What Your Mouth Asked Me To Tell You Transcript

Hey Everybody! Welcome to Namaste Nutritionist Podcast, and thank you for tuning in today! I am Francis Arnold, and I’m coming to you from the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Today’s renegade wellness expert in Will Revak of OraWellness, and we’re connecting on Skype, where he talks to me from his farm in Hawaii. And this is where he shares his life with his hens, a baby calf, and his momma cow. And he’s going to drop wisdom bombs with us today about why our mouths are the window to the entire body. And, the number one enemy of oral health, and hint, it’s not soda pop. And, he’ll talk to us about what is holistic dentistry. We’ll cover some action items that we can all take to improve our oral health today because the health in our mouths sets up the health in our whole bodies. Now before we jump in, I just want to invite you to jump onto my newsletter list, so that you can stay updated about all the latest and greatest health secrets that I publish. This is at namastenutritionist.com. Also, I’d love to connect with you on Facebook at facebook.com/namastenutritionist. And this is a new Facebook page, I actually have three Facebook pages and I haven’t figured out a way to bring everybody together onto one. Okay, so let’s jump into this exciting interview, and I hope that you love this content as much as I did.

Listen to the podcast here.

 

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Francis: Hi Will, it’s so great to have you here with us today, thanks for joining me!

 

Will: Hi Francis, thanks for having us on to talk to you today.

 

F: My pleasure. So let’s go ahead and get started with, why don’t you give a two or three minute background about who you are.

 

W: Well, OraWellness, my Susan and I started this business a number of years ago to help people take control of their oral health, and I think maybe a good intro to tell your listeners about our company would be to give you a run-down of our history and why we started the business. Fifteen years ago, my wife Susan was diagnosed with advanced gum disease. You know, she had been going to the dentist her whole life, and then lo and behold, you know, one dentist was a little more on top of testing for gum disease, and found “Oh,” you know, “you’ve got a case of advanced gum disease.” And rather than go the dental/surgical route that the dentist suggested, my wife and I, being alternatively minded, she said, “well, I’m going to look into this myself” and went about taking care of it by her own hand at home. And in the course of a year, created what a dentist, you know, a conventional dentist, would call a dental miracle because she reversed a very deep gum pocket to a shallow gum pocket. And the dentist actually, when she went back to the same dentist a year later, the dentist was poking and prodding saying, “I must have mis-measured last year, because you don’t have any signs of that deep pocket that I have on my notes was here last year.” And my wife said, “No, you didn’t mis-measure, I took care of this at home. Do you want to hear what I did?” And unfortunately, the dentist was of the mindset that she didn’t want to hear, and so needless to say, we didn’t go back to that dentist again. So, that was fifteen years ago, so then many years pass, you know, my wife shares with friends and family members, who when they have oral health issues, she shares with them what she did, and then they do it, and then we realized one day, “Wow,” you know, “We want a home-based business, we want to really help people, we want to feel fulfilled, like what we’re doing is really assisting people, and we’re health oriented individuals, and so what’s that business?” And we said, “Well, maybe more people want to hear about how you dealt with your gum issues.” And thus, the birth of OraWellness.

 

F: So that’s really, really fascinating and I’m sure, I’m wondering how in the world do you actually heal advanced gum disease, and I have heard a little bit about that story, so I’m looking forward to finding out more about that mystery as we get going, how you can actually heal your mouth through natural causes. So, that’s kind of a bit about OraWellness, do you want to share anything else about how you can guide folks to getting started navigating their own greater oral health?

 

W: Sure. We created OraWellness to help people do this, to empower individuals, and we’re very, how shall I say this?, we’re very educationally minded. So we like to shoot video tutorials, we have lots of free video tutorials on our website at orawellness.com that will help open the eyes of people of tools that, and techniques, that they might not know about, and just assist people in, okay, let me put it to you this way, Francis, and for the listeners listening here: knowledge is power. Why do we all know that as a cultural idiomatic expression? The reason that knowledge is power is because if we have knowledge, then the choices that we make and the actions that we take will be different than if we didn’t have the knowledge. And so if we have certain knowledge on how to navigate to greater oral health, then we’ll make different choices, hopefully wiser choices, and from my perspective, and from our track record as a business, I know they’re wiser choices, because now we continue to get testimonials from thrilled customers emailing us and saying, “I just went to my dentist, and said that I no longer have gum disease!” or “My tooth decay has stopped!”or you name it. We’re getting feedback, and in particular, we love the testimonials that are the after the dentist visit testimonials that we get from customers. It’s super fun.

 

F: So, I’m really curious then, how do you help people understand how to manage their oral health better and, I mean, especially with like, gum disease and tooth decay, what is it that you know about managing that or preventing it that probably the rest of us don’t know?

 

W: Well, we like to say that our cultural understanding about tooth decay and gum disease are outdated, and really, our culture functions from a mindset that is created many years ago, sometimes a long time ago. So for example, I’m just going to pick on mercury-amalgam fillings, or what are commonly called “silver fillings”. Incidentally, anybody listening here, if you’re going to a dentist that still calls amalgam fillings silver fillings, they’re functioning out of an old mindset, and you might want to look for a different dentist, because they’re not aware of the talks that impact that mercury has on all living beings. So that said, for example, fifty percent of dentists still use dental restoration materials in the form of mercury amalgam that were developed during the Civil War. Okay, so why are we still using dental filling materials that were developed 150 years ago? Right, so that’s one example. We approach avoiding cavities from purely an oral hygiene perspective when the research clearly shows that there are other factors involved. And then we also, conventional dentistry by and large approaches severe gum disease with dental surgery. Why, when there are other less invasive strategies that one can apply that are more successful statistically, why should we go about it that way? So that’s why we like to say that we’re culturally kind of, we function, we’re raised in this paradigm or this mindset that is outdated. And it’s up to us to look for new information that might be more accurate, and then be able to apply those. Again, knowledge is power.

 

F: And it seems like that’s what you’re doing, because it’s now always so simple to just go out and find updated information that is pro-health, even though, because conventional wisdom, conventional practices, there’s so many outdated approaches, I mean, you know, my dentist uses amalgam fillings, and a lot of dentists just simply aren’t willing to talk about alternatives, like you mentioned with your wife Susan’s experience. So I love that you guys are here to help people gain information that you’ve taken the time and energy to go out and research and bring to the rest of us, who are interested but maybe aren’t able to, you know, don’t have the same resources, you know, the same connections with people to find out updated information.

 

W: Right, I mean we all have skill sets, you know? I love to, actually, it’s kind of a dynamic duo, my wife and I together. She’s really the researcher and I love to read, you know, I’m kind of an arm-chair scientist, and I’m comfortable reading scientific literature, I mean, I’ve got to slow down and read it, but I’m comfortable reading it, and really looking to like, “what is this really saying?” and looking for the gem within that research, and so I have a passion for that, so the two of us together make a wonderful team to bring forward this information and then I’ve got a, I’m comfortable in front a camera to be able to stand up and say, “Hey, this is what we’ve learned about gum disease,” and “Let’s talk about this brushing technique that you didn’t learn, and why it really helps,” for example.

 

F: Yeah, you really have a lot of very resourceful videos. And most of what I’ve seen in your videos is entirely new information for me.

 

W: Yeah.

 

F: So why would you say that having a healthy mouth is different than having fresh breath, because I think in our culture, we really think that healthy mouth is largely about how your breath smells, I mean that’s part of it, right?

 

W: Yes, I mean it is a part of it, but you know, I think we tend to have, you know, all of us have this superficial aspect within us, like we all want to have fresh breath, where when we’re having a conversation or we’re going to kiss our loved one, the loved one isn’t cringing at this. So I mean there’s [unclear], and in fact, the bad breath is like the number one reason that people go to the dentist. You know, unfortunately, and I’m not going to throw all dentists under the bus here because there are a lot of really awesome dentists doing incredible work, and I want to actually emphasis this for a moment here as a tangent, Francis, that the dental community by and large has just been educated with what they’ve been educated. If the dentist has an adventurous spirit and wants to research new avenues or feels that, you know, “there’s something else missing from this puzzle,” and begins to dig in, then they are an awesome resource to find. And when you find a good dentists, hang on to them as a gem because they are, and they can be an incredible ally for us in helping us along the path of navigating to oral health. That said, most dentists, what I’ve found, don’t do a lot of research outside of what they’re taught in dental school, which is a very small subset of what is really out there to be understood. And as a result, you just get stuck in their ruts and they don’t, you know, go after this new information that could really empower people. So, the reason I bring that up about fresh breath is because most people go to a dentists because of bad breath, which is a real common sign of gum disease, I mean maybe we should cover some stats, statistics here. Over 9 out of 10 adults over thirty have some active form of gum disease, okay, so hello?, unless you are under stellar health conditions, you probably, the person listening to this, probably has some gum disease going on, if you’ve ever had any signs of bleeding gums, if you floss your teeth and find any color on the floss, if you have any, if you really want to know if you have gum disease, and this takes some courage here, but take a line of floss and floss between your molars and smell the floss after you do it. And I guarantee you that if you have a smell on that floss, and you’ll know that smell, then you’ve got some bad bugs in your gum pockets that are doing your body harm. So back to your original question here. Why is having a healthy mouth more than just having fresh breath? There is a lot of different ways we could approach this question, really. One way is, let’s just talk about conventional medicine, I mean every medical doctor and dentist would agree on this, okay, conventional medicine has recognized there is a direct link between the bugs that cause gum disease in the mouth and heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, stroke, and even some forms of cancer they’ve identified. And this is mainstream, conventional medicine here, has acknowledged this statistical correlations. And in fact they’ve found there’s a biomarker, if you will, if we can get into a little science here, there’s a biomarker that doctors use to  judge risk of heart disease, it’s called C-reactive protein, you can test this in a blood scan, okay, in a blood test, a doctor can. What they’ve found is that C-reactive proteins are high in a person that has gum disease, and they higher that the C-reactive protein is in the body, in the person’s blood, then the higher the risk of heart disease. There’s a good correlation there, in fact it’s a much more consistent correlation of predicting heart disease than, for example, cholesterol is, which, we don’t even want to get into that rat hole. What they’ve found, though, and the research has prove this, is that if you address the bugs in the mouth, you lower your c-reactive protein levels in the blood. So in other words, by addressing gum disease in the mouth, you effectively lower your risk of heart disease. Now why is that? This is a really gruesome one, and bear with me, and I’m sorry if this freaks anyone out, but I’ve got to share the freak out that I had the first time that I took plaque samples and put it under a microscope and looked at it. You see these bugs, they’re bacteria, different bacterial colonies, these bugs swimming around, and they’re not static bacteria, they don’t just like hang on to your tooth and just hang out there and cause tooth decay. Right, the bugs that cause come disease are very active, they look like snakes swimming in water, and they can, and do, swim upstream in the bloodstream and then deposit plaque and start living in the plaque of the arteries, and thus the inflammatory cascade that cause heart disease and stroke and diabetes and arthritis, and all, it’s a contributing factor, and I would argue a causal contributing factor, to all your systemic inflammatory conditions out there. So, that’s how conventional, how we could approach the question of how a healthy mouth is more than just having fresh breath, is from a conventional medical standpoint. Now, I do want to touch on, how does oral health directly impact the whole body health? There’s a correlation, if you’re familiar with Chinese medicine at all, and our background is in the Chinese longevity arts, we’ve, my wife and I have been studying Qi Gong and Tai Qi for the past twenty-five plus years now, so we’re very familiar with Chinese medical theory. And the Chinese medical theory has acupuncture meridians running all over the boyd. Well, it turns out that these acupuncture meridians, which relate to the various internal organ systems in the body all have correlations to various teeth in the mouth. So it turns out that if, for example, you have issues around a certain tooth that relates to your liver, then you’re going to have a predisposition towards liver issues. If you have issues around, I’ll give you a classic, like a true story here, we have a chart on our website called a meridian tooth chart, it’s an interactive chart where anybody can go on the site, it’s a free service, you can go on there, you can pull this chart, and you can click on, “I want to see what organs are related to this tooth,” and you click on the tooth and it’s going to say, “Oh that tooth is related to the spleen and pancreas,” and you know, whatever else that it’s related to. So when we first put this interactive tooth chart up on our site, a friend of ours went to it, and she freaked out because the one tooth that she has a root canal in, and it coordinates to the thyroid, and she wrote to us, and she said, “I can’t believe it. I’m in really good health, and yet the only medications I’m on is for my extreme hypothyroid.  I wonder if it’s related to this root canal tooth that is correlating with the area that relates to my thyroid?” Right, so I don’t know [unclear], but there’s clearly a correlation there that can be played, and I’m not one to argue with 5000 years of medical history in the Chinese medical tradition. Okay, I want to drop one, well [unclear] with your listeners here, while we’re on the subject. There’s a guy named Josef Issels, he is perhaps one of the most famous, perhaps the most notable, one of the most famous, integrative oncologist or integrative cancer doctors of the twentieth century. He died, I think, in 1998. He’s quoted to have said that, “Ninety-seven percent of all cancer in the body has a causal relationship in the teeth, jaw and tonsils.” End quote. Now, that blew me away when I first heard it. He’s essentially saying that ninety-seven percent of all cancers find their root in our mouths. Now I share this with you not to scare anyone, but to impress on anyone listening that the health of our mouths plays a really big role in the health of the whole person.

 

F: Holy smokes! This whole thing is just amazing, I’m wowed at this entire, your entire answer to that – all components! And so, I just want to back up a tiny bit, if that’s okay with you, I’m curious about the mouth bacteria. It seems like there’s a lot of avenues for entry, and for bad bacteria, but of course I know there’s good bacteria, there’s a whole flora in the mouth, but, you know, the community can vary from person to person. Do you know anything about how we get that bacteria, especially the harmful bacteria, in our mouths?

 

W: You mean, like vectors of contamination, is what I’d call it, how do we pick them up originally?

 

F: Mmmmhmmm.

 

W: Sure. We call it the three P’s, parents [unclear].

 

F: Okay, but can you say that again, you kind of, your voice kind of faded out.

 

W: Sure, we call these vectors of contamination, or the ways that we get these bad bugs, as we call them, in our mouths originally is the three P’s: parents, partners, and pets. It’s unfortunate that, you know, people say, for example, they’ll say, “Oh,” you know, “my gum disease is hereditary, my mom had it, it’s just in my genes.” well, I’m going to argue that it’s not truly a genetic factor, but it’s a “cultural genetic factor” in that you ate from the same spoon that your parents ate from when you were a kid, and they inoculated your mouth with these bad bugs. Okay, the second one I want to address is partners, if your parents didn’t get you, then some romantic partner did. And then the third would be pets. Never ever let a dog lick you in the mouth, dogs are notorious for gum disease, and I just, as [unclear] the business that I am, I just get grossed out, I’m like, “Oh! I don’t want to see that!” When I see some kid allowing [unclear].

 

F: Like the kid who’s sharing his ice cream cone with his puppy.

 

W: As sweet as it seems, when you know what I know, it’s like, “Oh, don’t do that honey, it’s so gross.”

 

F: Okay. That’s great. And then, I really want to check out the meridian tooth chart, I’m curious. I just had some cavities filled, and my mouth actually feels messed up ever since, and I’ve never had cavities before then, and now I’m like, regretting that I did it before I learned about you, because maybe there was a, I was hoping that they would fill in, you know, that they would remineralize, and I tried for two years for my teeth to remineralize, and they never did, so I finally had them filled. But, I’m going to check your meridian tooth chart to see if, where the correlation is.

 

W: Yeah, in particular, you know, not so much for tooth decay, but for gum disease, for root canals, crowns, these, you know, a little filling is one thing, I don’t think that it’s really going to, unless it’s metal, I don’t really think that it’s going to impede the energetic flow through that tooth, but yeah, you know, something, some major gum disease around a tooth, that’s a different story.

 

F: Yeah, no, I got lucky, like I have a really cool, new dentist, who is, he does the composite fillings. He’s pretty awesome so I’m happy, but my jaw does hurt after having it done still. Very sensitive now to like different temperatures, and it radiates almost up into my cheek.

 

W: Wow, and how long was that?

 

F: Just since I’ve had it done.

 

W: Yeah and when did you have it done?

 

F: A few months ago.

 

W: I would personally go back to the dentist and ask them to check the bite and see if the filling is a little bit too big to where you’re biting down and it’s pushing against the nerve in the tooth. I would question that.

 

F: That’s a good idea, okay. Thank you. So, and then, thank you again for this CRP aspect too, because as a dietitian, I work with a lot of people who have inflammation and I’m always looking for new sources of inflammation, so my radar has gone up, I’m going to keep an eye on new information around that. And, hopefully help my clients even more, you know, I mean this is incredible stuff, realizing how much your gum health effects your heart health and your overall system health. And that actually leads me to my next question because, you know, as a dietitian, I know that our diet plays a huge role in our oral health, and you know, sugar is a very easy culprit to pick on, because sugar’s so ubiquitous in our culture and we’ve seen how it decays teeth, especially in young children. So do you want to just share with us how nutrition impacts oral health?

 

W: Sure, absolutely. Gosh, how do we even start on this subject?

 

F: I know, it’s huge, right?

 

W: Diet plays, if not the biggest role, at least the number two role in supporting our oral health. And incidentally, if you don’t mind me putting you on the spot there, can [unclear] number one seems to be, Francis, as far as, I mean, potentially, I mean, diet and this other factor tend to go hand-in-hand, but there’s another factor that is perhaps even more primary than diet as far as effecting our oral and overall health.

 

F: Okay, so, I’m going to guess that, I know this one is important, I’m not sure if it’s number two on the list, but, or maybe number one, our fatty acids that we’re consuming?

 

W: That’s, I would still put that in as diet, personally.

 

F: Okay.

 

W: Still nutritional aspect. You know what it is? Stress.

 

F: Brilliant.

 

W: It seems that stress, at least the research is showing that stress plays perhaps an even more profound role in supporting or undermining our oral health than diet. And anytime that I say oral health, look folks, the mouth is just a mirror for what’s going on in the rest of your body. If you have stellar oral health, that’s because you have stellar immunological health. If your oral health is breaking down, then that’s a mirror of what’s going on in the rest of your body, so pay attention to that. Your mouth is talking to you, in this way of saying, “Something’s up!” So, here’s the thing, when we say oral health, really it’s just health. So we talk about helping people navigate to greater oral health, and it’s just too long to say oral health and therefore really, whole being wellness in parenthesis, but that’s essentially what we’re saying is that when you address your oral health and when you improve your oral health, then the rest of the body follows suit. And it really kind of makes an intuitive sense, when you think about the GI tract, it starts in the mouth. So if we have an unhealthy mouth, if we have these bad bugs in the mouth, then we’re constantly reinoculating the system and constantly burdening the immune system with these bad bugs that frankly do not have our best interests in mind. Okay, these bad bugs under a microscope have been viewed attacking white blood cells. Hello, that’s a battle zone. Okay, they’re really addressing, they’re really not, they don’t have our best interests in mind, and as kind of gross as it might sound, really what they’re doing is they’re beginning the decomposition process of a body that is not running at full immunity. So, let’s get back to diet. How does diet impact oral health? Well, we have a long line a researchers, and I’m just going to rap off some names here for your listeners to look into, obviously Weston Price, Dr. Melvin Page, Dr. Ralph Steinman, Drs. Edward and May Mellanby, and Dr. Francis Pottinger. All of these people have done extensive research in their own little niches on the role of how diet plays a huge impact in our oral health, and therefore, our whole being wellness. Okay, Weston Price, as you know traveled the world researching “native cultures” that had not been exposed to civilized foods, to processed foods, and found that they had great oral health, in fact, there was one culture that allowed Weston Price to dig up skulls, and he found one cavity in a hundred people in these skulls. Okay, now each of us presumably has thirty-two teeth in our mouth, so that’s thirty-two hundred teeth. He found one cavity out of thirty-two hundred teeth.

 

F: And so, I have a question about that. Is that, was that before tooth, people were brushing their teeth very regularly, because I know this is relatively modern.

 

W: Yeah, you know the toothbrush, if you look into the history, the toothbrush has been around in one form or another for a long, long time, but obviously, not how we’re doing it today. You know, but we’re living in a different culture, too. So, yeah, most of these native people were not brushing their teeth. You know, some of the cultures had some type of chewing stick or some type of root that they would use like a toothpick, but, you know, some of the Swiss cultures that Weston Price went and researched, actually had like, they had like mosses growing on their, I mean, these people did no oral hygiene whatsoever, and they had no decay. Now, one could argue with that, “Well like, okay, so the village might not have had any of these microbes that are necessary, that we now know are necessary to have in the mouth in order to cause tooth decay and gum disease.” And that very well might have been, because they didn’t have outside influences coming in and bringing new pathogens into the village. So that might have been a factor as well, but I’m going to argue that a big factor as well was their diet was so nutrient dense. So, it really, I can’t emphasize enough the role that diet plays, and I mean, it’s been proven time and time again, you know, Rami Nagel has a great book out there to Cure Tooth Decay, that he shows a simple protocol of how people can apply this, and he more or less stumbled into this in his own research to figure out why his daughters, what is called “baby bottle rot”, unfortunately, child tooth decay, was occurring. I mean, they were eating an organic diet, his daughter was breast-fed, why is this happening? So he went about researching it and of course, you know, discovered Westin Price’s work and Alden Page’s work and started applying some changes and lo and behold, the tooth decay stopped.

 

F: And I’ll make sure that I put those doctors‘ names on the resource page so that people can follow up. Wow, that’s really interesting, and something else I’ve learned in my work as a dietitian is how much dehydration plays a role in tooth decay or gum, loss of gum integrity.

 

W: Yeah, I mean, again, the research of Dr. Ralph Steinman proved, well, what does dehydration do? Dehydration throws off our electrolyte balance, it throws off our sodium/potassium balance. And if our sodium/potassium balance is off, then that’s going to skew our blood chemistry, which is now going to, going to open the window, essentially for tooth decay and gum disease. I agree.

 

F: That’s fascinating. And I just want to say before we leave this topic, I have a little history of canker sores, and I say little, but it’s actually, it was quite a compelling experience because at one point, my canker sores were so significant that I couldn’t eat. I could hardly drink water, because it just hurt, my mouth hurt so badly. And I just, I lost a lot of weight, and it was one of these things that I had experience my whole life, canker sores, and my dad had them, and I always chalked it up to stress, and then I thought, “Oh, maybe I’m not getting enough zinc” because I had read somewhere that zinc can effect your canker sores, and so on and so forth, well, finally I learned that I have severe gluten intolerance, and I actually have both genes for Celiac disease, I don’t know if I have Celiac, and we won’t know because I don’t eat gluten, but I thought that that was so fascinating because my mouth was showing me what was happening in my gut.

 

W: Yeah, yeah, it’s a window. It definitely shows us what’s going on in the rest of the body.

 

F: Yeah, I think people need to eat more fermented food to populate not just their gut flora, but also their oral flora.

 

W: Absolutely, yeah. We have a video on our site called “Mouth Probiotics” that really addresses this, again, our background is in the Chinese longevity arts and the arts of Qi Gong have a long time ago, established a connection between saliva production and health, so this correlates with what you’re talking about. How do we reinoculate the mouth with the good bugs? And you know, there’s lots of companies out there now claiming, “Oh, eat this,” you know, “probiotic lozenge” or whatever to reinoculate the mouth. Well, you know, I don’t know if those will help or not, I’m not going to discredit them because I haven’t done the research behind them, but I know a free way we can do it, and that’s by cultivating our saliva production and then swishing with saliva in the mouth, to reinoculate the mouth, because the bottom line is, these bad bugs, once they get the upper hand, you know, you really, you’ve got to do yourself a favor and knock them down because once the bad bugs get the upper hand, it’s tough to create positive change in the mouth. So, you know, you definitely can approach it dietarily, as well as approach it from an in-the-mouth perspective too. And then once you get these bad bugs knocked down, then to reinoculate the mouth with the good bacteria, the good bugs you were referring to, that’s in our saliva. Our saliva contains, I mean, it’s there for a reason, it contains minerals to remineralize our teeth, it contains enzymes, it contains something called lactoferrin, which is a part of our innate immune system that defends us from bad bugs.

 

F: That is so interesting. I’ve never thought about swishing with my own saliva, unless my mouth is really dry and I have no water nearby. Wow. Okay, go ahead.

 

W: In the Mouth Probiotics video, we actually show exercises, simply Qi Gong exercises, that cultivate greater saliva production.

 

F: Really? That’s so interesting. Okay. Will you send me a link to that video so I can share that in the resources for this podcast?

 

W: Yep.

 

F: Okay, thanks. And then, yeah, anything that you have about using hydrogen peroxide or different mouthwashes, like if you have any resources, because I want to make sure that we get through the rest of these questions, but if you have any resources that you want to add, or any quick tips about mouthwash and hydrogen peroxide and that kind of thing in relationship to the gut flora or the mouth flora, that would be nice too. Okay, so I want to move on because we have so much to talk about, and time is ticking, so there’s one question that I have about fluoride, and I know this one is so controversial because people say it’s so important for tooth health, and children get lots of fluoride, and there’s a lot of pro’s and con’s and now it’s in our water, which I really think is concerning. What can you share with us about your insights about whether fluoride is helpful or harmful?

 

W: This subject of fluoride is a real inflammatory issues. Call me a pacifist, but I like to think of it this way: there is no right or wrong answer here, but I’m going to share with you how we’ve come to view this. One side, you have research that shows that fluoride does presumably lower the number of bad bugs in the mouth that is related to tooth decay. Okay? On the other side, you have folks who are looking at the negative, long-term whole-body health impact that fluoride clearly has too, because there’s a boatload of research on that side of the fence as well. Really, the difference is a value judgement, it’s a difference of one where the individual is focused. If you believe, for example, that what goes in the mouth, stays in the mouth, which is incorrect, I might add, I mean, research has proven that what we put in the mouth goes through the whole body. Alright, even if you don’t swallow it, it’s absorbed through the cheek and gum tissue very, very easily. So, if you believe the notion that what goes in the mouth, stays in the mouth, and you don’t look at the evidence showing the damage that fluoride causes to the whole body, then that would lead one to say that fluoride is good for lowering tooth decay, right? However, let’s go back to another point that we need to bring up. There is research back in the day from a guy named Antoine Beauchamp he was a contemporary of Louis Pasteur, the Pasteur germ theory, okay. Beauchamp had a theory called the cellular theory, or in French what he called the terroir theory, the terrain theory, which says, “okay, germs exist, but what is primary is the health of the host”, in other words, our immune system is more important than whether or not we have bugs in our mouth. Okay, so if we keep in mind Beauchamp’s terrain theory, or his cellular theory, then the health of the host or our immune response is more important than whether or not we lower the presence of bugs that cause tooth decay in the mouth. So, let’s come back now to the subject of fluoride. If we understand that supporting whole body immune function must be our primary focus, then we cannot suggest the use of fluoride simply because the research clearly shows that fluoride does reduce our immune function. If, for example, fluoride were the only substance on the planet that we can put on our teeth to reduce the risk of tooth decay, then perhaps we would have to take a closer look at the relative benefits and risks, but it’s not. Okay, there are plenty of substances on the planet that lower the number of bad bugs in the mouth, many of them much better than fluoride, they do so much better than fluoride, and that not only diminish, not only don’t diminish our immune system, but they actually support our immune system in the form of nutrients. So, given all this information, it’s clear that for fluoride for us, is definitely a “not in our mouth” vote. It has no place in our mouth. By the way, while we’re here, let’s just address water fluoridation, since you brought it up, Francis. It’s been proven the concentrations of fluoride in fluoridated water are not substantial enough to protect the teeth, okay, if you take fluoridated water in your mouth, research has been done, you take fluoridated water on your mouth and you swish it on your teeth, there’s no benefit to doing so, as far as the reduction in tooth decay. That’s been proven, the studies are out there. Okay, now, when fluoride does work to lower tooth decay, which it does at higher concentrations, when fluoride does work to lower tooth decay, it works topically. Okay, so drinking fluoridated water is kind of like drinking sunscreen to reduce the risk of sunburn. Okay, drink sunscreen to reduce sunburn, it doesn’t make sense?

 

F: Unless it’s like, you know, sunscreen that’s made of antioxidants such as lemon juice in your water, and not actual sunscreen.

 

W: Right, we’re talking about a bottle of Coppertone, here, or whatever else.

 

F: I’m just laughing at your analogy, I think it’s great.

 

W: So, that’s our stance on fluoride. There’s really no right and wrong answer, it’s just a matter of where a person is focused. And if you keep in mind that the immune support is first and the fluoride does diminish our immune capacity, then why would you do it when there are other products out there that don’t use fluoride that can, if you just want to address tooth decay in the mouth, there are other things you can put in your mouth instead of fluoride that will help, and that aren’t going to nail your immune system in the process.

 

F: That’s really interesting. Okay, so, it has its pro’s and its con’s still, but that was helpful to eliminate that. And I like that the health of the host is more important than the bugs. And I just want to add something real quickly, just a personal story, because I recently had a post put into my mouth where I never had an adult tooth grow in, so I’ve always had this little, I had a vacant spot for a couple of years, so now I’m having an implant, I’m in the process of having that done, and oh my goodness, the medications that they give you after the implant are incredible, but the mouthwash was like terrifying because the label is practically filled with, I mean it might have just as well had skulls and crossbones. And it just had all these warnings, “Don’t swallow. If you do, you need to call poison control.” And it’s like, “I’m not going to rinse with this.” So I actually just used the OraWellness Essential Oil drops for cleaning my teeth everyday, so I used the OraWellness formula, and then I follow with some oregano, colloidal silver, and Dr. Christopher’s Garlic Super-Immune Formula, and I do a few drops of each, and I mix it up, and I just swish and swish and then I swallow. So, I’m benefitting my mouth and I’m benefitting my immune system by drinking it down at the same time.

 

W: Yeah, again, you just went through several products there that I’m referring to that are definitely going to assist in lowering the presence of bad bugs in the mouth, and yet at the same time, at least going to break even, if not support the immune system in the process. So, you know, fluoride is really one of those outdated notions, in my opinion, still.

 

F: That’s fascinating. Okay, well thanks for sharing that piece. So, I want to see if you can offer our listeners some gems of wisdom, because you’ve shared so much so far that’s been really helpful, and I know people are going to want to know, “Well, what else can I do to navigate better oral health?” from each individual’s own side. So what can you give people as far as guidance to improve their own oral health?

 

W: Well, really, it’s knowledge is power, again, if we kind of come full circle back to where we started, inform yourself. Inform yourself of strategies and techniques that you can apply to navigate to greater oral health. Inform yourself to the importance of oral health for whole-body health. If you’ve got something going on, and, you know, most of us are not running above, let’s say, a ninety-percent mark of our potential genetic immune response. Okay, we have stress in our lives, we’re not eating a perfect diet, we’re taking in too many environmental toxins, whatever it is, the combination brings us beneath that ninety-percent threshold, which means that we’re open, if you will, to, you know tooth decay and gum disease and a host of other buggers out there. As a result, if you have something going on in the body that is less than optimal, you might want to look to the mouth, and inform yourself of if there’s a relationship in your mouth, too. So, become aware of your own oral health, there’s, here’s perhaps the number one step that somebody can take to improve their oral health. You go to our website and you download a free download there called the “OraWellness Mouth Map”, and you take twenty minutes of your life, and you fill this mouth map out, it’s essentially a dental chart that a dentist or hygienist would do. The huge primary difference, though, is that you’re going to do it, in the mirror, in your mouth, and mark on the mouth map what you’ve find, because unless, we have this huge psychic disconnect about what’s going on, and it’s right under our nose. The bottom line is that we don’t know what’s going on in our mouths. So if we don’t know what’s going on in our mouths, how are we going to create positive change? And so, by using this simple feedback tool of the OraWellness Mouth Map, people can find, it’s free, it’s a free download on our site, people can find out what’s going on in their mouths from their own eyes, and then be able to make positive changes, and see the positive change that they make. They can make adjustments to their hygiene technique or whatever it is, and then see like, “Wow! I was having, this was a bleed spot between these two teeth when I flossed a month ago, and now it’s not bleeding. That means I’m going in the right direction!” Right, so informing yourself is huge. Empower yourself with the knowledge and information, you know, there’s free video tutorials on our site, we’re having a free online event coming up, that would be a wonderful resource for you to come to as well. Dietarily, if I could just throw out a couple of real broad brush strokes, here, moderate protein everyday is crucial to balance the blood chemistry, in order to make one less prone to tooth decay. It’s not impossible that a person would still get tooth decay if they eat moderate amounts of protein everyday, however, you’re really going to lower your risk, and I’m a big butter fan, you know, every research out there from Weston Price forward says, you know, when they go to heal tooth decay or oral health issues in patients, they give them butter, and lot’s of it, and the best quality you can find. So, there’s your, going to back to your point, Francis, of the fatty acids.

 

F: I love the Kerrygold grass-fed butter.

 

W: There you go, yeah.

 

F: Okay, excellent. So, let’s talk about that project that you have coming up online. It’s really exciting, so I want you to tell us about what it is and how people can find it.

 

W: So, The Health Mouth World Summit is what it’s called. Eventually, what happened is, we got into this business, helping people take control of their oral health and we know gum disease, obviously, we’ve covered that, and then we had people come to us with, “What about, what’s the proper technique to have mercury fillings removed,” or “I’ve had mercury fillings in my mouth for a long time, is it safe for them to just stay there? I’ve heard that mercury fillings are worse to have out, you get a toxic load of mercury. So what’s the proper technique to have mercury fillings out.” “Are crowns safe?”, you know, you name it, “How do I raise cavity-free kids?” questions that we just didn’t know the answers to. So we went on a quest this year, and we interviewed experts, truly the leading experts from around the world, we interviewed from six countries around the world asking them for their solutions on how to navigate to greater oral health. And these are real life, like stuff you can apply in your lives today, solutions that people can do to create positive changes in their own oral health. So we interviewed, you know, Dr. Hal Huggins. Hal is literally the Yoda of biological dentistry, I mean, they should lay him in the long line of researchers because although he’s the only one still alive, you know, he’s right in line with Weston Price, Melvin Page, Ralph Steinman, Hal Huggins. I interviewed Dr. Mark Breiner, the author of Whole Body Dentistry, Rami Nagel, author of Cure Tooth Decay. We just interviewed people from all over the world, from all walks of life, and relating to oral health, all things oral health. So we got everyone’s questions answered and put them in the format of a free online event that people can sign up to and come to. To add to it, I really think this is cool, Francis, I’m really excited that we are able to do, we have live Q and A’s with the expert as well. So you’re able to come in and, for example, listen to Dr. Robert Gammel talk about the risks of root canals, and what you can do if you have one, and what you can do to avoid a root canal, and all of your options if you’re told you need a root canal, and the you can come in and you can ask him your personal oral health questions, as well. And again, it’s all free, you can come to it and check it out. Again if people listen to this after the live event, they can still come to the Healthy Mouth World SUmmit, and learn about these tools. We’re going to have them available after the summit, the launches as well. So it’s a fun project for us.

 

F: That’s super fantastic, yeah, and I was going to ask that question, so what’s the website for that?

 

W: healthymouthsummit.com.

 

F: Okay, so we’ll make sure listeners have a way to find that. I’ll put that in the show notes. Okay, so you mentioned biological dentistry, and I think that sounds like a new term, I don’t know if it is, but can you go in to what that is.

 

W: Yeah, I use the terms biological dentistry and holistic dentistry interchangeably. I don’t know if a biologic dentist or a holistic dentist would argue that there’s a difference with me or not, but essentially, they’re just terms that, well, we’ve got some stuff to cover on this. First of all, they’re not recognized by the ADA, the American Dentist Association, or by dental schools, they’re not recognized designations. So what that means is that there’s no courseload that a dentist has to take in order to put on their website or in their YellowPages or whatever, that they’re a biological or holistic dentist. In one way that’s good, because dentists can do their own research and change their protocols and then call themselves a biological or holistic dentist. In one way that’s bad because there’s, in my opinion, there is some green-washing going on where dentists say, “Wow,” you know, “this is catching a trend and so I’m just going to call myself a biological dentist or a holistic dentist, and be able to tap in on this niche of people that are looking for dentists that are a little more aware of the non-toxic alternatives out there.” So, let’s go back to the summit for a moment, we are going to have a resource available at the Healthy Mouth World Summit called “Questions to Ask Your Dentist”. It’s a report that we’ve put together of a series of questions to be able to interview a dentist and ask them whether they’re properly trained, or sufficiently trained, and educated, and of a mindset, such that they’re really going to be able to help you and/or your family navigate to greater oral health. And what we do is, we, for example, we list a question, and then we give, here’s an answer you want to avoid, you know, if the person answers this, then clearly you don’t want to go to this dentists, if they answer this, then ask this follow-up question, and here’s an ideal answer to this question. So we really break it down, it’s a, I think it’s a thirteen page report that we wrote, helping people have the questions to ask the dentist. Again, if we go back to knowledge is power, if we have the right questions to ask the dentist when we’re interviewing them, we’ll really be able to know whether they’ll be ideally suited to help us or not. So, a biological dentist is simply a dentist who, or presumably, to me, is a dentist who is more educated of the toxicity of dental materials. Right off the bat, I would say a biological dentist does not use mercury amalgam fillings, if they use mercury amalgam fillings in their office and they call themselves a biological dentist, they have not done much research, in my opinion. And I know that’s kind of a stark one, but I’m going to draw the line on that. If they use fluoride in the mouth, if they use fluoride in their office in children’s mouths, then they are definitely not a biological dentist or a holistic dentist. It basically just means that it’s a person who is more aware of non-toxic alternatives that can be used in the mouth. Now, another term is coming out of like a whole-body dentist. This is an individual who is aware of the whole body implications that the mouth plays, and, so, for example, a biological dentist might suggest a nutritional protocol that a person get on if they’re dealing with rampant tooth decay. A biological dentist might suggest a detox protocol for a person to get on after they have been, had a mercury amalgam removed and changed out. So there’s just, it’s just a, you’ve got to be careful, because it is a bit of a green-washing going on, but it’s a designation a dentist will use to kind of differentiate themselves from the mainstream dental community.

 

F: That is so interesting. Okay, thanks for sharing, for illuminating all of that. So, we covered a ton, and we’ve got a few resources here, how to get back to you, some of the doctors you mentioned, I’ve got Weston Price, Melvin Page, Dr. Steinman, Dr. Pottinger, Hal Huggins, and Dr. Mark Breiner.

 

W: And let me add to that Edward and May Mellanby. It’s actually the folks who discovered vitamin D, and they did a boatload of research in reversing tooth decay.

 

F: Excellent, wow. Okay, so I’ve got some research to do on all of these great doctors and resources you gave, and then, are there any other resources that you want to give to the listeners today?

 

W: You know, come to the summit, it’s free. We’re going to cover a lot of the stuff, a lot of the research we just discussed, with these historical researchers like Dr. Price, and all through the list. A lot of the speakers touch on their research throughout the presentations. Our website, obviously is loaded with free video tutorials and downloads.

 

F: Which are great, I’d like to add that. So we’ll make sure that we add the Healthy Mouth Summit and orawellness.com.

 

W: Perfect. Yeah I think that’s…

 

F: And do you have any thoughts or comments you want to leave people with today?

 

W: I do. All of this talk on oral health and diet, it can get a little bit technical, a little bit dry, I mean we joke around that oral health really isn’t a very sexy subject. Just remember the importance of what comes out of our mouths, and the role that that plays in our immune health. In the words of our favorite contemporary musical genius, India.Arie, “Speak words of beauty and you will be there.” If we take up the practice of verbal harmlessness, and we hold our tongues when we want to spit verbal poison, we’ll watch our immunity sore to levels that we never knew were possible. So, you know, as kind of a right-angle close on our discussion here, Francis, what we put in our mouths, the products that we use in our mouths, the foods that we eat, are all incredibly important, and what we, we have control, we’re the gatekeeper of what we allow out of our mouths, and we can bless the world, or we can poison the world, and the reality is that not only does that effect others, but the most important person it effects is ourselves. It’s going to have a direct impact on our immunological health. So watch what we say, choose peaceful words. I like the term verbal harmlessness.

 

F: I love that too. It’s a, yoga, it’s also know as ahimsa, which is nonviolence, and that’s thought, speech, and action.

 

W: There you go.

 

F: Yeah. Wow! Well this is just gorgeous, you gave us so much today, I’m so grateful, and yet at the same time, I still have so many questions I would love to ask you, so I’m looking forward to the summit to see what else I can learn from that, I’m sure there’s just going to be enormous take-aways, so I hope that everyone else who’s listening is able to attend that, and it’s nice that it’s going to be available even after the summit happens so then people can do it on their own timeline. This has just been wonderful. Thank you again, so much, and thanks for the inspiration, because I completely agree with you words are power, and they can harm or they can heal. And it really does start from the mouth and what we’re putting in and what we’re putting out.

 

W: Truly. And thank you, Francis, for helping to spread the word, and to disseminate good information to people, because really, you know, I can only talk to so many people, and by you doing this podcast and by other reaching out, it just helps more of this empowering information to get in to the hands of people who are looking for solutions, so thank you.

 

F: My pleasure. And with that, I’d just like to say, for all those who are listening, please do share this podcast interview so that other people can be empowered with this wonderful knowledge, as well. So thank you, my friend, and I hope you have a wonderful summit, I’m wishing you lots of love and just a joyful ride getting there, because I know you’re really busy getting prepared for it, so I hope it’s a blast.

 

W: We’re having a lot of fun with it. Thank you, Francis.

 

F: Good. Thanks. Take care!

 

******

 

Wow! Well, wasn’t that interesting? Even though I already knew that our oral health was important, I really didn’t have any idea that our mouths can impact our health quite so much, and I’m wondering how you felt about that. I would have really loved to have asked Will several more questions, but we just simply didn’t have all the time. I was curious about toothbrushing techniques, what his thoughts on bleaching and safe bleaching methods are, because I know that you can really end up with some heavy metals in your bleaching kits, but, hey, I don’t like having brown teeth, so I use a bleaching kit, but I’m sure there’s got to be some healthy ways to bleach your teeth, right? And even about massaging our gums which is something I do enjoy doing, it’s an ancient Ayurvedic technique to massage your gums. Anyhow, I’m looking forward to seeing what else we’ll learn in Will’s Health Mouth World Summit, because I’m pretty sure some of this stuff will be covered, and a whole lot more than I would have even thought about to ask. So, I can tell you that I really have learned a lot from Will already, and a lot of that’s been from the resources that he provides for free on his website. And, I already use OraWellness products for my oral hygiene. I’m pretty blown away by how good my mouth feels when I use them. I’ve been so impressed by Will and Susan that I just had to get them on this show. And thankfully, they were happy to participate. So, here are three key actionable items for everyone to take home today. You ready? Number one: download the OraWellness Mouth Map, and if you want, the Meridian Tooth Chart to analyze where your oral health stands. Visit orawellness.com, or find the direct links at, you can find it at my site, which is namastenutritionist.com/OraWellnessinterview. I’ll repeat that a few more times, so don’t worry, at least that address. Okay, number two: evaluate your stress. Will mentioned that stress is the number one public enemy of oral health. And as a lot of you know, it also happens to be the number one public enemy of total health and happiness in general. Stress management is one of those on-going topics, and sometimes an ongoing thorn in our sides, for most people. And since it’s something that I’m particularly interested in, I have several resources on managing stress at namastenutritionist.com, so I’ll post links for fun, and some easy to do stress management stuff at namastenutritionist.com/orawellnessinterview. And it’s OraWellness like o-r-a-w-e-l-l-n-e-s-s interview, so, hopefully that gives you a visual for what the link would be. Number three: sign up for the Healthy Mouth World Summit. So, Will was pretty awesome and thoughtful because he invited me to join his affiliate program after our interview. So, if you register through my link to his Healthy Mouth World Summit, I would really, really, really appreciate it, because the proceeds would be the first income that I’ve actually made from my podcast, and don’t worry, I’m not necessarily getting rich, it just helps keep this show going, because there are expenses that we have monthly for publishing this. Anyways, it’s a free summit if you attend the summit live. And, if you purchase the Healthy Mouth World Summit after the event, then you get to add it to your library. And I’ve done this in the past with other summits, and I really like having that stuff in my library, because then I get to share it with people. I believe the OraWellness mouth care products are also really, really remarkable, I know I’ve mentioned this, but they’re also really affordable. And just so you know what I use, I bought the very soft toothbrush that they sell, which was like, just a couple bucks, and their Essential Oils Solution, and I use that for my daily cleaning. So the Essential Oil Solution was just a few dollars as well, and it’s lasted me a really long time, and I’m just amazed at how incredible my mouth feels after using it. It just feels really clean and sparkly, and just wonderful, like healthy. So thank you guys so much for listening, I sincerely appreciate your loyalty, and if you’ve found this podcast to be helpful, please share it with anyone who you also know would benefit from it, and just let me know what you think. I would really love to see you on my newsletter list, and/or on Facebook at my new page which is facebook.com/namastenutritionist. And, until next time, stay happy and healthy. Okay, we’ll talk to you soon! Bye bye!