How to Improve Oral Health & Its Critical Role in Brain & Body Health
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman and am a professor neurobiology and opened ology at stanford school of medicine. today.

We are discussing oral health. Now when most people hear oral health, they immediately think to health and appearance, and presumably fresh breath or lack of bad breath as well. And well, of course, tooth and breath, freshness, widness and health, is a critical component of world health.

Today, you will learn that oral health, including the oral microbiome, the health of your palette, your pencils, 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 piller to the so called six pillars of mental health, physical health and performance. This is not a trivial step to add a seventh pillars 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 in light exposure generally, which by extension also include dark exposure, nutrition exercise, which we could also call movement, both cardiovascular exercise and resistance training, stress management and relationships and social engagement, including relationships to self. And today we are going to add oral health and microbial health. And I suppose we could generally call this oral and got health, because, as you know, if you think about IT, your mouth, your oral cavity and your god are continuous with one another, we are going to add oral and good health as the seventh pillar of mental heal, 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 meet a ballet health, and indeed, to brain health, and to staving off diseases in all of those bodily compartments. I cannot over emphasize enough how much oral health influences your general bodily health. So today you will learn about oral biology and health.

We won't go too deep into 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, microbial and body generally.

So aliva is super interesting and important. And today you are going to learn many, many protocols, including zero cost protocols, protocols that will actually save you money, as well as some low cost 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, separate for my teaching and researchers at stanford IT, is, however, part of my desired 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 sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Martina Martino makes loose leef and ready to drink eba moti. I often discuss your ba moti's benefits, such as regulating blood sugar. It's high anti oxidation ent, the ways that they can improve digestion and possible neuroprotective effects. I also drink a bottle because I love the taste.

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Today's episode is also brought to us by roca. Roca makes eyeglasses and some glasses that are the absolute highest quality. I've spent a lifetime working on the biology of the visual system, and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of chAllenges in order for you to be able to see clearly and different conditions.

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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 are the following three categories you believe you best fall into, okay.

The first category is those of you out there who russian flows every day, probably twice a day, and who makes 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 not your tears are getting wider or not getting wider, if you, whether not your breath is fresh or not fresh. Maybe, okay, the own requirements are being in this category, but maybe you're somebody who also uses a mouthwash or uses mins or gums in order to try and keep your mouth smelling and looking fresh in your mouth clean. okay.

So this first category, uh, does not require that you do all of those things, but just 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're in category one. And by the way, if you're in category one and you do those things and you do bunch of other things like truth White ing and maybe go to the dentist especially often more than the recommended twice per year that still put you in category one.

okay. Second category are those of you out there who are, let's say, a bit more blazer about your oral and tooth care, those of you that perhaps just brush your teeth in the mornings so that your breath is flash cleaned out, that kind of sticky feeling in your mouth that's accumulated overnight, that sometimes brush and maybe flows at night. But you know, a lot of times you fall a sleep without doing that add.

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 six months, maybe or less, maybe once a year, once every couple years. So while there's a bunch of different things that could put you in the category to let's make a basic requirement for belonging category to 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 too. And then of course, there's the third category that maybe some of you out there falling to.

And this is the category 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 guns are very healthy, about making sure that your soft palate and hard pilot is very healthy, about making sure that, yes, your teeth are clean, that they're devoid of as much bacterial build up in other stuff in there that can cause cavities, but also that you're paying careful attention to your oral microbiome and the overall meal, you of your health in the mouth and the fact that your mouth is linked to all these different aspects of brain and cardiac and meta ballet health. Okay, if you fall into that third category, great. But let's be honest, most people, I would argue, ninety five, maybe the ninety eight percent of people or more falling to either category one or category two.

So as you're hearing this, you're probably thinking, okay, well, I mean, category one, i'm good, right? I go to the dentist twice. I brush in flaws, use a mouthwash.

I even brighten my teeth. You know, I make sure that if I had a sugar y meal, i'll wins out my mouth. I try not to drink acidic foods. Things that will discuss today as to whether not they actually have relevance or cavity formation or not. But guess what, if you were in category one, as I described, IT or category too, chances are you are doing things to really delete and disrupt your oral health. That's right.

Even if you're paying a lot of attention to two 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 cavor. You're not we can 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 are some additional things that you can do in a few things to avoid doing that very likely will improve your overall bodily health very quickly. And the good news is those things are also zero or low costs, 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 too that are not doing as much for the, let's say, hygd and fresher 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 one or category two, 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 dentist, including a pediatric dentist. I talk to a period dentist.

I talk 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 truth health eeta. And what i'm going to deliver today is essentially the overlap in the one diagram of what they all agreed on all highlight a few differences that they each had and that several of them had.

They do fall in the different camps. But I was positively surprised how much overlapped consensus there was in terms of best protocols for tooth and oral health. And by the way, for in the third category of the person that's doing a lot for their tooth health and appearance and breath eeta, but also oral health and microbiome, i'm sure that today you'll also learn some new health practices and some things that 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 tooth anatomy and health and some little bit about mouth anatomy. I promise to not go into this and too much debt, but we really need to have a firm basis, a foundation of understanding of what the mouth cavity really consider. And i'm not just going to throw bunch of names out there for sake of nominal clash.

I don't need to cloud your hippo campus with that sort of information unless it's functional information. But IT is critical functional information for the rest of our discussion, where we will talk about ways that you can really build up the strength of your teeth, even if cavities i've 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 at sea. 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 were all familiar with. What teeth are tongue with the tcs in the back and mouth, we have a soft palet, hard palet gums. Let's talk a little bit about how all that fits together centers around the thing that most people think about when they think about oral health.

That's the teeth is just a good jumping off point for us. Your teeth are laid structures like pretty much every structure in your body is a layer structure, 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 they're different kinds of teeth in your mouth, teeth have an outer layer, which is the in animal, the enamel, believe IT or not, is not White. IT is translucent.

Light can make IT through, but it's not transparently, not like a clear window is translucent, like can make IT through, but it's a bit OPEC a beneath the enamel al is a structure called dendon 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 borrow down through the anna mo, and if you're unlucky, make IT down to the denton. Our goal, meaning your 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, understand about oral health that, Frankly, I didn't know until I started researching this episode and talk in 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 accident IT is or how basic IT is, is always in a state of what's called either d mineralization or reminder zo. Now, those words are hard to say, and there are especially hard to say fast. So demonization.

Reminder zia, a little bit of a tongue twister. Today i'm going to a use a short hand. That's a convention in the dentistry field, which is demand or rein to refer to d mineralization or remineralize ation reminder zone is good.

IT is the process by which within the ana mo and to some extent in the deeper denton layer of the tooth, but especially within the ananimous, 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're incredibly well organized. They form M, A latest of very strong, often, although there are weaker Crystals to very strong bond and structure, like the structure of a really well formed building.

Okay, remineralize. Ation 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 burrow down into the anamal but have not yet made IT into the denton layer of the tooth or teeth.

Okay, this is very important. understand. It's especially important. Understand the context of the fact that typically, not always, but typically if you have a cavity formed at one tooth, let's say it's just half way or records of the way through the anamal 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 denton layer, why is a 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 about a little bit leader in the episode. It's not that I had tons and tons of cavities, actually had the other issue where my adult came in behind my baby titia all my baby teeth.

I had to get a bunch of injections of nova in my mouth, like getting injections into my mouth. So I opted to have any cavities I had drilled without an novae. It's not because I was a tough little kid, but definitely tough in me.

Up IT was because I hate IT having strangers in my mouth. I might have been bitten, a dentist or two or three. I don't bite the dentist anymore.

I think the dentist, by the way, I think dentist are wonderful. Regular cleaning are wonderful. Will talk about frequency of cleaning. 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 you're like most people out there with proper wiring of your neology well, then you don't like getting your teeth drilled. And you can avoid IT in many cases by remineralize ing the enamel layer of your teeth. Now, if there is a demineralized down to the deeper denton layers of the tooth than most often, you're gonna need IT to be drilled, drilled and filled, as they say.

Or is some people say, which is a bit more cynical, drill, fill and bill, because you get charged for that or your insurance get charged for that? Okay, back to some tooths anatomy and mouth anatomy. Talk about the anamal layer of the tooths on the outside.

I told you that either can dealie demand or minimalize. This is a key point. Your teeth are always in a state of either demand or women. That's right, either demand or reman. It's not both at the same time, it's one or the other.

And IT is largely dependent on the PH, that is the acuity of your mouth, which is largely dependent on how much saliva you're producing and the mineral content of that saliva keeps 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 dumps.

The ginza a, as it's called now, the gin java 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 gumming 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 job. Bone below the gums are very important for keeping the teeth where they are.

There's a ligament two 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 guns are a seal around the two. This is why when you go to the dentist, they're paying attention with that low pic.

They're paying attention to how high, or hopefully low. The tinting is the recesses or pockets of gums along the the I got you, I am elth. Yes, i'll try not to do that during today's episode.

Point to my teeth so much so you can understand that the guns are providing a seal between the oral cavity and essentially the bone and the general bloodstream. Now this is so critical, because this, just take a step back and think about the oral cavity and what a remarkable place that is. Think about IT.

This is a gapping hole in our body. Can we have some other gapping holes in our body? But those tend to be sprinter based holes? Yes, I realized their Price.

Some struggles as soon as these spinner. Like, yes, the end slinky. Okay, we're an animists where 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 crip reform plate. There's a bone. There's a bunch of things that actually barriers between the nasal cavities and the brain, which sits right behind at the old factory, bub.

And yes, we have eyes and know we have outside of the eyes and there's A A suspect ability there, but we have our blinks reflex. There's a also an oculus microban e. 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 breathing at night and not a mouth breather, not just for sake of staving off sleep upon, 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.

Fact is one of the leading causes of two decay in people like mEthane, demi addix. Or if you see people that are mouthy, there's their oral health and teeth generally, but certainly their oral health is severely depleted. So you ve got this big hole in your front, in your face and you're talking and eating and moving about during the day, even if you're nasal breathing when you're not talking in 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 petry dish for growing stuff that could potentially be really bad for us. But IT has this incredible feature, which is that if the P.

H is right, then the bad stuff is killed off, doesn't make IT in our system, doesn't disrupt our health or our bodily health. And also as a critical feature, which is that the bacteria that are good for us proferred and supports the ceiling process of the gums against the teeth and youth health and on health and pilot health. Etta, 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. 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 is an amazing to you already, based on what you 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 heels up without a scar, as long as you're about twenty five years or older, typically your formal ba scar, there will be something noticable there. The real cavity also can take cuts and burns and things like that.

Unfortunately, those things occur, but with rare exception, heals up with nearly zero scaring. Sometimes there's a scar, but nearly zero scaring, which is remarkable. why? Well, it's based in open on with bunch of bacteria and and its warm and its moist.

So clearly, there's something special going on in the thing that we call the real cavity. Indeed, there is. And it's anchored in the fact that if we treat you right, you can encourage reminder zone.

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? Today, we're going to talk about how to do that.

And by virtue of doing all the things that support two health, you're also going to support gum health. okay? Those gumbs are critical because they form that barrier that if he gets too big of those pockets, those recesses get too big, and you're not taking care of the bacteria in your mouths and you're not getting rid of the bad bacteria.

Those bacteria warm their way down into the deeper recesses near the roots of the tooth, sometimes into the tooth. We will talk about that, and can get you down into the bone, and then can cause serious, serious issues. This is so cool.

Paradigm disease and parietal disease is associated with all sorts of really bad stuff, including alzheimer. Okay, this is not just some wellness culture, wu science leap to alzheimer. There's a literally evidence that the specific bacteria that caused recession of the guns can cross the blood drain barrier if they make IT into the general circulation and potentially cause packs entangle some of the hallmark features of neutral degeneration in alzheimer's.

Okay, probably not the only caul heim's, but potentially one of the major causes. This is a new theory, but it's one that a lot of people trying to pay attention to. And it's also very clear that the bacteria make IT down into the deeper recesses near the roots and into the bone that you can end up with. Issues relate to cardiac alth and certain metallic health OK. 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 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, interpersonal interactions will flourish as well. I'd like to take a brief moment and think one of our sponsors, and that's ag one.

Ag one is a vitamin, mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptations. I started taking A G one way back in two thousand and twelve. The reason I started taking IT, and the reason I still take IT everyday, is that IT ensures that I meet all of my quotes for beams and minerals, and IT ensures that they get enough prebiotic and probiotic to support gut health.

Now, gut health is something that over the last ten years, we realized, is not just important for the health of our god, but also for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters, ors and ur modulators, things like dopamine. And in other words, god, health is critical for proper brain functioning. Now, of course, I strive to consume healthy whole foods for the majority of my nutritional intake every single day, but there are number of things in ag one, including specific micrometres ts, that are hard to get from whole foods, or at least and sufficient quantities.

So ag one allows me to get the vitamin minerals that I need, probiotics, probiotics, the adaptation and critical micrometers. es. So anytime somebody asks me if they were to take just one supplement, what that supplement should be, I tell them ag one.

Because ag one supports so many different systems within the body that are involved in mental health, musical health and performance. To try A G one, go to drink A G one dot com slash huberman, and you'll get a year supply a vitamin d 3k two and five free travel packs。 S of A G one. Again, that to drink A G one 点 com slash huberman。 Okay, let's talk about how cavities form because I think this is the major question that people ask when asking about we're thinking about moral health.

As I mention before, cavities are literally holds their feist rations as the um nerds call them, nerds like me call them feist rations will holds down into the animal that if they make IT down to the dental 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 remineralize ation by keeping the PH, that is, the relative acid alcoa baLance of the mouth, such that the saliva supports reminder zone. Now let's think about how a cavity actually forms.

Turns out that no specific food, not even sugar, causes cavities. Cavities are not caught by sugar. Cavities are caused by bacteria that feed on sugar.

And and that's not just a little bit of a twist in the mechanism. That's a critical point. There is no specific food, not even pure sugar, not even like a hard Candy, like a delicious jolly rancher.

You said like those when I was a kid, they get stuck in. In your truth, that causes cavities. No, it's the bacteria that feed on sugar, that then produce acid, that burns down through, that degrades, that demineralized the tooth in this very vocal area that we call a cavity.

Okay, now if that isn't surprising enough, get this. The bacteria that causes cavities by eating sugar in releasing this acid. While there are several of them, the major one is called stripped to caucus mutants.

Or what i'll call strip mutants for short strep mutants 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 at sara.

Now I am not here to tell you 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 personnel there.

Typically, they are a dentist or marry 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 stripped to caucus mutants. Because almost all adults Carry IT, not all, but it's communicable, like A S, T, I, or like a flu, or like a cold. It's communicated between individuals.

We are not born with IT. Now that's a whole area of which is college biology 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. There are overall behavior of kissing or usage of bottles or glasses in order to avoid getting strap mutants.

Most people in the world have strip mutants or will get strip muted. And IT lives in the mouth. okay? IT just resides there.

Stack mutants is there. And it's hungry. What's hungry for sugar? When their sugar present, IT eats IT. IT produces acid. The acid produces cavities, taking teeth from a state of remineralize ation to the mineralization.

Or, and by the way, this is really important if your mouth is already in a state that more demonization mode, so to speak, well, then I will capitalize on that. And IT will cause cavities much faster. okay. So keep in the mind that acidity is bad for the mouth.

Does that mean that you should never consume a lemon? Or, and by the way, yes, some guilty of everyone's want to cheow a lemon slice or drinking water with laminate or carbonated drinks, or so does, or tea, or anything that has acetic flavor? no.

Likewise, should you completely avoided ingesting any kind of sugar because trap mutant love sugar? no. Turns out strip mutants like sugars in the form of complex couple of hydrate sugars, too. So if you, we post our rice or wrote me some bread every once in, well, as I do, i'm an of right meat vision x and also starches and vegetable les and fruits and omaha, as most people are. Well then, strip mutants has an opportunity to eat the sugars that come from those other carbo hydrates.

Does that mean that if you were to have a zero carbo hydrates diet, no sugars, no starches, it's at you would reduce the opportunity for strip mutants to consume sugar and release acid. Maybe, maybe, however, most people won't do that. And three mutants is a very clever, maybe even diabolical, bacteria. And if you are on a zero carbo hydrate, zero sugar dye, there's some evidence that strep mutants 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's the cavity, is form not from foods, not from sugars per say, but from strep mutants and other bacteria that ethical wars and create acid, hence the critical need to keep your mouth as a coin as possible, which does not mean that you can ever drink some lemon water, coffee or tea.

Here's the key point that everyone needs to remember that because this dub tails beautifully into how often you should brush in flaws and when you should rush and flaw specifically, the key point is the degree to which your mouths is in a demand state or a reman state, and the degree to which cave dates have the opportunity to form is dependent on the amount of time, the amount of time in which your mouth is net acido or net alcalde, the amount of time that you are in a definition ation mode or reminder zing mode. Okay, so it's the amount of time. No one, no one can avoid having their mouth be acid tic every once while, or ingesting a sugar or a food that struck mutants can feed on and produce acid.

The key is to trying reduce the amount of strep mutants 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 flor ride because I know there are a lot of questions about florrie, but in order for you to understand what I say about florrie, to make the best decision about florrie both in drinking water and tooth pace and set up for you, you have to understand the reminder zing process just a little bit, just a little bit.

So, a little bit of chemistry, hear little bit structural biology. And that will be fun, I promise. Even if you know no biology, no structure biology, no chemistry, you're going to like this part.

And it's very simple, those minerals that form the Crystals within the anamaria in some of the deeper layers of your tooth or teeth, rather, those Crystals formed 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 legal chains. These are a legal chains that when they stick, when two pieces come together, things are tough to pull apart. They're not instruct able, 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 the mineralization of the teeth are indicated with one another, or rather, are at angles with one another that make those bonds especially strong. Any architect or somebody that understand structural biology understand that bonds could be weak or strong depending on whether not they're linear, whether not there are crossed, where are not they're in lattices. There's a whole bunch of interesting angled forces stuff that the architects will understand and the the construction workers will understand at a very intuitive concrete level.

No on intended and on and on. But just think about IT. A bond is only as strong as the number of different points at which you can resist sharing and pressure.

So the way that these reminder zone bonds form is through the addition of specific minerals at specific angles and the naturally occurring mineral that's responsible for the majority. These bonds in the ano and teeth is called hydrox y appetite, with a great name. If you're talking about oral health, right, because we use them out for a lot of things.

You can think of the small list or long list of those things. There are many of them, you depending on who you are and what you like to do with your mouth. But the point being that we do indeed with our mouth appetites part of eating.

So you just remember hydroxyapatite bond and they are very strong, but they're not instructive as they can actually break those bonds. Okay, that's the demineralized process. Now flo ride is a substance that is not a vitamin.

It's not a mineral. IT is not essential nutrients, but that in the last century I was discovered, can actually replace some of the hydroxyapatite bonds in teeth and actually make those bonds hyper strong, super physiologically strong. We will talk about the safety considerations with florida in a little bit, because there are some safety considerations.

But I was decided in mass, in the united states, in europe, that the addition Flora to the drinking water and to many tooth pace or tooth powers would be useful because IT creates the super physiologically strong bonds within the minerals of the teeth. And indeed, IT does. IT does.

Florida gets between those lego pieces and makes them extra, extra strong. And this is why floride is added to the drinking water. But, and this is a very important emphasize, but nowadays there is a really polar ized debate about florida, because some people out there believe that florida can disrupt thyroid health, might be be disruptive for brain health.

Certainly, a florida 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. Florida itself may not be poisonous at very low levels, but they're really two camps now that are 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 floride removed from the drinking water because of the long list of bad things that excessive, on a highlight, excessive floor I can do for bottling 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 buffo, 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 this is a really polarized camp. Now, I did a full episode of the human law park, cast all about water, and I talked about florida levels, which level are thought by the cd C2Be saf e? Which levels are not thought to be safe? I talked about some of the theories as to how florid might disrupt function of the thyroid and some considerations there.

Please check out the time stamp in that episode linked to that timestamp in the caption. But this epo de but the important point here is that if you're at all concerned about florida in the drinking water, the simple answer is to just filter the water that comes out of the tap. If you're concerned about floride, then I suppose you probably want to avoid tooth piece that have florida.

Indeed, there are some. I will provide links to some of those in the shown up captions for this episode, a variety of these zero florida tooth space that have started to accumulate. But keep in mind that when florida is introducing to the bonds of the minerals of the teeth, they do make the teeth really, really strong.

But and all the dentist spoke to emphasize this point, the bonds at 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 micros, could be look different.

They look wave. They're not smooth bonds and they do increase the of resistance to different forces, including cavities or access that would create cavities. To be specific, they make the teeth stronger structurally.

So resistance to chip in a 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 floria than if you drink less tap water. That just kind of stands to reason. But you don't really talk about, right? We talk about x amount of florida by concentration.

And the given leader of water done of water also have to ask how much top water you drinking everyday. Okay, you have to ask that question, right? It's not simply the concentration, is how much you're interesting overall.

And that's something that much harder to control for. Again, in the water episode, I talk about ways to eliminate or reduce fluidity in the drinking water if that's a concern of yours. But if you wanted know why there's florida in drinking water? It's because governments figured out.

And well, if we want to reduce to the k, what's the simplest low cost to do that? Well, it's to put florida in the drinking water. And you now also now know why there's florida in a lot of tooth pace.

But given the concerns about firebird health, potential concerns about brain health, now you also know why many people, including some dentist that I spoke to, are not big fans of florida, both for children in for adult. 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 florida in your drinking water? And if so, where you're going to filter? Are you going to completely avoid drinking any water, maybe cooking with any water from the tap and on and on? But now you know why florida is in drinking water and florida is in toothpaste.

If you're somebody who's concerned about florida in either 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 remineralize ation 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 florida might not be so great for our oral microbiome as well. Soon learn the oral microbiome is critical for our oral and overall health.

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So in a moment we are going to get to what to do that to do, the behavioral to do and some of the other to do, for trying to keep your mouth in the best possible remineralize ation state, the best P. H. For tooth health, for gum health, for avoiding period onto disease, maybe even for reversing some aspects of tooth and period onto sickness.

Because indeed, you can do that if you shift your mouth to the correct PH if you're putting IT into that remineralize ation mode. okay. However, before we get into the two, do I think it's very important to discuss that? Do not that every dentist and paradoxes I spoke to agreed on the quick list is, i'll call IT of bad for your teeth, bad for your mouth and therefore bad for your brain and body.

Or not surprisingly, perhaps alcohol, which, by the way, I didn't entire episode about alcohol, one of the more popular. I'm not here to tell you to never drink if you're an adult who is 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 truth health, what we're talking about is the disruption that alcohol creates to the microbiome in the way that IT alters the P H of your saliva and places the mouth and the teeth into A D mini zone state. That's very clear. IT also kills certain cells of the mouth.

Some people remember this in college would say, no, you've got a, you've got to scratch in the back. You're throw, you're getting sick, you and you should drink and so they said, you should drink. It's gonna kill that thing off.

Well, guess what? He does the exact opposite that 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 ort and eliminate those bacteria, viruses that are making you sick at that. So alcohol is bad.

I'm not saying you shouldn't ink 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 will 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 doesn't want to drink alcohol, you have yet another reason, do not drink alcohol. The second thing on the no fly list or the not good for us list for the sake of oral health are stimulants.

Now, of course, things like mEthane to me, which are you severely dilatory ious, addictive drugs for all sorts of reasons they kill dopa energies and other brain neons they are highly addictive um and on and on but also stimulants like atrial violence eeta those stimulants basically any drug that increases up an f an and nor up an f an who called a journal and or general and or 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 to offset the negative consequence of stimulus.

Why would stimulate cause such disruption in our health? While there are really two reasons, there is a chemical reason and there's a mechanical reason. The chemical reason is that stimulants change the P, H, of your saliva, making the mouth more aside, which makes strep mutants another bacteria more capable of creating cavities down into the teeth.

They take your mouth and your teeth from that reminder, sation state, or as i've been referred to mode to that realization. Demand mode. Demand mode, not a way to remember her to bad. Demand mode, demand mode not good, maybe in a video game, demon mode is good, demand mode not good for the mouth demand mode d mini sation mode so there's a chemical reason why stimulants disrupt the oral health mu and cause disruption in two healthy one degradation demand of the animal of the teeth and deeper layers of the teeth. And this is profoundness evident in mathews s.

But the other reason that this was a reason that was shared with me by a physician and empty from university california, a and cisco, who interacts virtue of his profession with a lot of methamphetamine attics who have terrible teeth, is that stimulants encourage mouth breathing, watch a method act, or watched somebody who's on a high dose of stimulant, and they tend to mouth breathe because of the shifts in autonomic nervous system function, intend to be mouth breathers. So it's the drawing of the mouth that also shifts the mouth from that reminder zone mode to demonization mode. So if you do take stimulants by prescription, I would hope not metheny demi or lyster drugs.

But if you take prescription stimulants, and by the way, things like well, b utrum modafinil, they do qualify as stimulant even though mode affinity is a little bit of A A special case. Any drug that increases more and F, F and f any stimulant. And yes, indeed, coffee will talk about coffee as well.

And tea will make the saliva maciel and make your oral health 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 calling oral health, but that include oral airway health.

And i've talked before in this podcast about the fact that if you can be an asal breathe, be an asal breaths, please, as long you're not speaking as one you're not eating, try breathe through your knows if you're exercising, exercising really hard, if you're running really hard, fine mouth breathe. I don't think there's any evidence that staying in nazzal breathing mode all the time while exercising is best for performance. In fact, to the contrary, there are times we need to mouth breathe and their sports where you need to excel through the mouth specifically, and martial arts, for instance.

So not saying don't ever breathe through your mouth, but as much as possible trying keep the oral cavity moist, enclosed, if this is critical. So stimulants drive out mouth that increase our city saliva. That's bad.

Smoking cigarettes, and yes, also cannabis. And yes, vapor does this too is so funny anytime I talk about smoking being bap, like, what about kind of us? Well, I didn't episode about cannabis.

Cannabis does have certain medical uses that are very interesting, and there's good evidence for those. But for many people, canada is not a good idea. You can check out that episode to decide for you.

Then people asking, what about vapor? Vapor is not as about smoking, right? That's what they say.

Or there's sort of asking, saying, hoping, wishing fantis zing. And the truth is that vapor is terrible for your 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 vapor instead of smoking.

So just know that if you're smoker or a vapor or if you vae, rather, that you're going to want to pay extra attention to some of the other protocols disgust 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, slash, waking and by extension, dipping tobacco. Frankly, not good for oral health or two health.

In fact, they can be pro cancer us to the gum tissue as well established. And they can also cause degradation of the gum tissue and even some of the underlying bone, if you tend to do on the same side all the time or often at all. So that's not good.

We already discuss that sugar is not good for oral health. Does that mean you can never in just sugar? No, of course not.

Enjoy the sweet to you. Enjoy everyone's in a while. Enjoy a nice pastry. Do as you will if somebody never eat those things. grape.

But then understand that any carbo hydrate, any start, provides a sugar that strip mutants can you, and create accident and demonized your teeth, create cavities that is. So avoid sugar and access. And if you eat sugar, trying to reach your mouth after, and ideally you would brush, maybe even flows after.

So I do know those people that after every meal that they run and even middle the day that run to the bathroom and brushed their teeth and flaws, and that's great, but most people don't do that. So swishing water, renting your mouth out again, plain water, maybe with a little bit of salt in IT, is gonna beneficial. Talk about mouth washes later, just to give you a low window and where we're headed with that, most mouth washes terrible, terrible for your oral health, especially alcohol base or in deceptive base, mouth washes, 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 swish some water may be split out, maybe swell. That's up to you, or you a spider swell.

Not my business. Don't want to know, don't tell me, don't put 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, ly acidity foods that are acido. So certain things like citrus fruits, which I love, I love oranges, have an orange tree in my backyard now, and I absolutely love. And I love oranges, great fruit.

I just, I love the peal. I even need the peel. Sometimes it's so delicious. And no one telling you not to eat acid c foods or to avoid accident. Drinks like lemon on water or carbon eye lemon water. Some people are really extreme, and they decided just use a straw when they are drink those things.

In fact, the dentist I spoke to said, yes, could you ask people please, if they're going to drink casio c drinks to try and use a straw? But then I said, why? You know, a lot of straws, they disrupt environment.

Most people aren't Carrying around metal straws are, you know? And what about the turtle, this kind of thing? And they said, well, okay, here's the real truth. The real truth is, is 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 five, ten, fifteen, maybe twenty thirty minutes and then be done with IT, rins out the mouths with a little bit of water and try and clear out that acuity. It's not about completely avoiding acid foods or sugary foods or acidic drinks.

It's about, again, limit in the amount of time that the overall menu of the mouth is acik because of this whole demand reman things trap mutant and the acid created by strip mutants that can do the teeth and the factor that of your mouth is kept aside 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, any time we talk about demineralized the formation of cavities, remember, like a sea saw, it's either demand or women, but not both.

So any time you're demining zing your teeth, you're also not remineralize ing your teeth. Okay, so really avoid alcohol, stimulants, smoking, v aping, sugar mouth breathing, acido foods, acidic drinks. But many of us, most of us can't avoid any sugar, any acidifying ds.

The other things can be avoided. But some of us subscribe these drugs and need these drugs. Some people like a drink with alcohol in everyone's while, and it's perfect fine for them, where they deemed IT perfectly fine for them.

In that case, trying to ring the mouths, trying keep the middle of the mouth as moist and as basic. Or alcoa, rather less accident as possible. So to translate a bit more to the real world, if you're somebody like me who loves tea, a drink cold, Bruce, zero sugar year.

But motive, that's my favorite source of caffeine. I also like a nice black double espress or coffee. Everyone's in a while. It's fine to drink that. But you don't want to sit 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 asian foods or with any kind of food, trying to get your meals done and rap up up and rings your mouths and move to the next part of your day. And that actually segway into a really important point that came about when researching this episode, that if I had a 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 twenty four 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 reminder zone of your teeth. And that's during the daytime, and especially through the middle of the day. Now there are couple things that can disrupt that.

For instance, eating anything I don't care of your carner vegan, whatever, on nov, when you eat, you change the p 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 to reading manuscripts and also reading some really interesting books about reminder zing 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 accident in terms of liquids can be very beneficial. Now this is a vote in support of so called intervention fasting.

This is something that I practice typically by eating my first meal somewhere around a eleven am every morning. Sometimes are earlier. I sometimes have a blue breakfast at nine if I particularly hungry.

But typically I eat my first meal around eleven, eight or noon, and then I eat my last bite of food by about A P. M. Not everyone likes to do intermit and fasting.

And I realized for take a weight loss, it's probably interchangeable with color c restriction generally. And there's a lot of debate as to whether not intermit fasting is going to extend life span, whether not it's Better from etb I health and simple church restriction. I don't want to get into that debate, Frankly, is a barbarie debate.

It's been Carried out on this podcasting elsewhere before and I think is is ongoing, I think is the the best way to touch 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 reminder zone of the teeth provided that there isn't a lot of food or acidic liquids in the mouth of that time.

So at least to my mind, this is an interesting opportunity to place internet and 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 mill u during which the teeth can reminisce and the overall oral health can improve. Now does that mean you should never eat, drink anything during the midday day? No, i'm not saying that.

I'm saying that if you're going to do those things, trying 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 even your drinking anything for some of you, that might be the only time that you're not eating or drinking anything because you are sleep. One would hope you are sleep.

But here's the interesting thing. Every cell tissue in organ in our body is on a twenty four hours circadian clock. I think many of you've heard me say that in the context of viewing morning sunlight and other protocols that I suggest on the human la podcast. But here's the interesting an important point in the middle. The night, indeed, you're not ingesting any food or fluids presumes ly, but your saliva production is dramatically reduced, again, dramatically reduced.

And as a consequence, if there's food, or rather food opportunity for strep mutants, another bacteria to feed on and create acid to road 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 pronged 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 interesting any food and if you're drinking anything, it's not acidic.

Or if you are to try to answer that acid as much as possible. So plain 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 carbon lemon water.

I love like year ba mote, indeed, the year ba ti I like is cobre zero sugar but has some lemon and ginger in IT OK that's fairly acetic. But then drinking IT down either pretty quickly or if you're going to sit on IT then rinsing away with some water and not doing that throughout the entire day. Indeed, I tend to drink like caffeine early in the day and not so much throughout today.

Maybe a little bit of a mutine the afternoon sometimes. okay. So that's one aspect of maintaining or encouraging the correct p of saliva to reminder ze your teeth. I create these windows opportunity where there's a lot of saliva for long stretches of time during the day as long as possible will still make IT compatible with your nutrition needs in your hydration needs.

Of course, the other pro 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 the critical time to make sure that there is as little opportunity as possible for strep mutants and other bacteria to feed on sugar 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 oyl health care professionalized 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 cleaner teeth. It's at nighttime, is at nights.

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 flows, 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 and get rid of all the kind of sticky ism in your mount, your morning breath, that kind of thing, but that at night they're finishing dinner, maybe having some dessert, doing some work in passing out without brushing their teeth are flagging or simply getting too lazy to rushing their flows. And by the way, i'm going to raise my hand and just say for many years, I was in that category.

I know ill, gross, but I was in that category. I had high motivation to brush and floss, or at least a brush in the morning. Very little motivation to do in the evening.

Every professional said, if you're going to brush and floss just once for twenty four 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 flaws and clean the mouth and get the menu 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 acuity and our unity.

You're aliva is coming in trying to see if everything in the strip mutants is trying to destroy your teeth and the acid is the weaponry they use and what fuels that weaponry, what provides them more M O, to destroy your teeth. Are sugars and acidity. So if you were going to brush your flows, an idea if you do both only once per twenty four hours, IT would be at night before going to sleep.

Indeed, so much so that I would say that nighttime brushing in thing is perhaps one the most important things that we can do for overall, overall health care will talk about what to do, what to use for brushing and flawed in a few minutes. But that absolutely essential. I do not want that to be translated into.

You only need to brush or brush and floss once per twenty four hours. Every professional spoke to, and all of the data point to the fact that doing IT twice per twenty four hours is best, or perhaps even three times for twenty four hours. But let's be honest, most people are not going to brush and floss three times every twenty four hours or somewhere, but most won't.

And now, of course, i've been saying brushing and flows, 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 as to spend a certain number of minutes set a timer, so was a flows in a certain way.

Every time we go to the dentist, they tells to flows in a certain way. Do this, not this. What did the data really say? What are the modern health professionals in dental and or health really suggesting we do when IT comes to brushing and flossing?

Unfortunately here, there's a near 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 sing.

But they are really the outlier. The vast majority of dental seth there all say the same thing. You need to brush, you need a 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 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 when I suppose hurts less.

Anyway, IT hurts my heart a little bit, because I enjoy very much using a medium or hard tooth pression, really like cursing back their special and teeth in the bag is feels good. I feel like i'm doing something good in the the front. I actually enjoy brushing my teeth, especially lately. 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 brissel, really disrupts the interface between the teeth and the gums s in ways that not healthy for the gum's, and actually makes tenting of the gump and those pockets of recesses, as they're called, form more likely to form. And every single one of them said, if you are regular with your brushing, and especially if you you're brushing and flossing regularly, that a soft tooth brush, that is one that moved in a circular emotion 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 bio film layer each and every time and promote the best tooth and overall oral health.

So suppose um manufacturer are making medium heart tooth pressures. Maybe give us some rationale for that um because the dental professionals that I spoke to and I can I spoke to a fair number of them, also the same thing. Soft toothbrush, not just Better soft tooth brush best.

Likewise, if you use an electric toothbrush, which I now do some of the switch back and forth, but using electa tooth brush, IT was recommended that you not provide too much pressure, that you really try to keep the tips of the brussels on the the teeth and gums. And yes, he 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 para ontil field, at least the ones I spoke to, was to actually brush your gum slightly, 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 you know so, nick, to their a gum with a while, while floating or with a tooth, pick and tell you bleeding very readily.

And that's not a good thing, right? You don't want to create bleeding of the gump. So what? I ve got bleating the guns during floating, by the way.

So don't jump the gun just yet. I said jump the gun, not jump the gun, by the way. If you are brushing your gums, make sure you're using a soft toothbrush.

If you're using elector tooth rush, make sure you're going very lightly on the gums. And because there's so much blood flow to the gump, that does encourage a lot of circulation to some of the deeper cavities of the tooth. As IT turns out, I don't want to revert to tooth anatomy and the kind of detailed way now.

But of course, within the tooth, you again, anamal of the day, you ve got what's called that. The proper, the center, there's a lot of nerves interval. The center of the tooth is a bunch of other tissues.

And in the bone around IT, in layers that set up in when you massage or lightly brushed the guns around there, you're encouraging a lot of blood flow to those deeper components of the tooth, which are really the alive 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 dumps. But if you have a little bit of time, IT can be beneficial, especially if you have sensitive teeth. The idea that emerging now in the dental field is that I can help promote resilience, ts, 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 rush your teeth and the reason to pressure tee lightly or without too much pressure, that is, is that if you're regular with your tooth brushing and flossing, the main goal of brushing is to break up the bio film layer that provides a substrate for strep mutants, another bacteria to layer on thicker layers of bacteria, so called black, that will eventually turn to tarter. So if we really want to grow ourselves out and really motivate brushing and flaught y, maybe we should describe that what happens with strap mutants as IT forms these strand like bacteria, so these like losi a, so they're attached. The tooth is the biosphere m layers that like strands of strings, but if enough to accumulated to get thicker and kind of mosy is kind of a thicker and looks that kind of sponge reform, and that's the black.

And then if enough of IT forms and there's enough facility in the mouth, then IT forms tarter, which is the hard, caked on stuff that require scraping off by the dentist. You some people get a lot of harder, some people less harder, build up depending on how diligent they are at removing the bio film with brushing. Now you can remove bio film in black with brushing, but once IT starts to form tarter, that is, once it's layer on something that has a yellow wwf h tint to IT, then you really start to run into trouble, because brushing and flossing will not remove that tarter.

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 still in that strand or platform, ideally within this, when is still in that strand form removing that bio film? If you've ever been to the dentist, you may recall they'll do this tooth polishing theyll, that thing of the kind of a greedy stuff on your teeth and you wonder, um you know, is this to make my teeth wider and they can create a bit more shine or shine 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 on your bacteria of 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 cosmetics purposes. Well, they do that because the smooth surface makes IT harder for those strands that bio film to stick and form, and certainly for the more dense black and target layers to build up on top of IT.

So they're making your tea smooth so that the bacteria can add here to IT as readily. But it's the daily protocols of tooth and oral health that are really critical. Will talk about dental visits and frequency of dental visits.

And what a dental visits really about is always about cleaning or feeling a, but in the meantime, brushing and brushing often enough such that you don't get any build up a bio film for very long periods of time. Eliminating or reducing the amount of black and target that builds up is going to be your best strategy for improving truth health. Now what about flossing? There's a little bit of debate about flossing in the dentistry y field.

Some people say if your dumps bleed when you floss, you need to floss more. In fact, most entire I spoke to said that, but they also emphasize that you need the floss correctly. You can just pull the flows down onto the gum in between the tooth.

You need to glide down the side of the tooth, get little bit underneath the gum, and use a circular emotion, 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 tea that are very close together, and we trying to 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 flaws.

And you know here we could also be talking about the tooth big based loss with there's a little art with the with A A little bit of flows across from IT. The one thing you can buy, some people actually use toothpicks fashion method. Frankly, most dentist I spoke to don't want people jabbing their mouth guns with toothpicks. Now you can decide for yourself. But almost all of them, actually, one felt that flows is a great idea for two health.

And then if your gums bleed, when you floss correctly, as I just described, what correct flossing is that? Your best tragedy is to floss at least twice a day between all of your teeth, and if you're not, can fly 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 would be at night before going to sleep for the reasons we talk about earlier and several dentists size.

But you said that using a water pic is going to be Better than using more typical flaws or for or using those toothpick base flaws approaches because it's gentleman on the teeth. I personally have not used the water pik, but i'm intrigued by the the concept because IT sound like it's 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 pig sounds, that could be a really good idea for the vast majority of us like me.

Just getting some traditional um flaws and using dental flaws um at least once a day at night and ideally also in the morning after brushing. That seems like the most direct and low cost strategy. I should just mention that the pediatric dentist that I spoke to mentioned that flossing is really about removing food products 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 effect.

That of those spaces are about either way, unless you, me, and when you were a kid, your teeth were too close together and all your adult teeth came in behind those teeth. That was really miserable experience for me. Most kids, their baby teeth y're spaced out a bit in order to allow the adult to come in to erupt, as it's called such a dramatic word.

Love Greenness literature. When the molders error, ed, it's like, wow, no IT just come up through the guns. 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 they could cause some damage to the guns. 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 floating, 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 at all. Zillah is a very low calorie sweetener. I can place IT among the other low calorie sweeteners like aspartame, su carlo, stevia, eeta.

But what unique about zot all is that very much like standard sugar or any kind of carbo hydra gar, the bacteria stepped to caucus mutants loves to eat all at all, but when stripped caucus of mutton's zilla all IT doesn't, meaning IT cannot produce the acid that Normally would demineralized teeth and create cavities. In addition to that, when stripped to coccus mutants eats zillah, all IT kills stripped to ocs mutants. So what this means is that isolator is present in the oral cavity after a meal, saying the minutes and hours after a meal.

Then any stress mutants that happens to be there is going to preferentially feed on the zillah, not other sugars. And IT won't be able to release acid. And because zillo all can actually inhibit the growth, and that is the proliferation of more remote ants, we've got a tougher we've got a situation where strip mutants can't release acid to demonize the teeth and potentially cause cavities.

And the total amount of strip mutants that can grow, that can deliberate and want to called colonies, literally, the bacteria colonizes on the teeth forming that, then that can happen. So that at all, is a very potent tool for improving oral health in this way. In addition, zoila le reduces inflammation, the gun tissue and other soft tissues of the mouth.

And so isa tol is providing in a ray 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 created olah le 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 allah le mints, or by chewing as allah le based gum immediately after a meal, you're taking substantial steps towards improving the chemical meal you of your mouth and inhibiting the proliferation of cavity forming step to caucus mutants.

Now you can also find some literature on other proposed benefits of seattle such as you know improving overall microbial uh such as reducing information and other tissues besides the gums and within the mouth there is some evidence that I can support the gut microbiome because of course, the oral microbiome and the good microbiome contiguous ous, they have different compartments. I mean, you might even be surprised to learn that within your mouth, they are different nishi as they're called. For instance, there's different microbiota that live on the gums of versus the hard pilot, versus the soft pilot back in the throat.

And then as you descend into the god and said a and IT disappear, that sale tile has certain positive benefits for all of those different got microbiome ichang. But the literary on that is less well substantiate than, for instance, the literature showing that is zola's all is put in as a surrogate sugar substrates for strap mutants, that is, disabled strep mutants and can prevent the formation of cavities. Now, as far as I know, when consumed in mint form or gump form, are not aware of any specific side effects or bad effects of social provided that is not consumed in excess.

But as with everything, dosage matters. So if you're somebody who wants to explore the use of sale tole gun with alita mins after a meal, I wouldn't suggest going from consuming. Heroes eat all means to consuming fifty a day or something like that, even ten 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 salata gum all day long at at, at a i'll just mentioned one other positive benefit of zl gum, which is if you use zillo 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 truth health is to have a long stretch of time in middle of the day where you're producing a lot of healthy saliva in large amounts because against salive is this incredible stuff, that porting reminder zone of the teeth. So lots and lots of reasons to think about. Maybe consider using solar gum or sallad le minds.

There are a number of different ones available out there. I have zero, again, zero financial relationship to any of those mint or gump companies. I'll provide a link in the shown of captions to one source. The company and the products were developed by a dentist doctor, ally 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, and that she's been talking about a number of these things, like promoting the health of the oral microbial and the potential value of salette guns and mince sa for some period of time. I think most of the information that SHE put out there is supported by other dentists, and SHE still suggests regular dental visit. So you know nothing reneging out there or heretical again, there are other sources of salt guns and means that you could consider.

I'm simply putting a link to the one that I used because I happen to use them and like them. So i'd like to use the discussion about silent all as a segway into a discussion about tooth space because there is a lot of controversy out there about which two 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 zillah, that if you can find a tooth pace that contains zoete 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 zala all on the short to not so short list of things that would be great to have in a tooth pace for all the reasons that you now understand. The real big question with tooth pace is always should I use a tooth pace that has florida or avoid tooth space that has florida?

In order to answer that, we have to go back to our earlier discussion about florida. IT really depends on what they're not you're somebody the things that floride is great because IT creates the super physiologically strong bonds within our teeth. The Crystal structures are that much stronger then when formed by high draxy appetite or whether not you're somebody who is wary of florida 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 man, I don't know. I should I be worried? I don't know if I should be worried.

I personally grew up using florida tooth pace, and we had a kind of standard name and florida oos pace um in our bathroom. I brushed heth those for years. Whether not that negatively impacted my health or not, I don't know.

Get my blood work done, my thry word hormones are Normal. My brain works, at least you reasonably well. But I do realized that some people are very concerned about florida, and they just don't want to anywhere near their kids.

They don't want 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 floria de containing tooth space, there are such tooth space out there. And most of those, if not all of them, contain you gusted high drugs, the appetite, they contain the minerals that naturally form the bonds, create that additional anamal that can potentially fill in cavities.

And by remineralize ation of the anamal and some of the deeper layers of the tooth. So if one is seeking tooth pace and you want to avoid floridian, you'd want to find something that ideally had hydrox y appetite and something that had zillah. And they often also contain some sort of mild depressive.

Okay, not a not a really scratchy a brace of substance, but a mild depressive that can really allow for breaking up with the bio film that we talked about earlier. Now i've provided links to a couple of sources for such tooth pace and also for are 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 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 and the shown no captions are companies for which I have absolutely zero financial relationship. I do know some of the people that started these companies.

I actually discover these companies because these people are dented or period dentist or other people in the oral health field um but I also want to be very clear that there was no exchange of promotion of their products for information or otherwise. I simply tried and like the products and I just so happened to have ve learned some things about oral health care from these people separate and away from anything about tooth pace or as atos at seta. okay.

So I want to be very clear that I do believe these are quality sources. These are the tooth pace and two tablets that I happen to use, gum, amit, that I happen to use, large part is a consequence of researching this episode, but I pay for 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 floride containing tooth pace and some other things to promote world 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 comments section on youtube.

Okay, let's talk about mouthwash. Or mouthwash is plural. At the beginning of toy's epo de, I said, let's determine what category of oral health you are in.

Are you somebody who pays a lot of attention to our health? You brush and floss at least twice a day. You're using mouth washes, tooth Whitener, 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 mouths washes, especially those containing alcohol, are terrible for oral health.

Simply put, they deplete certain components of the mu costal lining of the mouth, and they disrupt the healthy components of the oral microbial. So for those of you that rely on such mouth washes, 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 not they are helping or harming your oral health. Now i'm not suggesting that you create a scenario where you're breath is causing other people to dissolve into a pedal of tears or back away from you quickly. That's not what you that's not what I want.

That's not what anyone wants. But I think it's important to realize that these alcohol based mouth washes are not good for us. In addition, their antiseptic mouth washes, some of which contained 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 health care professional. But you would be wise to ask them whether or not these color oxide type mouth washes at set up or 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 over proliferation of really bad bacteria in the mouse.

So we don't want infections to run wild either. Most people, however, are using mouth washes 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 you are somebody who really wants to use a mouth wash for that reason, I encourage you to try and find a mouth wash that is not alcohol based and that is not a strong antiseptic, or that if he is an antiseptic that is not alcohol based, okay, in such mouth washes exist out there.

There are a little bit hard to fine. I'll provide a link to, at least to a couple of them in the shown. No captions here.

I have to say I have not tried those mouth washes yet. They do come from sources in which they were developed by licensed dental health care professionals. But this is always the case when somebody selling something, it's worthwhile to do diligence.

Now as we talk about tooth pace and minds and gums and mouth washes, I think it's worth taking a step back and also asking the question, are there any zero or very, very low cost, 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 stuffing. The grocery store that all the dentist 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 then the typical commercially available tooth pa thed or mouths wash. 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 bio film, perhaps even White the teeth a little bit.

Although as we talk about earlier, and not really White in the teeth through actually just changing the reflectiveness uh and some of the composition of that in ammo, which is translucent so that you can see the underlying components Better. Well, I talk 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, so we don't have to go into but it's actually considered quite safe for the enamel al of the teeth, especially if you're brushing with a soft tooth brush and you're not like really grinding the stuff against your teeth at maximum intensity or even near maximum intensity.

So turns out that baking soda and waters is actually a pretty good toothpaste if you're not going to go buy a tooth pace. So that's good news. Now you may have heard that you can make a sort of mouth wash or mouth rings with baking soda water, and in a little bit of hydrogen proxim, I want to eat size a little bit.

But i'm also going to emphasize, I don't think this is a good idea at all. Why isn't not a good idea at all? Well, first of all, when we were kids, we used to take baking soda and hydrogen proxim and put them together to simulate volcanoes.

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, 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 postdoc, so this is in the two thousand five to two thousand ten stretch, I started to get some pretty bad canker sores.

I don't know about you, but canker source feel awful to me. I hate them when you eat, they heard. When you song, they hurt. When you do anything, they pretty much hurt. And someone gave me the recommendation to use a little bit of baking, so to dissolved in some water and a little bit of hydrogen oxide, to use that as a oral rent, and of course, then to spit IT out. And I did that.

And actually, what happened to me, as I got almost quarter size authors on the roof, my mouth and on the sides of my mouth, that took those little canker sores, which were annoying and kind of painful, and turn them into full blown authors. I know this because when I stopped using, those healed up almost immediately. And then when I spoke to some dentist and pari dentist is that o yeah hydrogen peroxide is far too embrasse ve for the mouths 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, you may hear that things like pyrogen proxy can be useful for gargling with or swishing with. If you are starting to get a little bit of a throat tickle may be an infection IT turns out it's a really bad idea.

Now if there are physicians, are oral health experts out there that strongly believe in the use of hydrogen peroxide rinses, we're gargle ling with IT to promote oral health reason. Let me know in the shown no captions. I don't want to go against any those recommendations, but this now considered kind of old school recommendation of creating one's own mouth wash with a little bit of baking soda, some herdin proxy de 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 the water, dissolving IT and then finding the point 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 rent. Or putting your mouth and swishing in around and then spitting IT out and it's gonna taste for your salty, and then taking a sweet AR water, you know, just plain water, and then swishing around and then spit IT out, that actually provides a really nice meal. You for the production of healthy mouth bacteria is near zero cost was you need a bit to salt, low water in the glass to put IT in, but it's basically zero cost.

And if you think about IT, that high saline or high ceLinda's is a lot like the sort of brains and the liquid that comes from these low sugar probiotic foods that earlier I was suggesting in an other episodes, I was suggest I could be really healthy for swallowing, for the gut microbial to. 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 I spitting IT out as a way to improve the overall menu of the mouth to get their PH right to promote the proliferation of healthy microbiota components.

okay. So we've talked about some commercially available guns and mines containing all at all. We talked about some commercially available tooth pace. Indeed, some tooth pace that you are almost fall into the very beautiful e category because they have all these things that are known by dentist and Perry done is 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 tooth brush some water and just brushing the teeth as a great way to disrupt the bio film and clean your teeth and a high salt solution as a swish and spit, followed by, you know, a switch spit with clear water, clear water, no salt in IT as a essentially very low cost or zero cost mouthwash. Far and away different from the heavily centers, alcohol based antiseptic mouth washes that are commercially available and that we know are basically not good for our oral microbial.

In addition, i'd like to point out that those alcohol based flashes that many people in the world use are also known to reduce the amount of nature oxx IDE that's produced in the oral cavity, and that's very important for the production of nero oxide elsewhere in the body. Why is that important? Will nitro oxide promote vesa dillaway, not just within the blood vessels that lined 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 breaths, we know that dramatically increases nta oxide. We're talking about a substance that when the oral microbes ome is preserved in its healthy state, tends to increase in production. And we're talking about a substance that's really good for small cap lary vein in arterial health because IT allows for the passage of blood, both for the delivery of oxygen and other nutrient to tissues, but also the removal of waste products from tissues.

So we don't want to do anything that reduced matric oxide unless there are some specific medical condition that leads us to want to do that. So for most people, increasing metro occasion or keeping neta oxide levels stable is the state that we want to seek. And these alcohol by mouth washes are known to deplete the production of nitric oxide.

So there is yet another reason to avoid the use of these alcohol based more typical over the counter mouth washes. By the way, this is not a scare tactic against mouth washes. I'm sure that if you use mouth washes, you're still producing some metric oxide.

But I think nowaday many, hopefully all of you are interested in doing whatever you can to improve your mental al physical health and performance. And if there are things that you are doing that are inhibiting those in any way that you potentially want to at least think about those, maybe remove them from your protocols, especially if there is a cost of them that you can remove. In other words, you can save on costs.

So again, lots of reasons to move away from the alcohol base standard antiseptic mouth washes. Aside from the improvement in your breath that, by the way, can be Better achieved by supporting the oral microban om otherways that we've discuss, there is really no clear advantage as to why one would use one. And there apparently are a number of disadvantages.

Now earlier, we talked briefly about canker source. They are really uncomfortable. There are a lot of theories as to why kanker source form, and they're a lot of products and theories as to how to get rid of canker source.

Well, indeed, there are some ways that we can prevent the formation of cancer s and accelerate they're healing. And that actually has to do with promoting the health of the gut microbiome. So there's a clear link between gut microbial and oral microbiome in a way that can either promote or reduce the formation of canker source, and can actually help heal canker source and to mind knowledge.

The best way to support a court and quote, healthy gut microbial is to consume at least wonderful savings of low sugar fermented foods per day. I mentioned what some of those are little bit earlier. I also in entire episode, I got my microban ome.

We've posted expert guess on the microbial, including just in sonne g from stanford school of medicine, persecute time. I can just briefly list of the things that are known to promote a healthy that microbiome and that would indirectly support the healing and prevention of canker source. And those are coming, one of four serving 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 probiotic or probiotics fiber.

And in some cases, if somebody is really dislike oic or if you've been taking antibiotics, actually taking a pale form or type of form n pro biotic, but it's not something that I recommend people take consistently. And I certainly do not. I think by ingesting those low sugar fermented foods on a regular basis, by trying to make sure that you're getting enough sleepy tonight, this is key.

Probably should have mentioned this earlier in the episode um but you know one of the folks who I have great respect for in the public health discussion around dental health is doctor mark bergen. He goes by asked the dentist on instagram he's actually a retired dentist um but he's been deeply involved in the kind of evaluation of the consumer product space as IT relates to dental and oral health care for a number of years in mark bergin. In addition to discussing all the various topics that we've talked about today, such as that at all in florida or floor, I D know it's a has also been a big proponent of people paying attention to the 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 sleepy tonight.

So typically most people need six, eight hours. Some people need more, some people need little less, but getting at least sixty eight 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 doctor bergin and others have talked about this, but I really appreciate that he's champion the importance of sleep among other things but certainly sleep as a way to support the oral microbial. So we talked quite a bit about teeth and gums, a little bit about new castle lining and throat.

One thing that we haven't talked very much about is a hung the tongue. Your is obviously a very important component of your mouth. And as I mentioned earlier, different nations, different locations within the mouth have different microbiota living on them, both good and the bad, meaning once that we'd like to promote the proliferation of because they reduce bad breath and promote oral health and all that good stuff and and bad bacteria, because they make our breath smell bad, and because they deteriora various tissues of the mouth.

I looked pretty extensively into this issue of tune scraping, and it's an interesting one. And every licensed dental health care professional spoke to in preparing for the 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 as in the same way that bio film can build up on teeth, although through a different process, different bacteria, and that scraping the tongue or brushing the tongue can be advantages 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 tone 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 tune is a very fragile soft tissue. So the recommendation that they relate 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, then you would to brush your teeth. okay.

So things weren't complicated enough already. Think 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 issues, especially if one is brushing the tongue too vigorously. Don't want to introduce bacteria from your tooth brushing onto your tongue.

Of course, you can rent set 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 do all episodes all about toothbrush care, but we won't so nice to say that when you brush bacteria off your teeth or tongue, and presuming the truth, brush gets moist by no other means, certainly by means of your slave being on IT, then you in set off.

And then even if you were to drive IT off with a clean, some sort of clean towler, something like that you set IT out, a lot of bacteria are going to proffer on that toothbrush. So this opens up a whole discussion about, should you cover your toothbrush or let IT dry out in the air, should you use U. V radiation uh to sterilize your toothbrush.

Frankly, IT took us me down the rabid hole of toothbrush care so far that at one point I just just scream like uncle like enough. I think one has to decide how much bacteria they are willing to tolerate living on their toothbrush in between toothbrushes um anywhere from zero or use a new toothbrush or toothbrush had every single time you brushed. That seems unreasonable, economically unreasonable for most people versus replacing IT want a week versus want to be 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 and trying avoided contact between the toothbrush head and any unsAnitary or surfaces.

Try and rents and dry off the toothbrush. Ed, all these things are recommendations that were relate 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 our health.

And one of the questions that came back from many hundreds of people was, what about feelings? What about metal feelings? What about silence? Are they safe? Well, most dentists will tell you that silence are safe.

They are now made from compounds that are generally not thought to cause any major issues to be, as I did not do a deep dive into the chemical composition of different silence because IT turns out that different dental practices use different silence. I'm sure that if I looked hard enough, I could find some really bad stuff in silence. I'm sure I could also find some reassurance that at the concentrations and conditions that they're introduced, the team that they are Better alternative to having deep cavities into the teeth.

And that actually gives me an opportunity 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 using the source of practices were talking about today and that indeed, it's very likely that those cavities need to be drilled and filled right now. That's not always the case.

And this is one reason why I highly recommend that if you've listen to this episode and if you're here this point in the episode, then you blissed to the episode. That you talk your dentist, ask them if they say you have a cavity, how deeper these cavities? Do you think there's an opportunity for me to reminisce the teeth if I do the following things and if they tell you, look, you have a cavity or cavities and there are 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. You don't think you should find a different dentist. However, they may be surprised and who know is pleasant surprise for you to h say, hey, you know, I heard that you can actually remineralize ed tea and if i've got a cavity, but it's still not through the enamel al layer, if i'm really diligent and use some other at all, maybe some hydroxide appetite and avoids certain things and do certain things discuss in this episode that I could remineralize and fill in those cavities.

That said, there are, of course, we've situations where you need to get those cavities drilled and filled if they make IT into the deep, deeper layers of the tooth, and you do not want those cavities es to persist in for bacteria to proliferate in those deeper layers of the teeth and down into the bone. That is o so bad for reasons we talk 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 industry was such that they are early part of the last century, if you had a toothache e in a cavity, what did they do? They pull the teeth, they extracted the teeth.

Then at some point, this business of filling teeth became industry standards. So people would get metal feelings. Now, the types of metal feelings that people had and have depend on when they got those feelings.

They believe IT or not LED feelings. This is not good. You don't want LED in your body for all sorts of reasons. That is terrible for brain health, is why it's now illegal to contain in paint and many household goods. You don't want LED fillings, but some people had LED fillings or silver feelings, or combination of LED over and other things, and many metal feelings 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 ask several dentists about this and said, well, if somebody has a metal feeling that likely has mercury in IT, do they need to have that medal filling removed? And all of the dentist I spoke to said, IT depends, but generally the practices to leave those feelings in and try not to disrupt them. Now they also provided a important recommendation, which is if you have metal filings that contain mercury or that you think might contain mercury, to avoid disrupting those feelings through the use of things like a mastic gum.

We haven't talked too much about mastic gum. I've used mastic gum before, not for long page of time. It's a very thick gum, you know, the original use of mastic gump and the kind of origins of masculinity, a tree sap, that kind of substance that you chew on.

So it's a strengths in your ja, ta, 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 flaming and other health benefits of mastic gum.

I haven't really explored mastic gum and enough depth or detail to comment on any of that, but a number of dentist said, well, if you have metal feelings chewing on things like mastic gum or you know hard Candy where you're really chewing on on that hard Candy, which whether way you're sposed to suck the hard Candy, the jolly rani supposed tue on them but that some people will do that. They're just naturally true 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 I can get into the bloodstream and potentially cause other issues. So this is 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 nature distant future, metal fillings will no longer be used in the european union.

Elsewhere in the world, there's sometimes still used in the united states. There's a lot that's changing in this landscape around flo ride, around metal fillings that set up. So it's a very dynamic landscape right now. I think surface to say that if you have middle fillings currently trying out to disrupt them in way that could liberate that mercury.

However, if you have them and you really concerned about them, talk your dentist, ask what the various options are, see whether or 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, whether not you should get cavities filled, whether not you need that root out, that was a very common question. A lot of people said, do we really need root? Al, do we really need to drill cavities? My observation, based on now having talk to a number different practitioners in the space, really pay a lot of attention to the peer reviewed research.

The old school practice is the new practices. And where everything is headed is that there there are indeed instances where people need root als. There are many cavities that are just too deep into the teeth that remineralize ation of the teeth through the source 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 mental health. I also would hope that dentist 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 in 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're 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 reminder ze our tips and fell 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 in 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 is a tRicky one, asked dentist because, of course, dentists are highly incentivize to see their patients. And i'm not somebody that believes that is know is an attempt make money. But look, when moneys involved, things can get complicated.

Now, what was really great is that the feedback I got from dentist was very baLanced. I mean, I must say that the community of dentist 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 the office.

So just before rapping, i'll refer you to a couple online oral health and dentist educators that I think are providers a really useful content on a consistent basis, and i'll provide links to those in the shown out 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 coding, quote, routine cleaning. But everyone acknowledged that those routine cleanings, while they can remove harder, that built up, that would be very, very difficult for people to reverse or eliminate at home. And while they can identify cavities until you how four cavity has developed into the tooth, ea, every one of those dentist agreed that those routine cleanings are not actually going to help remineralize your teeth, except to the extent that they remove existing bacteria, black and tarter.

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 source 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 as oral health, but sleep health, mental health, physical health, at a 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 focus, sleeping Better at a so he was refreshing to hear that they feel that way well.

And in addition to that, all the dentist I spoke to said that no setting aside situations of like reconstructive uh, surgery for the mouth or a periodontal surgery which often is needed if that those recesses into the guns and ginger Aidan and worse have started to really develop in proliferate. All of them emphasize that the twice a year dental visit is not just about getting the cleaning. It's really the check up to evaluate how those daily practices are emerging. So it's work like going to the doctor for a check up on your BMI, on your blood pressure, but also things like blood test, things that typically we don't do at home unless we're accessing those through particular sources.

But all of them emphasize that going to the dentist twice here is not just about those cleaning, is 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 not, in fact, they could get away with perhaps one cleaning a year because you're so diligent about your brushing floing IOS hall, 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 gingery us or that predispose you to excessive build up of tarter. This is the reality that some people have genetic variations that create a suspect ability to certain things, both bacteria and other conditions in the mouth, to make IT, such that those people perhaps need to go to the dentist not just twice a year, but perhaps four times year or six times 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 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 were giving off the production of mutants, and we're scraping away the biosphere m 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 cleaning, you know, for those out there that are fortune ough to have that covered by insurance can afford IT.

Well, then all the Better. Because as I mention the begin 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 balls syndrome. I know that we have been done an epsom about this yet, but I get all so many requests to do episodes about rita balls syndrome and other code type, uh you know bowling gut issues that people have.

And it's so clear that oral health and promoting oral health has been linked to promoting positive good health as well, maybe even reducing and possibly eliminating some of the symptoms of irritable balal disease because, again, the mouth and the gut are continuous with one another. They're related. And a lot of the bacteria that can cause things like god 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 costs to low costs to, let's just be Frank, higher costs products and protocols such as water, pix, eta. 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 to 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 movements, 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 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 mouth washes are good for you or not. They're not.

They're bad for you, in my opinion. But you can decide for you how often you brush, when you brush, whether or not you decide to use zi at all at seta 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 at sea.

But through some means that I think for most people they weren't aware of, I certainly wasn't aware that we could reminder ze our tea at any moment by changing the acidity, the chemical mill, you 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 means exhaustive, meaning we simply don't have time to go down the rabbit hole of all these other promoted health practices, such as for incense oil polling.

A lot of people out there believe that if you take all of oil and swish around your mouth and spit IT out, that that's good for your mouth. And indeed, some dental health care professionals, I should say, license dental health are professionals said, yeah, I think there's some benefit to that. There's the whole story about vitamin d and where are not we're getting enough.

I am in d can indeed impact our two selves, so make sure your vitamin d levels are sufficient. You're getting some sunlight again. This ties into some of the other six pillars. And I suggestion that everyone do oil pulling. No, I don't think the peer reviewed evidence on oil polling is sufficient to suggest that people do that.

But as a practice considering that is you know essentially near zero cost and taking a little bit of olive oil and wishing around your mouth and spitting IT out, couple sense maybe um you know if that something that you feel benefits you, great if you are aware of some terrific pure reviews, research on that, anyone to put a link to that in the comments on youtube, great. Please send them my way. Love to review them.

But my point is that there are a lot of different practices that have been promoted, including oil polling 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 floating, rinsing, getting the oral microbial healthy, reducing the amount of strip mutants and the opportunity of strip mutants to create that acid that's going to deplete the animal of your teeth and lead to truth decay, trying to limit the amount of recessing of the gums and paradol disease. And for all the reasons that what we talked about before, keeping a healthy mouth, including healthy tea, healthy tongue, healthy gums, healthy palet and all the rest, is also 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 believer.

Not your skin didn't have time to go to 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 modifications are best for us. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribed our youtube channel.

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