Wellness dentist Katie To says brushing technique matters more than toothpaste, and most people brush too briefly. She recommends skipping sodium lauryl sulfate and unnecessary fluoride, or making your own paste from baking soda and coconut oil. Nutrition, sleep, and stress management are foundational to oral health.
As a person who's interested in seeing a wellness dentist, I'm also highly interested in supplements and vitamins and taking the right things. Can you tell me some of your favorites?
Definitely. So again, for me, in wellness dentistry and wellness in general, personalization is key. I have so many patients ask me, what are you taking? Can I take the same thing? My question is, when's the last time you get your blood work done? Let me take a look at your blood work. And see what you need to supplement. Both of my children get blood work done annually. My husband thought it's very cruel to get their blood drawn every year when they, you know, ever since they was born. But without those biomarkers, I can't supplement. Even both of my children, they have different supplement schedule. I have different supplement schedule. So number one thing is know what you need to supplement. Now, When you know what you need to supplement, we always want to stick with the supplementation, the professional grade, something that been tested, have research back it up. And most of the time, you notice that the supplement that the, the wellness dentist or the integrative functional medicine doctor taking themselves, so that's a good hint there. Like, if they taking, that mean they done research on it and they believe and they see the result on it. And then also On top of supplementation, you want to make sure that you practice the basic. I can tell you that I have patients asking me like, what is all the biohacks that you do? There's no hack in the world replace the basic. And the basic for me is nutrition, hydration, and sleep, and stress, stress level. So if you have not practiced that, you'd have not get the basic down. The supplementation is not going to be that effective. It's not going to be long-lasting. And you keep chasing another supplement, another thing. And people forget whatever we take, whatever we put in our system, we also have to detox it. So the more stuff you put in your system, the more load, the more work your liver, your kidney, your colon have to do the work to detox it out. So you want to know what you need to supplement, testing and follow-up to know, does it work for me? I switched around vitamin D because this form doesn't work. I had to go liquid, then liquid doesn't work as good, then I have to go into the intramuscular. So you have to know and monitor so you know the supplementation work. And also just practice the basic. For example, my number one question people ask me is like, what toothpaste do you use? Everywhere I go, the moment they know I'm the one dentist, they're like, I want to ask you, what toothpaste do you use? What toothpaste your kid use? So before I'm telling you what toothpaste I use, I can tell you that toothpaste is enhancing the brushing experience. It's not a requirement to brush with toothpaste. I know some people are like, viral, this is like new information. Because the act of brushing is remove the biofilm around teeth. And most people, when they have the toothpaste on, they don't brush as long. And therefore, the biofilm is still on the teeth. How do we know that? Because we put the Plaque ID or the biofilm identification solution on their teeth and we see all the colors. How long they've been on there? 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours. So regardless what toothpaste you would use, first of all, you have to master the act of brushing. It's not that hard. You just have to brush long enough and be patient. Most people, they brush for 20, 30 seconds. They think they brush for like 3 minutes. So number one is you have to learn how to brush with water first, just so you master the process of brushing. You can tell by your tongue if your teeth still have biofilms on it. And now adding the toothpaste on it, that first of all, we don't want to have a lot of chemical. Number one chemical we see in the toothpaste, I know what you're thinking, it's not fluoride, it's SLS. So it's a foaming agent. And that foaming agent actually causing a lot of patients' cheek and gum coming off. It's too strong, it's reactive. So that's number one I'm looking at the toothpaste is, does it have SLS on it? There's also so many other silica and chemical that doesn't need. If you already have plenty of, you know, calciums and fluoride in your water, in your system, then there's no need to use fluoride toothpaste. So again, toothpaste been on the front line of the dental questions and people forget the basic. Again, they worry about nano hydroxyapatite. They worry about fluoride in the toothpaste, which again, you don't need any of that if you master the nutrition, hydration, the sleep, and the brushing, which is the basic. And my advice for people, if you're too worried about like which nano hydroxyapatite is good, is fluoride, no fluoride, or these chemicals or these ingredients that you have to like check, make your own toothpaste. There are only 2 ingredients and it's cheap and it's good. And the 2 ingredients is baking soda and coconut oil. So if you are not sure, make your own toothpaste. If you'll be like, I'm going to use my toothpaste and enhance my brushing experience, then just make sure you brush long enough to remove the plaque on your teeth. And to most of us, that's actually longer than 2 minutes. So that's my, that's my 2 cents.
