The Dr. Hyman Show - Exclusive Dr. Hyman+ Functional Medicine Deep Dive: Functional Dentistry Part I

Episode Date: April 5, 2022

Hey podcast community, Dr. Mark here. My team and I are so excited to offer you a 7 Day Free trial of the Dr. Hyman+ subscription for Apple Podcast.  For 7 days, you get access to all this and more entirely for free! It's so easy to sign up. Just go click the Try Free button on the Doctor’s Farmacy Podcast page in Apple Podcast.   In this teaser episode, you’ll hear a preview of our latest Dr. Hyman+ Functional Medicine Deep Dive on Functional Dentistry with Dr. Mark Burhenne.  Want to hear the full episode? Subscribe now. With your 7 day free trial to Apple Podcast, you’ll gain access to audio versions of: - Ad-Free Doctor’s Farmacy Podcast episodes - Exclusive monthly Functional Medicine Deep Dives - Monthly Ask Mark Anything Episodes  - Bonus audio content exclusive to Dr. Hyman+ Trying to decide if the Dr. Hyman+ subscription for Apple Podcast is right for you? Email my team at [e-mail] with any questions you have.   Please note, Dr. Hyman+ subscription for Apple Podcast does not include access to the Dr. Hyman+ site and only includes Dr. Hyman+ in audio content. Learn more about Dr. Burhenne at askthedentist.com and on Instagram @askthedentist.

Hey podcast community, Dr. Mark here. I'm so excited to offer you a seven-day free trial of my revolutionary new platform called Dr. Hyman Plus. For seven days you get special access to all the private content included in Dr. Hyman Plus entirely free. It's so easy to sign up. Just go to Apple Podcast on your phone and click try free button on the Doctors Pharmacy podcast. You'll get exclusive access to ad-free Doctors Pharmacy podcast episodes and functional medicine deep dives where a practitioner dives into topics like heart health, muscle health, insulin resistance, and more to help you understand the root cause of specific ailments and walk you through the steps to improve your health today. You'll also get access to all my Ask Mark Anything Q&As,

where I answer the community's biggest health and wellness questions. Because I'm so sure you're going to love this platform, I'm offering you free access to all of this content for seven days and a teaser of my brand new functional medicine deep dive episode diving deep into one of the most important topics in health. Head on over to the Doctor's Pharmacy podcast on Apple podcast and sign up for your free trial right now. Okay, here we go. Hi everyone. I am Dr. Mark Brehenne and today welcome to the Hyman Plus channel. I'm very honored to be here and to have been asked to talk about functional dentistry. And so, you know, the channel that you listen to, Mark Hyman's channel, this is a deep dive

for functional healthcare and functional medicine. But today I'm going to introduce to you a new concept that is functional dentistry and why you should know about it, how it will affect your oral health, how that will affect your overall systemic health, and also how it will change how you see your dentist, figuratively, of course, but also physically, and your hygienist, and how this may change how you direct your own dental care. I don't mean at home. I mean, when you go see a dentist, when you go see your hygienist. So again, thank you very much. Very glad to be here. It's a great audience. It's an audience I'm familiar with. I did do a masterclass on sleep for Mark Hyman and the crew. Anyway, so many of

you are familiar with functional medicine. Obviously, if you're a fan of Mark Hyman and his team, this is something that is not new to you. But what may be new to you is the whole concept of functional dentistry. And I'm going to talk more about this, but there's a real schism between medicine and dentistry. And that occurred a long time ago. There's a history behind it. Maybe I'll share that with you. It's interesting. But it's affecting your overall health. The fact that your dentist doesn't speak and communicate with your physician and vice versa. Although it's very likely, and again, my work with Mark Hyman and his support of what I'm doing with functional dentistry is a good example of this. The most likely collaboration

of the two professions is going to come from, is going to happen between functional medicine and functional dentistry. And I think I'll be able to, I think you'll understand this later after I explained to you what functional dentistry is. Obviously functional medicine sees the big picture. So does dentistry. And what is the big picture? And the big picture is, at least in functional dentistry, but again, a functional physician knows this as well, is that oral health contributes greatly to systemic health. You cannot be optimally healthy overall if you haven't addressed your oral health. So let's kind of, again, dive deep. Again, I can't, in the context of this seminar, I can't talk about root canals specifically, what to do, and fillings, but I'm going to give you an

overall view, and then I can come back based on your feedback and questions, and we can talk about specifics. But we are going to talk about many things, the big picture in functional dentistry and how this affects your overall health. So again, by its inherent nature, dentistry and the practice of dentistry. And again, I practiced for 35 years. I'm retired now and I'm solely focused on education. I'll talk more about that. So anyway, dentistry by its nature and the practicing of dentistry is one that is very narrow. It only deals with one very small part of the body. And at least that's how a dental student comes out of dental school. But I think you'll see this little part

of the body has huge implications for the whole body. So it's a little part of the body, you know, with very global systemic, is the word, systemic implications for the whole organism, you know, us, the human being, our overall health. And how this fact will change, I think how that fact will change how we should be practicing dentistry and how you should be seeking out a very specific dentist, namely a functional dentist or a functionally minded dentist. And I'm going to give you some practical tips and places where you can find such a dentist. Thank goodness it's a growing sector or part of the profession. So again, I just want to start out with this silly holy trinity of dentistry

has always been brush, floss, and see a dentist twice yearly. I think by the end of this presentation, you'll see that this is not enough anymore to guarantee optimal oral health, let alone systemic health. This is where functional dentistry comes into play. It's not just for better teeth and gums, but more importantly, it is for better overall health. So let's continue. Hope that was interesting so far. All right. So I just love this quote. It ends up on my iced tea, my green tea caps. This appears and I thought just what I do now, not practice anymore, but what I'm passionate about is telling this truth of functional dentistry and how it should be told and how this benefits treatment outcomes for patients, but it also makes for a better dentist and a happier dentist because they're able to do so much more. So again, the truth is so rare

that it is a true delight to tell it. It's just every time I say that, I get goosebumps. So anyway, that's my why. I enjoyed my 35 years of clinical practice. I miss it. But there was kind of a point in my career where I just didn't feel, and people around me that have supported me in being online, that I just wasn't able to get the message out as much as I would have liked. And so this is, again, you can see, let me actually go to the next slide. You can see how much my life has changed. I mean, from being a clinical dentist now, I've made all these appearances. I have a website. I've written a book. I have a podcast. And this is something that I feel is very important because it is going to change so many things, certainly how we practice dentistry. And thank goodness we've seen some results already. So again, been in practice for

35 years, recently retired. And that is just to dedicate full time and my attention to educating other professionals, not just dentists, and talk about functional dentistry and guiding and teaching functional dentists into this new era of dentistry. And OK, so what, right? Well, this is going to affect your dental work and how you're treated in terms of oral health. And I think you're going to see the benefit as I discuss this concept. So again, different world for me. And again, back to the schism between medicine and dentistry, back in 1839, physicians and dentists separated.

It's a long story. I'm going to recommend a book at the end of this presentation, if you're interested, at least one of the chapters about how that happened. But what are the implications of that? And if you are convinced of my argument of this, how important it is to have good oral health, the oral systemic connection, how oral health connects to systemic health, how it affects, actually can create, but is connected to a lot of systemic chronic diseases, and how the oral microbiome, this new discovery, again, almost as new as the gut microbiome, 2003, 2005, how this is going to change everything. It's sad because physicians aren't getting this information.

They're treating patients kind of in their vacuum and dentists are treating their patients in their vacuum. And what they're not seeing is this huge connection and crossover or subsets, whatever you want to call it, and how this affects you. So again, may seem a little light at this point to you and you're hopefully you're interested, but I think by the end of this discussion, you're going to go, wow. So anyway, again, thanks to Dr. Hyman. He's been an inspiration to me. Much of functional dentistry, of course, is based on functional medicine. Why not?

I mean, it's health care. And we all have health journeys. Mine with sleep apnea was what really woke me up to the functional medical approach. So just a quick overview, what does the root cause approach look like in dentistry? And I use the word root cause because I know you're all familiar with it. Hopefully I don't have to explain that. The root cause is a phrase that all of you obviously recognize. It is the foundational approach of functional medicine. Again, the practitioner practicing upstream, looking for the big picture, what are the causative forces or elements of

disease and can they be prevented? Even if you already have a disease like diabetes, instead of just giving medication, why not address the things that caused metabolic syndrome, obesity, diabetes? A lot of this is reversible as we're finding out. So the approach is completely different from traditional dentistry. Functional dentistry is different from traditional dentistry, which as I said earlier, this Holy Trinity, it focuses on brushing, flossing, using mouthwash, visiting a dentist twice per year. And then if you have a cavity or a gum disease, let's go in there and scrape and drill. And again, it's fabulous what a good clinical dentist can do. And it's not that we don't need these traditionally minded dentists. And that's not

my intention to replace them. We need good clinicians, just like in Western medicine. You know, if there's a car accident, or if you do get cavities or a tooth dies, you need a root canal or an extraction and implant. We need good clinicians. So, and so again, when things go wrong, we need a good clinically skilled practitioner. So in the end, I hope I will be able to convince you that if you are interested in optimizing your overall health or even just optimizing your health and lifespan, you cannot ignore oral health. That's how tightly they are intertwined. So said in another way, your oral health is actually the key to achieving both of those goals, health and lifespan. Okay. So many of you have seen this tree before. You know, it's not much different. You know, all I do is, is, you know, superimpose, you know, the dental symptoms and the root causes. It's, I think it's pretty clear how that would transpose. And again, you know, functional medicine is an inspiration for me and transferring this to functional dentistry is important.

I actually wrote a book about making me realize that dentistry needs to follow a functional course for it to provide better, longer lasting outcomes. I wrote a book about sleep. And the first chapter is why is the dentist writing about sleep? Well, it turns out that sleep is, is, is a root cause for so much of what goes wrong in, in the mouth. It is a root cause that affects oral health. And it is one of the pillars of the practice of dentistry. And it's interesting. I mean, it felt a little ironic, but, you know, again, a dentist writing about sleep, I had to be treated by physicians to get to where I was. But in that process, I realized that there really needs to be a big involvement

from the dental field. So the root cause of my health issues, neck, clenching, tiredness, just happened to be dentally related. And there was a dental root cause. And from here, it was obvious that what had to be done. Well, I hope you enjoyed that teaser of exclusive content that you get every single month with Dr. Hyman Plus. If you want to listen to the full episode and get access to ad-free podcast episodes, plus Ask Mark Anything episodes, plus monthly functional deep dive episodes, I guess that's why we call it Dr. Hyman Plus, then head on over to the Doctors Pharmacy on Apple Podcasts and sign up for your

seven-day free trial. Hi, everyone. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.