Dr. Aaron Hartman explains how oral dysbiosis triggers heart disease, diabetes, and neurological problems through systemic inflammation and impaired nitric oxide production. Practical fixes include brushing, flossing, oil pulling, and chewable probiotics, plus vitamin D and omega-3s.
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One of the things I actually found from Weston A. Price's research back in the 50s was cod liver oil due to its amount of vitamin A and D has a, can have a big impact on cavities and oral health, which I think is quite fascinating. And then getting accurate Omega 3s just in general, adequate D levels. If someone has really poor oral hygiene, I mean my clinic, I've never yet to date had done a blood test on someone with poor oral hygiene that didn't have a low vitamin D level. There's one place in your body or one location, one part of your body that can actually be a window into illness in your entire body. It can be a window into inflammation, heart disease, neurological issues. And it's a place that we all kind of know about. We know health there is important, but it's often overlooked as a sign and even symptoms there of underlying inflammation and whole body dysfunction. What part of your body am I talking about? I'm talking about your mouth, oral hygiene. And so I want to talk about today in this deep dive is discuss the oral brain, oral gut, oral whole body connection and things you can do to help with that. So if this information is helpful, please like share, subscribe. How we get this information out there is by you sharing it. And on that we'll take a deep dive into this. So what do we know about oral health? What goes wrong? If your mouth is in bad shape, there's an increased incidence with periodontitis, cavities, oral bad, poor oral dentition. The term is usually dentition with heart disease, cardiovascular disease, with, with diabetes, with neurological issues, with strokes, and even with gut health. With gut issues there's a oral mouth, gut connection. So let's take a little deeper dive because obviously gut health, neurological issues, heart issues, I mean what else is there? If you have don't have your brain, don't have your heart, you don't really exist. And your gut is the second brain as we know. So what's the connection? Well, it's interesting. First the bacteria in your mouth actually seed your gut. If you have unhealthy oral bacteria, that's going to set your gut bacteria, your microbiome up to be dysbiotic or bad. So this is the idea of oral dysbiosis. So how would you know if you have bad oral bacteria? We have bleeding gums, we're seeing gum lines, you build tartar up really, really quick. Poor smelling breath, you actually just have a foul smelling breath and cavities. These are all ways swollen gums, tender gums, when you floss, they bleed. These are all markers that your mouth is inflamed. And you have a thing called leaky mouth. You may have heard of leaky gut, you may have heard of leaky brain. There's a barrier between different parts of our body and the oral barrier. Your leaky mouth is similar to your gut and brain barriers. So if your mouth is inflamed like that, the other places probably are as well. So the first concept is oral bacteria seed your gut. The second one is it also impacts your nitric oxide or endothelial dysfunction, which is a fancy way of saying all the small vessels in your body or what's that connection? Well, it's really interesting. The bacteria in your mouth when you're chewing nitrate rich foods like your beets or kale, your green leafies, whatever you're consuming has nitrates in it, require time in your mouth to be broken down, macerate, and you actually mix healthy bacteria in your mouth if you have them with that. And that's where the process of extracting nitrates which are made to make nitric oxide from your food starts actually in your mouth. So if you have poor oral hygiene, it actually will impact your ability to produce this which can affect blood pressure. For example, there's interesting data showing if you use a normal mouthwash that has antimicrobial like alcohol based people tend to have higher blood pressure. The connection there is that this nitric oxide, which is the same stuff that Viagra makes and nitroglycerin makes an sorbide or dinitrate makes and different blood pressure, actually navibolol is one of the bestolic, is a blood pressure medication that actually increases nitric oxide. If you don't make enough in your body because of your mouth, then guess what? You know, it makes sense, the connection between mouthwash and, and high blood pressure. How about the connection with mouthwash and diabetes? That's an interesting one. There's some literature showing that. How does that work? Well, again, same thing. You mess up the bacteria, which then mess up the bacteria in your gut. And we know that gut dysbiosis is associated with metabolic syndrome, which can affect which is one of the big parts of that is diabetes or insulin resistance. So and we actually have literature where people who use antimicrobial mouthwash actually having elevated insulin levels and being pre diabetic.
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So all of a sudden this basic oral hygiene, oral health, your oral condition can be, can be a huge positive or negative with your overall systemic health. The other thing is that it's interesting. There's a marker called a hscrp, which is a high sensitivity crp. CRP is a something your liver actually makes. It's called an antimicrobial peptide. It's something your body makes to fight off infections. So if I see an elevated CRP in someone, I'm usually looking, looking for inflammation, infections. So what are the sources of that? The sources can be your dental cavities, for example, root canals that are infected. It's amazing how many root canals fail. Cavitations where you had your wisdom teeth removed decades ago and then heal up all the way and you got a little infection there and just the gums in your mouth, all these things can cause blood testing to show inflammation, slight elevation in white counts. But the HSCRP is a more sensitive marker for that. So all of a sudden now if you're dealing with inflammation, inflammatory markers, other health issues, or if you just want to be the best you you can be, keep your mind your entire life, your health can become super important. Then again, easy things to look at that you know, the CRP we already mentioned, hscrp, cbc, other inflammatory markers, how's your gum, your oral health and the dentist. These are places where the dentist can help you because they can actually give you more concrete markers to look at. What are things you can do first? Flossing and brushing your teeth. I know it's the old saying, it's kind of boring. Floss and brush your teeth, that's the first thing. The other thing you can do is how can you change your oral microbiome on Top of that. Well, if you're brushing your teeth using toothpaste that actually has things like colloidal silver in it, there's actually some toothpaste that have. That. Some toothpaste will actually have essential oils, oregano, clove, cinnamon. These are all herbs that help with inflammation as well. Break down biofilms, which, strangely enough, biofilms are what helps make that cat loss, that thick stuff between your teeth. And if you have biofilms in your mouth, you'll have unhealthy biofilms in your gut. One thing I learned, I was taking a course through the. I believe it was the University of Denmark. This was pre pandemic, so this was probably six years ago or so. And the gist of it basically is all chronic infections require a biofilm to be going on. So if someone has a chronic infection, you need to deal with biofilms. So flossing and brushing, using a toothpaste that has, you know, good things in it, and then just routine oral health. You know, oil pulling is something that can be done where you take coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil and basically swish it vigorously in your mouth for about two or three minutes until the oral gets kind of thick and suddy. You think about what's soap? Soap is saponified fat. That's what soap is. And soap obviously breaks down cell walls and membranes of viruses and bacteria. You kind of sort of do something similar in your mouth when you swish it around for two to three minutes. Break down the biofilms also help break down the cell walls to help control the amount of that. And then doing certain kinds of probiotics, not just the ones you swallow, but you can get some chewable probiotics that actually will kind of get stuck in your teeth and remain there. Healthy foods, of course, diet's super important. Not eating inflammatory foods is super important. And then outside of that, if you're still having issues, there are certain mouthwashes that can be helpful. One of the things I actually found from Weston A. Price's research back in the 50s, was cod liver oil, due to its amount of vitamin A and D, has can have a big impact on cavities and oral health, which I think is quite, quite fascinating. And then getting accurate omega 3s just in general, accurate D levels. If someone has really poor oral hygiene in my clinic, I've never yet to date had done a blood test on someone with poor oral hygiene that didn't have a low vitamin D level. So these are some basic things. But ultimately, if your mouth you have mouth issues, and sometimes, you know, you can do these things. You, you might just need a good dental hygienist to remove the callus to clean your teeth for, and you might need to go more often than every six months. I have a few patients that need to go because they have a really bad oral microbiome. They're going every three months to get the biofilms broken down and to get things cleaned out. So, point is, your oral health is super important for the whole body. And there are simple things you can do that can actually impact your oral health, which will ultimately impact inflammation and can affect neurological health, heart health, a whole bunch of things. So if this information was helpful, let us know. Please share it as well. Like subscribe. That's how we get this information out there. If you have a topic you'd like us to talk about in these little deep dives we do, once a week, we take something, take a deep dive, please let us know. And we'd love to take a deep dive and educate you, encourage, empower you to take charge of your health. So if this was helpful, take care and we'll talk to you soon.
