Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to Live Well Be Well, a show to help high performers
improve their health and well-being.
I've heard a lot about like a morning routine of like swirling
water around your mouth. Is that a good trick?
And do we do it with mouthwash? Do we do it with just warm
(00:21):
water? And you know, I said to you
before the show when we were talking in the newsletter,
Compassionate Cure, I used to always buy mouthwash, used to
like, burn my mouth because I'd be like, it's great.
It's going to like, kill everything in my mouth.
I'm going to have really hot, fresh breath.
And then I read your book and thought, oh, I've just killed
everything. I'm not actually doing a very
good. I'm not actually doing something
(00:42):
very good. So let's talk about that.
Are we meant to have a morning routine of swishing water around
or mouthwash around? And how should we be looking at
what mouthwashes to buy? Yeah.
So we always want to try and be as gentle as possible.
And so if something says kills 99.9% of bacteria, that's not
good because the good, and I didthis, I told you as well, like
(01:02):
we would make our mouthwash extra concentrated so that it
would burn, but the commensal bacteria or the beneficial
bacteria of our mouth are actually easier to kill than the
bad pathogens. FN is really, really difficult
to treat for example. And so when you put harsh
chemical in your mouth, you're going to kill off the good stuff
1st and then you'll kill off thebad stuff.
And if anything survives, it's going to be the bad.
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And so you want to try and avoidthings like killing off 99.9% of
the bacteria unless you do have a dysbiosis that has been
diagnosed properly with a salivatest.
Then we may purge your microbiome for a couple weeks
and try and wipe it all out and then start again by rebuilding
it with what should be there. But on average, no, don't kill
it off during the day. In terms of is mouthwash
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beneficial? So you know, I would say it's,
it's not going to be the thing that gives you a robust
microbiome unless again, we're trying to correct something that
is wrong. So swishing with water is great
for sure. What that's going to do is just
kind of break up any last piecesof plaque or debris that's in
there and then you can spit it out in the sink.
(02:07):
I like to freshen breath with mouthwash.
So I'll use super gentle, non-toxic mouthwashes at the end
of my morning routine just to kind of give me that extra bit
of freshness after doing everything.
And then I can kind of spit out any, any free floating black
bacteria or plaque that are there.
But no, mouthwashes do not make or break your oral health unless
you're rinsing with scope or alcohol Listerine.
(02:31):
I also want to mention that, yeah, I'm glad that you
mentioned that, but I didn't want to say, I wasn't sure
whether I was going to mention abrand, but you said obviously
natural. But then I also read that
essential oils can disrupt your or microbiomes.
I think we have to like distinguish like what is natural
here because people will say, oh, this is full of essential
oils, it's all natural. It's like got no fluoride in
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which is nothing I want to talk to you about and then you're
telling me in the book that thatalso disrupts the microbiome.
So what, like what is what should we be looking at when
we're making these choices of toothpaste and and mouthwash?
Like what are the products? Yeah, and there are, you know,
I, I'm pretty sure, but I'm pretty sure scope does.
But Listerine for example, makesa, a non alcoholic mouthwash.
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So even they're getting more on on the scope of alcohol free
now, but they do have other harmful chemicals that I'd be
leery of. Yes, there are certain essential
oils that can disrupt the oral microbiome.
For example, tea tree oil is a really good antimicrobial
essential oil and a lot of people will rinse with tea tree
oil. But again, you have to be really
(03:34):
careful with that because that can disrupt the oral microbiome.
So I would, you know, it's OK touse essential oils if you want
to like freshen breath, for example, but I would stay away
from anything that is consideredantimicrobial or antibacterial
essential oils. And so that's why a lot of
people just choose to rinse withwater now and not rinse with
anything else. Another big one is coconut oil.
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A lot of people want to do oil pulling.
You know, I always tell people like if you are wanting to oil
pull to do it effectively, you really have to swish this around
for about 15 minutes to get the effects of this.
I can't even get people to brushand floss twice a day for two
minutes each. So I'm like, let's forget about
the oil pulling and just do the basics right.
(04:19):
There are some antimicrobial effects of, of oil pulling.
There's anti-inflammatory effects.
There's, you know, really good fats that are in there that are
great for our oral health. It's a really great lubricant.
It can disrupt some of the bonding of restorations.
So you got to be careful if you have a lot of fillings in your
mouth because it can't affect that.
But that is not that shouldn't be your go to thing for for
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improving your oral health, right?
Like do everything else first. 1billion people worldwide are
deficient in this nutrient that so many of you guys might not be
aware of. And women, if you're listening,
you are more at risk of being deficient in this nutrient.
So I'm going to first of all explain what the physical
symptoms are. If you have cold hands and feet,
(05:04):
pale skin, extreme lack of energy or fatigue then you might
be suffering with iron deficiency or anemia.
Now First off, please go to yourGP to get your iron levels
checked. Secondly, please explore a good
iron supplement. Many people that come to me are
worried about taking iron supplementation because it can
(05:25):
cause Constipation or GI distress.
That's why I'm so incredibly proud to be partnering for this
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(05:46):
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It's just one naturally sourced ingredient that works very well.
You can pick it up in Boots or buy online at Amazon.
But please do not ignore this. It is really critical to make
sure your iron levels are in check.
So what about fluoride? Because there's this huge kind
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of conversation around fluoride.The fluoride is good, fluoride
is bad. It's now being put into
obviously tap water to help withreducing tooth decay.
And there's a lot of uproar about these things like when
we're looking at a toothpaste, my, my dentist will always say
use pro enamel toothpaste, use like Sensodyne.
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These type of things are very good for you.
How? And then other people say, no,
use fully natural toothpaste that's not got any fluoride in.
Where should we be looking at when we come to toothpaste and
products that we're buying for our for our teeth?
This is a really big topic of conversation in the US right
now. I just came across something
saying that Utah is, I think it's Utah is pulling fluoride
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from their top water. You know, the EPA has come out,
you know, basically saying that there's been studies showing
that fluoride exposure lowers IQand children.
So it's, it's really a hot topic.
And, and what I what I will say is that now we have some
alternatives to fluoride that are safer or that we think are
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safer from based on the researchthat we have.
And so people can use things like arginine.
Arginine is a really potent desensitizing agent and it also
is really good for killing the bacteria in the mouth that cause
cavity. So if you look at your sensodyne
or pronamol, often times they'llhave really high levels of
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arginine in them. So arginine is great if you're
trying to reduce sensitivity or prevent cavities.
Another really good compound that you can look for is
nanohydroxyapatite. It needs to be nano because if
you just use regular hydroxy appetite, those particles are
too big to incorporate into the enamel to try and re mineralize
lesions. So in NASA, for example, NASA
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was who helped develop the nano hydroxy appetite compounds to
help keep their astronauts safe in space.
So it's good enough for NASA, it's good enough for me.
So toothpaste that have nanohydroxyapatite are going to
be great, as well as arginine. You know, I think the key thing
here is we need to prevent decayand disease because once decay
passes through the enamel and gets into the second layer of
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tooth structure, which is dentin, dentin is alive and
dentin is connected directly to the pulp of our tooth, which is
where the blood vessel and nerves are.
And once it gets to dentin, dentin is really soft and so it
can progress very rapidly and get an infect the the life force
of the tooth, which is the pulp.And then that's when we get
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things like tooth infections andabscesses.
And so that is much worse for our health than using a little
bit of fluoride in toothpaste. So while there are better
products on the market and I would recommend them, I
certainly would never tell a patient that has rampant decay
or is high risk for cavities or who has fillings on every tooth
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like you should go fluoride free, right?
Because they are such high risk factors for having a systemic
component to dental infection that I would say we need to fix
your diet. We got to fix your lifestyle,
your, your oral hygiene habits. We got to fix this decay.
You know, let's get everything rebalanced and then we can talk
about, you know, going fluoride free.
So I think the conversation is too focused on one thing and
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we're not really looking holistically at the issue.
And but yes, there are safer alternatives out there, but you
got to look at the patient. But I also think there's another
area of toothpaste that we've not mentioned, which is
whitening toothpaste, where I think there was a huge craze at
one point where everyone was getting whitening toothpaste
because obviously everybody wants whiter teeth.
And you wrote in your book, titanium dioxide is in many
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toothpaste brands, which is mostly ones that have like the
whitening in. Is that bad?
Should we stay away from anything that's like severely
trying to whiten our teeth? Is that going to like disrupt a
microbiome? It can disrupt the microbiome.
Often times what it is, is it's really abrasive to the teeth.
And so people will say, I have really sensitive teeth and I'll
say, well, what toothpaste are you using?
(10:05):
And they say that they use the whitening toothpaste.
Well, those whitening toothpasteare just full of really abrasive
of like titanium dioxide particles in there that as
you're brushing, it's actually removing portions of your
enamel. And when you remove your enamel,
your enamel is like a helmet to your tooth.
It's, it's a really hard innate structure.
It's harder than our bones actually, which is, which is
(10:26):
interesting because people will say, oh, I broke a tooth and
they act like it's no big deal. And I'm like, your teeth are the
hardest substance in your body. If you're breaking your teeth,
like your bones would be crushed, you know, let's back up
and talk about that. But that's a whole another whole
other thing. But yes, it can just, I am and
it can also cause tooth sensitivity.
So, but you also need to look at, you know, it kind of depends
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because if your teeth are dark because you're drinking coffee
or tea or whatever, OK, sure, that's an appropriate time to
use that. But other people will have lost
enamel on their teeth because ofaging or erosion or something
like that. Once you lose your enamel, your
enamel is the only thing that can whiten.
So if you've lost the name on your teeth, the dentin, which is
more Gray and yellow, shows through.
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So the thinner your enamel gets,the more Gray and yellow your
teeth look. That will never whiten.
So if you're using a whitened toothpaste to whiten thin enamel
teeth or grayish teeth, Gray teeth won't won't whiten.
Thanks so much for listening to hear the full episode.
There's a link in the description.