The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Ask The Dentist - How To Sleep Better, Create A Defined Jawline, Fix Bad Breath & Oral Health, & Oral Health Ft. Dr, Mark Burhenne

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

#628: Today, we're sitting down with Dr. Mark Burhenne, a bestselling author and family and sleep medicine dentist who has been in private practice for nearly 35 years. He has focused on patient-centered and preventative dental healthcare, with patients coming to him from all over the world. Today, Dr. Mark joins us to discuss how your oral microbiome contributes to your overall health. We explore how certain dental products can be detrimental to your health and what to replace them with, how to achieve the healthiest smile possible, and how to whiten your teeth safely. He also dives into the benefits of mouth taping, tongue scraping, and provides advice on how to prevent issues like bad breath and high blood pressure. To connect with Dr, Mark Burhenne click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To subscribe to our YouTube Page click HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential This episode is brought to you by Ritual Start a daily ritual that you can feel good about. Visit ritual.com/SKINNY to receive 30% off your first month of Ritual. This episode is brought to you by Vegamour Give your hair the power of the little pink bottle. Visit vegamour.com/SKINNY and use code SKINNY at checkout to receive the best deals for Vegamour's Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale. This episode is brought to you by WeightWatchers WeightWatchers is the #1 doctor recommended weight-management program and the trusted authority in evidence based weight-health. Visit ww.com/tsc to see if you qualify, and if you do, use code TSC25 to get one free month plus $25 off your second month. This episode is brought to you by Caraway Caraway Home’s non-toxic kitchen wares are all designed for the modern home and feature a chemical-free ceramic coating, so food can be prepared with peace of mind that no hard-to-pronounce compound will leach into your healthy ingredients. Visit Carawayhome.com/SKINNY10 or use code SKINNY10 at checkout to receive up to 20% off your next order. This episode is brought to you by OneSkin Visit oneskin.co and use code SKINNY15 at checkout for 15% off your first purchase. Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential. If you have not tried the Body Sculptor, you are missing out. I just used it on my Instagram. You got to go look. It's so good to break up cellulite, fascia, but most importantly, it just like sculpts your body. I was on vacation recently and I used it with an oil the whole time and I used it before I got in a bikini. And I am not kidding you. It takes water weight off your legs. It's incredible. I designed it so it has a little divot for the butt, a little divot for the arm, and a little divot for the leg. If you want to see a visual, like I said,

go to my Instagram at Lauren Bostic. And definitely go grab one for Black Friday Cyber Monday on ShopSkinnyConfidential.com. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness.

Welcome to the Skinny Confidential. Him and her. Aha! There was some lying going on because it was convenient. And there is a lot of information out. The mouth breathing goes back to the 1800s. James Nestor found an old English journal, medical journal. It was about dentistry.

And it was a dentist saying that mouth breathing was very bad for you. And that it was one of the main reasons we get cavities. That was back in the late 1800s. I never got that in dental school. So there was a lot of information that we had and somehow we got redirected. And I think that was because it became a profession for profit. Someone that I love to stalk on Instagram is Ask the Dentist.

The tips are tipping on this Instagram. There are so many takeaways and tips that I have learned from this account. I can't even tell you. So I went on and personally DMed him and was like, please come on the Him and Her show. And it took like a year and a half to get him on. So today I could not be more excited to announce that he is here. And let me tell you, this episode will blow your fucking mind. This is one that you're going to want to send to every single person that you know. In this episode, we learn about all the things. Tongue scraping, mouth taping, why mouthwash is bad for you, where bad breath comes from, how to fix it, everything you need to know about functional dentistry, and the dental brands and products that you need to avoid. If you're into your oral health, this episode's

for you. I not only learn things for myself and for Michael, but for my kids, which was like the best part of this episode. With that, Dr. Mark of Ask the Dentist, welcome to the Him and Her Show. This is the skinny confidential, Him and Her. I am going to say that I'm so excited to be sitting with one of the first dentists who have talked about mouth taping. You talked about mouth taping 10 years ago in your book. What even made you discover that? I came across it.

It was in a study or I was reading about it. And I right away thought this would be great for me as a practitioner to use as a differential diagnostic tool. And because everyone I was talking to and asking, do you mouth breathe or do you nose breathe? And of course, they were all lying to me, especially guys, right? They're like, oh, no, I'm fine. I don't snore and I breathe through my nose. Is that the right thing to do? Yes, I breathe through my nose. And this is a way to find out in one

night whether that person is actually telling the truth. So it allowed me to figure out, for example, if they had a high cavity rate, that comes from mouth breathing. If you have a dry mouth at night and you're sitting like this at night open all night. You're just going to, you have a higher incidence of decay and also gum disease and pretty much anything bad breath for that matter. So this was a wonderful,

of course I was using the wrong tape and we use back then we were using tape that was too sticky and uncomfortable. A lot of women didn't like it because it would, you know, we didn't know how to peel it off in the morning properly. But now it's a thing and it's wonderful. ENTs in my area in the Silicon Valley gave me a hard time. They said it was dangerous. A lot of them said it doesn't make a difference whether you breathe through your mouth or nose. But now it is finally seeing its moment. It's

wonderful. If it's on TikTok, we know it's a good thing, right? It's still, even though more and more people are talking about people like yourself and Human and Lauren and me, dare I say, when we mention it to people, we still get like that, are you guys nuts look, right? And again, people think it's dangerous. Why would you do this? From your perspective, if somebody's still hesitant, what are the three main things it's accomplishing?

Right. Well, for those who think it's weird, and most people still do, and they think it's dangerous. There are a lot of professionals that think it's dangerous. Just work into it slowly. Tape during the day. I recommend taping for children over age two or three to see if they can nose breathe. So just try it slowly during the day while they're watching TV.

See how long, make it a game. See how long you know you can breathe through your nose. The three, I mean, there are many things. Well, as I mentioned, it's great if you're a practitioner, I'm able to tell or anyone's able to tell. If you're at home, you don't need me. You can just tape. And if you can't keep the tape on, then you know you have to see an ear, nose, and throat

and get that cleared up. Because if you're not nose breathing, you're probably over-breathing CO2. So the three main things would be, and dentistry would be, if you don't keep your mouth shut, unless you're speaking a lot or eating, for example, then your decay rate will be higher. Any kind of oral disease, whether it's bad breath, gum disease, you'll have a higher incidence of that. That's a big enough reason for me, but there are other reasons too. You're going to be more anxious. Your CO2-O2 mix in your blood, your pH will change in your blood. The uptake of oxygen and the release of oxygen won't be optimal. So if you're exercising a lot, it ties into nitric oxide as well. That has a lot to do with what goes on in the mouth as well. These are all things that

will affect your everyday part of life. I mean, in terms of how you view things, it could even relate to psychiatric disorders. It also humidifies the air as it goes through the nose. It brings your nose back online, which is important. There's a histaminic response. If you have a lot of allergies or sensitivities to dry air, you're not going to do well unless you're breathing through your nose. You've got to keep this online. And the only way to do that is by pulling air in through your nose,

especially at night, six, seven hours of sleep. Perfect time. Can I ask you maybe a strange follow-up question? Oh, yeah. So I believe, and Lauren can tell me if I'm wrong, that I am a nose breather primarily when I sleep. I just, right? Am I?

Yes. Let's get verification of that. You are a nose breather, but there has been times when you're really, really tired where it hangs open. And so I just feel like you should just tape to tape to train. And that'll happen time to time with a good nose breather. My question, I guess, then is, what makes people become mouth breathers? Is this something you were born with?

Is this something that happens from improper tongue posture? Is this something that happens because of behavior? Like, what is the muscle? Like, what is the thing that makes? Because obviously, we're designed to breathe through the nose. Right. It's a great question. And we are designed to breathe through the nose.

We breathe optimally if we're breathing through the nose. Mouth breathing is for emergencies and yelling and yelling out and warning someone. I mean that's in speaking. It's a great question because we're really born that way and we're seeing more and more of that in today's society unfortunately and there's a whole host of reasons for that. But typically a mouth breather is born that way and develops into a mouth breather they mouth breathe early on now you can fall on your nose you can obstruct your nose there's trauma allergies for example allergies to things that we weren't really meant to be exposed to it can be the quality of air in the room I mean we're in a closed room here in a skyscraper and

it's all forced air the CO2 levels here in parts per million are probably 800 to 1,000. When I flew over here, the CO2 parts per million was 2,500. That's going to increase your respiratory rate. You may not feel like you're getting enough air. So there are many reasons why you could become a mouth breather, but typically, we're born that way. It's really interesting because when I read the book, Shut Your Mouth, Save Your Life, that was written, I think, I want to say in the 1940s or something. Yes, great book. I became obsessed with it,

and I started doing it every single night for the last eight months. I am so addicted to this, not only because I feel so much better in the morning and have so much more energy, but I'm addicted to it because of the beauty benefits. I have seen, and feel free to tell me if I'm wrong, my jawline feels more where it should be and more strong and strengthened and supported from the mouth tape. The mouth tape has taught me to breathe through my nose, which has supported the jaw, which has almost gotten rid of any sort of double chin. It's like a beauty tip.

Oh, it is, 100%. That's not a stretch at all by any means of the imagination. Also, when you mouth tape, and my wife taught me this, pucker up a little bit. You don't want to close your lips over because collagen has a memory, especially as you get older. If you want puffy lips, you know, get in that position and tape up in that position. Such a good tip. I mean, you're taped for six, seven, well, hopefully seven or eight hours a night. But absolutely, when you breathe that way, the tone of your airway changes,

the position of the tongue changes, the position of the hyoid bone changes. That's a floating bone here in the neck. I mean, all of that can be attributed to, it sounds like you've had this conversation before. I just can't believe it. Or argument. Why are you looking at me like I don't? I can notice it in pictures and on video.

And like, I know this sounds so crazy. It really, from an aesthetic standpoint, if you really do it religiously, and I do it every night. The other thing I noticed that's so interesting, what you said about a purse in your lips. I also, you're going to think I'm crazy, pull up from the bottom and pull the tape up

as opposed to taking the tape and pulling it down because I want to pull my face up. Well, this'm crazy. Pull up from the bottom and pull the tape up as opposed to taking the tape and pulling it down because I want to pull my face up. Well, this, this, I don't know why you're trying to win point. I've never contradicted this. I've always agreed and it made sense to me, to me, the logically thing, or just from an aesthetic, I would assume if your mouth is just

hanging open all the time, it's probably not great for your jaw structure and your muscles. That just, that just, for me makes sense. You see people walking around like, it would look strange if you saw them just walking with their mouth hanging open, right? But then if you're doing that for eight hours a night. Assuming you can mouth tape. Sure. Because there might be obstruction. Right. But back to Lauren's point, there's another reason. You're sleeping better,

which means your skin turgor will be better. I mean, you're also dehydrated when you wake up in the morning. Think about how much air, how much water we expel in an hours of breathing. I think it's a liter or two of water that we expel if we mouth breathe. It's much less if we breathe through our nose. So there are many other reasons and probably those are the best reasons. You're going to feel better. You're going to feel better about yourself. Skin will tighten up position of the jaw. As you mentioned, Michael, I mean, there, there are a lot of reasons. Mouth taping is a great thing if you can do it.

So you mentioned, we were talking off air right before we started and you mentioned that obviously Peter Tia came on here and he has one of the, you know, we, we all believe is one of the better books on longevity, one of the best books on longevity that's out, but that he only mentioned oral health once in the book. Maybe not intentionally, but that it was just, you know, this huge book on longevity and oral health was a very small part of it. Not a knock on him, but why do you think oral health gets so little attention in the spectrum of health? And honestly, I was thinking too, we've done 600 or so of these a little more and this is the first time we've done a show on this topic so well i'm glad that lauren had a great interest in oral health uh it's a great question and i i think i have the answer for it uh it goes back historically back to when dentistry and medicine

kind of branched apart from each other. We got kicked out of the club. We were in all the medical organizations, and I won't go into all the details, but that was 1839. So we've been practicing in kind of parallel universes with very little interconnectiveness or connective tissue. They're doing their thing thing we're doing our thing and i think now we've come to realize as as dentists that there's a lot going on that kind of parlays over to their side of things and hopefully some of them are realizing that for example there's a causal connection between high blood pressure and the use of mouthwash that needs to be fleshed out. And those two things are always running parallel to each other, but no one's talking. And let's face it, if your physician doesn't speak to your neurologist

and you're seeing a neurologist, that's a bad thing. But why aren't they speaking with your dentist? So I think historically there's a basis for that. I also think it's because we have two different insurance plans. Dental insurance is not really an insurance plan. It's more of a benefit because it maxes out, if you have it, it maxes out at $1,000 or $2,000, where if you get in a car crash, that's it. Your teeth have been knocked out. It's going to cost $40,000 to $60,000. But the medical side of things, of the insurance plan, it takes care of you. So two different insurance plans. And then there's some political stuff, I think.

We're not in a hospital organization necessarily, although we're beginning to see that. There's some schools that are merging medical and dental records, for example. Isn't that brilliant? I mean, why wouldn't you, if you're a physician treating for high blood pressure or heart disease, you're looking at CRP, C-reactive protein, that's a measure of inflammation. But what you may not know is that one of the greatest contributors to CRP is gum disease, which 70% of us have after age 60. Or 40%, actually almost 50% of us have over age 30. This is a very chronic prevalent disease that's contributing to all the markers that the physicians are looking for. So why wouldn't you want to get

that information? As you're talking, I'm going to just question because we're covering a lot here. What is the main contributor to gum disease and why is it so prevalent? Boy, that's a one hour reply. It's a complicated disease. It's related to food, diet, or environment. Obviously, starchy food, processed foods, mouth breathing, which changes the pH of the saliva, the lack of minerals in our diet. We need minerals in saliva for it to work properly. It's also mouthwash and toothpaste. I mean, we're using the wrong products. We're using products that are actually

making the oral microbiome, which is like the gut microbiome, it's the bacteria in the mouth that actually help protect us. We're taking that down every time we pick up a toothbrush with the wrong toothpaste or we're swishing with mouthwash. You said something when I was walking in. I was eating a piece of broccoli and I go, I said, right when I met you, I said, I'm sorry, I'm eating a piece of broccoli. Don't look in between my teeth. And you said, no, actually broccoli brushes your teeth for you. And so do carrots.

Can you speak on that and how that was the toothbrush back in the day? You know, it's like a chewing stick. That was kind of what we had before we had modern toothbrushes and all these gadgets and floss. But also, I mean, it's a crunchy food. It's a high fiber food. It hasn't been processed, but also the bacteria in your mouth really don't respond to it. They don't consume it. If you were eating goldfish crackers, for example, which is a highly karyogenic food, a cavity-causing food, you would be in this state of demineralization. Your pH in the mouth would drop to low levels below this critical pH, and that's when you start leaching or losing calcium in your teeth, and that's how cavities are formed.

Broccoli doesn't do that. The bacteria ignore it. There's nothing there for them. But when they see a goldfish cracker or other junk foods, I don't want to pick on goldfish, saltine crackers, any cracker for that matter, breads, candy, of course, that starts allowing the bacteria to consume a lot of the foods because it's processed. And then they excrete their byproduct of their metabolism, which is it's an excrement of pee and poop and all that, right? That's what we tell the kids. And that is a very low pH product. So your mouth is very acidic. You want your mouth, and that's why we have saliva. Saliva buffers the mouth. We want to have a resting pH of about 6.5 to 7.2. Literally, there's a critical pH, which I mentioned just a few minutes ago.

That critical pH is referred to as the critical pH because that's when things start changing in the mouth and everything starts going to pot. I mean, you start getting cavities. That is, so resting state of saliva, maybe 6.4 at its lowest level. Then the critical pH starts at 6.2, 6.3. And if it was for, that's for Denton, that's for the root structure of the tooth. It's a little bit lower for enamel. Enamels are harder surface. That's 5.5. That's not that much far. That's not too far away from that resting state of pH. So it doesn't take much to get to that pH level.

Now, if you're eating carrots all day, you're fine. You're always going to be in that neutral pH. So it doesn't take much to get to that pH level. Now, if you're eating carrots all day, you're fine. You're always going to be in that neutral pH. But if you're drinking kombucha, for example, or even some mineral waters, those are a pH of 5.5 or lower. Alcohol, green tea, my favorite. What else? Coffee. Those are all low pH products. So if you have those, drink them quickly. Don't sit there and sip them all day long at work because you're still, you're bringing down that pH and that just allows the teeth more time to demineralize. I'm a sipper. I know. Most of us are.

I'm a sipper. If I have a cup of coffee, Michael will be like, how would you have this all day long? Like I will sip the coffee all day long. I am such a sipper. That is really good information. Do you think that there is something related to people eating less meat now and the decline of the jawline? Are those two correlated? Because obviously our ancestors grew up eating tons of meat and they had these strong jawlines. Is there a correlation there? Great question. And absolutely, 100%. In fact, you've got young kids and you asked the question about, how does mouth breathing occur? It occurs in the early years while our jaws are developing. Our ancestors, they didn't have blenders. I mean, they didn't puree their food. I have two grandchildren and I've checked all their baby foods.

And of course, they're all very healthy and organic, but they're pureed. I mean, you got to get them chewing pretty soon yep that's so important and the smoothies i know people love a healthy smoothie but yeah you gotta you gotta chew yep yeah chewing is very important there's one thing you mentioned in there and i don't want to skip over because i know we're going to cover a lot here and this i've seen this on tiktok and i've seen people get very upset around the topic of mouthwash potentially being harmful to you. Right. They get frustrated because I think a lot of people are like, they throw their arms

up and they say, well, what the hell am I supposed to use? Well, they're also using it as like a quick fix. But then another, you know, it's like another thing they can't use that, you know, and I think people are getting just like overwhelmed by all of the poor product choices that are in the market. Right. From your perspective, why is mouthwash so potentially harmful? Well, it's not potentially harmful.

It is harmful. I mean, it is causal for high blood pressure. We have the studies. We've had them for 15 years. And I just saw an ad for Listerine this morning on the TV, and I was shocked. Listerine used to say that you could use mouthwash. This is why people use mouthwash. They think, as you were implying, that it's a quick fix and that it can reverse a lot of bad things like halitosis. That's where it mostly goes to with marketing, but it also helps prevent gum disease. The Listerine commercial used to say,

you can use Listerine mouthwash instead of flossing. They were spanked for that. That's false advertising. And now they kind of skirt the issue. And how did that ad go this morning? It was, oh, if you're a flosser and you don't feel like you're getting to all the niches in your mouth, this will take care of it. And it won't. But in fact, it's elevating your blood pressure by killing off, if you use it twice a day according to the studies you use mouthwash twice a day it kills the bacteria on the back of your tongue that are there to help produce nitric oxide which is this wonderful gas very fleeting short-lived but that actually lowers our blood pressure in fact so it's not a specific

ingredient it's that it well maybe isn't well it kills the bacteria, they're not. So it's not a specific ingredient. It's that it, well, maybe it isn't. Well, it is. It kills the bacteria that is on your tongue. If it's a disinfecting mouthwash, which is what most mouthwashes do, even if it has just essential oils in it, it's taking down those bacteria. Okay. And you need those bacteria. Those bacteria are doing a lot of work for you. In fact, now there's a study.

It just came out. Actually, it was a guy from Texas, a researcher from Texas and his group, where tongue scraping actually can lower your blood pressure. Remember, two-thirds of Americans are using mouthwash. About two-thirds have high blood pressure. I'm not saying there's a direct connection there, but we do know that high blood pressure is not just connected to the use of mouthwash. Mouthwash, the use of mouthwash is causal. In other words, it it causes it can cause elevated blood pressure now back to physicians and dentistry being you know not talking to each other this is

something that physicians should know especially if they're medicating for blood pressure dr mark i don't mean to brag but for christmas i get stocking stuffers tongue scrapers like i think every single person the first thing when you open your eyes, they should scrape their tongue. This is my weird theory. Are you Vedic? I think that when you have all that bacteria on your tongue and you take a sip of water in the morning, you're swallowing your bacteria.

So when you wake up immediately, scrape it off. Carson, if you don't have a tongue scraper after all these episodes, I'm going to die. I'm going to give him one of your tongue scrapers. The tongue scraper, I think is like the whole tone of the day. Is it true that you swallow the bacteria? You do. So whatever is in the mouth, the oral microbiome in the mouth is connected to the gut microbiome. We're swallowing trillions of bacteria a day and that one and a half liters of saliva, and you better make damn sure that it's good bacteria, right? I mean, the ones that you want to swallow, the commensal ones. So that plaquey layer, they're plaque biofilms, we call it now. They're biofilms all over the mouth, in the mouth, and biofilms can become very dysbiotic

and problematic. And the tongue is one of those areas. Think of it as a field of mushrooms, you know, those big mushroom caps. And underneath that, there's a lot of space there. There's a lot of stuff getting caught in there. And if you're eating crackers and breads and snack foods and all that, the bacteria down there are having a heyday. And they are literally a different set of bacteria in other words the the ones that produce ammonia gas for example not the nitric oxide become prevalent and then you get this weird fruity dead fruit smell with some sulfide bonds i mean that those are the

bacteria that are doing that i also think that when someone's breathing on you and it smells i think i this is my own lauren theory that% of it is coming from the tongue, not even the teeth. Oh, it's probably more than that. Yeah. It's probably 70%. There is a form of halitosis or bad breath that comes from the gut, from indigestion, IBS, other GI disorders, but it's mostly from the tongue. I have to applaud my husband. He scrapes his tongue every single morning. I have a friend who wasn't scraping it. My audience sent me my friend's Instagram and said, tell your friend to scrape his tongue right now. I got him on a tongue scraper. Everyone's got to

get one of your tongue scrapers. I want my kids to start doing it. My daughter watches me. It's a little tricky to get them to do it, but I'm definitely going to get her on it. I think what I've realized about mouthwash is that people have a nostalgic correlation or relationship with mouthwash. I remember my dad's mouthwash when I was little. It was the brown Listerine. He used a capful. Daddy, you better be throwing that out if you have that. The brown Listerine and the smell

of it evokes yes like an emotion that's almost like an aftershave clean yes we have so like a windex right so what are things that we can do to break that and and move towards other things that are healthier like is there it sounds like though with mouthwash it's we were just we just did an episode and we were talking about people jump right to effect. They don't go to cause. And so it's like they're doing this as a quick fix to their bad breath or flossing. So I think another way to look at it is like what could people do so that they maybe don't need to use mouthwash? Yes.

Right, right. First of all, I would just recommend to your question, tell them that their breath will get worse if you use mouthwash. I mean, much worse, and then they'll have to be using it more. Plus, their blood pressure will go up. To me, that would be enough. And then you're right. I mean, we're not addressing the root cause. So I think oil pulling would be fine. I'm not against oil pulling. Again, another Ayurvedic, I call that, what do I call that? Observational historical clinical data. I mean, it's a great way. The whole Ayurvedic thing is amazing. You just had Organic Olivia on. She's amazing. I mean, it's a great way. The whole Ayurvedic thing is amazing.

You just had Organic Olivia on. She's amazing. I mean, and she says it best. Essentially, they didn't have studies back then. They didn't have microscopes. But over many, many centuries of observational data that cause and effect, if you do this, then this works, or the opposite, and then that gets passed on to

the practitioners. So the Ayurvedics had it right on many things. They talked a lot about nose breathing and of course all the gurus and the proper breathing and all of that was correct. So tongue scraping, absolutely. That is something that should be done. And oil pulling, they didn't have mouthwash at the time. That's a mild surfactant. And it's great at thinning the biofilm and cleaning things up a little bit. You can overdo it. Coconut oil is probably best. I think olive oil is fine.

I don't mind the taste of olive oil. How long? Two to three minutes in the morning, maybe when your mouth is dry. When your mouth is very dry, it'd be a good way to rejuvenate the oral microbiome, get things going and humidify and get moisturized. I like to scrape my tongue. I have my coconut oil underneath the sink, but you can't expose your coconut oil to air, right?

You've got to shut it. And this is maybe TMI, but I use coconut oil for lube because I don't get UTIs anymore. So when you say about my orifice in my mouth to get the bacteria out, that to me makes way more sense as a mouthwash than a Listerine. Totally. And it's a biome, vaginal biome. It makes sense, right?

It kills the bacteria. You want to feed and nourish. You don't want to kill and disinfect because you don't know what you're going to end up with. It doesn't kill. I'm wrong. It supports, what is it? It supports and nourishes and it thins, it moisturizes. I mean, it's good for the mouth. Absolutely. I think you can overdo it. You don't want to remove your biofilm. Biofilm is important. I think dentistry has kind of

brainwashed everyone saying you've got to get rid of it all. There's no way you're going to get rid of the biofilm. And when you leave the dentist and you've had that profi cup with the abrasive, the powder that we use, the pumice paste with fluoride in it, I mean, your biofilm is pretty much off the tooth. It's been removed. It comes back in 20, 30 minutes. It's designed to come back and regrow. That's how the body protects inanimate surfaces in the body. Best multivitamin, what am I going to say? You already know, ritual. Ritual essential for women 18 plus. I have been taking ritual for like three years. I took it through both my pregnancies. Whenever someone asks me on DMs, like what prenatal did you take? It's ritual. I value my time. We know this. And like like I don't want to have to go digging everywhere to find out

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If you're going to go on their site, they also have an incredible plant-based protein powder that I make the best protein pancakes with. You could also add it to oatmeal. It's delicious. Go on their site, check it out, start a daily ritual that you can feel good about and help save the fish while you're at it. Ritual is offering the Skinny Confidential, him and her listeners, 30% off your first month. Visit ritual.com slash skinny to start ritual or add Essential for Women prenatal to your subscription today. So I had my hairstylist over the house today and he was like giving me a little blowout. I had an event to do and we were talking and he said, Lauren, your hair is like a literally a different head

of hair. He couldn't believe it. He said two years ago, your hair was like breaking. The blonde was breaking. I don't wash my hair too much. I obviously went brunette. And then I invested in an incredible hair serum to multitask. Okay. So what I mean by that is I like to do like a tight, sleek bun. I'm already going to do it almost every single day. And when I do it, I just add Vegamore's hair serum. This is so easy. It's such a great hack. If you just want to upgrade your bun, their hair serum is all about visibly thicker, fuller, shinier, longer hair without harsh ingredients. It comes in like this cute little pink bottle. Everything's 100% cruelty-free and never formulated with potentially harmful chemicals

like parabens or hormones. So what I do is I put it in my hair. I do scalp massage to really get the blood flow going. I stretch the fascia in my scalp and pull it up, and I'll brush through my hair, and then I'll put it in a sleek bun, and I am good to go to the gym. Sometimes I'll even put it on top of the bun. For a limited time, go to vegamore.com slash skinny and use code skinny at checkout to get in on Vegamore's biggest sale of the year during their Black Friday and Cyber Monday. That's V-E-G-A-M-O-U-R.com slash skinny code skinny to get the best deals on Vegamore's line of products. Vegamore.com slash skinny code skinny. Let's talk about Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers is the number one doctor-recommended

weight management program and the trusted authority in evidence-based weight health. Beyond the science, joining Weight Watchers means you become part of a powerful, passionate community. They're all about community there. We got to learn all about that when we had the CEO on our podcast. The company's purpose is to always inspire healthy habits and lasting weight loss. So how they do this is they focus on behavior change, nutrition, science, and real connections while never giving up on the food that we all love. Personally, I really love how they've evolved their approach to weight loss over the years. And they're really like with the times, which I appreciate.

Weight Watchers has helped millions of members on their journeys over the years. And recently they've launched Weight Watchers Clinic, and this provides support to even more people across the weight health spectrum. Most importantly, I think that Weight Watchers knows that weight management is not a one size fits all thing. There are behavioral and biological factors to consider. So they really have a multifaceted approach when it comes to losing weight. Head to www.com slash TSC to see if you qualify. If you do use our code TSC25 to get your first month free. Plus you get $25 off your second month. That's www.com slash TSC. So what are people doing that go to a common dentist wrong and what could they ask for to be their own advocate?

Wow, that is a loaded question. Well, I would first encourage them to learn about functional dentistry and we have a list of what to ask. Certainly if you see a functional provider, you won't have all those issues. First of all, I would stay away from fluoride. I would ask, and this probably would require a call ahead because if you're in the chair, they're going to shame you if they're into fluoride. It's a big money maker for dentistry, that fluoride varnish or fluoride treatment for your kids up until age 14,

insurance pays for that. That's a hundred, 150, sometimes $200,000. And do you get flocked for saying this from the community? I do. Oh, totally. Oh yeah. And we can talk hundred, 150, sometimes $200,000. And do you get flock for saying this from the community? I do. Oh, totally. Oh yeah. And we can talk about that later, but there is a lawsuit against the EPA on fluoride in our water. I'm hoping that comes to an end soon, but you really have to be prepared like anything. Same thing with seeing your medical provider. You can't rely on your doctor for the truth. You really have to be well-informed. So I would ask, how often do I need to be seen? How often are you going to take well-informed. So I would ask, how often do I need to be seen? How often are you going to take x-rays? If it's every time you come in, that's

just a knee-jerk response on their part. That's ridiculous. It depends on the patient. There's some patients that will never need an x-ray. That's an extreme, but I have patients like that. And then there are patients where you're like, could you come in in six weeks? I got to do all this again. It should really be a very custom-tailored kind of treatment. And if they're treating you just like an insurance number, stay away. I mean, assembly line dentistry. What is a biological dentist? And I've noticed some people who have come on, they've talked about their cancer journey and healing holistically.

Why have they used that? The term biological. Yeah. Explain. Cause I kind of still, I just booked an appointment for our whole family with a biological dentist, but I want to know more about it before I take the leap. Right. No, good question.

So there's biological, there's integrative, there's holistic, then there's functional. I think functional covers all bases. But biological means that the dentist is concerned about the things that they're about to put in your mouth, in your tooth, like mercury or even composites, the plastic fillings, the glues that we use. That means that he or she is concerned about the biology of it. Is it biomimetic? Is it safe to put these ingredients in there? And unfortunately, that's a difficult thing to do. I mean, the best is not to be in that case to begin with where you have a need to be restored.

So biological is, I mean, in dentistry, in dental school, this is 37 years ago for me, they used that term. And I remember the instructor, and he was our materials guy. Dental materials was the course. And it was always about biomimetic and biologically safe and compatible with human physiology and biology. And of course, that was all bullshit. It wasn't. I mean, we were taught how to put mercury fillings into our patients' mouths, and that's not biological dentistry. So biological can mean many things, but it means that when they

remove the metal filling, for example, that they do it correctly, that they're not exposing it to more mercury vapor when they remove it. So it's a good place to start, but typically it's a label, and I would be very careful. And again, you have to inform yourself. I'm going to look at your list. He has a list on his site that you guys can go and it says a directory of where you can go to find a functional dentist, a functional dentist, which should be aware of all that. They should be integrative. They should be biological.

They should be able to use the correct method of removing these neurotoxins. They shouldn't be pushing fluoride on you. In fact, there should be no fluoride in the office. There should be no mercury metal fillings in the office because that in itself is problematic. Every time you open one of those little compules, I mean, there's a little mercury vapor and it's in the office. I also think like I was talking to a girlfriend and she's like, oh, I'm taking my daughter to go to the dentist and we're trying to decide if we should give her sealants or not.

And I remember my parents taking me to get sealants. It was like a thing back when I was little where you's plastic that was heated around my teeth, seeping into my tongue and my bloodstream multiple times. That can't be good for you. Right. Even worse, the monomers that were used to prep the tooth before. Right. So, I mean, this is a problem in dentistry.

And I mean, every procedure we do is a surgical procedure in many ways. And now we're putting in implants and titanium was not as clean as we thought it was, titanium implants. Now we're looking at ceramic implants made out of zirconia. And there's always a problem.

I mean, BPA-free water bottles, right? They're not safe. It's always a problem. I mean, BPA-free water bottles, right? They're not safe. It's always a concern. So you really have to be well-informed. And that's why I've been doing this online for 10 years, just throwing out a lot of data. But it really pisses off a lot of people because they felt they were lied to. And they were in some cases, in most cases. Were they lied to or was it for a lack of information in the field itself?

That's a good question. I would say there was some lying going on because it was convenient. And again, it's a business. I mean, fluoride is a big business and we make a lot of money from it. And there is a lot of information out. The mouth breathing goes back to the 1800s. James Nestor found, when I was talking to him about his book, Breath, he sent me a document, because we were talking about mouth taping. He sent me, a few months later, he sent me something that he had found in an old English journal, medical journal.

It was about dentistry. And it was a dentist saying that mouth taping is, not mouth taping, they didn't tape back then, that mouth breathing was very bad for you. And that it was one of the main reasons we get cavities. That was back in the late 1800s. I never got that in dental school. So there was a lot of information that we had and somehow we got redirected. And I think that was because it became a profession for profit.

Is sealants ever necessary? Well, they are necessary, unfortunately, and it's better than doing a big filling. The question is, you're doing sealants as a preventative, as a prophylactic procedure. So the question is, does that patient really need it? It'd be a pity if they do need sealants, but the dentist isn't so sure, and they don't want to hear later that their dentist, their patient, young patient, the mom's going to come in and say, or dad will come in and say, oh my God, my kid has cavities. Why didn't you seal them?

So they're going to jump on that bandwagon a little earlier. It's very difficult. It's a difficult call to make. And that is the number one issue right now that my business partner and I that are launching this toothpaste are confronted with are all these parents talking about their kids. I mean, they're trying to follow the right diet and floss and brush and, and they're still getting cavities. And that's, that's the problem. We've been using these oral care products for over a century, and we're still making and using the same products that still have

the same concept of disinfecting the mouth and killing germs and freshening your breath and all of that. And we're still getting cavities. In fact, cavities are on the rise. Fluoride didn't seem to help in the water and topically. Fluoride topically can work, but we can talk a little bit about that. But in the water, it doesn't work. That's a decision we made back in the 40s. Kind of like pseudo-benadryl. What's, kind of like Benadryl and Sudafed.

The decision to use that, that it worked, was made in 1938. And now we're just coming to the realization that it's really a placebo effect or a decongestant. So fluoride's in the same category. It's old information. We have new data like we do with Sudafed and Benadryl, and that is that it doesn't work. And we also have new information saying that it's toxic. So yeah, there's been a lot of lying going on in the profession. Lying is misinforming. A lot of people. I really have to quickly know what you should do for an allergy if you can't use Benadryl,

what you would do. Oh gosh. Well, I'm not a physician, but I wouldn't use Benadryl because it doesn't work. Okay. I would find out what kind of allergy it is, find out what the root cause is, see a functional provider, MD. Okay. Get some blood tests, allergy testing.

Before you get Benadryl. Is it for a congested nose? I'm just wondering because sometimes my baby will have a rash and I'll bring Benadryl just in case. I've never given it to him, but I'm just wondering what I could bring on a trip that would substitute Benadryl. It would have to be something else. Allegra maybe. Again, I'm not the expert on that.

But there are antihistamine drugs that work, but we know that Sudafed and Benadryl don't. Got it. But they were the first and it took us that long to figure that out. A lot of people are scared to go to the dentist or they find the experience unpleasant. I mean, someone's in your mouth, I get it. From your perspective, how often should people be going to get their teeth cleaned and inspected, obviously, if they find the right practitioner. Right. So good question. The old standby was twice a year. And I think that was, I forget where that came from,

but it didn't come from dentistry. It came from a toothpaste company or someone made the recommendation and we all kind of ran with it. Very unscientific. Of course, people, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes you have to come in every six to eight weeks. I go once a quarter. Is that too much? No.

I mean, why do you go back once a quarter? Should they recommend it or? To me, like I, I understand. I, I, someone told me the twice a year to me, like instinctually that just felt a little like why only twice a year, right? But. I think it feels good when they clean your teeth, you feel clean, but you're saying that like you have to be careful how much you're stripping the teeth. Well, I mean, you can over-clean the teeth with the ultrasonics,

carbon steel instrumentation. You can over-instrument teeth. You can gouge them. I'm glad you think it feels good because most people don't. I don't think it feels good. Oh, okay, good. No, I mean afterwards. Afterwards, yeah. You think it feels, yeah, your breath. I mean, there are some patients that love cleanings, but I would do it based on need. And again, you don't, I mean, if you're going in to have your teeth whitened, not with a whitening gel, but by using that profi cup with the pumice, trying not to use fluoride, that will lighten your teeth. That will get rid of stains.

So I would just go in for that. And most dentists will look at you and go, well, you need the cleaning. No, you don't. You can just get the Proficup and just pay a la carte for that. I mean, hygienists can stay a little late. It takes, what, five, 10 minutes. If the teeth feel like they need a cleaning, that's when you shouldn't just like, mine's just scheduled quarterly so that I remember to go. If you build a lot of tartar, perhaps, but that could be because you're mouth breathing at night, that builds up tartar. If you have tartar on your teeth, you should get rid of that.

But then you have to ask the question, why are you getting tartar on your teeth every three months? I mean, that would be important to find out. So it could be mouth breathing. It could be too much calcium in your diet. Yeah, I have no rhyme. I literally just go because I just said, hey, let's schedule this once a quarter.

He just likes being clean. Yeah, well, I would customize that based on need. Okay. It would save you time and money and you can over-instrument the teeth, certainly, especially with a good hygienist. I mean, they're good at what they do. We talked about high blood pressure,

poor oral hygiene or care. What other potential diseases do you see coming from poor care? Yeah, oral disease. Yeah. Well, Alzheimer's is the big one. I mean, and heart disease certainly, but we now have a, let me put it this way. In studies that I'm reading now, they are discussing a causal relationship and examining a causal relationship. In other words, a bug in the mouth that literally can be one of the factors in causing Alzheimer's. Inflammation of the brain, shrinkage of the brain, amyloid plaque formation.

I mean, that's not the cause of Alzheimer's, but it is seen with Alzheimer's. In the early days, we thought it was the cause, but we now know that when we see that amyloid plaque being laid down, you're on your way to getting Alzheimer's. So this P. gingivalis bug, which we all have in our mouth sitting in this room, the question is, is how out of control is it? And how is the oral microbiome modulating it and controlling it? And literally within six weeks, according to some studies, within six weeks, you can get a P. gingivalis bug into the brain via the bloodstream, past the blood-brain barrier. Again, it's a constant hit. It's a tighter level. It's a certain amount where the brain sees a certain amount. It's like, okay, enough of this. I am under attack. I need to fix this. And when the brain responds to the P. gingivalis bug,

it leads to, in the long term, it can lead to Alzheimer's. It's typically multifactorial. There are other reasons perhaps, but that's what these studies are discussing. So I think we're pretty close to having a causal connection between what happens in the mouth, what happens in the brain. You are a disruptor in your space. I have so much respect for you speaking out about all these things that a lot of dentists are probably afraid. Why did you decide to do this? What was the epiphany that made you say, fuck this, I'm over this, I'm going to just call it how it is?

It was a slow process. There was no tipping point, obviously. There were many, many times where I just was confronted with, this just doesn't make sense based on my training. Plus, I'm always very curious. When something's broken,

I take it apart and I try and fix it. I want to know what happened. Even if I don and fix it. I want to know what happened. Even if I don't fix it, I want to know what happened. So I think it's partly my personality, part of my training. Before dental school, I was a biochemistry major. Before that, I was reading books on longevity as a 17-year-old, trying to understand. I was taking supplements. I mean, kind of nerdy, right? But I

think it was really that connection to the patients and knowing that I could do more for them. And I mean, if they had high blood pressure and their medications kept going up, it's like, well, let's start taking away the mouthwash. And then slowly over time, they would have their medication. Sometimes they'd get off of it. Those are great things you can do for your patients. I feel like you and Peter Attia should meet and do like a longevity book on oral health. I would love to meet Peter Attia. He's amazing. That is like, I feel like you guys would just jive. He's very analytical. I love his approach. Yeah. And he conveys it very, very well. And he mentioned oral health and disease in his mouth. Yeah. In his book. That's cool. In his book.

Why do you think people in your field and maybe in the medical, and again, like anytime we do episodes on this where people are maybe pushing against the common narrative, there's people in the medical field that are sometimes offended, right? Because they've gone and they've learned this particular approach and then you're saying something counter why do you think so many people in that field are resistant to new information or counter information because i think anyone that's in the medical field dental medical there's a very scientific you know application to all this stuff and you would assume that new data means looking at something from a new perspective but there's's a huge resistance. And we saw this over the last few years, definitely in multiple areas. Right. I mean, we pride ourselves as being

evidence-based and we do always go to the data and studies. Problem is, is that when you become a practitioner, you're kind of out of that. You go from the academic world and then you start practicing, you want to pay off your debt, you want to learn, you learn a lot from your patients. I love that clinical experience and there's continuing education after the fact. But somehow what is being talked about, like a good example would be the stuff that I talked about, about that connection between a bug in the mouth and Alzheimer's that's being discussed now, but there's a typically a 15 to 20 year delay, maybe 15 to 10 year delay by the time it trickles down to a clinical practice. Is it like a stay in your lane thing? It's stay in your lane,

but it's also a head in the sand and also clinicians i'm speaking for dentists but i know that medical doctors are the same i mean there are all sorts of issues by the way physicians have a higher suicide rate than than dentists so it's it's a tough job and you're just trying to stay afloat make some money please your patients keep the insurance companies happy don't get sued right, right? I mean, and in dentistry, you own your own business. That's a lot to take on as well. I mean, and there's a lot of equipment and capital expenditures and all of that. So I think part of it is just hard to, you just don't have the time to do that. I always did it because I was nerdy and loved that kind of stuff.

It was a carryover from what I was doing before dental school. I was influenced by Mark Hyman, that whole functional approach. That's wonderful. That made sense to me. But not every practitioner will do it. It's a great question. And there is a big disconnect between what we know now and what is actually being practiced.

That we know. And there's lots of explanations for that as well. Yeah, because, and I want to say this, I think most people, including yourself, that get into these fields where you're working with people and trying to help people, they do it for a good reason, right? They are like for, you know, with high intention. Right. But, and I think that there, it's unfair, especially for the last few years to assume that people have malintent, right? But I, but I think, I don't know if it's an insurance thing or a money thing or. It partly

is. That's part of it. Or people- Because you know what the insurance will pay for, so you bill for it. The other thing is, what you just said reminded me of this, is that as clinicians, we get into this rut and we know what we can do well that works well for the patient and we keep doing it over and over and over. And then if something else comes down, like a new technique, especially if you're doing surgeries all day long, which is what a dentist does essentially, then you have to

relearn something. If it's a new material, for example, a safer composite, it's going to handle differently. So there's a little anxiety there. And the first question, obviously, usually from office managers, can we bill for it? I mean, this is a business. Healthcare is a business, unfortunately. You know, it's funny you were talking about like, basically you become a, you go from academia to actually a practitioner. And I think it's the same thing. Like anybody could get a business degree, but it's a much different thing actually running a business, right? Completely. And I was, I was thinking about that as you were talking, but it in, in the quote unquote business world as an entrepreneur, when we find new information

or see a new tool, people are quick, they're fast to jump on it because it accelerates potentially what you're doing or it maybe gets rid of something that's no longer working. But I feel like in the medical field, things move so slow for whatever reason. We get a little bit of new data, but then things don't actually start to happen. It does. It's very slow. Yeah. And that's part of what I speak to with my directory, with our directory of functional dentists. There are about 300. This is a way to differentiate yourself.

Be a functional dentist. Find out, you know, connect all the dots in healthcare as a dentist. Work upstream of the issue that you're seeing, the symptomology. Don't just treat the symptoms. Find out what caused the symptoms. That makes for a more loyal patient and people want to seek you out. And I mean, what's happened in medicine is now happening in dentistry. It's being taken over by corporations, private equity, and so the dentist isn't their own boss anymore. And so it's going to be hard on a sole proprietor in dentistry. Medicine,

it's too far gone. It's all under one big healthcare for nonprofit sometimes, for non-profit kind of health organizations. But the quality has gone down. So seek someone out that has that functional approach because you're going to get more for your money and they're not influenced by the big corporations and they're going to drill, bill, and fill. I mean, that's what they're going to get more for your money and they're not influenced by the big corporations and they're going to drill, bill and fill. I mean, that's what they're going to do. One thing that I didn't know was non-toxic when I switched my whole household to a non-toxic household was pans. I literally didn't know that pans could have a bunch of toxic materials like PFSA, PTFE, PFOA, or all those other hard to pronounce chemicals. But I learned through a podcast episode, I think it was Max Lugavere, that there is a lot of chemicals in cookware.

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I remember like saving up and booking my appointment to remove my wisdom teeth when I was like 18. What is your feeling on that? Well, you were told that and it wasn't a lie. I mean, we are different than our ancestors in terms of facial shape and width. And our ancestors didn't need that. Obviously, they didn't have surgeons that could take out wisdom teeth. But that wasn't a lie. I mean, leaving them in would have been a problem. Oh.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, they would have impacted. They would have become infected. You would have gotten cavities on them in weird places. It could have taken you out. I mean, most soldiers before they go into the army, they have their wisdom teeth removed because on the front line, that can take you down. Our jaws are too small. We don't have room for the same number of teeth that keep coming in.

And that hasn't changed, but the jaw size has. So that was not misinformation and typically most people now it was a little bit of a rubber stamp but 99 of people today need to have their wisdom teeth taken out and those are the last teeth that come in and when they come in there's no space you can literally see it you see that second molar pop in and then you look behind it and then the the on the lower jaw you see it starts ascending already you need you need a little pad back there, that third molar to come in. There isn't one. And then the reason we do it prophylactically at a certain age, and I would argue that it could be done younger. The reason we do it then is

because if you have your wisdom teeth taken out at age 40 or 50 or 60, or even later, the sequelae, the side effects are much worse and you don't heal as well. Hasn't the damage kind of already been done by then if you wait that long? Oh, yeah. But some people stick through it, you know, and some people get crowns on their wisdom teeth and have the teeth filled. But you're right. Most of the damage has been done.

You're going to start getting bone loss on the back end of your second molar and you want to keep that. You're going to get gum disease around that tooth. And then if gum disease starts around, it depends on whether the wisdom tooth erupts or not. If it erupts, the tissue around it is going to get very inflamed and then that little niche biome in there is going to spread to the rest of the mouth.

Braces, retainer, Invisalign. What's your vibes on all those? We all need it. Why? You love all those things. Well, I don't love it. It's just necessary. I mean, I would rather not do it. The best dentistry is no dentistry, clearly.

Right. And I love Invisalign. Great, great invention. Wonderful. Braces sometimes are necessary. You can't always do Invisalign. But why are we doing this? Because our faces are small. They didn't develop to their full width and size. And again, the same number of teeth come in. If we were truly evolving in a proper way, we would be getting smaller faces with fewer teeth and they all come in straight. Well, no, we're dis-evolving or de-evolving. The face isn't growing properly and the same number of teeth come in. And that's why we have crowding. That's why we have narrow jaws, small airways. So do you think that's because of mouth breathing, not eating enough chewy food?

Like what are all the things that contribute to us not evolving with our jaw? Right. That's part of it. It's also tongue ties, midline defects. It can be breastfeeding. It's kind of taken a second seat there. I hate mentioning that because. No, go for it.

Well, it's, you know, I'm a guy and I hate putting pressure on women. I mean, my wife was a working woman and we had three kids and it was tough. And my daughter, for example, had a tough time breastfeeding. And that's another thing that's probably de-evolving as well. We're just not good at it anymore. But that has a lot to do with the development of the face. That motion of pulling and flattening mom's nipple and expressing the milk, that is fantastic for facial development. Also tongue position and that

bone, this art-shaped bone down here, all of that is so important. But also chemicals in environment, allergies, air pollution, all these things are tied to improper facial development, but chewing certainly. If you have a kid or you're an adult and you're not happy with the way your jaw looks, what is it called? It's called a myofascial. What is it called? It's like a doctor. Yeah, myofunctional therapist. I would start there before you start looking at expansion.

We have devices that we can expand the jaw typically better if it's done before age six or seven. 90% of this development is done by seven or eight years old. So the time to do it is when your children are young. So what this therapist does is teaches your child proper tongue posture. More than that, but that's part of it. What else do they do? Swallow reflexes, patterns.

They look for certain things. There's a TikToker now that tells you where to put your tongue so you have a good profile shot. I mean, a lot of that is true. I'm a mewer.

Yeah. Okay. Mewing's fine. Huge fan of mewing. I mew in photos. I mew, and I also just learned that when you mew and you put your tongue straight up

against the top of your mouth you also want to swallow it's hard to do for sucking on a tit yep because the swallowing seals it i'm obsessed with mewing right it works i mean it unfortunately mewing has gotten this reputation like oil pulling where it fixes everything. It doesn't. But mewing, it's named after Dr. Mew in England, and he's a very progressive orthodontist. I think he started the whole orthotropic movement. And so mewing is a thing. I mean, it's all about tongue position. But the myofunctional therapist, a lot of kids grow up and they can't swallow properly and they learn something different. And because the tongue isn't doing

what it's supposed to be doing in terms of movement, then it's not shaping the lower face. The tongue is supposed to be going up and bulging out and forwards. And from the inside out, from the inside out, that's how our lower face gets shaped. And if that doesn't get shaped properly, then the airway behind it and the airway above it don't reach their full potential either. Can you correct it before seven? Yes. You can correct it.

Yes. So like with me, I had double jaw surgery and they broke my entire upper and lower jaw. And not only that, they had to widen the top, the, what is it called? The palate? The maxilla or the palate, right? Yeah. They had to widen the top, the, what is it called? The palate?

The maxilla or the palate, right? Yeah. They had to widen that and it was a fucking nightmare. And to be brutal. It is very brutal. It was so brutal because you, I, I'm so glad I did it now, but I had a full blown identity

crisis because you blow up, you look different. How old were you? I was. She's 18. Oh, older was older no i was like 25 and it was when i had started my blog and it was in front of all these people and people were saying that like i got all this plastic surgery done and it wasn't it was for that my jaw was crooked it was like it was just a nightmare i mean you could see yeah like and she's posted about it and you can see but a lot of people they will look unless she's been open about surgeries too, but that was a huge change.

Even when I go back and look at pictures now, I'm like, it's weird. It looks like I'm looking at a different person. I have screws all over my face. It was a different you and it's not plastic surgery. You probably now look like you were meant to look. Yeah, aligned. Based, yeah, exactly. Well, not only aligned, but width and shape and all that, because that's how, that's your genetic

potential. That's where your genes would have put you if you had developed correctly. And I don't know what, why the reasons, you know, I mean, what are the root causes in your case? I think maybe. Were you breastfed? Yes. Okay.

I was breastfed. I think maybe genetics. I also think mouth breathing. I think. Definitely mouth breathing. Huge, the gnarliest thing you've ever heard teeth grinding like no one would be a big snore huge snore huge snore like my jaw was crooked always clicking like tmj just every single thing that could go wrong

and i think the dentist tried with braces and this and that but it just got to the point where it was unbearable right and i'm glad i did the surgery. The surgery, I mean, if it works, it's great. And now we would intervene at an early age and just do expansion, which means no surgery. And that also works as well. But you were grinding your teeth because you were struggling for air at night. That's called sleep bruxism. That's a new term in dentistry. We used to just call it bruxism or grinding. But now we know that the etiology is probably because your mouth is open and your airway is constricted and you have apneas. You're waking up. And it's that moment of grinding and bruxing, perhaps, that saves you, that gives you tone in your airway muscles.

And so you were mouth breathing. That's why you developed the way you did. And it's interesting because I wear my mouth tape every night, but the one night I didn't wear it, Michael said you were grinding all night. Oh, grinding. Yeah, grinding all night. And he said all you were doing was grinding and it's because I wasn't wearing my mouth tape. Interesting. The mouth tape has just been so supportive for the surgery that I got. I just can't shut up about it to everyone I know because it's really changed my life. Well, keep talking about it because it really works. And if you can't mouth tape, then obviously you have to go see an ENT. A lot of people say, well, it doesn't work.

So, well, that tells you something. It means you can't nose breathe. Right. Right. You were talking a minute ago, and I think, and I would preface, what we try to do on this show is to extract as much real information as we can from people. And I think we live in a weird time now, especially with the internet, where people feel like even if it's the right information, if it's uncomfortable or they hear something they don't like, or if it maybe goes against the standard. For example, in your field, I would say you're an expert, right? And for you to feel hesitant, and I'm not saying you do to talk about proper

tongue posture or facial structure development because of women breastfeeding i think that's part of the problem in the society we live in it's like that may make some people uncomfortable including women and men but if it's true information i think what we try to do here is present it now people don't have to take it and use it. But I think we get into a very dicey place when people feel scared to actually voice truthful things. Or their opinion. Or their opinion because of how it makes people feel online. If you're feeling a certain way, you're upset about something, you have to do some inner

work and say, why is that upsetting me? You can't be in a position where you just block out noise you don't like. Right? Does that make sense? It's a great point because we are always the bearers of bad news and frankly, we get tired of doing that. So if we think it can slide, we're going to let it slide perhaps.

That's why I like mouth taping. Instead of me telling the patient, you can't breathe through your nose, this is what it's going to lead to, especially with children, moms with their children, go home, mouth tape, and then they come back and they're like, gosh, it worked out the way you did or said it would or it didn't. And what does that mean? And make them part of the process. And the other problem, based on what you just asked, we don't have time. We don't have time,

especially physicians. They've got their 15 minutes and we only pick on the big subjects and we don't get into the weeds with all the detail. And that's why, based on what you asked a while ago, you have to know what to ask and what to be aware of. Come in with a list of questions. You have to be well-informed as a patient. This is why we do this podcast, though, because now everyone who's listening can have their list of questions that they find applicable to their own life, to their kids. Maybe they don't like one tip. They throw that away. They can do their curated list that they like, and they can take it to their dentist, whether they're in Ohio

or France or Florida, and they can have information as a patient. But there's, you know, and I'm not calling any individual out, but there's practitioners out there in all fields that instead of delivering the hard news even if it's truthful would rather make somebody feel good and i think that that puts people in a very disadvantageous place in their life later when they haven't taken care of it it's like if you came to me when i did a podcast on this and you were asking me about financial literacy and i looked at you and said listen you're spending too much and you can't afford your lifestyle and you need to change things right they'll find someone else and you're upset yeah but you're upset with me for telling you that even though it's the truth i can't be worried like

i have to still give you the correct information does that make sense yeah or you know if you're metabolically out of shape right and you're not taking care of your body just talked about this where you're eating poorly eating poorly and you know And I know what's going to happen to you if you continue on the path. I understand it may not make you feel good if I say get your ass to the gym and shut your mouth a little bit. But you still need to be able to say it.

If you get upset at any information that's given, what I would do is I would say, why is this making me upset? If someone on the internet calls you something and it strikes a chord with you right and you can't stop thinking about it there's something about something they said internally that's making you upset for a reason so maybe start to like examine what that is right how many people actually do that though well we're hoping i don't know i don't know i mean it's the

right thing to do you know you, you should never, whatever someone says to you, you should always listen to it and, and, you know, don't discount it right away. Um, and in dentistry where we always tell people, you know, they come in, they get cavities all the time. And we always tell them the same thing. You know, you're just not brushing enough. It's kind of like a shaming. We'd rather shame you than tell you what's the root cause. Maybe it's something you're a diet or, I mean, it something in your diet. There's a lot going on there, that relationship between patient and provider. And it's not all good. And technically, by not saying something, even though it may be lower on the scale in terms of priority,

that technically is malpractice. I also, and this is just maybe for the content creators out there aspiring content creators, I think it's a lazy practice when you only share opinions or have people on the show or do content with people that agree with your perspective. Yeah. Right? Because then you're just living in a bubble, right? You're just living in a certain bias.

And I think what we try to do here is we may have people on that we completely disagree with, but I need to understand why they came to that perspective so that I can either reinforce my position or change it. Does that make sense? Oh, absolutely. Otherwise, it's just politics where everyone's agreeing with each other. Dr. Mark, what do you think about veneers? Porcelain veneers or composite veneers? Talk to us about both.

Well, porcelain veneers are a more permanent product. It's an indirect method. In other words, you have to come back for them. They're made in the lab. They are by far better than a composite veneer. But there are a lot of cases where you just need to do one veneer or you have to do it in a hurry, like before a wedding or a TV show or something, which I was faced with a lot of the time. And that works well, but it's a lot more difficult to do. So you can walk out with a composite veneer. It's made out of plastic filling material. They don't last as long. They will discolor. Porcelain veneers are absolutely

outrageously beautiful and fantastic, but they are being oversold, unfortunately. If you need them, so I would never bring it up same thing with whitening i would never bring up whitening a lot of dentists will say you should whiten your teeth they're quite yellow or you know what you know you've got good teeth but you could have a brighter smile or maybe you've got a worn smile you want to you want to have teeth you know you're 60 years old but you want your teeth to look like you're 20 years old that's a big jump that's a personal decision but i have a lot of patients that were disfigured. Tetracycline staining.

I would not do porcelain veneers if you had a lot of crowding. Get the expansion first. Fix the root cause of why they're crowded. And then do the porcelain veneers if required. Because you don't want that narrow pathway with the veneers. Well, you're cutting a lot more tooth structure off to get rid of the spacing issues. Got it.

In certain areas. You would say do the Invisalign or straightening or spacing, whatever before you consider that. And then that affects the bond because the bond to enamel is better than to Denton, but you're cutting into Denton and the veneer will fall off. Usually it's at a party or at a wedding. So veneers are fantastic. I think it's a great thing that dentists are able to, I mean, it's your self-esteem. There's so many people out there that really will not smile. You know't. It's too unsightly. And it's something out of their control. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe it was domestic abuse. I mean, these are terrible

stories that I can tell you. I had a patient early on in my career, wonderful man. He was in sales, very well-dressed. Everything was perfect. Eyebrows, you name it. Down to the last detail. Skin, San Francisco. But he had tetracycline staining. Every time he smiled, he was given tetracycline for earaches and acne. It's a medication. It's an antibiotic.

And we now know better that if you shouldn't give it, it's malpractice to give. Although in countries outside of the U. US, it's still being given. I had a lot of patients from Asia that came for cosmetic care and they were being given tetracycline and it disfigures your teeth. It's literally, you know what a good and plenty looks like with the banding and your teeth look like good and plenty, but they're yellow and brown and they have stripes, white, orange, brown, rust. I mean, it's horrible.

And so he just wouldn't smile and he was in sales. So that's a perfect candidate for cosmetic work and get everything else taken care of, fix all the cavities, make sure there's no gum disease, make sure they know what they're getting into, make sure that they know that veneers are expensive, obviously a treatment plan, but also that they need to be replaced, that you are married to this restoration and that every 20 years, if you're lucky, if it's well done, you will need to have them replaced. The technology will get better. And then the whole process of making them look like what I think they should look like. And then sometimes the patient wants to influence you and will make bad decisions. You don't want to look like the chicklets gum.

Well, exactly. And then you need a good lab. And so it's a long process, but typically that doesn't get done. If you go to a real good cosmetic dentist, they're going to do that. They're going to show you pictures. They're going to send you home with Vogue magazines with great closeups of teeth, and they're going to want to see what you want. And then they're going to convince you of what looks good with your face.

Certain facial types have certain kind of teeth. And so I think it's a great thing. That gentleman, I mean, to finish that story, we finished the case. It takes a lot of time. It's expensive. We gave him the mirror when we were finished. He started crying. Aw.

And we thought, oh, God. And he was so happy. He was so happy. He booked a flight the next week home. It was Oklahoma. And showed his mom. And his mom cried. He booked a flight the next week home. It was Oklahoma and showed his mom and his mom cried. I mean, and she felt guilty because she took him to the doctor. I gave him the tetracycline.

So, so there are places where this is a very good thing and it's a wonderful, amazing thing. I call that dentistry 2.0. It's kind of dentistry 1.0. Couldn't fix that. Dentistry 2.0 has Invisalign. They've got veneers.

We have fantastic ways to fix things, expand jaws, fix airways, and all of that. So it's a good thing. You just have to know what you're getting into. All your products are safe. No one has to worry about anything. Can adults use the kids? Absolutely. Adults can use the kids.

You just gave Zaza vanilla vibes. Your brand is called Fig. Feed your good guys. Exactly. It's so cute. Thank you. And my question is, when are you launching floss? Because we just found out floss has tons of chemicals in it.

PFAS, right. Not all flosses. The slippery stuff that you can get in between your teeth better. And a lot of people don't like to floss. It's very difficult. It's painful. And so the Teflon floss, essentially that's what it is. That's been around for a long time.

There is 100% silk that is available. That's probably where we'll go with our brand, but you can get those right now. We have them on our page. We have a store on our page. I feel like it feels pretty rich to floss with silk. Silk. Yeah. I mean, it's great. It's biodegradable and that's good. Think of all the floss that's ending up in the landfill and toothbrushes and all that. So, but, but it's really important to their most oral healthcare products are doing the exact opposite of what you need and what you want. And again, corporate world, they sell us what we feel we want,

but not what we truly need. That's how it works. I got my blood tested, you guys, and there was high triclosan in it. And one of the things they told me is I need to check my toothpaste. So I think that if you have kids or you are wanting to upgrade your oral health,

I feel really good about recommending your brand. I feel really good about the toothpaste and the toothbrush. I'm going to actually give it to both of my kids and I'm going to take, I'm going to take the test, the microbiome test. Oral microbiome testing. Very important. First time we're really able to do it properly. A shotgun metagenomic approach.

It's checking all the other tests, check for five or six big players. This checks for all 700, 800, how many of our bugs we've got in our mouth, all the different types of bugs. Can we do it right now? You could. Okay. Yeah. Him and I are going to do it afterwards. Absolutely. Where can everyone find you? Is there a code for the audience? I didn't ask you this. Is that okay? I will get you a code. Okay. Can we do code skinny? I love it. Skinny for 15% off? Skinny for 15% off. Yes. What's the website? Website is askthedentist.com and we will provide a code skinny 15. Sounds great. Let's get everyone tested. You really shouldn't be getting any major dental care, especially in

periodontal health, gum disease, deep cleanings, gum surgery, unless you know the status of your oral microbiome. That is what's causing the problem. Find out what kind of bugs are causing the problem and try and make changes before that. Again, root cause approach. A lot of people are running around with these bugs, even at elevated levels, like for bad breath, but they aren't exhibiting the symptoms yet. Why not find that out before you get bad breath or gum disease?

That's what good high resolution oral microbiome testing. I mean, medicine has testing. Dentistry now has testing. We can quantify your oral microbiome. I'm getting my microbiome in my mouth tested. I would highly recommend going to check out their vanilla vibes, toothpaste, and their chocolate swirl. Obsessed with what you're doing. Askthedentist.com and askthedentist on Instagram. Thank you, Dr. Mark, for coming on. I learned so much. I have a page of notes. Thank you. Thanks for your interest in oral health. Thank you for coming on. Thank you.