The Hidden Link Between Oral and Thyroid Health

Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Sanda Moldovan, periodontist and nutritionist. Welcome to the Holistic Dentistry Podcast, the show that gives you the tips and tools to detoxify your mouth for a healthier body as we explore together the root cause of disease. Remember, you're not healthy until your mouth is healthy, so take care of it in the most natural—

So on the Holistic Dentistry Show, I'm your host, Dr. Sanda, and I'm here in beautiful Cannes, France with an amazing practitioner, McCall McPherson from Boston. Thank you for being on our show.

Thank you so much for having me. And what a beautiful place to have this conversation in, right?

I wish I could do podcasting by the beach.

Let's do this full-time.

Yeah, yeah, it's definitely great. It is. Yes, it is. Um, we're going to be talking about surprising ways that thyroid affects start off because there's some— not enough knowledge on thyroid health in dentistry. And I want to tell our listeners a little bit about you, the fact that, you know, you focus on thyroid hormone and metabolic health. You're founder of the Modern Thyroid Clinic where you combine medical expertise with personal experience to offer innovative solutions as well as a unique Balanced approach to wellness. And I definitely wanna unpack that because I'm sure there's a lot in there. How did you get here? How did you get to focus on thyroid health?

Yeah. If you asked me 20 years ago if this is what I would be doing, I would say there's no way. I was doing integrative and func— well, no, I was finishing PA school and then I went into integrative and functional psychiatry. Yeah. And that's kind of where I expected to stay. And I was 27 when my most recent flare for my thyroid condition. I have hypothyroidism. I had Hashimoto's. I've been in remission for over 12 years now. Um, really took me down. I was spending 16 hours a day in bed, not exaggerating. I would come home from work flat on my back. I would constantly be in the cycle of resting enough to recover from the day and resting enough to prepare for the next day. I was overweight. I was losing my hair. I was depressed, anxious, so foggy. I could hardly get through the day and was already practicing medicine. So I'm like, gosh, I think I just, I was on thyroid meds, need an increase in my thyroid meds. Surely that will fix it. Went to my doctor and was told, no, no. They tested only one of so many labs that we should be checking. No, your thyroid's normal. In fact, we probably need to reduce your thyroid med. Go home, eat less, exercise more. By the way, we need to put you on Lipitor because your cholesterol's high too, which was also from my thyroid condition. And I was devastated, like cried on my way home. Eventually found a physician to help me who specialized in more aggressive thyroid care and started to get my life back. And I just incorporated that initially into my psychiatric practice cuz it was functional, it was integrative, and treated enough treatment-resistant depression patients with, for thyroid because that was their issue, that they built basically Modern Thyroid Clinic on their own without me, without me knowing it. And now, you know, years later it came to be.

Amazing. How long did it take you to kind of stabilize?

So I felt improvement once I got in the hands of someone that actually knew what they were doing. I felt improvement after, what I call the first treatment cycle after they started the new form of treatment, did proper labs, changed my medications, which tracks with what Modern Thyroid Clinic does. I mean, 90+ percent of people feel improvement after the first time they meet us, and that's honestly the way that it should be if it's done correctly. Unfortunately, the vast majority of clinicians oversimplify thyroid conditions and patients suffer because of it.

A lot of of the thyroid conditions undiagnosed?

So yes, goodness gracious, yes. Medicine estimates 60% of people are undiagnosed with hypothyroidism. I think that's a vast underestimate because their standards, they intervene way too late.

Wow. Wow. And you mentioned remission of 12 hours. Yes. That's amazing. Congratulations. Thanks. So there is hope because I know I have patients as well that have thyroid conditions and they say, oh, there's no hope for me. I'm always gonna be stressed.

Yeah, right. So that's like my biggest miss— mission. That's our statement at Modern Thyroid Clinic is there's no reason to have thyroid symptoms. I think we've normalized patients' lives just being miserable, expecting them to be fatigued and foggy and just struggling through life. And that does not have to be the case. So Hashimoto's in regular medicine and traditional medicine is viewed as kind of the reverse lottery. Like there's nothing you can do about it, right? It's so true. And in functional and integrative medicine, we really recognize that autoimmune diseases are often reversible, at least reducible, which still makes a parallel impact, not only in how you feel, but in so many other aspects of your health. And so people need to know that there's things that they can do about this and how it can even impact your oral health and how your oral health can put you at risk for Hashimoto's. It's, it's a fully integrated system. I know you know that.

Yes. It's, it's integral. No, I definitely wanna go there. Yeah. After all, it is a holistic dentistry show. Yeah.

So in my own clinical practice, I've seen hypothyroidism, and research kind of parallels this, increases your risk for gum disease because when you think about hypothyroidism, everything slows down, everything dries up, including your mouth. That is one of the main things and one of the earliest things that shows up and manifests, which obviously changes your oral microbiome and puts you at risk for more oral diseases. And then that subsequently increases your risk for things like heart disease, et cetera. You know, all of that.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm talking about this right now because oftentimes, um, most of my practice is women. Yeah. And I see as women age, their mouth gets drier. Mm-hmm. Is that because they're starting to be a problem with the thyroid and should I refer them?

You should. I mean, here's the thing is, in my opinion, if you're a woman, if you're a woman with children especially, it's not a matter of if, but when you're going to have a thyroid condition. And our most vulnerable times as women are after we give birth, so postpartum, but perimenopause, menopause, we are extremely vulnerable to thyroid conditions because of changes in our hormones that predispose us for an increased risk there. And so when women go to their regular doctor, when they go to an endocrinologist, they're getting screened for thyroid with one lab that shows normal way more often than it should.

So how can women find a practitioner? What kind of questions should they be asking?

I love that. Like, to keep it simple, I would say if you ask your clinician 2 questions, you should have a very clear answer if they're a good match. So number 1, what labs do you routinely run to diagnose and manage thyroid conditions? And it should be TSH, free T4, free T3, reverse T3, and TPO and thyroglobulin antibodies. And the second question is, What medications do you use to treat people? And if it's only levothyroxine-based medications, you need to run. Should include things like Cytomel, Liothyronine, Armour, NP Thyroid, Rem Thyroid. And so people aren't stuck with one simple solution to their thyroid problem that doesn't and isn't able to help so many people. There should be choices just like there is in every other aspect of medicine, right?

I'm like, one medicine probably doesn't help everyone. You should try.

Totally. And, and people on thyroid medication, 91% of Americans are on one specific class of levothyroxine-based drugs. And think about those drugs like crude oil. We don't put crude oil in our car to make it run, right? But we need that crude oil to make gasoline to make our car run. But we have to be able to convert that to gasoline. And a lot of people can't. We're giving 91% of people with thyroid issues crude oil hormone when the vast majority of them cannot actually convert it to gasoline or what's called free T3.

That's a great way to explain it. Thanks. Now let's go back to oral health. Yes. Now I know what to do. I, I, I think this has definitely shifted the way I would refer patients.

Oral. I love that.

Yeah. Evaluation. I'm sure a lot of dentists listening are thinking the same thing. Yeah. What other oral issues are you seeing?

Yeah, so it's interesting. So Hashimoto's, the autoimmune disease associated with hypothyroidism, is actually bidirectionally correlated with gum disease and gingivitis. So, you know, when you have Hashimoto's, you are more likely to get gum disease. And actually, in the absence of Hashimoto's, if you have gum disease, you're at an increased risk of developing Hashimoto's. And I've actually seen this in my practice. Uh, so I think it's more pervasive than we probably, even more pervasive than I probably recognize, right? Because I don't get to connect with all of my patients' dentists.

Yes, yes, about even in periodontal journals. As a periodontist going to conferences, I've never heard that actually periodontal disease can exacerbate thyroid conditions and the other way around. This is phenomenal. I know about diabetes, right? We know about that. Yeah, but especially for women listening, know your gums are bleeding.

Amen. Preach it.

Yes. Any other, uh, like mercury fillings?

Yeah. So I haven't pulled studies on this, but what I will tell you is I've had probably a half a dozen patients who have gone to get their mercury fillings removed, not in a method of biological dentistry where they go in and they, right, and mass, yeah, massive exposure and they subsequently get Hashimoto's.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Unbelievable. But it makes sense because Vapor that's released off those fillings, it's more than the amount of fillings that's allowed in the atmosphere by the EPA.

Right, right. My husband's actually measured it after he took it. Yeah, it was fascinating.

That's, that's right, because your husband's a dentist.

Yeah.

And there is a machine actually that, and any dentists out there listening, that we can measure this vapor. Dr. Sanda Moldovanova actually has this machine. It's astounding how much toxicity comes off a little fillings. Yeah. And I'm curious to see, and I don't think we have data on this, how many dentists and auxiliary staff, like assistants, have thyroid issues.

I think the medical cost of, of that is so, so incredibly high and underestimated and undervalued. But I hope more and more people like you, more and more research comes out to advocate for them because my goodness, these people are going to have health struggles long-term.

So, patients come to you say they have this flu of symptoms, right? From thyroid issues. Yeah. Uh, do most of them already know that they have a thyroid issue? Is that how they—

Good question. So we have two types of people. One class that's kind of like me where they're on medication, they go to their doctor, they feel horrible, they're struggling through the day and their doctor says, no, your, your medication's good. Your labs are normal. We're not gonna change anything. And no, I'm not gonna check more labs. So that's one category of people. And the other category of people are kind of like you described. They go to the doctor, the doctor runs labs that are inadequate, and they tell them that they're normal based on flawed information, right? They don't look deep enough to uncover what's happening. Those people have learned, become empowered, informed consumers of their health, and they too end up at Modern Thyroid Clinic for sure.

And what is the first thing— what is your first go-to method to start to help bring them back? Isn't it? Medication? How is it?

Good question. So by the time people come to us, we're like the last ditch resort place. Okay. So when women come and it is, it's like your patients, it's 95% women. The men that come are dragged in by their wives, right? They are hardly functioning in life. Like they really are deeply, deeply struggling. And so the last thing we wanna do is be like, hi, it's nice to meet you. You're gonna go on the autoimmune protocol and exercise 3 days a week. And We don't advocate for doing that. So we kind of create leverage for lifestyle change by starting them on thyroid medication, by addressing their biochemical inadequacies, essentially whatever thyroid hormones they're lacking, which creates energy capacity and like motivation and the ability to take that, leverage it, pour into their lifestyle, change their diet. And we kind of build sequentially over time to create more and more energy in that way without really making people tax their system so much and it seems so overwhelming. It doesn't have to be.

Uh, I get patients that like, you don't feel well, they're exhausted. Some of them come in a wheelchair. Oh. And there's always this question like, where do we start?

Yeah.

Do we start with detoxification, starting on amalgam fillings? Do we help bring their health up a little bit so that they feel better and then detoxify?

Yeah.

What are your thoughts on that?

Having been one of those people, you know, I think women so appreciate getting the leverage to feel better, to do more, to feel better again, you know? So I always start with the low-hanging fruit. We start with thyroid, we start with adrenals, then we move to hormones and lifestyle. And so I always say, what is the most passive thing these people can do to create that leverage in their lives? And I start there.

Love that. Why do so many people though still don't feel well? Even though they're trying different things, is it because the labs, like you mentioned, they're off or they're trying even the integrative ways, or is there something else that's there underlying?

So I think we shouldn't address thyroid in, you know, an isolated way. Most people have more than just thyroid conditions, right? I wish that anyone that came to Modern Thyroid Clinic, all we had to do was fix their thyroid, send them on their way and be like, okay, you're good. But by the, by the time they get there, women need to unravel more. But I will tell you, you know, when you address thyroid, when you address inflammation, hormones, lifestyle, adrenals, our, our people, they, they get better. Like we, we have a, between a 90 to 95% success rate and really turning it around and And these are people that have struggled for years and years.

What is the one lifestyle factor that has the biggest impact on thyroid health?

Ooh, my goodness.

I know there's a few there.

There are, I would say if someone wanted to change only one thing and see how they shift, I would say try going dairy-free.

That's an interesting one. Yeah. So let me talk about that.

So I know gluten is highly correlated with thyroid conditions in terms of food. If we look at the food kind of formulas. I've tested probably close to 10,000 women with Hashimoto's and looked at what foods drive inflammation in their body. And if you asked me 15 years ago, I would've said it was gluten, but definitely dairy, 2 to 3 times more than gluten. I see on like objective lab testing, gluten is number 2, so I don't wanna discount it, but dairy is, is number 1 for sure.

Okay. So I need to unpack the dairy.

Me too. It's so much harder to to give up than, than gluten.

So is it cow, is it goat, is it sheep, or is it goat and sheep better?

Sadly, I don't see a difference on testing. I mean, I would say maybe cow is incidence is slightly more, but even raw compared to not, I mean, like it's kind of core base proteins, but I will say like, what if we keep our Parmesan? Because that's basically dairy-free if it's aged for 18 months, you know? So we get to keep something, and I think most people can eat most things in small amounts once they reduce their initial inflammatory load.

So since we're here at Ann's—

Yes. Or we might just have to eat dairy when we're in France. You know, let's create a little balance here.

So if someone is listening and really struggling with, with the symptoms that you talked about, um, what's the first step?

Yeah. You know, I would say the first step is find someone that you can truly partner with. On your health thyroid, even in the world of functional medicine, even in the world of integrative medicine, is grossly negligently oversimplified. And even when clinicians have the best of intentions, which I know my colleagues in functional medicine really do, they want to help people. It is incredibly complicated. It is incredibly nuanced. And within the scope of functional medicine, people need to be seeing someone that can prescribe meds, but that is generally all they do so that they really get the nuances cuz the nuances honestly count. They make or break how people feel on a daily basis.

That's great advice. Yeah. Um, you have a book coming out. Yes. And it's available for pre-order. Yes. And we're gonna put the link down to the show notes.

Thank you.

What's the name of your book?

It's called Take Back Your Thyroid.

I love it. And what kind of things do you—

Yeah, so, you know, we are still in an era of medicine where people need to be informed, empowered consumers of their health. I'm, I think it's the same in dentistry, right? And in thyroid, we cannot simply sit back and just passively accept what our providers say, what our doctors say, what our clinicians say, because women won't be able to get their lives back. And it's so— its impact is so far-reaching on our long-term health that we need to make sure that we do it correctly. So it's essentially all the tools, all the knowledge, all the information, the culmination of my entire career and almost every study I've ever read. That goes in, that really tells people step by step what they need, how to fix it, lifestyle, medication, because I want people, even if they don't ever become a patient of Modern Thyroid Clinic, I want them to know exactly what they need to do to get their lives back because women deserve it.

Absolutely. All right. You also have a course. Yes. Tell us about that.

So it's a similar, it's in video content. It's definitely a short abridged version of my book, but until my book comes out, normally I sell my course for $399. We're actually selling it for the price of the book. You can get the course and then when the book comes out, we'll ship it to you for free.

So that's amazing. And of course we can't refuse. Yeah. I love it. That's that down in the show notes as well. Take Grab Your Thyroid. What a great name.

Thank you.

Any last advice or anything we haven't talked about that you'd like to mention?

You know, I think women often wait and we don't intervene on our health. We don't take the time to pour back into ourselves. A lot of the time we're too busy caring for everyone else. And I think it's so important as women that we pause and we do take that time because I think you realize the same. When women's lives are changed, that is a generational impact. It saves and changes marriages. It changes the way they can show up as a mother, as a grandmother. And so even if it feels selfish, to initially take the time to take care of your oral health, take the time to take care of your hormonal health. Whatever you put out, you'll get back for your family, for your kids, the way you show up in the world.

So yes. And we support not only our families, but our communities. And if we show up better, so yeah, our communities and this world will, will be amazing.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much for being on my show. This was an amazing conversation, and I know our listeners got a lot of value from it. Of what we've been talking about.

Thank you so much for having me.

Everyone, if you know somebody in your life that can benefit from what we shared today about thyroid health, please go ahead and share this episode with them. And until next time, stay healthy. You know, you give into me.

Ah! Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please make sure you check out the show notes for any links mentioned in the show. If you like today's show, please invite your friends to listen as well. That would mean a lot to me. Do you have a question you'd like me to answer? Message me on Instagram @drsandamoldovanovan. This is Dr. Sanda Moldovan, and remember, your mouth is the gateway to your health, so take care of it in the most natural and best way possible.