Unlocking the Power of Dental Stem Cells: The Future of Regenerative Dentistry with Dr. Randy Garland

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 in a natural way.

Hi everyone.

Welcome to another episode on the Holistic Dentistry Show. I'm your host, Dr. Sanda Moldovan, and I'm very excited to talk to you about an interesting topic about dental pulpal stem cells, because a lot of you have asked questions. Well, can we use these stem cells in any way? Some of you might not even know that we have stem cells inside each and every one of our teeth. And today, to help me demystify this topic is Dr. Randy Garland, who has a company called The Tooth Bank, and he's here to tell us what exactly is inside each tooth. And as far as stem cells, how can we save those stem cells for future needs? And a little bit about his journey. Uh, he is a retired endodontist. He used to practice in Encinitas, and now his focus is on education and really helping people learn about the tooth bank. So Dr. Randy Garland, welcome to the show.

Thank you. And thank you, Dr. Sanda Moldovan, for having me here. I really appreciate it. It's nice to be able to kind of get the word out.

Absolutely.

About these little secret cells.

Exactly. So tell us, like, what, what, how were you different as an endodontist, right? Because at some point, some, you probably had an idea that sparked this interest for you.

Yeah. So, I practiced, first I practiced general dentistry for 7 years, went back to school and, and then practiced endodontics doing root canals for 27 years. And during the latter part of that, I started exploring what's called pulpal regeneration, where it's actually an alternative to doing root canals, which is odd for a root canal specialist to be offering an alternative to that. But I was trying to basically grow the nerves back into the teeth. To restore them back to their healthy state instead of filling them up with gutta-percha.

I love it. I love it because this is not done yet, right? This is not common for endodontists to even think about trying to save a tooth.

Yeah. And honestly, I don't remember how I stumbled upon this, but I think it was because I was, I was using a device that cleans out the inside of the tooth so pristinely that it created an environment that was conducive to that type of a thing. And normally this was just something that was done on children with an open apex, you know, immature teeth. But I found that it could even be done on adults. And so we were using ozone, we were using platelet-rich fibrin and doing all of that and getting some good results, but getting inconsistent results. And so it got a little frustrating because I would use the same protocol and sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't. So I, I dug deeper into the research in all that, and that's when I discovered these dental pulp stem cells, because in the studies, that was the only thing that worked really consistently to grow the nerves back.

Yeah. So, so inside the tooth, I guess we have to explain to some people that are listening who don't understand exactly what is a tooth, and a tooth is really an organ, but tell us a little bit about what is inside a tooth in terms of structures.

Yeah, so it's a lot of people, like you say, don't know it's hollow in there. And inside that hollow structure, there are nerves and blood vessels inside there, as well as it's chock full of stem cells. And what those stem cells are doing in there is repairing. If there's a deep cavity or something near the nerve, they'll, they'll work to grow new nerve tissue, build up tooth structure and all that. But basically, yeah, there's a hollow space in there. And if you get a cavity that goes all the way down in there, and kills the nerve, then you have an infection inside that hollow space. And so something needs to be done with that. And typically with a root canal, we'll clean out all that infection and fill it up with a material called gutta-percha.

I love that you mentioned this about those stem cells because teeth can regenerate themselves. That's really the message, right?

Right, right. So yeah, my, my, my hope after doing this for, for decades was that, hey, you know, instead of sticking some dead material in there, maybe we could just grow everything back in there and go back to the first stage, you know, where you have a nice healthy tooth. And that was very exciting for me, very exciting for a lot of, especially the holistic dentists and patients in my area were flocking. I had people flying in from across the country to have this done because there's not too many people doing this.

Absolutely. Even now in my area, I only know of one person in Santa Monica that does a pulp pulp regeneration. And again, just IQ, she hasn't found yet a predictable result.

Right, right. But, well, I'm, yeah, I'm hoping I can get these dental pulp stem cells available to dentists, you know, nationwide so that then that would be a, a routine procedure. It's just FDA's not there yet.

Not there yet. Exactly. It takes, it takes a few years. So, so through your research, you, you found these dental pulp stem cell research, and what did you discover?

Well, I found that not only could they be used for teeth, for growing the nerves back, but that these are really potent stem cells that can be used all over the body. And a unique thing about them, there's a lot of different sources of stem cells, but these particular stem cells are of what we call neural origin. And so they come from embryonic, it's called the neural crest. It's just the same place part of the spinal cord and brain come from. So they're particularly good at growing back nerves and repairing nerve tissue. Which is, which is unusual and very valuable for, I mean, that's what they grow back in teeth, but, but also for things like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and nerve damage and, and things like that. So, um, they're pretty fascinating, but, but also for the other things that stem cells are, are used for orthopedic issues. I, I'm a stem cell patient myself. I haven't had dental pulp stem cells, but I've had 3 different areas of my body treated with stem cells. So I'm a fan.

Me too.

For sure.

Definitely for healing and regeneration. Absolutely. So you found this research and how did you, what was your next step after that? How did you get to think about, oh, well, let's create the tooth bank.

So I was getting toward the end of my career, sold, sold my practice and, and worked a little bit longer. And that's when I was getting into learning about all of this. And honestly, I didn't want to work anymore. I just wanted to play. I'd practiced for a long time. I, I have a lot of outside interests. I surf, I play tennis, I play pickleball, got plenty to do. And I just wanted to play. Through learning all of this, I got this new passion about educating people about these stem cells. And so literally the same day that I retired from dentistry, I bought a company called Tooth Bank. And what it does is basically bank stem cells specifically from teeth. And started my little journey to, you know, because I had done some speaking and I was a regenerative dentist and also a stem cell patient, I felt like I was uniquely qualified to educate both dentists and the private sector about all that could be done with these types of stem cells. So now I'm, you know, one lecture, one webinar, one podcast at a time going out and kind of educating the world on this. I still play, don't get me wrong. But, um, this, this doesn't feel like work. So, you know, I'm really enjoying myself.

Yes, I can definitely relate. You know, when we have a passion to, to get the information out to, you know, better our profession and better patient care, it's just, it's not work.

Yeah.

So, so the tooth bank, tell us what exactly is it?

That's, that's a great question. So there are stem cells inside of all, all teeth, but, but the ones that we can save are in healthy teeth. And the nice thing about getting stem cells from teeth is that it's considered a non-invasive way of getting— it sounds invasive because you're pulling a tooth out, but that tooth's already coming out. And so whether it's a baby tooth, primary tooth, or orthodontic extractions, or wisdom teeth, these teeth are already coming out. And so rather than throwing them in the trash, when they have literally millions of really potent stem cells inside them, they can be saved and preserved. And so the way that it works is, you know, when people enroll through our, our site, we send them this tooth collection kit and they take that with the dentist, um, to the dentist with them, teeth in this little jar. It gets overnight shipped to our facility for cryopreservation and they get frozen at -196 degrees Celsius and they can stay that way for the rest of your life. And the beauty of it is the younger the stem cells, the better. That's when they're the most potent, just like our healing ability.

Makes sense.

You know, when we're 6, we heal a lot better than when we're 66. Your stem cells from when you're young, they're basically frozen in time once you freeze them. So when you thaw them out for use later on, you're putting those 6-year-old stem cells into your body and giving you the healing potential of a 6-year-old. Things heal a lot more rapidly and a lot more thoroughly if you have your stem cells helping things out. Yeah. That's how the process works.

I see. I love that. I mean, it's the only place in the body where we can actually remove a body part and, you know, be okay with it. And—

Right.

Be able to save stem cells. Yeah. Is this common? Is this done? Or is this just like the beginning of this practice?

This has been, shockingly, this has been going on. Tooth Bank has been in business for about 12, 13 years. And there's all types of stem cells that can be stored. Cord blood is a big one that's common. That's been going on for about 20 years. But with teeth, it's been, you know, 10 to 15 years that these have been going on. Most dentists don't know about this, which is just amazing. My son graduated from dental school 5 years ago. They didn't ever mention anything about dental pulp stem cells, about, you know, stem cell banking, none of that. And it, it just amazes me that the word just isn't out there.

Yeah, absolutely. We need to get the word out about this. So how viable are the stem cells? So they're, they're being frozen. Mm-hmm. And how long can they stay frozen before they go bad?

They've tested them out as far as about 25 years. And they're just as viable as the, the ones that are fresh, freshly, um, wow.

That's pretty amazing. So you basically are preserving the whole tooth when you do, when you freeze it.

Yeah. So what they do in the lab is they basically crack the tooth open and they take the pulp out from the inside, and that's what they freeze. And then, you know, say 10, 20 years later, uh, you need these stem cells that pulp tissue is thawed out, the stem cells are isolated from that tissue, and then expanded or multiplied out to where, you know, in a typical molar, there's about 4 million stem cells, but for treatment, you need more like 100 million. So, but they can expand them out almost indefinitely. Literally from, from your 4 wisdom teeth, you can have enough stem cells for the rest of your life for multiple treatments.

Amazing.

Because they can make literally multiple amount to a trillion, and they can save some of them you know, store them again and use the other ones. And so you're, you're pretty set.

So basically when you're saying expand them out, they actually can take, let's say out of the 4 million, they'll take a million, grow them out on a Petri dish until you reach 100 million. Okay. Or an incubator, for example. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And then what they would normally do is, you know, say make 500 million of them. They'll, and they'll take batches of 100 million and put them each in a, in a vial and preserve those. And then, so you'll, you'll use one batch and then you'll have others that are already expanded out. And if you need them, they can just take one of those vials, send it to your doctor, and they're ready to go. And they're the— your own. So you don't have any type of reaction to them or anything like that. It's— there's just no risk whatsoever.

Yeah. That's great. Because I know there's stem cells that come in a vial, basically from another source other than your own, that is injected in shoulders and knees and, you know, to regenerate certain areas. But are there side effects with that? You mentioned cytokines.

There can be. You can get, um, you can get a reaction, host versus, I forgot the name of it now.

Okay. Yeah. Like that.

Yeah. It's host versus graft disease. So yeah. Where, you know, your body doesn't like it and it reacts to it and kicks them out of there and they, it doesn't get the job done.

Yeah. No, I agree with you. I think our own stem cells are ideal for any kind of regenerative therapy.

Yeah.

Do you know of any studies that have used these pulpal stem cells to help regenerate, um, like tissues in the mouth?

Yes. Um, some, some really interesting ones that— one, I, I talked about pulpal regeneration. There was a couple of, of neat studies where one had kids that had, and I think there were 36 of them, that had trauma to anterior teeth and it went necrotic, but they still had some primary teeth. So they took one primary tooth. Expanded out the cells, put those cells into that tooth after they had cleaned it out, obviously. And, and it worked every time. I mean, it's, and yeah, it's, it's, you know, a, a baby tooth that was gonna come out anyway that ended up being the source of their, of their cells. Another really good one, very similar to it, was with cleft palate. Now, cleft palate, you've got this, you know, gaping hole between, uh, the two sides of the palate. And again, they, these were also done on children that had mixed dentition. So they would take out one baby tooth, multiply them out again to hundreds of millions of cells, and then add them to a graft material, put that in that cleft palate, and it would, it would grow back the entire cleft. And they compared that to what they would normally do, which would be a graft from your iliac crest. And it worked just as well as that. but without the morbidity of having surgery on your hip, which was a big deal for these kids. That was a more morbidity from that than it was from the surgery doing the cleft palate itself. And that's huge. It's one baby tooth. Wow. Sinus lifts. They've used them for sinus lifts. They put them in the graft material. They implant in the same day. And the bone that— this was a maxillary, well, obviously sinus lift. The, the bone that was regenerated was twice as dense as the surrounding bone in 4 months, which, I mean, you know, you do that kind of stuff. That seems pretty quick to me. I never did any sinus lifts or anything, but, but having double the density in 4 months sounds, sounds pretty good.

Yeah, I do want to comment on that because I do sinus lifts as a periodontist. And actually, it's one of the areas that has the least amount of vascularization. So typically, so for those of us listening that don't know what it is, sinus lifts are basically needed to add bone at the foundation level whenever somebody needs dental implants. And those of you listening that have had dental implants on the upper back jaw, you'll know, or maybe you're, you already know what a sinus lift is. Now, whenever we graft, that bone is never as dense as native bone. And one of the biggest problem is bone density, especially when we're talking about postmenopausal women. Who don't have the ability to regenerate that bone as easily because of a drop in estrogen. I would love to be able to use stem cells. I had no idea that I could use them. Yes, I'm definitely want to give this a try. Absolutely. But so I have to find someone with this I could take some stem cells for.

Well, that's— this is what was interesting about, uh, this was just a case study on a single patient, but they needed an extraction of a tooth on the contralateral side. And it was an adult. They took that one tooth and they took the pulp out and they used this device. It's called the Rigenera, R-I-G-E-N-E-R-A, Rigenera device. It's, I had never heard of it. I've tried to contact the company to see if I can get this thing because it basically takes that pulp tissue and it's like a little blender and it's, it chops it down into these, what they call micrographs of tissue. They added that tissue. To the graft material that they put into the sinus. And like I said, they did the implant the same day, the same appointment. And yeah, it worked. It worked fantastic. But same day procedure, extraction, get the micrografts, put them in there. I mean, that's, that's, it blew my mind to see that.

Yes. And I have to tell you, going through to all the, you know, oral maxillofacial surgery conferences and implant conferences, this is not a topic that is being talked about at all. But it makes absolute sense. And I do think we need more research and, you know, this department just to get more data on it, to get more people on board. But I think it starts with also what we're doing today, educating, hey, this is actually possible. We can increase the success rate of dental implant therapy by using stem cells. And oftentimes I also extract teeth in the same appointment that are vital, that I couldn't—

Exactly.

So basically, I'll have to look for this device that you're talking about.

Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll, uh, I'll get, I'll get that information to you and see if you have better luck. They're out of Italy. Okay. And I'll see if you have better luck at, at getting ahold of them than me. There is one other study I wanna tell you about that we're trying to put together.

Yes.

Uh, specifically using dental pulp stem cells. So there was a mice study where they, uh, treated mice that I guess they induced strokes in mice and they can see where that infarction area is in the brain. And they injected human dental pulp stem cells into that brain. And these mice recovered remarkably, I mean, far better than without. And so I was approached by, uh, an oral surgeon that worked with a hospital that has a stroke unit. And he learned about dental pulp stem cells and he said, hey, you know, let's, let's get together. He wants to try to set up a study where you have stroke victims that come in, because they get them in all the time, and they have neurosurgeons right there, and inject human dental pulp stem cells into that stroke area and see what kind of recovery they have compared to the ones that don't. And that's, that's pretty exciting because that would definitely put dental pulp stem cells on the map and get it in the news, the whole bit. Absolutely. Make my job a little easier.

Yeah, absolutely. And we'll have to learn how to use them specifically. Let's say we extract a tooth, it was like, how much time do we have to collect those stem cells, uh, you know, before they die? Right. Is there, has there been studies on that? Like how long do they live outside of the mouth?

So yeah, typically what we do is the teeth are extracted, they're, they're put in this kit and we, they're overnight shipped to our lab, but sometimes there's, you know, weather issues, especially these days, hurricanes and whatnot that slow down the delivery. We've had it go up to 5 days. And granted, it's, it's inside this medium that helps them last longer, but 5 days before they even get processed and they're, and they're still vital.

Amazing.

They got lucky there, but I wouldn't push it much past that.

Okay. Yes. I'm glad that you test them. So basically before you freeze them, you will test them for viability.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, and, um, and we get a— provide a, uh, a report, uh, to the patients, um, a viability report. And it has their little code number so that when, when they want to use the, the stem cells later, they just provide that tracking number and it shows exactly where those stem cells are. Because they're all in this, you know, this big tank being, being stored in little vials. You have to have that number to find them.

You don't want to send somebody else's stem cells. So, so let's say, I place an order, right? I have a patient, I like, okay, I'm trying to regenerate the sinus. I said, hey, you know, I need some stem cells. So what's actually being sent to me? Do I ask, do you actually prepare the amount of stem cells that I need over there, your facility, or no, does it go to another party?

No, it, it, so we actually use a, a third-party facility that does, I, I think I mentioned before, all, all types of cryopreservation of, of cord blood stem cells. They do embryo, I mean everything. They're, they're a very well-established FDA-certified company. And, but yeah, they would expand out the cells, put them in a, in a vial and send them to you on dry ice so that they're still pretty frozen, not as, as frozen as when they were, but you can thaw them out in a day for use.

Now, if somebody's going to have their wisdom teeth out, so they have 4 wisdom teeth, we take them all 4. Do we send all 4 or is it one tooth is enough?

Send all 4. The more, the more the better. And what's interesting too is a lot of people ask me, well, my oral surgeon said, oh, we're not going to be able to do the bottom ones because we have to section those. The pulp tissue is still usually attached to the tooth. So we have just send all the pieces, anything that has any tissue attached to it. And they all go in a little jar and there's a cold pack, a insulated envelope and everything that they get shipped in. But yeah, the more the better. Really.

Okay.

And we will put them usually in two separate vials so that we'll only thaw out half of them the first time they're requested. And you always have some, some backups.

What about teeth that they have a periodontal infection, but they're still alive? Can we send those in?

That's borderline. The healthier, the better, because as you know, you have a, a perio infection, there's bacteria down there and they might be getting in closer to the nerve. It's the type of thing where they can be evaluated. I mean, they can be sent in and evaluated. But we prefer healthy teeth, no deep decay, no, a little bit of decay, but usually not periodontally involved teeth or deeply decayed teeth or, or fractured teeth.

Now we talked about primary teeth, which I, I think is fascinating. I, I did not realize we could use those. So obviously if we have patients that are going in, young patients are having their primary teeth removed, oftentimes these teeth are without roots because their roots have been resorbed by the permanent tooth. Coming behind it. So can you use those teeth that already have no root, but it still has the coronal part of the tooth as a primary tooth?

As long as there's some tissue inside. And if they're actually being removed by a dentist, that's usually a little— there's still usually tissue inside. Ideally, you want— in fact, here's a guideline. If they're just starting to get a little wiggly, that's a great time to take them out. You know, by, to use for this. Because there's usually about half, a third to a half of the root remaining. And that's plenty of tissue. In fact, baby teeth are actually the best. They, like I said before, the younger the stem cells, the better. And baby teeth, they're usually coming out between 5 and 12 years old. So they're really young. And they have a different type of stem cell in them. Um, they're a little bit smaller. They multiply faster and better. They're really the ideal teeth. As long as you can get it, you know, with some tissue. I've had people send in teeth that their kid pulled out. I mean, it was that loose and they still had tissue in it and enough to preserve. So you rinse it off and you look in there and if it's still bleeding in there, then, you know, send them on in.

And especially, you know, with primary dentition, as our young patients go in and have, let's say, several teeth extracted over a period of like a year or so. Do you recommend that they send them all in?

Yeah. So the way that I approach, so each time a tooth or teeth are sent in, there's a processing fee. So the more that can be sent in at the same time, the better. So what I'll tell a lot of parents is if a tooth is going to be, a primary tooth is going to be taken out, the one on the other side is usually probably getting loose too. And sometimes there's, you know, 2 to 4 that are pretty close to ready to be taken out, get 'em all out at once. If, if you don't care about the processing fee, fine, do them one at a time. But it's a more efficient way if you can get at least a couple done at a time. Yeah, like I was saying before, the more, the more the better. Most people will do 2 to 4 teeth.

You know, now knowing about this option to save our stem cells, it makes me wonder if some of our protocols might change. Because sometimes, you know, we have patients hold onto their wisdom teeth until they go bad or, you You know, something happens, but what you're saying is the healthier the tooth, the better. So, uh, it might warrant for us removing the wisdom teeth when they're healthy and really not waiting too long. You know, patients don't know about this option. I think a lot of people are not looking forward to having their wisdom teeth removed. However, if they had a choice to save these stem cells when their teeth are at the peak, you know, health, it's going to be a good idea to even maybe the erupted wisdom teeth that are kind of like, okay, they're good for now, but let's see how you take care of them. It might be a good idea to take those out.

What are your thoughts? Exactly. If you're being told that, you know, someday you're going to have to have these taken out. For one, like you say, the younger you are, by far the better. The less exposure you've had to all the world has to offer, none of which is good for our teeth. The younger, the better. You're going to heal faster. And, and yeah, you're, you're preserving, you know, good, good, strong, healthy cells. So there's a big benefit to making that decision sooner than later, for sure.

And sometimes I take teeth that are not— the roots are not fully formed, wisdom teeth. Are those okay to send in?

Yeah, they're great. For one, they are a little bit younger. And as you know, it's, it's a lot easier on the patient. To kind of roll those things out earlier when there aren't fully formed roots. You're not going to have to section them and things like that. And there's plenty of tissue in there. Because the pulp chamber just gets smaller and smaller as, as the patient gets older. So there's more than enough tissue in there to, to preserve, you know, all those stem cells.

Another question I had, you know, patients sometimes, we see on the CT scan, they have pulpal stones. Clenching and grinding causes these pulpal stones or calcifications to basically take over that pulpal space. Are those teeth? Have you noticed any problem with those teeth? Do they have like less pulpal tissue that you can harvest, or those are still okay?

Yeah, it depends. If you, if you're looking at the X-ray and you can't see a pulp chamber in there, there's probably not going to be enough tissue for them to, they need to scoop it out of there and store it. If it's just a little bit inside each canal, the kind that I would have a hard time doing a root canal on, those aren't going to be good candidates. For most, most people under their 60s, there's going to be plenty of pulp tissue still left in there.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Who do you see, which branch of medicine do you see using stem cells the most nowadays?

Orthopedics by, by long shot, which is what I've had done. I had stem cell injections in my back 3 years ago. If you don't mind, I'll share that story real quick because it's, it was a game changer for me. I had been having back pain for 5 years. I could hardly roll over in bed. I had to, I had to grab the nightstand to get out of bed in the morning every day. It was a real struggle. And I, and I tried everything to, to fix that. I got 2 stem cell injections about a month apart in my back 3 years ago. And I have not had any of that pain since. It was an absolute game changer. Where were you from?

Was that from?

This was from someone else there. It's, it's called Wharton's jelly. Which is from the umbilical cord of some stranger. And luckily, you know, I had no reaction. I think with that type of product, I'll call it, you're a little more limited on what you can do with it. It helps a lot with decreasing inflammation, which I think is what I was dealing with, chronic inflammation. I had the same issue with my foot and my elbow and it worked with that. But if you want to regrow tissues and things like that, that's when you're going to really need your own stem cells.

Thank you for sharing that story. I know that a lot of dentists listening to this and hygienists are suffering from back pain.

Oh yes, shoulders and wrists and neck and back. Dentistry is not good for you.

It's so true. It is physically very challenging, you know, for our bodies. So true. I know a lot of dentists have disability with their neck, for example. So really having this ability to inject stem cells and not actually having a surgery is amazing.

Yeah. Yeah.

So Dr. Randy, this has been such an amazing conversation. Anything that we haven't talked about that you'd like to discuss?

So I honestly, in my heart, believe, and this is just because I own this company, that regenerative medicine is, is the future of medicine in our little world. And it's not far off at all. Like I say, I've already had it done 3 times and it's all over the place. I'm having more done in 2 weeks from another podcast guest of yours in my knee. And so my goal with this is that someday there's going to be a time where everybody just has their own stem cells available. So when they need something, they just go, go to the bank, make a withdrawal of their stem cells and, and get that regenerative treatment done because it's, they're finding that it can be used for so many things and it really increases what they call your healthspan. How long you're healthy for, and potentially even your lifespan. Because if you're healthier, you're going to probably live longer. I don't want to live longer if I'm not healthy.

I agree.

I definitely want to live a longer, healthier life. And I think that is really the biggest benefit of having stem cell— stem cells available in all these regenerative therapies.

I actually want to ask you one more thing about regenerative therapy.

Sure.

Is regarding to exosome products. What is happening right now in your company regarding exosomes, if anything?

That's a great question, uh, because we are working on developing an exosome product. And for those of you that don't know what this is, one of the ways that stem cells work is they secrete, they secrete different things. And, but the main thing that they secrete to get the job done are called exosomes. And so there are these little vesicles that, that have growth factors and cytokines and things like that in them that tell the body, direct the body what to do, how to heal, how to decrease the inflammation and all of that. And we are right now working on developing an exosome product from dental pulp stem cells. I have a neurologist that approached me because he said he realized that the neural basis of dental pulp stem cells, he wants to use these to treat Parkinson's patients. And he says they actually, they'll actually be using these in a nasal spray. And they're, they're absorbed. Yeah. Through the nose goes right to the brain. And they've tried this already. And he says he has a patient that comes in about every 3 or 4 months, a Parkinson's patient who will stumble in looking very, you know, Parkinson-like. He'll give me, and this guy will walk out a different person.

Wow.

He'll, he'll, he'll, everything about his demeanor changes. And he'll realize his symptoms are coming back 3 or 4 months later. And he'll come back in. And so he was looking for a source of these dental pulp stem cell exosomes. And so we're, we're working on developing those right now.

That's amazing. Please keep us posted. We'd love to have you back to talk about that. I'm a big fan of exosomes for sure. And I see when I do surgery in the mouth, the application of exosomes actually speeds up healing.

So you've been using them in the mouth?

I have been using them topically in the mouth. Yes. And I've seen really great results, especially with patients that are not healing that great. And they've already told me, you know, I'm not healing well, I've done a previous surgery and they haven't healed well, using exosome, uh, for any kind of like tissue repair, uh, or wound closure really helps.

That makes a lot of sense. It's, it's just enhancing your body's, your own body's ability to heal.

Absolutely. Where can people find you?

So, uh, toothbank.com, um, on Instagram, we're just Tooth Bank. You know, the, the normal, if somebody wants to do this tooth banking, stem cell banking.

Which everybody should, by the way. Everybody.

Absolutely. I gotta say, I was so upset when I found out about this because my kids had already had their wisdom teeth taken out. They're a little older. And I missed out on this as a dentist. It's really frustrating. Their kids are not gonna have a problem with that. They're not gonna see any teeth under the pillow. Sorry, Mr. Tooth Fairy. So, I'm gonna be offering a, a $100 discount on the, the whole processing fee for anybody who wants to do this to, to your listeners. Um, and they, uh, they just have to send me an email at, at toothbankoffice@gmail.com. Sorry, toothbankoffice@gmail.com. Send me an email with the code wellness, W-E-L-L-N-E-S-S, wellness, and they'll get $100 off. I'll, I'll send them a, you know, a, a, uh, discounted invoice for a better deal on that. And awesome.

Awesome.

You will not regret it.

For sure. We're going to put all that information as well in our show notes below. You know, whether you're an adult, uh, you know, or you have a child, primary teeth, wisdom teeth, teeth for orthodontic movement that need to come out, a lot of different ways here to get our stem cells banked.

Yeah. This is something that our main clientele are, are parents whose kids are having wisdom teeth taken out, but a lot, a lot also with the baby teeth, but even some grandparents do this as a gift to their grandkids.

What a great idea.

Because they have the option also, I mean, there's an annual thing, but you can also pay ahead of time for, for 20 years of storage and they're just set, you know, until they're, they're an adult.

That's fantastic. I mean, it's almost better than putting money in the bank because money is going to devalue, right? I remember my grandfather actually gave me money. That's completely devalued.

When I was like 6 months old and you started this, I could have invested it for you.

Exactly. I agree with you. But you know, the best idea is to invest in the stem cell and put them, you know, yeah, you're, you're investing in your child or grandchild's, uh, future health, which, I mean, what's more valuable than that really? Yeah. So true. Well, Dr. Sanda Moldovanova, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been really a pleasure and very enlightening. I think you motivated me and I'm sure other dentists listening to start using more stem cells and learning more about it.

So also, if there's any dentists out there that want, we have brochures and things like that that I'd be happy to send out to people. Again, just send me an email at toothbankoffice@gmail.com and happy to send those out to people so they can share that with their patients. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

My pleasure. And for everyone, thank you so much for listening. Drop us a note, let us know how you like this episode, and if you loved it, please share it with one of your friends or family members. Until next time, keep smiling. 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 @drsandamoldovan. 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.