Healing from the Roots: Overcoming Periodontal Disease Naturally With Dr. Lauralee Nygaard

Curious about the hidden link between your oral health and overall well-being? Join me, Dr. Rachaele Carver, as we welcome the insightful Dr. Lauralee Nygaard, a periodontist who champions a holistic approach to dental care. Dr. Nygaard shares her captivating journey into the world of periodontics, including a life-altering moment when she faced a possible stroke during surgery. Together, we unravel the connections between oral health and systemic conditions, discussing how accessible treatments can play a crucial role in preventing chronic diseases like heart disease and dementia.

In our engaging discussion, we explore how dietary choices can significantly impact your gum health. Discover the surprising benefits of protein-rich diets for reducing inflammation and why plant-based diets might leave your oral health lacking. We also delve into the effectiveness of modern laser surgery over traditional antibiotics in treating periodontal disease, underscoring the importance of stable blood sugar levels and informed dietary choices for better oral and overall health.

We don't shy away from addressing the complexities of medications on oral health, specifically the unexpected side effects of drugs like statins and GLP-1. Dr. Nygaard and I share innovative at-home dental care tips, from dry brushing to using a water pick, offering listeners practical strategies for maintaining their oral health. We also touch on the potential of epigenetics in overcoming genetic predispositions to dental issues, empowering you to take charge of your health and prevent chronic diseases. Join us for a transformative episode filled with knowledge and actionable insights.

Connect with Dr. Lauralee Nygaard https://www.drnygaard.com/

To learn more about holistic dentistry, check out Dr. Carver's website:

http://carverfamilydentistry.com

To contact Dr. Carver directly, email her at [e-mail]

Want to talk with someone at Dr. Carver's office?  Call her practice: 413-663-7372

Reverse Gum Disease In 6 Weeks! With Dr. Rachaele Carver Online Course!

Learn more about here: https://reversegumdiseaseinsixweeks.info/optinpage

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only. Information discussed is not intended for diagnosis, curing, or prevention of any disease and is not intended to replace advice given by a licensed healthcare practitioner. Before using any products mentioned or attempting methods discussed, please speak with a licensed healthcare provider. This podcast disclaims responsibility from any possible adverse reactions associated with products or methods discussed. Opinions from guests are their own, and this podcast does not condone or endorse opinions made by guests. We do not provide guarantees about the guests' qualifications or credibility. This podcast and its guests may have direct or indirect financial interests associated with products mentioned.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode
of the Root of the Matter.
I am your host, dr RachelCarver, and today we are very
lucky to have, I think, ourfirst periodontist or gum
specialist on the podcast, drLaura Lee Nygaard.
This is very exciting.
You guys have heard me talk somuch about terrain theory and
really the root cause ofcavities and gum disease and

(00:23):
that if we really want to try toheal it, we really need to
understand instead of alwaysjust trying to kill the bad
bacteria.
I'm really excited to have thisconversation to give you guys
some really good tips and how wecan really reverse this,
because we know the data isclear that the bugs that we
often see in periodontal diseaseare linked to dementia and

(00:44):
heart disease and preterm birthrates and every chronic disease
basically on the planet.
We need to fix this.
The exciting thing is the mouthis super accessible.
It's a lot easier to try totreat the mouth versus dealing
with IBS or something like that.
So we're going to give youreally great tips, lots of great
information, so we can preventthis disease.
That is a precursor to a lot ofchronic issues.

(01:07):
So welcome.
Thank you so much for takingtime on your Friday afternoon to
be with us.
So maybe tell us a little bitabout how you got into dentistry
and how you got more along thatmore kind of holistic whole
body.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Thank you for having me.
I'm very honored to be able tojoin you as the first
periodontist.
I love periodontics and I'mexcited to share what I have
learned in my journey.
I became a dentist largelybecause I thought I wanted to be
a physician.
In high school, when I took anaptitude test, dentists kept
coming up no matter how I triedto fake the test and so I
reluctantly thought, okay, Iguess I should be a dentist.

(01:41):
And my second year of dentalschool I thought I'd made a
really big mistake because I didnot love the tooth classes.
I was totally into more of thephysical assessment classes
pathology, immunology and allthat stuff.
In my second year of dentalschool, dr Peter Nordland, who
was a periodontist in California, took an afternoon office
practice and came in and showedthe first published connective

(02:04):
tissue graft procedures whereyou could actually regenerate
and regrow gums, and I was likein awe, like I knew that's what
I wanted to be when I grew upand I left that lecture
determining I was going to doeverything I could to score high
enough on my test.
I could go into my specialtyprogram with the dream of maybe
having an aesthetic focusedperiodontal plastic surgery
practice, which I did, started apractice from scratch when I

(02:26):
graduated from Dallas School in1995, and I was busy treating
all the periodontal disease thatI could get my hands on.
Doing.
Very much, a practice focusedon aesthetic periodontal
procedures and it was, I believe, a Wednesday afternoon.
I was doing surgery on apatient and I'm in a

(02:47):
multi-dental building.
So one of the dentists fromacross the hall popped her head
in my surgery and said, hey,pause for a second and answer
some questions on a case.
And so I stepped away to consultwith her on a case and stepped
back into my surgery, put mysurgical loops on and realized I
couldn't see anything.
And so I rocked my head backand forth, thinking my loops got
, you know, messed up, and Ipretty quickly realized what I

(03:10):
was thinking I wasn't seeing wasactually TV snow.
I literally couldn't get myeyes to focus and if you know
anything about dentalspecialties, we're the nerds in
periodontics, about everythingscience and I very quickly
realized that I was having astroke, most likely.
I knew that blood wasn'tgetting through to my brain

(03:30):
because my eyes weren't workinglike they were supposed to.
I was clearly sending themessage and nothing was
happening.
And so I moved my hands, Imoved my seat, I took my pulse,
I thought, okay, everything'sworking.
But I realized I needed aspirinreally quick, and so I was able
to get up and walk down the hallto my sterilization, where I
asked my assistants for two,three 25 milligram aspirins

(03:52):
which I chewed, sucked under mytongue and then went to do a
hygiene exam.
And by this time my speech wasvery slurred, so I sounded like
I was drunk, and so my hygienist, very, in a very animated way,
said what is the matter with you?
And I was embarrassed and I dida quick exam, said as little as
I could, and I walked back downthe hall to my surgery, sat

(04:13):
down and tried to pick up mysuture needles to finish, I had
two sutures to tie and I couldnot tie my sutures, and so my
surgical assistant put her handsover mine and together we tied
the last two sutures and Ifinished the case and I went up
to my office manager and saidhey, I feel weird.
I think I'm going to go home.
She goes, oh no, she goes, I'mgoing to drive you home.
And the thing that sounds crazyas I'm telling the story, is I

(04:36):
didn't feel like I was in dangerin the moment that all this was
happening and I went home thatnight just feeling weird and I
remember hoping I wake up again.
After I went to sleep and I gotup the next day, I think my
husband drove me to work andthen he checked in on me
mid-morning and I guess I wasjust slower than normal who kind

(05:01):
of looked at me condescendinglyand said oh, laura, lee had a
migraine, you're fine.
And I'm like no, I know, I hada neurologic event.
And he said just to prove toyou that you're a hypochondriac,
I'll order an MRI and just letyou know that.
No, it was just a migraine.
And so that was Wednesday whenI had the event.
I wasn't scheduled for the MRItill the following Friday, so it
was about a week and a half.

(05:21):
I did the MRI with contrast.
That Monday he called me andsaid I don't want you to freak
out, but we found a spot in yourbrain.
I've referred you to a strokespecialist.
He didn't even say a strokespecialist.
He said I referred you to aneurologist who will see you
Tuesday over his lunch hourbecause he has no openings until
November.
And this was May, and so Ipretty much hung up and anyway I

(05:47):
got.
I went in to see the neurologistand I had three months of
testing.
I think I had two or three MRIswith eye contrast, I had
multiple echocardiograms buttons of blood work and after all
of that he basically said youhad a cryptogenic stroke, which
means it was a clot stroke wentup the occipital artery and
that's why your vision wasaffected.
He said you saved your life bychewing two aspirin and he said
here's my card.

(06:08):
I have no idea why thishappened, but if you have
symptoms again, give me a call.
And I remember leaving hisoffice feeling a little bit let
down because I know enough aboutbiology to know you just don't
throw a clot for no reason.
My kids at the time, I think,were five and seven and you
envision not growing and notbeing with them as they were
growing up or whatever.
And so I came back to my officethe following week and was

(06:29):
relaying my story to a patientat the time that was a cardiac
nurse and she said Laura Lee,she said you could do something
about that.
She said I think you should goin for a more advanced cardiac
preventative workup.
And so that's how I was.
I was scheduled to see AmyDonene at the heart Attack and
Stroke Prevention Center tofigure out what was going on.
And interestingly, at the timethat I saw her, my OBGYN took me

(06:50):
off my birth control pills in ananosecond and he said he was
like in his opinion I had beenon them for more than 10 years
and he was adamant that I wasdone like yesterday.
And it was interesting, I gotreally different information
from all three differentphysicians.
So my neurologist said thebirth control pills had nothing

(07:11):
to do with it.
My OBGYN was like birth controlpills, you're done.
And then Amy Donene, because ofher approach, was to try to look
for some genetic root cause ofcholesterol.
And at the time, with theadvanced cardiac testing they
did, my cholesterol was not highbut my particle size was what

(07:33):
they called dangerous, which inhindsight, with what I know now,
just means I was eating nothingbut sugar.
I was on a very for years.
I had never eaten fat, I'd onlyeaten carbohydrates, and so a
lot of my lipid profile wasn'tso much, in my opinion, about
disease but more about mymetabolic dysfunction and stress

(07:54):
.
But anyway, at the time thatinformation wasn't really
available, because this was whatin 2005.
And they started me on a veryaggressive cardiac prevention
regimen of drugs, so many drugsthat even my pharmacist asked me
why in the world are you takingall this stuff?
Because I was skinny and littleand looked young and they were

(08:14):
in shock that I was on bloodpressure medication, cholesterol
medication.
Anyway, long story short, Iwent along like this for a while
and then, no matter what I didin terms of following the
American Heart Association dietor taking all my drugs, I could
not get my inflammation undercontrol, and LPPLA2, which is a
marker in the blood for anenzyme that shows that your

(08:36):
plaque in your arteries isdestabilizing, in spite of me
being on this regimen, was likegoing up and up.
And so, about two years intothis regimen, amy Donin said to
me hey, what's your periodontalhealth like?
Maybe you should have an oralDNA test?
And I'm like, excuse me, do youknow what I do?
I am a periodontist, that is,gum dentist.

(08:57):
I can assure you I do not havegum disease and I was a little
bit off-put.
And then the whole idea backthen about bacteria testing
really was off-putting to mebecause when I was in my
residency late 80s, early 90s,all this genetic testing was
getting going and they reallycouldn't connect it to any of
the oral things that werehappening.

(09:19):
And so I wasn't super open atall to do the testing and I
really poo-pooed it because ifyou know anything about
periodontal disease, your biomethere's 800 organisms on average
, or 700, 800 in your mouth, andI never really believed it was
a specific infection process,because it's more a dysbiosis
that creates an immune response.

(09:39):
So I was just not open to this.
Let's look at bacteria.
But as my inflammatory markerswere raging, I was starting to
get afraid of maybe havinganother event.
So I acquiesced and said, ohfine, I'll do the DNA test.
And I did the DNA test and Icame back with my.
Aa was a little elevated and Ithink TF, but it wasn't crazy,
it was just a little bit.
So I thought, ok, I'm going todo an experiment.

(10:01):
I thought, ok, I'm going to doan experiment.
I thought, okay, I'm going tohave my teeth cleaned.
So, embarrassingly, when Amysaid what's your gum disease
status, I went back to look atmy records and it had been three
years since I had my teethcleaned and for people listening
that might sound ridiculous,but when you're a dentist in the
grind you do not get in thechair unless there's a
cancellation in your scheduleand the hygiene schedule.
And it's just.
I was totally in the grind, nottaking care of myself, pretty

(10:25):
much subsisting on threefrappuccinos and a Coca-Cola a
day, and I was just a hot mess.
And the other thing about mycharting that sort of I looked
at is I had only two teeth thathad one four millimeter pocket
on them and I thought, well,that's not herd all disease In
2005,.
That was barely gingivitis,like everyone had fours in their
molars.
So I thought I heard alldisease in 2005.
That was barely gingivitis,like everyone had fours in their

(10:46):
molars.
So I thought I don't have gumdisease.
So I was a little surprisedwhen my um oral dna test came
back showing these pathogens andI thought, okay, I'm in a humor
, amy, don't need a long and I'mgonna.
Okay, I'll have my teethcleaned and I'll commit to
flossing every day for threemonths, which again sounds
embarrassingly like dentists todo it right.
But I will say my hygienistsare great.
I'm like the rest of y'all.
I'm not, I think, because Iknow dentists that could replace

(11:10):
my teeth if something happened.
It was just not.
I'm still like.
I never floss my teeth, maybeevery other day or every third
day when I wasn't doing itreally consistently.
So I really made an effort inthis experiment to floss every
day and have my teeth cleanedreally well using ultrasonics,
in this experiment to flossevery day and have my teeth
cleaned really well usingultrasonics, and three months

(11:31):
later I had a blood marker testfor LPPLA2 enzyme and then I had
another oral DNA test done andwhat was really interesting is
in a three-month period of timemy LPPLA2 fell over 90 points,
which took me from high-riskstroke to a normal range.
And if that had been a drug itwould have been marketed all
over the place, okay.
So that was really interestingto me and very educational.
That, wow, the flossing reallydoes.

(11:53):
It really works.
But that sort of began my, Iwould say, journey into this
whole holistic or this wholeoral systemic health connection
because of what happened to meand then, in addition to that,
about the time this washappening, I guess maybe a year

(12:14):
or so after that, my son gotreally sick with a skin
condition that nobody couldfigure out and I, through lots
of my research, had him testedfor celiac disease and he had
severe celiac disease and hismicrobiome was destroyed.
So he had 50 food sensitivities.
He was a mess he was at thetime we diagnosed him.

(12:35):
He'd been given steroids everythree months by the
dermatologist.
Nobody could help him and hewas sick, very depressed in
college anyway.
He was sick, very depressed incollege anyway.
So that sort of connected me tolearning about how the oral
biome, or how your gut health,basically connects to your oral
health and how that has a hugerole in periodontal conditions.

(12:56):
And I look now at periodontaldisease as the warning light on
your dashboard for your car Ifyou have pockets that bleed, or
even just no pockets but yourgums bleed.
That's like your check enginewarning light.
And there's so periodontaldisease.
It's often discussed by dentistsas an infection.
It is actually a dysbiosis,much like having gut dysbiosis.

(13:20):
So what?
And there's many things thatcan trigger a dysbiosis.
Certain medications can notbrushingbiosis, certain
medications can not brushing andflossing your teeth can.
Eating a highly processed fooddiet can.
Having a lot of stress in yourlife can.
So there's all these triggersthat create an overgrowth or
dysbiosis.
So dysbiosis happens when youhave good guy bugs and bad guy

(13:40):
bugs.
Both grow in the mouth.
Good guy bugs tend to be moreoxygen loving and bad guy bugs
and grow in the mouth.
Good guy bugs tend to be moreoxygen loving and bad guy bugs,
and so you can take a goodorganism, never brush or floss,
and those organisms multiply,pile on, cut the blood supply
off to the first organisms thatshow up and you take what was
once an okay bacteria and youcreate kind of a monster where,

(14:01):
because you cut the oxygensupply off, it becomes what we
call facultative anaerobic,starts to secrete a toxin and
then the toxin then in turnturns on an immune response in
your body.
So the actual destruction ofgum and bone is not from the
bacteria creating an infection,it's from your body's response,
literally chewing away your boneand your gum tissue in your

(14:23):
mouth.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
I just want to stop because this is so important,
and I love that you're sayingthis, because when I've given
lots of lectures and webinarsand you look up the definition
of periodontal disease and it'salways it's an infectious
disease and this is so importantand so important to
understanding how we can reversethis and prevent it in the
first place.
Okay, so I really I want toreiterate what Dr Loralee said.

(14:46):
Right, it is not about thebacteria, right?
So we have to stop thinkingabout kill-kill with all these
harsh mouth rinses andantibiotics.
It is a response.
It is we talk about it all thetime a change in the environment
, right, the terrain.
So we talk about this theorycalled pleomorphism, right,

(15:07):
where those healthy,oxygen-loving, nice bacteria
that we need?
Right, because they help usabsorb our nutrients, they help
our immune system.
There's so many things thatthey do when they lose that
oxygen right, they lose, or thenutrients, right, we're living a
highly processed diet, right.
So they become how I explain it?
They become hangry.
Think about you when you'rereally hungry, like your whole

(15:29):
personality can change, right,same thing.
That's what's happening withthese microbes they become
hangry, they change form andchange shape and, as Lorelei
said, it's the toxin that theygive off that activates the
immune system.
So I think of periodontaldisease just like an autoimmune
condition, because that'sbasically the definition.
Your body starts attackingitself, but not because of the

(15:51):
bacteria, because of the toxinsthe bacteria are relieving,
because the environment in thebody has changed.
We don't all of a sudden oneday swallow these pathogenic
bacteria and get gum disease orgenetics.
Right, my mother had it, so I'mgoing to have it.
No, it's about the environmentand the body and it's this
immune reaction.
So I'm sorry to interrupt you,but it's so important that

(16:13):
people get them.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
I'm so glad you did and I so am excited that you
talk about it the same way I do,because I have actually been
criticized by peers for nottalking about it as an infection
.
I'm like it's not an infectionat all and it's.
And the other thing that goesalong with this is that if you

(16:35):
are metabolically unhealthy oryou are hyperinsulinemic which
89 of a population america is,so I think it's only one in
eight of us it's metabolicallyhealthy.
When your insulin hormonespikes, your endothelial lining
inside your capillaries opens upand leaks.
When you are on the yo crap fooddiet, like I was on, where I
was eating sugar constantly, mygums bled every time I had my
teeth cleaned because I wascreating an environment where I

(16:58):
was opening up the little tinyblood vessels in the mouth and
those toxins were there and Iwas giving them a complete
invitation to enter mybloodstream.
And the metabolic stuff relatedto gum disease is huge.
I just lectured last month andI think it I don't remember I
think it was a journal of dentalresearch.
It looked at almost 300patients that, according to the

(17:23):
numbers, seemed healthy and theycorrelated what the insulin
levels were related toperiodontal inflammation and
what they found was that ifsomebody had five millimeter
pockets that bled, it was a 92%correlation that they were
insulin resistant.
Wow, say that one more timethat they were insulin resistant

(17:44):
.
Wow, say that one more time.
So in other words, for patientswho were having gum exams that
were considered healthy whenthey did insulin sensitivity
screening tests to see if theywere metabolically healthy,
patients with pockets that were5 millimeters that bled had a
92% correlation with beingdiagnosed with insulin
resistance.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
And insulin resistance is a major risk
factor for patients everything.
We know diabetes, obviously, butthis is, I think, what leads to
cholesterol.
High blood pressure, likehaving that insulin high is
really a problem.
And so it's interesting whatyou said, too, about the
endothelial lining.
Just as we talk about all thetime, the gut lining, one cell

(18:24):
layer, that seen as theendothelium, so the endothelium
is that lining of our bloodvessels, right, and this is what
causes cholesterol to get high.
When we have inflammation inthe blood vessel, it's a signal
to the liver I have damage.
Right, send me some LDL, whichwe think of, or we're taught to
think of, as the bad cholesterolwhen in fact that's the

(18:52):
band-aid.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
Send me a band-aid, yes.
So cholesterol then forms tokeep the endothelial lining
intact so you don't rupturesomething.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
Exactly.
And the problem is when we keep.
If our gums keep bleeding, forone example, and we keep getting
those toxins and they keepscratching and tearing the
endothelium, we make more and weneed more and more LDL right.
So instead of stopping when wetake a statin, we're saying
don't make any more LDL.
Well now what's going to repairthe gum line, the endothelial

(19:16):
lining right?
No, we're going to have moreand more holes right and it's
going to be problematic.
We're going to have more bloodpressure issues, all sorts of
issues.
So the problem really is thosetoxins right.
So get the gums healthy, so wereduce that or all the other
ways we can reduce toxin.
But that's really important tounderstand that the statin is
really doing something we don'twant it to do.

(19:37):
We need cholesterol.
That is how we repair andideally you have damage.
Then the body, the HDL, thegood cholesterol, comes along
and removes the plaque once it'srepaired.
But, like I said, when we havethat chronic assault to the
endothelial lining we get.
Everybody, usually by this time, has heard of leaky gut, but
leaky gums same thing.

(19:58):
Leaky vessels, leaky blood,brain barrier, anywhere you have
a barrier.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
These toxins create leak barriers, right.
And here's one even moreinteresting, and then maybe
you've seen this data but Pgingivalis, so one of the what I
call the parasitic.
So there is something calledthe red complex, which I call
the parasitic pathogens.
They actually gorge on the redblood vessels of your gums and
they are very difficult to getrid of.
They act almost what we callthem keystone bacteria, or call
them like the drug lord in theneighborhood who, when other

(20:28):
bacteria that would otherwisebehave good is in the presence
of these keystone bacteria, theybecome hoodlums.
They create much more damageand become much more toxic.
But P gingivalis in yourbloodstream actually binds to
the toll receptors in your isletcells in your pancreas and
makes you insulin resistant.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
And new research has shown that they are the ones
that activate the glial cells inthe brain, leading to the
plaques in the brain anddementia.
So yeah, peach and javaus,that's the real bad ones.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
So what I find even more intriguing is okay, it's
not an infection, but theseorganisms are so powerful they
are interacting at a cellularlevel, turning on and turning
off your normal biologicprocesses cellular level turning
on and turning off your normalbiologic processes.
So again.
So I would say, for me, what Isay to patients is look, if you
don't care about your tooth.
I get that because that was me.
But I floss because I want mybrain to function and I don't

(21:21):
want to have another stroke andI don't want to have a heart
attack.
And so my motivation now totake care of my gums is much
different than I was ever taught, because I was taught it was
all about a tooth, all about notgetting a cavity, and for me
those are not on the hierarchyof deeds really high up for me.
But having brain dysfunction Ithink there's so many of us
dealing with family members withdementia that is something that

(21:42):
when you start to talk topeople about where their values
are and what's important to them, when you can connect the dots
about why the oral systemicstuff matters in those regards,
a lot of times people are a lotmore willing to listen and the
metabolic stuff is game changing.
I've been using glucosemonitors with people, and if I
can get them to get their bloodsugar stable and learn how the

(22:05):
foods are responding, theirinflammation in their gums
totally goes away, totally goesaway, and I have a few people
that have even done thecarnivore diet.
It's unbelievable thedifference, and I think the
carnivore diet for periodontaldisease has a couple inputs that
are really important.
I think protein is a big issuefor connective tissue healing
and for bone health, and I think, as a rule, even encourage
people who are anti-meat ifthey're willing to put collagen

(22:26):
into their coffee.
I even see improvement in theirconnective tissue, and so I
think the protein thing isreally important.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Absolutely.
My brother-in-law is one ofthem.
I've talked about him on thepodcast all the time.
He went carnivore.
January 1st he had lost like160 some odd pounds, and he said
to me one day he said you knowwhat the really interesting
thing is, my gums never bleedanymore.
I haven't changed anything andI said absolutely.
It took all the toxins out ofthere.
And that's the other thing too.

(23:02):
As we get older, we actuallyneed more protein and we tend to
eat less and less, a lot oftimes because our digestion was
challenged, we may not be ableto break down.
So that's why I'm a bigadvocate of digestive enzymes.
I use a lot of that in my periopatients too.
That's fascinating, see, we'reboth seeing those same kind of
results, and not that we'renecessarily advocating that

(23:23):
long-term.
But when you change your diet soradically and you remove all
that, the processing and all thetoxins and it's absolutely
without protein, without aminoacids, you cannot heal tissue.
It's important, I try it.
The thing is, plant protein isnot the same as animal protein
and people have their reasonsfor not wanting to eat meat and
it's not about judgment, butfrom a healthcare practitioner's

(23:47):
point of view.
You do not get the fat solublevitamins and the proper minerals
and the right type of proteinand iron.
You're not getting the rightkind of iron for repair.
I just tell it how.
It is what I see.
But again, people make theirown decisions.
But I think some of my veganpatients have the unhealthiest

(24:08):
mouths I've ever seen.
You can even tell.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
I can look in a vegan's mouth and tell that
they're vegan because theirteeth are awful.
The enamel is not formedcorrectly.
They usually have very dry,inflamed tissues because B12
deficiency creates a whole bunchof oral mucositis challenges,
and so that has been interesting.
In the spaces I've started toconnect the dots where you
really can look at someone and I, and sometimes it'll startle

(24:31):
patients because I'll, I can not, they haven't said anything,
but I'll just look in theirmouth and I'll say this is the
diet that you eat and they'realarmed a little bit and I'm,
and they're like how did youknow?
I'm like cause I can tell bywhat's happening in your mouth.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Absolutely.
Yeah, it's fascinating.
That's one cool thing aboutbeing a dentist.
I think you can look at thetongue and you look at the
texture and there's so much.
This is the start of the gut.
You can see so much about aperson's overall health right
there.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
And just to circle back to this, periodontal
disease is an infection.
Part of when I was learningthis and all this oral DNA
testing was coming out, and thisis still happening.
Everywhere people will do anoral DNA test and put patients
on antibiotics, and I did aboutI don't know more than a dozen
cases in a row where I treatedeverybody the same.
So I did the oral DNA test, Idid the antibiotics that were
recommended and I retested sixweeks later and in every case

(25:21):
the oral pathogen load wasalmost twice what it was before
I started.
So then I thought that's notwhat I want, forget that.
So then what I did is I'm aLENAP, so LENAP surgery or laser
surgery doctor, and so I saidI'm going to forget the
antibiotics.
Let me do LENAP on these casesand see what happened.
Lenap cases were the mostdramatic reduction in oral
pathogens to get people to,especially the red, complex ones

(25:44):
, those blood sucking ones.
The only way to get rid ofthose is doing laser osseous
surgery.
And it was dramatic when Iwould do tests, do full mouth
laser surgery, then retest hugechange in their oral biome for
the good, like justsignificantly better.
But it was really eye-openingbecause I being doing my
residency in the late 80s, early90s.
I mean we were putting paperpoints in people's pockets and

(26:07):
we were putting everybody onamoxicillin, metronidazole for
three weeks.
I mean it was crazy how manyantibiotics we were giving
people and of course it didn'twork.
And I'm very much and I've seencases where, unfortunately,
patients that are treated thatway they develop very resistant,
difficult to treat periodontalconditions and then I think I

(26:27):
have had the same experience andI was like I got frustrated,
like regardless of what theseresults are, the recommendation
is just antibiotics.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
And at that time I was like that's really not great
for the gut.
And in my case I was seeingsome resolution, but at the same
time I'm like, but that's notlong term and that's not really
getting at the problem.
So I said same with you.
I was like, forget that, and Ididn't have my laser at the time
.
But I just started givingpatients oxygen, right, because
I'm like what do the good bugsactually mean?
Some oxygen, maybe switch thelittle hydrogen peroxide this

(26:59):
was years ago when I firststarted this and give them the
digestive enzymes and biotoxin,like a finder kind of
charcoal-based.
And it was really interesting.
I had anywhere from 20%reduction to 60% reduction in
just four weeks.
What was fascinating?
Every single person on thatregimen there was zero.
We got rid of all the Pgingivalis and I was like, wow,

(27:23):
so obviously there arealternatives.
And so talk to us a little bitabout the laser.
What's the mechanism there?
Why does that work so well?

Speaker 2 (27:30):
So there's.
So lasers are not all the same.
So the laser that I use is thePeriolase laser and it's the one
that has it's FDA approved fortreatment of periodontal disease
.
And what makes it unique is itis not a cutting laser, so it
and it is only the energy inthat light wavelength is only
absorbed by dark, pigmentedthings.
All of the bad guy pathogensare dark.

(27:54):
They're small and dark, and sowhen you shine the laser into a
pocket, those bugs vaporize andyou literally create a
sterilization in the pocket, butthe bone doesn't heat up and
the connective tissue doesn'theat up and then you can go back
and create a very stable bloodclot.
And in those areas it haschanged my practice.

(28:14):
I probably had my laser for 10years maybe, and I have many
cases where I thought people'steeth were going to totally fall
out of their heads.
And they still have their teethtoday.
And I even had patients who,for I've been practicing almost
30 years, so I've been doingthis for a long time.
But I have patients who foryears we struggle with their
teeth hurting and them beingmiserable having their teeth

(28:35):
clean.
We treat them with the laser.
The pain goes away.
They're like it's night and daydifference.
It's their whole, their theskin, their complexion would get
better.
It was the weirdest thing.
I would do this treatment.
They would come back and I'mlike, why are they?
Just?
They would look different, theywould look less sick, they

(28:57):
really would.
Because I think it's such aneffective oral biome wash.
Basically it just it gets ridof everything and then creates a
baseline and then if you'resupporting gut health,
supporting the oxygenation,doing digestive enzymes and
you're looking at things moreholistically, you really get
people back to a level ofstability.
Because when I was firststarting out, people would go
through full mouth surgery orfull mouth root planning and a
year to three years later theywere back right at the beginning
and it was like very I thoughtI'm not really helping these
people.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Maintaining.
You know that's like you'remaintaining a disease.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
And then this kills me.
I just lectured a month ago andthe hygienist put up her hand
and said the pocket's been fivemillimeters for 10 years.
Like she said, isn't thatstable?
And I'm like not.
If it's bleeding they'reprobably diabetic or insulin
resistant.
So there you do.
I think there is, and you canget to a place in periodontics
where you don't know thedifference between disease and

(29:41):
health and the square surfacearea of your periodontal pockets
are like your fore, I think,isn't it the forearm, or your
hand is the whole surface area.
So if every time you touchedyour forearm it was bleeding,
would you be worried about that?
Because patients will go oh, mygums have bled for 10 years and
I'm like that isn't normal.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
It's like when people have an abscess.
I said this just the other dayIf you had an abscess on your
arm and it would just ooze everyonce in a while with pus, then
it would get better, but then itwould ooze again.
I was like would you just leaveit there forever, even if it
didn't hurt?
People are like, oh, I'm like,yeah, oh, that's traveling all
and again.
Think about that, those pockets,the so many blood vessels,

(30:25):
right, that's going directly.
And what's scary is when wethink about top teeth, right,
you've got the sinus and thebrain Like there's not much
space between upper teeth andthe brain and we have to realize
that so much of our lymph, 20%of our lymph, is right in the
head and neck, so any of thosetoxins like that's traveling
through your entire body.
I don't know why in modernmedicine I know it's more
convenient for the insurancecompanies to cut the head off
from the rest of the body.

(30:45):
We are one being and everythingis connected.
And it's interesting that it'sonly been in the last few years
that all this research is comingout.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, and I think what I've observed is that we as
dentists know a lot more aboutmedicine than MDs know about
what we do, and so I have triedto partner with MDs about
especially getting earlydiagnosis for insulin resistance
, and I pretty much gave upbecause the standard tests that
they do is they'll do a two-hourglucose challenge test with 75

(31:16):
grams of glucose and the problemis, in 47% of the cases it
misses insulin resistance.
It is just not an accurate test, and so I've gone to ordering
myself.
I ordered through QuestLaboratories.
It's called the CardioIQinsulin Sensitivity Test and
what is very interesting in thisspace is the insulin issues

(31:37):
that I see.
Causing direct periodontalproblems can happen 10 years
before you become diabetic, andphysicians won't look at this
because it's not glucose.
They think it's all about sugarand it has nothing to do with
sugar.
The hormone insulin is what theproblem is.
It's not the sugar.
So you can have a normal A1C,your fasting glucose can be 100,
and you can have three timesthe acceptable insulin in your

(31:59):
bloodstream and your doctor isgoing to tell you you're
perfectly okay.
And I'm looking in their mouthgoing.
I know they're not okay,everything's bleeding all over
the place, but I struggle with.
I'm just the dentist, they'rejust what do I know.
And I just had a patient who helost an implant.
I think it was probably over ayear ago and I was worried at
the time that his insulin, sohis A1C, was nine.

(32:22):
Okay, so that A1C should beless than 5.4 for normal
metabolic health.
So at nine, the problem with anA1C that high is it affects
your connective tissue healing,so your collagen is not laying
down appropriately, so yourimplants are not going to
integrate correctly.
And when his implant failed, ofcourse he just blamed me.
I guess it wasn't anything hehad to do.
And he came in and said mydoctor told me when that implant

(32:43):
failed that I was fine.
But now he's on Wygovie andhe's lost 35 pounds and his
blood sugar is better and he'sfeeling better.
And I'm like I hate to tell youthis, but your implant failure
was like the check engine lightand I guarantee you you're
hyperinsulinemic andunfortunately you have a great
doctor, but they don'tunderstand what I know.
And it's not about the glucose,it's about what your insulin is

(33:04):
doing.
I said you need to think ofthis as the fact that you are
allergic to carbohydrates.
You need to limit how manycarbohydrates you're eating
because you have to keep yourinsulin low, and the people that
are excited or want to do bloodglucose monitors.
I think the glucose monitor forme really helped me understand
our bio-individuality, because Ithink prior to that I was much

(33:24):
more in the camp where one dietwas for everybody and the reason
that doesn't work is that we'renot in each other's lives in
terms of our emotional stress,our biomes, our environmental
toxin load, and food doesn'tfuel everybody or isn't broken
down by everybody the same way.
I would encourage you to go toDexcomcom and you can order

(33:51):
Stello.
It is a direct-to-market foryou.
Glucose monitor I think it's $89if you do more than one month
at a time and really you justneed to wear it for about three
months, I think, or even threemonths is plenty.
I think if you do it even amonth, you're going to learn
some really interesting thingsabout why you eat it.
I'll give you an example, likefor me.
I ate a green apple with almondbutter, which everyone says is

(34:13):
good.
My blood sugar went to 270.
I about fell over and Irealized that I had been eating
all this stuff that people weresaying was healthy, but for me.
It was not keeping my bloodsugar where it needed to be, and
I was metabolically so damagedby the time I figured this out.
I had to go much lowercarbohydrate, yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
That's interesting.
I recently just had this stellobecause I had some blood work
done and my HbA1c was creepingup and I was thinking, oh, this
is not I just.
I was working with anutritionist who had me eating
more.
He said you're not eatingenough carbohydrates.
That's affecting your thyroidand all these things.
And I'm like, oh okay, and hewas putting it to the side.

(34:55):
No, you need to eat this manycarbs.
And I said I want to get amonitor because that's
concerning to me.
And so I got the Stello.
I think mine was like $99 fortwo months.
They're the easiest things towear, it's so convenient and I
always loved learning everythingabout my body.
So I thought it was fascinatingand I was like, wow, my blood
sugar was really staying at 100.

(35:17):
I didn't have any.
Over the whole month I didn'thave any.
I think my biggest spike waslike 140.
And I can't even remember whatI ate.
But I was surprised, like myresting and again, I guess the
tissue it's interstitial versusblood, so it's a little bit
higher.
But I was like man, mine isstill sitting at a hundred here.
I was like I need to thinkabout this.
And so for me I noticed if I eata little fat, then protein and

(35:41):
then carbs, I'm okay.
But if I start my meal with acarb and then have the fat and
protein, it goes higher.
And it's so true.
There are so many things thatwe think will activate us, and I
thought I'm going to eatsourdough bread because that's
better, and I'll lather it withbutter, but no grains, for me
sky high.
So individuality is important,yeah, but I also think it's

(36:04):
important what you said aboutjust like having that P
gingivalis, so even just oralbacteria affecting the insulin.
So it could be a combination.
So that's why the monitor isgreat, right?
Is it the carbs or is it thebacteria in my mouth that is
creating insulin?
And I think that's somethingthat probably very few

(36:25):
physicians, if any, reallyunderstand that connection.
They just say just don't haveany carbs Because it's a problem
, because our liver and ourbrain function primarily on
glucose.
So we do need some glucose.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
But again, it's trying to find what's your right
lane that's going to be bestfor you and your metabolism, I
think yeah, not to interrupt you, but I think the other thing
that happens is if you haveeaten unhealthy like I did for
years, I've got so much glucosestored in my liver that I got in
order for me to finally get toa healthy metabolic state, I've

(36:58):
got to fast enough to burnwhat's in my liver.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yes, and that's why carnivore, I think, is good too,
because you're burning off allthose excess stores.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's why it works so well for so
many people, even as ashort-term reset.
But I have found like for me,I'm probably more carnivore-ish.
I do eat arugula for nitricoxide.
I do like red peppers forvitamin C, so there's some.
I do limited vegetables, but Ihave.
I really have to be carefulwith fruits, like even
blueberries.
I will go over 140.
If I eat more, like a half acup of blueberries, I'll go over

(37:30):
140.
If I do a quarter cup, I'mtotally fine.
So it's very interesting.
So for me, having that feedbackin the monitor, I've even been
able to figure out oh it's theamount that I'm eating that
matters, which has been reallyinteresting, but it's from a gum
health standpoint.
That probably is the mostdramatic change I see that

(37:50):
people can make is when they doglucose monitors, and
unfortunately I have a lot ofpatients that are type 2
diabetics or even whose A1Cs are9, 11.
The doctors don't do anythingand I've even prescribed
monitors for those patients tosay look, I need you to get your
blood sugar flat and stablelike a hundred.
You know we can't do thisyo-yoing around and I've had

(38:12):
really positive results in thepatients who I've done that for
and they're so grateful that I'mwilling to help them because
they finally get stuff dialed in.
And it makes me so sad becausethey are seeing their physicians
three or four times a year andfor some reason I know why.
My daughter's in naturopathicmedical school and she's being
taught that people won't changetheir behavior in naturopathic
medical school.

(38:32):
Yep, no.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
I know and I as a dentist.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
I'm sure you've found this too, dr Carver is that
people will change theirbehavior if you spend the time
educating them on the value 100%, 100%.
We just can't assume, peopleknow I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
I'm so educated to know Exactly.
It's not about your level ofeducation and everything.
When you just sit down and youexplain these common sense just
like we did about the LDLcholesterol, explaining it like
that, that common sense makessense Patients will look at you
and be like, oh yeah, that makessense, and that's all they need
is that education and somebodywho's going to partner with them

(39:08):
to help them understand it andmake a difference.
So I've heard that too fromfamily members who are doctors.
They're not going to change,they just want a pill.
And I'm like that's just nottrue and that's why we've gotten
into the problem we have withmedicine and all these side
effects and all this chronicdisease.
And now people are fed upbecause they don't just want the
pill, because they feel worse.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
And if you circle back to a statin, statins are
depleting on B vitamins so theycause a bunch of oral mucositis.
They actually make you insulinresistant.
So my story going back to thestroke, I was put on a statin,
which I was on for 10 years, andwhen I was first diagnosed with
a stroke I was completelymetabolically healthy.
By the time I took myself offthe statin, my A1c had gone from

(39:50):
healthy five to a nine, wow,wow.
And I was solidly on theprecipice of being a full-blown
type 2 diabetic.

Speaker 1 (39:59):
I don't understand that.
I don't know if that's evenlisted as a side effect, right?

Speaker 2 (40:03):
I think in the black box warnings.
I think it is actually and, butit also.
Statins also affect thyroidfunction, which was one of the
first things I was complainingabout, and my prevention nurse
was like I a pill for an ill is.
There's always consequences anddentally we see a lot of

(40:32):
consequences for manymedications that patients take
and as a periodontist it's notunusual for the patient to come
out on 45 medications.
Wow.
When I first started practice 30years ago, somebody had a
complicated medical history.
If they were on fivemedications, I would say 50% of
my population is, on average,eight to 10 drugs.

(40:55):
They're on antidepressants,they're on statins, they're on
metformin or Ygovy, they're onthen a thyroid medication and a
bladder medication.
It's really unbelievable.
And of course, dentally you canimagine what that does to their
oral cavities.
They're dry, they have decay,they have vitamin deficiencies,
they have a hard time managingtheir gum inflammation,

(41:18):
especially these drugs like theGLP-1 drugs.
I'm noticing patients havehorrible periodontal conditions
on those drugs and I think it'sbecause they increase insulin.
That's why you lose, or arethey?
I think they act on the insulinreceptor, but I'm seeing this
really weird inflammation and Ihaven't done a lot of research
into it yet.
But I'm just that's one thingin the back of my mind.

(41:39):
I'm going to be observing tosee what I see over time in
those cases.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yeah, that's fascinating stuff.
Yeah, this is great stuff and Ithink you know the more people
are aware of these things andknow.
So you take a patient in.
They have these problems.
You're doing the laser.
You're seeing a really bigdifference.
What other kind of therapiesAre there?
Any at-home therapies?
What do you recommend to thepatient?
They're not in your officeevery day for laser, so how long
do you see that lasting?

Speaker 2 (42:14):
And then what do you do to try to help?
Obviously, the diet changes.
Is there anything else?
Hygiene wise or supplement wise?
You recommend yes.
So hygiene wise, my favoritething to recommend is dry
brushing using a Nimbustoothbrush.
So I initially, when people arecoming in with a lot of
dysbiosis and a lot of plaque isthey don't know.
I don't want them putting slimytoothpaste on a toothbrush and
trying to get the slimy biofilmoff their teeth because
physically speaking, if you putsnot against snot you're not

(42:36):
going to get it off, and so weuse a dry.
So the Nimbus has a microbristle, which is a very fine
point, and you can angle it intothe gums and do circles and the
plaque comes off like easily.
And so people get a lot.
They get very quick resultsbecause without a lot of extra
time spent the biofilm getsremoved much, much easier.

(42:59):
So that's usually the firstthing I'll do.
I don't keep people offtoothpaste forever, but
initially, as they're trying tolearn the proper angle technique
and the proper habit forbrushing, I will have them do
that.
I personally love the cocoafloss.
That's my favorite floss.
I have a lot of elderlypatients and men with big hands
and if they're not going tofloss, then I always tell them a
proxy brush is the first cousinto floss.

(43:21):
You need to stick somethingbetween your teeth, I don't care
, you've got to disturb thecolonies.
And when I talk to people aboutdaily home care, I give them
the analogy that we need tooxygenate the colonies.
So the main reason you'rebrushing isn't to remove all the
plaque.
It's like we're tilling theground.
We just need to oxygenatethings.
So we make the bacteria in themouth the friendlier, happier,

(43:43):
kind, and we're trying tooxygenate so we don't have as
much of the bad guys develop.
And so I'm a little bit of a.
I need to know the why, and soI do find when people understand
that's the reason, they'reactually more open to do it, and
they don't have to do itperfectly all at once.
The idea is just you got tooxygenate it, so you got to sit
down someday and till around thebacteria.
I find that helpful.

(44:04):
I do like a water pick, becauseit does work a little bit better
for modal bacteria in the mouth, and so that I have found to be
very effective.
It also gets food debris out,and if you leave food debris
anywhere, it's like a mini martfor bacteria.
So you're going to grow tons ofbugs if there's food debris
left behind.
And I myself I had adultorthodontics and the only thing

(44:24):
that got me through it was awater pick and after I went back
to my flossing.
But I was shocked at how muchfood still comes out if I use a
water pick, so I've just keptthat habit up.
In terms of toothpaste, I preferthe Nano Hydroxyapatite
toothpaste and I think everybodyhas their favorite.
My personal one that I probablyuse the most is Boca, although

(44:44):
I've also used Revitin and CocoFloss and a few other ones.
But I have noticed we made achange on that.
Probably.
I was brainwashed, as mostdentists, that fluoride was good
for you and I remember comingacross an article I think it was
on Frontiers in Biology, whereit talked about how fluoride
actually worked and I was likeit's an antibiotic.
I was never taught that itliterally destroys your biome.

(45:06):
I was taught that it somehowmineralized the tooth and I
remember thinking I never oncewas neighborhood or in my town
for not wanting to have patientsbe on fluoride.

(45:30):
But I have just seen much morereduction of inflammation.
Taking that out of the equationNow.
Certainly I have seen cariesdevelop and those are in cases
where we didn't maybe do oralbiome testing.
There's other issues.
Almost always there's a sleepapnea component to those rampant
caries patients, so there'sother levers that are creating

(45:50):
that.
It's not about the fluoride butunfortunately, as dentists we
were just really taught notscience in terms of fluoride.
We were taught that fluoridewas the end-all, be-all to
protect you against everything,and it really, in my opinion,
has more detriment than it ishelpful.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
Well, it's not just your opinion.
The big lawsuit just came out,in September, showing that it
poses an unreasonable risk forneuroplasticity.
And, as you said, it isfluoride.
And apparently, as RFK has said, that's one of the first thing
he wants to work on is gettingrid of water fluorination, which
, whoa.
If that happens, that's crazy,but finally people might really

(46:28):
see the real science behind it.
That's why I tell people.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
So I think you definitely need to brush and
floss.
I really tell patients, brushtwice a day, floss once, you
don't have to do it meticulouslylike two or three.
You don't.
Three times a day is too much.
You can actually overbrush andoverfloss, just so you know you
will cause a lot of gumrecession damage if you're over
brushing, and I am not a fan ofpower toothbrushes because I see
significant amount of bone lossand tissue damage in people

(46:56):
with a more fragile what we callphenotype or just their genetic
susceptibility and also, Ithink also poor connective
tissue sets some people up forliteral bone loss and tissue
loss with the use of a Sonicareor Oral-B or Braun toothbrush,
and so I've seen a lot of damageand my own story is I've had
seven gum grafts and when I wasthe first one was 20 years ago

(47:19):
and I was using a Sonicarebecause that's what I was taught
, and about two years later Irealized I had brushed off
everything I had repaired.
And again, much of what Irecommend has come out of my own
experience and I was at ameeting where I was introduced
to the Nimbus toothbrush and itwas like game changing my
sensitivity went away because Iwasn't abrading my dental
tubules and my recession was waymore stable and, I think, bad

(47:41):
Venn too.
When I was having a lot of thatdamage occur, I was eating the
American Heart Association dietand I was not getting enough
protein.
I was not getting enough goodfats.
I was definitely in a reallybad place and what I learned,
actually through the WestonPrice Diet and Weston Price
Foundation and going back to mydental roots, so to speak was
when I stopped all my cardiacmeds and literally started

(48:05):
eating like ribeyes, butter,eggs and raw milk.
My HDL finally got to a normallevel.
My total cholesterol was high,but my body's happiest about 270
.
That's just where it is, andwhen I was in dental school,
high cholesterol wasn't untilyou're over 300.
270 was considered normal whenI was in school.

(48:26):
But what was really interestingis my depression went away, my
hormone function came back, myhangriness went away.
My muscle I had extreme musclepain which I thought was related
to my dental career.
I was doing massage every weekbecause I was in so much pain.
All of that went away and sothat has been.

(48:49):
An interesting side thing isjust adding fat back in and
realizing, wow, what adifference Fat is your friend In
terms of periodontal health.
What do I tell patients?
Brush and floss?
I'm not.
I don't want them using mouthrinses because mouth rinses will
kill near nitric oxide bacteriaand elevate your blood pressure
.
I'm not a big rinse person.
Now I do use Stella Lifecoconut rinse sometimes in my

(49:13):
lichen planus type patients, sothere'll be times that I'll use
that, but in general there's noreason to use any mouthwash.
I do want them to avoid liquidsugar.
So I usually will say thatmeans no juice, no soda, no
coffee sweetener in your coffee.
And I don't want people eatingseed oils because seed oils

(49:34):
spike insulin.
And so I will tell them ifyou're a coffee person, no
coffee creamer, because coffeecreamer is 80% seed oils, it's
canola oil and soybean oil.
It's not real food.
And so if they want a coffeethat's creamy, I'll either get
them to do collagen and butterand whip it up if they're open
to that, or just to throwcoconut if they can't do dairy

(49:54):
coconut cream or coconut milk,or to do full fat dairy so cream
or half and half usually iswhat I recommend in their coffee
habits.
And it's so funny patients.
So I had a patient who was postchemotherapy.
I think we had done a lot ofextractions on him I think maybe
some implants and he wasliterally starving, like he was
just whittling way to nothing.

(50:15):
And I said you know what I said, just add butter and collagen
into your coffee.
And I saw him like a monthlater you should have seen he
looked significantly better.
And I explained to him thatyou're not going to onboard the
dental vitamins that you need ifyou don't have fat in your diet
.
And I said so.
You need to get some proteinand some fat, and butter is my
favorite fat for dental health.

(50:36):
So I always tell people springbutter, put it in everything,
like you can't eat too much ofit.
So they usually look at mestrange, but that's my favorite.
I would say dental fat, and Iencourage patients to switch
over to clean fats.
So any animal fats, pure oliveoil the only one that you, but
not what you buy at the grocerystore, so Kirkland, their brand

(50:57):
is pure or you can go to a local.
We have a local olive oil storethat tests everything here, so
that's another option.
Avocado oil, but again, evenavocado oil now can be cut with
canola oil.
So you have to be careful ofyour brands and then certainly
your safest is all your animalfats in terms of cooking.
But people are funny, they'llgo.
I don't eat sugar.
I'm like, tell me what do youhave for breakfast?
Raisin bran.

(51:18):
I'm like that's pure sugar.
That's all you're getting issugar for breakfast.
So I think there's still we'rebrainwashed in this mindset that
we don't really know whatbreakfast food looks like unless
it's coming out of a cereal box.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
Yeah, yeah, it's like dessert, right.
I have patients tell me all thetime.
They say, tell me about yourdiet.
I eat healthy.
And I think what does that mean?
Some people they think RaisinBran is healthy right, it's
fibers and it's fruit.
And everybody's view, forinstance, like I can't eat a lot
of cruciferous vegetables.
My body, my microbiome can'thandle that.

(51:52):
But that's supposed to be thehealthiest.
And I had a patient tell me,telling her that story and she
said, oh she's.
I eat lots of broccoli andcauliflower because it's
supposed to be good for me, butI always feel terrible when I
eat that.
And I said don't listen to theblogs or whatever.
I was like listen to your body.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
Listen to your body.
Well, I just had a foodsensitivity test come back on a
patient who's got this crazy gutinflammation and it was
interesting.
Those were her foodsensitivities like broccoli,
cauliflower, cabbage, and that'sexactly what I thought when I
got the test back.
I'm like who would have thoughtthose foods are problematic?
Because what do most people do?
They go on a paleo diet ifthey're not feeling well, and
cauliflowers and everything.
And so it was very interestingto her.

(52:29):
Root cause was gluten and thatwas where her leaky gut started.
But then she had a lot of otherfood sensitivities that had
developed.
But so I usually, in terms ofwhat do I tell people?
Brush and floss, dry brush ordry brush, do something in
between the teeth?
I want patients to drink halftheir body weight in water a day
, because dehydration actuallyhas a big role in sticky plaque

(52:49):
formation and it can actuallycreate a dysbiosis if you're
dehydrated.
For easy math, if I weigh 100pounds, I need 50 ounces of base
hydration a day and I do likethat to have some electrolyte in
it, but I prefer I justpersonally, I just do Himalayan
salts or some Celtic salt, justa couple little granules in my
water.
So simple, you don't have to goout and buy a bunch of stuff.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
Just that.
You know, powders have a lot ofadded ingredients and dyes and,
yeah, maybe they make it tastea little better, but I would do
just a little bit of.
I use Redmond's real salt too,rather than you know same thing,
Well pinch in your water orlime juice and that's the
natural.
I think it's important.
Sometimes we feel like youdrink so much water and jive
that you're publicly lackingthose minerals and those

(53:30):
electrolytes.
You really need those to beable to absorb the water and,
honestly, there's a lot ofresearch on the fats.
One of the reasons I thinkketogenic diet can be helpful,
and just fats in general, isbecause it's healthy fats that
actually create structured waterin the body right and it's like
inside of our cells we havethis structured water.

(53:50):
It's not like water like wedrink.
And Gerald Pollack, who came upwith the whole idea of the
fourth phase of water?
He never drinks any water.
He eats lots of healthy fats,and so I used to wonder too.
I was like my dog when she wasa puppy.
She never drank water and I waslike how can she get through,
how could she even pee if shenever drinks anything?
I think her diet.
And when I learned that, I waslike, oh, maybe she's getting
plenty of fat in her diet thatshe doesn't need as much water.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
So it's really they think that's the mechanism of
action with the periolase laseris a structured water in the
cells.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
Yeah yeah, they're suggesting this and the laser is
phenomenal.
I've had now all my hygienistshave been trained to use those
lasers and we said no moreantibodies, the more resting
let's just.
Let's do our due diligence.
But I'm super excited to lookup that nimbus brushing.
It makes so much sense what yousay versus if you're putting
slimy stuff on slimy stuff.

(54:39):
That's really.
And if we think back to our,our ancestors, the cavemen, they
didn't have toothbrushes andthings like that they would eat
like.
In India they have the neembranches of the neem trees and
that was a mechanical way toremove plaque.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
There's also a study I came across I think it was.
Alvin Dannenberg published itand they did it in, I want to
say in Sweden.
So they created an enclosure,like a prehistoric enclosure,
and they did dental exams on afamily.
So how much plaque, how muchbleeding on probing, how much
inflammation, what were thepocket depths?
They put them in this enclosurefor three weeks, which is what

(55:16):
used to be the timeline forexperimental gingivitis.
So if we wanted to study adental product, we would say
don't brush your teeth for threeweeks, you use the product,
we'll see what happens.
So they did a three weeks.
So, because that was very muchin the literature, they chose
three weeks.
They put them into thisenclosure.
They had no brushes, no floss,they could pick up twigs and
then they were fed a prehistoricdiet.

(55:36):
So I think they had chickensand they had goats and whatever
they could forage.
So for three weeks theybasically ate ancestrally.
Three weeks of time they comeback for the dental exams.
They had higher levels ofplaque and lower gingival
inflammation.
So the conclusion of the studywas the gingivitis model of
three weeks doesn't work withoutprocessed foods in the DNA.

(55:58):
Huh, because there was noinflammation, so their dental
disease had not gotten worse, inspite of them not brushing
their teeth.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
And that's a really key takeaway that I'm trying to
teach all of my patients and theaudiences here right that it's
so much about the diet, so muchabout the quality of the diet,
the amount of nutrition is sokey.
So you've given us some reallyawesome tips here and really
super interesting stuff For thelast few minutes.
Tell us, is there anything elsethat you'd like to share with

(56:26):
us?
And maybe tell us, is thereanything else that you'd like to
share with us, and maybe tellus, if anybody has any questions
or maybe they're in your areahow they can reach out to you.

Speaker 2 (56:34):
So I think if I was to maybe suggest what, is there
one thing that you can do, Iwould maybe start off with the
water thing.
First, if you're drinking a lotof junk, just try to get
hydrated, because I do see hugedifference in my patient's oral
conditions when they have properhydration and it's just not
water, but maybe a slice oflemon and a little bit of some

(56:55):
pink salt, so not a lot, butjust a tiny bit, and you just
sip it throughout the day.
You can't drink water Like whenyou do those formulations let's
say, I need 50 ounces of water.
I tell patients you cannot doit the American way, which means
you don't guzzle it in onesitting and check the box.
It doesn't work that way andpeople usually resist because
they're afraid they're going tohave to go to the bathroom when
your body's running dehydrated.

(57:16):
Your cells don't know what todo with water initially.
So sip it slow and it's goingto take a week or two, but you
will not be going to thebathroom more.
It just doesn't happen, becauseonce your cells are functioning
hydrated, the first thingyou'll notice is your brain will
work better, and so I thinkthat's probably.

(57:37):
If there's one takeaway, I wouldsay that I would say the second
thing is really don't drinkyour food.
You need to.
Your dental, your teeth andyour dentition and your
musculature needs you to chew.
So this smoothie thing forbreakfast in the morning I'm not
a huge fan of.
I think real food is not asmoothie.
I think you need to actuallychew things and I think that I

(57:57):
would really encourage everybodylistening if you haven't done
the whole glucose monitor thing,best money you'll ever invest
because you need to know how thefood you're eating is
nourishing you and what it isdoing to your blood sugar.
And remember the reason itmatters is your insulin is going
to go up anytime.
Your blood sugar goes up andthe goal really is to keep
everything humming along flat.

(58:18):
If you eat a meal, you don'twant it to go up more than 20
points or 40 points at the mostright.
You want it to not skyrocket,like I did with my snack, to 270
.
Anything.
I think it was Dr Kate Shanahanwho wrote that any blood sugar
spike above 140 lays downcholesterol in your arteries,

(58:38):
and in some of her work in deepnutrition she also wrote that
any blood sugar spike over 89causes endothelial leaking as
well, and so I think that's why,when you get people on a
carnivore diet or they'regetting on a glucose monitor and
you're keeping things flatter,you're actually supporting the
integrity of your blood vessellining and I think that is one

(59:00):
thing then that you have alittle built-in protection
against the dysbiosis that'shappening in your mouth and the
other toxins and those types ofthings.
If people want to find me in myarea, you can go to.
I just got a partner, so mypractice name has just changed,
but I think our new website isNygaard Puvi Periodontics or if
you Google, laura Lee Nygaard, Ithink everything else is coming
up, but we're in the phone bookon Google so you can look us up

(59:22):
.
We practice in Spokane Valleyand I would just encourage
people listening to.
If you've been discouragedabout your dental health and you
think it's just your genetics,that what you took away from
your parents is their poornutrition and their bad dietary
habits, you do not have to becaptive by your genetics.
With epigenetics you are notsubject.
Your DNA actually has verylittle to do about your health

(59:45):
status and you have a lot morecontrol and power to choose to
have dental wellness than whatyou realize.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
So Lule was all in control, and that's one of the
reasons why we do this podcastis just create awareness.
I don't know how it is out andwhere you are, but trying to get
in to see any kind of doctor,you're waiting six months a year
.
It's becoming problematic.
So if we can all be our own andmaybe then you won't get the
best advice and maybe you'll beput on too many things so if we
all can learn how to be our ownbest doctors, we're going to

(01:00:14):
have a much healthier world, andI feel really passionate about
trying to help everyoneunderstand how things work so
that we can all get at that rootof it and prevent all this
chronic disease that's reallytaxing our healthcare system in
a big way.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
I would say too.
I don't know if we touched onthis, but people often will ask
me is there any supplements Ican take?
And I think what I reallyencourage patients is I like a
vitamin D3K2 supplement becauseyou want to boost immunity,
because periodontal disease hasthat immune component to it.
And then certainly there hasbeen shown in some literature
some benefits of omega-3s.
But I think we've thrownomega-3s on everything and

(01:00:52):
really if you just take omega-6out of your diet and don't eat
seed oils and process garbagethose oils that our body cannot
metabolize, I don't know wherethe literature would stand on
the benefit of omega-3s.
I think we're using those tocombat the toxicity.

Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
There's a lot of controversy on that and saying
too much of that actuallyoxidizes and that becomes a
problem.
I did a podcast about that,yeah, and I think that's true.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
So I usually just do vitamin D3K2.
Usually that's the onlysupplement that I really
recommend, and then probioticsto patients usually.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
This has been a fabulous hour and I so
appreciate your time on thisafternoon and I hope everyone
enjoyed it as much as I did.
It made me take some notes thatI need to go work on my little
course that I'm creating aboutreversing the dumpsy, so I thank
you for educating me and againspending the time with all of us
.
I hope everyone enjoyed it.
Please let us know if you haveany questions, have any other

(01:01:44):
thoughts for other topics, andwe'll see you guys on the next
episode.
Have a great day everyone.
Hello, I'm Dr Rachel Carver, aboard-certified naturopathic
biologic dentist and a certifiedhealth coach.

(01:02:05):
Did you know that over 80% ofthe US population has some form
of gum disease?
Many of us don't even know thatwe have this source of chronic
infection and inflammation inour mouth that's been linked to
serious consequences like heartdisease, diabetes, stroke,
dementia, colon cancer, kidneydisease, even pregnancy
complications.
Would you like to learn how toreverse and prevent these

(01:02:27):
chronic debilitating conditionswithout spending a lot of time
and money at the dentist?
Join me for my six-week coursewhere I will teach you the root
cause of disease.
You'll learn how to be your ownbest doctor.
Are you ready to get started?
Let's go.