June 26, 2025 • 45 mins
You’ve addressed your gut from every angle including diet, lifestyle & supplement protocols...but the bloating, constipation, or fatigue won’t budge. What if the root cause is actually in your mouth?
In this episode, I’m joined by biological dentist Dr. Michelle Jorgenson to unpack the powerful connection between oral health and gut health. From cavities as a sign of mineral depletion to the impact of mercury fillings, we explore how your dental history might be the reason your gut still isn’t healing.
We’re covering:
- How gum disease, mouth breathing, and dry mouth disrupt digestion
- The link between oral infections and gut dysbiosis (including H. pylori)
- Why you can’t have a healthy gut with an unhealthy mouth
- What cavities may reveal about nutrient absorption and mineral status
- The biggest mistakes people make with oral hygiene—and what to use instead
- How to evaluate whether your root canal or fillings are affecting your health
Mentioned in this episode:
→ Shop for Dr. Michelle Jorgenson’s products and book (use drfinley at checkout for 10% off)
→ IAOMT Safe Mercury Removal Directory: www.iaomt.org
Connect with Dr. Heather Finley
→ Follow Dr. Heather Instagram: @drheatherfinley
→ Ready to get to the root of your GI issues for good? Apply for gutTogether® here
Connect with Dr. Michelle Jorgenson:
Website: Living Well with Dr. Michelle
Instagram: @livingwellwithdrmichelle
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr. Heather Finley (00:03):
Welcome to the Love Your Gut Podcast.
I'm your host, Dr.
Heather Finley, registereddietitian and gut health
specialist.
I understand the frustration ofdealing with GI issues because
I've been there and I spent overtwo decades searching for
answers for my own gut issues ofconstipation, bloating, and
stomach pain.
I've dedicated my life tounderstanding and solving my own
(00:24):
gut issues.
And now I'm here to guide you.
On this podcast, I'll help youidentify the true root causes of
your discomfort.
So you can finally ditch yoursymptoms for good.
My goal is to empower you withthe knowledge and tools you need
so that you can love your gutand it will love you right back.
So if you're ready to learn alot, gain a deeper understanding
(00:46):
of your gut and find lastingrelief.
You are in the right place.
Welcome to the love your gutpodcast.
Welcome back to the next episodeof the Love Your Gut podcast.
I am so glad to be here todaywith Michelle.
She is a dentist, and we'regoing to talk today about
something that you may not haveeven thought about, which is how
(01:08):
your mouth and your oral healthcan actually impact your.
Overall health, it's often ahuge missing piece that we see
with our clients.
And so when Michelle reachedout, I was really excited to
have her on the podcast.
So Michelle, welcome to theshow.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (01:24):
Thank you.
I'm excited to talk.
There's a lot of things I thinkwe're gonna be able to talk
about today.
I.
Dr. Heather Finley (01:28):
Yes, there are a lot of things.
So why don't you just give uskind of the lay of the land a
little bit.
Tell us a little bit about whoyou are, why you do what you do,
why you're passionate aboutthis, and then I have tons of
questions for you that I knoweveryone will be excited to
hear.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (01:45):
You know, and I always really like
to start about out with why am Ihere and what, who am I and why,
why am I even doing this?
And it is not an intentionalplace.
I did not intend to be where Iam at where I am today.
I am a, was am a generaldentist, continue to be, but uh,
was practicing as a generaldentist, was doing a lot of
cosmetic dentistry.
I was loving what I was doing.
My father was a dentist as well,and I just thought I would do it
(02:07):
forever.
He's in his mid seventies, he'sstill practicing, you know, I
just thought that this was mylife, but about a decade in, I
got really sick and it startedwith gut health problems and
trustingly enough.
Uh, you deal with a lot of thatand when you have gut health
issues.
You just do what everybody elsedoes, right?
You start changing your diet,you start throwing away all your
food.
You know, you just, we.
And so we started doing a lot ofthat and it helped some, but it
(02:30):
didn't help a lot.
And the other issues were, Icouldn't remember things
anymore.
And I've always had a good mememory.
I couldn't complete sentences.
I couldn't remember patients'names from room to room.
I mean, something was reallywrong.
And the big one was numbness.
I had just painful numbness downmy hands.
Arms.
I couldn't sleep at night.
I couldn't blow dry my hair.
And I was losing dexterity.
(02:50):
I wasn't able to hold myinstruments anymore.
So I actually put my practicefor sale because doctors
couldn't tell me what was wrong.
They all just said nothing'swrong.
You know, maybe you have someIBS, which I despise that
because I'm like, okay, great,thank you.
Now what?
You know, that does nothing forme to tell me I have irritable
bowel syndrome.
Thank you very much.
Um, so really they couldn'tgimme any help, any answers, and
(03:11):
I didn't know how I was gonnacontinue, but.
I was in my mid thirties, fouryoung kids.
This was our entire livelihood.
My husband worked for thepractice as well, so this was a
big deal.
And, um, started just lookingfor other options for work.
And I thought, well, I could bea nutritionist.
I've learned a lot about diet.
Now maybe I can help somebodyelse in another field with this.
(03:32):
And ran into another dentist whosaid, you know, actually you
have a lot of the same symptomsI had.
Have you ever looked intoMercury as potentially the
problem?
And I knew that silver fillingshad mercury in them.
We as dentists are all taughtthis in dental school.
First year of dental schoolwe're taught this.
Uh, but I said, well, I don'thave any filling.
In my mouth.
And you know, I've taughtthey're perfectly safe.
And he said, despite what you'vebeen told and despite the fact
(03:55):
that you don't have any, hesaid, first of all, it's not the
ones you have, it's the onesyou've been drilling out for the
last decade with no protection.
And he said, maybe you shouldjust get tested.
So I got tested, and that's whatit was.
Mercury poisonings poisoning offthe charts.
So all of a sudden, all of mysymptoms made sense because Ner
Mercury affects gut function.
Mercury affects brain function.
(04:16):
It's a neurologic toxin, andmercury affects.
Hands and nerves and all of theabove.
So the doctor said, well, ifyou're gonna get better, now
that we know what it is, ifyou're gonna get it out, you
can't keep putting it in.
And I was a cosmetic dentist.
I was drilling out all kinds offillings every single day.
'cause people didn't like theway they looked.
So he said, you gotta figureout, you're either gonna have to
give this all up or you have tofigure out how to do it safely.
(04:38):
I found an organization that hadprotocol for removing these
silver fillings in a way thatthat mercury wasn't released.
'cause that's what happens.
You drill on it.
The mercury that's in thosefillings, they're literally 50%
mercury.
The mercury that's in therereleased as a gas, it comes up
right into the dentist's head,but also the patient's head.
You know, that's getting thiswork done.
So I found out there wereprotocols to do this safely.
Started doing that.
(04:59):
Patients started noticing whenyou walk in and a gas mask into
their, their office, theirprocedure, they're saying, uh.
Okay, what's going on here?
Something's a little different.
So I would explain to them, andthey were always grateful that
maybe this was helpful for themtoo, you know, from a health
perspective.
And then they would startsharing this with friends or
family or doctors or people thatthey knew were kind of, you
(05:20):
know, looking for something likethis.
And that's how I learned.
A doctor would come to me andsay, well, have you heard about
the concern with root canals?
Or, what do you really knowabout fluoride?
You know, these are thequestions that they were asking
me.
I to all of them would say,well, I don't know anything.
All I know is what I was taughtin school.
And you know, there's somereally some really sacred cows
(05:40):
inside a dentistry.
You know that these are safe andthey always will be.
And we can't change our mind.
And even if research shows,anyway, I had to, I had to.
Be able to bend and say, allright, research is showing
differently and my ownexperience is showing me
differently.
So how does the mouth reallyimpact overall health?
And so that's where I am at now.
We have a multi-specialty,multi-doctor practice.
(06:00):
We get people from all over theworld coming to see us because
there's literally so muchconnection.
Research shows 60 to 80% ofchronic disease can start in
your mouth.
So that's where I'm at.
Why I'm here today is because ofsimply the place that I was
myself.
Dr. Heather Finley (06:15):
Wow, what an incredible story and how amazing
that it, like one conversationchanged everything and you were
about to sell your practice.
How long did it take you tostart feeling better once you
identified that Mercury was theissue?
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (06:31):
So I started having some incremental
improvement within, you know, afew months time, but I was about
eight years before I felt like Ihad my brain back.
I don't even know if I everreally completely be back to
what I was before, but there'ssome other really interesting
tie-ins about how.
Anyway, where, where elseMercury comes from that added to
that, I think it probablystarted even before I was a
(06:53):
dentist and uh, just was thiscumulative build.
So anytime you have cumulativetoxic buildup like that, it
doesn't just go away overnight.
Dr. Heather Finley (07:01):
No, it does not at all.
That, that's incredible.
So someone might be listening tothis.
Just completely shocked thinkingI had no idea that my oral
health impacted my overallhealth.
So let's focus on the gut sincemost people listening to this
have GI issues.
So can you just explain brieflyhow oral health affects gut
(07:24):
health and vice versa, and likewhat you tend to see in your
clients?
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (07:29):
Yeah, it's so interesting to me
because, you know, even back inthe early 19 hundreds.
Medicine started specializingand started breaking off into
little areas of expertise in theentire body.
And really what that's done isit's changed the way we all
think about ourselves.
You know, this body that wehouse, that we're live, that we
live inside of the mouth is partof the digestive tract.
(07:50):
Mouth is part of, yeah, it's,it's the first part, but we,
yeah, we call it oral health andgut health.
I'm like, it's the same thing.
It's the same.
It's an open tube off thebottom.
Yeah, exactly.
From the top.
Is the mouth going into theother end?
Is the outside going out?
You know, it's one big tube.
And it's interesting becauseI've heard this talked about,
and if you think about it, it'sactually open.
(08:11):
It's an opening in our body.
It's, you know, it's, it's anopening spot from the mouth all
the way down to the other end,and that that opening is cell
connected top to bottom.
So mouth health is the startingpoint of the digestive tract.
So there's all sorts of ways wecould go with this.
Number one, you know.
Infection in the mouth is goingto also contribute to gut
(08:32):
unhealthy, and I will tellpeople this all the time.
You simply cannot have a healthymouth with an unhealthy gut or
vice versa.
You can't have a healthy gutwith an unhealthy mouth because
it's all one and the same thing.
So if you have gum infection.
If you have a reinfected rootcanal tooth, which is silent,
you often don't know what'shappening.
If you have infection in the jawbone where you had a wisdom
(08:53):
tooth removed, if you have anyof those infections in the
mouth, you cannot have a healthygut no matter what.
The mouth is connected a hundredpercent.
And you mentioned before we evenwent on today, h pylori, they
found that h pylori, which isthe cause of, or the usual cause
of a lot of ulcers and issuesthat way.
Originates oftentimes in themouth.
(09:13):
Yeah.
So these bugs in the mouth arethere for a reason.
The mouth's actually a, it's apretty, um, it's a war zone
because if you think about it,everything that we put into the
body, nearly everything that weput into the body comes in
through the mouth, right.
Our food comes in through themouth.
Our air comes in through themouth, our water comes in
through the mouth.
Everything comes into the bodythrough the mouth.
(09:36):
So there has to be some prettyfierce warriors in that mouth to
be able to fight because there'salso bad things that come in
through the mouth, right.
There's bad bugs in all sorts ofthings, and air, water, food,
all of the above.
So there have to be some prettyintense bugs living in the mouth
to actually be able to defendus.
Well, sometimes those prettyintense bugs get outta control,
(09:56):
and then there, then there areones that we actually don't
want, and those will spreadelsewhere.
So if you have gut dysbiosis,gut problems with the biome and
the bugs living in your gut, youneed to look at your mouth.
Say, do I have something goingon there as well?
So that's the easiest most, youknow, the easiest to understand
connection is just the bacteria.
Dr. Heather Finley (10:16):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And what, obviously you swallowand then we're looking at
stomach acid and if someonedoesn't have enough stomach acid
and yes, it's, anything thatdoesn't get killed off ends up
in the gut, so.
Yep.
I think I read in your book yousaid the mouth is the mirror of
the body.
And Yeah, it's like it,everything is connected.
Like you said, the GI tractreally starts with your mouth
(10:40):
and your oral health, so.
What are some of the signs thenthat might indicate that the
mouth is the sign of some deepergut issues, maybe dysbiosis or
SIBO or h pylori, some of the,those are some of the top things
that we see.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (10:57):
Yeah.
I love this question becauseit's something that I talk about
every single day with patients.
Um, we were all told by our momsthat if we eat sugar or don't
brush our teeth, we're gonna getcavities.
Right?
Yeah.
That's true, but it's only atiny piece of the truth.
The mom didn't know everything.
Unfortunately, nobody's talkingabout this.
(11:18):
Hopefully now more moms aregonna find this out.
But if, if I see a patient andthey've had a clean mouth, I.
Nothing's really been going on.
In fact, I'll always remember, Isee patients like this all the
time, but I'll remember, Iremember this woman, her name
was Kim, and she was just themost diligent patient on the
planet.
You know, you know the type,they'll do every single thing
that we ask them to do no matterwhat.
(11:39):
So she came in every single,every six months on the dot,
like on the day she was thereevery six months, getting her
teeth cleaned, getting her teethexamined, all of the above.
She really didn't have tooth tocase she'd had someone, she was
younger, but we figured it wasprobably diet related.
Some other issues.
She hadn't had a cavity forforever.
Well, she came in at her sixmonth appointment and she had
four cavities all along the gumline, two molars on each side.
(12:02):
She started freaking out.
Of course.
Yeah.
And um, I just said, you havegut problems.
There's something going on inyour gut, you're not absorbing
food properly.
And she said, well, how theheck, how do you know that?
Well, the reason is because thebody is all connected head to
toe, and it needs a balance ofeverything.
And if gut function is not, Imean, this is your world.
(12:25):
If you have low stomach acid andyou're not ion ionizing minerals
properly, what happens is youthe minerals pass through and
don't stop on the way and go andtake care of the cells.
Well.
The brain needs certain amountof minerals.
The heart needs certain amountof minerals, and those are life
sustaining operations in thebody.
Life will not continue if yourheart doesn't continue working
(12:45):
and your brain doesn't continueworking well, guess what's not.
Life sustaining teeth.
So your body can actually livewithout teeth.
It can also live without bonesbecause teeth and bones are
comparable in this, in thisscenario.
But your, you can live withoutteeth.
People do.
So your body knows this.
And this says, all right, if I'mnot getting enough nutrients, if
I'm not getting enough mineralsthrough, either because I'm not
eating them or because I'm notabsorbing them crop properly, I
(13:08):
will have to go find themelsewhere.
And so teeth are already madebank of minerals.
So if you're getting tooth decayalong the gum line, you have.
Core gut function.
Mm-hmm.
The tooth is thinnest along thegum line, so the body's
literally mining minerals fromthe tooth top to bottom, but
it's thinnest at the gum line,so that's where the hole will
show up first.
(13:29):
So this is basically your bodyjust trying to take care of
itself elsewhere.
So that's the first sign I seeis if I see a lot, if I see a
lot of decay period and peoplebrush their teeth.
'cause we can tell, like I canlook, I can tell looking in your
mouth whether you brush yourteeth or not.
Even if you did it just likereally well yesterday I can, I
can tell it was like a, aonetime deal, you know, or, uh,
no, I've been doing this everysingle day of my life.
(13:51):
I can, we can tell.
So if I look in our mouth andyour teeth look beautiful, I can
tell you're brushing.
I can tell you're cleaning,you're doing everything right
and you have.
Nonstop tooth decay.
You know, you're the kid thatalways had two cavities when
they went into the dentist, oryou're the mom who every single
time you go to the dentist, youhave another couple cavities and
you just don't know what to do.
'cause you like, you'reliterally doing everything you
know to do.
It's a gut function.
It's a gut function issue, ahundred percent.
Dr. Heather Finley (14:15):
Do you see this a lot with pregnant and
nursing moms as well with justlike how many minerals they're
depleting because I've heard itso many times from our clients
where they're like, I never hadcavities until I was
breastfeeding.
Yeah.
And then we'll run an HTMA onthem and like they're in a four
lows pattern.
They're minerals are superdepleted.
And I'm like, well, yeah.
You know, calcium bones, likeall the things, it makes total
(14:38):
sense.
So.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (14:39):
Exactly right.
So there's three times.
I see this happen teenage years.
So what's going on in teenageyears?
Well, you're growing your ownbones.
Think of the growth that happensduring teenage years and you
know, I, there's a lady whobrought her daughter in, she was
18, she just moved to collegeand like visited a dentist in
her college town and he said shehad 16 cavities and her mom was
(15:02):
freaking out.
So she brought her in for asecond opinion.
I said, she doesn't have 16cavities, she actually has 17.
Then they really freaked out andI said, this is her gut.
This is her gut.
She is growing faster than herminerals can keep up with.
So either gut function or she'sjust not getting enough period.
You know, she's, you know,college, she's living on pizza
and ramen, you know, whatever.
So she's just not getting whatshe needs.
(15:24):
So in that situation, you'vegotta supplement, you've got to
add more minerals, period.
You just have to do it.
The second one is pregnancy andnursing, because you're not
growing your own bones, you'regrowing somebody else's bones.
You're growing a baby, you'regrowing a human that has bones
and teeth and all sorts of needfor those minerals.
And then the third one is duringmenopause years, because
estrogen, estrogen drops andestrogen actually is what helps
(15:47):
maintain mineral balance in thebones.
That helps maintain a lot ofdifferent things.
So you got that estrogen dropand you actually need an
increase in minerals.
So we start to see decay aroundbound menopause age as well.
So.
It's interesting.
Years ago they talked about whatcaused cavities.
There was a re a whole research,uh, continuum that kind of came
together and all theseresearchers came and one guy
(16:08):
brought this idea that sugarcauses cavities.
Basically sugar eats.
Or bacteria eat sugar.
They lead to acid, which leadsto cavities.
Another guy, Dr.
Weston Price, which a lot ofpeople in the nutrition world
have heard about, he brought hisresearch that says Nutrition
actually leads to the cavities,to nutritional deficiencies,
lead to cavities.
And another researcher, Dr.
Melvin Page said, actually, myresearch shows that hormones
(16:31):
lead to cavities, hormonechanges, lead to cavities.
Well, I think they're all right.
It was voted on in the.
Sugar equals cavities.
One got chosen, so that's theone that we were all taught and
told forever.
This was literally the 1930s.
They did this.
I think they were all right, andthey were all right, kind of for
the same reason.
You know, the body needsminerals to stay well, so it
needs minerals on the teeth, andsugar eating bacteria will strip
(16:54):
those.
It needs minerals in the body,otherwise your body will strip
those and those times increaseduring hormone changes.
So these things are all true.
It's all back to the mineral.
Dr. Heather Finley (17:06):
Yeah, it's like I always talk about this.
Minerals are the foundation ofhealth and then you also need to
be able to absorb the mineralsas well.
Vitamin, there's
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (17:16):
three K too, and acid uhhuh.
Dr. Heather Finley (17:19):
There's the, there's the second part of it.
So another hot topic that I feellike is becoming more.
Common or commonly known aboutis mouth breathing.
So how does mouth breathingaffect gut health digestion, or
even mineral balance?
I think mouth taping has becomevery popular.
(17:39):
But even that, like you'reseeing a lot of, dental airway
specialists.
I know my daughter's dentist isspecializing in this and we've
done expansion and all thethings and have seen like
amazing results, so.
Yeah, I'd love to hear yourthoughts on that and just kind
of explain to the listenersabout that.
Yeah,
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (17:58):
so this trend of mouth taping is really
an interesting one because thebody naturally should be keeping
the mouth closed at night.
I.
But, so we're gonna go twodirections with this.
I'm gonna talk about why this isin need, why your daughter had
to see you, had to do someexpansion, you know, why that's
even happening.
And then what are we missing outon when we're not breathing
through the mouth at night?
(18:19):
What is it doing to the gutfunction?
What is it doing to all thosethings?
So first of all, why are we, whydo we even have this need today?
Why are we not able to keep ourour mouths together?
You know, our lips?
Together at nighttime.
Why are we not able to breathethrough our nose properly?
Well, this again goes back toDr.
Weston Price.
He was studying all thesedifferent societies in the 1930s
and looking at what led tohealthy people, what diet, what
food led to healthy people.
(18:41):
And he found that people whowere healthier had higher levels
of vitamins, fat solublevitamins, vitamin D three, K
two, and water soluble vitamins.
You know, they're the ones wetalk about all the time.
Vitamin C, vitamin B, vitamin,you know, these are, these are
the ones that we get.
People had higher levels ofthose, they had better health.
I mean, we all know this, right?
Yeah.
But what he also found is thatthe people who were healthier
(19:01):
had wider mouths, wider faces,wider noses.
Okay.
Interesting.
Right?
What about that made adifference?
Well, when you have a wider noseand a wider mouth and you're
able to keep your lips togetherat night, air passes through the
nose and it's really importantto do that because the nose is a
(19:21):
filter, so it filters out.
I mean, that's what boogers are.
It's why I tell kill Xlo ton.
It's what your boogers are.
It's all the stuff that, thatyou actually don't wanna be
breathing in.
But if you're breathing inthrough your mouth, there's no
filter.
The tonsils act as a filter, sothis often leads to swollen
tonsils.
So what do we do?
We take the tonsils out.
Oh, great.
Now we've just removed the lastbarrier between the lungs and
(19:43):
all those boogers.
Right?
So we need to breathe throughthe nose because it filters.
It also warms up the air.
So it makes it easier for ourlungs to use it humidifies.
It moistens the air so our lungscan use it better.
It also, when you're breathingthrough the nose, it creates
something called nitric oxide,which leads to expansion of your
blood vessels.
So that air then gets furtherinto the brain, deeper into the
(20:05):
muscles, further into the heart.
All of those places we need tobe breathing through our noses.
Mm-hmm.
This is really important forgrowth and development of
children, particularly, so I'mso glad you're doing this with
your child growth anddevelopment, that nitric oxide
leads to growth hormoneincreases all of these things.
So why do so many peoplestruggle with this?
Why do so many people havecrooked teeth?
(20:26):
Need braces, need expansion?
Why are no mouths fitting wisdomteeth anymore?
A hundred, 200, 300 years ago,we see skulls of people who had
all 32 teeth, you know, so alltheir wisdom teeth in their
mouths and straight teeth.
So what's going on here?
This is a nutrient deficiencyissue.
The first bone affected bymalnutrition is your top jaw.
(20:48):
I learned this because I adopteda little boy at two and a half.
His top jaw was so small, it fitcompletely inside his bottom
jaw.
That's the opposite of whatshould happen if you look at
your teeth.
The top jaw's on the outside,his teeth were lined up like
runway, like airplanes on arunway.
They were so terrible, and hisbirth mother said.
One of the reasons we chose youto adopt him is because we know
(21:09):
you're a dentist and we knowyou're gonna be able to fix
what's going on with his mouth.
Well, he was incrediblymalnourished.
He'd been born at 21 week, like20, what was he, 23 weeks like
super premature.
He had been fed through afeeding tube for the first year
of his life.
He couldn't hardly eat food, sohis jaw did not develop.
If your top jaw develops toonarrow.
(21:30):
The bottom jaw has to developnarrow to fit inside of it, and
so now we have really crookedteeth.
The top jaw is also the floor ofthe nose.
So if your top jaw developsnarrow, your nose develops
narrow.
So we all like these nice,skinny, petite looking noses.
So I joke that it used to bethat like Meryl Monroe and
Robert Redford were like thebeautiful faces in our world.
(21:52):
But now we look at Justin Bieberwith a super skinny nose and
Angelina Jolie with a superskinny nose get, guess what?
Angelina Jo Lee and DustinJustin Bieber, they don't
breathe.
Almost guarantee it.
They cannot breathe.
We need wide noses.
So when we have skinny jaws.
We have skinny noses, and sowhat happens to happen is the
mouth has to drop open to beable to get enough air to
(22:14):
actually survive.
As soon as the mouth drops open,it changes the growth and
development of the face.
It grows more narrow, more long,more skinny, higher arch on the
roof of the mouth.
And now the problem isperpetuated.
So nobody's breathing throughthe mouths at night or breathing
through the nose at night.
They're all hanging their mouthsopen.
They're getting unfiltered, hot,dry, dirty air, right down their
(22:38):
tonsils.
It's up their tonsils.
It's leading to airway issues.
It's leading to kids who aregrinding their teeth at night,
who have to have tonsils out,who need braces, all of these
things.
So mouth taping.
As a result of this, like wehave this whole generation of
people who can't breathe becauseof malnutrition.
This comes back to your world.
Malnutrition.
We gotta get nutrients in theirguts, but because of
(22:59):
malnutrition,'cause we're notgetting the nutrients we need
outta the food that we'reeating, food doesn't have it
anymore.
And because we're just notabsorbing, our guts aren't,
aren't working very well,everybody's malnourished.
We don't have rooms in our mouthfor all of our teeth anymore.
Everything's narrow and skinny.
So they said, all right, let'stape those dang lips closed.
Does it help?
Sure.
Right.
If you can continue to breathethrough.
(23:20):
My husband, Nate tapes his mouthat night every single night
because if you have, if yourmouth breathing, you are gonna
change the biome.
You're gonna change the bugsthat live in your mouth.
You're gonna dry out your gumsleading to gum disease.
You're going to dry out yourteeth leading to tooth decay.
So we see increases in toothdecay, creases in gum disease
when people are mouth breathing.
And it just feels like theSahara Desert when you wake up,
(23:40):
like it feels terrible and youget bad breath.
I mean, it's like awful.
So he.
Tapes, his mouth closed atnight, but he breathes out the
sides.
I hear it.
He goes, you know, he is likebreathing out the sides of the
tape, like it didn't fix theproblem.
Does that make sense?
It didn't fix anything, but itmakes it less dry.
It's better for tooth decay andgum disease, but the bigger
thing is to do what you did withyour daughter is to go and
(24:01):
actually have.
That top jaw expanded out, whichwill also expand out the nose
and give the natural room thatthe body needs to get air in the
way it needs to come in, ratherthan artificially band-aiding it
by putting some tape here.
But I mean, the tape is betterthan nothing, but I would much
prefer expand and we can expandin adults and in kiddos.
(24:23):
We can make everything biggerthe way it should have been, the
way it should have grown, butdidn't.
So if you have crooked teeth,there's no room for wisdom
teeth.
These are all signs.
That your jaw did not grow bigenough and most likely this was
a nutrition problem.
Dr. Heather Finley (24:36):
Yeah, no, it was actually miraculous.
My daughter, she was mouthbreathing and, she failed her
hearing test because heradenoids were so swollen and at
the time we didn't know it, butwe had mold in our house.
So that was obviously a bigpiece there.
Which we've addressed sincethen.
But yeah, she failed her hearingtest and it was pretty amazing.
(25:00):
Now she's, her hearing justfine.
She, and it was way lesstraumatic as a kid.
I had the herps, which was sotraumatic.
Yes.
Um, with the key and like, youliterally feel like your nose is
growing, as you know, andmm-hmm.
Hers was much better.
So we were very appreciative forher dentist that walked us
through that.
But.
It's, it's wild.
(25:21):
Just how common I feel like itis now and you know how much
nutrition actually matters andplays a role and comes down to
also not only what you eat, butwhat you can absorb, like you
said.
So.
Yep.
Let's chat a little bit about.
Saliva and how saliva is a partof the digestive process and
what happens when someone hasdry mouth or just poor salivary
(25:44):
flow.
I think that goes along withsome of the airway issues as
well.
So just kind of building onthat.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (25:51):
Yep.
So absolutely mouth breathingwill lead to dry mouth for sure.
Which, like I said, will leadto.
Sensitive gums, more guminflammation.
It will lead to drying out theteeth, which leads to plaque
buildup, which leads to toothdecay, all those kinds of
things.
There are also some hormonechanges in autoimmune conditions
that will lead to low salivaryflow as well.
So when you put food in yourmouth and even sometimes before
(26:14):
you put food in your mouth, whenyou look at food, your mouth
starts watering, right?
Yeah.
It's the first, it's the startof the digestive process, and so
it secretes something calledamylase.
It's an enzyme that's mouthspecific, so I'm sure that you
know all about this, but thereare certain enzymes.
Enzymes break down food.
There are certain enzymes thatour body has naturally, there
(26:36):
are also enzymes that come inwith our food.
This is why it's so important toeat raw foods, because enzymes
are killed at about 130 degrees.
So we do need some raw foodsthat bring their own enzymes
with them because it helps tobreak down the food that's raw
and the food that's not, but.
The mouth secretes somethingcalled amylase that's an enzyme
in the mouth that starts thebreakdown of food right here.
(26:57):
Mm-hmm.
So if you don't have that, ifyou don't have good salivary
flow, you are now sending fooddown the gut.
That hasn't already started thatprocess and the amylase travels
with the food.
So it's still breaking it downas it moves down, and then it
hits other enzymes as we hit thestomach.
There's other enzymes there asit, you know, there's different
things that it go, that goes tothis process of digestion.
(27:18):
So if you don't have thatsalivary flow and that amylase
at the very beginning, it reallyimpairs the abo the ability to
digest that food down the roadas well.
So there's some things you cando to stimulate salivary flow.
One of the things people used toalways do was bitters.
This is interesting.
I love learning some of the oldtraditional things that people
would do.
Um, like if you would go toGermany, there were like kind
(27:40):
of, you know, unspoken rulesthat you should have at least
six pickles on the table duringa meal.
So you had your, your, uh,spectral and your, like a few
other things, but then you wouldhave.
Pickles, all different kinds ofpickled vegetables.
Why?
Well, those are bitter and theycreate more saliva.
Isn't this interesting?
So they actually have naturalprobiotics, natural other things
(28:02):
as well with them along with it.
But a lot of times you canintroduce help.
For your low salivary flow.
So if you're not getting enoughsaliva, if your mouth feels dry,
you need to do bitter foods.
You need to do things that aregonna increase that salivary
flow.
Even a little bit of lemon inyour water will help to increase
that salivary flow.
I also have a mouthwash that hasmarshmallow root.
(28:24):
Marshmallow root is very goodat.
Also increasing salivary flow.
So you can use a marshmallowroot rinse to try to kickstart
things.
You need it to be able to digestproperly.
So saliva's, super importantsaliva's also where bacteria
live.
So this is why when you have bugbugs in your mouth, they get to
(28:44):
your gut.
Because the saliva's going downwith the food.
So if you have bad bugs that areliving in your mouth, they're
going crazy.
You have gum disease, you'reswallowing all those bugs, and
they're hit in the stomach too.
Now, stomach acid will kill someof them, but not all of them.
And this is where the whole SIBOidea is, where it's like the
right bugs in the wrong place.
Well.
(29:05):
This is potentially a source forwhere SIBO is coming from, as
well as bugs that are, should behere and up here.
Body can't deal with them there.
They're in the wrong place.
So saliva is super important.
Use Bitters to try to stimulateit and marshmallow root Lemon
are great things as well tostimulate it.
Dr. Heather Finley (29:21):
Yes.
I love that you mentionedbitters because that's one of
the very common things that werecommend to our clients as well
as bitter foods which I loveincorporating, like add some
arugula to that.
Add some, you know, dandeliongreens and That's so true
actually, when I went toGermany.
They did always have likesauerkraut or something else on
(29:41):
the table, which I love.
Those are just foods I enjoyanyways, so we live in a very
antibacterial world, as youknow, and everything is
antibacterial, like kill off allthe bacteria.
And you and I both know thatthat's not necessarily helpful,
so.
What common oral hygienepractices may be harming the
(30:03):
oral and gut microbiome?
Like, where are we overdoing itand what's, what do you see in
your practice?
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (30:11):
Love this question because it goes
all the way back to oral careproducts.
Um, commercial toothpaste.
If you look on the tube, you'regonna see that there's a whole
bunch of ingredients that youcan't pronounce.
One of them is Tricent.
You can actually pronounce thatone, but you probably have no
clue what that is.
It's a really potentantibacterial.
(30:32):
So what it's doing is it'skilling all the bugs in the
mouth.
We don't wanna do that becauseif you kill off all the good
bugs, what's going to happen isthe bad bugs are gonna flourish,
including yeasts.
So there's so much yeast.
I'm sure you see a lot of yeast,don't you?
A lot of yeast proliferation andguts.
Dr. Heather Finley (30:48):
Oh
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (30:48):
yeah, exactly right.
You kill off all the, all thebacteria, the yeasts are gonna
have a heyday.
So Triclosan and otherantimicrobials that are in
toothpaste are really damagingto the gut biome and to the oral
biome to both.
'cause it's all the same thing,you know?
So it is to the biome ingeneral, they're very damaging.
So I don't recommend any toothcare products that have any
(31:08):
antimicrobials in them at all.
So that's a starting point.
Um, the next one is mouthwashthat burn that you get with like
a Listerine.
It's because of alcohol.
Mm-hmm.
These mouth washes are over 50%alcohol.
Well, what does alcohol kill?
Bacteria.
Right?
This is why when you go to thehospital and you're getting your
(31:28):
blood draw and they use a littlealcohol wipe on the arm because
it's gonna disinfect the area,it's gonna kill any bugs that
are on that surface.
Well, when you're rinsing withthat, you're killing all the
bugs in the mouth and you'reabsolutely swallowing that.
There's no way you're rinsingwith something that you're not
swallowing as well, so you'reswallowing that alcohol.
It's going down as changing thegut biome as well.
So no.
(31:49):
Alcohol containing mouth washesever should be used, period.
So what do I recommend insteadfor a tooth care product?
Absolutely recommendHydroxyapatite products that
don't have any kind ofantimicrobial in it.
So my tooth powder actually hasessential oils, which some
people will say that's anantimicrobial, and it's true.
(32:10):
Essential oils are really greatat controlling bacterial growth.
It depends on the amount.
If I had.
Dumped an entire capsule ofpeppermint oil in that tooth
powder.
It sure is.
It's gonna help control or it'sgonna kill some bugs.
We're like, it's the whiff ofessential oil in there to make
it taste right, because I didn'twanna put any artificial flavors
in there, or artificialsweeteners or artificial
(32:32):
anything else is so it's justenough to make it right, but
it's not enough to kill anybugs.
The other one is in ourmouthwash, we use colloidal
silver, which a lot of peoplewill say also, this is gonna do
the same thing.
It's gonna kill all the bugs.
It depends on the parts permillion.
So the dosage of.
The colloidal silver is, if youhave high parts per million high
dosage, it will, it'll kill anybugs just like the alcohol did.
(32:53):
If you have low, it willselectively kill only bad bugs,
not good bugs.
So it's really important to makesure that what you're using for
tooth care is keeping youhealthy as well.
Dr. Heather Finley (33:03):
I love that.
And that's a big recommendationthat we often give to our
clients is just making littleswaps.
You know, it can feel superoverwhelming to overhaul
everything, but it's like, okay,when you run outta something,
let's just replace it with adifferent thing and you know, it
doesn't all have to be at onetime.
We can do it.
We can do it systematically.
So.
(33:24):
How do you recommendsimultaneously supporting the
oral and the gut microbiomes?
Like what are, what are somestrategies, specific routines,
foods, probiotics, whatever itmight be that you recommend
starting with.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (33:39):
Yep.
So one of the things you canstart doing at home that's a
real simple swap as well, istongue scraping.
And this is an old Ayurvedictechnique from India, and they
swear that it alters gut biomeas well, that it does not just,
you know, your oral biomechanges, but it does gut biome
as well, whether it does that ornot.
And some research shows thatit's true.
But like I said, it's all thesame biome.
(34:00):
It's all the same bugs.
So what.
Oil.
Oh, excuse me.
There's two things that Ayurvedarecommended.
Oil pulling and tongue scraping.
So let's talk about both ofthose.
So oil pulling every bug in yourmouth, every bug in your body,
doesn't matter where it is orwhat it is, is surrounded by
fats.
This is just the way they'remade All of our cells are too.
It's called the fatty lipidlayer around the outside of
(34:21):
every single one of our cells.
So it's surrounded by fats.
So when you put the tablespoonof coconut oil in your mouth and
you swish it around.
The fat in that oil will attractthe fat in the bacteria, and
they'll literally.
Pull to each other.
So this is why it's called oilpulling.
It will pull bacteria from everynook and cranny in the mouth.
It's not selective, so it'sgonna pull bad bugs, good bugs,
(34:43):
all bugs.
This is why I don't recommendoil pulling every day of your
life because I believe it'sgonna remove too many bacteria.
So I recommend if you have gumdisease, you're gonna do it
about five days in a row.
And then you're only gonna do itevery four to five days just to
kind of keep things undercontrol, but not to eliminate
and eradicate all bugs ingeneral.
So that's one thing people don'toften say about oil, oil
(35:05):
pulling.
They think that it's good everyday of your life.
I don't agree.
I.
I
Dr. Heather Finley (35:08):
think
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (35:08):
it's a once a week kind of touchup
thing if you need it.
If you have gum disease, I don'toil pull at all unless I have
something that's coming along.
If I feel like I've got a yeastinfection.
And how can you tell?
I get a white tongue, so if youget a white tongue, often that's
a sign of yeast infection.
If I have that going on, I I'lloil pull for about three days.
Just try to get things kind ofback into, back into balance
again.
So the second one is tonguescraping.
(35:29):
Um, I want to challenge peopleto do a test at home because
oftentimes people say, well, Ialready brushed my tongue.
It's fine.
Well, the tongue's like a shagcarpet.
There's so much that can gettrapped down in that shag
carpet, and we think that justbrushing alone is doing the job,
but it's not.
So this is the test I want youto do.
I want you to get a tonguescraper.
I have a copper one.
The reason I like copper isbecause it's antimicrobial.
(35:52):
So when you actually scrape withit and then you go stick it in
your bathroom cupboard.
There's not bugs that are stillliving on it.
The next time you put it back inyour mouth, you're not just
adding yesterday's bugs back toit because they can't live on
that copper.
So that's why I like the copper.
But you know, there's lots ofdifferent versions of tongue
scrapers.
I want you to get a tonguescraper.
So I want you to brush yourtongue as good as you always
(36:12):
have done.
And then I want you to tonguescrape and I want you to see
what's left on there that youdidn't know was left on there.
Dr. Heather Finley (36:18):
And I think it's pretty amazing.
I've done that before and it's,yeah, it's eye.
It's like
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (36:22):
I thought I was doing a really
great job here.
So what I like to do, the orderof things is.
You're going to, I actually liketo brush then floss because if
you brush with hydroxy appetite,flossing after brings the
hydroxy appetite down betweenthe teeth.
So brush, floss, rinse.
If you're using a hydroxyappetite mouthwash like what I
(36:43):
have.
'cause you're adding it all backin.
And then, sorry, I jumped ahead.
Brush floss.
Tongue scrape.
I want all that junk off ofthere.
The last thing you're gonna dois rinse, because I actually
want those antimicrobials fromthe coil silver to get into that
tongue surface.
And I want that crud cleaned offof there.
So this is the way I always tellpeople.
(37:04):
Brush floss, tongue scrape,rinse.
Seven minutes a day, that's allit takes.
This isn't anything fancy orextra anything else, it's just
what you're already doing.
Super simple ways to keep itunder control.
I just have a brand newmouthwash that actually has a
prebiotic in it, and that iswhat's going to encourage good
bacterial growth in the mouthand in the gut as well.
(37:25):
So there's a lot of other dentalprebiotics that you can take or
probiotics that you can take.
I don't think they're thatessential if you just keep
everything balanced on a dailybasis.
I don't think you need to takean extra pill or an extra
anything else to give you otheroral probiotics.
Dr. Heather Finley (37:41):
Okay, well that kind of answers my next
question.
I was gonna rapid fire a couplequestions, but you already
answered most of'em.
It was gonna be, do we need oralprobiotics?
No.
No.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (37:52):
And you're staying on top of it.
Dr. Heather Finley (37:54):
Okay.
One thing to stop doing todayfor oral health, I think that
this one you already answeredtoo, but
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (38:00):
using an alcohol containing mouthwash or
a toothpaste with triclosan init,
Dr. Heather Finley (38:05):
and then oil pulling overhyped are helpful.
There we go.
You put that as well.
And then the last one youhaven't touched on is xylitol.
Yes or no?
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (38:13):
Okay.
Xylitol is an interesting one.
There's some controversy aboutit, but it's all about the
dosage.
So xylitol, starves.
Bacteria.
They can't eat it, so it's asugar that they don't like.
So really the reason thatcavities develop sugar doesn't
cause cavities.
That's not, it's not that directof a relationship.
What happens is the bacteriathat live in your mouth, they
(38:35):
like sugar, they eat sugar, andthey poop out acid.
So like basically they excreteacid.
That acid then dissolves theminerals on your tooth.
So does sugar cause cavities?
Sure.
In a roundabout way, right?
Bacteria eat sugar, whatever.
So if you feed them sugar thatthey can't eat, then they can't
(38:56):
poop out acid.
Does that make sense?
So there are, there's a ton ofresearch showing that xylitol
leads to less ate.
This is why, but the problemcomes when you start using it
for everything.
So there have been shown,there's research showing issues
with gut function.
Research is, you know, withissues with other functions in
the body when you're using Xxylitol on a large amount.
(39:18):
So if you're replacing xylitolas your sweetener of choice,
when you're making a batch ofcookies or you're, you know,
putting whatever it is.
That is not how we're gonna useit.
You're gonna use it in a toothcare product.
So I actually joke my, not mytooth powder.
I figured out the researcharticle that showed the damages
or the dangers with xylitol.
I figured out you'd have to eat13 jars of this powder a day to
(39:41):
get as much xylitol as they wereusing to test and show.
Problems with it.
So if you wanna eat 13 powders,uh, jars of this powder a day,
then you're gonna have problemswith xylitol.
But if you're using it in verysmall amounts and tooth care
products, you're okay.
You're just not gonna use it asa replacement sugar in your
baking and cooking and everydaylife.
Dr. Heather Finley (40:01):
Okay.
That's super helpful.
So last question, just to kindof tie up the loose end that we
were talking at the beginning ofthe episode about root canals
and amalgam fillings is we knowthat these can be problematic
because you described even justyour own journey.
What should somebody do if they.
(40:22):
Need to have a root canal orhave been recommended to have a
root canal, or they have amalgamfillings that they feel like are
impacting their health.
Like what were, what are thesteps that they should go
through, or what kind ofpractitioners should they look
for?
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (40:35):
So first thing is mercury fillings do
release mercury 24 7.
When I was in school, I was toldthat if I told you that I would
lose my license.
Now I can tell you that becauseit's been backed and shown by
research.
So they do release mercury 24 7.
So if people have symptoms andmercury goes to gut function,
mercury impacts zinc, whichleads to stomach acid creation.
So if you have mercury levels inyour body, it can lead to low
(40:57):
stomach acid and gut issues.
So if this is something you feellike.
Maybe this is a piece of mypuzzle.
Maybe I need to address this.
You absolutely wanna go to adentist that will remove them
safely because you're gonna getthe most mercury release during
that removal procedure.
And if you just do it at anormal dentist where you're
swallowing it and breathing itin, and it's way, way, way
(41:19):
worse, I tell people, leave'emalone.
Unless you're gonna do itsafely.
So go to a dentist.
There's a two directories youcan go to.
One is on my website, livingwell with dr michelle.com.
I have a dentist directory onthere of people who do this kind
of thing.
The other one is calledI-A-O-M-T.
Hopefully you can put that inthe show notes.
IAOM t.org.
It's also dentists who willremove mercury fillings safely.
(41:42):
And what does that look like?
You are covered, like your faceis covered'cause mercury is
absorbed through the skin.
Your nose is covered, everythingis covered, you're not
swallowing in it.
There's a giant vacuum that's atthe edge of your, the base of
your chin, so it's sucking allthe vapor that direction.
That's how you wanna'em removedif you're going to do it.
Root canals, this is a wholehour talk on its own, but I'll
give you the 32nd version.
(42:03):
Basically the problem is.
When you have a root canal, thetooth is not completely clean
after no matter what, becausethere's main canals and there's
little side channels.
I like to think of it as thesuper highway and the little
roads, the exit ramps and theroads that go off through the
cities.
Those roads can't be cleaned.
You always have dead tissue leftin a root canal tooth, no matter
what.
(42:24):
You can get a root canal, butunderstand it's a place saver.
It's gonna hold that space, holdthat tooth in the mouth for a
while.
If you already have chronicdisease, I do not recommend it
because what it's going to do isyour body is gonna have to deal
with that dead tissue and lowgrade chronic infection 24 7,
and it's going to impact you.
So if you already have chronicdisease, if you're already
struggling, what do you doinstead?
(42:46):
If the tooth is still alive, wesave it.
We use ozone, and we actuallykeep the tooth alive.
We fill right over it and wekeep it alive.
If it's already dead, we removeit and we replace it with a
ceramic dental implant.
I have a dental implant right uphere.
Nobody knows it's there.
It chews like a tooth.
It smiles like a tooth.
It's fabulous.
I tell people all the time, Ican replace your teeth.
I can't replace your health.
(43:06):
So if this dead tooth in yourbody leads to chronic disease
and nothing else is taken careof it, it's time to get that
tooth out.
And how do you find out?
You do what's called a cone beamCT scan, cone beam CT scan
shows.
Is your root canal healthy or isthere an issue?
And I find these daily massiveinfections that nobody knows
about, contributing to guthealth, contributing to sinus
(43:27):
infections, contributing to allthe above, and it's a failed
root canal.
I.
Dr. Heather Finley (43:32):
So interesting.
It's crazy how it is allconnected and just,, I love how
you said, we started separatingmedicine, we started separating
everything and I think hopefullyat the end now everyone is
realizing, I.
We can't separate it.
Everything is all connected.
So Dr.
Michelle, this has been amazingand so informative.
(43:52):
I've learned a ton.
I know that the listeners have,you just had a book that came
out.
So tell everybody about yourbook, where they can find you,
where your practice is, in casethey wanna work with you and
come see you, all the things.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (44:06):
Yep.
So the book is actually, there'sa little bit about dentistry in
there, but it's.
It's the answer to a lot ofconcern that we have today,
which is where do I start?
I want to get better.
I want to do the right thingsfor my health, but I don't have
a clue where to start.
Like there's all these peopletelling me different things and
there's so much overwhelm in thehealth world today.
So it actually has an assessmentin it that uses your symptoms.
(44:28):
You plug your symptoms in and ittells you which of your cells
need help first, and it puts youin a season.
So gut health is a big one inthere, and you just need to
know, is the gut the first placeto start?
Or is my liver, do I need todetox first?
Or is it, you know, whatever.
Whatever it might be.
It tells you which.
Cells to start with first, andthen it tells you what to do
about it.
So that's what the book's allabout and really it is changing
(44:49):
the way we stay.
Well, that isfound@livingwellbook.com.
So check that out.
But also all the products I'vetalked about, all you know, all
of the everything information,all sorts of free stuff all over
the place at Living Well with drmichelle.com.
And the officeis@totalcaredental.com.
So those are the three places tocheck out the book, the
practice, and the products, andthen the dental office.
Dr. Heather Finley (45:11):
Amazing.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Last question actually that Ialways ask every guest is, how
do you love your gut?
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (45:19):
You know, it's interesting because I
have struggled with gut healthsince I was a teenager, and I
love my gut by listening to it.
Dr. Heather Finley (45:27):
I love that.
Thanks so much, Dr.
Michelle.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (45:29):
Thank you.
Welcome to the Love Your Gut Podcast.
I'm your host, Dr.
Heather Finley, registereddietitian and gut health
specialist.
I understand the frustration ofdealing with GI issues because
I've been there and I spent overtwo decades searching for
answers for my own gut issues ofconstipation, bloating, and
stomach pain.
I've dedicated my life tounderstanding and solving my own
(00:24):
gut issues.
And now I'm here to guide you.
On this podcast, I'll help youidentify the true root causes of
your discomfort.
So you can finally ditch yoursymptoms for good.
My goal is to empower you withthe knowledge and tools you need
so that you can love your gutand it will love you right back.
So if you're ready to learn alot, gain a deeper understanding
(00:46):
of your gut and find lastingrelief.
You are in the right place.
Welcome to the love your gutpodcast.
Welcome back to the next episodeof the Love Your Gut podcast.
I am so glad to be here todaywith Michelle.
She is a dentist, and we'regoing to talk today about
something that you may not haveeven thought about, which is how
(01:08):
your mouth and your oral healthcan actually impact your.
Overall health, it's often ahuge missing piece that we see
with our clients.
And so when Michelle reachedout, I was really excited to
have her on the podcast.
So Michelle, welcome to theshow.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (01:24):
Thank you.
I'm excited to talk.
There's a lot of things I thinkwe're gonna be able to talk
about today.
I.
Dr. Heather Finley (01:28):
Yes, there are a lot of things.
So why don't you just give uskind of the lay of the land a
little bit.
Tell us a little bit about whoyou are, why you do what you do,
why you're passionate aboutthis, and then I have tons of
questions for you that I knoweveryone will be excited to
hear.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (01:45):
You know, and I always really like
to start about out with why am Ihere and what, who am I and why,
why am I even doing this?
And it is not an intentionalplace.
I did not intend to be where Iam at where I am today.
I am a, was am a generaldentist, continue to be, but uh,
was practicing as a generaldentist, was doing a lot of
cosmetic dentistry.
I was loving what I was doing.
My father was a dentist as well,and I just thought I would do it
(02:07):
forever.
He's in his mid seventies, he'sstill practicing, you know, I
just thought that this was mylife, but about a decade in, I
got really sick and it startedwith gut health problems and
trustingly enough.
Uh, you deal with a lot of thatand when you have gut health
issues.
You just do what everybody elsedoes, right?
You start changing your diet,you start throwing away all your
food.
You know, you just, we.
And so we started doing a lot ofthat and it helped some, but it
(02:30):
didn't help a lot.
And the other issues were, Icouldn't remember things
anymore.
And I've always had a good mememory.
I couldn't complete sentences.
I couldn't remember patients'names from room to room.
I mean, something was reallywrong.
And the big one was numbness.
I had just painful numbness downmy hands.
Arms.
I couldn't sleep at night.
I couldn't blow dry my hair.
And I was losing dexterity.
(02:50):
I wasn't able to hold myinstruments anymore.
So I actually put my practicefor sale because doctors
couldn't tell me what was wrong.
They all just said nothing'swrong.
You know, maybe you have someIBS, which I despise that
because I'm like, okay, great,thank you.
Now what?
You know, that does nothing forme to tell me I have irritable
bowel syndrome.
Thank you very much.
Um, so really they couldn'tgimme any help, any answers, and
(03:11):
I didn't know how I was gonnacontinue, but.
I was in my mid thirties, fouryoung kids.
This was our entire livelihood.
My husband worked for thepractice as well, so this was a
big deal.
And, um, started just lookingfor other options for work.
And I thought, well, I could bea nutritionist.
I've learned a lot about diet.
Now maybe I can help somebodyelse in another field with this.
(03:32):
And ran into another dentist whosaid, you know, actually you
have a lot of the same symptomsI had.
Have you ever looked intoMercury as potentially the
problem?
And I knew that silver fillingshad mercury in them.
We as dentists are all taughtthis in dental school.
First year of dental schoolwe're taught this.
Uh, but I said, well, I don'thave any filling.
In my mouth.
And you know, I've taughtthey're perfectly safe.
And he said, despite what you'vebeen told and despite the fact
(03:55):
that you don't have any, hesaid, first of all, it's not the
ones you have, it's the onesyou've been drilling out for the
last decade with no protection.
And he said, maybe you shouldjust get tested.
So I got tested, and that's whatit was.
Mercury poisonings poisoning offthe charts.
So all of a sudden, all of mysymptoms made sense because Ner
Mercury affects gut function.
Mercury affects brain function.
(04:16):
It's a neurologic toxin, andmercury affects.
Hands and nerves and all of theabove.
So the doctor said, well, ifyou're gonna get better, now
that we know what it is, ifyou're gonna get it out, you
can't keep putting it in.
And I was a cosmetic dentist.
I was drilling out all kinds offillings every single day.
'cause people didn't like theway they looked.
So he said, you gotta figureout, you're either gonna have to
give this all up or you have tofigure out how to do it safely.
(04:38):
I found an organization that hadprotocol for removing these
silver fillings in a way thatthat mercury wasn't released.
'cause that's what happens.
You drill on it.
The mercury that's in thosefillings, they're literally 50%
mercury.
The mercury that's in therereleased as a gas, it comes up
right into the dentist's head,but also the patient's head.
You know, that's getting thiswork done.
So I found out there wereprotocols to do this safely.
Started doing that.
(04:59):
Patients started noticing whenyou walk in and a gas mask into
their, their office, theirprocedure, they're saying, uh.
Okay, what's going on here?
Something's a little different.
So I would explain to them, andthey were always grateful that
maybe this was helpful for themtoo, you know, from a health
perspective.
And then they would startsharing this with friends or
family or doctors or people thatthey knew were kind of, you
(05:20):
know, looking for something likethis.
And that's how I learned.
A doctor would come to me andsay, well, have you heard about
the concern with root canals?
Or, what do you really knowabout fluoride?
You know, these are thequestions that they were asking
me.
I to all of them would say,well, I don't know anything.
All I know is what I was taughtin school.
And you know, there's somereally some really sacred cows
(05:40):
inside a dentistry.
You know that these are safe andthey always will be.
And we can't change our mind.
And even if research shows,anyway, I had to, I had to.
Be able to bend and say, allright, research is showing
differently and my ownexperience is showing me
differently.
So how does the mouth reallyimpact overall health?
And so that's where I am at now.
We have a multi-specialty,multi-doctor practice.
(06:00):
We get people from all over theworld coming to see us because
there's literally so muchconnection.
Research shows 60 to 80% ofchronic disease can start in
your mouth.
So that's where I'm at.
Why I'm here today is because ofsimply the place that I was
myself.
Dr. Heather Finley (06:15):
Wow, what an incredible story and how amazing
that it, like one conversationchanged everything and you were
about to sell your practice.
How long did it take you tostart feeling better once you
identified that Mercury was theissue?
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (06:31):
So I started having some incremental
improvement within, you know, afew months time, but I was about
eight years before I felt like Ihad my brain back.
I don't even know if I everreally completely be back to
what I was before, but there'ssome other really interesting
tie-ins about how.
Anyway, where, where elseMercury comes from that added to
that, I think it probablystarted even before I was a
(06:53):
dentist and uh, just was thiscumulative build.
So anytime you have cumulativetoxic buildup like that, it
doesn't just go away overnight.
Dr. Heather Finley (07:01):
No, it does not at all.
That, that's incredible.
So someone might be listening tothis.
Just completely shocked thinkingI had no idea that my oral
health impacted my overallhealth.
So let's focus on the gut sincemost people listening to this
have GI issues.
So can you just explain brieflyhow oral health affects gut
(07:24):
health and vice versa, and likewhat you tend to see in your
clients?
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (07:29):
Yeah, it's so interesting to me
because, you know, even back inthe early 19 hundreds.
Medicine started specializingand started breaking off into
little areas of expertise in theentire body.
And really what that's done isit's changed the way we all
think about ourselves.
You know, this body that wehouse, that we're live, that we
live inside of the mouth is partof the digestive tract.
(07:50):
Mouth is part of, yeah, it's,it's the first part, but we,
yeah, we call it oral health andgut health.
I'm like, it's the same thing.
It's the same.
It's an open tube off thebottom.
Yeah, exactly.
From the top.
Is the mouth going into theother end?
Is the outside going out?
You know, it's one big tube.
And it's interesting becauseI've heard this talked about,
and if you think about it, it'sactually open.
(08:11):
It's an opening in our body.
It's, you know, it's, it's anopening spot from the mouth all
the way down to the other end,and that that opening is cell
connected top to bottom.
So mouth health is the startingpoint of the digestive tract.
So there's all sorts of ways wecould go with this.
Number one, you know.
Infection in the mouth is goingto also contribute to gut
(08:32):
unhealthy, and I will tellpeople this all the time.
You simply cannot have a healthymouth with an unhealthy gut or
vice versa.
You can't have a healthy gutwith an unhealthy mouth because
it's all one and the same thing.
So if you have gum infection.
If you have a reinfected rootcanal tooth, which is silent,
you often don't know what'shappening.
If you have infection in the jawbone where you had a wisdom
(08:53):
tooth removed, if you have anyof those infections in the
mouth, you cannot have a healthygut no matter what.
The mouth is connected a hundredpercent.
And you mentioned before we evenwent on today, h pylori, they
found that h pylori, which isthe cause of, or the usual cause
of a lot of ulcers and issuesthat way.
Originates oftentimes in themouth.
(09:13):
Yeah.
So these bugs in the mouth arethere for a reason.
The mouth's actually a, it's apretty, um, it's a war zone
because if you think about it,everything that we put into the
body, nearly everything that weput into the body comes in
through the mouth, right.
Our food comes in through themouth.
Our air comes in through themouth, our water comes in
through the mouth.
Everything comes into the bodythrough the mouth.
(09:36):
So there has to be some prettyfierce warriors in that mouth to
be able to fight because there'salso bad things that come in
through the mouth, right.
There's bad bugs in all sorts ofthings, and air, water, food,
all of the above.
So there have to be some prettyintense bugs living in the mouth
to actually be able to defendus.
Well, sometimes those prettyintense bugs get outta control,
(09:56):
and then there, then there areones that we actually don't
want, and those will spreadelsewhere.
So if you have gut dysbiosis,gut problems with the biome and
the bugs living in your gut, youneed to look at your mouth.
Say, do I have something goingon there as well?
So that's the easiest most, youknow, the easiest to understand
connection is just the bacteria.
Dr. Heather Finley (10:16):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And what, obviously you swallowand then we're looking at
stomach acid and if someonedoesn't have enough stomach acid
and yes, it's, anything thatdoesn't get killed off ends up
in the gut, so.
Yep.
I think I read in your book yousaid the mouth is the mirror of
the body.
And Yeah, it's like it,everything is connected.
Like you said, the GI tractreally starts with your mouth
(10:40):
and your oral health, so.
What are some of the signs thenthat might indicate that the
mouth is the sign of some deepergut issues, maybe dysbiosis or
SIBO or h pylori, some of the,those are some of the top things
that we see.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (10:57):
Yeah.
I love this question becauseit's something that I talk about
every single day with patients.
Um, we were all told by our momsthat if we eat sugar or don't
brush our teeth, we're gonna getcavities.
Right?
Yeah.
That's true, but it's only atiny piece of the truth.
The mom didn't know everything.
Unfortunately, nobody's talkingabout this.
(11:18):
Hopefully now more moms aregonna find this out.
But if, if I see a patient andthey've had a clean mouth, I.
Nothing's really been going on.
In fact, I'll always remember, Isee patients like this all the
time, but I'll remember, Iremember this woman, her name
was Kim, and she was just themost diligent patient on the
planet.
You know, you know the type,they'll do every single thing
that we ask them to do no matterwhat.
(11:39):
So she came in every single,every six months on the dot,
like on the day she was thereevery six months, getting her
teeth cleaned, getting her teethexamined, all of the above.
She really didn't have tooth tocase she'd had someone, she was
younger, but we figured it wasprobably diet related.
Some other issues.
She hadn't had a cavity forforever.
Well, she came in at her sixmonth appointment and she had
four cavities all along the gumline, two molars on each side.
(12:02):
She started freaking out.
Of course.
Yeah.
And um, I just said, you havegut problems.
There's something going on inyour gut, you're not absorbing
food properly.
And she said, well, how theheck, how do you know that?
Well, the reason is because thebody is all connected head to
toe, and it needs a balance ofeverything.
And if gut function is not, Imean, this is your world.
(12:25):
If you have low stomach acid andyou're not ion ionizing minerals
properly, what happens is youthe minerals pass through and
don't stop on the way and go andtake care of the cells.
Well.
The brain needs certain amountof minerals.
The heart needs certain amountof minerals, and those are life
sustaining operations in thebody.
Life will not continue if yourheart doesn't continue working
(12:45):
and your brain doesn't continueworking well, guess what's not.
Life sustaining teeth.
So your body can actually livewithout teeth.
It can also live without bonesbecause teeth and bones are
comparable in this, in thisscenario.
But your, you can live withoutteeth.
People do.
So your body knows this.
And this says, all right, if I'mnot getting enough nutrients, if
I'm not getting enough mineralsthrough, either because I'm not
eating them or because I'm notabsorbing them crop properly, I
(13:08):
will have to go find themelsewhere.
And so teeth are already madebank of minerals.
So if you're getting tooth decayalong the gum line, you have.
Core gut function.
Mm-hmm.
The tooth is thinnest along thegum line, so the body's
literally mining minerals fromthe tooth top to bottom, but
it's thinnest at the gum line,so that's where the hole will
show up first.
(13:29):
So this is basically your bodyjust trying to take care of
itself elsewhere.
So that's the first sign I seeis if I see a lot, if I see a
lot of decay period and peoplebrush their teeth.
'cause we can tell, like I canlook, I can tell looking in your
mouth whether you brush yourteeth or not.
Even if you did it just likereally well yesterday I can, I
can tell it was like a, aonetime deal, you know, or, uh,
no, I've been doing this everysingle day of my life.
(13:51):
I can, we can tell.
So if I look in our mouth andyour teeth look beautiful, I can
tell you're brushing.
I can tell you're cleaning,you're doing everything right
and you have.
Nonstop tooth decay.
You know, you're the kid thatalways had two cavities when
they went into the dentist, oryou're the mom who every single
time you go to the dentist, youhave another couple cavities and
you just don't know what to do.
'cause you like, you'reliterally doing everything you
know to do.
It's a gut function.
It's a gut function issue, ahundred percent.
Dr. Heather Finley (14:15):
Do you see this a lot with pregnant and
nursing moms as well with justlike how many minerals they're
depleting because I've heard itso many times from our clients
where they're like, I never hadcavities until I was
breastfeeding.
Yeah.
And then we'll run an HTMA onthem and like they're in a four
lows pattern.
They're minerals are superdepleted.
And I'm like, well, yeah.
You know, calcium bones, likeall the things, it makes total
(14:38):
sense.
So.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (14:39):
Exactly right.
So there's three times.
I see this happen teenage years.
So what's going on in teenageyears?
Well, you're growing your ownbones.
Think of the growth that happensduring teenage years and you
know, I, there's a lady whobrought her daughter in, she was
18, she just moved to collegeand like visited a dentist in
her college town and he said shehad 16 cavities and her mom was
(15:02):
freaking out.
So she brought her in for asecond opinion.
I said, she doesn't have 16cavities, she actually has 17.
Then they really freaked out andI said, this is her gut.
This is her gut.
She is growing faster than herminerals can keep up with.
So either gut function or she'sjust not getting enough period.
You know, she's, you know,college, she's living on pizza
and ramen, you know, whatever.
So she's just not getting whatshe needs.
(15:24):
So in that situation, you'vegotta supplement, you've got to
add more minerals, period.
You just have to do it.
The second one is pregnancy andnursing, because you're not
growing your own bones, you'regrowing somebody else's bones.
You're growing a baby, you'regrowing a human that has bones
and teeth and all sorts of needfor those minerals.
And then the third one is duringmenopause years, because
estrogen, estrogen drops andestrogen actually is what helps
(15:47):
maintain mineral balance in thebones.
That helps maintain a lot ofdifferent things.
So you got that estrogen dropand you actually need an
increase in minerals.
So we start to see decay aroundbound menopause age as well.
So.
It's interesting.
Years ago they talked about whatcaused cavities.
There was a re a whole research,uh, continuum that kind of came
together and all theseresearchers came and one guy
(16:08):
brought this idea that sugarcauses cavities.
Basically sugar eats.
Or bacteria eat sugar.
They lead to acid, which leadsto cavities.
Another guy, Dr.
Weston Price, which a lot ofpeople in the nutrition world
have heard about, he brought hisresearch that says Nutrition
actually leads to the cavities,to nutritional deficiencies,
lead to cavities.
And another researcher, Dr.
Melvin Page said, actually, myresearch shows that hormones
(16:31):
lead to cavities, hormonechanges, lead to cavities.
Well, I think they're all right.
It was voted on in the.
Sugar equals cavities.
One got chosen, so that's theone that we were all taught and
told forever.
This was literally the 1930s.
They did this.
I think they were all right, andthey were all right, kind of for
the same reason.
You know, the body needsminerals to stay well, so it
needs minerals on the teeth, andsugar eating bacteria will strip
(16:54):
those.
It needs minerals in the body,otherwise your body will strip
those and those times increaseduring hormone changes.
So these things are all true.
It's all back to the mineral.
Dr. Heather Finley (17:06):
Yeah, it's like I always talk about this.
Minerals are the foundation ofhealth and then you also need to
be able to absorb the mineralsas well.
Vitamin, there's
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (17:16):
three K too, and acid uhhuh.
Dr. Heather Finley (17:19):
There's the, there's the second part of it.
So another hot topic that I feellike is becoming more.
Common or commonly known aboutis mouth breathing.
So how does mouth breathingaffect gut health digestion, or
even mineral balance?
I think mouth taping has becomevery popular.
(17:39):
But even that, like you'reseeing a lot of, dental airway
specialists.
I know my daughter's dentist isspecializing in this and we've
done expansion and all thethings and have seen like
amazing results, so.
Yeah, I'd love to hear yourthoughts on that and just kind
of explain to the listenersabout that.
Yeah,
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (17:58):
so this trend of mouth taping is really
an interesting one because thebody naturally should be keeping
the mouth closed at night.
I.
But, so we're gonna go twodirections with this.
I'm gonna talk about why this isin need, why your daughter had
to see you, had to do someexpansion, you know, why that's
even happening.
And then what are we missing outon when we're not breathing
through the mouth at night?
(18:19):
What is it doing to the gutfunction?
What is it doing to all thosethings?
So first of all, why are we, whydo we even have this need today?
Why are we not able to keep ourour mouths together?
You know, our lips?
Together at nighttime.
Why are we not able to breathethrough our nose properly?
Well, this again goes back toDr.
Weston Price.
He was studying all thesedifferent societies in the 1930s
and looking at what led tohealthy people, what diet, what
food led to healthy people.
(18:41):
And he found that people whowere healthier had higher levels
of vitamins, fat solublevitamins, vitamin D three, K
two, and water soluble vitamins.
You know, they're the ones wetalk about all the time.
Vitamin C, vitamin B, vitamin,you know, these are, these are
the ones that we get.
People had higher levels ofthose, they had better health.
I mean, we all know this, right?
Yeah.
But what he also found is thatthe people who were healthier
(19:01):
had wider mouths, wider faces,wider noses.
Okay.
Interesting.
Right?
What about that made adifference?
Well, when you have a wider noseand a wider mouth and you're
able to keep your lips togetherat night, air passes through the
nose and it's really importantto do that because the nose is a
(19:21):
filter, so it filters out.
I mean, that's what boogers are.
It's why I tell kill Xlo ton.
It's what your boogers are.
It's all the stuff that, thatyou actually don't wanna be
breathing in.
But if you're breathing inthrough your mouth, there's no
filter.
The tonsils act as a filter, sothis often leads to swollen
tonsils.
So what do we do?
We take the tonsils out.
Oh, great.
Now we've just removed the lastbarrier between the lungs and
(19:43):
all those boogers.
Right?
So we need to breathe throughthe nose because it filters.
It also warms up the air.
So it makes it easier for ourlungs to use it humidifies.
It moistens the air so our lungscan use it better.
It also, when you're breathingthrough the nose, it creates
something called nitric oxide,which leads to expansion of your
blood vessels.
So that air then gets furtherinto the brain, deeper into the
(20:05):
muscles, further into the heart.
All of those places we need tobe breathing through our noses.
Mm-hmm.
This is really important forgrowth and development of
children, particularly, so I'mso glad you're doing this with
your child growth anddevelopment, that nitric oxide
leads to growth hormoneincreases all of these things.
So why do so many peoplestruggle with this?
Why do so many people havecrooked teeth?
(20:26):
Need braces, need expansion?
Why are no mouths fitting wisdomteeth anymore?
A hundred, 200, 300 years ago,we see skulls of people who had
all 32 teeth, you know, so alltheir wisdom teeth in their
mouths and straight teeth.
So what's going on here?
This is a nutrient deficiencyissue.
The first bone affected bymalnutrition is your top jaw.
(20:48):
I learned this because I adopteda little boy at two and a half.
His top jaw was so small, it fitcompletely inside his bottom
jaw.
That's the opposite of whatshould happen if you look at
your teeth.
The top jaw's on the outside,his teeth were lined up like
runway, like airplanes on arunway.
They were so terrible, and hisbirth mother said.
One of the reasons we chose youto adopt him is because we know
(21:09):
you're a dentist and we knowyou're gonna be able to fix
what's going on with his mouth.
Well, he was incrediblymalnourished.
He'd been born at 21 week, like20, what was he, 23 weeks like
super premature.
He had been fed through afeeding tube for the first year
of his life.
He couldn't hardly eat food, sohis jaw did not develop.
If your top jaw develops toonarrow.
(21:30):
The bottom jaw has to developnarrow to fit inside of it, and
so now we have really crookedteeth.
The top jaw is also the floor ofthe nose.
So if your top jaw developsnarrow, your nose develops
narrow.
So we all like these nice,skinny, petite looking noses.
So I joke that it used to bethat like Meryl Monroe and
Robert Redford were like thebeautiful faces in our world.
(21:52):
But now we look at Justin Bieberwith a super skinny nose and
Angelina Jolie with a superskinny nose get, guess what?
Angelina Jo Lee and DustinJustin Bieber, they don't
breathe.
Almost guarantee it.
They cannot breathe.
We need wide noses.
So when we have skinny jaws.
We have skinny noses, and sowhat happens to happen is the
mouth has to drop open to beable to get enough air to
(22:14):
actually survive.
As soon as the mouth drops open,it changes the growth and
development of the face.
It grows more narrow, more long,more skinny, higher arch on the
roof of the mouth.
And now the problem isperpetuated.
So nobody's breathing throughthe mouths at night or breathing
through the nose at night.
They're all hanging their mouthsopen.
They're getting unfiltered, hot,dry, dirty air, right down their
(22:38):
tonsils.
It's up their tonsils.
It's leading to airway issues.
It's leading to kids who aregrinding their teeth at night,
who have to have tonsils out,who need braces, all of these
things.
So mouth taping.
As a result of this, like wehave this whole generation of
people who can't breathe becauseof malnutrition.
This comes back to your world.
Malnutrition.
We gotta get nutrients in theirguts, but because of
(22:59):
malnutrition,'cause we're notgetting the nutrients we need
outta the food that we'reeating, food doesn't have it
anymore.
And because we're just notabsorbing, our guts aren't,
aren't working very well,everybody's malnourished.
We don't have rooms in our mouthfor all of our teeth anymore.
Everything's narrow and skinny.
So they said, all right, let'stape those dang lips closed.
Does it help?
Sure.
Right.
If you can continue to breathethrough.
(23:20):
My husband, Nate tapes his mouthat night every single night
because if you have, if yourmouth breathing, you are gonna
change the biome.
You're gonna change the bugsthat live in your mouth.
You're gonna dry out your gumsleading to gum disease.
You're going to dry out yourteeth leading to tooth decay.
So we see increases in toothdecay, creases in gum disease
when people are mouth breathing.
And it just feels like theSahara Desert when you wake up,
(23:40):
like it feels terrible and youget bad breath.
I mean, it's like awful.
So he.
Tapes, his mouth closed atnight, but he breathes out the
sides.
I hear it.
He goes, you know, he is likebreathing out the sides of the
tape, like it didn't fix theproblem.
Does that make sense?
It didn't fix anything, but itmakes it less dry.
It's better for tooth decay andgum disease, but the bigger
thing is to do what you did withyour daughter is to go and
(24:01):
actually have.
That top jaw expanded out, whichwill also expand out the nose
and give the natural room thatthe body needs to get air in the
way it needs to come in, ratherthan artificially band-aiding it
by putting some tape here.
But I mean, the tape is betterthan nothing, but I would much
prefer expand and we can expandin adults and in kiddos.
(24:23):
We can make everything biggerthe way it should have been, the
way it should have grown, butdidn't.
So if you have crooked teeth,there's no room for wisdom
teeth.
These are all signs.
That your jaw did not grow bigenough and most likely this was
a nutrition problem.
Dr. Heather Finley (24:36):
Yeah, no, it was actually miraculous.
My daughter, she was mouthbreathing and, she failed her
hearing test because heradenoids were so swollen and at
the time we didn't know it, butwe had mold in our house.
So that was obviously a bigpiece there.
Which we've addressed sincethen.
But yeah, she failed her hearingtest and it was pretty amazing.
(25:00):
Now she's, her hearing justfine.
She, and it was way lesstraumatic as a kid.
I had the herps, which was sotraumatic.
Yes.
Um, with the key and like, youliterally feel like your nose is
growing, as you know, andmm-hmm.
Hers was much better.
So we were very appreciative forher dentist that walked us
through that.
But.
It's, it's wild.
(25:21):
Just how common I feel like itis now and you know how much
nutrition actually matters andplays a role and comes down to
also not only what you eat, butwhat you can absorb, like you
said.
So.
Yep.
Let's chat a little bit about.
Saliva and how saliva is a partof the digestive process and
what happens when someone hasdry mouth or just poor salivary
(25:44):
flow.
I think that goes along withsome of the airway issues as
well.
So just kind of building onthat.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (25:51):
Yep.
So absolutely mouth breathingwill lead to dry mouth for sure.
Which, like I said, will leadto.
Sensitive gums, more guminflammation.
It will lead to drying out theteeth, which leads to plaque
buildup, which leads to toothdecay, all those kinds of
things.
There are also some hormonechanges in autoimmune conditions
that will lead to low salivaryflow as well.
So when you put food in yourmouth and even sometimes before
(26:14):
you put food in your mouth, whenyou look at food, your mouth
starts watering, right?
Yeah.
It's the first, it's the startof the digestive process, and so
it secretes something calledamylase.
It's an enzyme that's mouthspecific, so I'm sure that you
know all about this, but thereare certain enzymes.
Enzymes break down food.
There are certain enzymes thatour body has naturally, there
(26:36):
are also enzymes that come inwith our food.
This is why it's so important toeat raw foods, because enzymes
are killed at about 130 degrees.
So we do need some raw foodsthat bring their own enzymes
with them because it helps tobreak down the food that's raw
and the food that's not, but.
The mouth secretes somethingcalled amylase that's an enzyme
in the mouth that starts thebreakdown of food right here.
(26:57):
Mm-hmm.
So if you don't have that, ifyou don't have good salivary
flow, you are now sending fooddown the gut.
That hasn't already started thatprocess and the amylase travels
with the food.
So it's still breaking it downas it moves down, and then it
hits other enzymes as we hit thestomach.
There's other enzymes there asit, you know, there's different
things that it go, that goes tothis process of digestion.
(27:18):
So if you don't have thatsalivary flow and that amylase
at the very beginning, it reallyimpairs the abo the ability to
digest that food down the roadas well.
So there's some things you cando to stimulate salivary flow.
One of the things people used toalways do was bitters.
This is interesting.
I love learning some of the oldtraditional things that people
would do.
Um, like if you would go toGermany, there were like kind
(27:40):
of, you know, unspoken rulesthat you should have at least
six pickles on the table duringa meal.
So you had your, your, uh,spectral and your, like a few
other things, but then you wouldhave.
Pickles, all different kinds ofpickled vegetables.
Why?
Well, those are bitter and theycreate more saliva.
Isn't this interesting?
So they actually have naturalprobiotics, natural other things
(28:02):
as well with them along with it.
But a lot of times you canintroduce help.
For your low salivary flow.
So if you're not getting enoughsaliva, if your mouth feels dry,
you need to do bitter foods.
You need to do things that aregonna increase that salivary
flow.
Even a little bit of lemon inyour water will help to increase
that salivary flow.
I also have a mouthwash that hasmarshmallow root.
(28:24):
Marshmallow root is very goodat.
Also increasing salivary flow.
So you can use a marshmallowroot rinse to try to kickstart
things.
You need it to be able to digestproperly.
So saliva's, super importantsaliva's also where bacteria
live.
So this is why when you have bugbugs in your mouth, they get to
(28:44):
your gut.
Because the saliva's going downwith the food.
So if you have bad bugs that areliving in your mouth, they're
going crazy.
You have gum disease, you'reswallowing all those bugs, and
they're hit in the stomach too.
Now, stomach acid will kill someof them, but not all of them.
And this is where the whole SIBOidea is, where it's like the
right bugs in the wrong place.
Well.
(29:05):
This is potentially a source forwhere SIBO is coming from, as
well as bugs that are, should behere and up here.
Body can't deal with them there.
They're in the wrong place.
So saliva is super important.
Use Bitters to try to stimulateit and marshmallow root Lemon
are great things as well tostimulate it.
Dr. Heather Finley (29:21):
Yes.
I love that you mentionedbitters because that's one of
the very common things that werecommend to our clients as well
as bitter foods which I loveincorporating, like add some
arugula to that.
Add some, you know, dandeliongreens and That's so true
actually, when I went toGermany.
They did always have likesauerkraut or something else on
(29:41):
the table, which I love.
Those are just foods I enjoyanyways, so we live in a very
antibacterial world, as youknow, and everything is
antibacterial, like kill off allthe bacteria.
And you and I both know thatthat's not necessarily helpful,
so.
What common oral hygienepractices may be harming the
(30:03):
oral and gut microbiome?
Like, where are we overdoing itand what's, what do you see in
your practice?
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (30:11):
Love this question because it goes
all the way back to oral careproducts.
Um, commercial toothpaste.
If you look on the tube, you'regonna see that there's a whole
bunch of ingredients that youcan't pronounce.
One of them is Tricent.
You can actually pronounce thatone, but you probably have no
clue what that is.
It's a really potentantibacterial.
(30:32):
So what it's doing is it'skilling all the bugs in the
mouth.
We don't wanna do that becauseif you kill off all the good
bugs, what's going to happen isthe bad bugs are gonna flourish,
including yeasts.
So there's so much yeast.
I'm sure you see a lot of yeast,don't you?
A lot of yeast proliferation andguts.
Dr. Heather Finley (30:48):
Oh
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (30:48):
yeah, exactly right.
You kill off all the, all thebacteria, the yeasts are gonna
have a heyday.
So Triclosan and otherantimicrobials that are in
toothpaste are really damagingto the gut biome and to the oral
biome to both.
'cause it's all the same thing,you know?
So it is to the biome ingeneral, they're very damaging.
So I don't recommend any toothcare products that have any
(31:08):
antimicrobials in them at all.
So that's a starting point.
Um, the next one is mouthwashthat burn that you get with like
a Listerine.
It's because of alcohol.
Mm-hmm.
These mouth washes are over 50%alcohol.
Well, what does alcohol kill?
Bacteria.
Right?
This is why when you go to thehospital and you're getting your
(31:28):
blood draw and they use a littlealcohol wipe on the arm because
it's gonna disinfect the area,it's gonna kill any bugs that
are on that surface.
Well, when you're rinsing withthat, you're killing all the
bugs in the mouth and you'reabsolutely swallowing that.
There's no way you're rinsingwith something that you're not
swallowing as well, so you'reswallowing that alcohol.
It's going down as changing thegut biome as well.
So no.
(31:49):
Alcohol containing mouth washesever should be used, period.
So what do I recommend insteadfor a tooth care product?
Absolutely recommendHydroxyapatite products that
don't have any kind ofantimicrobial in it.
So my tooth powder actually hasessential oils, which some
people will say that's anantimicrobial, and it's true.
(32:10):
Essential oils are really greatat controlling bacterial growth.
It depends on the amount.
If I had.
Dumped an entire capsule ofpeppermint oil in that tooth
powder.
It sure is.
It's gonna help control or it'sgonna kill some bugs.
We're like, it's the whiff ofessential oil in there to make
it taste right, because I didn'twanna put any artificial flavors
in there, or artificialsweeteners or artificial
(32:32):
anything else is so it's justenough to make it right, but
it's not enough to kill anybugs.
The other one is in ourmouthwash, we use colloidal
silver, which a lot of peoplewill say also, this is gonna do
the same thing.
It's gonna kill all the bugs.
It depends on the parts permillion.
So the dosage of.
The colloidal silver is, if youhave high parts per million high
dosage, it will, it'll kill anybugs just like the alcohol did.
(32:53):
If you have low, it willselectively kill only bad bugs,
not good bugs.
So it's really important to makesure that what you're using for
tooth care is keeping youhealthy as well.
Dr. Heather Finley (33:03):
I love that.
And that's a big recommendationthat we often give to our
clients is just making littleswaps.
You know, it can feel superoverwhelming to overhaul
everything, but it's like, okay,when you run outta something,
let's just replace it with adifferent thing and you know, it
doesn't all have to be at onetime.
We can do it.
We can do it systematically.
So.
(33:24):
How do you recommendsimultaneously supporting the
oral and the gut microbiomes?
Like what are, what are somestrategies, specific routines,
foods, probiotics, whatever itmight be that you recommend
starting with.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (33:39):
Yep.
So one of the things you canstart doing at home that's a
real simple swap as well, istongue scraping.
And this is an old Ayurvedictechnique from India, and they
swear that it alters gut biomeas well, that it does not just,
you know, your oral biomechanges, but it does gut biome
as well, whether it does that ornot.
And some research shows thatit's true.
But like I said, it's all thesame biome.
(34:00):
It's all the same bugs.
So what.
Oil.
Oh, excuse me.
There's two things that Ayurvedarecommended.
Oil pulling and tongue scraping.
So let's talk about both ofthose.
So oil pulling every bug in yourmouth, every bug in your body,
doesn't matter where it is orwhat it is, is surrounded by
fats.
This is just the way they'remade All of our cells are too.
It's called the fatty lipidlayer around the outside of
(34:21):
every single one of our cells.
So it's surrounded by fats.
So when you put the tablespoonof coconut oil in your mouth and
you swish it around.
The fat in that oil will attractthe fat in the bacteria, and
they'll literally.
Pull to each other.
So this is why it's called oilpulling.
It will pull bacteria from everynook and cranny in the mouth.
It's not selective, so it'sgonna pull bad bugs, good bugs,
(34:43):
all bugs.
This is why I don't recommendoil pulling every day of your
life because I believe it'sgonna remove too many bacteria.
So I recommend if you have gumdisease, you're gonna do it
about five days in a row.
And then you're only gonna do itevery four to five days just to
kind of keep things undercontrol, but not to eliminate
and eradicate all bugs ingeneral.
So that's one thing people don'toften say about oil, oil
(35:05):
pulling.
They think that it's good everyday of your life.
I don't agree.
I.
I
Dr. Heather Finley (35:08):
think
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (35:08):
it's a once a week kind of touchup
thing if you need it.
If you have gum disease, I don'toil pull at all unless I have
something that's coming along.
If I feel like I've got a yeastinfection.
And how can you tell?
I get a white tongue, so if youget a white tongue, often that's
a sign of yeast infection.
If I have that going on, I I'lloil pull for about three days.
Just try to get things kind ofback into, back into balance
again.
So the second one is tonguescraping.
(35:29):
Um, I want to challenge peopleto do a test at home because
oftentimes people say, well, Ialready brushed my tongue.
It's fine.
Well, the tongue's like a shagcarpet.
There's so much that can gettrapped down in that shag
carpet, and we think that justbrushing alone is doing the job,
but it's not.
So this is the test I want youto do.
I want you to get a tonguescraper.
I have a copper one.
The reason I like copper isbecause it's antimicrobial.
(35:52):
So when you actually scrape withit and then you go stick it in
your bathroom cupboard.
There's not bugs that are stillliving on it.
The next time you put it back inyour mouth, you're not just
adding yesterday's bugs back toit because they can't live on
that copper.
So that's why I like the copper.
But you know, there's lots ofdifferent versions of tongue
scrapers.
I want you to get a tonguescraper.
So I want you to brush yourtongue as good as you always
(36:12):
have done.
And then I want you to tonguescrape and I want you to see
what's left on there that youdidn't know was left on there.
Dr. Heather Finley (36:18):
And I think it's pretty amazing.
I've done that before and it's,yeah, it's eye.
It's like
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (36:22):
I thought I was doing a really
great job here.
So what I like to do, the orderof things is.
You're going to, I actually liketo brush then floss because if
you brush with hydroxy appetite,flossing after brings the
hydroxy appetite down betweenthe teeth.
So brush, floss, rinse.
If you're using a hydroxyappetite mouthwash like what I
(36:43):
have.
'cause you're adding it all backin.
And then, sorry, I jumped ahead.
Brush floss.
Tongue scrape.
I want all that junk off ofthere.
The last thing you're gonna dois rinse, because I actually
want those antimicrobials fromthe coil silver to get into that
tongue surface.
And I want that crud cleaned offof there.
So this is the way I always tellpeople.
(37:04):
Brush floss, tongue scrape,rinse.
Seven minutes a day, that's allit takes.
This isn't anything fancy orextra anything else, it's just
what you're already doing.
Super simple ways to keep itunder control.
I just have a brand newmouthwash that actually has a
prebiotic in it, and that iswhat's going to encourage good
bacterial growth in the mouthand in the gut as well.
(37:25):
So there's a lot of other dentalprebiotics that you can take or
probiotics that you can take.
I don't think they're thatessential if you just keep
everything balanced on a dailybasis.
I don't think you need to takean extra pill or an extra
anything else to give you otheroral probiotics.
Dr. Heather Finley (37:41):
Okay, well that kind of answers my next
question.
I was gonna rapid fire a couplequestions, but you already
answered most of'em.
It was gonna be, do we need oralprobiotics?
No.
No.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (37:52):
And you're staying on top of it.
Dr. Heather Finley (37:54):
Okay.
One thing to stop doing todayfor oral health, I think that
this one you already answeredtoo, but
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (38:00):
using an alcohol containing mouthwash or
a toothpaste with triclosan init,
Dr. Heather Finley (38:05):
and then oil pulling overhyped are helpful.
There we go.
You put that as well.
And then the last one youhaven't touched on is xylitol.
Yes or no?
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (38:13):
Okay.
Xylitol is an interesting one.
There's some controversy aboutit, but it's all about the
dosage.
So xylitol, starves.
Bacteria.
They can't eat it, so it's asugar that they don't like.
So really the reason thatcavities develop sugar doesn't
cause cavities.
That's not, it's not that directof a relationship.
What happens is the bacteriathat live in your mouth, they
(38:35):
like sugar, they eat sugar, andthey poop out acid.
So like basically they excreteacid.
That acid then dissolves theminerals on your tooth.
So does sugar cause cavities?
Sure.
In a roundabout way, right?
Bacteria eat sugar, whatever.
So if you feed them sugar thatthey can't eat, then they can't
(38:56):
poop out acid.
Does that make sense?
So there are, there's a ton ofresearch showing that xylitol
leads to less ate.
This is why, but the problemcomes when you start using it
for everything.
So there have been shown,there's research showing issues
with gut function.
Research is, you know, withissues with other functions in
the body when you're using Xxylitol on a large amount.
(39:18):
So if you're replacing xylitolas your sweetener of choice,
when you're making a batch ofcookies or you're, you know,
putting whatever it is.
That is not how we're gonna useit.
You're gonna use it in a toothcare product.
So I actually joke my, not mytooth powder.
I figured out the researcharticle that showed the damages
or the dangers with xylitol.
I figured out you'd have to eat13 jars of this powder a day to
(39:41):
get as much xylitol as they wereusing to test and show.
Problems with it.
So if you wanna eat 13 powders,uh, jars of this powder a day,
then you're gonna have problemswith xylitol.
But if you're using it in verysmall amounts and tooth care
products, you're okay.
You're just not gonna use it asa replacement sugar in your
baking and cooking and everydaylife.
Dr. Heather Finley (40:01):
Okay.
That's super helpful.
So last question, just to kindof tie up the loose end that we
were talking at the beginning ofthe episode about root canals
and amalgam fillings is we knowthat these can be problematic
because you described even justyour own journey.
What should somebody do if they.
(40:22):
Need to have a root canal orhave been recommended to have a
root canal, or they have amalgamfillings that they feel like are
impacting their health.
Like what were, what are thesteps that they should go
through, or what kind ofpractitioners should they look
for?
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (40:35):
So first thing is mercury fillings do
release mercury 24 7.
When I was in school, I was toldthat if I told you that I would
lose my license.
Now I can tell you that becauseit's been backed and shown by
research.
So they do release mercury 24 7.
So if people have symptoms andmercury goes to gut function,
mercury impacts zinc, whichleads to stomach acid creation.
So if you have mercury levels inyour body, it can lead to low
(40:57):
stomach acid and gut issues.
So if this is something you feellike.
Maybe this is a piece of mypuzzle.
Maybe I need to address this.
You absolutely wanna go to adentist that will remove them
safely because you're gonna getthe most mercury release during
that removal procedure.
And if you just do it at anormal dentist where you're
swallowing it and breathing itin, and it's way, way, way
(41:19):
worse, I tell people, leave'emalone.
Unless you're gonna do itsafely.
So go to a dentist.
There's a two directories youcan go to.
One is on my website, livingwell with dr michelle.com.
I have a dentist directory onthere of people who do this kind
of thing.
The other one is calledI-A-O-M-T.
Hopefully you can put that inthe show notes.
IAOM t.org.
It's also dentists who willremove mercury fillings safely.
(41:42):
And what does that look like?
You are covered, like your faceis covered'cause mercury is
absorbed through the skin.
Your nose is covered, everythingis covered, you're not
swallowing in it.
There's a giant vacuum that's atthe edge of your, the base of
your chin, so it's sucking allthe vapor that direction.
That's how you wanna'em removedif you're going to do it.
Root canals, this is a wholehour talk on its own, but I'll
give you the 32nd version.
(42:03):
Basically the problem is.
When you have a root canal, thetooth is not completely clean
after no matter what, becausethere's main canals and there's
little side channels.
I like to think of it as thesuper highway and the little
roads, the exit ramps and theroads that go off through the
cities.
Those roads can't be cleaned.
You always have dead tissue leftin a root canal tooth, no matter
what.
(42:24):
You can get a root canal, butunderstand it's a place saver.
It's gonna hold that space, holdthat tooth in the mouth for a
while.
If you already have chronicdisease, I do not recommend it
because what it's going to do isyour body is gonna have to deal
with that dead tissue and lowgrade chronic infection 24 7,
and it's going to impact you.
So if you already have chronicdisease, if you're already
struggling, what do you doinstead?
(42:46):
If the tooth is still alive, wesave it.
We use ozone, and we actuallykeep the tooth alive.
We fill right over it and wekeep it alive.
If it's already dead, we removeit and we replace it with a
ceramic dental implant.
I have a dental implant right uphere.
Nobody knows it's there.
It chews like a tooth.
It smiles like a tooth.
It's fabulous.
I tell people all the time, Ican replace your teeth.
I can't replace your health.
(43:06):
So if this dead tooth in yourbody leads to chronic disease
and nothing else is taken careof it, it's time to get that
tooth out.
And how do you find out?
You do what's called a cone beamCT scan, cone beam CT scan
shows.
Is your root canal healthy or isthere an issue?
And I find these daily massiveinfections that nobody knows
about, contributing to guthealth, contributing to sinus
(43:27):
infections, contributing to allthe above, and it's a failed
root canal.
I.
Dr. Heather Finley (43:32):
So interesting.
It's crazy how it is allconnected and just,, I love how
you said, we started separatingmedicine, we started separating
everything and I think hopefullyat the end now everyone is
realizing, I.
We can't separate it.
Everything is all connected.
So Dr.
Michelle, this has been amazingand so informative.
(43:52):
I've learned a ton.
I know that the listeners have,you just had a book that came
out.
So tell everybody about yourbook, where they can find you,
where your practice is, in casethey wanna work with you and
come see you, all the things.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (44:06):
Yep.
So the book is actually, there'sa little bit about dentistry in
there, but it's.
It's the answer to a lot ofconcern that we have today,
which is where do I start?
I want to get better.
I want to do the right thingsfor my health, but I don't have
a clue where to start.
Like there's all these peopletelling me different things and
there's so much overwhelm in thehealth world today.
So it actually has an assessmentin it that uses your symptoms.
(44:28):
You plug your symptoms in and ittells you which of your cells
need help first, and it puts youin a season.
So gut health is a big one inthere, and you just need to
know, is the gut the first placeto start?
Or is my liver, do I need todetox first?
Or is it, you know, whatever.
Whatever it might be.
It tells you which.
Cells to start with first, andthen it tells you what to do
about it.
So that's what the book's allabout and really it is changing
(44:49):
the way we stay.
Well, that isfound@livingwellbook.com.
So check that out.
But also all the products I'vetalked about, all you know, all
of the everything information,all sorts of free stuff all over
the place at Living Well with drmichelle.com.
And the officeis@totalcaredental.com.
So those are the three places tocheck out the book, the
practice, and the products, andthen the dental office.
Dr. Heather Finley (45:11):
Amazing.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Last question actually that Ialways ask every guest is, how
do you love your gut?
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (45:19):
You know, it's interesting because I
have struggled with gut healthsince I was a teenager, and I
love my gut by listening to it.
Dr. Heather Finley (45:27):
I love that.
Thanks so much, Dr.
Michelle.
Dr. Michelle Jorgenson (45:29):
Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.