Hey Shayla - Judgement Free Motherhood 😅😭😍
Hey Shayla - Judgement Free Motherhood 😅😭😍
061 - HOLISTIC PEDIATRIC DENTIST: It’s so much more than cavities With @Doctor_Staci
Their teeth fall out anyway...
Hey Shayla Podcast | Ep: 061 Do I Need to Bring MY BABY To The Dentist? With Pediatric Dentist @Doctor_Staci
Doctor Staci Whitman is a Functional Kids’ Dentist in North Portland, Oregon. She is the founder of NoPo Kids Dentistry where she takes a whole-body, holistic, and functional approach with her patients. Her dentistry/practice is grounded by science and powered by love.
She has also created, Fygg, aMicrobiome TOOTHPASTE!
Resources:
Microbiome Test: Brittle (DoctorStaci gets 10% off)
Find a function dentist: AskTheDentist.com
Find a AirWay Specialist: BretheInstitute
AAPMD
BOOK: The Dental Diet Dr. Price and Dr. Stephen Lynn
Chewing Device: Myo Munchie
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I remember them teaching us, like what caused cavities, and I was my jaw was on the floor because I realized I had no idea. I just sort of thought oh, you drink soda and you don't brush well, and then boop, a cavity appears. But it's really so much more than that, because it's it's really about you. Now there's somehow you've been inoculated with a pathogenic bacteria and you're feeding that bacteria For mentable carbohydrates, which is what they eat, and so that's sugar or flour. So those bacteria metabolize that food source, they release acid. But in theory, if your body is in balance, your saliva should be able to neutralize or buffer that acidity. But at some point you become out of balance and your saliva can't do its job, and so then that acid starts leaching minerals out of your tooth.
Speaker 2:Hey guys, my name is Shayla. Welcome to the hey Shayla podcast. I went from full-time travel to full-time new COVID mom and now I'm a mom of two. And holy Wow is motherhood and adulting a learning curve. There are so many decisions we need to make and a million ways to do it right. I created this podcast to interview some of my gurus, to share their knowledge and empower you on your journey. Let me be your guinea pig and ask the question. Think everyone else knows here we're a little hippie. We try to do things as naturally as possible, we're open-minded and we don't take ourselves too seriously, but above all, we support one another and work to find what works. If you're into it, you're our people. Let's get started. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the hey Shayla podcast.
Speaker 2:Today I have Dr Stacy Whitman, who is a functional children's dentist in northern Portland Oregon. She's the founder of no pod kids dentistry, where she takes a whole body, holistic and functional approach with her patients. Her dentistry practice is grounded by science and powered by love. You can also find dr Stacy at doctor underscore Stacy with an eye on Instagram.
Speaker 2:Today I want to talk to Stacy about kids teeth and specifically in the like zero to five age range, because I, when I first was told that I need to bring my kids to the dentist, I was like, do I? When do I need to take them? Why do I need to take them? Their teeth are gonna fall out anyway. So I'm really excited to talk to her about all the things and learn all the things about children's dentistry From a holistic approach, because I've been following her for a while and she definitely talks about, like, what supplements take when you have cavities and I'm like, excuse me, what. So it's super interesting and I can't wait to hear from her. Hello, thank you and welcome, and so good, I'm so excited to talk to you.
Speaker 1:I am more excited. I'll compete with you about the excitement.
Speaker 2:I'm a huge fan of yours as well and it's it's been so interesting to follow you and just like learn, because I was the person who was like the teeth are gonna fall out, why do I need to Do that? And like the whole fluoride thing. You're like do I do fluoride, do not do Florida? I don't know when there's just so much mixed, it's just so. Let's just get to the bottom of it all, okay.
Speaker 1:Gonna unpack it all today right here.
Speaker 2:Perfect. So I want to talk specifically about like Zero to five age range ish like the, because when do you start losing teeth?
Speaker 1:I'm. Usually the average is around six, but certainly we see four year olds lose teeth and then some kids don't lose teeth till they're like eight or nine. But I think six, so like late kindergarten, first grade.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, so when? What? Well, I always like to start off with like I want to know about you how did you get into holistic dentistry? I feel like that's a pretty niche, uh-huh big.
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially Functional, holistic Pediatric dentistry. There's hardly any in the country.
Speaker 2:We're working on that.
Speaker 1:So who? Um, I I'll try to abbreviate this, but I was a general dentist for many years. Um, I hated dentistry. I arguably never really liked it. I was an art major and like a theater kid, what yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't have you get it. Okay, I literally don't really know it was safe.
Speaker 1:It was. It got me out of Maine. I was in rural central Maine and I wanted out so bad.
Speaker 2:Dentistry was the ticket out.
Speaker 1:I was like dentistry safe, uh yeah, and I was like I guess I work with my hands, a little bit kind of like the artistic thing. So I graduated and I really didn't like it. Um, and Part of it was I kept seeing patients just coming back with disease. So like you do these fillings or root canals or crowns, and then the patient leaves and then they come back six months later and then they have all the same issues again and I just thought what are we doing here? This is like putting band-aids all over the place. Um, and so I thought how do I get more upstream? How do I get more root cause? How do I educate these humans before they have these massive Chronic issues? And I thought, well, that's with kids. I need to get to the parents, I need to get upstream.
Speaker 1:So I went back and went and got my pediatric certification board certification and then I practiced in a more traditional practice again, because that's kind of all that seems to exist.
Speaker 1:Right and I still was finding the same dissatisfaction. Um, mostly too, I just didn't have the time I needed to educate Parents and kids, because a lot of us just we've really received no oral health education. I mean, you know your intra like why are baby teeth important? What's the big deal? Fluoride, not fluoride. So I personally Practiced, I personally lived a life that was cleaner, if you will, and this has been a journey, but that started in high school. I remember my boyfriend's mom was a chiropractor and she gave me the book sugar busters.
Speaker 1:Okay if anyone's read it, it was like the first time I I realized, oh, sugar is so detrimental to our health, um, so this was back in like the mid 90s and anyway. So that just led me on this trajectory of reading more about health and nutrition. And then I lost my parents when I was pretty young, and that was due to preventable lifestyle choices, and so I just chose To like double down on clean living. So that's how I was living my life, but I wasn't applying that to the way I practice dentistry.
Speaker 1:Okay so I just thought well gosh, I'm gonna recreate my practice model. No one else is doing this, but I can't. I'm not gonna maintain my dentist License if I don't change something, because I was still pretty miserable. Yeah, because it's a lot like groundhog day. I mean, you just go in and you're just doing the same thing over and over again. It's really wonderful to see patients get healthy.
Speaker 1:Yeah and in a lot of dental situations you don't, you don't. So anyway, um, so I opened my own office and I Just went, went for it and branded it as a holistic office. And then really I consider myself more functional dentist because I now have IFM or Institute of Functional Medicine certification. That's a whole other topic, but essentially that just means we get to the root cause of disease.
Speaker 1:We try to tie in how oral health relates to systemic health, how the oral microbiome established from infancy can, you know, really affect a child's entire trajectory of health, and that cavities aren't just I feel like we'd normalize them. And so this isn't to shame or judge, but it's. It's to say there's something going on in that human and we shouldn't be losing minerals from our teeth and living in the state of imbalance. And that goes for gum health and bone health and facial development and airway and everything. And so if we really want to optimize health, we need to realize that mouth isn't separate from the rest of the body. And I think that's just An educational piece that you know, because dentistry is over here and medicines over here.
Speaker 1:Totally yeah we just think, oh, they're separate, but of course they're not. I mean, this is the gateway into our body. We swallow 2000 times a day, so we're swallowing bacteria Every day like trillions of bacteria. That's affecting gut health. You know, your teeth are the most mineralized Substance in your body and so if they're crumbling and decaying, you know what is the what's happening in the rest of your body with your minerals and your vitamins and just your systemic health. So we know if you have A healthy mouth you will be more likely to have a healthy body.
Speaker 2:That there's so okay. First question is what is the difference between functional and holistic?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean Holistic. I think thrown out there a lot, a little bit is kind of marketing, to be honest with you, because that's what patients kind of most Recognize, yeah, but you know it's holistic means whole body body Okay.
Speaker 1:I would say functional medicine and dentistry. It just kicks it up a notch in the sense that we're looking for root cause but based on on functional medicine principles, which mean it's like Understanding how different components of the body work together. So I can't say holistic dentistry is necessarily taking that extra training and understanding hormones and understanding immune health and understanding, you know, cardiometabolic health. It's a lot of medicine, to be honest.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And this is not taught in dental school. There's nowhere to go get trained in this. You sort of have to piecemeal it right now, which is what I did, but I am fortunate enough to be working with a team of amazing humans. We are trying to create a functional dentistry. So cool you can go get trained and get this information. So you know, I think holistic gets a little bit of side eye, because what does that mean? I mean, are we like rubbing crystals on people? Right like functional medicine, functional dentistry is extremely evidence-based.
Speaker 1:Got it you know it's just um, it's it's trying to reach optimal health. So we know like traditional medicine might say, vitamin D at this level is okay, it's acceptable. But we really know our vitamin D should be up here because that's optimal.
Speaker 1:that's more like functional medicine we got it optimal health in the human and we look really deeply at the oral microbiome airway but also digging deep and knowing you know what gene snaps affect dental development and digestion and bioavailability and we really focus a lot on gut health and we focus a lot on, like oral facial pain and sleep and it's it's just more of a systemic approach. That's wild.
Speaker 2:Well, I even just saw posts from you being like, oh, these are the supplements you should take if you have cavities, and I was like, what supplements for? So you're right, like it is Even in my mind. It's like you've got your teeth and you've got your health and body and whatever, and like your mouth microbiome. Never heard of that before, so it's right. So it's so fat. But you're right, like if you're swallowing all this stuff every day, you're right. Listen to me, be like. I think you're on to something.
Speaker 1:I know, I know it's so funny, though I remember I am sure it was like my first day of dental school, I had no one in my family who was a dentist. Again, why was I there?
Speaker 2:I was like well, clearly we know why. Now.
Speaker 1:I was doing 3d art, sculptures and things, anyway. I remember them teaching us like what caused cavities. And I was my jaw was on the floor because I realized I had no idea. I just sort of thought oh, you drink soda and you don't brush well, and then boop, a cavity appears. But it's really so much more than that, because it's. It's really about how you now there's somehow you've been inoculated with a pathogenic bacteria and you're feeding that bacteria for mentable carbohydrates, which is what they eat, and so that's sugar or flour, so those bacteria metabolize that food source, they release acid. But in theory, if your body is in balance, your saliva should be able to neutralize or buffer that acidity. But at some point you become out of balance and your saliva can't do its job, and so then that acid starts leaching minerals out of your tooth. But if your tooth is already weak or mineral deficient or vitamin deficient, well that process is going to happen a lot faster and it has a lot to do with hydration and electrolytes, because your saliva is like this golden elixir.
Speaker 1:Like we don't take our spit seriously enough. Your spit is incredibly important for your health. Um, it's important for swallowing and digestion and gut health. It protects your teeth. That's why we see patients who mouth, breathe or undergo any sort of chemotherapy radiation. They get zero stomia, dry mouth. Their teeth just fall apart. Um and so there's a lot to it.
Speaker 2:There's a lot more to it even that you because I'm I still am on the train of the sugar eats your teeth. That's what I taught my daughter, so I'm gonna have to teach her.
Speaker 1:So this is a great way to educate your kids, because I also don't love how we've created such a negative impression of germs. Like we know, we're over disinfecting, all the bleach and the distance you know all of it. We're increased risk of asthma and allergies. We're just seeing all these things because we're wiping out our microbiomes and there's so many wonderful things about a healthy microbiome. I mean, arguably you can't be healthy without your microbiome. We are more microbial cells and human cells. That's something wild to think about. So a way to teach your kids is that there's good guys and there's bad guys, and you wanna feed your good guys and you don't wanna feed your bad guys, so we want a bigger good guy army, not a bad guy army.
Speaker 1:And so what good guys eat. They eat the rainbow. That's what I teach in my office.
Speaker 2:Okay, this is exactly what I've been telling Aliyah the good guys are superheroes, because she's into superheroes.
Speaker 1:They're superheroes totally.
Speaker 2:But I do it as, like the immune system, I guess I think of like.
Speaker 1:So you have immune cells in your saliva, so that is part of it.
Speaker 2:Okay, keep going.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean, think about how do things enter into our body through our nose, through our mouth, if you cut your skin? Through your skin, maybe through your eye, but otherwise we have a barrier, right? So we have immune cells in here. Every time we put something in our mouth, food, our fingers, whatever, the cells have to go Is this foreign or not? And they will go to battle with foreign invaders, viruses, bacteria.
Speaker 1:Now, obviously, things are still getting into the system, but that's the first mode of defense. The same with your nose. I mean, you have immune health qualities in your nose too. It's filtering, it's disinfecting the air that you breathe. Now, of course, things can get passed.
Speaker 1:This is also why we talk about bleeding gums. Or we say, if you see pink in the sink, so that's gingivitis. So think of many of us have heard about leaky gut or intestinal permeability. That is, when now, the layer within our intestines is permeable, which is not supposed to be. So the gap junctions open and foreign material from our food can get into our body and that can create this inflammatory response, right? So we've heard, most of us have heard about leaky gut. Well, there's leaky gums. Our gums are supposed to be a barrier so that things can't get into our system.
Speaker 1:But if they're not healthy and your gums bleed, now that's an entry point for bacteria in your mouth to get into your system, just like if you had a cut, and it gets infected. And we know now with the oral microbiome, these pathogenic bacteria, they can catch a free ride all over the body, through your circulatory system, your lymphatic system, they end up in organ systems. They shouldn't Like the brain or the heart and they can infect our ability to conceive. They can affect our pregnancies. I mean we're seeing miscarriages or preterm weight babies Because of the pathogenic bacteria. So the like p-gingivalis is a big one. It's a bad, bad germ. We see it with gum disease and periodontal disease, which is bone disease, okay, and you're seeing it in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. And when it gets there it's releasing toxins. Essentially it's inflammatory markers that are then creating imbalances in these organ systems.
Speaker 2:So you have this germ in your mouth, but once your gums are so unhealthy that they're bleeding, then it can get into your body.
Speaker 1:Correct.
Speaker 2:What.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is the oral microbiome. This is all the talk about the oral microbiome and you know we're seeing the oral microbiome research is really blowing up Because we're realizing these bacteria, pathogenic bacteria, from the mouth. They're more influential over our health than we realize, so we can even breathe them in. It can affect our lungs and so we saw that with a lot of the early days of COVID the patients that were dying of pneumonia in the hospitals they were finding oral bacteria in their lungs.
Speaker 2:My mind is melting right now. Yeah, we haven't even. Oh, I just don't plug this, we haven't even gotten into any questions.
Speaker 1:It makes it a lot cooler. I'm already president.
Speaker 2:I'm already what.
Speaker 1:It makes dentistry a lot cooler.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're like, I kind of like my job now, now that I've created my own job, yeah, but I think too it's important.
Speaker 1:This is where I see dentistry going Like we're always going to need technicians, like people that can fix and repair teeth, and that's just kind of what dentistry is. But we really need more dental physicians, I think, that are piecing this all together for patients and testing the microbiome. I don't know, looking at a patient, what type of microbial health they have. There's up to 800 species now of bacteria that can inhabit the mouth. We don't all have all 800. But that's how many they've coded for essentially. And so with oral microbiome testing you can do a spit test.
Speaker 1:My favorite is bristle, which we can put the link in the show notes for your listeners and I have a little discount I can offer. But it's an at-home spit test. Send it off Kind of just like think 23andMe, but it's for your saliva in your oral microbiome and you get data and it will say you have a very high risk of periodontal disease, bacteria in your mouth or bad breath or cavity-causing bacteria. They do gut health assessments too, and it's going to keep expanding. They're probably going to start talking about genetic mutations and SNPs and things too and how those relate. But then you get a printout and then you can work with a one-on-one functional dental health coach, who's usually a hygienist, to talk about. How do we get you healthy again? How do we get these bacteria out of your mouth? We want to crowd them out. We want balanced bacteria, commensal species, healthy bacteria in your mouth.
Speaker 2:And that's not just by brushing, no.
Speaker 1:Hygiene. I mean for kids, I don't want to overwhelm people. Hygiene's very low on my list. So it's really about nutrition, minerals and vitamins. How are your teeth developing and what's the quality of your saliva? So hydration and electrolytes and trace minerals are very important too. Then I would say it's really important how you're breathing. So if you're mouth breathing, that's going to create an environment for bad bacteria in your mouth, because the bad bacteria they love acid, so they love a low pH and when you mouth breathe the pH of your mouth is low.
Speaker 2:See the mouth breathing. I have not gone down that rabbit hole. I've kind of just like, ok, these weirdos were in tape on their mouths that night, but you talk about it all the time. I put it on them questions, just because I'm like I tape every night.
Speaker 1:I tape every night. What if you have a stuffy nose? I don't. Then I don't tape. I don't tape if I have a cold, OK but why?
Speaker 2:What is it? Ok, like I've done zero into this, give me a very high level. What's the mouth breathing?
Speaker 1:So when mouth breathing starts in kids let's just start there it can create what we call oral motor dysfunction. So it affects the way you grow and it affects the way your tongue sits in your mouth and it can affect the way your jaws develop. So I want everyone to think of, like Napoleon Dynamite, when you think of a character who's mouth breathing like forward shoulders right, and it's that long face, open, dark circles hunched over shoulders that's a typical mouth breather, because they're trying to open their airway so they can breathe, so they're moving their body in a way and then eventually it creates this terrible posture and that can lead to all these other things. But that open mouth too, it affects the way the jaw develops. The job's going to kind of develop down and long and it perpetuates the mouth breathing. Now I want you to think of, like a typical movie star, what tends to make them so attractive. Think of the chiseled jaw. They have nice, wide, big jaws. Think of Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie Big, wide jaws. It's because their airways are big.
Speaker 1:So how does this impact kids? So if your jaws are small, it's a surface area issue. If your jaws are narrow and small, if your palate is narrow, if it's V-shaped, if it's vaulted, you're not going to have enough room for your teeth. So crowding, crowded teeth is a sign of small jaws and a potential airway issue. If your jaws are nice and wide, the teeth are going to fit. Do, do, do, do, do even. And if you ever go to like the Natural History Museum, look at ancestral skulls. Their teeth are perfectly straight, like 10,000 years ago, perfectly straight, no braces. That's because they had these big, wide airways, because they were obligate nasal breathers, they breathed through their noses, and also because they chewed, and they chewed their food up to four hours a day, and so that pressure of the tongue in the face and the muscles moving out, it grows the face wide.
Speaker 1:We now are a society that sucks down go-gurts and smoothies and mac and cheese and we inhale our food and we don't chew. We only chew about four minutes a day now, and so this impacts jaws. To change what? And if you think about it volumetrically that small jaws, it's going to make small sinuses, it's going to make a small airway and you're going to have a hard time breathing and you're more likely maybe to have sleep apnea, sleep disorder, breathing. Well, what does that mean? Well, if we're not getting enough oxygen and if you breathe through your mouth you get 20% less oxygen. That affects brain development. So that affects brain development in our kids and so a lot of these kids that are getting pegged with behavioral issues, adhd, and they're being put on meds. They actually have an airway issue, a breathing issue, but you don't tape kids' mouths. You can over the age of three, but you want to make sure that they've been checked off by an ENT and that you're working with an airway focused dentist.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not just like. Oh, I think my kid air breathes, I'm going to tape their mouth tonight 100%.
Speaker 1:You also make sure that they're mature enough to kind of understand what's happening. But if you think about it, all you're doing is physically just trying to keep your lips closed so you breathe through.
Speaker 1:So the rule is you need a time and if you can comfortably breathe through your nose for three minutes without feeling panic like fight or flight, then you could mouth tape or lip tape. Now some people have a deviated septum. Kids have huge adenoids that are blocking or inflamed turbinates in their noses. They have allergies, they've stuffed the noses. No, you should not be lip taping or mouth taping. Or if you've been diagnosed as an adult with true obstructive sleep apnea, no, you need to be working on correcting that. But for me mine's like a muscle tone thing. My mouth just pops open at night so I just tape it. But I will tell you, because I have this aura ring, when I tape my sleep scores are incredible because I'm getting into my deep restorative sleep. I'm not waking up all night because I'm kind of like it's essentially like you're choking If you're done fall back.
Speaker 1:You're choking. That makes you wake up. You're going to feel like garbage, your hormones are going to be all jacked up. So that's kind of that part of it, and this is also why hormones is really important. So when you get into deeper restorative sleep, that's when growth hormones release, that's when anti-diuretic hormone is released.
Speaker 1:So a lot of these kids who are prolonged bedwetters, the first thing I ask is I wonder if they're mouth breathing at night, because that means they're not getting into deep sleep to release that hormone to prevent them from urinating. But also, if you kids have really small stature, it could be because their growth hormone hasn't been being released appropriately. So if a child comes in with small stature or a diagnosis of ADHD, I'm always digging deep into how they breathe in their sleep. But from a dental standpoint, if you're breathing through your mouth, you also now you're allowing a place for more bacteria and viruses to come in because your nose filters a lot, but also you're drying the mouth out, and when you dry the mouth out now you've lost your beautiful saliva, which is protecting your teeth.
Speaker 1:That affects your digestion, because digestion starts in the mouth. We have enzymes in our mouth that actually start the digestive process and it lowers the pH to your mouse acidic, and so you're more likely to have cavities and gum disease too and like tonsil stones, bad breath, basically an imbalanced microbiome. So you're creating this perfect environment for the bad bacteria to just thrive.
Speaker 2:So you're saying we used to chew more and breathe through our noses more. No, we used to chew more, which changed the shape of our jaw, which allowed our airways to be bigger. Now we're doing like, basically, processed foods that just are dissolving in our mouths and we're not having to actually chew. So our jaws are being more narrow, which is making our airway more narrow and harder to breathe, which is changing our posture, which is changing our sleep, which is changing our hormones.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and got health too. Yeah, all of it Digestion, got health. I mean it's a big deal. So then what do?
Speaker 2:you do, when you start to notice that you're I mean just feed them chewier foods.
Speaker 1:Chewing, yes, so that I mean I'm not gonna say I'm in one camp or the other, but baby lead weaning done safely, if you're into that, is something to look into or doing at least a mix of purees and baby lead weaning. So chewing is important when you feel safe. It's not a choking hazard. You obviously need to work with your pediatrician and offering really crunchy vegetables, meats, carrots, you know, raw veggies is a wonderful thing to do. But then also there are appliances, now called like. There's a myo-munchy. It's a little silicone tray, a lot like the brush that you asked me about. Yeah, but it goes in and it's actually an oral motor appliance and it can replace pacifiers, it can help kids with thumb sucking, but basically it goes in. They close their lips around it. It's like a U, you know it's almost like an off guard, yeah, and they gently chew on it and it's so.
Speaker 1:It's building these facial muscles. I keep one of my car because it actually tones the face, oh nice. I mean think of this as muscles, just like the gym.
Speaker 1:You gotta work the face out, you know, and your tongue is a muscle too, and so the other thing to know about this is where tongue ties come in your tongue this is your tongue should be living up at your palate when your mouth's closed and your tongue's this huge, strong muscle, and so over time the starts in utero, when your baby's inside of you. The tongue goes up and it starts to spread the palate and spread the face. It pushes out.
Speaker 2:Hmm.
Speaker 1:And breastfeeding continues to help support that. But if think about if the tongue is restricted and it can't lift up, it's gonna sit low in the mouth, you're gonna mouth breathe and your palate's gonna be super narrow.
Speaker 1:Your palate is a bone right here it's also the floor of the nose, so if your palate is narrow and vaulted, your sinuses are gonna be narrow. You also be more likely to have a deviated septum what? And so you're not gonna be able to breathe your nose, and this is why we like to expand kids early, which can be with these cute little retainers. There's a suture here in the bone that's filled with cartilage, and so it's really easy to manipulate that bone when kids are young.
Speaker 2:On the top of their mouth.
Speaker 1:Yep, they just think about your pink retainer that we maybe had after embraces, I still have it.
Speaker 1:Yep so but there's a way to like expand it. There's like the little cute thing and it will expand it and it's really so easy to do in young kids because that cartilage is so wide open. Around the age of 10, a lot of our facial development is done, believe it or not, as much as conventional and traditional orthodontics will argue with this. Once you're around 10, that's gonna. That really fills in with bone, it starts to interdigitate and lock and now it's really hard to manipulate the shape of the face and the jaws. And so traditional orthodontics very much focus on straight teeth, the aesthetics, the Hollywood smile. I care more about jaw development, facial development, airway health. If we work on that early, early, early, just like what I said before, if the jaws are wide enough, the teeth will be straight.
Speaker 1:So, you still get the straight teeth. It's just that wasn't your goal and if traditional orthodontics you very often are, you know, waiting until the kids are 12, 13, all the baby teeth have fallen out, you've missed an opportunity to actually change the shape of that patient's face and jaws in their airway and so, even though their teeth are straight, they still might have a high narrow palate, they still might have small jaws and they're very likely more likely to have oral motor dysfunction issues and breathing issues as they get older.
Speaker 2:All right, we're gonna take a brief break to talk about my freaking favorite multivitamins for kids Haya. I did a lot of research on these vitamins. I honestly rejected them at first because I was like everyone loves Haya. Whenever everyone loves something, I'm like mm, mm. But then my sister tried them and when we went over there she let them have a vitamin and they love them. So I bought them.
Speaker 2:Literally, they ask for their vitamins and get upset that they can only have one a day. What I love about it is there's 12 fruits and veggies. So I've got very picky eaters and so I feel good. I'm like, wow, at least you got your vitamins in, at least you got your 12 fruits and veggies in. There's zero sugar. I don't know why there's sugar in vitamins anyway, but that's the kicker. I also love their eco-friendly. So when you order for the first time, if you use the code HAYESHALE, you get 50% off your first order, but they give you a refillable container and then each month after that you get eco-friendly refills to put in the container.
Speaker 2:I find that investing in vitamins for your kids, it honestly has paid off. They have been really healthy most of the time. They've obviously still gotten sick. Can't recommend HAYA enough. If you're interested, go to hayashalacom. Slash HAYA pod POD and use Hayashala as a discount to get 50% off your first order. Let's get back to the show. Okay, so I'm a listener, I'm listening to this and I'm going. Yeah, I think my kid needs whatever.
Speaker 1:Go to my dentist and they're like. That's the hard part. That's what.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna put your heart on yeah.
Speaker 1:So you would wanna look for and I have some resources that are on my page Ask the Dentist is a really great platform. He has a functional dentist finder and a lot of functional dentists. A huge component of their practice is airway health, but this is a little bit controversial. It's like a scholarly debate, which I think is ridiculous because there's just so much evidence for it. I'll be honest, they are starting to teach us in dental schools now, just kind of lowering the treatment age, but it's an education. We have to educate the public about this too, cause some parents are like what do you mean? My four year old or five year old needs a retainer? What?
Speaker 1:are you talking about, but like my daughter, she's 10. We started her at five with expanders and now she's just finishing an Invisalign and she's done at 10. Her jaws are so wide. She has this big, beautiful, wide smile. Her friends are just getting braces on. She never needed braces. So a lot of this early intervention, you can avoid braces and with some severe cases you're gonna avoid jaw surgery when you're older too. So it's a big deal. So you wanna find someone that is practicing this way. So check out those resources. But I'll put it in the show notes. But there's a couple websites to check out to find providers too. One's the Breathe Institute in LA just see who's been a certified provider on there and the other is the AAPMD. It's the American Academy of Physiological Medicine and Dentistry. I think it's what it stands for. But it's basically an airway group and everyone who's listed on their website will have done airway training.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, because I feel like that would be the hardest thing. You're like okay, I'm on board. Now how do I find somebody who's also on board? What can do something to help me?
Speaker 1:It's so hard. And it's just like every dentist isn't the same, every ear, nose and throat doctor isn't the same. If you do need tonsils and adenoids assessed, every physician's not the same. Every orthodontist isn't the same but it's a slow movement. There are people out there I mean, I'll be honest, I do have people that travel really really far to see me. It's very flattering and humbling, but it's because they just don't have any resources close by. So sometimes, if you have the means, you may need to travel a little bit. But again, it's one of those things you sort of are paying it forward and I really deeply believe it's gonna help the overall health of your kids.
Speaker 2:But even if you don't have the monetary resources, the crunchy things as soon as you can. I feel like is like the best.
Speaker 1:And in breastfeeding, if you can. Not everyone is able to do that, not everyone wants to do that, not everyone can do that as long as they might like to, but breastfeeding is a wonderful way to help facilitate jaw development and then also making sure if there was like a tongue restriction or something, that it got addressed. That's. The other hard part is a lot of them are not diagnosed or misdiagnosed. But yeah, crunchy foods I mean whole foods is really important. Maybe you can buy a mild munchie and try to use that too.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, oh. The other thing that I saw was tongue stuff so like, because I've seen if your kid has got like kind of like white film or like white whatever, that's sugar.
Speaker 1:It's chemi candida.
Speaker 2:Yes, that.
Speaker 1:So that's another component of this. We have learned in the research that it's not just strep mutans, which is a type of bacteria that we are taught in dental school is like the big culprit of cavities it's strep mutans, strep mutans, strep mutans. Well, now we're realizing oh wait, hang tight, it could be fungus, it's candida, and especially if you have strep mutans and candida, it's like that's a super hero power team and they help facilitate each other to be full throttle evil in your mouth, if you will. So a lot of babies, their teeth come in and these poor mamas are breastfeeding and then the teeth start decaying and they go to see the dentist and the dentist says you need to stop breastfeeding. This is basically your fault.
Speaker 1:I get furious about this and I will tell you I used to be that dentist because that's how I was trained and it's absolute BS. So again, there's nothing more important than breastfeeding for airway health. Okay, so you need to be breastfeeding as long as you can, as long as it works for you. If it works for you, it's not the breastfeeding that's causing the cavities, it's not the breast milk. If you just think about this logically, evolutionarily, it wouldn't make sense for mammals to be feeding our babies this beautiful golden elixir of all of this wonderful nutrients and immune cells and all of this, and then it would decay our teeth. And there's no other species on the planet of animal that gets decay from their mother's milk. So that's just logics. Actually, animals in the wild don't get cavities. It's domesticated dogs and cats that are getting cavities, and that's because of kibble. You're not gonna get cavities from eating a deer.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah.
Speaker 1:So these poor mons are being told stop breastfeeding. But really I'm thinking Candida. Does the baby have fungus and a lot of them do or are their teeth extremely under mineralized? Because we are so mineral deficient and this is no one's fault, this is generational but we've stripped our soil. I mean, we know our soil is extremely magnesium deficient. Magnesium is really important for dental development. So many of us are vitamin D deficient. And even if you're consuming it, is it bioavailable? How are you metabolizing it? And so vitamin D deficiency.
Speaker 1:And then this is where the work of Dr Western Price comes in. Maybe you've heard of him. Dr Steven Lin is a functional dentist out of Australia who kind of modernized his work Dr Price's work in a book called the Dental Diet. And essentially Dr Price traveled the world in the 1930s studying more ancestral tribes that were still in existence and studying what they were eating, and he found that their teeth were immaculate. They had beautiful wide arches, no crowding, wide open airways and no cavities. And so he was looking at well, what are they eating? And they were eating ancestral diets of a ton of fat soluble vitamins, you know, fish oils, vitamin D, vitamin K, vitamin A, lots of minerals.
Speaker 2:Through their food, though. Through their food, yeah, so not even supplement.
Speaker 1:No, no, but we don't eat this way anymore. So they were eating like organ meats and like drinking blood and you know stuff that we're not probably gonna pull off, Don't take your yeah. I mean we're. We need to get kids off goldfish crackers Right. So, like we have to, we're a normal modern society.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's interesting.
Speaker 1:You know what kids are eating liver and, like we used to, you know, or again, our minerals, we're still mineral deficient, which means moms are mineral deficient, which means our milk is deficient, which I don't know, that's what I was thinking.
Speaker 2:I'm like, if they're only getting milk, how are they having a fungus? But it's, yeah, coming from mom.
Speaker 1:Usually so. Our microbiomes come from our moms. So you know, ideally we first established our microbiome. Well, actually, we know the microbiome starts in utero. We didn't, we used to think it didn't. We know, we now know it does. But that coming through the birth canal is your first exposure to your mom's microbiome. And then, of course, skin on skin and breastfeeding. All of this is establishing the microbiome, which is a good thing. We want all these beautiful, good, versatile bacteria. But usually who first introduces pathogenic bacteria to the baby? It's a caregiver, not just a mom, but it could be dad, it could be grandma, it could be older sibling. So bacteria, cavity bacteria, it's transmissible, you can exchange it. It's like talking.
Speaker 1:Sharing utensils, kissing on the lips. You know the past. Fire falls, you lick it, you give it back to the child and then at some point, depending on the underlying health of the child and immune response, they're either gonna kind of like fight off that bad bacteria that comes in the mouth or, if they're more vulnerable, the bacteria is gonna take over. Yeah, yeah, and depending what you're eating too. So it's a good thing too if we're in the dating scene. You should know the Oral Microbiology partner.
Speaker 2:Oh right.
Speaker 1:I mean that's a little crazy next level.
Speaker 2:but if somebody think about rampant periodontal disease, I don't know You're saying as far as procreation, or just like kissing them.
Speaker 1:Kissing, yeah, nasty yeah, I mean just being a partner with them. They're more likely to have Alzheimer's and dementia and all these things. They need to get their mouth in check.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I'm healthy yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. Okay, so you're saying breastfeeding is great. Is there like a? Well, you said the what's the munchie thing called?
Speaker 1:My oh munchie, my oh munchie.
Speaker 2:But is there like a nook that's better than others, or a bottle nipple that's better than others or anything like that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really depends on the baby's needs, but generally speaking, you want to find a nipple that resembles a nipple on your body as much as possible, and so what is that? It's usually the straight, so like literally the passers they give you at the hospital.
Speaker 1:Those are some of the best ones, and it's the same for bottles too, like just kind of a more straight nipple. But if you're having problems breastfeeding or feeding, I really do recommend to work with an IBCLC, like a certified lactation consultant, because we're all bio individual. So if I can't just say, look, this bottle is perfect for everyone or this passers perfect for everyone, but a lot of those like orthodontic pacifiers, it's marketing.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I'm looking right now, just like the Phillips advent, just literally, where it's just there's no bulb, there's no, nothing, it's just a straight, yes, straighten it and then the brushing. So my kids are a year and a half and three and a half and I started like I would just hand them the toothbrush before they had teeth, and I would. They would brush their teeth while I brush my teeth and then, as they had older, I would help them do it. My one and a half year old it doesn't let me do much, but she's seeing her three anyway but then I saw this at for this, like it's a mouth guard toothbrush, and it was like, oh, your kids are missing things because they're not getting in between the spaces. And I was like, yeah, they are. And you put this mouth guard thing with all these little like nubbies and then like, really, yeah and the, and you just rock it back and forth and it vibrates and I was like genius. So I sent it over to you to get a fact check. I didn't got a big fail.
Speaker 1:Thumbs down. Yeah, so okay, the reason I'm not a fan has to do with my clinical observation of patients coming in using those. Their teeth are filthy, some of the worst plaque accumulation I've seen. So I called the company about this and they're like oh, they're not using it correctly, let us send you a kit. Can you be an influencer? Blah, blah, blah. So I thought this is disgusting, but this is my story. So I was like all right, I'm gonna test this for myself.
Speaker 1:So I didn't brush my teeth for four days and I intentionally ate way more fermentable carbohydrates than I do. I tend to eat pretty paleo and if you eat more paleo and I'm not advocating for any diet, we're all different but I eat more. I just eat like meat and vegetables that's kind of my main thing, with a little bit of fruit, but I ate a lot of bread and crackers and like all these things. And I had like gross plaque all over my teeth, driving me crazy. And then I did. I took a disclosing tablet Maybe you guys know there's those little red tablets usually and you break them and you chew them and you swish and it stains your plaque pink. So I did that and then I put in my auto brush and I followed the instructions exactly as I said, I'm a dentist. I'm very good at following step-by-step instructions. That's all. Dentists do we follow instructions and I took it out and I have photos. Nothing came off. I had pink plaque all over my teeth still. Did you follow up with them?
Speaker 1:Yeah and they were like you didn't do it right and I said I absolutely did, and also, this is not rocket science. So basically it just it doesn't do a good job. I think it's a fun tool to get kids excited about oral health and I think anything that you can do that makes it fun is awesome. But here's a strategy I have for introducing brushing. If you just have a young baby who's just getting teeth, I really love this. So you are on your changing table multiple times a day In the top drawer of your changing table, and this I want you starting to do things like as soon as teeth are up, so like six, seven, eight months old.
Speaker 1:The drawer of your changing table or wherever you're keeping all your creams and things. Have a toothbrush and maybe a little toothpaste or maybe not, like sometimes just water's fine until molars are up. I like the little silicone finger brushes at first, so they make like the silicone banana brush. You can also get little xylitol wipes. We just mostly are trying to desensitize your child into having people in their mouth. Okay, so you take an existing routine that you do and add a new habit to it. So we're changing diapers every morning and night anyway, why not just do a quick little do-do-do with the silicone brush and on your way, Once teeth start to come in, if they touch, then you can add a little floss Dick, dick, dick.
Speaker 1:This takes seconds. But also the child's laying back. And so you know, dentists lay patients back. Why do we do that? It's not to torture you, although it seems like we are. It's so easy. If I look down into a patient's mouth, I can see what I'm doing. I can see all their teeth. I can move their lips and cheeks around. I'm looking in their eyes. It can be very engaging. I can sing to them. I can do the ABCs, you know, as opposed to like coming at someone like bam, like you know or like like headlocking them and going like it's really aggressive.
Speaker 1:If you can't see what you're doing, you're probably going to hurt your child a little bit, and they're not going to leave you. Try laying your kids back, and this includes as they age.
Speaker 2:I love to lay the kids back.
Speaker 1:You can see what you're doing. Some parents get headlamps. I mean, I know it seems excessive, but you have to trust me, the best dentistry is no dentistry. You do not want your kids getting cavities because it's really hard to deal with them when they're little. That means anesthesia, sometimes there's sedation. And then you mentioned earlier, well, why Baby teeth fall out. Not a big deal. Well, we have baby teeth until we're 12 or 13.
Speaker 1:So if cavities start developing and I need to remind people, cavities are the number one chronic disease in children globally. So, while this may seem like what is she talking about? No one gets cavities. I'm telling you right now, everyone gets cavities. We see so many cavities I can't keep up with it.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't matter gender, socioeconomic status, education level, it doesn't matter. It is a universal issue. So hygiene does matter. Now, it's not as important as what we're eating. So if your kid isn't consuming a lot of ultra process foods chips, crackers, granola bars, fruit snacks, dried fruit melts, all that stuff they're gonna be a lower cavity risk. If they're eating mostly meats and cheese and nuts and seeds and veggies and fruits and olives and pickles, eggs, they're not gonna get cavities from that stuff. It's the process food, it's the things that come out of packages, so a lot of us think it's soda and candy bars. I want you to think of it as it's actually flour, and also all these additives and flavorings and things. What are they doing to our oral microbiome? They're not supporting our beneficial bacteria. They really can affect a lot, like just all the additives.
Speaker 2:They're feeding all the bad guys who chip away.
Speaker 1:That's just shifting it. It's creating like a chemical imbalance or pH imbalance. A lot of these process foods they act very acidic in the mouth. So it's just things to think about. But I really do love flossing.
Speaker 1:Most cavities that we see are between kids back molars, and so around the age of like two and a half, I would love you flossing. And parents look at me like I'm insane, cause how are you gonna floss to two and a half year old's teeth but flash forward, if you had been playing with it kind of all along since infancy babies, you know it's not a huge deal and then reintroduce it. Okay, so we didn't do that. So now my child's like three.
Speaker 1:How do I floss her teeth? Try to make it fun, lay them back, sing a song, have an award chart, have your dentist tell them why it's so important. I have a trick. I'm gonna try to have people visualize this. But if you take your toothbrush and I had mentioned a silicone brush once molars come in, I really do like us moving to a smaller head, soft, real toothbrush and using a little bit of toothpaste, and we can get to a toothpaste later. But you have your toothbrush, put it on the side of the mouth, so it acts like a little mouth prop, I guess, and so it's keeping your child open. Then you have your little floss stick and you can sneak in and go doot, doot, doot Floss stick, not the floss in your fingers.
Speaker 1:Forget it, you'll get that yeah okay, great.
Speaker 1:The other thing that works really well, and so it's the four corners. You wanna hit the molars Like I think flossing is more important than brushing. I want everyone to start their oral routine at night with flossing. If teeth touch, okay. So again, that's usually two and a half or three, because that's where I see cavities. Almost 100% of the time we don't see them in the mouth, it's not until we take X-rays. They're in between and that's because the bad bacteria love to hang out in there. Because it has low oxygen. So the bad bacteria hide between the teeth. You're chomping your goldfish crackers. That gets pushed down in between. You're never flossing and they just thrive.
Speaker 2:Thrive, yep what.
Speaker 1:When you're flossing and brushing. It's not about removing food, that's important. Really, what you're doing, you're disrupting the biofilm. You're disrupting the bad bacteria. You don't want them to stick to your tooth for too long. You wanna shake them off, and then they come back again and you shake them off. You have to do it every day, depending on what you're eating.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, I'm learning a lot about my kids, but also learning a lot about my own oral health.
Speaker 1:Yeah, flossing, I can't. If you are an adult, you should be flossing every day if you want to have optimal brain health.
Speaker 2:Don't you sell floss.
Speaker 1:I am working on it. I have the patents pending. I haven't gone to manufacturing yet because it's a custom made floss pick. It's made of post-consumer, recycled paper which, weirdly, has never occurred before on Planet Earth. But now I know why because the manufacturing is really expensive. So we are trying to secure the patent, which will help me get investors to do that. But the patent bureau is a bit backed up because hashtag government agency.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've heard it takes years for patents to.
Speaker 1:Then it has been five years. Oh my gosh. I guess maybe four years, but I think we're very close.
Speaker 2:And you're committed to this. Like what about bamboo?
Speaker 1:I'm so deep in it, I mean I have to finish it. Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 2:You're like I don't know how far the finish line is. We might be a day away, we might be five years, but I'm gonna keep going to the thing of the day.
Speaker 1:Literally, I'm running like this weird ultra marathon thing that never ends, or maybe it does, I don't know. I don't know the route, but anyway, yeah, so lay your kids back. My other rule is I like parents helping kids with their teeth at night. I just want to tell my parents I patients and I actually did this post on my feet. Yeah.
Speaker 1:This is my rule and I say this from clinical experience Again, my whole thing is no dentistry is the best dentistry for your kids. So I say you know, my rule is until you turn 10, you need a grown up to help you with your teeth at night flossing and brushing but you could do it on your own in the morning. And it's just because kids do a terrible job. They just do. They don't have dexterity, they don't have focus or attention, you don't know what they're doing. This is annoying to them. So you do the best you can. I have a word chart on my office website that can really help motivate kids. You know, your daughter, is it your daughter three?
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. Three and a half.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you know she's starting to get into that award chart.
Speaker 2:Totally. She's the first born through and through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah right. So it really can work, because this is also establishing good habits and we know good habits start in childhood. So if we double down on oral hygiene and flossing now, she hopefully is a teenager and an adult that just has really remarkable oral hygiene, doesn't even think about it. She's like a great flosser and brusher. And you know it's all about prevention because this is what you do. It's just like I wash my shampoo and condition my hair and I wash my face and you know it's.
Speaker 1:Try to think of it like that.
Speaker 2:All right, we're gonna take a brief break to talk about my flip book. This came when I felt like postpartum was just a gnarly experience, and I retrospectively looked back at it and feel like a lot of it came from social media. It came from the insane amount of information coming in. It came from a little bit of isolation well, a lot of isolation and so I wanted to create a thought prompt flip book.
Speaker 2:So this sits on in your nursery, it sits in your closet in the morning, it sits in your bathroom, it sits wherever you want, and every day you can flip it, or multiple times a day you can flip it, and it gives you thought prompts that I created to help you get through motherhood in a positive way. So it asks questions like what are things that I like about my spouse that I am grateful for that they do? What is a challenge I've experienced that has made me better? Who are people that I have to lean on and just like so, instead of scrolling your phone when you're nursing your baby to sleep, or scrolling your phone when you're pumping, or scrolling your phone when you go to sleep, instead you flip one of these thought prompts and you think and it's just so magical. What can happen when you put your phone down and you just do nothing. But that's hard. So I wanted to have a thought prompt to think on, to get your mind in a positive place. If this sounds like something you're interested in, you can go to hayshilacom slash shop and you will find it there.
Speaker 2:Let's get back to the show.
Speaker 1:What works really well, I think, is to do a lot of this in the bedroom. So I have a bowl it's a metal bowl in case it knocks over, so it doesn't shatter filled with flasks, and unfortunately I do use the plastic ones. I will say bioplastic is kind of a waste of your money. Most bioplastic it still has plastic in it and most of them are made with cane, sugar or corn, which are not great crops for our environment. So I'll just say that so use the plastic ones, spend more money and use the bioplastic, but it's not much better for your environment. You can rinse them and reuse them. So just like you don't throw your toothbrush away every night, you don't have to throw your floss your way every night, just clean it, reuse it.
Speaker 1:But I keep it in the bedroom and we do a lot of our flossing or routine rate as we're reading stories at night. So and what I'll do is I'll throw my kids on the bed or I'll like lay them back in my arms so they're laying back, you know, and so I can see in their mouth, and we'll do it. And what I used to do is I'd start reading their book and I say, okay, we need to brush and floss our teeth and the faster we do this, the more book we get to read. And I just think it's about consistency and you're gonna have bad nights and they're gonna flail and get mad. Some parents are like I don't wanna create dental trauma. I will tell you so. I've been a dentist for almost 20 years. I've never met an adult who remembers their parents brushing their teeth and holds on to this deep rooted trauma from it. But I've met thousands, tens of thousands of patients who have dental phobia and trauma from dentists fixing their teeth, and it almost all comes from childhood.
Speaker 1:So just try to remember that. It's just like a lot of kids hate their car seat, a lot of kids hate their faces wiped or their hair washed. We still do that.
Speaker 1:And we need to think of oral hygiene like that too, and it doesn't need to be aggressive and long and drawn out, but we need to do it and consistency is key. And the more you do it and the more you make sure your child knows this is something we do, they're gonna adapt and they're gonna be more accepting of it. I promise you they really will.
Speaker 2:So for as far as cleaning their teeth, you're saying the silicone finger brushes are a good way to start. Then moving to a small soft head, do you like the buzzy ones?
Speaker 1:I do like electric toothbrushes yes, I honestly introduce those to my kids when they were around like 15 months old or so. I think most of them say don't use under three. That's just a CYA thing that they do. There's no data behind that.
Speaker 2:I use it for both of mine, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally so. The Gobi brush is great and Quip is really great when they're young to get them used to bump the bumpiness. I am a big Phillips Sonicare fan. I think Sonicare's the best and I would say you could introduce that around three. The thing is a lot of kids. If you just throw it in there, it's very stimulating. It can be tickly and it can be too much. So you kind of want to do maybe training wheels and use like a Quip or a little Gobi.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do they have smaller ones?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they make kid ones.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, I was like I can just share a head swap heads with my daughter, but the whole thing could be so big for her.
Speaker 1:I would just get a smaller head. Yeah, they have them. You can find them on Amazon or whatever.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, sweet, and then toothpaste.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I know it's kind of a I'm talking about it. What do we look for?
Speaker 1:So I am a big fan of hydroxyapatite toothpaste. So, as a functional dentist, I want to be using materials that are very biomimetic, the most similar to the body as possible. We don't have any fluoride in our body or in our teeth, naturally, so I personally have some concerns with fluoride, especially in our water system, because it is defined as a neurotoxin and there are some very concerning studies that are out about how it can affect brain development in kids, specifically systemically from water. Right, but for me, because it's the data is so concerning and there's actually never been a proper safety study showing that it is actually safe to use fluoride, believe it or not, I have a really hard time looking at a parent and saying we need, you have to use fluoride absolutely because I'm worried about their brain development.
Speaker 2:What would the opposition say? Why do people say you need fluoride?
Speaker 1:Because they say it's totally safe and it works in reducing the cavity risk. But I would argue the data now is showing that fluoride actually isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's not reducing cavities like they claim. The latest study shows that it really reduces maybe one surface cavity per child who uses it, which is not a big deal. Cavities are still the number one global epidemic, even with patients that use it. I mean, I see so many patients using fluoride toothpaste, fluoride rinses during prescriptions, they're on fluoride water and their teeth are still decayed.
Speaker 1:Because you can't compete with processed food, right, nothing's gonna compete with diet Nothing. So I think there's a time and place for it, I suppose, on if patients don't have access to hydroxyapatite and hydroxyapatite is a little expensive. So I would just say and it is now, I hope the price comes down but basically, hydroxyapatite is calcium and phosphorus. It's within your enamel. Already, 97% of your enamel is calcium and phosphorus hydroxyapatite particles. 70% of your bone is hydroxyapatite. So this is bio-limetic. It has been approved by the SCCS in Europe, which is like the FDA there. We know Europe is extremely strict. There's this internet rumor saying it was banned in Europe. That is 100% fault and it's driving me bonkers that be, yeah, because they officially approved it.
Speaker 1:they took almost 10 years reviewing the data, reading the systematic reviews and performing their own research and they came out with a final position saying it's totally safe because it's calcium, it's minerals, it's calcium and phosphorus.
Speaker 2:Did they ever do that with fluorine?
Speaker 1:No, no, they did not.
Speaker 2:Why Well?
Speaker 1:fluoride was introduced into the water system in the 1940s and it was before evidence-based medicine and it was put in there based on observation, which now would never happen. Correlation is not causation, right, so they're actually is the national tax toxicology report that was released. We're gonna, we're digging deep here now. So there is a federal lawsuit that's been going on since 2020. It's the people versus the EPA. It's out of San Francisco.
Speaker 1:The judge, hopefully, is ruling this March and he last year has been trying to get this toxicology report from the Department of Health and Human Services. It has been under lock and key for six years. I think they won't release it. So under the Freedom of Information Act, he mandated that be released and they made a statement based on their research, just as the United States Health and Human Services National Taxicology report on water fluoridation. Their final statement was there's no safe amount of fluoride in our water. The, the American Dental Association and all these super pro water fluoridation groups went bonkers and then two weeks later, weirdly, the NTP came back and said well, maybe we need more research. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. You can interpret that as you want, but the judge has the original statement. He's also been having expert testimonials from epidemiologists, biochemists, neuroscientists, you know, endocrinologists. He basically was like dental community. I don't want to hear from you. I get it. You, dennis, love fluoride right. Message received. I want to know what it's doing beyond the teeth right you think it makes teeth stronger, prevents cavities.
Speaker 1:What is it doing to brains and thyroid and bones and all of this? And I've been obsessed with this trial, I know a lot about it. I would argue it doesn't look good for water fluoridation in our country. We are one of the last countries to still Florida our water. Most other countries have had it removed years ago. 97% of the global world is not fluoridated. So we'll see. I don't know he might man, he might rule to take it out of our water system which, from a brain development standpoint, I hope you know it's. It's a neurotoxin and, if the science is really totally but it's concerning I can fix a kid's tooth.
Speaker 1:I can do that. I cannot fix the brain right we only have one chance at brain development. So again, I can't look at a parent in the eye and say, absolutely, it's totally safe, you know. And the thing is you're like, okay, well, what about topical? What about toothpaste and rinses and all these things? Okay, fair. But you are swallowing it and it's, it's absorbed through the mucosa and it can be cumulative. And that's where we do any more research, like what is it doing? What is topical safe or not? And it probably is.
Speaker 1:But if there's a better alternative out there, literally droxy appetite that the science is showing works as well. And now there's data showing it actually outperforms and it's safe to swallow. You know it's biomemetic.
Speaker 2:Yes we have it, and alia was like just squeezing it into her mouth yeah, and. I was like girl, let's not eat the toothpaste. So I was reading her the directions, because directions on toothpaste always says don't swallow the freaking bottle says it's, it's rise well, and it says yeah, yeah, it's safe, safe enough to eat, but don't. Because that's weird. It says that on the thing and I was like I can't let us all out to you because then you're gonna just keep eating this food yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1:They love it because these like vanilla cupcakes. Yeah, yeah, I mean, fluoride has a poison control label on it. You're supposed to call poison control if they eat the bottle of toothpaste okay.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I have. I take the fluoride out of my water. I don't use fluoride toothpaste. But then we're at the dentist. They're like, oh, do you want to do the floor on teeth?
Speaker 1:and I'm like that I don't know sure it's fine to see, sure, I think, but honestly so. The other thing that you need to know about fluoride varnish and I have a post coming out this soon I've been reading the MSDS reports, the safety data sheets on fluoride varnish, which you would think oh, you're a dentist, you should know that. Nope, never read it, never taught it in school. I mean, I've been doing.
Speaker 1:I read this a couple years ago because I'm working on something winged winged but I'm, there's an hexane in it, there's shellac in it, there's polyurethane in the varnish, there's ethanol, which is basically alcohol, and then you read the MSDS is in your like what level of concern are these? And you know it will grade it one, two, three, four, four is like really toxic and dangerous. A lot of those ingredients are threes or fours and it will say things in it like don't swallow, don't touch on skin, you know, and it's like what are we? So it's like the fluoride is the least concerning thing of some of these varnishes. You know how they're so sticky yeah, what thinking it's sticky shellac, what?
Speaker 1:yeah, I know it's wild, it's wild and also wild the data I mean. Here's the thing do you go into the dentist twice a year and having a cleaning and having fluoride, it's not moving the needle, it's right you do every day at home, so I think you can say no, I have never put it on my kids yeah, because.
Speaker 1:I don't even think it's doing anything, and a lot of those are very acidic. The varnishes are acidic, so it's kind of you know it's altering your microbiome too, so you'll get some flak, I do. You know, it's unfortunate. I wish I think younger dentists are being more accepting of patients just saying you know, I'm good, thank you. We choose not to use fluoride yeah but you just double down on your flossing and brushing and your diet and hydration and your nasal breathing at home and your kids will be healthy.
Speaker 1:I mean yeah, not supposed to get cavities, that's. This is not in your destiny.
Speaker 2:I feel like that's the biggest takeaway and it was. I mean, if I hadn't been following you it'd be shocking, but I've been following you, so I kind of know this. But just like getting them the whole foods to help with their structures of their faces, that just cascades into everything else yeah, yeah, think of it like help starts in the mouth.
Speaker 1:It really does right. It's the gateway to the body, is our mouth cool that sounds really self-important, but it's, yeah, it is true.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean yeah, I mean your dentist, but I feel like nutritionists would say the same thing or whatever.
Speaker 1:It's just that's where you're entering things into your body yeah, I mean, there's that saying like each bite of food you take is towards health or illness, or I? Think it's true, I think it's not to become food obsessed, but you know, when I sit down for me, all I think you know, is this nourishing me or is this like a fun food? And I know I'm doing this, just I know, that's what I'm trying to teach you, I don't need it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and sometimes that's acceptable totally acceptable, but you just have to find the balance of it you know I'm not a big purist or extremist yeah with fluoride and like, even like lead and stuff. I mean, here's the thing. We're exposed to these things every day. It's in our soil, it's in our air, it's in our food. But you, you know our bodies are pretty incredible, but you just want to minimize unnecessary exposure.
Speaker 1:So I see so much anxiety and stress yes, yes over information and then trying to be purists, and I think it's unrealistic. You've got to let some stuff go and and you're? You just do the best you can, but you focus on the low hanging fruit right filter your water. That's a really good one. It's not only for fluoride, it's the chlorine and the bromine, and you know that's a great one.
Speaker 2:Clean water is foundational yeah, and I really need sleeping is foundational yeah, that one I need to work on. I think I need to think about it, but it but I. I think you're right, though. I think, because, like, my whole thing is like, oh, granola moms or whatever and I know a lot of people who do and I'm like, the anxiety and stress and cortisol that you are experiencing is way worse than letting your kids have a 100% whatever. So it's, I think you're a percent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, kids, okay, like I'm pretty strict, but not I mean compared to other families. Yes, but they still get this stuff. They do. They have soccer practice and they're eating. I see them sucking down high seas and rage and I'm like, yeah, but I do it. Yes, because I also know one exposure isn't what we're talking about. We're talking about daily use. It's like deodorant, aluminum deodorant you know, you use it once or twice, you use it a hundred times, you're probably fine. It's the decade after decade after right day after day like right.
Speaker 2:But that's the cool thing about, as moms, making a few of these changes, because these changes are gonna be the standard for our kids. Yeah, so they're gonna go oh, I don't know, I always use no fluoride, I'm a toothpaste and grab it in college. Or like they're gonna bring the filtered water bottle of college or there and like that is the difference that you're making. You're the exactly the decades of difference instead of the high sea at prices yeah, I mean, I'm literally like I'm gonna go for a walk, I'm just gonna walk this one off.
Speaker 2:I'll be right back.
Speaker 1:I'm eating Oreos right now, oh my god. But like that's also like they're. My kids are a little older, they're girls, they're eight and ten. I'm telling you, they're social stuff too, like they don't want to be the weird kid that I come over and I'm like no, excuse me, no, you cannot have those and then the moms get weird and it's just like all right, cool yeah eat Oreos, get a stomach ache later, talk about it, and then we're gonna make sure we really floss and brush later.
Speaker 1:And and then what's? What's cool though, because I didn't I don't bring those foods into my home. Generally, when they do get them at birthday parties or soccer, their bodies don't react well to it. They literally will come home and be like, oh, I don't feel very good. I'm like, oh, that's so interesting. Could it be the Doritos and the Oritos that you had? And this is helping them self-manage their bodies. I want them to learn to listen to their bodies and not have me harping at them about stuff. That's really hard for teaching.
Speaker 2:And that's why it's hard, because I'm trying to teach Aliyah this superhero bad guy thing and I'm like sugars feed the bad guys. And I'm like, but you know what? A little bit of sugar doesn't. I don't want her to think that sugar or she can't have sweets or get this complex about bad foods and have it be a thing. I'm like it's good to enjoy these things because they're yummy, but we don't want to eat too many because then the bad guys. So she'll literally hand me her sucker halfway through and she's like mom, is that okay? And I'm like are you finished? Cool, yeah, Did you love it?
Speaker 1:That's cool and my kids did that too, and I didn't teach them that that's innate, because they're listening to their bodies. It will be like it's too sweet. I'm done, that's super cool. That's like when you have the piece of cake because you just want to be social and enjoy that family gathering together and it does taste good and then at some point you're like whoa, okay, that's good Totally. You know, I think it's important and I have girls and so I do worry about like eating disorders and things like just.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And while I do think there are foods that I mean whether you like the word, good or bad or whatever I do think there are some foods that are like really not foods, or like franken foods 100%.
Speaker 1:And that bums me out. You know they're there, they're there in our world and we have to learn how to manage that. And again, that goes for fluoride. And I just see I see these extremists with lead and stuff, like all of it, like they're like testing everything in their house with these monitors, like, look, my computer mouse has traced amounts of lead in it and it like the amount of sensational anxiety that that is creating for those moms and moms because I believe we are foundational for the health of our family.
Speaker 1:If you have all this anxiety and stress and, as you mentioned, cortisol and neuroses, really is like it just spirals right, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that is going to now make your kids anxious and probably become socially isolated because totally even go out or touch anything or I can't live in this house and like it's just such a bummer. And that's why I really encourage people to follow accounts on these social media platforms that make them feel informed. But good, so much fear mongering and click bait and I get so many questions. Like you know someone so sad that this toothbrush head. It comes from India and it might have traced amounts of cadmium in it, and you know it's like what I don't know yeah.
Speaker 1:You can't go to that level. I just don't think it's helping.
Speaker 2:No, I agree. Yeah, that was a lot. Yeah, that was a lot. That was great, though. I loved it, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:No, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for being on the panel. So does anybody.
Speaker 1:When will this go on?
Speaker 2:Uh, wait, let's do a wrap up. Let's do a thank you. Thank you, I don't know when it's going to go on. It depends on what I can, can I?
Speaker 1:say can I say I, because you'll edit this out, maybe Sorry about that. I was going to say that I have an announcement.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's not till December 15th.
Speaker 2:Oh wait, for sure We'll be after that. Oh great, yeah, so let's just announce it. Okay, sure, to start talking. Yes, well, you have something very exciting to share as well, right I?
Speaker 1:do I do so? Speaking of toothpaste, yes, drum roll please. So I jumped on Instagram back in 2020 during COVID and I was mandated to be closed I couldn't be a dentist for three months because of the state of Oregon, sorry and on there I met this wonderful human, dr Mark Brejena, who has the acid and his platform that I mentioned, and we always get asked about oral health care products and toothpaste and, like we had some, we suggested you know the one your daughter uses, the one I use but we never were totally happy with the ingredient list, because a lot of them still had emulsifiers and surfactants which disrupt the oral microbiome and, even though they were more natural versions, they still can cause some disruption, or they had really high, excessive essential oils which can disrupt the oral microbiome. So he and I one day we're just chatting on the phone he's a mentor of mine, but we've become very good friends we were like why don't we just make a toothpaste? And so, two years ago, we started that process.
Speaker 2:Two years.
Speaker 1:It's taken forever, and here's why we made a toothpaste where we wanted to take things out of it, and that was really hard. So we wanted to take the foaming and the burning and the additives and all of that and it was really hard to create. There's a reason, I think, it really hasn't happened the way it has before. So we have a toothpaste coming out and it does have hydroxyapatite, which of course we're huge fans of, but that's not really what differentiates us. Our differentiator is that we are oral microbiome supportive and it's called FIG F-Y-G-G, which stands for Feed your Good Guys.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:I love it. And it has prebiotics and amino acids that help have been shown in the data to support beneficial bacteria growth, so it's really like a toothpaste that is like a supplement for your oral microbiome too.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:And it tastes delicious, and we're getting EWG certified and blah, blah blah. That's happening and we all hope it's successful, and we have all these other ideas for expanding the product line.
Speaker 2:but there's a lot of flavors.
Speaker 1:There's kid flavors, we have toothbrushes, we have tongue scrapers.
Speaker 2:So where can people go to get it?
Speaker 1:FIGcom, f-y-g-gcom. And yeah, we're also on Instagram FIG Oral Health.
Speaker 2:I think Pretty sure It'll all be in the show notes. That's so exciting, I'm so congratulations, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's a strategic consumer right now and we'll just see how it goes, but we'd love everyone to try it.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, so cool, exciting. Thank you, thank you. Well, thank you for being on. Just in general, this was incredibly eye-opening and jaw-opening in all of the things. I learned a lot.
Speaker 1:It's like one more. I'm sorry, I hope it didn't create anxiety or stress. It's like, oh my gosh, one more thing speaking of all these things. But here's the thing I'm here to support you don't stress. The whole idea is this early identification of issues and we make slow changes. And so hit me up on Instagram. On the IG, I do try to answer all my DMs as best I can. I don't always, but I really try to, and then I do Q&As a lot too. So just keep harassing me If I don't answer. Keep messaging me. I'd like to be like oh, this poor person is messing with my times. I need to answer it.
Speaker 2:And it's doctor underscore Stacy with an eye. Yep, amazing, all right, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you Super fun. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:All right. Thank you guys so much for listening. If you enjoyed it, please share with somebody you think would love, and I would be so honored if you would subscribe to the podcast and leave a comment and rating below so I can know what you guys are digging, what you want more of. Just connect with you a little better. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time.