118: The Mouth-Body Connection: Functional Dentistry with Dr. Staci Whitman

Chronic disease is absolutely an epidemic in this country and abroad. We think about diseases like breast cancer, heart disease, autoimmune disease, and we're so quick to put them into their silo. They have to do with the breast or the heart or the immune system. And we are not thinking about the broader person and what could be causing this, what could be at the root?

What?

Well, my guest today has thought far beyond that. Today we have Dr. Stacy Whitman. She is a functional dentist, a biologic dentist, a holistic dentist who has made it her business and is reshaping how training happens, how we approach the patient, because she is thinking holistically how, how we should be thinking about it. She is thinking about it in a root cause way, but from her unique training and perspective, which is as a dentist, because though we do not normally connect it and there are way too many practitioners who are just ignoring that whole part of our biology about, of our physiology, of our form and function. And that is what is happening in the mouth and how does that relate to what is happening to you systemically? So this is a conversation that needs to happen. This is a woman that is turning medicine on its ear and it needs to. This is Dr. Stacy Whitman.

So yesterday I'm speaking, speaking with one of my patients with metastatic breast cancer. And she was first diagnosed, I think around 2021, 2022, and then re diagnosed again in 2024. And when she was re diagnosed in 2024, I saw her and she has three or four root canals in her mouth. And I told her that's something that absolutely, positively has to be taken care of. Care of. And she came back to me last month and said, you know, I know you said that the root canals have to be taken care of, but my aunt or my cousin or someone is a dentist and she said that root canals have nothing to do with your overall health, couldn't have anything to do with breast cancer. And they've been there for years and they're fine. So I thought it was really important to have a biologic dentist, a hologic dentist on here to talk about this and other things, because I believe that the mouth is not only the window to the soul, but also the window to the body and where we are with our health. And, and I do not think that you can have an unhealthy mouth and have a healthy body. I also don't think that you can reclaim your health if you still have an unhealthy mouth. So I'm going to welcome Dr. Stacy Whitman to the podcast thank you, Dr. Simmons.

You are speaking like a functional dentist right there.

I'm very well trained.

Yeah, you're saying all the right things. The mouth is the gateway to the body. We can see so much about a human's health, health from their mouth. And I think for so long, dentistry and medicine have been separated. You know, we've obviously compartmentalized our bodies. In medicine, we need to get the mouth back in the body. It's the thing that's the most overlooked. And if we can target, you know, oral health a bit more, we will achieve more optimal health in our patients, including cancer prevention, to your point. And we can speak of this. So the issue with root canals, specifically, let's just go there, is that so many are done poorly.

What does that mean? What does that mean? What are poor root canals?

Yeah. So the issue isn't necessarily the procedure, it's the technique, it's how the dentists are doing them. So many root canals are done improperly. They're incorrectly debrided and disinfected and cleaned. And so residual bacteria and yeast and, you know, microbes are left within the tooth. And then you're not factoring in the terrain of the human also. So we're never triaging our patients to say, can you even tolerate this procedure? Are you immunocompromised? Do you have an autoimmune disease? What is your overall health to begin with? So it just creates this perfect storm. So you're not cleaning out the tooth properly, you're using substandard materials. Many general dentists are doing these procedures without a microscope. So you're just, you're missing part of the canal system. And so you're leaving this reservoir for bacteria in the body. And it can sit there year after year, decade after decade, creating this perfect breeding ground for these bacteria and these yeasts, et cetera, to just take over. And the problem with traditional dentistry is we're not evaluating the root canals properly after they're placed. So we generally just do X rays, like a, you know, a standard film.

To two dimensional. We need three dimensional imagery. So if you have root canals, I strongly encourage all of you to have a CBCT scan, CBT scan every three to five years to make sure there isn't this residual periapical lesion, or it's called like low grade chronic infection. And so many are caught on the CBCT scans that are missed on conventional X rays. And so if you have a genetic predisposition, if your terrain isn't optimal, it's just, it's epigenetics. It's helping flip on that switch. And now you have a vector bacteria that can, can get into the lymphatic system, get into the circulatory system, catch a free ride and end up in places it shouldn't. And we are, there are more and more studies coming out about the links to oral bacter oral pathogens in various cancers including breast cancer. And this isn't only root canals, this is also gum disease and periodontal disease.

So all this that you're talking about, you learned this in dental school, right?

No, I did not. I didn't learn any of this in dental school. So I was traditionally trained as we all have to be. I do want to be clear with that, but.

To me dental school is too brief. We focus so much on our procedures in dental school. A little bit of medicine, a tiny smidge of nutrition, but really we get thrown into clinic in the simulation lab. And fixing teeth, it's always fixing end stage disease. That's what traditional modern dentistry is. It's not about a preventative approach, it's not about a root cause view point. So we are little micro surgeons is what I say, fixing, you know, doing fillings, doing crowns, doing root canals, etc So I graduated from school, I was practicing as a general dentist and I was depressed. I was so miserable. I hated my career path. I had this huge student loan burden. I was really overwhelmed and I did not like my career because I wasn't truly helping my patients. I went into this to be a healer, to be a helper, but instead I was just putting out fires all day. I didn't have an opportunity to connect and communicate and really properly work up my patients, understand their antecedents, their triggers, what has happened in their life to get them there. What are some protocols like? Let's do some health coaching. How can I get you back onto a path of health? Let's create a team. Modern dentistry is not set up this way. And I almost left the profession, but I was so worried about my loans, I said, gosh, I have to salvage this career some way. And this is when I said, well, the most upstream I can get is pediatrics. So I did become board certified in pediatrics where I now focus on children's and women's health. But I have to tell you, I graduated. And then again, it was the same thing. It was this turn and burn. Now it's faster pace because it's kids and pediatrics tends to be really high volume. And I was still depressed and miserable and I just Said, you know, I need to go out into the world and re educate myself. And that's what I did. And so I connected with people in my community who were practicing biologic dentistry. I went to conferences and then I went into functional medicine and I started deep diving into functional medicine and I became IFMCP certified at the Institute Functional Medicine and now am able to kind of take these pieces of functional medicine and apply them to dentistry. And this is, we're trying to create a movement, a revolution if you will, to really change the way we're looking at dentistry and the mouth and how it's connected to the body instead of just looking at the tooth and fixing the hole in the tooth, knowing it's taking a step back and looking from a more micro macro angle. And so it's been so satisfying. And we are launching the Institute for Functional Dentistry actually in January to get other, I'm a co founder to get other dentists trained up, practicing this way. Because you and I will have this beautiful one hour conversation and your listeners are going to be very excited and they're going to want this approach, but there's no one to go to. And so we need to, we need to re educate. And so it's, it's a residency level program based in functional medicine with an application in functional dentistry.

That's really amazing. I'm curious, I mean I, I know what drove your decision to go this way in that you were feeling all of the burnout that I think a lot of practitioners feel. Not just dentists, but.

General medical doctors too. They feel that frustration, but they literally don't know where to go or that there is the even possibility that there is functional medicine. There are so many practitioners that have never heard of functional medicine, let alone biologic dentistry. How did you learn about it? I hear you saying that you trained, but how did you even learn about it?

Gosh, I don't remember exactly how. I'm sure it was Mark Hyman seeing a book from Dr. Mark Hyman. I mean I always, since high school was the one very focused on health. You know, I was doing the south beach diet and reading about the Master Cleanse and I was into yoga and tai chi and did a vegetarian diet for a while and that was an epic failure for me. You know, I was just always trying to learn more about human biology and how to optimize, I guess. So that was just always a passion of mine is human optimization from a science perspective because I obviously love science.

So I don't really remember, I don't Remember, I must have read an article or something.

But a lot of us can attribute our evolution in one way or another to Mark Hymen. So we'll just, well, just give him some props.

Hat tip.

Yeah, I mean he was definitely the turning point for me. In fact, the first time I heard him speak was just after I was diagnosed. And I'm sitting in a lecture hall and this tall, lanky guy, this big toothy grin, walks on the stage and he introduces himself as a functional medicine physician. And at that point I had been a doctor for about 20 years and trained at one of the finest medical institutions in this country. And all I could think of in that moment was there's no such thing as a functional medicine physician. What is this quack talking about?

Totally. And then as it turns out, the.

Quack was Mark Hyman. And I'm like constantly reminded of that story. And I think like there's a line from the movie Parenthood. Did you ever see Parenthood? I did, where Gary's mother, I forget the name of the actress who played her. She was talking about someone who she used to date in high school and her sister in law says, oh yeah, I saw him today. And she was like, yeah, what a loser. And she said, driving a Bentley. And she said, I meant me.

It's so good. Yeah, yeah. Oh well. I mean he deserves it though. He's been the face of the movement and.

You know, use the word quack. I still hear that so much. It's so disheartening because especially I've got, because I've gone through IFM's training. It's so rigorous, it's so evidence based, it's so scientific. It's so scientific.

All your biochemistry notes.

Yes.

Your first year of medical school.

And I have lectured for them. And I will tell you, there are things that they will not let you lecture on if there, if there's not enough data to support it. So I mean, I think we're in the moment of a movement and revolution. I will tell you what, functional dentistry gets even more side eye right now because it's so new. I mean, we're adopting the principles of functional medicine and applying it now to dentistry. And I would argue the mouth should never have been separated from the body.

Never.

I, I believe dentists, I think dental dentistry should be part of medical school. I think it should be a specialty of medicine. I mean we should go to medical school and then decide, I want to specialize in oral health. I really believe that's what we should be doing. But we're probably far away off from that. But anyway, so I just couldn't get enough information. It's books and then I'd fly and shadow someone and it was just, I was just consuming so much information. And so I created my own functional practice and it really is the first functional pediatric practice in the country.

And I think to your point about so many doctors, they want to practice differently, they just don't know how. It does take a certain personality type, I think, to go against the grain. There's risk, right? There's risk involved to completely revamp a practice or do a micro practice or concierge or whatever you want to say. There's risk to that. And what is nice with these different functional medicine programs now, empower in numbers is it empowers providers that this can be done. There's proof of concept now. They can see that patients want this, the community wants this. Like people are tired of the status quo.

And this is why we've lost so much trust in medicine and dentistry is that people are onto it, they're on to us. They, they're, they don't want just their end stage disease address, they want to live upstream. They want to prevent all of these things to have a longer lifespan and, and a healthier, optimized life.

I think there's like some attempt to convince people that if they go get their teeth cleaned every six months, that is preventative dentistry. But what I'm hearing from you is that's a bit of a charade.

Yeah, it's, it's a small, small component. So I do want people going regularly because removing the biofilm, which is what we're doing, you know, our teeth are the only non shedding sur in the body and they do get dirty depending on your diet and your microbiome and your gut health and your hydration levels and your mineral levels, etc. Also, you know, someone should look in your mouth for oral cancer screening. So I do want you going. But the cleaning is such a small portion of it. It's so much more. I mean it is nutritional deficiencies, it's what are you eating? How are you frequently? Are you eating? What are you drinking? Are your beverages acidic? Are you, you know, are you micronutrient deficient? Are you vitamin D deficient? Do you have intestinal permeability that's going to impact nutrient absorption which will affect your oral health. Gum health is influenced, you know, vitamin C deficiency. Think of scurvy. We used to talk about these things. We don't anymore. Vitamin C Deficiency, zinc deficiency, B vitamin deficiencies. All of these can relate back to the mouth. And yet the patient gets blamed. You're not brushing and flossing enough. Here's some fluoride. See you in six months. It's so much more hormones come into play. Okay, so puberty. So many teenagers get shamed for not taking care of their teeth. And I used to do this, too. And then you take a step back and you're like, wait, what's happening in their life right now? Oh, their hormones are surging. We have hormone receptors in our gums. They're getting more gingival inflammation because they're going through puberty. And the same happens during pregnancy. Pregnancy, gingivitis and perimenopause and menopause. And so I just. We. We've lost sight of the human. We're just so focused on the tooth or the compartmentalized portion of what we're specialized to train in, we forget there's an entire system, an entire biology attached to that person, including their emotional health. Right. That's a huge component, too. So I'm really excited. The oral microbiome is. Is front. It should be front and center in dentistry. And I. I think we're moving that way. That's the other issue is dentistry. We don't really. We don't collect data. You know what? You don't get labs drawn at your dentist. We should. Vitamin. You should have a vitamin D test. Absolutely. Done. Vitamin D deficiency is reasonable. A micronutrient panel, even organic acid test.

A gut. I mean, gut mapping would be important, too. Is your patient of yeast, H. Pylori. All of these things can impact oral health. And so my goal, my personal sense of purpose, mission is to move us more in that direction. And it probably will end up. The dentistry will be two entities. There's going to be the technicians that fix the teeth, which we need, and then more the physicians that kind of work from a preventative lens and work with our functional medicine providers so that we can collaborate on optimizing a patient. Because I love that what you said in the beginning, you cannot be healthy without a healthy mouth. And I want my physician colleagues to listen to this, too. If you're focusing gut health and cleaning up a patient's gut, that's wonderful. But if you're not cleaning up the mouth, if you're ignoring the periodontal disease, the gum disease, the failing root canals, the failing mercury fillings you swallow 2,000 times a day, the bacteria in your mouth can translocate. They release endotoxins like, you know, lipopolysaccharides, all of these inflammatory markers that can create this, the cytokine cascade, inflammation downstream. You're doing a major disservice. You're missing a huge part of your patient's health story. And so we really need to take more of an integrative approach.

Are you testing oral microbiome?

I do, I do, yes. Very frequently with the kids, I do more of a biomarker test. I was testing the oral microbiomes, but come to find out children's microbiomes are very transient because they're putting so much in their mouth. But I do. I'm working on some pilot studies and working with friends and colleagues outside of my pediatric office. And my hope is to create a women's clinic one day. I want to help women on their fertility journey and also through the different stages of life, so. And that would be heavily involved with testing the oral microbiome.

Yeah, And I love what you said in that, ideally, we are combining the specialties so that, yes, we will still have technicians trained to do the procedures, like everything else.

Right. That.

That creating health should be the goal of every medical practice. And having practitioners trained to do that is who should be staffing it.

Exactly, yeah. I just think we've oversimplified dentistry. And actually, it's an incredibly complex part of the body. You know, it's the second most savorous microbiome in the body.

The.

There are various niches. Your gum microbiome is different than your tongue, than your tooth, than your tonsillar microbiome.

It's so important for posture and neurosensory regulation. Like your bite, it's your occlusion.

Chewing, mastication, speech, airway. I mean, there's so much happening here, but it's just always gotten pushed to the side and given the side, eye. And dentists are the brunt of the joke. Right. So we're trying to change that. You know, it really is important. And so if you're a patient listening, please prioritize your oral health. That would be the biggest message of this, this conversation.

Well, I think it comes down to training, and it's not only true in dentistry, it's true across the board. I mean, I'm reminded every single day that people go to their gynecologist for help with hormones. And the truth is that gynecologists have almost no training and no knowledge of female hormones. And the only thing they've been trained to do is when there is hormonal Dysfunction. Put people on birth control pills.

Right.

That's all they've been trained to do. And we think of them as hormone experts, but just like dentistry, we. What they are is trained technicians. They're trained to be surgeons. The vast majority of what they learn in their four years of training is to do hysterectomies and to deliver babies. That's what they're trained to do. They're not trained to manage hormones, they're not trained to promote health, they're for sure not trained in breast disease. But that's who, that's who people go to.

Yeah. And hormones are so complicated. I mean you need someone who's really on top of it learning about these things. Yeah, I agree with you, I agree with you. We, we just need more subspecialists essentially, you know, and, and to work it. Wouldn't it be nice just have a multidisciplinary practice too where you have.

That's what I'm, that's what I think it should be.

Yeah, I agree.

I think medicine should be, is multidisciplinary, but only from the technical standpoint. Like yes, if you need a dental procedure, here's the dentist. But everyone is thinking about the person from head to toe and how do we drive health, how do we create health, how do we restore health?

Yes.

If you need a procedure, yes, the specialist is there, but the specialist is as aware of all of the health promoting procedures as anyone else. They just happen to be a specialist.

That's right, yeah. And, and knowing not being an expert in the other people fields you're working with, but you need to know a little bit about how your webs are connected. Right. And that, this is why I love functional medicine is you need to learn about all of it. You may not utilize all of it in your practice, but you have to be knowledgeable about it. And so this is why from people are calling themselves functional dentists now, especially on social media. And I give a little bit of a side eye because I. Do you have any functional medicine training? Any? And the answer is no. They think if they don't place mercury fillings and they talk about airway health. But it's so much more than that. We have to have the medicine, the medical training to understand how the webs connect. And so I'm excited for this movement and it's just always so nice to meet like minded people like you. So thank you for what you do.

So I do want to go through some things because people, people want to know. Yeah, X rays, do we Need X rays. How often should we be getting X rays?

What do they add to the picture? What do they possibly detract from the picture?

Sure. So there's a principle called ALARA as low as reasonably achievable. I do think we over radiate patients. We, we have based our treatment recommendations from the insurance model. So if insurance covers X rays twice a year, you're getting X rays twice a year. If deep cleanings are covered once a year, all of a sudden everyone's getting a deep cleaning once a year. Okay, so be aware of this as the consumer. I do need X rays. I wish I didn't, but I do. But I, I cater the frequency to the patient. Are you low risk? I mean are you doing all the things, how does your salivary health look? How are you, how's your health as a human? Have you ever had a cavity, do you have gum disease, etc. Okay, so if you are a very healthy person, I can change the frequency of which I request them as compared to someone that maybe has rampant disease or maybe we're watching a lot of cavities that have started, but I'm trying to be conservative and allow hopefully the body to remineralize those cavities. You know, we can heal cavities if they're caught very, very early. So I do need to monitor them. But there are more like radial radiolucent and different scanning devices that some dentists have that are no radiation that can give us a picture. They're almost like intraoral cameras that we're using now. But I, I, we do need X rays. That's the, that is the hard part. And what, what do we see on them? Okay, so people are like, well I'm fine, my tooth doesn't hurt. Cavities don't hurt until they're end stage disease. Okay. More importantly is gum disease and bone loss. And this is periodontal disease and periodontal disease and periodontal pathogens are what are most associated with all of the health issues. Alzheimer's, dementia, all the cancers, fertility issues, autoimmune issues, etc, we can see bone loss on X ray that you can't see in the mouth sometimes. But alternatively, this is where oral microbiome testing could come in also because if we test your oral microbiome and, and you're through the roof with certain bacteria now, this gives us even more of a reason to say, okay, let's dig deeper now we should do a full set of X rays or let's do more frequent probings. Or cleanings or get you on a different nutrition plan. Let's look at your gut health with, work with your functional medicine. Doctor, do you have an underlying autoimmune disease that we're unaware of? Or diabetes or, you know, a lot of these things are bidirectional.

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Back to our show.

I, that's a long winded answer. I just can't give you a straight answer. I, I would say every two, I would, yeah, I would say, you know, every couple ish years, three years, you're gonna have to work with your dentist. And this is the problem. Many dentists are very strict about this. I mean some dentists kick patients out of their practice, which I think is just outrageous. But if you can just find an open minded, reasonable dentist and have this conversation. Because radiation is cumulative. I mean we, we know this and then there are, you know, detox protocols that you can use after you've been exposed to X rays. The good news is the little digital X rays they're using now, the millirem of radiation, it is very, very low. Yeah, it is very low. It's if you are on your, we are probably getting more just Sitting here with all of our equipment around us right now.

I hate that justification, if you will, because there is a big difference between scattered radiation and the focused radiation that we get during X rays.

And the mouth is a place of rapid turnover. But we, we don't see nearly as many cancers in the mouth as we do in the breast and the thyroid and other organs. And if you do need X rays, you should think about detoxification before, not just after. So really loading up on antioxidants before you have a radiation exposure so that they are there to combat any free radicals that form. So vitamin C, vitamin D, melatonin, glutathione, all of these nutrients I have people load up on before they have X rays done. And then you can continue for a day or two or three. Three afterwards, depending on what you had done.

Yeah. What is your protocol? I do three days before and usually three days after is that I don't.

I don't do three days before, but I don't think it would hurt anyone. I just probably think it's not necessary. But I do monster doses, so.

Well, in terms of vitamin C, it would probably help you to preload because it's very hard to get off oral vitamin C in at high levels because it's just limited by gut absorption. But I do 2 to 4,000.

Milligrams of vitamin C. I do 100 milligrams of melatonin.

I do.

Either n acetylcysteine, 600 milligrams twice a day. Uh, or you can do, you can go directly to glutathione.

Um, this is all after. You're all doing this after.

This is before.

This is before.

Yeah.

And then. But the day, like the day before. I'm sorry, I'm like, I'm quizzy. I'm asking because I want to create my protocol.

Yeah, yeah. I'm happy to share my protocol with you.

Great.

But the day before and then one hour before your study.

Okay. Okay, cool.

So to make sure that it's all in before your study.

I love that.

And people are like terrified of taking 100 milligrams of melatonin, but just know that is not a sleep dose. So low doses of melatonin make you sleepy because that mimics physiology. What's happening in your body. High doses of melatonin or anti inflammatory doses. So I have my cancer patients on somewhere between 90 and 180 milligrams of melatonin every day. And for the ones with metastatic disease, I have them taking that Twice a day. Okay, so it's.

And then do you have them do sauna after and just open detox pathways? Because I know you speak so much.

Never hurts.

But things that help more with radiation, yes. Sauna, maybe, but more the antioxidants. Because what we're trying to do is combat free radical damage, since that's primarily what's happening during radiation. So now if there are other toxins that you're exposed to in the course of this.

Then I think about binders. So I think about things like chlorella help bind up any of these toxins that are released into the system.

And that's an instance where yes, sauna will help on top of that. But mostly for the radiation, I think about the free radical damage that's happening and combating those free radicals. So heavy duty antioxidants.

I love this. Yeah. So good.

Yeah. All right, so while we're talking about toxins, let's talk about mercury.

Well, it was just banned in the eu.

Wouldn't it be lovely if United States followed suit?

You know, after the Industrial revolution, cavities skyrocketed and they just, they couldn't keep up with the decay rate and they were placing more biomimetic bio compatible materials like gold. But obviously that had its limitations from a cost perspective. So they created a blended alloy which is now called amalgam amalgamation and it has mercury in it. And so this has been used for a very long time in standard dentistry to fix teeth. And many dentists will tell you the biggest exposure is when you place it and after that it becomes inactive. And this is not true. There's many studies to show that with chewing and drinking hot liquids and grinding and just day to day activities, mercury vapor is released slowly over time and it can accumulate in the body. I don't like to create fear in patients that have alloy fillings because not everyone has the capability to go have them replaced. But I would encourage you to chip away at them. Especially if one breaks or one cracks and you need it replaced, I would just say no, I do not want mercury put back into my tooth. I'd prefer ideally a ceramic based composite filling material or maybe like a composite inlay, or onlay, something more conservative. So mercury, it's a, it's a concern, you know, and if you are worried, I suggest you do a heavy metal test because you might find you're very high in mercury as I was. And I didn't even have any mercury filling. So where was I getting exposed to it? Well, I'm a Dentist, it's my work. Dentistry is very toxic. It's very toxic for the providers. We are actually the ones very exposed to these things day in and day out.

So just being aware, I mean, we are in a transition period all around and learning. When you know better, you do better, you know. And so I do hope at some point we also ban mercury fillings, not only for patient health, but environmental health too. You know, these. The mercury goes down our drain. Yeah, it's supposedly it's getting.

An environmental mental risk for sure.

Yes.

Before we move out of that, you said, well, two things. First, if you're going to have your mercury fillings removed, there are safe ways to do it and not so safe.

Ways to do it.

Can you talk about that a little bit?

Yes. There is something called the SMART technique. It's the safe mercury amalgam removal technique. I highly encourage you to find a dentists that are SMART certified and that is through the iaomt, the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology.

And so they will do a lot of the things you just spoke about. Okay, so the vitamin C ahead of time, really high dose. Some dentists are doing IV vitamin C or they'll even do ozone.

Binders after, you know, glutathione, all the antioxidants that you mentioned as well as then sauna, sweating, detoxifying, you know, making sure you're having bowel movements. But here's the thing. And sometimes you need chelation therapy too. It just depends. Be very cautious with that because it can impact your minerals as well. Make sure you're working with someone very knowledgeable in these things. We use a lot of spirulina chlorella, as you mentioned, dandelion, like bitter. The bitter vegetables too. But here's the thing. If you are sick, if you're a sickly human, if you have Lyme disease, if you have autoimmune diseases, if you're really struggling with your health, sometimes the first thing people want to do is I want the mercury out. But you're not ready. You are not ready. It can make you very sick.

To the argument that the dentists make that it is more stable in your tooth, I mean, this is true. You are going to be very exposed during the removal procedure even with all these smart techniques.

So because there will still be off gassing.

That's right.

And you will still get a bolus of toxin.

That's right, yes. And so if your body isn't equipped to handle that, it can make you very, very ill. So just be cautious. This isn't to scare people. But I also, it's. We tend to oversimplify things, especially a lot of people go to social media for their education. Now, there's a lot to it, it's very nuanced and it's all about the human. You know, you are different than your neighbor, than your sister, than your cousin down the road who had this procedure done. We need to know your health. What, what are you capable of?

Yes.

Okay.

You also talked about what is replacing these amalgams. So you talked about ceramic base. You talked about composite inlay and onlay. Like.

There is a lot of talk in my circles about people who have gone to have their mercury amalgams removed only to have BPA based.

Fillings put in. So they're just trading one cancer causing agent for the other. Because we know that mercury is a metallo estrogen and BPA or BPB or whatever plasticizer you're talking about to give that thing flexibility. They. These are all xenoestrogens. So we're just trading in one bad choice for another. Is there a good choice?

I mean, not to be.

Cynical, but the best dentistry is no dentist history.

Of course. Of course.

So there are. So there is a company called Voco Voco, it's out of Germany, I believe, and they make bio ceramics that are considered the cleanest material on the planet right now. So are they perfect? No, but they're much cleaner. So many of the plasticizers have been removed, the BPA, the BIZ, GMA, etc. And then when you're doing inlays and onlays, or even crowns, that generally is zirconia, you know, so that is a ceramic. It's very biocompatible. I will say.

You know, you found a really great dentist when they're doing biocompatibility testing on you because not everyone can tolerate everything. Like. Yeah, you, you hear a lot about biocompatibility. Yes. So your body, you know, we all have different levels of sensitivities. Think about how you are. You might have an allergy and someone else doesn't. So you can react to different materials in your body as well. This is important to note too, with a Hodge positive dentistry in your mouth. If you have a gold crown here and an alloy filling here and a different metal here, they can react and they can actually cause galvanic forces in your mouth. So this is important to know too. This is why we don't love metals in the body. Yeah.

It creates a circuit. Yes. And what is that doing to the Body. What is that doing to the microbiome? Okay, so.

Anyway, you'll ideally be tested to make sure this material works for your body. It's just like if you go in for a knee replacement, the surgeon isn't just going to go put in this hardware without working you up first. And so your dentist should be working you up. And most people do very well with zirconia and zirconia implants. You'll hear ceramic implants, zirconia implants, but some don't. And actually titanium might be a better choice for them if that's what they need. So you just, we're all bio individual but we want to be using materials that work best with our body and our biology. Amazing.

So anyone who needs an implant of any kind, they should be undergoing biocompatibility testing first to see what is the best for them.

I believe so, yes. Yes. And you know, the, the dentist in my circle are all doing this. There's, there's different tests. One's called the Melissa test, but just ask your dentist about it and maybe you will teach them something.

Yeah, that's amazing. I love that. Before we get away from mercury.

Dentists.

Are.

Known to have the highest depression rates, the highest suicide rates of all the medical practices. Do you think it's because of long term mercury exposure and are we seeing improvements of that in that as we get away from mercury?

It's so funny. I'm working on a book and I, I, my intro chapter talks about this.

I think it's very multifaceted. So we do have a very toxic environment. It's not only mercury that we're exposed to. We're inside all day, we have this terrible posture, like, what is that doing to our lymphatic system? We're under these terrible fluorescent blue flickering lights and what is that doing to our mental health and our mitochondria? And we're isolated. Most dentists practice in solo practices and while you engage with your team, you can't engage too much with your team, you know, so it's very lonely. And on top of that, we tend to be perfectionists.

You know, we want, I don't know anything about that.

We want the perfect filling, the perfect margin. It has to fit well. But there's so many things you can't factor in. Like, is the patient, like, let's say you do something and it fails, you blame yourself. But like that patient maybe was eating Jolly Ranchers and smoking cigarettes and not flossing and do you know what I mean? Like, but they blame you, okay? Or they clench and they grind and then they're mad at you. Or dental pain, if anyone's ever experienced it, it is awful, awful. And so you have patients coming into you truly debilitated, I mean, in the worst state. And you put so much pressure on yourself. I have to fix you. But it's so complicated and we're not trained in all the things we just spoke about to really work the patient up. Instead, we're putting band aids on things. No wonder they fail, right? Or no wonder the issue comes back again because we haven't been addressing the actual root cause problem. And so you, you're in this toxic environment with true toxins and then also toxic energy and.

You'Re lonely. And I mean, I speak personally. I hated dentistry. And I honestly do. I still struggle with it. Like I've tried to make it my own and make it as beautiful and enjoyable as I can, but it's a very challenging career and your patients don't want to be there. There's so much dental trauma from childhood. And that is partly why I went into pediatrics. I saw adult patients who legitimately have deep rooted trauma from experiences in their childhood in the dental chair. I mean, truly, a lot of it was assault. There was, there's just terrible things that could happen.

And they hate being there. And so then you're this, also this profession, you're just, you just want to help, but then people just hate coming to you, you know, so it's really tough. So I do say, be nice to your dentist. That being said, I think you're right. I mean, I think, think most dentists.

I go to regular dental conferences now, very infrequently, I'm mostly at functional medicine conferences or, you know, alternative, if you will, conferences. But when I go to my standard American Dental association conference, I look around and the dentists are sick. They're not healthy people. They're inflamed. They're, they have terrible forward head posture, their mouth breathing. They just, they're, they're, they don't light up. And I do think this is changing with the newer generations who are prioritizing self care and exercise and nutrition and sleep. But I think many generations haven't done that. And so I think your dentists, a lot of them are pretty sick. And so I would say just be kind, be kind to your dentist. I, they are, many are struggling. I can speak from experience and also I have colleagues and friends and many are struggling, they really are. So we, something has to change. And I will tell you the joy that has been brought back into my career through looking at health differently and looking at it through a functional medicine lens. It's. It's really reinvigorated me. And. And I. And I really. Part of it is, at the end of the day, I. I go to sleep, and instead of feeling this guilt that someone's crown failed, I feel joy because a mom came to me and said, you helped diagnose my child's Crohn's disease. No one has talked to me about this before. They just blew it off. You know, when you start hearing stories like that and you're really making change, it. It. It really means a lot. It does. So, yeah.

Well, you absolutely, working in the pediatric space, are helping generations of people, because that's where it needs to start. It needs to start in the pediatric population. I mean, if I could impact that population, I could make a change in the breast cancer world. I mean, I'm still making a huge change in the breast cancer world, but it really needs to start there because people realize that the decisions that they make when they're 10 and 15 and 20 are going to determine who does and who doesn't get breast cancer at 40 and 50 and 60.

That's right. Yeah. And that is partly. I mean, I love children, but that is not why I went to pediatrics. I went into pediatrics because I wanted to have the most impact.

And it comes with educating the parents, too. Like, just educating on the first thousand days of life and how important that is for, you know, micro. Microbiome establishment, and that sets you up for a trajectory of health or otherwise. So. But I'm just. It's so wonderful to have platforms like this and to be speaking of this, because this is how we're going to make the change. It's going to come from our patients and our followers and our listeners, you know? Yeah.

I remember something from.

James Nestor's book Breath, about how our palates are literally collapsing. Like, they're getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And the reason that we have crooked teeth now is because our mouths are getting smaller. We're not breathing through our nose. Our skulls are getting longer and.

Narrower, and that's why everyone needs braces. And then braces even pulls them in more instead of expanding them out. So we used to have room for our teeth, and now we don't have room for our teeth anymore. That's right.

Yes. Breath is probably my favorite book of all time. I thought James did such a beautiful job with that book. This is part of my specialty. So I am an airway trained dentist also.

Let's talk about the why. Because some people, they just don't realize this, this is a newer phenomenon. So if you go to the Natural History Museum and you look at the skulls, you will see from not that long ago, 10,000, 12,000 years ago, really broad wide palates. There's room for all the teeth, including the wisdom teeth, the third molars. And the teeth are straight. Okay. You'll also notice if you really look, they don't have decay, they don't have a bunch of fillings and crowns.

Yeah.

So what changed? Well, we went from a hunter gatherer society to an agrarian society. And then the industrial revolution happened. So we started milling and processing and adding flour and sugar and preservatives and food dyes and all of these things and hyper palatable foods. And now food is just endless and we're eating and eating and eating and snacking and sipping all day long. And this is trashing our oral health. It's trashing our oral microbiome. It's changing the PH of our mouth to be more acidic, changing our gut health also, which is impacting nutrient absorption. Our food is nutrient devoid. And so this is part of the conversation is the food, but also it's chewing. So ancestrally we used to chew, we had to forage, we used to chew food four, five hours a day is what they estimate. Now they estimate we chew just a few minutes a day because everything is inhaled. Mash. Yes. It's already pre digested for you.

Well, if it's not pre digested, it is pre.

Pulverized.

Right, right.

Like you don't have to chew it in order to get it into your system. And you can see, I mean, sugar cane is not a new crop.

Right, Right. Yeah.

We've been trading sugar cane since the beginning of the times that we traded. But you can imagine that chewing on a sugar cane was hard work to get that sugar out. It was hard work. It was really good for the teeth.

Right. And jaws. Yeah. So. And that chewing is creating salivary flow and that salivary flow is cleansing the teeth from the sugar. So you're right, it's, it wasn't a bad gig. And it, you know, so the act of chewing and your tongue lateralizing is what forms the face. And this starts in utero actually is the tongue goes up, the palatal shells expand and broaden. And then you breastfeed, ideally, if you can, and if it resonates with you and that helps grow the face and then and then introducing whole foods. But we've lost this. And so many parents come to me like, what can I do? And I. You could. There's things you can do to not make it worse. But you're. We are fighting 12,000 years of dis. Evolution. So it, unfortunately, it kind of is what it is. And they've estimated, I think it would take four, five generations if everything changed and we got back to how we used to eat and live. Five generations to arguably re. Evolve back how we were. Yes. So this is why we like early intervention. And so I screen kids for airway issues and their palate shape and are they mouth breathing and do I think their teeth will be crowded and crooked and what is their posture like and do they have low muscle tone and do they have a tongue tie? All of these things. Things. And we can intervene early and we. A lot of times you do it just with a retainer because they're so malleable at a young age. They're just their palate. The midline is just cartilage, so you can expand them. And the reason teeth are crowded is the surface area issue. The jaws are too narrow. The teeth have nowhere to come in. So they come in sideways and crooked and horizontally. Your wisdom teeth are impacted. And I get this question all the time. You know, we want to go back to ancestral living. I understand that. But so many people are very worried about having their wisdom teeth removed. And I wish we didn't have to, but your jaws are mostly too small. To everyone speaking out there, majority of people, your jaws just aren't big enough to accommodate these teeth. And so you very likely will need them out because they can cause the same sort of infections that the root canals can cause if they're left there to brew, but not always. You just want them monitored. Right. So airway is so important. And the thing is, with adults, it's not too late. There's really wonderful things that are fairly non invasive that they're doing now too, to regrow faces and widen jaws. There's an appliance called a marpi which uses little mini screws to broaden the palate. You know, James wrote about homeo block. That's what he had used as an appliance for him as an adult. And there's the ALF appliance. It's a light arch wire that they can use. And then working with myofunctional therapy too. So when you're dealing with these airway conversations, we're talking about bone and muscle, and bone includes teeth. I would say so hard tissue versus soft tissue. Orthodontics tends to only address hard tissue. But in a battle between muscle and bone, muscle will always win. So this is why so many people say, oh, I went through braces twice and everything relapsed. It's because no one addressed your underlying myofunctional issue, your musculature issue, and that has to be part of it. And so from a functional orthodontics needs to start incorporating in myofunctional therapy, physical therapy, I would argue craniosacral therapy, chiropractic therapy, working on posture, working on is, are you sympathetically overdriven? Are you clenching? You know, all these habits that we have from daily stress that if they're not addressed, they're gonna impact your bite and your teeth and how you're growing too.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

All right.

I want to ask you about fluoride.

Yeah.

Because people think I am nuts when I say that fluoride should not be used on a daily basis, should definitely not be in the drinking water. I mean, I think RFK is taking a lot of heat for, you know, calling attention to this when people perceive there are far bigger issues for our society to address. So can you talk about fluoride?

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I would happily talk about fluoride. What's Interesting about the fluoride debate is it's been a debate since its inception. People don't realize this. It did not get put into our water without argument. And it's important for everyone to look at the history of that, I think. But so, you know, I agree with you. I do not. So fluoride is considered a neurotoxin, and the counter argument will be dose makes the poison. Okay? That's what they always say. And this is true, of course. However, what are the cumulative effects. Effects of daily exposures? And in your world, you. I know you speak about this a lot. What are the cumulative effects of all the endocrine disrupting makeups and body lotions and fragrances and deodorants and etc. That people are putting on their bodies? Well, it's the same thing with fluoride. And so fluoride, we do know it does not need to be ingested to work. Okay? So this is our archaic thinking. Removing it from the water is going to have little to no impact on oral health. And this, this is where it can get heated. But I will tell you, we're taught in dental school to just say conversationally, oh, your teeth are strong. You must have grown up in a fluoridated community. This is all observational. There's no rhyme or reason to this. There's no data to support this. What's. However, I see plenty of patients who drink fluoridated water that have cavities and plenty that don't. That don't have cavities. Okay? This has to do with diet and lifestyle and breathing. No one's fluoride deficient. There's no such thing as fluoride deficiency in the body. So it's a neurotoxin and you're drinking water with it. Maybe you drink a liter of water a day. Maybe you drink 3 liters of water a day. Are you boiling your pasta in it? Are you making soup with it? What other things are you doing with your water? And so what's. What are the cumulative effects of that? And the problem is we are ignoring the EPA's own standards of the safety dose, which is, which is 10x. Okay, and so why do we have this margin of safety? The standard.

It'S to protect the vulnerable populations. Okay, so we fluoridate far above that safety standard. And what are vulnerable populations? It's pregnant women, it's infants. So think about babies who are having formula mixed with fluoridated water. Okay? So pregnant women, infants, people with calcium deficiencies and iodine. Deficiencies, people with genetic polymorphisms, they all should be erring on the side of caution with their fluoride exposure. But we just treat everyone the same. So we're mass medicating patients and we're not getting consent. And so that's my discussion about systemic fluoride. I agree it should be removed from our water. It just thinks there's no place for it. There's many, many countries in the world who have removed it. We're one of the last countries in the world to still fluoridate our water. Many people don't realize that these countries that have removed it, they don't have rampant decay. They've implemented other policies and, and resources for patients, you know, nutritional counseling, access to care, etc. So then we can talk about topical fluoride. Now this is, this gets nuanced and I personally do not use fluoridated products, products my children never have. I haven't for 25 years now. And I do not promote them to my patients because I think there are alternatives that work better.

This is personal though. If you're a very, very high decay risk, maybe for a short duration of time, you need a higher dose of topical fluoride. Again, I would want to speak and suggest alternative alternatives to you, but the thing that gets left out of the conversation with fluoride too is that it's antimicrobial. What is it doing to the microbiome if you're swallowing it? What is it doing to the gut microbiome? What is it doing to the oral microbiome? And it is harming commensal and beneficial bacteria. This is why so many patients, a lot of patients, they'll say, I got off from fluoride in my oral health and improved. I'm not surprised because you were constantly bombarding your mouth with this low grade antimicrobial every day. And you weren't allowing your native bacteria to flourish and become diversified.

So I look forward to a time where our FDA and our American Dental association will recognize, recognize that there are alternatives to remineralization besides fluoride, but we're just not there. We're just not there yet.

Let's talk about those though.

Can you heal a cavity? Yes, you can. You need to. Well, if it's, if it's still in the enamel, okay. And this is important, this is why I don't want people just doing this on their own. Because you need, this is where you need the X ray. The X ray tells me how deep is the cavity into your tooth. Can we heal it or do we actually need to do a filling? But this is part of my specialty and my protocol. We heal, heal or reverse or remineralize or at least arrest, which just means freeze in time. So many cavities in children and so we're avoiding so many fillings and anesthesia visits for these young kids, which is so great. So the first thing is you just need to know the why. Why, why do you have the cavity? Is it a nutritional deficiency? Are you snacking and sipping too frequently throughout the day? Are you not flossing? Are you mouth breathing? Do you have a microbial imbalance? You know, we really need to work you up to really figure out why, why is this going on in your body? And then we need to correct those things first. Okay. So we can't just throw a medicament or prescription at it. It won't work long term term. So but things that I like, there's hydroxyapatite, which is calcium and phosphorus, which is what our teeth are actually made of. So you're seeing more and more products with hydroxyapatite. Theobromine works very, very well to remineralize. That's derived from cacao.

Xylitol can be helpful in modulating the microbiome. It acts as a prebiotic at specific doses. Then we talk about better antimicrobials and to me that's ozone. So whether it's ozonated, water, ozone, oil, ozone, gas. A lot of patients are using iodine, as you know, to reduce the bacteria and cause the rest of the decay too. So there are different strategies and protocols. And then you have to make sure your saliva is optimized. Saliva is this golden elixir in our, our body, we don't give it enough credit. It has so many health benefits. It contains all the minerals that your teeth need to stay healthy, as well as immune cells and enzymes for digestion and you know, hormone regulating receptors and things of that nature too. So if you are dehydrated, if you're mineral deficient, if you're vitamin D deficient, and this comes internally, okay, your, your tooth does have nutrient supply. It has a lymphatic system, a blood supply system. It is getting nutrients to it daily. And so if you are vitamin D, mineral magnesium, K2 deficient, you will probably struggle. But also gut health, you know, we have to look at your gut, you know, and if you have intestinal permeability, Crohn's, celiac IBS or ibd, you may have issues too. So you can see it's multifaceted. But the good news is, it seems like a lot when I'm saying it, but it's like little tweaks to your daily routine can have profound impacts, and it's often not a really big lift if you're motivated. But so I would say to heal a cavity, you have to understand the why. First of all, can you heal your cavity, cavity, like, how deep is it? Why? The why behind it. And then the products that I mentioned can help, but we have to focus on nutrition, too, and also how you're breathing. If you're chronically mouth breathing, you will struggle with decay until you get that corrected. And the reason is when you breathe through your mouth, you lose your salivary health. Your mouth dries out. And when we see this with patients undergoing radiation or chemotherapy, their teeth can just get. They become destroyed because we are. It's our saliva that protects our teeth. And if you lose your spit, you're going to struggle. So you have to get your mouth breathing under control, too.

What about bad breath?

Yeah, if it's chronic, I wish people would just stop ignoring it. It's a. This is your body yelling at you that something's not imbalance. So this is where so many people reach to those traditional mouthwashes multiple times a day. And those conventional mouthwashes that are high in alcohols and astringent, they're just carpet bombing your mouth. They're irritating the mucosa. Chronic use have been linked to certain oropharyngeal cancers, but plus it depletes the nitrate reduction pathway, the bacteria that help there. And so it can impact your nitrate nitric oxide levels, which can impact your cardiovascular health, your immune health. And there's data to show the chronic use of these strong mouthwashes can increase your blood pressure. Okay. And potentially create erectile dysfunction, too, because of the nitric oxide pathway. So if you have really bad breath, we need to know why it's not. Just don't. Let's stop normalizing it. So do you. You probably have periodontal disease. This is where a microbiome test would be really helpful. But also, you could have an infection. You could have a failing root canal or a filling that has some sort of infection in it. You might have an abscess. You could have tonsil stones. You could have a sinus infection, which will can kind of drip down, and it's, you know, it's all connected. So please don't ignore bad breath. It's your body telling you that something's off. And so that you have, you have dysbiosis of your microbiome. And so we need to figure out why it can be also sometimes coming from the gut.

So I want to go back to your transition from the traditional medical space into the space that you're in right now because I think it's really important. First I want to ask who are your heroes? Like who do you, who do you look up to in this space?

In this space? Well, my co founders of the Institute for Functional Dentistry. So Mary Ellen Chalmers was the first functional medicine trained dentist.

That at least that I know of. And she's just such a rock star in the space and many don't know her because she's not big on social media, but she's brilliant.

Valerie Cantor is someone else I really look up to. She has an integrative endodontic practice in la. So if you are looking to save a tooth and you want a more whole body, holistic root canal, she's doing them and she's using lasers and.

Peptides and stem cells and like really, really cool, cool state of the art things.

You know, I really look up to Mark Hyman and Dr. Jeffrey Bland and even though they're not directly in dentistry, they to me are the pioneers who kind of paved the way from this, for this movement. Certainly Weston Price is obviously someone I very much look up to. He was a dentist in the, the earlier 1900s, I would argue, who's the original functional dentist who started looking at, wait, why are our teeth in this industrialized country so bad compared to more, more tribal countries, if you will, more ancestral communities. And it was our food and nutrient deficiencies and how we're breathing essentially. So he was the first one that kind of put this to pen. And then Dr. Steven Lin modernized all of this with the dental diet. And then James Nestor. I'm a huge fan of James. I mean, he made a topic that I had been passionate about for so long. He made it attainable to the masses and, and like kind of sexy. And I think nothing is more important than airway health. So if you haven't read that book Breath, as you mentioned earlier by James, as it will change your life, I think more than any other book because it's something we all do, we all have to do to survive. And if you are not breathing properly, all these things that we talk about, the nuances of, you know, what is your daily stack and what am I doing to live longer, none of it's going to make a difference if you're not breathing properly.

It just Won't I couldn't agree more. I think that that book was brilliant. Eye opening, life changing, all of the above. Couldn't agree more.

So there are so many people who are hearing about this or who know about this, but they don't know where to go to access care. And there's like the patient that I started off with today whose aunt or cousin is a dentist. Dentist who's saying that, you know, all of this is hogwash. And most dentists practice in this conventional paradigm. They haven't learned anything since they finished dental school. And it's all more of the same. Very kind of rinse and repeat and drill and fill. Where do people go for biologic dentistry? Where do people go? How do they know who's good, who's bad, who, who's doing the right thing for them, who's not?

Yeah, this is the challenge. So I can give you places to go now, but the problem is there is no standardization, really.

Okay.

So anyone can call themselves anything but you. You don't know what you're going to get. And so I do have to disclose that. I mean, we're at a tricky time. So the places I would go and then I do, I have a solution. You can try the iaomt, as I mentioned earlier. So their biological dental group and they do have some certification programs and things. But there is a difference in my mind between biological dentistry and functional dentistry. And why is that? It's the functional medicine component to me that's really important. I want to understand hormone pattern pathways, I want to understand gut health and immune function. And again, because that's going to help me connect all of the dots. But biological dentists, they, they will talk a lot about root canals and mercury and fluoride and just kind of cleaning up dentistry, if you will. And so that's a great place to start. There's the Holistic Dental association. They have a list. But again, I can't vet for any of these people. You know, you're gonna, It's a wide range of providers that you'll find. If you're interested in airway dentists, there's the Breathe Institute, will have a list of providers and the aapmd, we can put this all in the show notes, but it's tricky. And so this is why we're creating the Institute for Functional Dentistry. Because the, the students will, it'll be about an 18 to 24 month long program. It's a residency level curriculum. There will be a certification exam that they have to pass and then they will become Credentialed. So there's a standard of care, there's a standardized education that these dentists will receive. So when they graduate, there should be some consistency in the way they're practicing so that, you know, if they're on that website that you, you should hopefully have an idea of what you're going to get. So I just asked people to be a little patient. So the first cohort is starting in January.

So hopefully by like summer 2027, there will be more of us out in the world. And I will tell you, we have 600 dentists on the wait list right now.

Wow, that's amazing.

I know, I know. Absolutely amazing.

Would this be in lieu of them going to do like the Institute for Functional Medicine certification?

Yeah, so they can do. We have different tracks. So there's a first track that's more for hygienists and auxiliary team members. The second track is getting your functional dental certification and that does have functional medicine coursework in it. But if you want also your functional medicine certification, there's track three because we are allied partners with ifm and so they're getting IFM curriculum.

Wow, that's amazing.

So, yeah, so the dentists that are doing track three, you will be certified in functional medicine and certified in functional dentistry. I'm right now certified in functional medicine. I'm not certified in functional dentistry because it doesn't exist, but I'm going to take the program and I will be one of the first graduates. You know, I'm doing a couple of the lectures for the curriculum, but we have about, I think 45 lecturers on founding faculty and there's over 300 hours of CE. It is an intense, all inclusive curriculum and we speak about mental health and we speak about Dr. Burnout too. So we really try to make it very well rounded. So hopefully very soon you'll have a better database of places to go find someone that's like minded.

That's amazing. I love to hear that. How do.

The standard dental programs, the dental training programs, how do they view you and what you're doing? Do you know, do you have a.

I don't know yet. You know, I do. I, I think some are very excited. So I, I do have a lot of connection to Tufts in Boston, which is where I went. And I will tell you, they're very open minded. You know, they know who I am. We've spoken, I've spoken to the dean and you know, the, the idea is to eventually get some of this curriculum in dental school. So that will be Phase one of my mission is to create a textbook and like, get basic Functional Dentistry 101 in dental school. Yeah. So I think it's probably a mixed bag right now, you know, but no one can argue that the oral microbiome needs to be focused on. And no one can argue that we need to pay more attention to how hormones and gut health and immune health all tie into oral health, too. So it's.

I mean, I agree with you in that it's inarguable, but I think that there is still argument being had. I mean, I know that Jerry Curatola.

I think he really tried to get some of that learning into the program at nyu. I mean, I may be speaking a little out of turn, but I don't know that it worked out so well.

Yeah, well, different approaches. We'll. We'll get there. I'm pretty confident. So, I mean, I think as long as you stay evidence based.

That'S the key. You have to be very evidence based with everything that you say. But it's all. Everything is timing too, you know, so it maybe was just too early for that transition to happen. What's. What's exciting is I know that IFM is getting some of their curriculum into some medical school schools. So that's really.

Setting a great standard for us as the dentist.

Yeah, that is good precedent.

It's a great precedent. Yeah. So who knows? I mean, it could be five years, 10 years. But I am. I'm pretty confident that it's just. We. It's pretty obvious the system's broken. We just can't keep up with the demand right now. And healthcare is a of matter, so we do need to take different approaches.

Yeah, for sure. I couldn't agree with you more.

This has been an amazing conversation. I think we covered a lot of really important things. And at the end of the day, I hope that everyone walks away from this understanding not only the importance of oral health, but its connection to overall health. And that there we are constantly learning more and more and more about the relationship between oral health and heart disease, between the relationship between oral health and various cancers, not just breast, between the oral health and autoimmune disease. So the things that plague us in our society, cancer, autoimmune disease, cardiac disease, it's all related. And we. Your idea to fuse the.

Study and the care of the mouth with the study and the care of the body in general is absolutely spot on. And we have to start. You talked about in the beginning compartmentalization. We need to stop that. Yeah, just Stop that.

I know.

Because operating in these silos is what got us to where we are now. And it's a system very much designed to. To be that way for the purposes of rewarding sickness, because that's what our system is built on right now. And doctors don't get paid now unless you're sick. And that includes dentists. They don't get paid unless you have dysfunction.

There's a code. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The phrase stay in your lane needs to disappear.

Go away. Go away. I was.

Not proud of this, but scrolling this morning on Instagram and there was a nurse practitioner who was talking about.

Not no longer recommending screening mammograms because of all the data that shows that screening mammograms have no survival advantage. And one of the comments was, well, you're just a nurse, like stay in your lane.

Totally.

And I'm a doctor and my. I recommented on that. So saying that, you know, you are no more qualified to say that than. Than she is. Like your, your doctor degree didn't make you qualified. The thing that makes you qualified to have an opinion is knowledge of the data, which. Which you clearly lack.

Right.

Yes.

Yes. And so many quote unquote experts, they have their blinders out up. So it sometimes is the other team members, the auxiliary team members that have better clarity about what's happening around them. They can see the truth a bit better. So that was really nice you to. To comment for her.

I'm sure it will be met with.

Of course. But that's okay. I'm a tree, I can bend. That's right. And it's just, you know, someone on a. They're thumb typing somewhere, it's fine. Yeah.

It makes people really brave.

I know, I know. It's funny, my evolution on social media, I've definitely gotten more. I take much less personally, which is good, actually. It's a good quality that it brings out in us. Yeah, yeah.

Very hard for people pleasers though.

Yes.

Very hard for people pleasers to. But I, I always come back to it is impossible to teach the blind to see.

Right.

So there are just some people who don't want to know and will never know the truth. They are just incapable of knowing the truth. And I come back to this Upton Sinclair quote all the time in that it's impossible to teach a man something when his livelihood depends on him not knowing it.

That's right.

Yes.

But here's the thing. This is the way I look at it. If you touch a thousand people and 900 of them give you attitude, but you've, you know, change the others. That's a huge that, that will create change. Right. So. Yeah.

So it is going to take a while for your colleagues to see what you're doing as the right thing because they've been taught otherwise for decades. Yes. Same with me.

Right.

Like I'm, I'm just on this path that is so contrary to what the people that trained right alongside me were taught and that they believe, even though I know and you know, that a large part of what we were taught is not only untrue, it's dead wrong.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know it's just gonna take time for people to, to realize that, to, to adopt it. But it's okay because I know that you're on the right side of history and you are changing the world. So bravo.

Thank you. I feel the same of you. I need to come to your clinic and I want, I want to speak to you more offline about you. You helping me with my, my radiation protocol.

You got it. You got it. Happy to help.

Dr. Whitman. Where can people find you?

Yes. So we covered a lot, but I find it to be more surface level because it's a podcast. It's really hard. So I do dig deep into many topics in a newsletter that I have every week called Open Wide and that's on my website, DrStacy.com that's a great name. Thank you.

Great name.

Thank you. I have. I'm going to be using it in other ways coming up.

And then I'm on social media. I also scroll around and so I'm mostly on Instagram. You can find me on X and Tick tock. And that's Dr. Underscore. Stacy, you can come see me in person if you have kids under 13 for a functional dental approach. And that's Bloom Kids Dentistry. And then I do online consultations too. You can get that on my website.

And then.

And then the Institute for Functional Dentistry, of course. Course too. So if you happen to be a dentist or share this with your dentist, like if you have a dentist who you're, who is open minded, you know, please tell them about the Institute for Functional Dentistry because they, they might want the education. That's what we're missing. It's just the. Can I just go to one place and get everything I need in one place and so please share that with them.

Yes.

And even if they're not open minded.

Yeah, fair.

What's, what's a one hour podcast? Like, just share it with them and have them listen, because it may just strike a chord with them. And change has to start from somewhere. So it's possible that maybe they just never even heard about any of this. It's hard for. For us to believe that. But I am constantly reminded of the fact that, you know, in 2017, when I went on my healing journey and saw Mark Hyman for the first time, I had no idea who he was. And at that point, he had already written, like, seven of his books.

Do you know, it's wild. So many people still don't know who he is. I can't. I can't believe that when I say, oh, you know, Mark Hyman. And people, people go, who. Where have you been? So, because, because we, we are. We are in a little community too, right? And we. We forget that. So I agree with you. Like, we need to branch out, extend the olive leaf and bring others in because they. Many people want to be here. They just don't even know that here exists. So you're right.

That's right. That's right. So please share and with that, know that I will be back next week. So same time, same place. It's Dr. Jen. Bye for now.