Dr. Staci Whitman
Appearances
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yes. Consider hydroxyapatite if you're concerned.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
When it does this, the bonds generally are considered stronger, and the dental crystalline structure is more densely packed, so it's known to be more acid-resistant. And so we can get into the history of how they discovered this, but essentially fluoride was put into toothpaste in about the 1960s. It became very popularized.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Correct. So think about if you were a big advocate for sunscreen or a lotion, you put it on, you immediately jump in the shower. You're washing it all off. So it's the same with your toothpaste. There is a duration of action that it takes for maximum efficacy. So if you're brushing for two minutes and spit and rinse, all that goodness is getting rinsed down the drain. So it really should.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
You can still spit. People get confused by this. You can still spit, but try not to vigorously rinse everything off. You do want to try to sit on the teeth and in your saliva a little bit.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And alcohol.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Because I just checked so many boxes. I'd say optimize minerals and fat-soluble vitamins. This is kind of Weston Price stuff. Yeah.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Well, we could say tongue scraping. Tongue scraping, excuse me. I do like tongue scraping. So again, Ayurvedic, you know, Chinese medicine, we'll look at the tongue from a health standpoint. If you have a white coating on your tongue, that's a sign of dysbiosis. You could have candida. This is important to touch upon.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Strep mutans gets blamed for cavities so much with kids especially, but with children, we really need to be focusing on fungus too. So candida is really prevalent in early decay in children. No one's screening for this or treating it. Candida loves sugar, you know, and this is also with diabetics, we're seeing a bi-directional relationship.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
with gum disease, periodontal disease, and insulin resistance and blood sugar imbalances too. So tongue scraping, and it will do a better job than your toothbrush. People always ask because it is removing the biofilm as the toothbrush is kind of moving it around. So it's taking off that film of bacteria. I know it's kind of gross, but they tend to be anaerobic.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And that can help with nitric oxide production, too, because the good bacteria on the tongue tend to live down more in the crypts. So you don't want to scrape too hard, but just get that film off. You'll also notice improvement in your taste perception, too, because you're getting food remnants and things off as well.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah. Oh, I love it. Once you start tongue scraping, you usually, most everyone's a big advocate for it.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
What other biofilm do you have access to? I mean, it really is a window into the body. So if you have gum disease or cavities, that is a sign of a metabolic imbalance in your body. So not to make you panic, but I just want people to take it seriously that it is a window into other things that could be happening deeper within the system.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So that is why many dentists love fluoride is that you're using it and it makes your teeth more acid resistant. And also it has some antimicrobial effects too. The issue I have, and we can unpack this more later, is that it's not super selective. So it's not only selecting anaerobes or pathogenic bacteria, but it potentially could be damaging beneficial bacteria too.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. So I could read it later. Not all doctors have bad handwriting.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
This was really fun. Thank you so much.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So that's why toothpaste has fluoride in it. It also will lower the critical pH. So the critical pH is the pH of which your enamel will start to demineralize or degrade. And for enamel, it's 5.5. And then for dentin, it's closer to 6.5. So what fluoride does is it raises the pH resistance.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yes. Some out there argue the enamel structure actually is weaker. This is very nuanced, but generally the dental community believes it's a stronger version of enamel. Some will argue when you look under scanning electron microscopy, the crystalline structure can be more wave-like and potentially the bonds could break more easily. But generally, you know, topical fluoride does work.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
However, it is no match for a poor diet, you know, so all of this really comes back to what you're eating. So it will make you less at risk for cavities, but it's not a shoo-in, like it's not for sure going to prevent decay.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's a tricky word. It's a tough one.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Remineralization. Right.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. That helps.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah. This is great. This is important. So generally after you eat, you know, as I mentioned, your mouth will become more acidic. After about 20 to 30 minutes, your saliva will naturally start to buffer. So it will start to rise and raise the pH up. I like to see us eating more on a schedule. So generally every two hours or so is when we'll get full optimal remineralization.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
The issue is we are a society on the go and we're grabbing crackers and chips and granola bars and we're eating and nibbling and sipping on Frappuccinos. So we never allow that remineralization to take its full effect. So yes, when you're not putting food or drink in theory in your mouth, your saliva, if it's optimized, and we should talk about that as well, will be remineralizing.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But unfortunately, I do feel so many of us are just not in balance. You know, we're dehydrated, we're mineral deficient, we're calcium deficient, we're And we're mouth breathing, so the pH is changing just from mouth breathing can make the mouth more acidic. And so there's a lot of factors at play.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you, Andrew.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But in theory, if I can make one suggestion to someone out there who might be struggling with cavities, I want to know not only what are you eating, but how frequently are you eating it? And this is a great reason why from a dental standpoint, fasting, intermittent fasting, or time-restricted eating is a great way way to combat dental decay. It's also better on gut health as well.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
The migrating complex, the cleansability, just giving things a break and a rest is really important.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Like added sugar.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Fermentable carbohydrates is what I like to say, but that gets kind of nerdy. So not directly. It's really acid that causes cavities. So what sugar does, and I like everyone to think of flour like sugar. This is also very important because the bacteria in our mouth, they thrive, the pathogenic bacteria, they thrive on sugar. But flour will act like sugar in the mouth.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So they'll also thrive on flours. So the crackers, the bread.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Well, the issue is— You like to give up sourdough, right? I like sourdough, too. The issue is more contact time. So things that are really sticky and dried, I would argue. So crackers or toast.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Chips. I mean, think about if you take a handful of goldfish crackers. I haven't done that in a long time. But imagine that. It's all throughout your teeth, in between the teeth, down in the grooves. It's sticky. Yeah. It's just a smorgasbord for the bacteria. And so what do the bacteria do when they metabolize the sugar or the flour? They release acid.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And so if that food substrate is stuck against the tooth for a long period of time, and these foods are also hyperpalatable, so we're meant to be just snacking and grazing, hitting the bliss point, you know, grab a handful. go do something, come back, grab another handful. You're just constantly feeding that bacteria. So your mouth is staying constantly acidic.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So it's truly the acid that causes cavities. But I would argue that sugar or flour is kind of the catalyst that feeds the bacteria to create that imbalance.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And interestingly, broccoli or prebiotic fiber is what feeds the good bacteria. So I work mostly with children now, and we can talk about why that transition happened. I used to work with adults, but I teach them, eat the rainbow, feed the good guys. OK, so we want to feed our healthy bacteria more than we want to feed the bad bacteria.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And that's not to say you can't ever have fun and enjoy some fun foods, but it's all about balance. And so I think people don't realize the true root cause issue with dental disease is primarily diet. You know, we're so hyper focused on diet. fluoride and what's in your toothpaste and the mouthwash and all these products.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But all of those things are really just masking the underlying issue, which is how are these bacteria behaving? What types of bacteria and in what ratios do we have them in the mouth and how often are we feeding them?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yes. I mean, for example, I personally haven't used fluoride for many, many years and neither have my children just because I know there are other ways to prevent disease. And I have many of my patients that choose not to use fluoride or these products also because I think so many people have been taught you have to have this product, fluoride, et cetera, to stay cavity and disease free.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But if you eat a clean diet, focus on just some of the pillars of health, that will translate into the mouth as well.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Sure. So I'm not advocating for any one diet, and I do believe we're all different. So what works for some people may not work for others. But generally what I suggest is really high-quality protein sources. a wide array of vegetables, fruit. I would argue you should limit fruit potentially, especially if you're a high decay risk, just because there is sugar, fructose.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But I don't want to villainize fruit. There's so many healthy benefits of polyphenols and everything in it. So nuts, seeds, olives, pickles. I love fermented foods for gut health and then oral microbiome support too. So essentially a whole food diet, things that come from the earth and more from farms and less from factories, less things out of bags.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Arguably ultra processed foods should be avoided as much as possible or minimized and then trying to stick to minimally processed or unprocessed foods.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
We want to look good. I mean, I appreciate and respect that. I do think we've moved a little away from reality with some of that. So I agree with you. I think there are teeth out there that could not be quite so bright. But you do you. I think everyone should do what makes them happy. So what makes teeth white?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So interestingly, if you look at a baby tooth next to an adult tooth – and I get this call all of the time from parents – So the child loses their first baby tooth. The adult tooth starts to come in. And adult teeth are quite a bit darker than baby teeth, which are very white and bright. And they're worried. What's wrong with my child's teeth? They're so yellow.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
That's actually a very natural shade of enamel. And why is that? It all has to do with that crystalline structure and the mineralization. So baby teeth are less mineralized, and the crystalline structure is a little more haphazardly arranged. It's not quite as organized. So instead of like Lincoln logs lined up, it's more like pickup sticks to some degree. Why is that?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Baby teeth are meant to resorb, dissolve, and fall out. Okay, so this is why baby teeth are also much more susceptible to decay. Okay. So the whiteness is coming how the light reflects and refracts off the teeth, which is a lot of times why you hear if you use hydroxyapatite or even coconut oil, it's changing the surface modification.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So it's changing the way light reflects and refracts off that tooth to make it seem whiter and brighter. Now, certainly with adult teeth, if you're using bleaching agents, you know, hydrogen peroxide or carbon monoxide, some of the stronger bleachings, that's actually penetrating into the tooth and changing the structure, pulling out stain.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Well, they do bleaching trays, essentially. Well, people will rinse with hydrogen peroxide, yes. And it will make your teeth brighter and whiter, but I'm telling you it's going to do a number on your oral microbiome. So I suggest it in a very limited fashion.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's biomimetic. It depends on how you look at life, I think. I prefer... biomimetic materials personally. Again, it's a personal choice, but I agree with you. My patients who have switched to hydroxyapatite, and I'd like to point out not all hydroxyapatite toothpastes are the same. It depends on sourcing and the other ingredients that are in there.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But generally speaking, their teeth look healthier, stronger, whiter, and brighter. They just look more nourished, more hydrated. Their
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, it can be xerostomia or dry mouth. So we definitely lose salivary capabilities as we age. Very likely more mouth breathing. So mouth breathers will tend to have darker teeth because the teeth desiccate, they dry out. And over time, you will experience mineral loss. Decades and decades of coffee, tea, wine will do it too.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's good.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah. Got to live life.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But yeah. And so they're losing minerals too, you know, over time. Your teeth take a beating. I mean, we're living to be a hundred now. That's a long time to maintain this non-shedding surface in our body, you know? And then it depends on the generation too, but-
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Some generations, especially as you mentioned, 70s, 80s, I'd wonder about tetracycline exposures when there's certain antibiotics that we don't use anymore that were known to darken the teeth, which is why they pulled them from common prescription.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Sure, great question. Great way to start off. So I first want to commend you and thank you for including the oral microbiome and oral health as one of the pillars of health. That means a great deal and it has a lot to do with this answer. So unfortunately, we have been taught that we need to carpet bomb the mouth. We need to add
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
astringents and alcohols and foaming agents and really strong essential oils to clean disinfect and to freshen the breath but we're really what we're doing with these products is damaging our delicate microbiome which can make things far worse so much of oral health is a less is more approach and It's not so product heavy.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It should be more focused on diet and lifestyle, like anything with health. Unfortunately, dentistry has been separated and compartmentalized out of the body like much of medicine. We're so specialized and subspecialized in dentistry is included in that. And we need to remember it's all interconnected. And what we're doing to the mouth, whether it be strong toothpaste, mouthwashes, certain gums,
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And even what we're eating and how we're breathing can really do a number on our oral health. And so it's taking a different perspective and it's a bit of a mindset shift to really get us back to optimization.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I've worked with that population before.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yes, this is a big part of my practice. So we need to understand the why, just like anything. Why are you a mouth breather? So humans are obligate nasal breathers where we are meant to be breathing through our nose. Unfortunately, so many of us are mouth breathers. They estimate up to 50% of the population now breathes through their mouth.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I personally think that's an underestimate with what I'm seeing in my practice. So why is this? So the theory is that ancestrally, we used to chew and masticate up to four hours a day. This act of chewing, it pushes forces out. It was actually what grows the face, the lateralization of the tongue, the tongue elevating. It would grow the jaws wide, the sinuses wide, including breastfeeding, okay?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
We now flash forward 10,000, 12,000 years, okay? So we had the agricultural revolution. We went from hunter-gatherer society to agrarian. Then the industrial revolution. We started milling and processing everything. Everything's soft and mushy now. We used to chew four hours a day. We now chew four minutes a day. So there's atrophy, essentially.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
We slurp our food.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Oh, I cried during that movie.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I was so worried that it was true, and here we are.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yes. So this is many generations of this happening. We're essentially shrinking. James Nestor phrases it, we're dis-evolving, okay? So faces are shrinking, jaws are shrinking. This is why we see so much crowding in teeth. If you go to the Natural History Museum in New York, Washington, D.C., look at the ancestral skulls. The teeth are pristine. There's no decay.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And all 32 teeth, including the wisdom teeth, fit perfectly into the dental arches. So that was not that long ago in human, you know, our trajectory. So what has happened? It's our food. It's how we're chewing. It's how we're breathing. And so if this structure shrinks periodically, The nasal volume shrinks, the sinuses shrink, the airway shrinks. Our tongue has no room in our mouth anymore.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So it either sticks out, tongue thrusts, or it falls back, you know, and it's obstructing us. So there's so much sleep disordered breathing, dysregulated breathing, and sleep apnea now that's not getting diagnosed. So if we look at children early and they come into me and I can see it as they walk in, they generally will have forward head posture. because they're trying to open their airway, okay?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Forward head posture, they have dark circles. That's called venous pooling. That's a sign of inflammation, secondary to mouth breathing. You can see more of the whites of their eyes, so it has to do with their visual plane. So forward head posture, the droopy eyes from inflammation, you see more of the sclera, the white of the eye. They just look congested and sick.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
They just, and their mouth's open. And those kids have major airway issues, and we need to understand why. So it is generally either a hard tissue issue or a soft tissue issue. So what would the hard tissue issues be? That would be the size and shape of the jaws, the size and shape of the palate. Um, this, the position of the jaws, you know, is your jaw set back? Is it forward like a bulldog?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It really depends on the ingredients. So I'd like people to start looking at their oral health care products like they're starting to look at food labels. We should be reading the ingredients and understanding why they're there and what they're doing, where are they sourced from. But certainly, I think so many of us feel it has to burn in foam to be effective. What is toothbrushing?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Um, and do you have a deviated septum? You know, they, they asked me, um, 75% of humans can have some sort of deviated septum and people think that's ridiculous. It's not just from getting in a fight and getting your nose broken. So think of it this way. If your palate is narrow and I smushed your face like this, um, the septum has to go somewhere, and so it will can't, okay?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So that's what creates the deviated septum. And so if we expand a face, and this is what early functional orthodontists, and this is what I'm doing in my practice, are doing in these younger kids, you put in a little retainer, that can help expand the face and the septum straightens and now we can breathe better. So that's hard tissue.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Soft tissues could be enlarged adenoids, enlarged tonsils, oral motor dysfunction, low tongue tone, low tongue positioning too.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I really want this to happen to myself.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And it's guided. Yeah. They do one that's guided.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It depends on your age. So most facial development is done around the age of 10. So the issue I would say with traditional orthodontics, which is when you wait for all the baby teeth to fall out and then you put braces on, you can't control the modeling of the face, the midface, the jaws, which is why we now are starting with functional therapies as young as three or four years old with retainers.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So... In the middle of our palate is a suture filled with cartilage. And so with kids, it's really easy to manipulate and change facial development. If you make the jaws wider, not only is it improving airway, but the teeth will come in straight. Now they have room. The reason they come in crooked is there's not enough room for them to come in.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
What is it really doing? You're disrupting the biofilm, which is really the plaque or the bacteria that are adhered to your teeth. And so all these extra bells and whistles, it's sort of extra credit. But if you're perfectly imbalanced, we shouldn't need all these stripping agents and strong mints and things.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's important to know the floor of the mouth, the roof, sorry, the roof of the mouth is the floor of the nose. So if you expand the palate, the sinuses will get wider. The septum's going to upright. Everything's connected. Now, as an adult, um, It's really hard to manipulate bone structure just through posturing and habit.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
There are myofunctional therapists, which they're the best, and they're really important in this conversation. Think of them like physical therapists for breathing, teaching you to keep your lips closed, your tongue up. All of this musculature is really important. Toning it. If you don't use it, you lose it.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So if you're a mouth breather, your tongue will lay low, your tongue's a muscle, it will get weak, it will get flaccid. So we want to strengthen these muscles to help with lip seal and nasal breathing. But as an adult, if you do have a skeletal discrepancy, usually you need some sort of intervention.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
You're not going to just be changing it through lip taping or how you're training or myofunctional therapy. And there are more conservative ways now besides true jaw surgery. There's an appliance called the homeoblock, which I know is what James Nestor used. You can read about it in his book. That will actually start to change facial structure. There's less invasive treatments.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
There's an MSC appliance. It's a maxillary skeletal expansion device. It does put these little mini screws in your palate, but it will pop the suture. And adults in this is, you really would have to want this because you're struggling so much. And people who aren't breathing well, they're struggling. I think it's the most important thing for health is how you're breathing and how you're sleeping.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And with children, if they're not breathing appropriately and they're waking up a lot, which is why it would be interesting to get some sort of product on you. I'm just curious. Do you get into deep sleep? Do you get into REM sleep? I do. Great.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So you get 20 percent more oxygen when you nasal breathe. And this is really important for children in these formative years of brain development. And this is why we're seeing studies showing that children who mouth breathe have sleep disorder breathing. They have behavioral issues and many are getting diagnosed with ADHD and ADHD.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So, for example, sodium lauryl sulfate is a foaming agent, but it also can be really disruptive to the oral mucosa and can lead to oral ulceration. So that's a common ingredient that causes foaming that I would argue we do not need. Your toothpaste shouldn't foam, nor should it burn. Essential oils, we think, oh, those are natural. They're healthy, right? Well, many are very antimicrobial.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
arguably potentially put on medications when really if we'd screened them for airway issues, potentially we could have avoided some of this. And it also has to do, we're not getting into deep sleep. The glymphatic system's not kicking in. Hormone function's not kicking in. So a lot of these children, growth hormone is impaired.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Anti-diuretic hormone is impaired if they're not getting into deep restorative sleep. So that's why we see bedwetting. Some signs to look for in your partner or your children is tossing and turning, clenching, grinding, snoring or noisy breathing, sleeping in really odd positions like craning the neck because they're trying to open their airway, spinning around the bed, you know,
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
the child's legs are in and the body's like out of the bed, the bedsheets are everywhere. And then certainly waking up unrested and then noticing behavioral issues too.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So no bleeding gums. We do not want inflamed bleeding gums. Flossing is something we haven't touched upon yet, but it's incredibly important, not only for cavity prevention, but gum health. Pink in the sink, any amount of bleeding is a sign of inflammation and it doesn't just stay in the body. It can impact the entire system.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So please take your gum health seriously for nothing else than for your sexual health.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah. You want to make sure you can do so safely. So with kids, I always suggest they get screened by an airway-focused dentist or potentially an otolaryngologist or an ENT. For adults, there is a test that you can do. It's the three-minute test. Can you breathe through your nose? without panicking or feeling sympathetically challenged for three minutes.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So you can either put water in your mouth, put a piece of paper, tape your lips, and literally time yourself. And if you can breathe through your nose successfully, then you, in theory, can safely lip tape. There are different tapes that you can do that are open in the middle so you can still off-gas or it feels less invasive.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And what I suggest if people are interested in it is just start five minutes while you're chopping vegetables for dinner and then move up to 30 minutes while you're watching a show and then watch a whole movie. for two hours. And then if you've been able to tape that long, you can do so at night as well. I will tell you, it is one of the top things that I have done to improve my health.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And I do see it with my wearables and my sleep data.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And so they could be damaging the healthy bacteria in your mouth. So that's where that strong burn after many toothpaste, you really don't need that. And if your breath is so bad or you have halitosis that you feel the need for that, then I would argue, well, let's dig deeper. Why is your breath? So in balance, there's probably something else going on.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Interesting.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's kind of a yoga move too.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
You can do a lot to improve your airway health through breathing rehabilitation. So I think that is a big part that's missing in these conversations with airway health. You know, we talk about, well, you need to see the airway trained dentist. You need to see the myofunctional therapist, the orthodontist, the ENT. That's a lot.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But it is. It's a lot to unpack airway issues. If parents are out there, there's two books, three I'd recommend if you're very interested in this since it impacts so many people. Certainly Breath by James Nestor, Jaws, as you mentioned, by Sondra Kahn, and Sleep Wrecked Kids by Sharon Moore. If you're a parent.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Sleep Wrecked Kids.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yes, by Sharon Moore. So it will just help you screen and understand why we're worried about these things more. But, yeah, we can't overemphasize airway health, especially in our children. You know, and catching it early and intervening early is really important.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, I think it's time and place can be very beneficial. So where I like it is if because I will say, hey, parents, you really need to avoid crackers and chips and granola bars. And they say, what do I feed my kid? You know, and.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So if we've missed the window of how to introduce food to children or they just favor those type of foods, what's a good strategy if you're out on the go to minimize decay risk and increase salivary health? Choose some gum, particularly xylitol gum, because xylitol will inhibit... bacterial proliferation. It will reduce strep mutans, which is the bacteria that causes cavities. Big fan of xylitol.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So I really encourage people to start learning about their products. I think we just give dentistry and teeth, just we push it to the side. It's kind of an afterthought many times. And just like we're prioritizing skincare, shampoo, things that we're putting on our bodies, we need to be focused on the ingredients in our oral healthcare products too.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So offering a piece of xylitol gum after an exposure to some of these snack foods, these fermentable carbohydrates is great. It will loosen the food. It will increase salivary health. Some people like it to strengthen, you know, mastic gum. I always get asked about that. You can overdo it. You know, I worry about temporomandibular Dysfunction.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Or you feel something pop up in your joint.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah. I'm not a big fan. I like to just explain it. Think of a baseball pitcher. I mean, how many of them go on the disabled list because they're overusing their shoulder? It's a similar joint, you know, rotation. We're only meant to chew really for sustenance. That's how we were evolved. So if you're chewing gum all day... it's very likely wearing down the cartilage in your joint.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So I'm not a huge fan of it. I just personally don't love gum chewing, but I think time and place too. So especially from a cavity standpoint or hydration, you know, increasing salivary flow. But just, I would just chew it for a couple of minutes, throw it out. You don't need to be chewing it for an extended period of time.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yes. Yes, thank you. So the issue, as we mentioned, is we are slurping and smooshing our food.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Well, you do that in your mouth. You're supposed to do that through chewing.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's Go-Gurts and applesauces and fruit snacks. Baby food. Baby food, exactly.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Exactly. So I'm not advocating in one camp or the other. There can be a mix, but there's blended food that's offered, or you can do more of a baby-led weaning, which is eating more real foods. Obviously, please be smart about this. Don't give choking hazards to your children.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
There's a lot of information out there that you can look on how to safely prepare food for your child, but chewing is incredibly important for facial development.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Chicken nuggets and French fries. And yeah, we need to chew. When really asked what's going on with the airway, why does everyone, why are faces shrinking? It's chewing. We've lost chewing. And then arguably breastfeeding too. We've moved away from exclusively breastfeeding too.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
How many people? I don't know either. I don't know. But it's certainly – I think it's making a resurgence. And a lot of people, though, are doing a blend. And we do what we need to do. I mean a lot of women are working and – So it's important to know if you're not able to breastfeed or it doesn't resonate with you or you are working and having a pump that there are fixes, okay?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So this isn't dire, but just working with someone to catch these issues early And also, unfortunately, even if we're doing all the things correctly, introducing hard foods, our child's chewing and their nasal breathing and we're breastfeeding, it's hard to combat generations and generations of dis-evolution, essentially. So a lot of humans are needing intervention now.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Sodium lauryl sulfate. And the problem is there's derivatives. So some cleaner versions might have coconut-derived SLS derivatives. Many people will do okay with those, but a common complaint I see in my office are oral ulcerations. And the first thing I think of is what's in your toothpaste. Does it have SLS or a derivative?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yes, and many other systems too. So much research. So they're finding 57 diseases are linked back to oral dysbiosis or oral pathogens, which is quite a lot. And different species can affect different parts of the body. So what does this all come down to? It comes down to gum disease. So it's important to note about 80% of the global population suffers from some sort of gum disease.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
That's huge, you know. And about 10% of the population will have severe periodontal disease, which is chronic bone loss, tissue loss. And this is where we get tooth loss, too. So it's sort of a continuum. But these all have one thing in common. It's the type of bacterial species that live in our mouths and when they get out of balance. So there's something called the red complex.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
These are the five bacteria that most influence gum disease and dysbiosis that can affect the heart and other organ systems. The big contenders, P. gingivalis, F. nucleatum, T. denticola. There's AA and then strep mutans too can affect the heart as well. But why do these bugs, how do they get where these other organ systems are and what are they doing? So I like to term this leaky gums.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So we've all heard leaky guts.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Because we're all different and some people have more sensitivities and will react more to those.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So let's say we're just in dysbiosis and probably because maybe our oral hygiene isn't the best as well as some other things. So we're not flossing, let's say, and our gums bleed.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Okay, that's a sign of inflammation, but you've now have created a vector, an opening in the skin, in the mucosa where bacteria can get into the circulatory system, catch a free ride and end up in places they shouldn't be. And that creates an immune response. So in inflammation, okay? And then also these bacteria release endotoxins, okay? They can create cytokine storms, all kinds of things.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So the body doesn't like these bacteria to end up where they shouldn't. So heart disease, for example, if you have gum disease, you're twice as likely, two times as likely to have cardiovascular issues. If you have gum disease, you're three times more likely to have stroke. A lot of this is correlative
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
not quite causal yet, but some of these are looking to have more influence than others and there's more research that's needed. Fertility is a big one that I like to speak about. So women who have gum disease can take two months longer to get pregnant and to conceive. And there are studies that show in couples that can't conceive that 90% of the men show some sign of gum disease.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And once they go in and get it treated, then their fertility conception improves by 70%. That's significant. Yeah. And it's not only gum disease, but just any oral infection. P. gingivalis is being linked to Alzheimer's and dementia. You know, these bacteria end up in the brain, they cross the blood-brain barrier, and they create amyloid plaques and inflammation in the brain.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Aphthous ulcers, yes.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And so there have been studies, many studies now, one big one was out of Harvard, where they sampled the cerebral spinal fluid in the brains and saw that in these plaques they had P. gingivalis of almost 100% of the patients. And when they tested them against other patients who had passed away without dementia or Alzheimer's, they didn't see any P. gingivalis.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So there's a lot of association and links right now that we need more research on. The other to be aware of is cancer. And this is why I love people to consider oral microbiome testing. I personally have a friend who we tested her oral microbiome, and she was through the roof with F. nucleatum.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Pretty asymptomatic otherwise, but F. nucleatum is linked to increased risk of pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, and colorectal cancer. I mean, we swallow 2,000 times a day, and we know some of these bugs, these bacteria, they can live through the stomach acid and make their way down into the gut.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I have someone really close to me dealing with it right now. He actually just had his pancreas removed prophylactically because it was precancerous.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So if you could just test your spit, you know, it's a simple test. I can give some of the tests that I like in the show notes, but you just spit into this little vial and mail it off and then they send back your results with you. I mean, that's pretty amazing. You do need to find a dentist who can then guide you. What do you do with this information?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
a lot of these pathogens, they do need antibiotics. They're very virulent. They're spirochetes. So they're corkscrew shaped and they can just impregnate and wedge into tissue. And so sometimes we really do need to be pretty heavy hitting with how we treat them. So antibiotics.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's usually an amoxicillin type of blend that they'll use.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So it could be secondary to trauma, certainly. It can be viral related. So the herpes virus often will result in oral ulceration.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Just preventatively?
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think it's harder to repopulate the gut and the oral microbiome than one might think. I like a less is more approach. I think there's better ways to kill off bad things like ozone therapy is being used a lot. I use ozone in my office.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So, Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yes. But also, and this is off, not on many people's radars, you know, the mouth is the gateway into the body and the mouth is the gut. I want people to start thinking of it that way. So what happens in the mouth can be a reflection of what's happening in the gut.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And so a lot of times when I have patients that come in with recurrent aphthous ulcers or ulcerations, that can be a sign of Crohn's or celiac, IBS, like something going on deeper within that we need to be evaluating, food sensitivities, etc.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
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Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I mean, if that bothers you, there are ways to bleach your teeth or lighten your teeth. Hydroxyapatite is a wonderful way to improve the brightness and whiteness of your teeth and oil pulling as well. Or you can use heavy hitter bleaches too. Just don't overdo it. Everybody's overdoing everything now. And bleaching too much can damage your teeth. It can...
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
cause chemical harm to the to the pulp or the nerve over time and some people will get spontaneous abscessing or need root canals I mean these are people who are really like bleaching all the time the people who you need sunglasses to look at their teeth and it's just not really a natural aesthetic but some people are into that but just know what the risks are that's what I would say
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
now it's completely gone yeah so we have minor salivary glands on the floor of our mouth and that is a common place people will see calculus or tartars those lower teeth that's where you'll feel your hygienist scraping a lot but i wonder if it's because you increased your k2 in your diet which helps with calcium metabolism and i supplement k2 but i was doing that before and then i um
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I use either the SILHA test, which is more just biomarkers. Have you spelled that? S-I-L-L-H-A. This is done in an office. It's just testing basic biomarkers. So I use it a lot as an educational tool. It will show the pH, the acidity, if there's leukocytes, if there's red blood cells, inflammatory markers. So a lot of parents, this is so new to them when I'm talking about this.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But it prints out in a graph form for them. It's a cheek swab? Spit.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, kids usually won't spit till about four, just physically. It's hard. Yeah, it's hard.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Anyway, but I really like tests that use shotgun metagenomics because you're looking for the whole array of bacterial DNA. And so my favorite is bristle, like a toothbrush bristle, and it's direct to consumer. So because the issue is I can talk about all of these things, but sometimes it's hard to find providers that are offering them.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So I really love people to be able to get the tools in their home.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And it's really user-friendly. Their interface is wonderful. And they will give guidance and protocols.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
That's fine. As long as people know. Their oral probiotic, we have a collaboration with their oral probiotic. But regardless if it's Bristle or not, you look for a test that's using shotgun metagenomics. Okay.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yes. There's PCR testing, too, and a lot of biological dentists will offer something like oral DNA is the most popular. The issue with that is it's really only looking at the top 12 pathogens, periodontal pathogens, which is important, but there can be a lot of other information that you're missing. So it's a great place to start, and your dentist may offer that.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Again, it's oral DNA, and I have no affiliation with oral DNA.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And there's more and more popping up. The oral microbiome is really blowing up. So for those who are looking for investment opportunities, I'd say look toward the oral microbiome. It's kind of what the gut microbiome was doing a decade plus ago.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Skeletal fluorosis.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It doesn't make sense. You're thinking critically about it.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I'll do my best.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I appreciate that.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Well, I will get it too. Don't worry. I have thick skin at this point.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And I haven't had a cavity for multiple decades and haven't used fluorine. And Portland isn't fluoridated.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It is not. So let's talk about that. So fun story. Back in 2011, 2012, I was working on the pro-water fluoridation campaign, volunteering in Portland, picketing and handing out educational flyers because I thought we needed it in our water. And this is because that's how I was trained. And I just never questioned it. I never picked up a journal to look at the other side.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I thought anyone speaking out against water fluoridation, that's the Tin Hat Brigade, that's the Woo Woo Caucus, all the things. I was that person.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah. So I went to a debate in Portland, pro versus against. I don't like those terms, but it's just the easiest way to describe it. And I was sitting kind of on the pro side and just waiting to see these pseudoscientists come out to speak. And I was so profoundly impressed with what they said and also the had no idea that there were any concerns with, with fluoride.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I had never been taught that in dental school, the endocrine disruption, the neurotoxicity, the skeletal fluorosis. I knew about dental fluorosis, but I, at that point was of the mindset, well, it's just aesthetic, you know, but your teeth are stronger. And the microbiome issues too. So it didn't take long. I just started rabbit holing. And there's so much literature.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And this, again, this was quite a while ago. And more and more data and literature is coming out to question the practice. So it's important to go back to the history of water fluoridation. I'll try to be brief. In the early 1900s, there was a dentist in Colorado Springs, Frederick McKay, who noticed his patients had mottled, brown-spotted teeth, but they were really strong.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
They weren't getting decay. And so this kind of spread, and they started kind of trying to understand the why. And they realized there was a really high concentration of fluoride in the natural water supply that this community was drinking. And this just kind of spread like wildfire with very little evidence-based medicine to back it because this was in the early 1900s. Now it was like the 1930s.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So no long-term safety studies or efficacy studies. And it was put in as an experiment in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the mid-40s. After about a decade or so, they noticed that caries rates, cavity rates were going down. And so based on this observation, it just went like wildfire throughout the United States. And I believe about 80% of the United States is fluoridated.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So the pro-advocates, if you will, will say it's the greatest public health movement of the century because decay was such an issue. It's important to know dental decay is the top chronic disease globally in children and adults. It's almost entirely preventable. I think we've just normalized it. You just get cavities. But I'd like to point out we're one of the only species to get dental decay.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Wild animals don't get decay. Our domesticated animals do. because of what we're feeding them, the kibble, processed animal food. So here we are. So it's been controversial from the beginning. Epidemiologists, endocrinologists, neuroscientists have always challenged it, saying this is a bad idea. It's a highly reactive element.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
The fluoride ion can interfere with iodine uptake and, again, skeletal fluorosis, neurotoxicity, etc. So About seven years ago, there was a federal trial in Northern California, but it was federal. The people versus the EPA. It was a TASCA trial. And this has been ongoing for the past seven years.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And basically, they were saying, where is your safety data, EPA, on the long-term effects of water fluoridation? So the idea was that if we put it in the water... It's not a very efficient way to get fluoride to people, but eventually it will make itself into the saliva and have a topical effect coming out through the saliva.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
They used to think systemically it was actually incorporating into the developing teeth in children, making the enamel stronger that way, but that's been debunked. So now it's most likely still a topical benefit, maybe a little bit of a systemic benefit, touching the teeth. And we do know fluoride really needs to work topically.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
We don't need to be ingesting it, and that is all through the data, and they're teaching that in dental schools now too, okay? Okay. But this is the easiest way to get fluoride to the masses because caries or cavities are such an issue, right? Now, my first comment on this is we're not addressing the root cause of dental decay, which is our food. It's all the ultra-processed foods.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Again, we didn't really see dental decay in humans until the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and now the ultra-processed food craze that's been happening the past many decades. Okay?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
1900, they would have decay. But if you looked at about 10,000 years ago, very little. You know, unless they lived in an area with a lot of fruit abundance or honey, like where are you getting your sugar from? You know, and you go pick some berries on a bush, you're competing with the animals and the birds. You didn't have much opportunity to overconsume sugar. Mm-hmm.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But, you know, there was the sugar trade and then we just sugar was a sign of wealth and royalty and people's teeth just rotted out. And it was because of our diet. So that's the root cause issue that no one's talking about. You know, we're just saying let's slap fluoride on it. How about we educate and teach people what is really causing cavities? But anyway, okay.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So the task of trial was going on, and Judge Edward Chen was waiting for this National Toxicology Program's report, which was under the Department of Health and Human Services. And this is – it reads like a soap opera, to be honest with you – And it kept getting delayed and postponed, and they wouldn't release it.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And finally, under the Freedom of Information Act, he said this needs to be released. And it said there is a strong correlation between increased fluoride consumption and IQ issues in children. And so with that, he took this information and he made his ruling. Now, this was after years of expert testimonies as well, okay?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
saying there's an unreasonable risk to current water fluoridation practices in the United States. This was his ruling that just happened late last year. I mean, this is very new. And EPA, you now need to fix this. You need to regulate this better.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
What people will argue is a lot of the studies they were looking at that are showing lowered IQ in children or neurocognitive issues, it was at 1.2 or 1.5 milligrams per liter. That was the concentration. The United States, we now do 0.7 milligrams per liter. But that's per liter. So how many liters of water do you drink a day? This is the controversy.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So, for example, the American Academy of Pediatrics generally recommends pregnant women drink two to three liters a day. You might be cooking with fluoridated water, making your pasta, making your soup. How do we really know how much someone's getting exposed to? What's their body composition? How much do they weigh? What are the other outside sources of fluoride?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Are they swallowing their toothpaste fluently? Fluoride is in many pharmaceuticals because it helps increase bioavailability, especially SSRIs and Prilosec. A lot of these have fluoride in them.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yes. Ultra processed foods will have fluoride. So the factory that's making your Rockstar energy drink or your... Hi-C or, you know, whatever you're consuming, they're not using reverse osmosis to filter the water. So you're getting fluoride that way. It's naturally found in green tea and black tea. And this is not to make people worried about green and black tea. I still consume them.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's more to say, how are we really understanding how much is exposed to? And so they were finding that pregnant women, they follow, there's many studies now, but a famous one was the Rivka Green study out of Canada, and they followed about 520 mother-child pairs.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
They tested urinary fluoride in the mother per trimester, averaged it, and then followed these children to the age of three or four and did IQ tests and found that that mothers who had higher concentrations of urinary fluoride, the children tested lower on their IQ tests, up to five to seven points, and that's on par with lead, okay?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
On par with lead, yes. And so that was in 2019. There's been so many more studies now. So the judge ruled, EPA, you need to regulate this better. In that amount of time, there was a meta-analysis that came out that further supported the NTP report by JAMA Pediatrics. And this is very controversial for these editors to be putting out, by the way. So I commend them.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And also a Cochrane report came out, Cochrane Collaborative, which has said—this, again, was very recent— Looking at all the data from water fluoridation, water fluoridation isn't reducing decay like we thought it was. It's only reducing decay by about one quarter a cavity per person. One quarter of a cavity per person. So that's not statistically significant. So people will say, well, what gives?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Why were cavity rates going down when we added fluoride to the water? Well... It's hard to say. Maybe they were already just going down due to education, more access to dental hygiene and toothbrushing, flossing. But also, we now have fluoride everywhere in our toothpaste. So fluoride was put in the water in the 1940s. It wasn't added to our toothpaste until the 1960s. Now it's everywhere.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
We get fluoride everywhere. Rinses, the varnishes that made you vomit. At the office. And by the way, that's very common. That's very common. And it's because a lot of those fluoride varnishes, number one, fluoride, you know, it does have a poison control label on it. You're not supposed to swallow it. But these varnishes also have polyurethane and hexane derivatives in them.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's what makes them so sticky.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I know that flavor.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So it's very controversial. And unfortunately, we've lost sight of the science. It's getting buried in politics right now. And it really upsets me because it's not a political issue. We just need to look at the data. And I feel like we're losing sight of the scientific method.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
You know, the American Dental Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics is doubling down on saying we have to put fluoride in the water. And for nothing else, I think it's important to know 97% of the world does not fluoridate their water. This is a very United States controversy. Many countries removed it and found, I think it was Denmark, Germany, Japan, they have very low decay rates.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And why is this? Well, they educated their population on what's really causing decay and also made fluoride toothpaste accessible.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I think they're crowded and crooked, too. And a lot of that has to do, I think, with facial development as well. I think we see a lot of Western European, they do have that kind of dysmorphic face, if you will, probably from nasal breathing. Who knows why? Industrial Revolution, allergies, mouth breathing, et cetera. Why does it seem more prevalent there? So that's the take, the quick take on it.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And so I just think it should be a personal choice. You know, if you want to use fluoride, you can go out to the store. I mean, you can get fluoride toothpaste at the dollar store now. They give it out for free at many clinics. To me, I just think it's a medical ethical issue. We're mass medicating a population without their consent.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And then the even bigger issue for me is no one's talking about this, nor can I find any literature on it. What is it doing to the gut microbiome? Because it is an antimicrobial. So that would be a wonderful study, NIH, if you're listening. Can we test... you know, people that live in fluoridated areas versus those that don't. Can we follow them?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Maybe it's a prospective cohort study to just see how their microbiomes are different. Because it just doesn't make sense to me. And why would we ingest something systemically with all these potential risks when we could just use it topically or actually talk about what's really causing decay? If fluoridation worked... So cavities wouldn't be the top disease in our country, in our children.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And many worry, well, if we take it from the water, decay may go up. And it may. I mean, there's been, they did this in Calgary, Canada, where decay rates went up. But then if you actually look at the data, the decay rates were already going up. when they removed it, but they only show you the data that they kind of want to show you for that. But again, it's a risk-benefit analysis.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I mean, I think dentists tend to be too focused on teeth. And so you mentioned, like, if they say it's good for me, I'll do it. Well, good for what? Good for your teeth or good for your whole body or good for your brain? And I think that should be an individual choice. As a parent, do I want to choose one quarter less cavity in my child or do I want to preserve their optimal brain development?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, and I'm a dentist. I was trained to fix teeth. I can fix a one-quarter cavity in a tooth. I can't fix a developing brain. We have one shot to develop a brain. We have one shot to grow a face. You know, it's really important.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And without a risk assessment. So your low decay rate- I might be a really high decay rate. You don't need anything extra. Your diet, your balance, your microbiome is great. I'm not eating well. My hygiene is terrible. You know, we can't just blanketly be treating everyone the same. We're supposed to be doing risk assessments.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
The children.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So water fluoridation, the fluoride that they get is a byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer industry, and it's called hydrofluorosilicic acid. So as a byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer industry, it's considered a hazardous waste, and it's very expensive to dispose of. But they have found that if diluted in theory and put – it's an acid, first of all.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So if it's put into our water system, it is so diluted that it becomes safe. But I will say, you know, everyone can go – research this and look at themselves, but it does come in like cement bags with skull and crossbones on the front. And they do have to wear hazmat suits to put it into our water. They're supposed to titrate it.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And I think what's interesting, you know, we're supposed to target 0.7 milligrams per liter. I've been involved in some educational campaigns and have tested communities surrounding Portland. It's very hard to keep it in range, you know, and so there are some communities testing as high.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
We've seen as 2.2 milligrams per liter, which definitely falls into, based on the science and literature, more concerning zone for neurocognitive issues and other issues. Health issues. So if you're concerned, you can call your local water bureau, municipality. I will say I don't think the federal government is going to have much control over this. It would be nice if the EPA stepped in.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Potentially. I'm sorry to hear that, but we'll unpack that.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
They have appealed, by the way, but it will come down to more like on the state level and local level. And we're already seeing states like Florida and Utah have run it through and initially done a we're going to ban this as a mandatory thing in our state. And I think it's North Dakota, Kentucky.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
There's other states picking this up, too, and other communities that are removing it or not adding it to their water. So it's an interesting time to observe all of this. Yeah.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
No. I have stories to share, too. We'll get to as well. I think many people do, and that's the problem. So I wasn't taught this in dental school, interestingly enough. So this is something I learned later. out in practice. And it's the concept that your teeth can naturally remineralize if you have a small cavity. But let's start further back.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Blue city.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
The city's makeup, it's kind of like many states. So Eugene, Portland, Bend tend to be pretty blue. And I think the surrounding is more conservative. But no, it's shifted a bit, but not enough to shift out of voting liberal.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah. So again, it ties back to that translocation and creating an immune response and inflammation, as well as the endotoxins that are released. With men particularly, they're seeing increased sperm challenges with sperm motility and sperm mobility as gum disease and periodontal pathogens increase. And again, it probably has to do with the inflammation. And with women, you know,
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It can show that women take about two months longer to become pregnant. It does affect ovulation, egg quality, but also we know it can lead to miscarriages and low-term birth, low-weight birth, preterm birth, and just pregnancy complications as well. And so we are finding oral bacteria in the placenta. Okay. you know, we're finding there's different microbiomes everywhere now.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
The breast has a microbiome, the placenta has a microbiome. And so oral bacteria can end up in many of these places and just create that cascade of inflammatory events. And so certainly it's an exciting time to be alive because of all the research happening. And right now it's Again, not causal. There's a lot of correlation, but I would love to see fertility clinics focusing more on oral health.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Like how amazing would it be if they started testing the microbiome of patients and if they realize they're really high in P. gingivalis or F. nucleatum and they eradicated or lessen that bacteria. I mean, I'd be interesting to see how pregnancy and fertility outcomes would change and possibly improve.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, I guide parents on this a lot because brushing a child's teeth can be challenging. Nighttime is always the most important. One, you're removing the food particulate matter from the day away. You're disrupting that biofilm so that you're not sitting, sleeping all night, 8, 10, 12 hours if you're a child with that sticky... potentially dysbiotic biofilm on your teeth.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So your teeth are constantly going through demineralization and remineralization. And this is very natural. And anytime we put anything into our mouth besides arguably neutral water, and this has to do with pH. So anytime we eat, our mouth is the beginning of the digestive system. So we release amylase, which is an enzyme that helps break down our food. And in doing that, the pH drops.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And then you add in maybe your mouth breathing, that's going to shift the microbiome and drop the pH more. So it's really nice to go to bed with clean teeth. So I suggest focusing on the nighttime. What does drive me a little bonkers is the fact that we tend to focus so much on brushing, but we leave out flossing a lot of the So thank you for mentioning that.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
If you read children's books, you'll see they all say go brush your teeth, but never floss. So we need a revamp there. But most cavities that I see in children, and this translates to the adult population as well, are in between the teeth or interproximally in the molars. And it's really common. So a lot of parents will bring their kids in. They think they've been doing everything correctly.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
They haven't been flossing quite yet. And we take x-rays for the first time, and the children have eight cavities, which sounds like so many, but it's really common because we have eight molars. And so it happens between the teeth where you're eating those goldfish crackers, those pretzels, those chips. They get stuck in between the teeth. The bacteria come to feed.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
The acid gets released, and it just sits there hour after hour, day after day, arguably week after week if you're never flossing. Right. So I really like flossing to be part of the routine too. Again, if you can only do it once a day, that's great. That's fine. Do it at night. I like to floss first, then brush. You're dislodging the food in between and kind of brushing it away.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
There's actually studies to support this too, that order. However, beggars can be choosers. Just do it. You know, some people get a suction cup mirror. They'll do it in the shower. Some people do it in their commute in the car. I'm not going to be picky about it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
This is how we start digestion. When that happens, we lose minerals in our teeth. The acid will leach out calcium, phosphorus, and minerals from our teeth. But the concern is we don't want it to stay in that acidic state for too long, in that demineralized state for too long. Because if we allow our body to do its thing, our saliva will naturally remineralize our teeth.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. Thank you.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
This is all part of a healthy balance system. So our saliva is this golden elixir of our body, and it contains immune cells and enzymes, but also the minerals that we should need, if balanced, to create that remineralization. So there's something called the Stefan curve.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ,,,
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And essentially, it's showing us how our mouth will become acidic and neutral and acidic and neutral throughout the day as we eat. The problem is in modern society, we tend to be snacking and grazing and sipping often. All of the time. So we're not giving our mouths enough of a break, enough of an opportunity to remineralize.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, I get burning mouth question a lot, too, from my community. What's burning mouth?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So your mouth feels metallic and it truly feels burning, almost like itchy, I think. I haven't experienced it, but that's how it's described to me or kind of like a dry mouth. It can be a sign of zinc deficiency or vitamin B deficiencies. And we can see changes in those with perimenopause and menopause.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I think it's important to know the mouth is the gateway into the body and we can see nutritional deficiencies in the mouth as well. So cracks in the corner of the lips can be a zinc deficiency. It's the same with white striations on your fingernails. That can be a zinc deficiency. B vitamins can be burning mouth or geographic tongue is something people experience.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So many of us are staying in the state of constant acidity and demineralization. But what's interesting is, so if you have a small cavity or lesion that hasn't yet truly cavitated, that in a cavity means a hole. So if you look on an x-ray and I see a shadow on your tooth, it's called an incipient lesion. Those, if they're still in the enamel, those can, quote unquote, heal or remineralize.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
We're told in dental school it maybe has changed, but it's benign, you know, and just tell patients to avoid citrus and acidic foods. It is cross-linked to latex allergy and psoriasis. So it's an autoimmune issue. It can be a sign of... nutritional deficiencies, usually zinc, B or iron. And also it can be a sign of celiac, Crohn's or gut issue. Again, it's all connected.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And so a lot of times when kids see me, I will send them to a functional medicine doctor or naturopath to just make, to rule that out, you know, and there's genetic predispositions too. Yeah.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I mean, it's good not to burn.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Well, I don't think it's getting into your... I mean, hopefully you're not eating it that much. But I mean, we need to be mindful of our products. You know, there's petroleum-based products. A lot of lipsticks, lip balms, they just have nasty ingredients in them. We're learning more and more.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And, you know, they're not necessarily as regulated here from a cosmetic standpoint as they might be in the EU. So read your ingredients. But a lot of petroleum-based products will actually cause more dryness, you know, and it has a reverse effect, which is why people... get addicted to chapstick, I think. They just, their lips dry out more.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But when I see chronic dry lips, I'm thinking dehydration and are you mouth breathing? Because when you mouth breathe, all the tissues dry out. So if a kid comes in with chronically dried lips, I do wonder if they're a mouth breather. Another way to assess if you have a mouth breather on hand is, are you always asking someone in your life to chew with their mouth closed, especially kids? Yeah.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So when we're chewing, we have to breathe. So you should chew, lips closed, breathe through your nose. But if you can't because of an obstruction, deviated septum, inflamed nasal turbinates, you'll have that kid, his mouth's always open, and they tend not to chew enough. They kind of mash food and swallow it because they're worried about oxygenation. They feel like they're going to choke.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
These kids tend to get picky eaters because they stay away from meat, carrots, apples, things you have to chew a lot, and they eat more chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, because you can just mash it and swallow it. That can be a sign of oral motor dysfunction in adults and kids. So if you have a hard time chewing with your mouth closed, that's something you can explore and get help with.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
You should chew equally on both sides of your mouth. So if you're chewing just on one side, not only will you get hypertrophy of the muscle on that side, but it can cause a shift, especially in kids of the way you're growing. But I would want to know why. Why are you chewing that way? Is your occlusion or your bite off? Are you avoiding a tooth because you're in pain? Yeah. It can be a bad habit.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
There's ways to retrain, but everything should be symmetrical. So you should kind of chew, chew. Your tongue should move the bolus of food to the other side, chew, chew. So if you can't do that, it can be a sign of oral motor dysfunction too. Maybe your tongue doesn't have good range of motion or mobility. Maybe you have a tongue tie or low tone. So there's a lot that can go into that.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And this is where seeing a myofunctional therapist could really help.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Bottom of the – Floor of the mouth.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Uh-huh.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
We're going into all the controversial conversations here.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And this is where you would need to work with, let's say, a functional or biological dentist to understand how deep your cavity is. Once it becomes a hole, generally you do need some sort of treatment. But our body is meant to... for stability.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So that's called your frenum. Okay. So we all have a frenum. It's the band of tissue that attaches our tongue to the floor of the mouth. We also have a labial frenum. And sometimes you have little buccal frenums up here in the vestibule. Near the cheek. If you put your finger up in your mouth, you'll feel.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
You may have them, you may not.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's like webbed.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So the whole thing with this conversation is all about function, okay? So does your tongue and do the oral structures function appropriately? In which case... You're good. What's hard is something to be mindful of. You can't diagnose anyone from a photo on social media. So I see a lot of parent blogs who are saying, my child has a tongue tie. My child has a lip tie. You can't tell.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
We have to look at function. So is it impairing or impacting breastfeeding? Can the tongue not lift appropriately? It's all about lifting, elevating, and lateralizing. Mm-hmm. So many think tongue tie impacts you sticking your tongue out. We don't care as much about that.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
What grows the face and the palate in utero and then beyond is that tongue lifting, elevating, and spreading that palate almost like an expander, like an orthodontic expander. And so if it can't lift, that's the first sign. And that means it can't pull in the breast tissue and breastfeed appropriately. Babies might have a lot of reflux. Women will have pain, okay?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So that's one of the first things we look at. But then as children get older, we look, well, is there a tongue tie that is potentially leading to mouth breathing? So when your lips are closed and you're breathing through your nose, your tongue should be up at the palate and it should have enough tone to stay there, ideally while we sleep too.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But if your tongue is tethered, it can't lift up, your tongue's going to lay low. And you're going to have more of the Napoleon Dynamite look, okay? So that open mouth forward head posture. That's just because the tongue can't lift. Many times when people have tongue tie, their palates are narrow too because in utero, the tongue wasn't up to grow the face optimally.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And this runs genetically in families as well. the predisposition. So then the next thing we look at is speech, you know, and is it impacting speech or is it impacting chewing and swallowing?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
You know, it knows what to do, but how you eat, how frequently you're eating, and then we can get into this, but how you're breathing and certainly the products you're using and your hygiene practices all factor in as well.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So if all of those things are fine, if it looks like there's a tongue tie, but you're thriving, you're doing great, assuming you're not compensating and using other muscles and now having other downstream effects like shoulder pain, headaches, postural issues, you're great.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But if a child is having issues and you've gone through the right screening and had the risk-benefit discussion with the parents, I do think a phrenectomy is indicated. And I myself have had one, and it benefited me a lot. My issues were neck strain and a lot of shoulder tension. There's a lot of fascial tissue that's impacted with a tongue tie or can be, and so it helped me a tremendous amount.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But nothing's one size fits all and we're all different. So this is where you do want to work with someone with additional training to see if you have a tongue tie, how are they assessing that? And then is it impairing function? And then do you actually need a procedure done?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Sometimes just working with a myofunctional therapist or different body workers, a chiropractor, a craniosacral therapist, an osteopath can be enough to create balance again. So it's not always a surgical intervention.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I had my tonsils out also very recently, just a few years ago, because I had chronic tonsillitis. And so I knew I had a posterior tongue tie, and I just told the surgeon, just go ahead and do it. I'm already getting my tonsils out.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, already in there.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Usually, no. Usually, it is local. It's really not bad, especially they're using lasers now for their procedure. It's pretty straightforward. Yeah.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Exactly. You do want to generally suture and you want to make sure you're working with a myofunctional therapist before and after for optimal outcomes. It's like, think about if I went in for a knee replacement, I wouldn't just walk into the operating room. Here's my knee. Usually there's physical therapy before and after to make sure you're optimized. And so it's the same with a tongue release.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, it certainly couldn't hurt. I haven't seen any solid data on that, but it would reduce inflammation, improve blood flow, you know, so I'm not opposed to it. It's wonderful post-surgery, you know, so if you have wisdom teeth out or periodontal surgery, a lot of dentists and specialists are using red light therapy extra-orally or intra-orally to help expedite healing, collagen synthesis, etc.,
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Peptides are newer and exosomes as well that are being used, particularly in root canal therapies and maybe cavitation surgeries and things. Again, just to help with inflammation, healing, collagen synthesis. It's pretty cool. It's very cutting edge and it's very new and there's very few out there today. doing it right now. There's a couple in LA that I know are, so I can share names.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But the idea is to regenerate tissues, specifically with peptides. It can, when put down in the pulpal chamber, potentially can help build up the dentin within the tooth and maybe help increase vascularization, get some more vitality back to the tooth too. So it's pretty cool.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, stand by.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So the best dentistry is no dentistry. I will always say that. So that's why we always want to take a preventative lens as best we can. But that's not the reality since 90% of us have suffered from some sort of dental disease in our life. So mercury fillings, this can get controversial. I think the first thing to do, I don't love mercury amalgam fillings, and they were recently banned in Europe.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I think if you're getting a new filling, I would try not to have mercury placed. That would be my recommendation. Try to use a composite, ideally a ceramic-based biomimetic material. But if you have existing mercury fillings, amalgam fillings, and you're concerned, the first thing to do is get a test, get a blood test to see what are your mercury levels.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
If they're within normal, I wouldn't worry too much. If you have mercury toxicity or mercury through the roof, then you probably should have that conversation with your dental team and your medical team to see could this be coming from my fillings. And certainly if a filling is breaking, damaged, it needs to be replaced, maybe considering not doing an amalgam metal filling.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So that's kind of my stance on that. Composite fillings, you know, they are plastics essentially. Most are BPA-free, but that is a bit of a marketing thing. you know, there's still other plasticizers in there, Biz GMA, et cetera. So I do really like ceramic-based materials if you can find them. Nothing is perfect. You know, this is the best available that we have.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Regarding retainers, I get this question a lot too. Acrylic retainers, those are the pink retainers. What's interesting about those, methyl methacrylate can have gluten in it. So if you are celiac, There have been case reports of teens, especially who they keep having GI distress or rashes because celiac often can come out in the skin and they can't figure out why.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And it ties back to their retainer. So just be aware of that. And then people will ask, well, about Invisalign. And again, nothing's perfect. Usually, most of these retainers and things you're only wearing for a short period as you're trying to correct your airway issue. So lesser of two evils. I mean, I'm a big airway advocate. I want people breathing optimally.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
That is the most important thing for your health, in my opinion, is optimize oxygenation and breathing and rest and recovery. You know, I am an advocate for expansion in some of these materials and products for short durations if necessary. So we can't take all the risk out of everything, right?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And this is why the host, making sure your immune response is optimized, your detox pathways are open, your phase two liver detox is optimized. You know, that's ideal. So, yeah. Yeah.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Dandelion.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Everyone has them. So you just try to minimize your exposure. And then sealants, I am an advocate of sealants. They really do reduce cavity risk. They're usually put on the molars in the grooves and the fissures of the back teeth. But again, I use... So I use spectrometry to make sure I'm not sealing in bacteria. So it's an image that shows me if there's like caries or cavity there.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I'm using ozone to make sure I'm killing the bacteria. Sometimes I'll use my laser, which helps disinfect too, to open the groove up. And then I'm using ceramic-based materials too. So I think it depends on your risk as well. If you're low risk, you're not eating a lot of these ultra-processed foods, you're probably okay.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But a lot of kids, you know, we have control over our children's diets only to a certain point. And then they go off to middle school and start eating the Takis and the Doritos. And, you know, they make maybe some bad choices. And so if you want their teeth as protected as possible, I'd suggest sealants.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah. Thank you for bringing this up. I think it's important to talk about. Dentists do have a really high rate of depression, anxiety, and yes, suicide too. I always heard this too even before I became a dentist. And it's a really hard profession. And so we tend to be the brunt of the joke. You know, we're in the song.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
There's songs like I'm Afraid of Dentists in the Dark, you know, by Vance Joy and like Steve Martin playing the eccentric Dennis in multiple different movies, I think.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So we have hydroxyapatite, which is essentially calcium and phosphorus in our teeth. Our enamel is about 90% hydroxyapatite. The dentin, which is the layer below the enamel through the enamel, is about 60%. And our bone has hydroxyapatite too, about 60%.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Little Shop of Horrors, Horrible Bosses. There's like a crazy Dennis. There's always like horror movies have Dennis. I mean, we are the brunt of the joke a little bit. And so that's hard. And unfortunately, there are just so many negative childhood experiences at the dentist. And this is partly why I went into pediatrics is that I was an adult dentist for many years.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I felt very dissatisfied with my career because I just felt like I wasn't making a difference. You know, dental disease is so prevalent. And unless we're talking about it from this root cause lens, We're not going to move the needle, but it's very hard when you get in the system to get out of it.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
You know, the way our appointment times are set up and the overhead is crazy and the student debt now and the pressures and the things with dentists is we are the clinicians, but we're also kind of the CEOs of our businesses. Like many of us have private practices. So you're wearing two hats. So when you're done...
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
With treatment all day and seeing patients all day, then you're sitting in front of the computer and you have people to help you, but you're trying to manage the business. And we didn't go into school for that, you know, looking at spreadsheets, HR issues, etc. And many of us are in solo practices, so it can be very lonely.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But also, we tend to be more type A personalities, perfectionists, and dentistry is hard. There's a lot of unknowns. There's a lot of variables. I can put a filling in your mouth, but I can't guarantee that you're going to brush, floss, follow my rules, not eat ultra-processed foods. You're breathing through your nose. What's your microbiome like? So then...
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
You're doing all of these things that I've instructed you not to do. And then you come back because the filling fails. And we're the ones to blame for that. And don't get me wrong. There's all variations of providers out there. And there's people doing excellent work and people doing not so excellent work. But I do think it's important for everyone to know that many dentists are...
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
having a hard time with work especially post-covid i would say there's a lot of pressures um our dental insurance is very challenging you know it's not truly insurance like medical insurance it's really a benefit package and so you you tend to only get a thousand or twelve hundred dollars
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
a year and then everything else is out of pocket and so people kind of look at us like that's kind of a scam you know like it's so expensive but what they don't realize is many of these dental supply companies they have essentially monopolies on us like our equipment is outrageously expensive um and prices keep going up and up and up but what isn't changing are insurance reimbursements okay so where does that delta come in and usually it's coming out of the dentist's pocket too so
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's why corporate dentistry is taking over in a lot of ways kind of what happened in medicine. But I would just say be kind to your dentist. Just recently, this is very timely, but I don't know where this came from. Maybe it was like a TikTok thing, but there were letters being mailed.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Specifically, I saw in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon and Portland, that dentists were receiving these hate letters saying dentists are scumbags and they should all kill themselves. So I think it's important for people to know what we kind of deal with behind the scenes, you know, and to just be kind to your dentist.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
All bone.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
And I would say if someone doesn't resonate with you, if their personality doesn't resonate with you, just go find a different dentist. And I do want to understand there is a lot of post-traumatic stress disorder from patients who truly fear the dentist. It's usually from experiences in childhood. And that's what I wanted to change, too. I just said it doesn't have to be this way.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yes, which is calcium and phosphorus. Our saliva will also have calcium and phosphorus floating around too. So what fluoride does is it throws off the hydroxyl group in hydroxyapatite and so it changes it from hydroxyapatite to fluorapatite. So it restructures it a bit.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
We can make dentistry a very positive place, a safe place, so that children go into adults without dental disease, but also that find the dentist to be a safe, comfortable place to go. So I mean, some people, if you're really that fearful, you know, maybe considering therapy or, you know, some sort of... Like, do you need something to help you feel calmer at the dentist?
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But I encourage everyone to go to the dentist. Don't avoid the dentist, but also trying to understand it. It is a challenging profession. It really is. And there's a lot of unknowns and there are some mental health challenges out there, too.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, that's loading a lot onto people. I would say floss at least once a day. Flossing twice a day is extra credit.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, because a lot of people don't floss. So we want to start out reasonable. Before sleep. Yes, ideally.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Floss, then brush.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But however you can do it.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I also like tongue scraping. We forgot to talk about tongue scraping.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Spit it out.
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How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Not in the sink. And why just a few times a week? I don't know if I was clear on that. It's because coconut oil is antimicrobial, so I'm erring on the side of caution because it will target more anaerobic pathological bacteria, but less is more. We don't want to disrupt the oral microbiome too much. So just a couple times a week. You don't need to do it daily.