It's All In Your Mouth: How Your Teeth Are Impacting Your Immune System, Sleep, Performance, Inflammation & Much More (& What You Can Do About It With Holistic Dentistry).

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, whenever you talk about chronic inflammations, consider looking into your mouth and finding somebody who is specialized and skilled to remove it. And do this in an all in one concept. The most metal you will find in regular patients will be in your mouth. Then you have little antenna in your system. The normal dentist is only interested in can you bite on your teeth or not? And the only question your dentist is.

Asking you, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. All right, we are going to talk to a dentist today, a holistic dentist whose book that I read blew my mind when it comes to all of the ins and outs of dentistry that I was really unaware of. And so. So I think you're going to really, really dig this show with this dude who's got a sick accent. All right, folks, I've said this before on the podcast, but I don't actually go to a regular dentist. No, no, no. For reasons that I've actually talked about a few times in the past, in previous episodes I've done on something called holistic dentistry. I do not personally step foot near a regular dental office. Instead because just how profound an impact my teeth, my gums and my tongue and my oral cavity have on my entire biological system. I only work with a holistic dentist, in my case, a guy named Dr. Craig Simmons at the Holistic Dental center in Spokane. And due to my strong interest in this whole matter of dental health and holistic dentistry, I recently read this really fantastic new book called it's all in youn Mouth. And it goes into a bunch of kind of like European, European medical concepts that we haven't even adapted or adopted, whatever the word would be here in the US when it comes to caring for our mouth, our mouth microbiome, understanding everything from root canals to wisdom teeth to a whole bunch of things that I really hadn't come across before when it comes to dental hygiene and dental health. The book was written by Dr. Dominique Nischiewitz, who's a dentist but also, interestingly, a naturopathic physician. So he specializes in biological dentistry and ceramic implants. And he's also the president of the international side of medical or metal free implantology, which is a mouthful. So he actually also co founded something called DNA Health Anesthetics, the Center for Biological Dentistry with his father in Germany. So he is coming to us. He is my podcast guest today, by the way. He wrote the book and he's coming to us from a. Actually I don't think he's in Germany. I think he's in a. If I'm correct, Dominique, you're in a hotel room in the U.S. am I correct?

Totally correct, Ben. I'm sitting here in New Orleans in the Westin.

Wow. Interestingly, are there, are there many things there in the, in the south that you're concerned about when it comes to your teeth? Like, like grits, for example? We're not supposed to grit our teeth, right?

Yeah, it's true. Thank you very much for having me, Ben.

Yeah, absolutely. And there's all sorts of things I want to dive into in the book. And by the way, for those of you listening in, I'll put all the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com AllenYourma mouth that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com AllenHourmouth but before I actually dive into questions I have about everything From Pellicles to EMFs to all these things you talk about in the book, Dominique, I want to hear you walk me through a day of how you personally care for your mouth. Like a guy who's on the cutting edge of holistic dentistry like you are. I'm just curious, you know, are you pulling sticks out of trees to floss your teeth? Are you eating some kind of teeth enhancing superfood? What's your day look like for you specifically when it comes to the way that you care for your teeth?

So it's basically not too extreme. I will just brush my teeth regularly. Of course, from a biological point of view, we don't use anything unnatural in your mouth. That means I have toothpaste, which is fluoride free, which is a no brainer and basically only contains natural substances. I try a lot of different things because they all sent me this stuff to test, but I think a coconut oil base or and some maybe ayurvedic herbs with it are a great way to start for your mouth. But yeah, it's actually more the daily lifestyle and nutrition part which is important for your all microbiome or your oral cavity than the actual like brushing your teeth. Because in nature you probably won't brush or like you said, maybe get a stick from a tree and rub the calculus or the plaque off. But if you have like a good lifestyle and yeah, comes down to basically everything you would always recommend for your patients.

That's kind of, that's kind of a boring answer, man. Do you, do you floss for example?

Yes. No, I don't floss and I do not actually recommend Floss for several reasons. Of course, if you have a mouthful of amalgam fillings and like crowns and stuff, you probably have to do that. But if you have a natural mouth, like total healthy teeth, I wouldn't emphasize on flossing because the gum around your teeth is kind of like a. Yeah, it's kind of like outside body. And most people, if they floss, it will bleed a little bit. So you will have like tiny micro ruptures in your gingiva, which will then open to your whole system. It's kind of like leaky gum. Before, even before we even talk about leaky gut, where it starts. And you have to be very precise in doing flossing. And I'm not sure if anybody is able to do that. Normally. The patients I see, they will just pull it down and it will always bleed. They will always tell you it's going to bleed. Why should I floss? So I don't do it because of the gingiva being like tightly connected to your tooth. And if you're healthy and not inflamed in your mouth, it's. Yeah, it's a superstructure and it's outside body.

Now, what about like a water pick?

I personally don't use water picks. You could probably use that. It's more like go as natural as possible. But of course, if you want to enhance it a little bit, maybe you could use a water pick or you could use maybe a electric toothbrush because most people maybe brush a little bit too hard, which can happen where you can also break down your enamel if you brush or grind too hard with the toothpaste. You should also not include many particles that whitening the teeth, because if they're whitening most of the time, those are abrasive particles. If I can say that.

What would be an example of a particle that would whiten the teeth?

Yeah, it's mostly silica based or something like this, just abrasives. They are in the parts per million. But still over time, if you brush your teeth, let's say two times a day for the next 20 years, you will maybe grind down a little bit of enamel. And the enamel is very important as protection of your tooth.

Sorry to keep interrupting. I have so many questions here. So you're saying that there is a component of toothpaste that should look for, that's an abrasive that would wear down the enamel of our teeth. Is there a certain abrasive that you're referring to?

Sometimes it's silica or silicon dioxide. Just look for abrasives and that's mostly the part that in whitening toothpaste, I actually don't know how it is called, how it would be called in English, but I think silica is kind of the thing you're looking for. And also be aware of all the stuff that makes you toothpaste white, which is titanium dioxide. So also, natural toothpaste contain titanium dioxide. It's sometimes also referred as E171. And titanium dioxide is just like very immunological. Problematic. Problematic. And also a toxin.

And you say that that's found in natural toothpaste as well.

It's also found in. Yeah, basically when it's a white substance, kind of like the coating of your chewing gum or also the white toothpaste. Most toothpastes are white. Also the natural ones. I just bought one here at the Whole Foods. It's also white. It's mostly titanium dioxide. E171. It's something you just don't need to put into your body from biological point of view.

Okay, so in terms of toothpaste, you talked about things that could wear away enamel, and I know that recently, I believe it was a British journal article on charcoal toothpaste. This article actually something that appeared in a Vice article on health myths debunked. And I actually reported in a podcast some time ago that after reading that study, I quit using charcoal because of the concern there that charcoal could damage enamel. Now, later on, and since then, upon doing some further digging, what I've found is that you can gauge what's called the abrasiveness safety in tooth enamel products or tooth enamel care. There's something called, I guess a MOH scale. MOH scale to determine if a substance is too abrasive for the enamel. And when you look at the MOH hardness value of activated charcoal, it's actually very low. It's like one to two compared to what I think is five for tooth enamel and like two and a half ish for tooth dentin. So activated charcoal technically should not abrade or scratch the teeth during brushing because it's significantly less hard than enamel and then dentine. So based on that, why is it, do you think that the British journal would recommend not to use something like these charcoal toothpastes? Or are you familiar with that article?

Actually, I haven't read the article. I just listened to this on your podcast, probably because I heard about that. Like you said, you dug further into it. So if it's not abrasive, I would never had any problems with the activated charcoal.

They say in the article that people who brush frequently and vigorously for extended periods of time. When you actually read the article using activated charcoal were the people who are getting some abrasive action against the teeth. So I think part of it might be excess brushing or using a brush that's too hard. That's what I would hazard a guess about. But when you look at activated charcoal, the other thing is there's something called, I guess the relative dentin abrasivity or the RDA. And the RDA of CREST is like above 100 and Colgate is pretty high and activated charcoal is actually pretty low. Apparently they say anything over 200 is considered unsafe for the teeth and activated charcoal is like 70 to 90 ish. So I think the issue here, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts about this, is a very firm brush or brushing really frequently and vigorously and for a long period of time. If you're using activated charcoal, then it might become an issue with wearing away the tooth enamel. Is that, is that reasonable, do you think?

I think that's totally reasonable. And if you're saying that Colgate is actually even more abrasive. And yes, brushing too firm. That's the word I was blanking is the most problematic with the too hard, soft. With a toothbrush that is just too hard. And that's what I mean. You don't have to brush your teeth after all your meals and stuff. Basically two times a day is actually fine. You know that if you have a good lifestyle, you probably don't even have to brush it too much because you don't even build black in the first place so much.

Based on that, when you're brushing, how long are you personally brushing for? If you're brushing twice a day, which.

Is like one and a half to two minutes. I know exactly how to brush and I even don't apply any force at all. I have actually, I have an electric toothbrush and I just hold it onto my teeth and it feels just cleaner than with a soft brush. I also tried all these bamboo brushes. The very soft ones you have to press more firmly. So if you know how to use an electric one, you just actually hold it onto there and it's just kind of like polishing your teeth a little bit. And of course you do that also to not smell like that's a good idea.

Now, what about oil pulling? Do you do oil pulling?

Yes, oil pulling is something I always recommend mainly in. You could do that every day, like the whole year. But if you don't do it, do it at least at wintertime or now when all these viruses are going around. Because oil pulling helps your whole oral microbiome, it's detoxifying. And it also, if you use for example, extra virgin coconut oil which also has antiviral, I don't know if you say that antiviral purposes, you can totally help your whole microbiome and get a little bit of these viruses or maybe anaerobic bacteria stuck into. And also it's detoxing for the fat soluble toxins which are also in your mouth. And if you for example, have a mouth full installed of like materials that work from a craftsman point of view, it will help you. But, but don't swallow it afterwards. You should at least oil pull for five minutes, up to 15 minutes and then just spit it out. I'm a fan of the coconut oil. You could also use olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, good quality, has a lot of these phenolic acids in it. And you could also use walnut oil. Tastes good, but just don't swallow it, just spit it out. It's a very good one. Theoretic medicine also, they use that for thousands of years.

What I started doing after reading a book on Ayurveda and teeth care was in the morning I do oil pulling and right before I oil pull I do a little bit of tongue scraping. And then I actually don't do any other tooth care aside from chewing a little xylitol based gum, which I actually want to ask you about momentarily until the evening when I do about two minutes or so of tooth brushing. And right now I'm kind of back to using a charcoal toothpaste, but only a medium bristle brush so I'm not wearing away the enamel with a, with a harder brush. But for the oil pulling in the morning, I actually make my own now and it's really cool. You can get do, you know, like the molds that you can use to, you know, for the kitchen to make little chocolates or you know, jello, you know, just a mold that you would use for anything like that with like small almost like dime to quarter size molds. You know what I'm talking about, like a, like a plastic mold.

Dr. Yes, I know what you mean by a mold.

Yes. Okay. So what I do is I heat up coconut oil and then I'm adding right now clove and mint essential oil to that. And then what you do is you pour it into the molds about, you know, it's about 1 tablespoon or so per mold and then you put that in the fridge and it sets and then you. So the coconut oil hardens with the essential oils and then you can remove it from the molds and just keep in like a mason jar in the fridge. And when you wake up, you just pop one of these molds into your mouth, you let it melt and then you start to swish. And considering how expensive like a good organic or extra virgin coconut oil based oil pulling oil is online or on Amazon, it's super easy to just do this yourself at home.

Well, it sounds like you totally optimize it. I'm kind of like doing exactly the same brushing once a day. But that's a good idea. I will implement that. DIY your own coconut oil with the essential oil is perfect idea. You could also maybe add some herbs like maybe curcumin or something that also helps being a little microbial turmeric.

Essential oil is something that's actually on my radar. For my next recipe, I want to do that. The other one that my children and I did was we traveled to Kauai, Hawaii where we visited a superfood farm down there called Kauai Organic Pharmacy. And they have this little berry that they grow called the electric toothberry. I believe it's called something like spilanthes is the actual botanical name for it. And it's actually known to be able to relieve toothaches and be very, very good as like an antiviral and antibacterial for the mouth. And interestingly, it coats your tongue with this. It's almost like a salivary stimulant, so your mouth fills with saliva. So it's wonderful as like a digestif before a meal. But last year we actually made an extract of that. We brought back the seeds. We figured out how to grow it on the patio here in Spokane. And it grew just fine. It grows like a weed. You harvest little berries and we actually ground those up and blended those with coconut oil. And it was almost like this spicy saliva inducing oil pulling oil. And so when this summer or when the spring rolls back around, we start growing those again. I'll start making that. But that one's really interesting. You can order the seeds even like on Amazon, but it's called spilanthes. Have you heard of that one before?

No, I haven't. But it sounds amazing. Like perfect idea.

Yeah, yeah, they're really cool. I'll put a link to spilanthes seeds for those of you who want to try it. But I'll warn you, it just makes your mouth absolutely full of saliva. But you can buy organic seeds on Amazon and it's super, super duper easy to grow. Okay, so you do twice a day brushing, you do oil pulling? Dr.

Personally I do once a day like you.

Oh, okay, alright. And then my question for you before I ask you about gum is if floss, what do you do if you like have a steak or pineapple or something that gets stuck in your teeth?

Okay, okay. I don't regularly floss, but if I have something in my teeth get stuck, then of course I will floss or pick it out maybe with a toothpick, whatever. But if it's really stuck in between the surfaces of both adjacent teeth, I will use a floss. But it's very rarely because if you have healthy teeth then you normally have a perfect periodontium and your gingiva is kind of like totally inside your teeth. There is no gap in between, know what I I mean?

Okay, got it.

So over time, if you have a, like most people have a lot of gingivitis, maybe lose a little bit of the periodontium or maybe have some crown work done or maybe some fillings that you will get a little bit of an opening in between the teeth, like in between adjacent teeth. And that's of course a problem with food getting stuck in there. So. But if you have healthy teeth, normally there's not a lot of stuff getting stuck in there.

Okay. Now do you use gum at all? Do you chew gum?

Very rarely. I like to chew gum actually, but you already mentioned it. We have one at our store, it's a siloitol based one. But it's so difficult to find something that is really like without titanium dioxide and all these other nasty things. But of course it has some good purposes. I see you using gum a lot, right?

Yeah, I chew a few different brands of gum. I have one new one that I use called Immunity gum, which is like astragalus and elderberry and vitamin C. Actually the name of it is called Mighty Gum and I really enjoy that one, especially these days when I'm traveling with this. You know, at the time we're recording this, there's the big coronavirus going around. So I've been chewing that when I travel. And then another one that I chew quite a bit is called Sleek gum. And Sleek is a blend of different essential oils including peppermint, that does a really good job satiating the appetite, but also so it seems to do a good job keeping my mouth clean as well. And occasionally I'll pop a piece of this Lucy nicotine gum. Which is a form of nicotine gum that's got fewer of, like the artificial sweeteners and artificial compounds in it. And so, yeah, I've typically got all three brands of those gums, Mighty Gum, Sleek gum, or Lucy Gum in my fanny pack. And just kind of alternate between those during the day. And I find it's very helpful for me because I only eat two to three meals a day. And between that and drinking a little Zevia or a little sparkling water, you know, in between my meals, it does a really good job keeping my appetite satiated.

Makes total sense. Yeah. I think in Europe we're a little bit behind with all these nice brands you just mentioned. And mostly what you see is all these artificial things. Even aspartame you can find in the regular Wrigleys and chewing gums and a lot of sugars mostly. So you have to be aware. But of course what you do is already optimized. So that's totally recommended, of course.

Yeah. Okay, so what I want to do next, now that we've had a little bit of a chat and hopefully gotten some people's wheels turning about just different ways to care for your mouth during the day, I want to step back before I dive into a few of the specifics in your book and just delve into this concept of holistic or biological dentistry. And I get this question from people sometimes when I tell them that I go to a holistic dentist. They're like, what's that? My very base explanation is, oh, they don't use toxins, and they do a really good job choosing materials that are biologically compatible with the human body. And they don't use a lot of silver and metals in the mouth. And they irrigate the mouth really well and clean the air in the procedure room really well. But I don't really have a set definition for what a holistic or a biological dentist would be. So I'm curious, how would you describe it if someone were to ask you, you know, what holistic dentistry exactly is?

I would call it what we call is biological dentistry. And my definition for this is more like it's an overlap of functional medicine, maybe you can say also biohacking and high tech dentistry with the goal of optimal health by starting in your mouth. That's basically what we do. So, of course, what you said, the holistic approach from a more dental point of view, by not using any materials that could disturb your body. What we do, basically, we will remove all your metals from your mouth under special precautions, of course, amalgam under super safe removal structures. We can talk about that for sure. I'm personally also removing all root canal treated teeth and also these things called cavitations, which is the layman term for a chronic silent inflammation in your jawbone. You could also find it under cibd, Chronic ischemic bone Disease or FDOJ for fatty degenerative osteonecrotic jawbone. Or even nico, which stands for neuralgia inducing cavitational osteoporosis. This concept is something that's not accepted in medical school right now. Even if there's a guy in Germany, Dr. Johan Lehtner, who is doing research and studies for the last 40 years, he's a friend of mine, is 72 years old and yeah, he still battles with the bosses of the bigger clinics but it will soon be a thing. And yeah, so the goal is take out all chronic problems we address. Of course with all the metals we address different things we have. Metals could be toxic like amalgam. For those who don't know, amalgam is the silver filling. It contains 50% of mercury. And mercury is the most toxic non radioactive element on earth. So why the hell would you have it in your mouth? And there's also other materials that we use as craftsmen just to make you buy it like gold or different alloys. There's nickel, there's cadmium. They use all kinds of things you don't even know about. Then you use titanium implants. So there's always a toxical problem. That means those dependent your body has to detoxify, for example mercury. On the other hand, there's an immunological problem because your body could be intolerant or immune system could be attacking all of these substances because they literally have nothing to do in your mouth besides maybe the biting thing. And if you're allergic to something, it's not dose dependent anymore. And some people are actually allergic and having toxicity problems. So that's a double whammy. And also one point that there's really. It's not a woo woo or esoteric thing. I'm talking about this for years. It's is that we have an electric like we have these EMFs everywhere. And this is something that increased over the last 10 years exponentially. Wi Fi 3G, 4G. I think in the US it's already 5G. And of course if you have metals somewhere in your body and most of the patients or the most metal you will find in regular patients will be in your mouth, then you have little antenna in your system which will disrupt Your whole autonomic nervous system. There are studies showing that if you normally use do a cell phone call and the electromagnetic waves go to cell phone and then back to the tower. But if you have any metal installed, it will go to the cell phone, then to the metal in your body. Could also be your hip. But mostly it's maybe a titanium implant or metal filling and then gets amplified by 400 to 700 fold maybe and then disrupts the system. And people are getting. It's called electrosensitive a lot. There are whole groups in Europe here and people that are getting treated by this. So there are even patients that can listen to radio frequencies with this. It sounds really crazy, but it's totally logic electric physics.

Holy cow.

Yeah, it's really bad. And you probably read the book from Joe Mercola.

Yeah, I interviewed Joe, but we didn't talk about the fact that metal in the mouth can act like an antenna. I never really thought about that. You can literally, if you have some type of metal filling and you're holding your cell phone or up around your mouth or getting exposed to WI fi that's traveling near your head, that's essentially using the metal in your mouth like an antenna.

Yes. And it's even worse. There is a study showing. I can send you the study. If you do a phone call, the mercury vapor which gets released anyways from your filling every day will be even more mercury vapor coming out of the filling. By using a cell phone call? By doing a cell phone call. I had an interview with Dr. Mercola lately. I think we didn't even get into this topic with the emfs. And also one point, if you had an. For example, just go with the amalgam filling. If you had a mercury filling in your mouth, there's studies showing there from the 90s from Vimee Lorscheit. They showed if you put a mercury filling in your tooth because of the dentin and the connection to the trigeminal nerve, within 24 hours, this mercury is in your whole jawbone. And it goes to all these crucial organs like the brain, the kidneys, detoxification organs within 24 hours and gets transported through the trigeminal nerve through something called retrograde axonal transport within the brain, ganglia, hypothalamus, pituitary. And you can imagine from a functional medicine point of view how many problems that will cause later on. So if you have, for example, still mercury particles which are super tiny, it's like micrograms or like super. It's more like the Vapor in your bone, for example, and you have again, tiny micro antennas and it will heat up. There's studies showing that if you do a phone call, just a regular titanium implant, it can heat up until it could heat up to 4 degrees more. When you do a phone call. That means normally you have a body temperature of I have to go with Celsius here, here, let's say 36.8 degrees Celsius. If you do a phone call, it can go up to 40 degrees, which is actually high fever. And this ruins the whole bone structure around it. That's why we find regularly like these cavitations or hollow spaces in your bone around titanium implants. I remove all titanium implants. We basically remove everything that shouldn't be there. And of course, 20 years ago when there was no EMF and no WI fi, nothing, it wasn't probably a big problem to have a few gold fillings, but now it's really a thing and we have to find bio compatible solutions to like not cripple anybody, but find biocompatible materials. Some specialists in ceramic implants, that's also the Congress I'm here presenting as the president. And so we will, we are able to remove these things that are, that are doing, that are not doing your body any favors by all these toxicity things, chronic inflammations, high cytokines, etc. And EMF problems, and install biocompatible things like ceramic implants at the same time. We call it the all in one concept. So we are able to do this all in one with the right preparation of the patients and with lifestyle and changes and good recovery tools. And yeah, this is a high skill procedure. But the fulfilling part with this is besides doing a maximum achievement thing, because it's kind of like building Lego but on a very tiny scale in your mouth on the next day your patients are telling you, oh wow, these symptoms are gone. I had this, this and this. You can name every symptom, literally because your whole mouth is connected to your whole body through that autonomic nervous system, which could go away. But sort of the typical or the usual suspects are chronic fatigue, thyroid issues, gut issues, neurological issues, like, and also these very heavy problems or heavy, very heavy diseases like als, you heard of it probably, and Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's. So it's all a big component and I think still in functional medicine. And I did my course in functional medicine 10 years ago in LA, they are not really talking about all these problems that are starting in your mouth and talking about maybe heavy metal detoxification and how to find out if your body is loaded with mercury or something, but not how to actually approach it and that it has such a big impact. So I had very good mentors. Maybe you heard of Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt is one of my biggest mentors. Yeah. And he. I found him through my studies like right after university and he. And for example, Thomas Rao from Paracelsus Clinic or Joachim, I listened to your episode when he went to Swiss Mountain Clinic. Dr. Yari Mutter. I think he wasn't there anymore when you were there, but he was the director there before. Those are all good mentors. And they are talking about these things for years. And estimated they say it's about 70% of all chronic disease actually start in your mouth. And this is a big, big number because you could use all things biohacking, functional medicine, improve your lifestyle, have the perfect diet, have your whole house shielded and only drink the perfect water from glass bottles, not using plastic, have the perfect mouth hygiene. But if you have installed in your mouth 247 that could be toxic or immunological, problematic or an antenna, you will still not be superman even if you do all these things. And I have all these patients. So chronic sick patients is about the most patients I see. It's a very extreme spectrum. So more like chronic disease. And on the other hand, like biohackers, health optimizers, functional medicine interested people, the whole community of optimizing. So in the middle, in between are not a lot of patients. But it's probably because of the specialty. And yeah, really the goal is optimal health, how to achieve this and also not by doing it inconsequently. And the term biological dentistry that I yeah. Kind of not coined, but I wanted to call it differently than holistic dentistry because in Germany or in the European speaking countries, if you say you're a holistic dentist, this is kind of like a bad word. And they initially think the other dentist, dental colleagues think you kind of like a woo woo guy and you don't know your skill set because this is a real problem. If you say holistic dentists, they will perform a holistic root canal, which makes no sense because for a root canal, for example, it's a dead tooth. So a tooth basically is an organ.

I do want to delve into root canals, but you just covered a lot of stuff. And I want to jump in with a couple of questions. The first is that you talked about the nerves and the link between the teeth and the nervous system. And when I was reading your book, I came across a graph I think you call it like a mitotome, a relationship between our teeth and different organs based on that nervous system connection. Can you explain how that works? I mean, is this like foot reflexology in Chinese medicine, where certain parts of the feet, when stimulated, will stimulate certain organs? Is it a deal where if a tooth is diseased or in good health, that it's going to affect different organ systems? And if so, if that's what's going on, talk to me a little bit about that and if any research has actually been done on the link between the nervous system and the teeth.

So this is a chart called Odontones and they are actually naturopathically designed. I think in the 60s 70s, two doctors in Germany or to naturopaths in Germany, tested all the a meridian chart connection of the teeth with different body parts like you just mentioned. So they did it with electroacupuncture. And what they found out is that every tooth is connected with different organs. So for example, if you look at your incisors, which are the front teeth, they are connected to your kidney and bladder meridian system. So from an energetic point of view, and meridians, or for example, your canines are connected to your liver and your gallbladder system, the premolars and the upper jaw are connected to your large intestines and lung meridian. And the molars in the upper jaw are connected to your stomach, your spleen meridian and your thyroid. And the wisdom tooth area, which is very crucial, it's connected to your whole central nervous system, autonomic nervous system, and the small intestinal and heart meridian. So what you can see from this thing. So what we do, maybe I explained from a dental point of view, I will see all my patients initially just virtually so remote because I don't have the time to see everybody in person anymore for a long time. You will send in your current panoramic X ray and the panoramic X ray. I look at it a little bit different than the regular dentist. So I will look if I can see if there's any wisdom tooth removed or root canal or metal, and then you can totally connect and ask patients if you correlate the panoramic X ray and this meridian chart, what kind of problems do you have in your body? And for example, these cavitations which stem from wisdom tooth removal, I would say at least 80% of all Western patients have their wisdom teeth removed, have these kind of cavitations there. So they mostly have a problem. And it could either be chronic fatigue because of the connection to the adrenal glands and nervous system or a lot of patients have the opposite, like high cortisol stress. They have good adrenal glands, they can produce these things. And also small intestinal problems like ibs, irritable bowel syndrome, they have their own. They even do autoimmune, paleo or ketogenic or carnivore and super anti inflammatory foods. But still having a reaction. That's what I was. So I had the cavitations myself too. And I didn't even know. So I was surging. I had like bad eczema on my face. And if, you know, if you have an eczema, everybody will come to you and tell you, oh, that's your diet. And I knew I'm very good at diet. And this is something that started me 20 years ago, that I learned everything about nutrition and food. I knew that wasn't the problem, it wasn't diet. I knew that it was stressed, but I didn't know why, because I wasn't like, there's something from underneath. So we did a salivary cortisol, it was very high. And then it was just coincidence or whatever you want to call it. And one day in our office there was an enteropathic doctor who was also trained by Klinghardt and was able to test with kinesiology. Autonomic response testing, this is called, from a technique developed by Dietrich Klinghuff. And he said, and I was like grinding the hell out of my jaw and was super cramped, my whole neck. And I had massive eczema on that day. It really felt like shit. So he tested me and he said, hey dude, there's some kind of oral interference. And I was like, what are you talking about? You mean the grinding, right? No, no, not the grinding. There's something. Let's do a cone beam. Okay. We did a cone beam, which is a three dimensional X ray where you can see slices of your whole bone. And fascinatingly, we found huge cavitations in my wisdom tooth area, which totally makes sen, because I had my wisdom tooth removed when I was 14 years old without being prepared for nothing. My mom just drove me there to the surgeon. Big surgery, huge cuts, huge trauma, massive inflammation afterwards, bad lifestyle. I wanted to become a professional skater. So I was smoking probably and had like, didn't have the good lifestyle back then. So it was probably inflamed. And yeah, 20, 20 years later I had this chronic sin inflammation. And of course I wanted to get rid of this as fast as possible with dramatic results. And when we did that, it's about eight years ago, this came out on our radar because on the chair, when we did my surgery, I was connected with my whole body, like I was breathing kind of parasympathetically to just remove my head from what is actually performing in surgery. And I felt into my body and I had a chronic back pain in the middle of my back, which is kind of like the stomach entrance or maybe small intestinally related, and it just disappears. I was talking to my surgeon, I was like, is that even possible? I had to laugh while doing surgery. I was like, is this possible? And on the next day I woke up and this little being overly activated, like I felt I had Parkinson's already. It was just gone. It felt like something has lifted from my body. And we only did one side, which was not a good idea from retrospect. But I had so many so dramatic results when we did the other side six weeks later, my skin rash probably went away within the next 10 days. I could now be a model for skin cream. And there's no sema. Ever since, my small intestinal bowel problems were all gone. And ever since then, I've performed about 3,000 cavitation and surgeries and also placed over 3,000 ceramic implants. And yeah, we implemented this whole thing into the whole treatment sequence. It's kind of like a bed and all inclusive bed and breakfast thing. So whenever I have a consultation or a planning of your case, for example, if you want to send me your panoramic X ray, I will show how we do that. And it's always included because everybody had teeth removed and it's mostly the wisdom teeth because of issues with not having space enough and maybe orthodontic issues. You probably end up having these problems and having chronic silent stress on your trigeminal nerve nerve. And you have to know from a nervous system point of view, your trigeminal nerve is one of the 12 cranial nerves which is starting in your brain stem. And it has 50% of the space of all the other 12. So it's kind of important. And it also, with the trigeminals, is always a branch of the, of the vagal nerve. You maybe heard of this?

Oh, yeah, we've discussed it quite a bit on the podcast. And obviously, if oral health is impacting the vagus nerve, then there's a direct link between that and pretty much any organ that the vagus nerve would innervate. And I'm curious, has actual research been done on this link between the teeth and the nervous system? When you're discussing its impact on things like eczema or gut function. Or in the book you discuss its impact on obesity and a host of other chronic diseases, including heart health. Have they actually done research on this?

You have to look at research a little bit differently in this case because you have to see, see, dentistry is still the things I'm telling you right now is the future of dentistry. Dentists are still considering themselves as just basically craftsmen. They're doing their highly skilled craftsmen, which is the base of my thing too. But they're not connecting the functional medicine part. So there will normally not be any studies from the dental department showing this, but there are lots of studies from functional medicine. You just have to see, for example, you know, about cytokines. For example, if you have a chronic elevated IL6 cytokine which is totally connected with an apical periodontitis of a root canal tooth, of course your body is in a chronic inflammatory state which relates to insulin resistance and liver problems and GH problems. But you just have to connect the dots basically. And then there's all things research done. But I don't think there is a study showing that if you have an inflammation on tooth number six that it's directly connected to your stomach, which also doesn't make too much sense because it's more multi factorial. You have to have to just understand, and this is how I train all these dentists. You have to understand immunology, you have to understand your parasympathetic and sympathetic and autonomic nervous system. You have to understand cytokines, you have to understand liver, liver phase one, two and stuff. You basically have to understand the whole body. And I think every, every doctor, wherever specialty it is, should understand this because basically the craftsman part, it's just a technique. You could show me how to do a heart surgery and I'll probably learn it because I'm doing surgeries on brain nerves when I remove teeth. So it's just a technique part. This is what we have to do is understand how the whole concept works. And yes, for example, there are studies done that bacteria from your mouth are totally related to inflammatory markers in your blood that are the next stop is mostly the heart. And also there are studies that are showing that cardiomyopathy, for example, have 20,000 fold higher mercury levels in the heart muscle. So there are a lot of studies done connecting the oral microbiome or the oral health or even toxicity with the whole body. But with the toxicity thing, one more thing I would like to add is yeah, for now the FDA still declares everything that you have in your teeth, like a filling or a crown or an implant, still as outside body, as kind of like a device. And the device doesn't have to have to go to a toxicological. What is it, the word? I'm blanking. You don't have to look at it from a toxicological side of you because it's outside body. So biological dentistry basically means that the mouth is part of your whole body where everything starts. And you know that mercury or cadmium or all these heavy metals that you use in industry, that higher levels in the blood are correlated with chronic inflammation, insulin resistance, all these things that functional medicine is anyways talking about. And where is the biggest source still for mercury is still the amalgam filling. You cannot even imagine this. But 80% of the German dentists, and I think the same in the US still place amalgam fillings. They don't even think further because it's endorsed by the government, it's subsidized. So if I clinic and this thing that the insurance pays is still an amalgam filling. This is crazy. In other countries, like Russia, it's forbidden for about 30 years. The whole Scandinavian countries, they did a clever thing. They just banned mercury, like overall, so you couldn't use it in your mouth. But Germany is still a little bit behind. But I think FDA is talking about this right now again to maybe finally make it mercury free.

Yeah. And I actually wanted to ask you because when you were talking about the nervous system, you brought up wisdom teeth. And my kids, actually, I told them last night I was going to interview a dentist and my wife said, oh, you should ask him about wisdom teeth and whether or not they really need to be removed or why they would need to be removed in the place first. First place. And, you know, I've certainly talked in the past with a couple of breathwork researchers like Patrick McCown, who say that a big part of the crowding of teeth is due to proper or improper breathing patterns and improper posture, meaning specifically a lot of mouth and shallow chest breathing resulting in overcrowding of the teeth due to nasal breathing not being present to allow for airway expansion and proper positioning of the jaw and the mouth. And he has some other things he gets into, such as inadequate chewing and the presence of autoimmune triggers, such as commercial dairy or wheat that might cause congestion and further inhibit nasal breathing, which could impact the crowding of wisdom teeth. But I'm curious, what's your take on wisdom teeth as a biological dentist?

So I know you're familiar with the work of Weston Price. So he did this nutritional, physical degeneration and basically traveled all over the world to look at nutrition and physical degeneration. And he found like if like endogenous people like the Aborigines or some like Africans or maybe he went also went to the Swiss Alps to see how they live without the industrial products you just mentioned like dairy, gluten containing wheat or like grains overall and sugars and all these things. They had perfectly aligned teeth, they had a perfect spine, they had really wide palatals and all. Breathe. Breathe? Yeah, breathe through their noses. And when those, when like the, the newer generation got into contact with eating the, the industrial stuff, processed foods, it kind of looked like monsters. Kind, kind of like the teeth were growing out of their eyes, just over exaggerating but really narrow faces, no space at all, etc. So I'm a big believer in the food or health starts in your mouth concept by eating the right nutrition, but it starts even earlier. So when you come to the world you normally, if it's a normal birth, you go through the birth channel and you will get the microbiome from your mom and then if it's possible you will be breastfed. And breastfeeding in itself should be done like from a natural point of view for at least 1.5 years or 18 months. Why? Because. Because breastfeeding, sucking on a nipple of your mom activates the whole lower jaw to grow. And the muscle is like if you pull on it on a nipple, I don't know if that's the correct word. You have to apply 10 times more force than using the formula from a baby bone. So this will grow your whole jaw, make your pal a little more wide and your whole. You breathe through your nose when you're sucking on a tit. So it's even, it's the whole. Everything you just ask in your question is basically in there already. You get your whole immune system from being breastfed and of course the colostrum and all these immunoglobulins, et cetera and the growth. So my kids, I have three sons I don't know with my wife. The breastfeeding always worked perfectly. And they're all at least some of my second one is actually almost two years breastfed. They have the perfect alignment for now for the jawbone. Of course I'm taking care about the nutrition and we don't eat any processed foods or sugars and stuff as you can imagine and gluten free. And we take care about Macronutrients and micronutrients. So let's see what will happen. Because me personally, I had the worst bite. So I had braces twice when I was 12, I had braces that didn't work out at a very narrow phase. I only breathed through my mouth and I ate the crappiest food. And I had a second set of braces when I was in university, which was a study. And I had it in like in the inside, which was called incognito. It was full of metals, it was the hell and back. So a big part is also the bite. So what they only did with my braces was straightening my teeth. So I have very nice teeth from an aesthetic point of view. But if you look at it from a functional point of view, I have no bite at all. So it doesn't even fit low on upper jaw, which is really problematic because your bite is kind of like a thermostat for your whole posture. So you can see it's a lot of things connected around your mouth. And basically you can see a little baby like the first three years everything is only related with mouth. They will stuff anything in their mouth, they test anything with the mouth. So it's really all health starting in your mouth. And I'm a fan and believer. I don't know if it will work with the first generation. That means my son sons that if they have a healthy lifestyle and diet and I'm supplying the right ratio of proteins and healthy fats and they don't eat any grains and stuff, that they will have no cavities and that they will have not to have braces or orthodontics. And then you're coming back to your question with the wisdom teeth. I guess that the, the wisdom teeth problem will not, will not be a problem anymore. Because if your body is like if your jaw grew in the first place and if you have building blocks to build bone and tissue and teeth, there will be place and enough space for your wisdom teeth. Because of course if wisdom teeth are in your mouth and grown out and have space, why not it's the best thing to have like another set of four healthy teeth to give you more grinding biting surface. And yeah, just the best do so. But if you have like all the western, most of the western population are not trained like this. So they eat their weed and the grains and have a protein deficiency and maybe didn't even get breast fed for a long time. So they end up having a too narrow phase and having no space at all for the wisdom teeth. So Orthodontics will recommend removing the wisdom teeth mostly within 12 to 20 years because of the, because of making space for braces or that the teeth, the wisdom teeth, when they try to come out when you, like what, 18 to 21 years old, are not crowding your teeth again anymore. It's more like an aesthetic point of view.

Okay.

But also if you have impacted, like impacted teeth, my wife, for example, still has impacted wisdom teeth. Those are also not a good idea because your body wants them to have them out. So we can, can totally discuss this.

Okay, so when you say impacted teeth, is that different than wisdom teeth?

Wisdom teeth, no. Wisdom teeth, if they don't grow out and stand in line with all your other teeth and be not visible, they could be impacted. That means they're still in your bone trying to come out every day, but they can't because there's no space. That's an impacted teeth. You will only see it on an X ray. You understand?

Okay, got it. Okay, so what do you do about the impacted teeth?

Yeah, from an just natural point of view, it's pathologic to have an impacted tooth because it will, most of the time, this tooth will be activated all day long to get out of there. And what you can see a lot of times surrounding these impacted teeth is that there's an ongoing chronic inflammation in your jawbone. Mostly kind of this thing I call, I talked to you about before, these cavitations around. So a little bit of a chronic inflammation, you don't even feel it. You don't even feel these cavitations, mostly because the receptors, it's kind of like insulin resistance. They don't even react anymore to pain. So it's just in there. But it's stressing your autonomic nervous system, your trigeminal nerve, your parasympathetic on a daily basis. So few people, a lot of people actually grind extremely at night. Grinding is something that is not a big problem, but if it gets too much, it's mostly related to stress issues. And if, if you have, for example, impacted tooth or cavitation or root canal, this could end up being a lot of stress to your nervous system and you will grind even more. So I grinded the hell when I had my cavitation still there. And I don't grind at all anymore. Even if I don't have any good, I don't have a bite. So I still have to find my bite. You know what I mean?

It's super interesting that this idea of how many things we do on a Daily basis, even from birth, will affect our oral health later in life. And one thing that I think is intriguing, again, kind of relating the mouth to the rest of our biological system. Something that you talked about when you discussed the proper formation of teeth in the mouth was chewing along with breastfeeding. But you also, in the book, if I recall, you talk about chewing actually assisting with the production of certain type of immune factor cells. I think they were the TH17 cells. What exactly are those? And how would chewing help to enhance the immune system health?

The TH17 cells are specialized T helper cells and they are correlated with autoimmune problems. You may be familiar with the Cohimba protocol where this guy is actually able to reverse Ms. And stuff like autoimmune process by high doses of vitamin D3. That means 100,000 IUs or even more on a daily basis. It's just a symptom treatment. But still, if you reduce TH17, you're not too much prone to autoimmunity. With chewing, I think it's different. Chewing is more like if you chew, there will be saliva production. And saliva is kind of like your immunological super host in your body. You have to see the mouth is the first. Everything enters through your mouth. So the microbiome in your mouth is way more diversified than in your rectum, for example. That makes total sense because your mouth gets in contact with everything like food. There has to be digested which are all these enzymes in there. And there are peptides in your saliva, the minerals, the proteins, everything is in the end the whole immune system. So some people, they are in chronic stress because of different stressors, have no saliva at all. It's a dry mouth syndrome. And if you have a dry mouth, you experience a lot of immunological problems. And I think this is the stuff you're referring to. And this is why you have to take care of the saliva. And chewing actually helps with this. So you, you already told me when you do the oil pulling with your things, you actually build more saliva. Or even if you think about food, which is really delicious, you will feel that you produce more saliva because saliva helps you digest. That's why it's so important to chew your food thoroughly. So my grandma told me, buy it every bite for 30 times. I probably even did, didn't do that. But I'm very focused when I do the, when I eat and do it very slowly, do nothing else and you'll have a lot of saliva. And I know if you're in sympathetic mode and in stress you don't have any saliva or just a little. Because of course, when your autonomic nervous system is in fight and flight, you don't want to sever or like drop saliva out of your mouth or eat something. Then you want to have all your stuff and energy in your nervous system and your muscle to just run away from the Sabletooth tiger. So it's a combination, a stress response could be, and it's a big stressor actually is stuff that is installed from a strictly dental craftsman point of view. Like the normal dentist is only interested in can you bite on your teeth or not? And the only question your dentist is asking you. I don't have anything against my dental colleagues just saying they're only asking you, does it hurt or not? So I have patients coming in with huge scale cysts under their root canal teeth, like huge cysts. This is a sign of chronic inflammation. And cysts destroy the whole bone. You can't even imagine what I see on a daily basis. And they have that for 20 years. And I asked them, why did your dentist didn't do anything about it. They just asked me if it hurts and it doesn't. So which chronic disease actually hurts? Does high blood pressure hurt, does thyroid problems hurt or depression hurt? Mostly nothing hurts because when it hurts, it's mostly acne. So coming back to the chronic things, from a biting point of view, of course you can install all different materials. And of course a root canal from just strictly biting is a fine thing. You can bite on the tooth. But from a medical point of view with the goal of optimal health, it might not be a good idea or even really detrimental for your health. And if you have, for example, amalgam fillings or some metals. Amalgam or mercury from amalgam is known to destroy the healthy oral microbiome for and aggravates stuff like parasites and viruses and fungi. They use these heavy metals to shield themselves or build like colonies. And you know, the biofilm, they, I. I imagine like this, they, they just build steel into their biofilm and skyscrapers to make.

And that that's occurring in the actual root canal, which is obviously a big issue there. That. What was the name of the big documentary that came out out recently about root canals that I think even got banned from Netflix, at least temporarily.

Yes, those was a pit. It was a petition of 200,000 dental colleagues, mainly the endodontologists. Those are the guys who only perform root canals. They didn't want to see this movie. And it was banned by net on Netflix, which Is really terrible because it doesn't happen in a root canal by itself. It happens in your, in your, in your mouth. But you know, when you form plaque. So basically microbes, your microbiome is very diversified and this is really important. But if you have different things installed, it goes into a dysbiosis, which will further down, go into your gut system. So this is more the problem that you get compartmentalized. So root canal, for example, is a dead tooth. A regular tooth is a healthy tooth, is an organization with a blood supply, a lymph supply, and an autonomic nervous system. So there are studies showing that wherever there is any bacteria trying to go into your tooth, the immune system in your pulp will fight against it and will be no problem. But if it's a root canal treatment, there's no immune system anymore. It's just a dead organ which is there to just bite on it. So from a microscopic point of view, electronic microscopic point of view, you have these dentin tubules. And if you cut a tooth and look at this, one root has about the equivalent of 1km, it's maybe 1.6 miles of dental tubules where these anaerobic bacteria, which are in itself not a big problem, but if they go into a root canal, then they have their compartment. It's kind of like a compartmentalization and of the bad guys, you know what I mean? And if the bad guy's lurking there and you have an immune system, your immune system will try to do something. You will have a chronic infection there, and your body will do a chronic inflammatory process, which is most of the time assist around the root canal tooth to just help your body so that the infection doesn't spread from there. So compartment is the big problem. Also, these cavitations which stem from the tooth removal in your wisdom tooth area, or better fatty, degenerative osteonecrotic jawbone. If you see that, man, it's just nasty. It's really. They found everything in there from mercury over anaerobic bacteria, parasites. Mold is a big thing in the US I have a lot of patients flying in from the US and they always have this mold issue or Lyme disease. And if you have Lyme's disease, it's so important that you get your Microsoft mouth sorted out from a very strict biological point of view. Otherwise you won't even heal because of these compartments of these anaerobics, parasites, etc. And also, of course, you maybe can smell this, but your immune system will be more aggressive. And the goal would be from let's look at this from a strictly super sick, chronic sick patient I describe. I always try to do like easy anecdotes. So a super chronic sick patients always has Lyme disease, has problems, toxicity, etc. And a dysbiosis. And they have parasites and viruses. And I compared it to the Mars. The planet Mars. When you think about the planet Mars, it's kind of like dry. There's nothing. But there may be some weird creatures living there which can be related to parasites or viruses. So it's not the parasites or viruses that made the planet Mars. Those are the last survivors. And that's the same thing in your body when you're chronic sick. Of course you have parasites and viruses, but they are there to help you because they help you with the metals to eat that for you. But they want something from you. They want you to take your energy. That's why they're parasite. So what the goal is, is to get your body and your whole system back to look like nature on Earth, like diversified, all live in peace together, no compartment, a lot of nature, a lot of everything. And then it's also okay to have a few parasites maybe, but not acute. So if you understood what I'm talking about.

Yeah, well, one thing that it sounds like to me with this issue, and this was kind of like a big message I got, and one of the things that intrigued me early on in your book was this idea of saliva and this thing you call the pellicle actually seeming to be in stark contrast to something like a biofilm and a root canal. How we could actually keep our mouth healthy beyond things like chewing and the biome and oil pulling and some of the brushing and even things like gum chewing that we've discussed. In terms of the pellicle. I hadn't ever come across that concept. And I'm wondering if you can explain what the pellicle is, what saliva has to do with that and how we can actually care for that part of our mouths. Because I found that to be a very intriguing part of your, your book.

The pellicle is kind of like a thin coat on top of your teeth. And do you know the movie Venom or the super like the bad guy Venom?

You know what, I saw that movie come out, but I'm pretty bad at Hollywood. I heard it got rave reviews though, so maybe I'll have to watch it. Why do you ask?

Just like this guy, this Venom dude is kind of like, it looks like a pellicle. So Pellicle is kind of like a sneaky thing that goes on top of your teeth and more like a tiny net. That's how I imagine it to go over your tooth. And it will be there, you will destroy it like probably 15,000 times a day. But the base of it is your saliva and proteins and glycoproteins that just getting attracted by the positive ions in the calcium, the positive calcium ions in your enamel. And it goes on top of your teeth like a thin coat. And it's there to protect your enamel from grinding, also from the contact of the teeth in between. Because teeth are actually not stable in your mouth. They kind of like hanging. They're hanging in there kind of like a trampoline on these periodontal, like the Shar Pei fazon to move. So if you bite pretty hard, your tooth is able to move outside and inside and a little bit down and a little bit up. Can you imagine? And of course there will be a grinding to adjacent teeth. So the palate pellicle and protects. And also the pellicle protects from biting itself so that the enamel doesn't break off. And you bite about 15,000 times a day, which also will activate your whole nervous system again. And the saliva and the pellicle are totally correlated because the saliva contains all the building blocks for pellicle and also for the mineralization of your teeth. So in the saliva you find proteins, you find calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, different minerals that are very tightly controlled and to rebuild and remineralize your teeth all the time. Because whenever you eat, your PH level in your mouth will, will drop a little bit and go a little bit into an acidic ph, which is no problem because your saliva will cover that within 30 minutes as well as your pedicle. And the problem only comes when you eat the wrong foods that are in itself more acidic. Like you drink coke all day long, or like orange juice, for example, is super acidic. You get erosions and stuff. And also of course, the pellicle will be used by your bacteria that are living with you in your mouth. And they will build their biofilms like kind of like attaching themselves to the pellicle. It's kind of. It has a little bit of, you cannot say electric, but electrostatic. Maybe it pulls the proteins from the saliva on top of your teeth. Can you imagine what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. So basically this pellicle is almost like allowing our teeth to glide properly. It's protecting the teeth and allowing saliva to kind of flow around the teeth. And so if we're caring for our saliva using some of the Strategies that we've talked about in this show and that you also discussed in your book. We're then going to build a healthy pellicle and that would mean things like maintaining adequate mineral status, maintaining adequate hydration status using some of these oil pulling strategies that we talked about. From what I understand, fluoride may actually be an issue when it comes to the pellicle. So being careful with fluoride and essentially if we care for this pellicle and increase our tooth saliva production or our mouth saliva production, then what's going to happen is we have less of a potential for the bacterial buildup that could then cause the inflammation or toxicity that could spread to other organs via the link between the teeth and the central nervous system that you've described.

Yes, if you have total healthy teeth, that's the perfect explanation. But it changes all if you had dental work done, basically because this disrupts the whole microbiome and anything and also leads to less saliva production. So if you have different materials and also very important point is that saliva is an electrolyte. So by that I mean if you have a titanium implant, for example, and you have a gold crown on top, which works from a biting point of view, but you could also produce a galvanic element there, which is a battery basically. And you can produce 3.5 volts within a titanium implant and a gold. So electrons will flow and if you have electrolyte, which is the saliva, they will travel from the cathode to the anode. And this on top will always again lead to corrosion and to rusting of the material. And kind of like the propeller of a boat in the sea, you know how it looks like being there for a few years, it's totally rusted. That's how you how these metal restorations in your mouth look like. So it's really bad. And of course then you have more plaque accumulation because there's a plaque accumulation index. And for example, regular teeth are very low and ceramic materials are even lower than regular teeth. So there's not a lot of plaque on ceramics. But on top of metals it's extremely. Because they are more electrically loaded and can can aggravate these plaques even more. So you have to see it from a point of being already super healthy. Your mouth is totally clean then. Yes. All the nutrition, everything you do. And I'm very much focused on protein. You shouldn't do too. A lot of people have too less protein. Not your audience for sure. And protein is a big part of the immune system and the saliva and on the other hand, the chronic sick patients or people that haven't done dental work already. And it can be amalgam, gold, whatever. There's a study showing that even gold nowadays they tested 1200 patients. Maybe you're familiar with the lymphocyte transformation test where you test an IG4 response to different materials, which you can also do with metals in your mouth. Just test if your body is allergic to gold. Gold and spot number one is always nickel. And it's actually not allowed in Germany to use nickel anywhere, not even in jewelry. But you still find it in titanium implants, whatever. I'll tell you in a second. On second and third place is always mercury, organic and inorganic. And on the fourth place is already gold. So a lot of patients had their mercury removed in the 80s or 90s and plus placed gold fillings or inlays or partial crowns or metal based crowns instead. And it's not the best idea from the EMF point of view and also from the immunological point of view. And gold and there's another point. And gold and mercury will always be used together. So when people were searching for gold like 150 years ago, they will always use mercury because they are totally aligned to each other. So if you had mercury in your teeth and that then got restored with gold fillings, there is a big chance that you have that you still have a lot of mercury particles in your dental tubules that can't go away because they electrostatically holding them together. And actually you will find about 50% of all metal restorations have still mercury underneath. And this is something you cannot see X ray. It's crazy man. You cannot even on a daily basis.

And as you get into in the book, the problem is that if you're doing some kind of a metal detox, like if you test high in mercury, let's say on a test, and you're doing even what I would consider to be a gold standard for metal testing, which would be hair, saliva and urine. I believe it's hair, saliva, the triplicate test for metal. Is it hair, saliva and urine or hair, blood and urine? I'm blanking now. Anyways, it's a triplicate test for heavy metals. And and I discussed this a little bit with Dr. David Minkoff and also with Dr. Dan Pompa on previous shows. But you have to eliminate the source of the metal if you're going to detox. And so you have to go to a holistic dentist to remove an amalgal filling or an amalgam filling a gold or metal crown a tooth with a root canal treatment. I mean, I think that a couple of the folks who you've mentioned, Dietrich Klinghardt and Joaquin Mutter, are are really good therapists in particular for the removal of heavy metals. And those are guys that you should look into. And I'll also link in the show notes to all the podcasts that I've done on metal remediation. But yeah, it's a huge issue. I mean we couldwe've been going for a little while and I know we're running a little bit short on time here, but really, I mean for me the biggest message that I could give to people and what I learned from your book, and then I'd love to hear your closing thoughts as well, would be care for your mouth's biome and take into consideration the products that you're using within your mouth. Understand the intimate link between your teeth, the biome in your mouth, and all the organs in the rest of your body. Consider postural modifications like nasal breathing and upright posture and chewing, breastfeeding for infants, etc. And then really make sure that you're optimizing saliva production for the health of the pellicle, like with water and minerals and again chewing gum, things along those lines and oil pulling of course. So those are a few of the things I learned from your book along with this idea of just like visit a holistic dentist compared to a regular dentist. If you have that option, absolutely go for it. Any other tips you would throw out there for people?

You totally summarized it perfectly. Yeah, I would say say Dietrich Klingerd or Jahi Mutho. They will never see a patient without sending them to a biological dentist first. And it has to be like the overall concept, it doesn't make any sense to remove a few amalgam fillings or a few metals. Nowadays you have to really be 100% metal free. If the goal is optimal health. No root canals, you can replace them by ceramic implants, which are zirconium dioxide based, which are totally neutral, no free electrons, no problems with emf, and your body loves ceramics. But in order to do all this and address these cavitations, this is a big thing that is not in the minds of the most patients and not even doctors, because it's still medically not accepted, which is a chronic silent inflammation. So whenever you talk about toxicity, chronic inflammation, cytokines, insulin resistance, whatever, consider looking into your mouth and finding somebody who is specialized and skilled to remove it and even take it a step further. And do this in an all in one concept. But prepare your body first and I think your audience will be prepared very well in terms of the lifestyle, nutrition, all these other things and biohacks. But you cannot biohack your way around taking out the source. And if you take out the source source, your body will heal itself. But even better if you use all the other strategies we already discussed. So you can see optimal health really starts in your mouth. But it's the entrance to your whole gut system. Why not? And this should be really come out to all the other leaders in the field of functional medicine because it's really detrimental to detox anybody or do a chelation or use something like DMPs, DMSO, DMSA, whatever. If you have any sort of oral inflammation or oral interference could make the problem even worse. I've seen it a lot of times and we're very strict with this. No heavy detoxifications. And before the mouse is not totally restored biocompatible. And you need to address root canals and that stuff too. And don't just remove root canals. Best idea is to install like teeth if you can afford it. And now it's lucky that we live in this times because we have the solutions now. Now the solutions are good and the goal is just get the patient to the next level by implementing all these structures. So as I said at the beginning, biological dentistry is the consequent overlap of functional medicine, biohacking and high tech dentistry. So just the next level in my opinion.

Yeah, yeah. It's a ton of good information. And for those of you listening, the book is called it's all in your mouth and I'm going to put the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com AllInYourMouth Last question regarding the actual ability to be able to find a holistic dentist. What's the best place if people want to actually find a holistic dentist in their area to work with?

So they are so holistic dentists, you can always google there as the iaomt, but those are more like the holistic dentists that are focusing more on the mercury toxicity thing for the whole big picture. We are training dentists and so far, unfortunately it's only 30 specialists for biological dentistry in ceramic implants. But we're working on this to get as many as possible that understand the full concept now able because you have to be a surgeon, which I am and we train these people so that you can find it and get the solution. So let's say if I'm able To train thousand dentists. I calculate that I will do 30,000 surgeries in my lifetime. So there will be 30 millions possible. So there's a huge impact if we train, which is the International Academy for Ceramic Implants, because doctors, they are using ceramic implants, not all of them, but a few of them know a little bit more about the whole body. So I'm only feeling confident in recommending dentists that I've fully trained because then I have the feeling that they lift the concept. They know what they're doing and I would be able to do surgery under their head hands. So those are the guys I recommend, but just holistic dentistry, biologic dentistry, the ismi, the ioci. So all these things I could give you for the show link, show notes and all the articles.

Yeah, send those, send those resources over and I will just email them to me and I will embed them in the show notes. For people who want to search for a dentist again, I'll put them@BenGreenfieldFitness.com AllInYourMouth for those of you who want to take the same steps as I have for myself and my family and my dentist and dentist, it's still covered by insurance and many insurances will still cover biological dentistry. But I just love the peace of mind for me, for my wife, for my boys, knowing that we're not getting basically worse health going to the dentist in many cases. Yeah, perhaps a wider, more beautiful smile, but long term, a lot of deleterious health implications. And I'll also link to that documentary I mentioned, root cause, which is pretty shocking as well. For those who want to sit down and watch it, you'll see why it got so stripped off of Netflix. Dominique, I want to thank you for your time and for writing this book and also for sharing all this with us on the on the show today.

Thank you very much for having me. It's my pleasure. And my goal is to help as many people as possible get to this information. So yes, it's all there. Use it and thank you very much.

Awesome. All right, folks, well, again, show notes. BenGreenfieldFitness.com AllenYourMouth and I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Dr. Dominique Nishwitz signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.