goals now I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done for the simple reason that many of the factors that impact your immediate and long-term Health can only be analyzed from a quality blood test a

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you'd like to try inside tracker you can go to insid tracker.com huberman to get 20% off any of insid tracker's plans again that's inside tracker.com huberman so in a moment we are going to get into what to do the to-dos the behavioral to-dos and some of the other to-dos for trying to keep your mouth in the best possible remineralization State the best pH for tooth health for gum health for avoiding periodontal disease maybe even for reversing some aspects of tooth and periodontal sickness because indeed you can do that if you shift your mouth to the

correct pH if you're putting it into that remineralization mode okay however before we get into the todos I think it's very important to discuss the do Nots that every dentist and periodontist I spoke to agreed on the Quick List as I'll call it of bad for your teeth bad for your mouth and therefore bad for your brain and body are not surprisingly perhaps alcohol which by the way I did an entire episode about alcohol it's one of our more popular episodes I'm not here to tell you to never drink if you're an adult who's not-

alcoholic but the cut off seems to be two alcohol based drinks per week Beyond which you run into trouble and yes zero is better than any but here when we say alcohol is not good for oral health and for tooth Health what we're talking about is the disruption that alcohol creates to the microbiome and the way that it Alters the pH of your saliva and places the mouth and the teeth into a demineralization state that's very clear it also kills certain cells of the mouth some people I remember this in college would say oh you

know if you've got a you know you've got a like scratch in the back of your throat you're getting sick you know you should drink and that's what they said you should drink it's going to kill that thing off well guess what it does the exact opposite it kills off a bunch of things that you want like the cells in and around the mucosal layer of the mouth that are actually going to provide immune support and eliminate those bacteria or viruses uh that are making you sick Etc so alcohol is bad I'm not saying you

shouldn't drink at all if you're a non-alcohol adult you have to decide for you but just understand that if you're drinking alcohol that you want to pay extra attention to your oral health and your tooth care practices especially on the days around that alcohol consumption and if you're somebody who doesn't want to drink alcohol now you have yet another reason to not drink alcohol the second thing on the no fly list or the not good for us list for sake of oral health are stimulants now of course things like methamphetamine which are you know severely

dilus addictive drugs for all sorts of reasons they kill dopaminergic and other brain neurons they are highly addictive um and on and on but also stimulants like adderal viance etc those stimulants basically any drug that increases epinephrine and norepinephrine so called adrenaline and noradrenaline are the other names for those are going to have a negative effect on oral health does that mean you should stop those medications if you've been prescribed them no it means that you should do some other things to try and offset the negative consequence of stimulants why would stimulants cause such disruption

in oral health well there are really two reasons there's a chemical reason and there's a mechanical reason the chemical reason is that stimulants change the pH of your saliva making the mouth more acidic which makes strep mutans and other bacteria more capable of creating cavities down into the teeth they take your mouth and your teeth from that remineralization state or I've been referring to it mode to that demineralization demon mode demon mode that's a way to remember it's bad demon mode demon mode not good maybe in a video game demon mode is good Demon mode

not good for the mouth demon mode demineralization mode so there's a chemical reason why stimulants disrupt the oral health milu and cause disruption in tooth health and degradation demon of the enamel of the teeth and deeper layers of the teeth and this is profoundly evident in meth but the other reason and this was a reason that was shared with me by a physician an MD from University of California San Francisco who interacts by virtue of his profession with a lot of Methamphetamine addicts who have terrible teeth is that stimulants encourage mouth breathing watch a meth

addict or watch somebody who's on a high dose of stimulant and they tend to mouth breathe because of the shifts in autonomic nervous system function they tend to be mouth breathers so it's the drying of the mouth that also shifts the mouth from that remineralization mode to demineralization mode so if you do take stimulants by prescription I would hope not methamphetamine or elicit drugs but if you take prescription stimulants and by the way things like Wellbutrin modafanil they do qualify as stimulants even though modaal is a little bit of a special case any drug that

increases norepinephrine epinephrine any stimulant and yes indeed coffee we'll talk about coffee as well and tea will make the saliva more acidic and make your oral health po potentially less good mouth breathing bad for oral health bad for teeth bad bad bad there's just no question about it so today's discussion I'm calling oral health but that includes oral Airway health and I've talked before on this podcast about the fact that if you can be a nasal breather be a nasal breather please as long as you're not speaking as long as you're not eating try and

breathe through your nose if you're exercising and exercising really hard like you're running really hard fine mouth breathe I don't think there's any evidence that staying in nasal breathing mode all the time while exercising is best for performance in fact to the contrary there are times when you need to mouth breathe and there's Sports where you need to Exhale through the mouth specifically certain martial arts for instance so not saying don't ever breathe through your mouth but as much as possible try and keep the oral cavity moist and closed okay this is critical so stimulants

dry out the mouth they increase the acidity of the saliva that's bad smoking cigarettes and yes also cannabis and yes vaping does this too it's so funny anytime I talk about smoking being bad people like well what about cannabis well I didn't episode about cannabis cannabis does have certain medical uses that are very interesting and um there's good evidence for those but for many people cannabis is not a good idea you can check out that episode to decide for you then people ask what about vaping vaping is not as bad as smoking right that's what

they say where they're sort of asking saying hoping wishing fantasizing and the truth is that vaping is terrible for your oral health as well is it as bad as smoking probably not but it's bad for a bunch of other reasons that offset any gain or gains you would get from vaping instead of smoking so just know that if you're a smoker or a vapor or if you vape rather that you're going to want to pay extra attention to some of the other protocols discussed and that we will discuss going forward in order to try and

support your oral and therefore your whole body Health Okay so we've got alcohol stimulant smoking SL vaping and by extension dipping tobacco frankly not good for oral health or tooth Health in fact they can be proc cancerous to the gum tissue it's well established and they can also cause degradation of the gum tissue and even some of the underlying bone if you tend to do it on the same side all the time or often at all so that's not good we already discussed that sugar is not good for oral health does that mean you can

never ingest sugar no of course not enjoy the sweets you enjoy every once in a while enjoy a nice pastry um you know do as you will um if you're somebody who never eats those things great but then understand that any carbohydrate any starch provides a sugar that strep mutans can eat and create acid and demineralize your teeth create cavities that is so avoid sugar in excess and if you eat sugar try and rinse your mouth after and ideally you would brush maybe even floss after okay I do know those people that after every meal

they run even in the middle of the day they run to the bathroom and brush their teeth and floss and that's great but most people don't do that so swishing water rinsing your mouth out again plain water maybe with a little bit of salt in it is going to be beneficial we'll talk about mouthwash es later just to give you a little window into where we're headed with that most mouthwashes terrible terrible for your oral health especially alcohol-based or antiseptic based mouthwashes except under certain conditions prescribed or otherwise okay so if you eat any sugar

and frankly after you eat anything it's a good idea to try and clear as much of that food product from your mouth you may not think you still have food in your mouth and teeth but trying to you know swish some water maybe spit it out maybe swallow it that's up to you are you a spit or swallow not my business don't want to don't tell me don't put it in the comments just decide for you but sugar and other food products residing in the mouth for long periods of time not good and similarly acidity

foods that are acidic so certain things like citrus fruits which I love I love oranges I have an orange tree in my backyard now and I absolutely love it I love oranges grapefruit I just I love the peel I even eat the peel sometimes it's so delicious and no one's telling you not to eat acidic Foods or to avoid atic drinks like lemon water or carbonated lemon water some people are really extreme and they decide to just use a straw when they drink those things in fact the dentist I spoke to said yes could you

ask people please if they're going to drink acidic drinks to try and use a straw but then I said well you know a lot of straws they disrupt the environment most people aren't carrying around metal straws or you know and what about the turtles this kind of thing and they said well okay here's the real truth the real truth is it's the amount of time that the mouth is exposed to that acid so if they're going to drink it drink it over the course of 10 15 maybe 20 30 minutes and then be done with

it rinse out the mouth with a little bit of water and try and clear out that acidity it's not about completely avoiding acid foods or sugary Foods or acidic drinks it's about again limiting the amount of time that the overall milu of the mouth is acidic because of this whole demon remen thing strep mutans and the acid created by strep mutans that can derode the teeth and the fact that if your mouth is kept acidic for long periods of time you're going to provide the opportunity for faster and deeper development of those cavities and keep

this in mind again anytime we talk about demineralization the formation of cavities remember it's like a seesaw it's either demon or reman but not both so anytime you're demineralizing your teeth you're also not remineralizing your teeth okay so really avoid alcohol stimulants smoking vaping sugar mouth breathing acidic Foods acidic drinks but many of us most of us can't avoid any sugars any acidic Foods the other things can be avoided but some of us are prescribed these drugs and need these drugs some people like a drink with alcohol in it every once in a while and

it's perfectly fine for them or they've deemed it perfectly fine for them in that case try and rinse the mouth try and keep the milu of the mouth as moist and as basic or alkaline rather less acidic as possible so to translate this a bit more to the real world if you're somebody like me who loves tea I drink cold brew zero sugar y bate that's my favorite source of caffeine I also like a nice black double espresso or coffee every once in a while it's fine to drink that but you don't want to sip

on those sorts of things all day and you don't want to sip on them for hours and hours and if you're going to combine those things with some acidic Foods or with any kind of food you know try and get your meals done wrap them up and rinse your mouth and move to the next part of your day and that actually Segways into a really important point that came about when researching this episode that if I had to highlight bold face underline and light up one particular protocol that I think most everybody is not thinking

about is that there are certain times in the 24-hour circadian period in which your mouth makes the maximum amount of saliva okay and that the saliva has an opportunity to be the optimal pH that is chemistry for encouraging remineralization of your teeth and that's during the daytime and especially through the middle of the day now there are a couple things that can disrupt that for instance eating anything I don't care if you're carnivore or vegan whatever omnivore when you eat you change the pH of your saliva and you're introducing those sugars that the bacteria can

feed on so one thing that became very clear to me when researching this episode talking to experts reading manuscripts and also reading some really interesting books about remineralization opportunities for the teeth is that having a stretch of time of maybe two four six hours or more where you're not eating anything or ingesting anything that's acidic in terms of liquids can be very beneficial now this is a vote in support of so-called intermittent fasting this is something that I practice typically by eating my first meal somewhere around 11:00 a.m. every morning sometimes earlier sometimes have a

little breakfast at 9:00 if I particularly hungry but typically I eat my first meal around 11:00 a.m. or noon and then I eat my last bite of food by about 8:00 p.m. not Everyone likes to do intermittent fasting and I realize for sake of weight loss it's probably interchangeable with caloric restriction generally and there's a lot of debate as to whether or not intermittent fasting is going to extend lifespan whether or not it's better for metabolic Health than simple caloric restriction I don't want to get into that debate frankly it's a barbed wire debate that's

been carried out on this podcast and elsewhere before and I think this is ongoing I think it's the the best way to couch that debate but in researching this episode it became very clear that we have an amazing opportunity during the day especially in the morning and throughout the day to create a lot of saliva that's the right pH to support remineralization of the teeth provided that there isn't a lot of food or acidic liquids in the mouth at that time so at least to my mind this is an interesting opportunity to place intermittent fasting

which again or even just gaps between meals not constantly snacking or sipping on acidic beverages throughout the day as an opportunity to create that healthy milu during which the teeth can remineralize and the overall oral health can improve now does that mean you should never eat or drink anything during the middle of the day no I'm not saying that I'm saying that if you're going to do those things try and clear them from your mouth as I described before now many of you will probably say hey during the middle of the night I'm not eating

or drinking anything for some of you that might be the only time that you're not eating or drinking anything because you're asleep one would hope you're asleep but here's the interesting thing every cell tissue and organ in our body is on a 24-hour circadian clock I think many of you have heard heard me say that in the context of viewing morning sunlight and other protocols that I you know suggest on the huberman loud podcast but here's the interesting and important point in the middle of the night indeed you're not ingesting any food or fluids presumably

but your saliva production is dramatically reduced again dramatically reduced and as a consequence if there's food or rather food opportunity for strep mutans and other bacteria to feed on and create a to erode your teeth the saliva necessary to offset that to combat that is simply not present or at least not present at the same levels that it is during the day so this is a sort of two-prong protocol on the one hand I'm saying you might consider trying to introduce maybe an hour or two hour or longer stretches during the day in which you're

not ingesting any food and if you're drinking anything it's not acidic or if you are to try and rinse away that acid as much as possible so PL water would be great avoiding carbonated lemon water would be great but if you like those things and indeed I love those things I love carbonated lemon water I love things like yamat indeed the yate I like is cobw zero sugar but has some lemon and ginger in it okay that's fairly acidic but then drinking it down either pretty quickly or if you're going to sip on it then

rinsing it away with some water and not doing that throughout the entire day and indeed I tend to drink my caffeine early in the day and not so much throughout the day maybe a little bit of mate in the afternoon sometimes okay so that's one aspect of maintaining or encouraging the correct pH of saliva to remineralize your teeth right create these windows of opportunity where there's a lot of saliva for long stretches of time during the day as long as possible while still making it compatible with your nutrition needs and your hydration needs of course

the other prong or the other aspect of this protocol is that at night when you go to sleep you need to know you're not producing very much saliva and that's the critical time to make sure that there is as little opportunity is possible for strep mutans and other bacteria to feed on sugars or other food products and thereby to create acid that creates cavities and so this is a very important protocol that every single dental and oral health care professional I spoke to supported and indeed Champions which is if there is a most critical time

of day or night to brush your teeth and floss and clean your teeth it's at nighttime it's at nighttime why am I saying this with such whispered importance well I think there are many people out there in particular people that fall into that second category that I mentioned at the beginning of today's episode that wake up in the morning and brush their teeth maybe even use mouthwash maybe floss and do a bunch of things to try and get their mouth clean and fresh especially if they're going to interact with other people during the day and

to get rid of all the kind of stickiness and you know mouth you know morning breath that kind of thing but that at night they're finishing dinner maybe having some dessert doing some work and passing out without brushing their teeth or flossing or simply getting too lazy to brush or floss and by the way I'm going to raise my hand and just say for many years I was in that category I know ew gross but I was in that category I had high motivation to brush in floss or at least a brush in the morning

very little motivation to do it in the evening every professional said if you're going to brush and floss just once per 24 hours and that is not what they recommend by the way but if you were going to do it just once the critical time the most essential time to brush and floss and clean the mouth and get the millu of the mouth correct for tooth care and mouth overall oral health is at night before you go to sleep because you already know the mechanistic backbone for this argument because at night you're producing far less

saliva and if there's any food product there that the bacteria can feed on the saliva isn't there to combat that because it's a constant battle between acidity and alkalinity your saliva is coming in trying to save everything and the strep mutans is trying to destroy your teeth and the acid is the Weaponry they use and what fuels that Weaponry what provides them more ammo to destroy your teeth are sugars and acidity so if you were going to brush your floss and ideally you do both only once per 24 hours it would be at night before

going to sleep indeed so much so that I would say that nighttime brushing and flossing is perhaps one of the most important things that we could do for overall oral health care we'll talk about what to do what to use for brushing and flossing in a few minutes but that's absolutely essential I do not want that to be translated into you only need to brush or brush and floss once per 24 hours every professional I spoke to and all of the data point to the fact that doing it twice per 24 hours is best or

perhaps even three times per 24 hours but let's be honest most people are not going to brush and floss three times every 24 hours some will but most won't and now of course I've been saying brushing and flossing but I haven't talked about the incredibly extensive landscape of how to brush and floss so now let's take ourselves back to being little kids right when we were taught to brush our teeth in a particular way you know you're supposed to spend a certain number of minutes set a timer supposed to floss in a certain way every

time we go to the dentist they tell us to floss in a certain way do this not this what do the data really say what are the modern health professionals in dental and oral health really suggest in we do when it comes to brushing and flossing and fortunately here there's a near uniform consensus there's always that outlier that person that says to do things a little bit differently or no there's in fact one person very prominent in the dental health space that is not a fan of flossing but they are really the outlier the vast

majority of dentists out there all say the same thing you need to brush you need to floss you need to do it twice a day or more and you need to do it correctly so now let's talk about what Cor correct brushing and flossing really is okay so I'm not going to demonstrate how to brush your teeth but one very actionable protocol that was told to me by all the dental professionals I spoke to was use a soft toothbrush now this one hurts or I suppose hurts less anyway it hurts my heart a little bit

because I enjoy very much using a medium or hard toothbrush and really like scrubbing back there especially in the teeth in the back it just feels good I feel like I'm doing something good I get into the backs of the teeth the fronts of the teeth I know I actually enjoy brushing my teeth especially lately don't ask me why but I do but every single one of them said that that very vigorous brushing with medium or hard as they're called bristles really disrupts the interface between the teeth and the gums in ways That's not healthy

for the gums and actually makes tenting of the gums and those Pockets those recesses as they're called far more likely to form and every single one of them said if you are regular with your brushing and especially if you're brushing and flossing regularly that a soft toothbrush that is one that's moved in a circular motion on the fronts and backs of your teeth for all your teeth and that is gentle you're not providing a lot of pressure is going to be the best way to break up that bofilm layer each and every time and promote

the best tooth and overall oral health so I suppose um manufacturers who are making medium and hard toothbrushes maybe give us some w rationale for that um you know because the dental professionals that I spoke to and again I spoke to a fair number of them all said the same thing soft toothbrush Notch just better soft toothbrush best likewise if you use an electric toothbrush which I now do sometimes I switch back and forth but if you use an electric toothbrush it was recommended that you not provide too much pressure that you really try and

keep the tips of the bristles on the the teeth and gums and yes it was also suggested that people brush their gums this is interesting for people out there who have tooth sensitivity one of the major suggestions from people in the dental and perodontal field at least the ones I spoke to was to actually brush your gums lightly to increase circulation of blood and other nutrients to the deeper portions of the tooth that actually extend into the bone now there is a tremendous amount of blood flow to the gums anyone who's um you know sort

of nicked their uh gum with a while while flossing or with a toothpick can tell you bleeds very readily and that's not a good thing right you don't want to create bleeding of the gums we'll talk about bleeding of the gums during flossing in a moment by the way so don't jump the gun just yet I said jump the gun not jump the gum by the way if you are brushing your gums make sure you're using a soft toothbrush if you're using electric toothbrush make sure you're going very lightly on the gums and because there's

so much blood flow to the gums it does encourage a lot of circulation to some of the deeper cavities of the tooth as it turns out I don't want to reverse to tooth anatomy in any kind of detailed way now but of course within the tooth you have again enamel you have the Dentin you've got What's called the the pulp or the center there's a lot of nerves inating the center of the tooth there's a bunch of other tissues and and the bone around it and layers Etc and when you massage or lightly brush the

gums around there you're encouraging a lot of blood flow to those deeper components of the tooth which are really the live and active components of the tooth that require blood flow and nutrients so this is a good thing in fact it's probably such a good thing that most people perhaps all of us should do it but most people probably won't take the time to also brush their gums but if you have a little bit of time it can be beneficial especially if you have sensitive teeth the idea that's of emerging now in the dental field

is that it can help promote resilience or less sensitivity of the teeth to things like hot and cold and maybe even to pressure so before we talk about flossing I just want to reemphasize that the reason to brush your teeth and the reason to brush your teeth lightly or without too much pressure that is is that if you're regular with your toothbrushing and flossing the main goal of brushing is to break up the biofilm layer that provides a substrate for strep mutans and other bacteria to layer on thicker layers of bacteria so-called plaque that will

eventually turn to Tarter okay if we really want to gross ourselves out and really motivate brushing and flossing maybe we should describe that what happens with strep mutans is it forms these strand-like bacteria so these are like little Celia so they're attached to the tooth is the bofilm layer so like little strands of strings but if enough of it accumulates and it gets thicker and kind of Mossy it's kind of like you know thicker it looks kind of sponge form and that's the plaque and then if enough of it forms and there's enough acidity in

the mouth then it forms tartter which is the hard caked on stuff that requires scraping off by the dentist you know and some people get a lot of tartar some people have less Tarter buildup depending on how diligent they are at removing the bofilm with brushing now you can remove biofilm and plaque with brushing but once it starts to form tarar that is once it's layered on sometimes it has a yellowish tint to it then you really start to run into trouble because brushing and flossing will not remove that tarar and that's why the dentist

needs to get in there and scrape it away so it's ideal to be diligent about removing the bacteria while it's still in that strand or plaque form ideally within this when it's still in that strand form removing that bofilm if you've ever been to the dentist you may recall they'll do this tooth polishing you know they'll do that thing the kind of gritty stuff on your teeth and you wonder um you know is this to make my teeth whiter and indeed it can create a bit more shine or Sheen to uh your teeth but the

main reason for doing that it turns out is to make the surfaces of your teeth smooth after all they do it on your backs your your teeth too right if they're good dentist they do on the backs of your teeth as well why would they do it there it can't be for cosmetic purposes well they do that because the smooth surface makes it harder for those strands that bofilm to stick and form and certainly for the more dense plaque and Tarter layers to build up on top of it so they're making your teeth smooth so

that the the bacteria can't adhere to it as readily but it's the daily Protocols of tooth and oral health that are really critical we'll talk about dental visits and frequency of dental visits and what a dental visit is really about is it always about cleaning or filling Etc but in the meantime brushing and brushing often enough such that you don't get any buildup of bofilm for very long periods of time a eliminating or reducing the amount of plaque and tartter that builds up is going to be your best strategy for improving tooth Health now what

about flossing there's a little bit of debate about flossing in the Dentistry field some people say if your gums bleed when you floss you need to floss more in fact most dentists I spoke to said that but they also emphasize that you need to floss correctly you can't just pull the floss down onto the gum in between the tooth you need to Glide down the side of the tooth get a little bit underneath the gum and use a circular motion and then lift up from between the two teeth which frankly is a lot easier if

your teeth aren't very very close together right some of us have teeth that are very close together and when you try and bring it up through the teeth it's more of an effort okay but they really all emphasize trying to not drop this you know rather sharp floss and the you know here we could also be talking about the tooth pick based floss where there's a little Arc with a with a a little bit of floss across from it the ones that you can buy some people actually use toothpicks they're old fashion method um frankly

most dentists I spoke to don't want people jabbing their mouth and gums with toothpicks you can decide for yourself but almost all of them except for one felt that flossing is a great idea for tooth health and that if your gums bleed when you floss correctly as I just described what correct flossing is that you best strategy is to floss at least twice a day between all of your teeth and if you're not going to floss twice a day for whatever reason in protest or for lack of time at least once a day and when

would that once a day be it would be at night before going to sleep for the reasons we talked about earlier and several dentists I spoke to said that using a water pick is going to be better than using more typical floss or for or using those toothpick based floss approaches because it's gentler on the teeth I personally have not used a water pick but I'm sort of intrigued by the the concept because it sounds like it's um much harder to damage the gums and teeth by doing it and that it is at least as

efficient as standard flossing so for those of you that have the disposable income and the interest in using a water pick sounds like it could be a really good idea for the vast majority of us like me just getting some traditional uh floss and using dental floss um at least once a day at night and ideally also in the morning after brushing that seems like the most direct and lowcost strategy I should just mention that the pediatric dentist that I spoke to mentioned that flossing is really about removing food product from between the teeth and

therefore children younger than six who typically have big spaces between their baby teeth and their adult teeth have not yet come in in fact that's what those spaces are about by the way unless you're me and when you were a kid your teeth were too close together and all your adult teeth came in behind those teeth it was really miserable experience for me most kids their baby teeth are spaced out a bit and in order to allow the adult teeth to come in to erupt as it's called such a dramatic word I love reading this

literature you know when the molers erupt it's like whoa no it just come up through the gums those spaces are really there for the adult teeth to come up through the gums and so it was suggested that children who have those spaces between their teeth and the spaces are big don't need to floss between those teeth because it could cause some damage to the gums rather they should just focus on their brushing now let's talk about some protocols that involve changing the chemistry of your mouth not just immediately after meals or during brushing or flossing

but really around the clock and one of the key protocols that I'd like to discuss is the use of an artificial sugar called Xylitol xylitol is a very low calorie sweetener I can place it among the other low calorie sweeteners like aspartame sucrose Stevia Etc but what's unique about xylitol is that very much like standard sugar or any kind of carbohydrate sugar the bacteria streptococus mutans loves to eat Xylitol but when streptococus mutans eats Xylitol it doesn't meaning it cannot produce the acid that normally would demineralize the teeth and create cavities in addition to that

when streptococus mutans eats Xylitol it kills streptococus mutans so what this means is that if xylol is present in the oral cavity after a meal say in the minutes and hours after a meal then any strep mutans that happens to be there is going to preferentially feed on the Xylitol not other sugars and it won't be able to release acid and because Xylitol can actually inhibit the growth and that is the proliferation of more strep mutans we've got a twofer we've got a situation where strep mutans can't release acid to demineralize the teeth and potentially

cause cavities and the total amount of strep mutans that can grow that can proliferate in what are called colonies literally the bacteria colonizes on the teeth in that forming that bofilm well then that can't happen so xylitol is a very potent tool for improving oral health in this way in addition Xylitol reduces inflammation of the gum tissue and other soft tissues of the mouth and so xylitol is providing an array of positive benefits especially when it's present to the mouth immediately after meals and for that reason there are a number of different dentists that have

created Xylitol products in the form of gums or in the form of mints specifically to be used after meals so by chewing a few of these Xylitol mints or by chewing a Xylitol based gum immediately after a meal you're taking substantial steps towards improving the chemical milu of your mouth and inhibiting the proliferation of cavity forming streptococus mutants now you can also find some literature on other proposed benefits of Xylitol such as you know improving overall microbiome uh such as reducing inflammation in other tissues besides the gums and within the mouth there is some evidence

that it can support the gut microbiome because of course the oral microbiome and the gut microbiome are contiguous they have different compartments I mean you might even be surprised to learn that within your mouth there are different niches as they're called for instance there's different microbiota that live on the gums versus the hard pallet versus the soft pallet back in the throat and then as you descend into the gut Etc and it does appear that Xylitol has certain positive benefits for all of those different gut microbiome niches but the literature on that is less well

substantiated than for instance the literature showing that if xylitol is put in as a surrogate sugar substrate for strep mutans that it disables strep mutans and can prevent the formation of cavities now as far as I know when consumed in mint form or gum form I'm not aware of any specific side effects or bad effects of Xylitol provided that it's not consumed in excess but as with everything dosage matters so if you're somebody who wants to explore the use of xylol gum or xylol mins after a meal I wouldn't suggest going from consuming zero Xylitol

mins to consuming 50 a day or something like that or even 10 a day you might start off slowly and just consume one or two after a meal maybe just your morning meal maybe just your evening meal something of that sort rather than chewing Xylitol gum all day long etc etc I'll just mention one other positive benefit of Xylitol gum which is if you use Xylitol gum after say your noon meal or your early Day meal it further increases the production of saliva which as we talked about before is a great thing because one of

the best ways to support oral health and tooth health is to have a long stretch of time in the middle of the day where you're producing a lot of healthy saliva in large amounts because again saliva is this incredible stuff that's supporting remineralization of the teeth so lots and lots of reasons to think about maybe consider using xotl gum or xotl mins there are a number of different ones available out there I have zero again zero Z Financial relationship to any of those Mint or gum companies I'll provide a link in the show note captions

to One Source the company and the products were developed by a dentist Dr Ellie Phillips who is quite prominent in the public health education space around dental health some of her views are a little bit controversial like her views on flossing other of her views I find frankly quite ahead of their time in that she's been talking about a number of these things like promoting the health of the oral microbiome and the potential value of Xylitol gums and etc for some period of time I think most of the information that she puts out there is

supported by other dentists and she still suggests regular Dental visit so um you know nothing Renegade out there or heretical uh again there are other sources of xotl gums and mints that you could consider I'm simply putting a link to the one that I use because I happen to use them and like them so I'd like to use the discussion about Xylitol as a segue into a discussion about toothpaste because there is a lot of controversy out there about which tooth space are better for us maybe even bad for us and best for us I

think it's fair to say based on what we all now know about xylol that if you can find a toothpaste that contains Xylitol as a sweetener that can only be a good thing and indeed there are a number of them out there we'll talk about specific sources in a little bit but let's just put Xylitol on the um short to not so short list of things that would be great to have in a toothpaste for all the reasons that you now understand the real big question with toothpaste is always should I use a toothpaste that

has fluoride or avoid toothpastes that have fluoride and in order to answer that we have to go back to our earlier discussion about fluoride it really depends on whether or not you're somebody that thinks that fluoride is great because it creates these super physiologically strong bonds within our teeth the crystal structures are that much stronger than when formed by hydroxy appetite or whether or not you're somebody who is wary of fluoride that you're concerned about potential brain health issues or thyroid issues and you know here I think people really do fall into either camp or

the camp frankly of I don't know should I be worried I don't know if I should be worried I personally grew up using fluide toothpaste we had the kind of standard name brand fluoride toothpaste um in our bathroom I brushed my teeth with those for years whether or not that negatively impacted my health or not I don't know uh get my blood work done my thyroid hormones are normal um my brain works at least you know reasonably well but I do realize that some people are very concerned about fluoride and they just don't want it

anywhere near their kids they don't want it anywhere near themselves so if you're somebody who's going to air on the side of caution with fluoride and you are seeking a non floride containing toothpaste there are such toothpaste out there and most of those if not all of them contain you guest it hydroxy appetite they contain the minerals that naturally form the bonds that create that additional enamel that can potentially fill in cavities and by remineralization of the enamel and some of the deeper layers of the tooth so if one is seeking toothpaste and you want

to avoid fluoride you'd want to find something that ideally had hydroxy appetite and something that had Xylitol and they often also contain some sort of mild abrasive okay not a not a really scratchy abrasive substance um but a mild abrasive that can really allow for breaking up of the bofilm that we talked about earlier now I've provided links to a couple of sources for such toothpaste and also for these little toothpaste tablets um that I've been using lately as well sometimes switch back and forth between the two these are tablets that you chew up and

then you uh brush your teeth immediately after you with your wet toothbrush both of them work quite well again I want to be clear that the companies that I've provided links to in the show note captions are companies for which I have absolutely zero Financial relationship I do know some of the people that started these companies I actually discovered these companies because these people are dentists or periodontists or other people in the oral health field uh but I also want to be very clear that there was no exchange of promo of their products for information

or otherwise I simply tried and like the products and I just so happen to have learned some things about Oral healthc Care from these people separate and away from anything about toothpaste or Xylitol Etc okay so want to be very clear that I do believe these are quality sources these are the toothpaste and tooth tablets that I happen to use gums and mints that I happen to use large part as a consequence of researching this episode but I pay full price for them I'm certainly not suggesting that anyone else has to use them they just

represent one option if you're looking for non- fluoride containing toothpaste and some other things to promote oral health and I'm sure there are other sources out there and if you'd like to refer the various viewers and listeners of this podcast to those sources because you feel very strongly about those other sources just put those in the comment section on YouTube okay let's talk about mouthwash or mouthwashes plural at the beginning of today's episode I said let's determine what category of oral health you are in are you somebody who pays a lot of attention to oral

health you brush and floss at least twice a day you're using mouthwashes tooth whiteners perhaps as well or are you in category two or three well here's the deal most all most all not all but most all mouthwashes especially those containing alcohol are terrible for oral health simply put they deplete certain components of the mucosal lining of the mouth and they disrupt the healthy components of the oral microbiome so for those of you that rely on such mouthwashes I would really encourage you to learn more about them you're about to do that now you're already

doing that now and to really consider whether or not they are helping or harming your oral health now I'm not suggesting that you create a scenario where your breath is causing other people to dissolve into a puddle of Tears or back away from you quickly that's not what you want that's not what I want that's not what anyone wants but I think it's important to realize that these alcohol-based mouthwashes are not good for us in addition they're antiseptic mouthwashes some of which contain alcohol some of which don't which sometimes are prescribed for very serious bacterial

overgrowth and infections of the oral cavity if your dentist or physician or periodontist prescribes those I certainly am not going to try and get in the way of that prescription that's between you and your healthc care professional but you would be wise to ask them whether or not these chlorohexidine type mouthwashes Etc are potentially bad for other components of oral health or microbiota in the gut generally because in some cases they have been shown to be not good for us at the same time we don't want overproliferation of really bad bacteria in the mouth so

we don't want infections to run wild either most people however are using mouthwashes to freshen their breath and to kill off additional bacteria in the mouth that they might believe they couldn't get with brushing or flossing if if you are somebody who really wants to use a mouthwash for that reason I encourage you to try and find a mouthwash that is not alcohol-based and that is not a strong antiseptic or that if it is an antiseptic that it's not alcohol based okay and such mouthwashes exist out there they're a little bit hard to find I'll

provide a link to at least a couple of them in the show note captions here I have to say I have not tried those mouthwashes yet they do come from sources in which they were developed by licensed mental healthare professionals but this is always the case when somebody's selling something it's worthwhile to do diligence now as we talk about toothpaste and mints and gums and mouthwashes I think it's worth taking a step back and also asking the question are there any zero or very very lowc cost or even cost-saving alternatives to any of this and

the great answer is yes there are actually a number of things that you can do with basic over-the-counter stuff from the grocery store that all the dentists I spoke to said yeah that's a pretty good option it's not the best option available perhaps but it's a pretty good option and in many cases it's better than the typical commercially available toothpaste or mouthwash for instance I would imagine based on everything I now know about the structure of teeth that using something like baking soda to brush the teeth would indeed scrape off the bofilm perhaps even whiten

the teeth a little bit although as we talked about earlier you're not really whitening the teeth you're actually just changing the um reflectiveness uh and some of the composition of that enamel which is translucent so that you can see the underlying components better well I talked to several dentists and they told me that baking soda actually is fairly low on the abrasiveness rating scale they have a specific rating scale for this that we don't have to go into but it's actually considered quite safe for the enamel of the teeth especially if you're brushing with a

soft toothbrush and you're not like really grinding the stuff against your teeth at maximum intensity or even near maximum intensity so it turns out that baking soda and water is actually a pretty good toothpaste if you're not going to go buy a toothpaste so that's good news now you may have heard that you can make a sort of mouth wash or mouth rinse with baking soda water and a little bit of hydrogen peroxide I want to emphasize a little bit but I'm also going to emphasize I don't think this is a good idea at all

why is it not a good idea at all well first of all when we were kids we used to take baking soda and hydrogen peroxide and put them together to simulate volcanoes so um that tells you right there the kind of chemical reaction that you're going to get but in addition to that it's pretty clear that hydrogen peroxide unless there's a specific medical recommendation to do so is not something you want to introduce to the oral cavity now this is something that I'm very familiar with because when I was a postto so this is in

the 2005 to 2010 stretch I started to get some pretty bad caners saurus I don't know about you but krur feel awful to me I hate them when you eat they hurt when you swallow they hurt when do anything they pretty much hurt and someone gave me the recommendation to use a little bit of baking soda dissolved in some water and a little bit of hydrogen peroxide to use that as a oral rinse and of course then to spit it out and I did that and actually what happened to me is I got almost quarter

siiz ulcers on the roof of my mouth and on the sides of my mouth it took those little canr saurs which were annoying and kind of painful and turn them into full-blown ulcers I know this because when I stopped using it those healed up almost immediately and then when I spoke to some dentists and peridontist they said oh yeah yeah hydrogen peroxide is just far too abrasive for the mouth cavity and the reason I raised this is because I don't think I'm alone in that if you kind of venture into some of the um let's

call it alternative recommendation space for oral health um you may hear that things like hydrogen peroxide can be useful for gargling with or swishing with if you are starting to get a little bit of a throat tickle maybe an infection it turns out it's a really bad idea now if there are Physicians or oral health experts out there that strongly believe in the use of hydrogen peroxide rinses or gargling with it to promote oral health for any reason let me know in the show note captions I don't want to go against any of those recommendations

but this now considered kind of old school recommendation of creating one's own mouthwash with a little bit of baking soda some hydrogen peroxide and water does not seem like a good idea not just based on my experience but every one of the dental professionals that I spoke to that said it does seem that creating a high salt solution okay so taking some salt putting in water dissolving it and then finding the point at which it won't quite dissolve because the concentration of sodium is just high enough and using that as of course not something to

swallow but rather as a dental rinse so putting your mouth and swishing it around and then spitting it out and it's going to taste very salty and then taking a swig of water you know just plain water and then swishing it around and then spitting it out that actually provides a really nice milu for the produ production of healthy mouth bacteria it's near zero cost suppose you need a little bit of salt low water and a glass to put it in but it's basically zero cost and if you think about it that high saline or

high salinity solution is a lot like the sort of brins and the liquid that comes from these low sugar Probiotic foods that earlier I was suggesting and in other episodes I've suggested could be really healthy for swallowing for the gut microbiota but again I want to be very clear do not do not swallow high salt concentration fluid we're talking about a Swish and then a spitting it out as a way to improve the overall milu of the mouth to get the pH right to promote the proliferation of healthy microbiota components Okay so we've talked about

some commercially available gums and mints containing Xylitol we've talked about some commercially available toothpastes indeed some toothpaste that you know almost fall into the very Boutique category because they have all these things that are known by dentists and uh peridontist to be great for oral health but those can run some cost right and so I do think it's important that we also talked about the use of just baking soda with a soft toothbrush and some water and gently brushing the teeth as a great way to disrupt the bofilm and clean your teeth and a high

salt solution as a Swish and spit followed by you know uh Swish and spit with clear water clean water no salt in it as a Essen very low cost or zeroc cost mouthwash Far and Away different from the heavily scented alcohol-based antiseptic mouth washes that are commercially available and that we know are basically not good for our oral microbiome in addition I'd like to point out that those alcohol-based mouthwashes that many people in the world use are also known to reduce the amount of nitric oxide that's produced in the oral cavity and that's very important

for the production of nitric oxide elsewhere in the body why is that important well nitric oxide promotes vasodilation not just within the blood vessels that line and feed the oral cavity but also the throat also in the nose also in the brain also in the heart so what we're talking about here is a substance that is indeed increased when we for instance nasal breathe we know that dramatically increases nitric oxide we're talking about a substance that when the oral microbiome is preserved in its healthy State tends to increase in production and we're talking about a

substance that's really good for small capillary vein and arterial health because it allows for the passage of blood both for the delivery of oxygen and other nutrients to tissues but also the removal of waste products from tissues so we don't want to do anything that reduces nitric oxide unless there's some specific medical condition that leads us to want to do that so for most people increasing nitric oxide or keeping nitric oxide levels stable is the state that we want to seek and these alcohol-based mouthwashes are known to deplete the production of nitric oxide so there's

yet another reason to avoid the use of these alcohol-based more typical over-the-counter mouthwashes by the way this is not a scare tactic against mouthwashes I'm sure that if you use mouthwashes you're still producing some nitric oxide but I think nowadays many hopefully all of you are interested in doing whatever you can to improve your mental health physical health and performance and if there are things that you are doing that are inhibiting those in any way that you'd potentially want to at least think about those maybe remove them from your protocols especially if there's a cost

to them that you can remove in other words you can save on costs so again lots of reasons to move away from the alcohol-based standard antiseptic mouthwashes aside from the Improvement in your breath that by the way can be better achieved by supporting the oral microbiome other ways that we've discussed there's really no clear Advantage as to why one would use one and there apparently are a number of disadvantages anes now earlier we talked briefly about canker sours they are really uncomfortable there are a lot of theories as to why canker form and they're a

lot of products and theories as to how to get rid of canker sorus well indeed there are some ways that we can prevent the formation of canker sorus and accelerate their healing and that actually has to do with promoting the health of the gut microbiome so there's a clear link between gut microbiome and oral microbiome in a way that can either promote or reduce the formation of canker sores and can actually help heal canker sores and to my knowledge the best way to support a quote unquote healthy gut microbiome is to consume at least one

to four servings of low sugar fermented foods per day I mentioned what some of those are a little bit earlier I also did an entire episode about gut microbiome we've hosted expert guests on the microbiome including Justin sonenberg from Stanford school of medicine and for sake of time I can just briefly list off the things that are known to promote a healthy gut microbiome and that would indirectly support the healing and prevention of canker sorce and those are consuming one to four servings of low sugar fermented foods per day for instance consuming enough Prebiotic fiber

so consuming enough fiber in the diet through fruits and vegetables or perhaps supplementing Prebiotic or probiotic fiber and in some cases if somebody is really dis biotic or if you've been taking antibiotics actually taking a pill form or capsule form probiotic but it's not something that I recommend people take consistently and I certainly don't I think by ingesting those low sugar fermented foods on a regular basis by trying to make sure that you're getting enough sleep each night this is key probably should have mentioned this earlier in the episode uh but you know one of

the folks who I have great respect for in the public health discussion around dental health is Dr Mark bheen he goes by ask the dentist on Instagram he's actually a retired dentist uh but he's been deeply involved D in the kind of evaluation of the consumer product space as it relates to dental and oral healthare for a number of years um and Mark Beren in addition to discussing all the various topics that we've talked about today such as Xylitol and fluoride yes or fluoride no etc etc has also been a big proponent of people paying

attention to that first pillar of mental health physical health and performance which is sleep and pointing out that when people get fewer than their necessary allotment of sleep each night so typically most people need 6 to 8 hours some people need more some people need a little less but getting at least 6 to8 hours of quality sleep per night which supports the health of the gut microbiome and oral microbiome and thereby indirectly supports the health of the entire brain and body so um Dr burin and others have talked about this but I really appreciate that

he's championed the importance of sleep among other things but certainly sleep as a way to support the oral microbiome so we've talked quite a bit about teeth and gums a little little bit about mucosal lining and throat one thing that we haven't talked very much about is a hung the tongue your tongue is obviously a very important component of your mouth and as I mentioned earlier different niches different locations within the mouth have different microbiota living on them both good and quote unquote bad meaning ones that we'd like to promote the proliferation of because they

reduce bad breath and promote oral health and all that good stuff and quote unquote bad bacteria because they make our breath smell bad and because they deteriorate the various tissues of the mouth I looked pretty extensively into this issue of tongue scraping and it's an interesting one and every licensed dental health care professional I spoke to in preparing for this episode agreed that yes it can be a good idea to scrape the tongue and each one of them cited the fact that a number of unhealthy bacteria can build up on the tongue across the course

of the day and throughout the night much in the same way that biofilm can build up on teeth although through a different process different bacteria and that scraping the tongue or brushing the tongue can be advantageous for removing that bacteria what was interesting is that several of them pointed out that lightly brushing the tongue may in fact be better than scraping the tongue because they argue that especially when people use those steel tongue scrapers that few people know how to use them with sufficient Force to remove the bacteria but not so much force that they

don't damage the tongue tissue and the tongue is a very fragile soft tissue so the recommendation that they relayed to me was to suggest once or twice a day brushing of the tongue but here's an important point they all suggested that you use a separate toothbrush to brush your tongue than you would to brush your teeth okay so if things weren't complicated enough already about using a separate toothbrush why well they gave two reasons one is they want to prevent crossover of the bacteria between those two different tissues especially if one is brushing the tongue

too vigorously you don't want to introduce bacteria from your toothbrushing onto your tongue of course you can rinse it in between but the ideal situation is to use a separate toothbrush for the purpose of brushing the tongue now that opened up a whole exploration and discussion about toothbrush care we can probably do a whole episode all about toothbrush care but we won't suffice to say that when you brush bacteria off your teeth or tongue and presumably the toothbrush gets moist if by no other means certainly by means of your saliva being on it then you

rinse it off and then even if you were to dry it off with a clean um some sort of clean towel or something like that and you set it out a lot of bacteria are going to proliferate on that toothbrush so this opened up a whole discussion about you know should you cover your toothbrush or let it dry out in the air should you use UV irradiation uh to sterilize your toothbrush and frankly it took us me down the rabbit hole of toothbrush care so far that at one point I just I just screamed like

Uncle like enough I I think um one has to decide how much bacteria they are willing to tolerate living on their toothbrush in between toothbrushing um anywhere from zero where you use a new toothbrush or toothbrush head every single time you brush that seems unreasonable or at least economically unreasonable for most people versus replacing it once a week versus once every two weeks really there's no specific recommendation I can make all I can say is be aware that bacteria are growing on the toothbrush head try and avoid contact between the toothbrush head and any um

unsanitary surfaces try and rinse and dry off the toothbrush head all these things are recommendations that were relayed to me and that just make good common sense now prior to this episode I put the call out on social media for questions about oral health and one of the questions that came back from many hundreds of people was what about fillings what about Metal fillings what about sealant are they safe well most dentists will tell you that sealant are safe they are now made from compounds that are generally not thought to cause any major issues to

be honest I did not do a deep dive into the chemical composition of different sealants because it turns out that different Dental practices use different sealants I'm sure that if I looked hard enough I could find um some really bad stuff in sealants I'm sure I could also find some reassurance that at the concentrations and conditions that they're introduced to teeth that they are better alternative to having deep cavities into the teeth and that actually gives me an opportunity to raise something that I perhaps said earlier but I want to reemphasize which is I've been

talking about how you can remineralize the teeth and how that's critical if you want to maintain and build up your tooth and oral health but it's very clear that if the cavities get down into the denting layers of the tooth that in most cases there is no remaining opportunity to remineralize the teeth you using the sorts of practices we're talking about today and that indeed it's very likely that those cavities need to be drilled and filled okay now that's not always the case and this is one reason why I highly recommend that if you've listened

to this episode and if you're here at this point in the episode and you've listened to the episode that you talk to your dentist ask them if they say you have a cavity how deep are these cavities do you think there's an opportunity for me to remineralize the teeth if I do the following things and if they tell you look you have a cavity or cavities and they're simply too deep into the tooth that you can't remineralize your teeth and fill those in well then you know you should trust them they're the dental professional if

you don't you should find a different dentist however they may be surprised and who knows pleasantly surprised for you to uh say Hey you know I heard that you can actually remineralize teeth and if I've got a cavity but it's still not through the enamel layer you know if I'm really diligent and you know use some zotol and maybe some hydroxy appetite and avoid certain things and do certain things discussed in this episode that I could re uh remineralize and fill in those cavities that said there of course will be situations where you need to

get those cavities drilled and filled especially if they make it into the deep deep layers of the tooth and you do not want those cavities to persist and for bacteria to proliferate in those deeper layers of the teeth and down into the bone that is oh so bad for reasons we talked about earlier not just for your mouth and your teeth but for your General Health and brain health included so for that reason and also because you know the history of Dentistry was such that you know in the early part of the last century if

you had a toothache in a cavity what did they do they pulled the teeth they extracted the teeth then at some point this business of filling teeth became industry standard so people would get metal fillings now the types of metal fillings that people had and have depend on when they got those fillings there were were believe it or not lead fillings this is not good you don't want lead in your body for all sorts of reasons it is terrible for brain health that's why it's now illegal to contain in paints and many household goods you

don't want lead fillings but some people had lead fillings or silver fillings or a combination of lead silver and other things and many metal fillings that were given and sometimes are still given depending on where you live in the world and Country and the kind of Health Care and costs that you have available to you contain mercury now I asked several dentists about this and said well if somebody has a metal filling that likely has mercury in it do they need to have that metal filling removed and all of the dentists I spoke to said

it depends but generally the practice is to leave those fillings in and try not to disrupt them now they also provided a important recommendation which is if you have metal fillings that contain mercury or that you think might contain mercury to avoid disrupting those fillings through the use of things like Mastic Gum we haven't talked too much about mastic gum um I've used mastic gum before not for long periods of time it's a very thick gum uh you know the original use of mastic gum and the the kind of origins of Mastic Gum are like

a treap kind of substance that you chew on supposed to strengthen your jaw Etc um I don't use it any longer I use it for a short while doesn't taste like much of anything some people believe there are certain anti-inflammatory and other health benefits of Mastic Gum I haven't really explored mastic gum in enough depth or detail to comment on any of that but a number of dentists said well if you have metal fillings chewing on the like Mastic Gum or you know hard candies where you're really chewing on on that hard candy which by

the way you're supposed to suck the hard candy the Jolly ranch you're not supposed to chew on them but that some people will do that they'll just naturally chew on those can actually disrupt and liberate some of that mercury and that would be bad and keep in mind also that when Mercury is contained in a metal filling it's not really bioactive in that mode but if it's liberated then it can get into the bloodstream and potentially cause other issues so this is a somewhat controversial topic so much so that in certain countries and I believe

in the EU somebody checked me on this but I believe that in the not too distant future metal fillings will no longer be used in the European Union perhaps elsewhere in the world they're sometimes still used in the United States there's a lot that's changing in this landscape around fluoride around metal fillings Etc so it's very Dynamic landscape right now I think suffice to say that if you have metal fillings currently try not to disrupt them in a way that could liberate that mercury however if you have them and you're really concerned about them talk

to your dentist ask what the various options are see whether or not they could be replaced with something safer and if the process for replacing them is really worth the trouble and again to just go back to the larger point of whether or not you should get cavities filled whether or not you need that root canal that was a very common question a lot of people said do we really need root canals do we really need to drill cavities you know my observation based on now having talked to a number of different practitioners in this

space who really pay a lot of attention to the peer reviewed research the old school practices the new practices and where everything is headed is that you know there are indeed instances where people need root canals there are many cavities that are just too deep into the teeth that remineralization of the teeth through the sorts of protocols that we're talking about today is not going to cut it that they really need to be drilled and filled and of course we hope those dentists are doing that as little as is required to maintain dental health I

also would hope that dentists are talking to their patients about ways that they can improve their oral health and indeed there are a lot of cases reported online where people will go in get X-rays and an exam they'll talk about all these cavities that they have and then they go home and they do a bunch of practices and they are able to remineralize their teeth and to essentially reverse those cavities and I certainly don't doubt those stories but it's simply not always the case that we can remineralize our teeth and fill back in our cavities

if those cavity recesses are too deep into the teeth they need to be drilled and filled now that raises a final set of questions and points which is do we really need to go to the dentist twice a year every six months that's the general recommendation and this was a tricky one to ask dentists because of course dentists are highly incentivized to see their patients and I'm not somebody that believes that everything is a you know is an attempt to make money but look when money is involved things can get complicated now what was really

great is that the feedback I got from dentists was very balanced I mean I must say that the community of dentists um seems like a really wonderful Community I don't know how they treat each other but they were very kind very generous with information with me and at the end of this episode just before wrapping I'll refer you to a couple um online oral health and dentist Educators that I think are providing some really useful content on a consistent basis and I'll provide links to those in the show note captions but here's what the consensus

was this business of going to the dentist twice a year makes sense it makes sense from the perspective of quote unquote routine cleanings but everyone acknowledged that those routine cleanings while they can remove tarar that's built up that would be very very difficult for people to reverse or eliminate at home and while they can identify cavities and tell you how far a cavity has developed into the tooth Etc every one of those dentists agreed that those routine cleanings are not actually going to help remineralize your teeth except to the extent that they remove existing bacteria

plaque and tartar and so all of them said that they wish for and that they really strive in their own practices to promote more oral health daily Protocols of the sort that we've talked about today which I think is just great I think obviously I believe in medical professionals providing routine care I also believe in each and all of us doing things for our health not just oral health but sleep Health mental health physical health Etc to try and not just maintain but really bolster our brain and body against disease and also to bolster our

Vitality to feel really great energetic focused sleeping better Etc so it was refreshing to hear that they feel that way as well and in addition to that all the dentist I spoke to said that you know setting aside situations of like reconstructive uh surgery for the mouth or perodontal surgery which often is needed if that those recesses into the gums and gingivitis and and worse have started to really develop and proliferate all of them emphasize that the twice a year Dental visit is not just about getting the cleaning it's really the checkup to evaluate how

those daily practices are emerging so it's sort of like going to the doctor for a check up on your BMI on your blood pressure but also things like blood tests things that typically we don't do at home unless we're accessing those through um particular sources but all of them emphasize that going to the dentist twice a year is not just about those cleanings it's also about establishing what the Baseline level of health is in one's mouth and teeth and having that on record and in a very detailed way so that one can check back routinely

twice a year and discover whether or not in fact they could get away with perhaps one cleaning a year because you're so diligent about your brushing flossing Xylitol uh not being a mouth breather and on and on or perhaps if you're not being very good about those protocols or and this is important if you have some of the genetic variants that create an over proliferation of certain bacteria that predispose you to gingivitis or that predispose you to excessive buildup of tartar this is the reality that some people have genetic variations that create a susceptibility to

certain things both bacteria and other conditions in the mouth that make it such that those people perhaps need to go to the dentist not just twice a year but perhaps four times a year or six times a year indeed there are some individuals for whom either because of lack of diligence to protocol and or genetic issues actually need to go to the dentist every single month for major cleanings but fortunately if we are diligent about these daily protocols nighttime protocols and we really are are paying attention to the components that can create healthy saliva and

remineralize the teeth and that can fill in any cavities that begin to form and we're staving off the production of mutants and we're scraping away that bofilm on a regular basis that we are going to prevent the need for so many routine cleanings and even if we are still getting those two-year routine cleanings you know for those out there that are fortunate enough to have that covered by insurance or can afford it well then all the better because as I mentioned at the beginning of today's episode oral health is not just about having clean straight

white teeth and fresh breath it's not just about that all of those things are great to have but oral health is about all of that and it's also about reducing cardiovascular disease it's about reducing irritable bowel syndrome yes I know that we haven't done an episode about this yet but I get oh so many requests to do episodes about irritable bowel syndrome and other colitis type uh you know boweling gut issues that people have and it's so clear that oral health and promoting oral health has been linked to promoting positive gut health as well maybe

even reducing and possibly eliminating some of the symptoms of irritable bowel disease because again the mouth and the gut are contiguous with one another they're related and a lot of the bacteria that can cause things like gut issues are making their way into the body not directly through the gut but through the oral cavity because of the richness of blood flow to that region so again today we've talked about a lot of different protocols ranging from cost saving to zero cost to low cost to let's just be frank higher cost products and protocols such as

water picks Etc the point of today's discussion was essentially three-fold first of all to really Tamp down in our minds the importance of oral health not just tooth Health but oral health on the whole because of its relationship to brain and body Health on the whole so much so that I'm placing it right up there next to the other six pillars of sleep nutrition MO movement stress modulation relationships and light as the seventh pillar of critical to attend to on a daily basis in order to promote our mental health physical health and performance the second

point is that there are many things that we are probably doing currently that we could do differently either by doing them more or perhaps less or eliminating them all together things like considering whether or not these antiseptic alcohol-based mouthwashes are good for you or not they're not they're bad for you in my my opinion but you can decide for you how often you brush when you brush whether or not you decide to use Xylitol Etc as ways to improve your oral health and of course in doing so the strength of your teeth the brightness of

your teeth the freshness of your breath Etc but through some means that I think for most people they weren't aware of I certainly wasn't aware that we could remineralize our teeth at any moment by changing the acidity the chemical millu of our mouth and that they're very straightforward cost saving zero cost and low cost ways to do that and then the third point is that today's discussion by no means was exhaustive right you may be exhausted but it was by no mean exhaustive meaning we simply don't have time to go down the rabbit hole of

all these other promoted Health practices such as for instance oil pulling a lot of people out there believe that if you take olive oil and swish it around your mouth and spit it out that that's good for your mouth and indeed some Dental healthc Care Professionals I should say licensed Dental Healthcare professional said yeah I think there's some benefit to that there's the whole story about vitamin D and whether or not we're getting enough vitamin D can indeed impact our tooth health so make sure your vitamin D levels are sufficient make sure you're getting some

sunlight again this ties into some of the other six pillars am I suggesting that everyone do oil pulling no I don't think the peer-reviewed evidence on oil pulling is sufficient to suggest that people do that but as a practice considering that it's you know essentially near zero cost you know taking a little bit of olive oil and swishing around your mouth and spitting it out couple cents maybe um you know if that's something that you feel benefits you great if you are aware of some terrific peer reviewed research on that and you want to put

a link to that in the comments on YouTube great please send them my way I'd love to review them but my point is that there are a lot of different practices that have been promoted including oil pulling and a bunch of other things that start to get pretty far into the esoteric which doesn't necessarily mean that they don't have Merit but today I've really tried to focus on the major ones the ones that relate to what most everybody could and should be doing like brushing and flossing rinsing getting the oral microbiome healthy reducing the amount

of strep mutants and the opportunity of strep mutants to create that acid that's going to deplete the enamel of your teeth and lead to tooth decay trying to limit the amount of recessing of the gums and perodontal disease and for all the reasons that we talked about before keeping a healthy mouth including healthy teeth healthy tongue healthy gums healthy pallet and all the rest is oh so important not just for your mouth not just for speaking and smiling and looking the way you want to look but also for your heart also for your gut also

for your believe it or not your skin didn't have time to go into this but it directly relates to skin health and for your brain health so I strongly suggest that all of us take a look at what we are currently doing for our tooth and oral health and consider what modification are best for us if you're learning from Andor enjoying this podcast please subscribe to our YouTube channel that's a terrific zero cost way to support us in addition please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and apple and on both Spotify and apple you

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