Dr. Mark Burhenne
Appearances
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Certainly, and I'm also very concerned about longevity, have been since I was too young to really worry about longevity. I would say that oral health has a lot to do with longevity. In fact, more than you would expect and highly underrated. And maybe it's all about longevity when it comes to oral health. So, I mean, let's talk about metabolic disorders, right?
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
That's BMI, high blood pressure, triglycerides, inflammation, all of that. I mean, all these metabolic disorders that we're suffering from. Oral health contributes to all of that. It is very, very tied into it. So it's Alzheimer's. There's a connection now between high blood pressure, Alzheimer's, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis. This oral systemic connection
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
has been around all along, but now dentistry is waking up to this. So is medicine. So is functional health. Oral health is intimately involved with pretty much everything there is to do with dying or living a good life, living a long life. And if you don't address oral health, longevity will be an issue for you.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Mm-hmm.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Right. Well, I'll cut right to the chase. A poorly done root canal or root canal that is done on a tooth that has fractures in it. that weren't noticed by the dentist can take you down. I mean, sepsis, death.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Oh, it's a systemic infection directly from the tooth itself. It's a very difficult thing to do. It's very technique sensitive. And if it's not done properly or if it's done on a tooth, that shouldn't... be getting root canaled, it will fail and those bacteria will will change again. It's a it's like a biome and it will get into your bloodstream and it will take out some of your organs.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
It will require that you take a series of very strong antibiotics that could lead to ulcerative colitis or gut issues. And so root canals do have a bad reputation. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean that a root canal cannot work. There's actually a dentist here in La that she's a specialist. She's an endodontist. That's a dentist that does just root canals.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
And that would be my recommendation is that if you're looking at a root canal, get a second opinion, first of all. Because sometimes, you know, people jump to the gun. Obviously, a dentist wants to get you out of pain. Sometimes they do the wrong tooth. It's hard to know which tooth is causing the pain. The need for root canal is based on pulpitis.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
We talked about it earlier, where the pulp inside the tooth is dying. It's inflamed. It goes through a phase of a lot of pain. Sometimes the pain will go away. Often it does because the tooth is dead, but the infection is still there. And a lot of patients and a lot of dentists will say, oh, everything's fine. You survive that infection. incident of pulpitis and the swelling went away.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Well, then it gets you a year later and all of a sudden you're traveling, you're in a foreign country and you've got a fever and you've got a severe infection in other parts of your body from that one tooth. So it's important to get, I would say, see an endodontist, get pulp tested, get the tooth pulp tested, get a 3D image of it with an x-ray. Don't rely on regular conventional dental x-rays.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Find out what the problem is. Make sure that you have the tooth checked for fracturing. A lot of people will fall off. uh you know the sidewalk or a horse or a trampoline and when they fall they may not the blow is not to the face but as they fall their teeth are clenched and then the the jarring motion is transmitted to the teeth one tooth will kind of spider fracture
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
The way to see that is to shine a very bright light through the tooth. It's a transillumination device, very easy, inexpensive. Every dentist should have one. If there are fractures, no root canal will save that tooth. You'll have to extract it. But if the hard structure of the tooth is sound, there's infected tissue in there.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
If it's removed properly, if you use lasers, ozone, these are all the newer techniques that this dentist here in LA is using. but not all dentists are using. We use chemicals, we use just little files that have serrations in them. We're pulling out that dead tissue. That's not enough.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
I mean, you can over-prescribe many ways. You can be greedy and do root canals because insurance covers 80% of it, and then you have to crown the tooth.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Hard to say. I would say it is common. It is common.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
There's big chains, and there are certainly incentives. But a functional dentist, someone that you've been going to for a long time, typically they won't.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Well, dentists don't because they know it's difficult to do. Okay, got it. And certain teeth are almost impossible to get right unless you have a microscope.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Yeah, they'll refer you out to an endodontist. But, you know, look, get a second opinion. Get pulp tested. Get that 3D image. Make sure you're seeing an endodontist. Maybe get a second opinion from another endodontist. Make sure there's a... $30,000 microscope on wheels sitting in the corner. That's the best way to do it. Make sure they're using laser and ozone, all the latest techniques.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Yes.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Right.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
If there are fractures in the teeth, root canal could delay the loss of that structure, but it could also complicate things. Certainly if it's from an acute moment, a fracture from an accident or a blow, to the face. So root canals are tricky. I hate to admit that as a dentist, but I think in dental school, you're told that it's a fantastic way to be able to save a dying or dead tooth.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
I mean, in medicine, can we save dead tissue? No, we usually cut it out. But the tooth is a unique structure. It has a hard shell. It's the only, I mean, you wouldn't do that to bone because there's bone marrow inside there. And bone is living. Enamel is inert. So it has that outer structure. Can it survive in the mouth if it's sealed off from the rest of the body? Theoretically, yes.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Practically, there are a lot of problems with it. Absolutely.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Taking the tooth out has its issues as well. And implants are far from perfect. You can get gum disease, peri-implantitis around an implant. They don't connect the same way as teeth do to the jawbone. I'm not saying you shouldn't get an implant, but... Try and hang on to that tooth if you can. A natural tooth, whether it's alive or dead.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
If it's dead, hopefully it's cleaned out and it's sealed off. That still has that soft tissue ligament attachment to the jawbone. It still moves a little bit. You can still feel pressure on the tooth. Can't do that with an implant.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Well, thank you for having me on the podcast again and for your interest in oral health. It's not always a thing. And oral health, hopefully in this discussion, we can all agree that oral health is a big player in overall health, not just longevity, but in the quality of your life.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
I really don't have anything to add other than you scrape your tongue, take interest in your mouth, smile, stay away from toxins, see the right dentist. I mean, all the things we talked about. There are things that you can do at home that are simple and easy. There are things that you can take out of your routine like mouthwash. Don't spend the money and time. It's just it can really...
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
make things a lot worse for you. I mean, high blood pressure, who wants that? And by the way, when your blood pressure goes up, guess what? Your gums start receding. The blood supply in that tissue is so fragile and so tiny. It's a microvasculature. It's a peripheral blood supply.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
When the blood pressure goes up, those parts of the body with like kidneys, same thing, small blood supply, they necrose, they die. And when the gum tissue dies at the edge, it recedes. So there are a lot of ways that oral health can impact your life in general. Yeah.