Dental Issues Don't Start in Your Teeth with Nirvani Umadat - 8/12/26

Well, I am very excited to be here today and to have this discussion and chat with you. And what I titled this particular talk today is moving beyond bacteria and brushing for whole body dentistry. And what we're going to talk about today is where we are now as far as the general consensus within dentistry. And a part of that is what is, in my opinion, it's been the best marketed story within germ theory over the last 150 years. And that is that bacteria and sugar cause cavities. And that's something that every dentist has learned. And it's something that if you've been to a dental office, you've probably heard. And we tell kids all the time to avoid sugar as little sugar as possible and constantly brush because that's how you keep your mouth clean. But we've got now this idea within dentistry that everything is caused by bacteria as far as dental disease goes. And it's this prevalent story and the way we fix all of our problems in dentistry is with hygiene. It's brushing and flossing and going to the dentist more to get more cleanings. So we're going to pull that story apart a little bit and talk about some new ways to CT and see your mouth. And how your mouth is connected to the rest of your body and what are the messages that your mouth is giving to your body and vice versa. And then finish off with some practical ways for you to hopefully maintain or even improve your dental health. So just a little bit of a background on me. I did my dental school training at a Canadian university and it was pretty mainstream education. So I graduated thinking I was going to have a relatively conventional career. I did a small mini residency after I graduated in surgery and that was kind of my focus for the early part of my career. But a couple of things happened for me early on that allowed me to shift my perspective and open up beyond the things that I had learned. And the first of those things was I was given a book that is essentially a collection of studies that were published in the 1950s. And the authors were one was a dentist and one was a cardiologist and they came up with after publishing a series of I think it's 50 something studies in this book. It came up with a model of teeth and dental disease that was entirely independent of bacteria causing cavities, the need to mechanically brush your teeth to clean them properly. And they proposed that a tooth was actually built with a really unique complex internal structure that allowed for the tooth to clean itself from the inside out. And if that was disrupted in some way, the tooth could not only not clean itself, but it couldn't communicate to the rest of the body. And although this is a theory or was a theory, it never became popular within mainstream dentistry, but it opened me up to the idea that there was an alternative way to look at teeth and look at cavities and connect them to the rest of our body. And then the other thing that happened to me was around 2015, I was working with a company that was based out of the university here and that company had developed a PCR panel. And this was long before PCR, that term became popular, became a household term. But what they were doing is they were receiving samples, patient samples from dentists all over the country. And they would run their PCR panel and try and identify which bacteria were causing dental issues in these patients. And the premise in dentistry, as I said a little earlier, is that for pretty much every dental disease, there's a bacterial problem. So for most clinical diagnoses, you'll have a list of bacteria that are supposedly responsible for causing that disease. And you'll have a list of elevated bacteria. So these are the amounts that you would normally find them in your mouth. And because you have this disease, this is sort of the range that they exist at a higher level. And we were running these tests and we'd run hundreds and hundreds of samples. And it was shocking to me that we were not consistently and reliably seeing that. So we were running these tests and we were not necessarily seeing that in people who had a clinical diagnosis, like they went to their dentist, their dentist looked around, did some measurements, gave them a diagnosis, and the textbooks say this is what you should find as far as the bacteria in this person's mouth, we were not finding that. And the general idea that I came away from with that experience was that this story of bad bacteria and too many bad bacteria in your mouth caused dental disease, it really didn't hold up based on my experience and based on what I was seeing in my own research that I was doing working with this project. And those two things allowed me to take a step in a different direction. So I practiced for years in a conventional setting and I did a lot of the things that biological or holistic dentists would say that you want to avoid and you want to stay away from. But I started my practice doing those things. And so I have a perspective of both sides of the coin where I understand why general dentists conventionally are saying certain things and then I also understand why dentists who want to practice more holistically or who would call themselves biological dentists would say certain things. But I will say that in general biological dentistry, holistic dentistry, regular, your friendly neighborhood dentists, all of them are still operating under the premise that bacteria are the problem. So it's a germ theory model of treating people and caring for people. And now we've got this whole picture that bacteria are the problem and bacteria cause cavities. So a reasonable question to ask would be has anyone ever seen bacteria causing a cavity? And surprise, surprise, the answer is no, what research has shown what people have seen is they will take extracted tea, so tea that have been removed from people's mouths and cut them up, slice them up into pieces, put them in a pea tree dish with a high sugar solution, usually some form out of agar, and we'll add some bacteria into the tray. So they'll inoculate the tray with bacteria and watch it over time essentially what happens. And over time what they've seen is that there are more bacteria in the tray and often times there are holes or cracks or issues with the tooth piece that was in there. But I mean this is now a study being done on a dead tooth removed from a human mouth sitting in agar, which is a, it's a sugar that comes from algae. So it doesn't even come from humans and it's not produced by humans. So you have this tooth sliver sitting in a solution that it wouldn't normally be in. And then you see some things happening and you link the cavity to the bacteria. That is since the 1880s, that's what research in dentistry has found. And we've just continued to repeat this story, bacteria cause cavities, bacteria cause cavities. Bacteria are found where there are cavities. That's really the only real evidence that we can come away from with all of this research that's been done. But now we've got this story, bacteria responsible for cavities and the more bacteria you have the more likely you are to have a cavity. So in the early 1900s, not many people were brushing their teeth and certainly not many people were brushing their teeth with toothpaste. But there was research being done that initial study, I think it was somewhere in the 1880s was published about how bacteria were responsible for cavities. [BLANK_AUDIO] Early 1900s, a toothpaste company approached a very clever marketer and said our sales are down and we would like you to help us boost toothpaste sales. And this marketer did his job well and he went through the studies that had been published up until that time. And what he found is that there is a biofilm or a layer of slime, a slimy layer that forms over people's teeth. And this naturally forms. This happens to all of us and you can probably feel it. If you just run your tongue along your teeth, you'll feel that they're a little slippery. And everybody has a different biofilm layer. But what was found up until this time was that somebody's baseline biofilm, if it was cleaned away, it would take about 10 to 12 hours to form again to baseline levels. Or it would happen twice a day. So he said, "I'm going to turn this into a story. I'm going to make people think that this biofilm is bad and that we need to get rid of it." And it was very clever. What he did is he put out a campaign basically saying that if you wanted to be considered civilized, if you wanted to be taken seriously as an industrious businessman, and if you wanted to be considered hygienic, you would clean this biofilm away. You'd get rid of it and you would do that with toothpaste to make sure everything was removed and you would do it twice a day because it comes back twice a day. And that's essentially where this recommendation that we all of us probably are following that we brush twice a day comes from. So it wasn't really grounded in science exactly. It was essentially a marketing technique that was used based on some of the science that had come out. But the biofilm that was sort of weaponized against people is a totally naturally occurring thing in your mouth. And while this was going on, there was a dentist in the US practicing in Cleveland. And if you're listening to this, you're probably at least somewhat familiar with West and Price. But he was was practicing in the early 1900s and was seeing patients in his busy practice and came to his own conclusion that he wasn't buying this idea that bacteria and hygiene are the only culprits to dental disease because he was seeing patients where they were rushing well at that time. And they were still getting cavities or he was seeing families and genetically different children in the family would have been similar but had completely different cavity rates. And so this story of bacteria or the only thing responsible for you getting cavities wasn't holding up for him. And in the 1920s and 1930s, he decided to travel all over the world. And he went to all kinds of places, industrial places or cities that were being industrialized at the time and then more remote world places that didn't have the same type of industry developing. And he assessed people. He wanted to know what was making people healthy. How did people look in these different areas? Like how was their physical development affected by their lifestyle? And he came away with this new focus where he was now convinced that it wasn't bacteria that were responsible and hygiene practices that were responsible for weakened teeth and overall poor health. He came away from his experience thinking that diet was the main issue or diet was the main cause for poor health or good health. And some of the places he had visited were incredibly remote and people were not brushing their teeth at all had never brushed their teeth. So he was convinced that he was on to something. And you're probably somewhat familiar with his dietary recommendations. But, you know, keeping your food preparation practices simple but not using processed foods, not using processed oils, sugars, grass fed animals, grass fed dairy, fermented foods. These are all things that he was an advocate of and he wrote about. And his recommendations are the basis of the nourishing traditions, diet, if anyone is following that or has heard of that. So what's in praise gave us a different view of what affects teeth? He gave us a framework to look at teeth slightly differently and know that there are things outside of just bacteria that can cause problems in our teeth. But if we fast forward to today with the things that we now know about teeth, one question that we need to ask are what are teeth? What are they actually? And teeth, every single one of them are organs and in a full adult dentition. So if you have all of your teeth, as an adult, you should have 32 teeth. I know a lot of people have had teeth taken out, but that's how many we all should have. And NIH defines an organ as an anatomically distinct structure of the body composed of two or more tissue types. Each organ performs one or more specific physiological functions. And I have here different tissues that are found in a tooth, but it certainly has more than two tissue types. And as far as the functions of a tooth, we have chewing, grinding, pressure sensitivity, temperature sensitivity, your teeth obviously align your bite. And that actually has an effect on the rest of your skeletal alignment and your posture. So your teeth do all kinds of things. But one of the things that they do that is not so commonly talked about is that they generate electrical current. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that because that is the fascinating part of teeth that we're really under representing in dentistry is we're just not talking about this enough. But when your teeth are placed under pressure, which they are all the time, they generate a current. We're going to talk about this. So I have your teeth as crystals. And I'm going to talk about what I mean by that and then go into a little bit more about the current. I was just, I was just talking about. But your teeth have a crystalline structure. And the basis, the foundation of that crystal structure is hydroxyapatite. And hydroxyapatite is a mineral compound and it's mainly calcium and phosphate. And in the outer, hard layer of your tooth, the enamel, it is a very dense, tightly packed, incredibly organized crystalline structure of hydroxyapatite. And then as you get further into the tooth into the dentin layer, the hydroxyapatite matrix becomes less dense. There's more collagen embedded in it. And the tooth becomes softer. So it goes from really, really hard to softer to soft tissue inside the middle of your tooth, which is where the nerves and the blood vessels are. But the interesting part of this is because of this crystal structure that runs through and through throughout your tooth, teeth have something called the piezoelectric effect. And what this means is when a tooth is put under mechanical force like chewing or grinding, it generates, because of this crystal structure under force, it generates moving charge or generates a current. And this current flows through the tooth. And then it also becomes dissipated or moves through the surrounding structures. So we're going to go a little bit into the TCM model, the meridian model of the body in a little bit here. But that's one of the premises of why teeth can be linked to that system is because they generate this charge when they're under function. And the interesting thing is that this has even been seen in root canaled teeth. So for anyone who doesn't know a root canaled tooth is typically considered a dead tooth. And the reason for that is when a tooth is undergone a root canal, the living live tissue within the inside the soft tissue is removed from the tooth, including the nerve. So there's no nerve inside of a root canaled tooth and there's no blood vessels, any longer inside of the root canal tooth. And because of this, it's called dead. But what is interesting is that studies have shown that root canaled teeth when they're put under pressure and they're put under function. This charge that I was telling you about that happens with teeth in general continues to exist and flow through teeth that have had root canals and the the charge doesn't just stay in the tooth it again it dissipates to surrounding structures so there is a vital component still to this these teeth not from the sense that there's living nerve tissue or blood vessels inside of it but in the sense that there's an electrical current that is generated in these teeth and then that electrical current communicates energy to structures outside of the tooth in the body so my definition of what are teeth is that they are electrically conductive crystalline organs which is probably not something any other dentist is is going to tell you but that's what I think they are based on things that we already know about how teeth function so now we know what a tooth is what is a cavity it is not just a hole it can present as a hole but what it is is essentially it's a deconstruction of that crystal matrix so when the incredibly organized structure of a crystal starts to break down it becomes weak and the teeth are no different so when that crystalline structure doesn't retain the same mineral density or is traumatized in some way and it doesn't maintain its organized structure it becomes weakened and these weakened areas can turn into what we're calling cavities or holes and it's been shown that in these areas of weakness so in areas where there are cracks or de-mineralized areas or areas where small cavities have developed the flow of charge that I was just talking about that current that runs through the teeth decreases so these weakened areas don't hold charge as well and they become weakened if there's some traumatizing event that will impede the charge that can cause either the cracking or the hole to get bigger so now we have sort of an idea of of where we've come from and why we're here and some alternative ways of looking at teeth and these are alternative ways of considering what dental disease is in teeth I mean talk about two of them here and there may be others that are less popular even these ones are slightly under the radar but I will bring them up because they're they're both really fascinating and they both link to this idea that a lack of charge is what is responsible for dental disease and they're not at all related to bacteriology and hygiene and you know I'm not saying don't brush your teeth and that's not important but I think we need to reframe how we look at what teeth are and what causes problems in them so the first model TCM or traditional Chinese medicine says that teeth are linked to other parts of your body other organ systems within your body through the meridians and the meridian channels and TCM are these pathways that run through the body and they run from organs to other organs to we're now calling teeth organs so they run through your whole body and they connect different parts of your body and allow the flow of Qi or life force energy to flow through the body and what TCM says is that if you have a blockage in one of these meridians where you have a blockage of your Qi you're going to have an issue in the organs along that meridian or you can have an issue in the organs along that meridian and so although this is is very interesting and this is a system that's been used for thousands of years Western minds asked for a little bit of proof that that this was true and there is a doctor in the US who has mapped this link between teeth and the organs that they're linked to within the meridian system and it's fascinating because what he has found is that if a tooth is diseased or injured and there's an issue into a relating organ if dental work is done or some kind of of care and attention is given to that tooth the charge will be restored to the downstream organ and the function will be restored and so the way he has kind of mapped this and proven this is he has been able to show that there are different acupuncture points that fall along the meridians and you can measure the amount of electricity that's moving through these points and so if you've got a diseased tooth say your upper right molar is diseased and you know you've got an issue in your stomach what he found is that the flow of charge in that meridian if he put electrodes on two of those acupuncture points would be too low would be lower than you would normally want and then you have some dental work done to fix that tooth and the charge or the flow of charge along that meridian channel between these two points gets restored it increases so it is quite fascinating because he has now been doing this for decades and is teaching other people including dentists to understand this a little bit better but there's some empirical proof or some evidence that this is a thing and then the other model is called piano or psychoneuroodontology and what psychoneuroodontology which is very much emerging but it's really interesting but what it says is that there are psychological, emotional and spiritual components to your re-dental disease and there's a map as well in piano of what each and everyone of the 32 teeth are linked to as far as psychological, emotional, spiritual components and when those things become dysregulated how that affects the teeth now the interesting thing is that there is also evidence for this although this sounds kind of obscure and it is relatively new as far as people doing research into it as a science people have done research into it and so one of the things that's been noted is patients who have a diagnosis of something like anxiety, depression, chronic stress, chronic fatigue so people who are generally feeling low energy and would be considered to have low charge in their body these patients or these people are less able to tolerate current flowing to and through their teeth meaning that if a current is applied to a tooth in a person that was suffering from one of these things their pain tolerance would be lower so they would register that current as painful sooner than a healthy person who didn't have any of these diagnoses so what that tells us is that the emotional state of the person and there are all kinds of details related to that for each of the teeth but in general a person's emotional state will render their teeth more or less capable of holding charge which is what they're designed to do so if they're not as able to do that you're more susceptible to dental disease or dental issues now in traditional Chinese medicine as I said your teeth are linked to different organs in the body and the interesting thing is that you know these organs are not readily available to us to have a direct relationship with you can't directly touch your heart you can't directly touch your lungs and what you can do is directly touch and access your teeth every single day and so for me I find that we have these 32 organs in our mouth readily available for us to interact with and touch and be aware of and take care of every single day and that gives us access to the deeper parts of our body the organs that we typically don't get to touch and interact with in the same way and so I do think that there's something to be said for honoring this idea that there is if you don't want to call it Qi this this life force energy moving through our body think of it as electricity but this electrical current running through our body and running from each one of our teeth into our body and then with PNO or psychoneuroodone ontology, as I was saying, there's a map for what each and every one of the 32 teeth are related to as far as some of these psychological and emotional aspects. And I'm not going to go into all of them, but some general principles are that if you're experiencing things in your life that relate to how you present to the external world. So perhaps if you're feeling uncomfortable with how you're presenting at work or at school or if you're starting a new position and you're uncomfortable with that, anything that could kind of bring up some dysregulation around how you're feeling about how people perceive you tend to show up in the front teeth, so that tends to cause issues in the front teeth, which from this framework makes sense, because the front teeth are also the first teeth that people see when they see you or come into contact with you. And then on the flip side of that, your back teeth tend to relate to issues that you're having as far as your home life, your personal feelings about your stability and perceived safety or your rootedness in your life. And this would make sense from a piano perspective because the back teeth are the more rooted teeth. So if you are feeling uprooted or just not as stable or anchored, that shows up in these back teeth. And then issues generally speaking relating to your relationships within your public life, so things like your relationships with your friends or your coworkers. If you have social networks that you're a part of, if you're feeling uneasy or you're feeling as though there's something that needs to be addressed within those types of relationships, that'll show up more so on the right side. And then the opposite, if there are things in your private life, relationships in your private life that are suffering or that are causing you some kind of concern or stress, that can show up on the left side. And just a note for me or from me, something that I more recently noticed is I had a patient who was coming to the end of his career and has been for a little while. And a part of the job was that he had to travel a lot and do a lot of speaking engagements. And that was just becoming more and more undesirable. It was something that he wasn't really interested in wanting to continue, but it was a part of this job and it was an important big job. So he wanted to keep doing it for that reason. But the last year or so, I would say every time there was a major speaking event, he would develop an issue in one of his front teeth. So something would break, something would crack, something would chip. So it was just interesting because this is, although an emerging science, there is some legitimacy and validity to these overall patterns that we see where, you know, in this case, if you are having an issue with how you present to the world that may show up in these front teeth. So what are some ways that we can strengthen our dental health, fortify your dental wellness, as I would say? And I have four ways here. There are lots of things that you can do, but I also believe in keeping your life as simple as you can. The four main things that I've put down here are diet, regulating our nervous system, function, and saliva. And so I'll go into each of these a little bit, just to give a bit more context, but diet, I mean, this is going to be personal preference, but if you're here listening to this, you probably have some familiarity with the Western price diet or the nourishing traditions diet. And general principles, so Western price specifically talked about fat soluble vitamins and vitamin K2. And so foods that have fat soluble vitamins, vitamin K2, grass fed dairy products, grass fed animal meats, stews, bone broths, these types of things. Fermented foods help to regulate your gut, and for me, I consider your mouth a part of your gut. It's the first place in your body where you start to digest food. So your mouth is very much a part of gut health and your gut. And then regulating your nervous system. So all of us know that having as little stress in your life as possible is the goal. And sometimes that's easier to achieve than other times. What I would say is stress in your body impies charge. So people who are considered more high stress or who are functioning at higher stress levels don't flow charge or electricity through their body as well as people who are less stressed. And so if you can take the time in your day where you would be brushing your teeth or doing your dental hygiene practices and use that as a time of relaxation, like use that as a self-care ritual that you have built into your day. You're going to do it anyways. So really lean into it and honor that time that you're giving yourself when you're taking care of your mouth and you're taking care of your teeth, even just those few minutes a day can help to set your day up and help to regulate your stress levels and also just allow you to give your body, give yourself a different level of appreciation and care. And then dynamic function. So with our modern diets now being as processed as they are, most of the foods that we're eating unless you're following a more traditional diet are over processed and are too soft. So we don't put the necessary force that people who have existed prior to us have been putting on their teeth and on their jaw and that's a whole other discussion for another day. But the result of that is that we've developed overall dental issues and jaw issues. One of the reasons being that we're not applying the correct amount of force to our teeth. And when I started this talk, I was talking about charge. And the amount of charge that your teeth are generating and are conducting is in relationship to the amount of force that they're taking. So two foods that have a variety of textures and chew them well. So maintain crunchy foods, maintain harder foods. You can have some soft foods but have a balanced diet. And if you can, try and get 10 to 15 chews and I know that sounds like a lot if you're not doing that. But when you first do it, you'll have to think about it and count them out. And then you will get used to chewing this way. But even if the food has been ground up or mashed up, the chewing, the action of chewing continues to put force on your teeth and your teeth will continue to generate that current that I talked about that was so important. And then saliva quality and flow. So saliva to me is like a superfluid in our body because it's constantly bathing our teeth. And it has minerals, it has proteins, it has vitamins, it has things in it. And if you don't want to put those terms on it, it has things in it that help your mouth, help your teeth and are important for the health of your teeth. And it's also a conductive fluid. So if your teeth are generating charge, you know, that charge has to go somewhere and it will go into the tissues, but it also goes into your saliva. So the more conductive and healthy your saliva is in cooperation with your teeth, the healthier your mouth is going to be. And then any messaging that gets carried away from your mouth to the rest of your body. And what I've been telling people more recently is bless your water. So drink lots of water, drink structured water, but bless it. Now, healing a cavity, if you've done all of those things or you're starting to do all of those things, but there are areas in your mouth that need a little bit more attention because you maybe have a small cavity, you have some cracking that's starting, you have some de-mineralization. Some ways that we can address that are to remineralize, I have your oil pulling, releasing tension, and then your intention to heal. Now with remineralization, hydroxyapatite is the mineral compound that is naturally found in your teeth. And there are lots of hydroxyapatite based toothpaste or toothpaste. powders that are now available. And so you can use one that's commercially available. You can make your own, but use something with hydroxyapatite in it because although it doesn't chemically bond into your tea, but it does structurally bond into your teeth, meaning that if you've got a little hole and you're packing hydroxyapatite crystals into that hole where the hydroxyapatite has come out, you are sort of patching it up or filling it up. So it's like putting a missing puzzle piece back into the puzzle. And then also cell salts and homeopathics. I don't do as much with homeopathics. That's not my area of expertise, but I do know of people who have had a lot of success with ruda gravolins and hyperacum perforatum. These are things that are useful for the nerves in your teeth, the ligaments around your teeth. And I believe some vitamin Oficionale, I think is the homeopathic that it's good for bone development. So that's good for the tooth itself, but also the bone around the tooth and around the ligament. And then cell salts, calc floreka, calc fos, salisia, all of those are good for mineral health in your teeth. Now, oil pulling. My research into oil pulling, I know most people have been told that you have to do this for 20 minutes a day. And you can, there's nothing wrong with doing it for 20 minutes a day, but most people don't have that and then don't do it 'cause that just sounds too long. But the research has shown that there is, as far as a benefit to you, there's no difference between doing it 10 minutes a day and 20 minutes a day. So if a day, so it's not a time, it's a day. So if you want to do this for two five minute intervals in your day, totaling 10 minutes, do it. But you wanna use about a tablespoon of oil. And the oil takes about five minutes to fully emulsify and then start to break things down. So if you can stretch this to at least a five minute period in one go, that is sort of where you need to be up for this to be effective. And then sesame oil, coconut oil, a cold pressed organic oil is what you want. Releasing attention. So this is an important one because we, most of us are caring attention and many, many people are caring attention in their head and neck and around their jaw. Now, clenching, grinding, there are reasons that people are handing out nakers left right in the center and it's because of jaw tension, jaw, lock jaw, jaw pain. And there is a way to alleviate this that you can literally put into your own hands and that's massaging your fascia, massaging the muscles of your head and neck. And you can do this from the neck up and really focus on, so if you go down to your clavicle area, that's where your SCM, these big rope muscles in your neck, that's where they insert into and then work your way up and focus around the bottom of the jaw and around the back of the cheeks 'cause that's where your salivary glands are and you have lots of little ones in your mouth but those are the big ones or in these areas here. So if you can massage these areas out, release the tension in them and around them, they will flow better, you'll get a better flow of saliva. And then lastly, intention to heal and this is so important because believing in yourself and believing that something is possible is quite literally a mechanism to healing. And I know the dominant idea in dentistry and in dental health is that cavities can't be healed and that you just go get a feeling, go get your teeth fixed and sometimes that's the case. And for me personally, I've seen certain levels of healing in my practice but I haven't seen profound, profound holes in people's teeth grow back. I just haven't seen that but also most people aren't willing to put the time into the energy into or the belief into the idea that something like that can heal and wanna get it fixed, which I understand. But because of that, there isn't the same evidence for healing these types of things that there is for other things. But I do think it's important for us to just bring into the consciousness, bring it into our awareness that we are capable of healing ourselves, we are capable of healing our teeth even in small ways. And that we don't have to be beholden to this idea that bacteria are attacking us or are breaking our teeth down and the only thing that we can do is brush, floss, and go get more cleanings. So your body is a temple and your mouth is the gateway into that temple. I do truly believe that and your mouth is a window into what's happening in the rest of your body. So when you see or when you feel things or even when you just bring awareness to your mouth, it gives you a sense of connectedness to the rest of your body and to these areas as I was saying earlier that are otherwise just not as readily accessible to you. So not only do you speak through your mouth but sometimes your mouth is speaking to you for the rest of your body. So that's it for me, Tricia, if we have any questions, I would be happy to answer them. - Thank you so much, Derbani. We do have a couple of questions in the chat. Would you like me to read them to you or would you like to go through them in the YouTube window? - Sure, do you mind reading them for me? I just, I don't want to do anything here that's gonna, that's gonna log me off. No worries at all, I will read them to you. So the first one we have is what kind of dental work is actually beneficial? - What kind of dental work is beneficial? I think that depends on what the issue, if you have an issue is. I think is preventative dental care beneficial, meaning preventative dental care is, you go into your dentist and you get a cleaning every six months or every X number of months, whatever they've told you you need to go in for. And what they're doing is they're removing biofilm layers and in some cases plaque and calculus layers which are like hardened forms of plaque, that's what calculus is. Now, if you have good health and you have good overall health, you have good diet, you have good practices as far as your own at home care of your mouth. Are you, is everybody always gonna develop calculus? No. And calculus being the hardened form of plaque, it does require mechanical removal. So like you trying to remove calculus on your own at home would be very difficult if not impossible depending on where it is and how thick it is. It's hard. But there are people who do not develop calculus, everyone's gonna develop plaque and that can be removed, that can be brushed away. But if you have good general health, you don't have to go in for cleanings because the cleanings are, the intent of the cleaning is to get rid of the calculus causing your dental disease. And you can do these practices at home to maintain good health. But is there a danger to having a dental cleaning done? There isn't a danger to it and that's if you're healthy. There are some, some things if you're unhealthy. But if you're healthy, it's not dangerous. It's just not always necessary. And some people truly do just love coming in for cleanings. It's like they consider it a form of self-care. It's relaxing. It's potentially an hour long appointment where they can just relax and not be bothered by anything else in their life. And so if you view it that way, then there's nothing wrong with doing it. But it's also not always necessary for everyone. It's not something you have to do. - Okay, great. There's a few more, Nirvana, if you don't mind. - Sure. - The next one is what's the best way to regenerate a missing tooth? - A missing tooth. You know what you, as far as I know, there is no way to regenerate a missing tooth. There is research that's been done just recently, Japan published some research. There's a University in Japan that published some research. And about 12 years ago, the Kings College in London published some research and they both have found ways to regenerate parts of the enamel of teeth, which is really interesting because the enamel layer is the hard layer and when that's broken, things tend to progress, as I said, the softer layer is inside. So that is interesting, but there is no known way, at least no way I have ever heard of or know of, that you can regenerate a whole tooth. Hopefully somebody is working on it and we'll come up with a good solution, but if you're missing a tooth, the sort of the gold standard right now is to get a dental implant. And if you're getting an implant, if that's the route you're gonna go, I would suggest a ceramic implant over something that's metal or titanium. - Okay, the next question is, I never got my wisdom teeth removed. Is this good or bad? I have not experienced much trouble, except for the cavities they filled with mercury. - If you have your wisdom teeth and you don't have any issues with your wisdom teeth moving in your mouth, like they fit in your mouth and you're chewing well with them, then it's good that you have them because the wisdom teeth, as I said, each one of the teeth generates an electrical charge and moves through the body, moves charge through your mouth. And so if you've maintained that, that's amazing. It's also more surface area to help you chew your food well. And the wisdom teeth from a TCM perspective are related to the heart and are related to the small intestine. They're related to the sexual organs. So there is, if you've been able to keep them, there is a lot of utility that they have being in your mouth. So that's great. - Okay, the next question is, since brushing gets rid of bacteria, which are beneficial, is it a harmful practice? - Yeah, so this is an interesting question and it's one, so on, on Tuesdays, I meet with some of the other doctors and experts in the new biology clinic and it's one that we've talked about a couple of times. And so this is what I have to say about that and I don't know if it'll be a complete answer, but it's the best answer I think I can give you right now. So the interesting thing is that, I've just talked about how our teeth are considered organs. And there is no other organ in your body that you have to brush and you have to floss in order for it to stay clean and healthy. You don't have to do that anywhere else. And Weston Price went all over the world and visited remote people who had never brushed their teeth, never heard of a toothbrush, never heard of toothpaste, just didn't do that and had healthy teeth. Did not have cavities, did not have periodontal disease. So do you have to brush your teeth? Do people have to brush their teeth? The short answer is no, because we have lots of evidence of people who didn't brush their teeth who are doing fine or they were doing fine. But what I would say is do I tell my patients or do I personally not brush my teeth? No, I brush my teeth two to three times every day. I love brushing my teeth. Like I look at it as a self-care practice that I really enjoy. But I don't tell anyone not to brush their teeth. And I think the way that we are living now versus the way that people were living in very remote areas of the world 100 years ago is entirely different. Even if we're not consuming toxins in our diet, we unfortunately are exposed to toxicity in so many parts of our life, the air, we're breathing, the water, we're drinking the food in many ways that we're cooking, even if you're really trying hard to cook good things, the things that we're listening to, the ideas that are being put into our head, there are so many ways that we are bombarded by toxins and toxicity that I don't think, I think the examples from Western price are a good framework and they're good for peaking our interest into what are some alternative ways to think about our health. But I also think that we're just dealing with more things today than we ever have been. And I wouldn't recommend over brushing your teeth because there are issues with that that can cause damage to your teeth into the gums if you're too aggressive. But I don't think, I think that the benefit to feeling clean and hygienic, perhaps, and feeling like that nice, clean feeling on your teeth and just feeling freshness in your mouth, I think that there is a benefit to that, even if it's a psychological one, that isn't outweighed by the damage of removing bacteria from your mouth. And those bacteria come back. And especially if you're using good natural products, you're not just indiscriminately killing things and completely destroying your microbiome. - Okay, just a few more. The next one is what's the best way to heal a cracked tooth? - Well, some ways that you can try are some of the things that I talked about as far as remineralization. So if it's truly a crack, like it's not a cavity that has some depth to it, it's a crack in the enamel. You can oftentimes remineralize those, depends where it is and how deep it is, but I would start by using a hydroxyapatite-based toothpaste. You can even leave a little bit of the paste or the powder on the crack, like once you've finished brushing your teeth, you start using some cell salts and the homeopathics that I just went over. So I think, as I said, I'm not the homeopathics or not, something that. I've had a ton of experience with, but I know people who have used them and had good results, but calphaus, calphlor, and silicea for the cell salts use those, those work well. And then, yeah, the hypericum, perforatum, rutogravulins, and some phytum, oficinale are the homeopathics that are typically, those kind of cover all the aspects of a tooth, like the nerve tissue, the tooth tissue itself, and then the ligament and bone tissue. - Okay, the next question is, do metal and ceramic caps also have a current? What about implants? - So metal does, like metal is conductive and will allow current to flow. Ceramic does not, so it doesn't allow the same conductivity of current. And implants, if they're made out of titanium, which are typically what metal implants are made out of, they'll conduct current. If they're made out of ceramic, they will not conduct current. They're non-conductive. So the thing though, with dental prostheses, so things like crowns and things like implants, being conductive, is that they don't have the same conductivity as your natural tooth structure. And what can happen is they can be overly conductive. Like they can over-conduct electricity to the point where it causes, and it happens slowly, it usually doesn't blow up, but what it would do is overheat the tooth over time, or if it's an implant overheat the bone. Like they just don't conduct current in electricity the same way that teeth do. Ceramic are non-conductive, but with a crown as an example, the ceramic crown goes over top of the tooth, and so the underlying tooth structure still maintains the ability to conduct current beneath it. - Okay, the next one. Does calculus need to be removed, or is it perhaps serving an intelligent purpose? - I believe that, I believe there's a reason, if your body has created something, or has formed something, there's a reason for it. I think that the reason calculus forms, and so what it is, essentially, It's like a wall of hardened plaque that forms on your teeth. If it's left long enough, it will literally form a wall. It has to be chipped off, like that's how we get it off. If it doesn't get to that point where it's not as significantly formed, then you'll have areas of calculus that are attached to the teeth, hardened plaque that are attached to the teeth, or even below the gums on the teeth. And I think that from a more energetic perspective, if you're feeling like you need protection or you're feeling vulnerable in some way, you're feeling like you're maybe you need something to lean on, those could be emotional ties to why your body would find a way to produce something, like calculus, especially if it's produced in a large amount, like, you know, as I'm saying, literally, sometimes people have a wall of calculus. So that's like a wall your body has built up as a form of protection or perceived stability even for you. And so I mean, I think there's a purpose, there's a reason your body would form the calculus, but I also think and have seen that it's not a, it's not a, quote unquote, normal expression of your body. It's not something that forms in perfect health in somebody's mouth. So if your body has come up with a reason to form this substance or this structure, there's probably an underlying emotional component to it or a psychological component to it or a spiritual component to it, and that should be addressed, because otherwise it's just going to keep coming back. And then should you leave the calculus or doesn't have to be removed, it causes problems in your mouth or at least I have seen over the last almost 16 years that it can cause problems in your mouth. It can persist or aggravate inflammation in your gums, in the adjacent gums. So I would suggest removing calculus if you have calculus build up, but I do think there's a deeper, less well understood reason why it forms in the first place. And I think like with all disease, you ultimately have to get to that. Why would your body form this protective, hard layer? That is going on in your life, in your psyche, in your being, in your soul, that would think that your body would think that this is an appropriate way to protect you. And if you can get to that, if you can address that, then you can get the calculus removed and also be more certain that it's not going to come back because you don't have that emotional component that still needs to be addressed. Okay, the last two questions. Can you heal a tooth under a crown? I'm assuming there's maybe a cavity that's developed under the crown. That's based on the question I'm assuming that's maybe what you mean. And if that is what your question is, the principles behind the cavity are still the same. So, I mean, the cavities formed because there's an issue in the tooth as a whole. And what we've talked about today is that there's a charge issue, but some of the practical ways that you can deal with that are, again, the things like hydroxyapatite, cell assaults for mineralization, homeopathics, for mineralization, whale pulling, whale pulling is also a good way to get to areas of your mouth that are not as easy to access because it's oily. It's oily. It's liquid that will get into the cracks and crevices of your mouth. It gets into the areas beneath the gums. So those things, as a practice, are if you're trying to heal something, are worth exploring. And then you can always, typically if there's a cavity that's developed under the crown, your dentist will have a sense of how large or how big it is. So unless you've been told, you know, this thing is just a mass of hole under your crown, you have to do something about it right now. You usually have a bit of time that you can try and address these things on your own. And you can ask your dentist or your hygienist who ever found the issue, you know, how advanced it is. And then give yourself some time and see if you can on your own heal or reverse some of the issue that's developed there. But practically speaking, you know, having the intention to heal it, and then using some techniques for mineralization, and also whale pulling, as I said, because that's a good way to get in and remove the bacteria that is in the cavity. And it's not because the bacteria are causing it, but it's the fact that when the cavity is present with bacteria in it, it does not allow for the same level of charge and electricity to flow throughout that area of the tooth, and that's the problem. So clean it out as much as you can, and those are some ways that you can do that. Thank you. Okay. The last question is if we're bombarded by toxins and bacteria are there to help clean up the toxins, isn't it more important to keep the bacteria? Well, you are keeping your bacteria. So bacteria don't, like if you're using hydroxyapatite, and you're using coconut oil or sesame oil, or even an essential oil in your oil pulling, those things are going to help you balance your microbiome. So your body functions on balance, and bacteria can be helpful for cleaning things up, but it's not like you can't have a dysregulation or an imbalance of bacteria in your mouth. And so, when you do things like brush and whale pull, you do remove bacteria, but because those things don't significantly alter the microbiome in a way where the bacteria can't interact properly with one another, which chemicals can often do, they come back, they regenerate, and that biofilm that's supposed to form, reform every 10 to 12 hours or so, it is allowed to rebuild. And there are also proteins in your mouth, so part of that biofilm is like a pronatious layer, that's part of what that slippery feeling is. And that gets maintained when you add the oil into your mouth. It doesn't just indiscriminately wipe away everything, including bacteria or break everything in your mouth down. And so, I mean, the premise that you want bacteria to remove toxins, true, but there is also a way in which you can maintain the bacteria that you have and the balance of your microbiome as a whole that is non-destructive and still allows you to engage in hygiene practices and have that sense of, like, that clean feeling in your mouth and feeling like you're taking care of your teeth. Nirvani, thank you so much for your time today, your presentation was excellent, thank you so much. Yeah, you're very welcome, thank you, Trisha, and thank you to everyone for your questions and listening today.