Hormones and Your Smile: What You Need to Know

So, Dr. Tony, you know, for everybody listening, we were, we were on talking just a few minutes before we jumped on the air, and we were talking about the perception that dental problems are something that happen, like, when we're younger, and that something magical happens, like when we're older, in our 40s and 50s and onward, that we don't really have to worry as much, except for, like, dental cavities. And I would say that's. That's actually further from the truth. Do you find that a lot of people kind of have that sort of. It's. It's not like, spoken, but it's just sort of like, what do you mean I could have a problem with my dental health?

I know, isn't that funny? And I don't, because even as a, as a provider in some of the networking groups that, that you and I are in, they're like, oh, Tony, Dr. Tony, you go over here with all the pediatric providers. I'm like, wait, wait, I love kids. I see kids. But I'm not a pediatric provider per se. So, yes, you're 100% right. I'm not sure where that comes from, but you can absolutely have lots of oral health needs and oral health concerns and things that can be tweaked and help to help you feel better and live better in your 30s, 40s, 50s, and well beyond that.

Yeah. So I would love, I would love to talk a little bit about, like, what are the big. The big items in dental health, particularly in biological dentistry, that you see that, that seem to crop up more when we're, you know, I'd say a little more seasoned in our life.

Yeah. So I think probably the biggest one is we'll start to see new areas of gum inflammation. So if you have a tendency towards inflammation in general, then that dip in hormones, that can happen sometimes in our 40s and 50s, it really, really messes with your oral microbiome, with the bacteria in your mouth, and it can cause way, way more inflammation and start this cascade of gum disease that we might not have known otherwise. So I would say that's. That's a huge one. But then other than that, we're looking at all of these things where maybe our past dental work might be impacting us now because it. Dental work is. Is kind of like cosmetic work. It's kind of like a really expensive car. It takes a little bit of maintenance over the years. And so if you've got old root canals, old fillings, then we really want to be looking at those in detail to see if they're positively or negatively impacting our health.

Oh, yeah. Well, you know, and. And as you were saying those things about hormone health, most people don't realize that, you know, the loss of estrogen and progesterone affects obviously the microbiome, like you said. But then, you know, we know that other parts of our body dry out. Right. We get vaginal dryness. We also get dryness in the mouth. We can get dry eyes. And. And then you get more likelihood to have gum disease and other issues, too. I've noticed more, you know, more risk for, like, receding gums, too.

100%. Yeah. You saliva is very underappreciated in its usefulness until you don't have it. Kind of like vaginal lubrication, it's underappreciated until you don't have it. Then you're like, oh, holy crap, this was really important. So, same thing in the mouth. When you have Even just a 20% decrease in the amount of saliva that you have in your mouth, you lose all of the buffering capacity that your saliva has. And so it's harder to fight the acids that can cause tooth decay and gum disease. Like, all of these things start these disease cycles that are harder to get out of, that take a little bit of tweaking to be able to get out of those.

Yeah. Now, so obviously we look at it from a medical standpoint at Minerva, and then obviously my clinic in Dallas, we would restore hormones to help, obviously, protect, ideally take care of it before it becomes a problem. But even if it is to help restore sort of that natural function of the mucus barrier. But what are some other things that women might do? Because I know when I went into kind of that kind of heated part of perimenopause menopause, I didn't notice it so much in my eye, in my mouth, but I noticed that I literally overnight could not wear contacts. It was like ant. Yeah. Ants crawling on my eyes, you know, And I. I had. I had, as you very well know, a lot of airway issues. And I went through palate expansion, which we're going to talk about. But. But I didn't notice so much of that. But it was really interesting that, that we saw that. So if somebody is still struggling and maybe even doing hormone replacement, what are some other things they can do? Because as your mouth dries out, everything else degrades pretty quickly.

It really does. It can wreak havoc pretty fast. So I would say making sure that you're drinking plenty of water, obviously that one's Important. I actually like some of the oral health products that, that have a little bit of glycerin in it. In some circles, glycerin is controversial for, for some reason, but there, there's great data behind it. So products with a little bit of glycerin. I actually really like a xylitol spray. It's from the brand. I can't remember if it's spry or clear because they're both part of the same company. But I like their, their dry mouth spray that has xylitol in it. It's got a little bit of glycerin. It just to, it helps coat the tissues if there's not as much saliva as there should be. But the xylitol is really, really beneficial in two different ways because in the short term it will raise the pH of your saliva. So again, it helps with that buffering capacity of the mouth. And over the long term, over time, it helps shift the microbiome back in our favor. So all the pathogenic bacteria, especially the ones that cause cavities, they'll ingest the xylitol because it's close enough to sugar, to those formidable carbohydrates that they want to ingest, but they can't metabolize it. And so over time, they'll start to just slip right off of the teeth and you'll get the, this much better shift towards a healthier microbiome.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, that's, that's great because I think even if somebody maybe isn't sure they're having those problems, they could use a product like that just almost preventatively.

Yes. Oh, for sure, for sure. And then oral probiotics too, I think, are a really great tool to use. There are some, some great ones on the market, ones that have, there are certain strains of strep salivarius that, that are in some of the oral probiotics. And this is different, different than a regular probiotic that you take for gut health. The ones for gut health, you want them to survive the extreme acid environment of the stomach to get down into your gut. The oral probiotics we like in tablet or powder form so that they can dissolve in the saliva and seed the oral microbiome instead. So those two things, the xylitol and the probiotics, can really be super helpful. And then, you know, clean oral health products in general, like, I really, really, really want people to stay, stay away from mouthwashes that have alcohol in them, stay away from the super strong antimicrobials. If your toothpaste has weird stuff in it that you can't pronounce, it's probably not great for your mouth.

Yeah. So let's talk about this because this is a big movement for Maha and everything else, the removal of fluoride from water. And then obviously we have fluoride in many of our commercial products and things like that. And then, you know, there's a huge emerging market market, and I know you've got a list that we're going to let everybody have access to about some of the best oral health products out there. But, you know, I think people probably go into the store and see the gigantic wall of toothpaste and then they just don't even know what to do. Right. Like, where do I go?

Yeah, yeah. So tell me what you. I try to look for simplicity. Simple is best for sure if things are out of balance. So if we need our toothpaste to do some work, if you need to remineralize some decay, if you need to shift things in a better direction, then tools, like ingredients that can be used as tools. I look for things with calcium hydroxyapatite and with xylitol. Those are really our best cavity fighting tools that can be as effective, if not more effective than fluoride, but have a much, much better safety profile. Because all of my functional medicine practitioners that are sending me patients do not want their patients to be using fluoride. And the good news is you don't need to use it. There are things that we can use that are as effective as, but have a much, much lower systemic risk. Things to avoid are anything else that's complicated or confusing. Like if things are healthy, if you have a healthy mouth in general, then you literally don't even need toothpaste. You can just use a toothbrush and water. So it can be that simple. As simple as rinsing with salt water. So, so simple is best when you need tools, when you need extra help, look for just these safer but still really effective ingredients.

So that's really. I think people are probably like, what did she just say? Salt water and a toothbrush? Like, we've always been kind of led to believe by advertising and the companies that make these products that you need all of these detergents.

You know, it's really good marketing, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. Yes, it is. So that is really interesting. So some of my listeners may not know the controversy around fluoride because there's other countries that don't have it in their water. Right. So tell us A little bit about that in case they don't know the kind of controversy and why we're worried about it.

Well, I have huge ethical problems with adding fluoride to the water because it really is like it was potentially I want to assume the best in people. We assume public health officials had good intentions. They noticed that areas that naturally had higher levels of fluoride, that the people in those communities naturally had fewer cavities. So they said, hey, if a little bit of a good thing is a good thing, maybe more of a good thing is an even better thing. And so they started experimenting with adding fluoride to the water supplies in different communities. The problem is the source of the fluoride is typically this fertilizer byproduct. It's highly, highly caustic. It's highly, really unsafe. I've had people in water plants tell me that they don't even let their employees touch the stuff because it's so dangerous. So they use this byproduct to add to the water. The intent when you're adding it to the water is as a medical treatment. There's no other reason that it gets added to our water supply. So if we're performing a medical treatment, I don't know about you, but when I was in school I was taught that a medical treatment required consent. And when you're adding something to the public water supply, there is no consent. And not only that, you can't control the dose. So what Grandpa Joe is getting when he has one glass of water a day, his dose of fluoride is going to be entirely different than a 10 pound infant whose primary diet is formula mixed with tap water. Yeah, vastly different levels of fluoride and we have no control either way. And so they're noticing now in, you know, after it, after the CDC deemed this like the best public health advance of the 20th century, some people actually had some critical thinking skills and started to look and see. Oh actually yeah, cavities have decreased in the United States after we added fluoride to the water. But huh, it also decreased in other countries where they didn't add fluoride to the water. So the rate of tooth decay has gone down regardless of whether there was fluoride in the water or not. So it looks like you can't really credit fluoride with the decrease of cavities. Just like a lot of other communicable diseases that we talk about, like measles that was decreasing in the 60s before certain medical advances were, were brought to the public. So it's really interesting that it's maybe not as effective as a tool as we once thought it was. And then more people in other countries, not here, because in the United States prior to this administration, questions were not asked, were not allowed to be asked. So in other countries, they started looking and studying and doing more research around what do the I. What does the IQ of children look like in areas where there are higher levels of fluoride? And sure enough, they're finding that there are a. There's a significant decrease in IQ in our kids, especially boys, when they have higher levels of exposure to fluoride. So obviously, there is still research being done. There are still studies being done even in our own country. The National Toxicology Program wrote this study. It was a meta analysis, a study of studies where they said they could not determine what the safe level of fluoride is for our kids and for the general public. That study was blocked from being published until a judge said, no, no, you actually have to publish this. And that's really what started this snowball that hopefully is going in the right direction now where we're getting this information out to the public, which hopefully will encourage more studies so that we can actually know the risk level at certain dosages, because we really don't know what is a safe level for each specific person in each scenario. So all of those things being said, if fluoride was not in our water, then I could control the dose that I get, I could control the dose that my kids get, and then I probably wouldn't have as big of an issue with it, because we'd be able to know, okay, what's a dose that impacts the thyroid in a clinically significant way? What's the dose that calcifies the pineal gland in a significant way? We'd be able to know these things and be able to tell, and we could probably use it as a tool in dentistry. Much safer. But as it stands right now, because it's still in the water in the vast majority of places in the US Then I can't say that there's any safe level because I don't know what that safe level is. So it's not in my practice, it's not in my office. We go through all of our dental materials and filter out those materials that have fluoride in them unless and until it's completely out of the water and we know the safety levels. So that's kind of the. The controversy around fluoride. That's why a lot of my colleagues will argue back Because. Because fluoride is naturally occurring, just not in the form that we typically use it. And it is very well studied. But again, you can't control the dose. And so we don't know what you're getting and we don't know what's good for your thyroid and what's not.

Yeah, I mean, I so much agree with you just because it correlates with the reduction in dental caries, but the reality is we were probably getting better at brushing our teeth. Somebody might have broke out a floss once in a while. There's so many other things. Correlation does not equate to causation. But you know what's interesting is when. When it suits industry, they'll claim it's caught. It's. It's causal. Right. But when they. When it doesn't suit industry, they'll say, well, you can't correlate and say that's causal. It's really interesting how that all works. So I'm a. Yeah, yeah. I'm a firm believer in taking it out because again, it's. It's a. Hell, it's a highlight. It's just. Yeah, we don't. We. Because then we. I remember when I was a little kid, I was recommended to take, like, an additional fluoride, you know, paste. You know, we did it for a little while. But, like, if you have that, then you know what you're getting because you know exactly what your dentist told you to do.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

If you're swallowing it, then who knows?

Right? Right. And let's face it, everybody swallows it because we're drinking it. And then it's in everything else for sure.

All of the packaged foods that we have, you know, if you're eating any kind of packaged food or drinking any kind of bottled or canned drink, if that's from a municipal water source, then you're getting fluoride and you don't even know how much you're getting, and you have no control over it.

Right, right, Exactly. Exactly. Okay, so we talked a little bit about that. So I. You know what I would love to talk about, because this was one of the things that I was surprised by. And then once it happened to me, of course, you know, you can't unsee what you've seen. And so, you know, it's. It's a reoccurring experience for my. My patients in my clinic. You know, a lot of us, especially in this age group, probably went through dental work as a kid. You know, many of us got to wear braces and Maybe headgear, you know, and all of that stuff. And I happen to have had a total of eight teeth removed as a kid. A matter of fact, my baby teeth were pulled out so my permanent teeth would come in. Because I had such a narrow mouth, I couldn't really breathe out of my nose. Right. And so I went through, you know, the horrific experience of braces as an elementary school kid, got them off and thought I was good to go, you know, but never really slept well. Never really. But then when I got to, like, 40, the sleep problems became so much more apparent, and I ended up, you know, really finding out that I had an airway issue. And it's because of the narrowing of the. The palate, the roof of the mouth, and it was affecting airway not so much in the nasal passages that you can see, but back in the throat.

And.

And there's a lot of hormonal things that we can talk about that also contribute to that. But I was so surprised because I was like, wait a minute, I had dental work. I should be fine. But after my research, I was like, oh, my God, this is a real big problem. Upper airway resistance that eventually becomes apnea. And I think so many women suffer from this, and they think about it with their kids, they don't think about it for them. Right. They don't think, oh, I could be having this problem. So let's talk about airway and what women could be missing because we have different qualifications than men. Right. The problems are much worse at much lower levels of dysfunction.

Absolutely. And it's like back in those of us who had orthodontics in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, IT. We just didn't know what we didn't know. And so if there wasn't enough room in the mouth for the teeth, if the teeth were all crowded and jumbled up, then it made the most sense and was the most expedient to remove some of those teeth that were not visually important and shove everything together. The problem is when you take out teeth and make the rest of them straight, what you do is you just shove everything back into the airway back here, just like you said. And so a lot of orthodontics that baby boomers and Gen X kit. Well, maybe not so much baby boomers, but the orthodontics the Gen X kids especially had, it was airway that unintentionally shrunk airways. And this is a huge, huge problem now because you're exactly right. As soon as you lay down and get horizontal, then your tiny Airway, this coffee straw that you're already trying to breathe through at night just gets smushed even more by the soft tissue in the rest of your throat. And then it really does make it just that much harder to breathe. And so it's a. It's a huge issue that hopefully we. You know, we're. We're seeing in advance now. And so I'm encouraging my patients to go get expansion done first before they just start doing, you know, traditional orthodontics. And in adults, there are still things that you can do. It's tougher. It's tougher once the. The growth plates are closed and the sutures are all closed. But it can be done. We just have to be careful with how we do it. So, yeah, opening up the airway is huge and a huge quality of life issue for all of us, I think.

Yeah. And I think it's. You know, because the. The idea is, is everybody's kind of heard of sleep apnea, right? Where you completely stop breathing because of an airway issue. Often it's accompanied with, like, snoring like a freight. But what was surprising to me is because I was like, well, I don't have that. Right. I don't have that because I don't snore at all. Matter of fact, my husband's like, half the time I'm not sure you're alive because you're so quiet. But. But upper airway resistance doesn't result in a loss of saturation. It doesn't result in a lot in, like, the freight train. But what I tell people is it's. It's like you're going from a straw to a coffee straw. But what it does do is it caused the alert center in the brain to constantly go off. I was getting 62 an hour.

Gosh.

You know, and. And I remember the first time I got. The first time I got it done, it was 42 an hour. And that was about 10 years before the second time because I kept getting sleep studies. I'm like, something's wrong. And the doctor was like, you don't have any apnea. You're fine. And I'm like, what are the. What are these arousals? He's like, that doesn't matter. I'm like, yeah, it does. You know, because at that point, at the second time, I was sleeping about three and a half hours a night, you know, because it was really broken, right. And I kept thinking, I'm gonna have an aneurysm. You know? So I think if women are listening to this, like, you don't have to snore like a freight train. You don't, you know, you don't have to have apnea events to have a loss of airway that alerts the alert centers of the body that keep drawing you out of the deeper sleep, either REM or deep sleep.

Yep. Yeah. It's so scary. And then that sets off, you know, if you're not sleeping well, if you're not getting, getting into those deeper levels of sleep like you should be, then your cortisol is going to be higher in the middle of the night, which means your insulin regulation is going to be all out of whack. And then it sets you up for icky, no fun thing where, yeah, everything is just out of balance. And it may be as simple as you wake up more often in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Patients always ask me, well, why does that matter? I just, you know, maybe I drank water before bed. I'm like, but did you? They're like, well, no, no, maybe not. I said, okay, well, your, your kidneys should not be producing enough urine so that you are triggered to need to go to the bathroom unless you have awakened enough that you are out of the level of sleep that you need to be in. If you're actually sleeping the way that you're supposed to sleep, you should not have a trigger to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. And sometimes, sometimes they have no symptoms that they notice at all other than not sleeping well. But we can see them in the dental office. So I'm looking at flattened off molars, scalloped borders of the tongue, you know, evidence of maybe some silent reflux here and there. Those can all be signs that, hey, we need to look at the airway. We need to look deeper. We need to refer to a sleep study, things like that.

And don't. Isn't clenching one of those signs too, like clenching. Maybe not grinding, but clenching. And then clenching causes gum recession.

Yep. Yeah, 100%. 100%. And sometimes TMJ issues, you know, it's going to show up differently for everybody.

Yeah. And so obviously I went through palate expansion, so I got to put on a grill and wear one of those horrible AGA devices and things like that. But there's also, there's also, you know, dental pieces and things like that that can help open the airway. So not everybody has to go back through sort of reconstructive orthodontics.

Right? Yeah, there are, there are a variety of treatments. There's like a good, better best and several things in between. So it's. There are options. It could be as much as surgery and having jaw reconstructive surgery, or it could be custom orthotics like you had, like an adult expansion device like you had. Or it could be more symptomatic care. Like there's a laser treatment I do called Nightlase that can help you stiffen and tighten the collagen in the back of the throat. So you get an opening of the airway that lasts for about a year. And you can get, you know, if you want to really just put a band aid on things, then doing a night guard that kind of repositions the jaw just to help hold the jaw open at night. Um, again, there are risks with that. I think there are risks with any time you do a band aid type of treatment. But. But it can be really helpful to get you unstuck, to get you kind of past the plateau.

You know, one of the things I found, and I don't know if you've ever seen this in the studies, is that when progesterone levels start to decline in perimenopause, we see, we see a lack of tone that actually affects the airway. Right. So I think that's what. Why we see it more as we get into our, like, 40s and 50s, is just because progesterone is declining, the airway tone gets worse, and so we, you know, we lose more. And then obviously, if there's weight gain and other things, which is often secondary to the sleep problem, it's like this.

I know. It is a vicious cycle. Yes.

Yeah. So before, so before we end, I want to talk a little bit also about like, root canals and like crowns and things like that and what, you know, because I think people are like, that happened. I'm done. I don't have to look at it again. But we often find things there that we shouldn't.

Yeah, it's. So what people don't realize is even though your tooth hopefully feels better, when you've had a root canal done, you've removed the nerve of the tooth so it no longer feels pain. Pain. The tooth itself doesn't. But you've also removed the blood supply from the tooth. And when you remove the blood supply, that is the source of oxygen to that area. So no oxygen means instead of the normal bacteria that's supposed to be around, in and around the tooth, now you're going to have the anaerobic bacteria, kind of those bottom feeder, creepy crawly pathogens. That will start to inhabit the area. And so even if the tooth is clinically doing well, even if I look at it as a dentist and it's doing okay, it's still something that your immune system is having to work on because the microbiome in the area has shifted. It'll cause a slight inflammatory response in the area. And it's one of those things where for many people, no symptoms at all, doing just fine. For other people, they'll notice that. You know, now that I think back, some of my chronic health issues happened after that root canal was done. And so not only do we want to look and see clinically in three dimensions. So I'm not talking about just a normal X ray. I'm talking about the, the 3D. It's called a cone beam CT that we want to look at to see if we can see any clinical sign of infection. But sometimes it's, it's more than that. Sometimes it's working with the naturopath, with the functional medicine doctor and all getting on the same page, having the discussion of, is this tooth serving well for this patient in this phase of life? Because I do have patients who notice that they, they feel better when some of these old infected root canals are removed. So it's a, it's a case by case basis, but it's definitely not something that you want to ignore if you've had a root canal for a long period of time.

Yeah, yeah. And especially, you know, if they're having pain or discomfort or anything else around the area, that's usually a pretty good sign that there's something really corrosive going on from a bacterial standpoint. Infection, because you're obviously not going to feel it in that tooth because the tooth is dead. Right? Essentially.

Right, yeah. So if it feels. I just had a patient yesterday, she's like, you know, I had this root canal done. I don't, I didn't love that I had to have it done, but I did it. And, and the tooth has never felt good. She's like, it doesn't hurt like it did before the root canal, but it doesn't feel right. It still doesn't feel good. And my dentist told me that that wasn't possible, that the tooth was dead and it didn't have any feeling. I was like, well, that dentist sucked for saying that. So you feel what you feel. And yeah, the, the tooth may not have a nerve anymore, but there are still nerve endings around the tooth. And it's still impossible to completely remove every single nerve fiber from inside of a tooth. So if a tooth that's had a root canal, if you're feeling it, then, yeah, after, after it's had time to heal for those first couple of months, you really should not be feeling anything at all. And if you are, then we want to look closer. We want to see exactly what's going on.

Yeah. Because I don't think people realize too, that, you know, that's within the gum line, often within the bone structure, even of the jaw. Well, not often. Always. And it's a. It's a beeline straight to your blood, you know, basically your blood flow. So it's associated with cardiovascular disease and other conditions. And actually, one of the stool tests that we use, we can even pick up oral microbiomes. So if we see a lot of that, we're like, okay, who is it and why are they there?

Yep, yep. Who are those bad guys? Exactly.

Exactly. I can't tell you after 20 years how many people have gone in with their dentist and had a root canal removed. And, you know, obviously usually a implant or whatever, and they found some really scary infectious activity in there. And lo and behold, their inflammation, their immune system, like, it's. It's. You know, everybody's always like, why are you asking me so much about my dental health? And it's like, well, because it's really, really important.

Important. Yeah. It's such a shame that we. We had all of these wonderful advances from separating our education into different systems, but a lot of us forgot that you got to then put it all back together because the body is one. You've got to treat the whole person at the same time while still being specialized in each system, in each area.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I have one esthetics question I have to ask. All right, so teeth whitening, obviously, it's all the rage. You know, sometimes I see people and I'm like, whoa. You know, they're so. They're so bright white. They're almost iridescent. Tell us about. Because obviously some of those bleaches and things like that have got to be pretty harsh.

Yeah, they can be. They can be. And you'll get a little bit, a tiny little bit of kind of micro etching from the peroxide based products. The peroxide products are still the most effective, so they're going to work the best. But you do have to be careful with them because they'll. They'll do just a tiny little bit of enamel etching, especially if you overuse them. So I. Natural is best. It's. I. That's why I don't do a ton of cosmetics in my practice because I am just not great at. I'm not going to be the one to twist anybody's arm into doing a bunch of cosmetics. It's, you know, I like whitening every once in a while. Just because I'm not going to stop drinking coffee or tea, I'm just going to say no.

That's a no.

It's not going to happen. I love doing a beautiful case of veneers when it really changes somebody's smile and, and their self esteem. But like all things, we've kind of gone too far. I. I think it's time to bring back a little bit of character in our smiles so that everybody's mouth doesn't look the same.

Yeah.

And you know, you don't need a, a Kardashian smile.

Right. I mean, I have found, I mean a lot. I've tried like a few of those things for at home. Like, I'm like, I don't want a professional because I'm like, that's like sandblasting with Clorox. And I was like, I don't, you know, and I was like. And I drink coffee, so we're just gonna have to work with that. But my teeth seem to be pretty sensitive to a lot of those things. So I'm always like, what are the natural ones? Do you have certain ones that you're like, you can get over the counter that you're like, I think these are better or worse.

There's. There's one from a brand called Lumino that you can get in the health food stores. I like the ingredients in that. I used one from a company called Sunna Smile for a while. That and those ingredients were cleaner. So yes, you can find things with cleaner ingredients. But it's. To me, it's still a give and take because the, it seems the cleaner the ingredients, the less whitening oomph that we have. So it's a give and take. I haven't found the perfect product yet that I love. So I would say if you don't want to use all the chemical stuff or if you're like, like you, if you just get sensitive when you use those peroxide products, I do too. Then every once in a while, do some surface whitening. And I would say like once a week, do a bentonite clay or an activated charcoal and just dip a wet toothbrush in it and brush with that. And it's so good at removing surface stains and will whiten your teeth. A Little bit. And so for a lot of people that's enough. And it's completely natural and you're not doing it so often that it's too abrasive. So I, I think less is more.

Yeah, I'm kind of with you. I mean, yeah, you know, I'll see people and I'm like, oh, those are really bright white. But I'm like, they don't look natural, you know, you know, so.

Yeah, and I don't do as many anymore. But, but back when I was doing a lot more denture cases, it was, it was my denture patients who I would have the hardest time convincing to do a natural color that they would just refuse. They're like, no, I've had bad teeth for however many years, so I'm going to have the brightest white Chiclet looking dentures that you've ever seen. And I'm going to be the hottest honey in the active living community. So I gave up trying to convince them that natural was better. They wanted bright white and fake. Yeah, I get it, I get it.

I've definitely seen it. For sure. For sure. Okay, so, so last question. So if, so if, you know, a woman is listening to all of this and, and they're like, oh, you know, I don't know if I have somebody like you in their area. So tell me, tell me, how do they find? I mean, obviously there's, there's associations and things like that because you're a biological dentist, which is very different than the conventional dentist. Like no mercury amalgams, no fluoride. How do they find people like you?

Probably the biggest directory of us online is with the IA omt and that's one of the trade organizations, but they've got, I think, the biggest list of us. And it kind of divides, you know, puts everybody in categories. So it can tell you how many meetings we've been to, if we've done our certifications or our accreditations. So you can get a feel with, are we really in it? Are we, are they not really in it? So I would say that's the biggest directory that there is, is just IAOMT.org yeah.

And then they can also obviously search by biological dentists. But just like anything else, people can put whatever they want on their website. Right.

Or just fly into Dallas. We're happy to see you.

Yeah, exactly. Come to Dallas and go to Flourish. Flourish Dentistry. Exactly, exactly. Well, Tony, this has been a great conversation and I think I'm very hopeful that my listeners got some information that's really, really valuable for them to kind of understand how to take better care of their mouths. Is there any last minute words of wisdom you would like to share with them?

If I could just tell all of your listeners one thing, it would be that your body is meant to flourish. You can heal, you can be well, and you can feel great. And so I hope everybody will, will take that in and live it out.

Yes, yes. And I think we have, we have a parting gift. So on our show notes, we'll have a link to Dr. Tony's favorite products. And then you can also check out Flourish Dentistry, which is in the north Dallas Richardson area of North Texas. Obviously you can check her out too, as well if you happen to be in the area or want to come here for dental health. And I want to thank you for spending your day with me. Thank you.

Thank you so much, buddy.

Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you everybody for listening to Menopause Mastery. If you happen to be watching this on YouTube, don't forget to subscribe and leave a comment and let me know what you think. And if you're listening on the podcast, thank you so much. Please leave a review if you and we will be back with you next week.