In this interview, Dave Asprey and Trina Felber explore the possibility of naturally healing dental cavities by optimizing the oral environment. Asprey explains that a cavity can repair itself if the mouth’s environment is made healthy, emphasizing three essential components that dental products must contain. He likens belief in bone healing to belief in cavity healing, noting that teeth share the same mineral composition as bone but are stronger. The conversation identifies the primary cause of cavities as an acidic oral environment caused by modern diets and many dental products, which leads to mineral loss, harmful bacterial growth, and "leaky gum syndrome" (gingivitis). They connect poor oral health to broader systemic issues, citing recent studies linking gingivitis bacteria to Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, and inflammatory conditions such as leaky gut. A striking anecdote describes a pregnant woman whose preterm labor ceased after treating severe dental disease, illustrating the link between maternal oral health, the infant’s microbiome, and the child’s future susceptibility to cavities and gingivitis. Overall, the dialogue promotes a bio‑hacking approach to oral health, suggesting that by correcting acidity and supporting mineral balance, cavities can heal and overall health can improve.
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I feel like right now we're in the world of biohacking. We're rediscovering stuff that we already knew, whether it's 13th century knowledge about meditation, like, oh, yeah, someone figured that out, and about breathing and now about our teeth. So you worked with this guy or not with him directly, because he's passed a long time ago, but you worked with his body of research and you learned that you could do the impossible with your own family, which is amazing. Like, oh, the tooth is healed. What does it look like when a cavity heals? A lot of people listening don't even know a cavity can heal. So what's the process for that?
So you know there's three things that you need to have in your dental products in order to make your mouth. I always say it's related to the environment inside your mouth. And if your environment inside your mouth is healthy, then you can heal a cavity. So I get this all the time, oh, you can't heal a cavity. And I tell people, if you believe that you can heal a bone, if you've ever broken a bone, if you believe you can break or heal a broken bone, then you need to believe that you can heal a cavity. And here's why. It's the exact your bones are made up of the same minerals. Calcium, phosphorus, all sorts of minerals. The difference between your bone and your teeth. In fact, your teeth are actually stronger than your bone. But the difference in the reason why we end up with cavities, which on your bone would basically be chips in your bone. The reason that we end up with cavities is because of the environment that our teeth are in. Our teeth are in an acidic environment the majority of the time. Most of the foods that we're eating are acidic. The dental products that were being sold on the market are creating more acids in your mouth. The more acid you have in your mouth, the more minerals your teeth lose, the more bad bacteria you grow and the more chance of having what I call leaky gum syndrome or gingivitis. Once you go down that path, you end up with all sorts of health issues that are inflammatory related, including leaky gut syndrome and all of the digestive issues that you might suffer from.
And Alzheimer's. A study just came out about that. The link is very clear that those bacteria in gingivitis are going to make you forget your name when you're old.
Yeah, yeah, you don't want to do that. Yeah. And it's linked to heart disease. It's actually linked to preterm labor. I actually had my chiropractor was telling me about a patient of hers that was in preterm labor. She was only like 28 weeks, and they couldn't figure out why she was having preterm labor. She was basically in bed on her head to keep her baby viable and in. And so what they discovered about three weeks into it was that she had severe dental disease, and they treated it. And as soon as they treated her dental disease, her preterm labor stopped. She went home and delivered a full term baby. So it's completely linked to oral health. In fact, the oral health inside the mom's microbiome is very indicative of what baby's microbiome is going to be like. And if mom has a not so healthy microbiome, then baby is more prone to cavities and gingivitis as they get older.
