Dr. Staci Whitman
Appearances
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
So if they have intestinal permeability, if they have gluten intolerance, celiac, you know, SIBO, this can all affect how we're absorbing our nutrients as well. And so a lot of dental health issues can be nutritional deficiencies. And that's something I think a lot of dentists are missing. It's not just about hygiene and diet. There's a lot. This is why it's functional dentistry.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
And there's a lot of bidirectional relationships. So we really do need to dig deep into understanding the root cause, which obviously It always is dysbiosis or microbial irregularities, but I don't think we can always say it's diet because I have lots of patients come in and adults too, and they're eating pretty clean. You know, they're doing pretty well.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Yeah. So the oral systemic connection is very well documented in research and just more and more research is coming out as we are learning more about these specific pathogens and microbes and how they work together. Essentially, if your gums bleed, so I like to say if there's pink in the sink, if you spit out and there's blood, that's a sign that your gum health is compromised.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Their hygiene's decent, but they still have oral health issues. And that's where we need to dig deeper and understand, well, is it an airway issue? Are you a chronic mouth breather? Because that certainly will contribute to oral dysbiosis. Do you have gut health imbalances? Do you have candida or H. pylori in excess?
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
That can affect how we absorb minerals, fat-soluble vitamins, and how we're utilizing nutrition because that affects gum health. That affects our dental and tooth health as well. So what's really important is that initial intake with the patients. And mine's quite extensive. It takes patients quite a long time to fill it out.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
But it's really necessary to fully understand what's happening in that individual. And we are all bio-individuals. So why someone might have gum disease or cavities and dysbiosis could be very different than why someone else may. And so it's individualized medicine or individualized dentistry is really critical.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Yeah, I mean, oral microbiome is number one. This is why I really love salivary analysis. This is oral microbiome testing. It's usually a spit test. And there's many different companies out there doing this. And it really is, I'm hoping, becoming standard of care in many offices. Certainly more functional dentists are doing this. But you essentially test the saliva.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
And you can run chakra and metronomics. There's different ways to scan and assess for the full range and the raw data of what bacteria you have. And you're trying to see what balance, what balance of healthy bacteria, commensal bacteria versus pathogenic bacteria you have. So that's the first place to start.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
That now is a way for bacteria in your mouth, pathogens, or even commensals to get into your vascular system, your blood supply, your lymphatic system, and they just catch a free ride. And they end up in organ systems they shouldn't. They can end up in the heart. They can end up in the brain. They can affect fertility. And
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Because until we know what species of bacteria you have in your mouth, or it could be fungus, candida is a big contributor too. And we know that bacteria and fungus work opportunistically in the mouth. Until we fully understand what's happening in your body, it's really hard to create a treatment plan. So first I say the oral microbiome,
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Yes, absolutely. My, the one I like to use is bristle. They, they do use shotgun metronomics and they're, they're really assessing for all 700. Now it's almost 800 species of bacteria and fungus and archaea and protozoa in the mouth. Um, and they will link it to, to, to gut health as well. Cause GI mapping, um, can be important too. So Bristle is what I use.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
I like it because it's direct to consumer also. We obviously want a dental professional overseeing these things, but unfortunately not all dentists are on board with this. And so it's really nice that consumers who are interested in optimizing their health have access to this information. It's just now it's like, what do you do with it? And who do you go to to get protocol?
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
So that's where you might want to look for a more biological or functional dentist in your area. There's other brands, Oral DNA, Viome is one. There's more and more coming out, but I personally use Bristle. So I would say oral microbiome is first. Then I would probably say diet. You know, what we're consuming and eating. This is obviously how these bacteria feed and thrive.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
it's important to know we are born essentially with a pretty neutral mouth. We get inoculated with pathogenic bacteria from usually a caregiver, mom, dad, a family member. So these are transmissible, these bacteria. So we get these bacteria from someone in our community. And these pathogens, you know, generally, if you're healthy, you're able to maintain a a balance of these bacteria.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
But if we're feeding them, if we're overfeeding them, these ultra processed foods, these fermentable carbohydrates, you know, sugar, flour, and frequency of eating, they're going to thrive and they're going to bloom and blossom and kind of take over. So there will be an imbalance.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
If you tend to eat more paleo or the Mediterranean diet, and I'm not advocating for any type of diet, but we do know if you tend to eat more Meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, healthy oils, you are much less risk for dental disease. And so you're going to have a much more balanced microbiome.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
So after nutrition, I do think airway and nutrition's kind of tied together or equal, I would say, but how we breathe really matters too. So when you breathe through your mouth, the pH drops, you're creating an acidic environment and creating this perfect balance you know, perfect world for these pathogens to develop. So nasal breathing really is optimal.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
And I know you've had guests on speaking about the importance of airway before. If people are interested in this, the book Breath by James Nestor is a go-to to fully understand what I'm speaking of, but it is important for our microbial health to be breathing through our nose as well. And It helps with nitric oxide production.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
It helps keep our saliva in balance so we don't get xerostomia or dry mouth. You know, mouth breathers tend to have more tonsil stones. They tend to have more halitosis or bad breath too. And then all the way down is hygiene. I think hygiene's last. I hear some of these influencers, they tend to be more extremists, like the carnivore diet, people say, I don't brush, I don't floss.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
They can end up in your joints and lead to arthritis and autoimmune diseases. And so it's really important to maintain gum integrity. This is a lot like leaky gut, right? So it's the same concept of leaky gut. There's leaky gums. So you really want, that's a barrier from the outside world into the inside world.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
I don't advise that. But the point is, ancestrally, you know, we didn't have impeccable oral hygiene. And, you know, 10,000 years ago, we really didn't have a lot of cavities. You look at There wasn't a lot of decay.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
There was some bone loss or periodontal disease, but that means these species of bacteria are newer in our more modern society and they're getting fed and multiplying and expanding and spreading faster. through our diet. We're really feeding them.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Yes, I do. I think it is for kids. The problem with testing an oral microbiome in a pediatric patient is their oral microbiomes are very transient because they're putting things from the outside world in their mouth so much that you can take an oral microbiome test at 10 a.m. and get a get all of these certain species and the next day it could be very different.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
So I do still think the oral microbiome is the most important part, but testing, we just haven't gotten there yet of how to actually test and create a database for the pediatric population.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Yeah, I don't think people misuse baking soda. A lot of people worry about it being too abrasive, but its abrasivity index is pretty low once you mix it with water. Because how it abrases something is how it could damage the enamel. So the way I use it, I put it in my water pick. Or you could create like a slurry with water and rinse with it at night. So this is what I do. I...
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
a big believer in interproximal tooth cleaning. What does this mean? Flossing. And if someone said you're going to be on a desert island and you have to pick, you can only either brush or floss, what would you pick? I would always pick flossing. I would always pick flossing. And this is because this is where I see the most disease. This is where I see the most cavities in both kids and adults.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
It helps with gum health. Anaerobes love areas of low oxygen, so they love to hide in between the teeth and wreak havoc. But I think if you're dealing with a younger patient, flossing alone is fine. But as we age, we do tend to get recession, some gum loss, some bone loss, and that is normal to some degree. And so flossing isn't quite getting the job done as much as we need to.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
So these bacteria, not only do they end up where they shouldn't, but they do release toxins, endotoxins, lipopolysaccharides that can create an inflammatory response, a cytokine response, and it's being linked to cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's, dementia, mental health imbalances. It can impact fertility, it can impact pregnancy outcomes, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune diseases.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
So I personally alternate. I floss one night and the next night I water pick or water floss. And there's a lot of data to support that water picking really is comparable to flossing. I have a lot of patients who are special needs or they're orally sensitive or they just can't floss, but they find a water pick to be more fun.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
It gets them excited about it and it will allow them to do some interproximal cleaning. So when I'm making my water floss liquid, I add water and I add some baking soda into it so that I do get that buffering and neutralization benefit. And I do that at night.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Yeah, I mean, pretty darn close. Thank you. So yeah, it's called Fig Like the Fruit. Feed your good guys. And we really are an oral microbiome focused oral health care line. That's our main goal. And we have added prebiotics and amino acids into it at the appropriate ratio to modulate the microbiome. So that's great. This is what we're doubling down on with our brand identity, if you will.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
But we also do have hydroxyapatite because we know most of us need a little boost of remineralization. And hydroxyapatite, it's really exploding in the research and data. Again, I mentioned it's been around since the 70s. The Japanese and the Italians have been using it since then. It's pretty new to the United States and it's definitely... Still, some dentists are still warming up to it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
But yes, we've removed all the emulsifiers, all their surfactants, all the essential oils, which many people think essential oils, that sounds natural and healthy. Well, unfortunately, essential oils are strong antimicrobials. So if you're using this every day, it can be damaging to your healthy bacteria. So we really want to move away from daily usage of antimicrobials.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Now, this is important to know. This is where oral microbiome testing comes in. You may have some pretty significant pathogens in your mouth. P. gingivalis is a big one. And that's the one that's linked to Alzheimer's and many other of these downstream systemic issues. And we can get into that in more detail. But you may need more tailored, more aggressive therapy.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
So you may need antimicrobials for a short duration of time and stronger medicinal therapies, even sometimes antibiotics. But I don't like strong antimicrobials like essential oils every day. So that's twice a day, every day is your routine. toothpaste or product. Um, so, so yeah, thanks for the shout out. We were really excited. We actually have a varnish, which is professional strength.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
I mentioned that earlier. So we actually won an award on as best new product is the Celerant best in class hygiene award from the, um, RDH group, which is a hygienist group. Um, and it's, this is what I'm using with my patients to, to arrest and reverse cavities. And it's, it's pretty incredible what it's doing. And we have
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
comparative and clinical trials coming out soon too, that I'll be happy to share with everyone.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
You have to remember too, you're swallowing about 2000 times a day. And a lot of those bacteria are pretty resilient. They can actually withstand the stomach acid and get down into our intestines and kind of wreak havoc down there. So et cetera, et cetera. The root cause of all oral disease is dysbiosis. And what is that? That means imbalances in your oral microbiome.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Yeah, that's actually a valid finding that's supported by research. And there's a lot of white papers on that too, with how it reduces sensitivity. That's actually one of the most amazing things about hydroxyapatite is that's what people will notice.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
So hydroxyapatite, especially if you're using the nano particles, and I do want to be clear, it's really important where you source anything from, whether it's your supplement or your food, but also your hydroxyapatite and your nano. it can actually occlude and penetrate into the tubules because they're so small.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
So it's calcium and phosphorus ions that are getting into the tubules of your teeth, which think are like the pores of your teeth. And then it's occluding and blocking. And so that is going to help with sensitivity. You know, what you're feeling is nerve sensitivity from cold or hot or various stimuli, acidity in the mouth. And so... It's profoundly beneficial.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
And I would say, Drew, you should try the varnish too down in there just to see if it will stay away from being bothersome longer. We're seeing some really great results with that. But yeah, that is a legit finding.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Yes.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
It's kind of the wild, wild west. And some manufacturing practices are substandard. And the FCCS in the EU, which is the Oversight Committee for Consumer Safety, they were looking at nano hydroxyapatite. They started... some studies about eight years ago to see, because they were noticing it was kind of blowing up in Europe. So they said, hey, is this safe in consumer products?
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
So they started researching, doing their own data, doing their own studies. And there was one nano in particular that they set aside because it was showing no concerns. It wasn't showing any concerns with penetrating epithelial linings or creating calcifications. And so that is now become the standard. And it has to do with particle size, shape, aspect ratio.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
This gets real nerdy quickly, but also the quality of it to make sure it isn't rampant in heavy metals. And so unfortunately, there are some nano manufacturing facilities in other countries where people are sourcing their nano from where they have tested really high. So you just want to make sure you're asking your brand, where are they sourcing from?
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
And I personally would only use a brand that's sourcing from and using Nanoxim. It's N-A-N-O-X-I-M. And I'm happy to link, we can list all the brands that I know of in the show notes for your audience. Okay. We need the FDA to get involved, obviously. So we need some standardization here in the United States too.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
So this is where you just want to follow brands that are using ethical and transparent practices.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
We speak so much in the health and wellness world about the gut microbiome, but I think finally the oral microbiome is getting the attention it deserves. So what I look for as a practitioner are the usual suspects. Are you leaving with a diagnosis from your dentist? So do you have cavities, which is a sign of dysbiosis? Do you have gum disease? When you brush or floss, are your gums bleeding?
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
I think, you know, traditional medicine I've seen be okay with a range between 20 to 40. I've even had patients come in that are in the teens and their primary care was like, oh, you're fine. I like to see it more optimized up around 60. My doctor is even liking me to get up closer to 70 to 80. So that's hard. And we only know with testing.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
And so I do really like people to go and at least annually have a vitamin D test. Now the problem is it's often not covered by insurance. So you really have to advocate for yourself and ask for it. But I'd say 60 is a great place to shoot for. I do see, and this isn't by no means saying how anyone should eat, but I do see an uptick in enamel defects in formation in children.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
whose mothers were either vegan or vegetarian or they're being raised that way. And all my whole point with this is just to make sure if you are eating this way, make sure you're really optimal. and vitamin D and magnesium because it will affect your child's dental development.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
And just know, I was vegan for many years too. I was vegetarian and I went vegan and it had effects on my health. We've heard the story before. And I thought I was doing all the right things, but what I wasn't really doing was testing myself enough. I just wasn't getting those metrics and those data points. So that's the most important part. Just know where you are.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
That's a sign of inflammation. Have you been diagnosed with periodontal disease? When you hear the hygienist reading out the little numbers as she probes around your teeth, are they getting larger? That's a sign of not only inflammation, but attachment loss of your teeth. dry mouth, tonsil stones, ulcers in the mouth. There's quite a few things.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
So if you are in and out of your dental office, easy peasy, no diagnosis, you're probably doing well. But if you go in and every time you seem to have a new treatment plan, you need a new cavity filled, you need to come back for a deep cleaning. If you're suffering from dry mouth, tonsil stones, halitosis, these are all signs of dysbiosis or oral disease.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Yeah. So plaque is biofilm. That's a really nice way to think of it. And biofilm is bacteria. We know we need beneficial or commensal bacteria in the mouth. So not all bacteria is bad. And I think this is a very important point that we can double down on later in the discussion.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
But plaque, it will get thicker and the biofilm will get more advanced depending a lot on what you're feeding your microbes. So your diet has a lot to do with it. So beneficial bacteria, commensals, they love prebiotics. This is why we talk so much in my
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
practice about the importance of a nutrient-dense diet, phytonutrients, eat the rainbow is what I tell my pediatric patients, because that's feeding your good guys. The bad guys, the anaerobes or the pathogens, they love fermentable carbohydrates. So think of all of these modern, ultra-processed, hyperpalatable foods that we love to consume and
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
And the more we eat these foods, the thicker that biofilm can be and the more advanced the pathogens can get. Now, of course, hygiene has to do with this. What hygiene is, brushing, flossing, even tongue scraping, it's removing and disrupting the biofilm so that those bacteria don't have long enough to sit attached to your tooth or to your other structures to cause damage.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
And they cause damage by metabolizing and utilizing these fermentable carbohydrates and turning the byproduct into acid. And it's actually the acid that's causing the disease. The hole in your tooth or the cavity is the acid that's causing the gum inflammation along with the endotoxins that they can release as well. So mouth breathing also will affect the biofilm or the plaque.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
pH is extremely important when it comes to oral health. We want to maintain an optimal pH. The critical pH of the mouth is 6.5. So anything under that is when enamel will start to degrade and break down. So we want to maintain, sorry, 5.5 is enamel, 6.5 is root structure. So we have to maintain a balanced pH.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
And if we don't, if we are living in a constant state of acidity, that will also contribute to a thicker plaque or thicker biofilm because we're creating this beautiful environment for these microbes to thrive in.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
So if we're feeding them too much of the wrong foods, essentially, if we're breathing through our mouths, changing the pH, if we're losing the integrity of our saliva, which is very protectant, And then our hygiene is substandard or suboptimal. That will increase our plaque buildup.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Yes, you're speaking my language. I see a lot of patients who seek me out just for this. Cavities absolutely can be arrested, which means frozen in time or reversed, remineralized. However, they have to be caught at the right time. And this is why we love preventative care. This is why we recommend to see a dentist regularly to have not only a physical visual exam, but also
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
the appropriate amount of radiographic exams because that's how we can see in between the teeth and see the structures down in the root and around the bone. So yes, you can arrest and remineralize. So what's important to understand is our mouths all day long are in a constant state of either remineralization or demineralization. And this is normal. This is a normal process.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
So anytime we put things into our mouth other than a more neutral pH water, we will have an acid effect. So there's something called the Stefan curve. And this basically just has to do with the alterations in pH in the mouth throughout the day. So every time the pH drops into an acidic state, we will lose some minerals from our teeth through the acid attack and pulling it out into our saliva.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
However, if we're healthy, if we're balanced, if our saliva is optimal, and if we are not snacking, grazing, and eating these ultra processed foods all day, our saliva will naturally through the calcium and phosphorus ions in our saliva and appropriate enzymes, it will remineralize the teeth. So this happens all day.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Now the problem is when this state is in balance, when we are leaning more towards a demineralized state than a remineralized state. So we want to do things that help promote remineralization. That is through diet, that's through optimizing our salivary health, through hydration and minerals, and certainly how we breathe as well.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
And so there are a lot of protocols and products and things that we can use to help boost remineralization for those of us who may tend to find ourselves in an imbalanced state. But I personally am utilizing a lot of these protocols in my office, and I'm avoiding a lot of treatment. fillings, root canals, extractions, and anesthesia visits in my pediatric patients.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
And to me, that's hugely important, not only for the procedure, but the emotional experience, because so many adults have trauma and emotional health issues because of how dentists have treated and arguably over-treated their teeth in the pediatric years. So I think this is a really important conversation, especially in our pediatric population, and
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
where maybe we could be avoiding this over-treatment and creating these negative dental experiences for these kids.
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
Yeah. I mean, it's hard to make generalizations, but I would do an in-depth nutritional assessment and analysis with them. But I would be curious if they are eating more processed foods. The important thing to understand is not just sugar. Flour is also a culprit. Even things, carbohydrates like rice and breads and pastas, crackers, chips, granola bars,
Dhru Purohit Show
Oral Dysbiosis is Driving Disease, Popular Oral Care Products You Should Throw in the Trash, and How Your Diet Can Help Remineralize Your Teeth
these all can contribute and feed those pathogens. And a lot of this has to do with frequency of how much we're consuming them. So I would want to dig deeper and understand if are they eating more of a kind of a high carb diet essentially. But it's also important to understand that gut health impacts these things as well.
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's a tricky word. It's a tough one.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Remineralization. Right.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. That helps.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Like added sugar.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's good.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah. Got to live life.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Oh, I cried during that movie.
Huberman Lab
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?
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I really want this to happen to myself.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Sleep Wrecked Kids.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
So, Thank you.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
������acacacacacacacacacacacacacacacacacacacacacacacacacacacacacac cleacacacacacacacacacacacacac cleacacacacac cleacacacacacacacac cle cleacacacacacacacac Athletac Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet Athlet此acacacacah������������������������������������������������������������������������eniket
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Skeletal fluorosis.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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?
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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?
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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?
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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?
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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?
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's what makes them so sticky.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I know that flavor.
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
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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?
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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?
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
The children.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Blue city.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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,
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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 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.
Huberman Lab
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?
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
I mean, it's good not to burn.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Bottom of the – Floor of the mouth.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Uh-huh.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
We're going into all the controversial conversations here.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
You may have them, you may not.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
It's like webbed.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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?
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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?
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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?
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, already in there.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.,
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Yeah, stand by.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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?
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Dandelion.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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%.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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...
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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...
Huberman Lab
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...
Huberman Lab
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
Huberman Lab
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
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
All bone.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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?
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Floss, then brush.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
But however you can do it.
Huberman Lab
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.
Huberman Lab
How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman
Spit it out.
Huberman Lab
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.