EP #162: Innovating Oral Health: What It Means for Lifespan and Wellness with Dr. Jonathan Levine, Founder of Smile House Tribeca

Hi, Dr. Jonathan. Thank you for being here for coming on to the podcast. Thanks, Stella. So much. Great to be here. Yeah, and it's like we were just talking about how wonderful it is to be face-to-face. It's not often that I get to do these in-person interviews, but it is like so exciting to get to sit down with you and to learn more about your background, your path, your interest in oral wellness, which I feel like is a very new term, at least I've recently heard of, and to have been out smilehouse recently and to get to kind of experience everything that you and your team is building is just really cool. And I'm so excited to learn more about that journey for you. Yeah, I'm so happy to get an opportunity to get over there at smilehouse. And you couldn't pick more greater convenience for me because you're about six, seven blocks away from 55 Warren Street, so pretty spectacular, easy commute. Very easy commute. It was just fantastic. Well, let's start with your background and what kind of informed your passions for the medical field and becoming a doctor and kind of coming into all of this. Where did that originate from? So that's the early days of growing up and being at the dinner table. I always say the kids learn the most around the dinner table, the conversations your parents are having and you have it with each other. And I think we build our value system that way and learn a lot from the parents that way. It just, you know, as Moses, it comes in, well, my dad was in a crazy business called the Fur business. And the Fur business back in the day was the business where, you know, nothing was organized and everything was on a promise. And so there was the conversation was always conflicting. This person, I was this person money and I'm saying, oh my god, business. I don't want anything to do with business. That's business. And I always lean more towards the sciences. And then leaning towards the sciences when I got to Cornell, I was a microbiology immunology major. And I figured, okay, I'm going to take that kind of scientific path, which unravels and kind of figured that out over the four years that I was there. Yeah. So it all came from kind of your childhood and and what you were hearing at the dinner table. And what I wasn't going to do. Exactly. Which can be equally and if not more valuable. Exactly right. The figuring out what you are going to do. Exactly right. And then when I was a junior senior, I lost my grandma. I was very close to my grandparents. I lost my grandpa. And I had time in the hospital and it was painful. And I related to that. I said, I don't want to work in a hospital. And I was doing sculpture and I was a lacrosse player. So I was into kind of that art and athletics, along with studying, which, you know, was premed and pre-dent. So it was like, you know, how to study pretty hard. But so process elimination got me to a field that I really knew nothing about. Gold antistrate. And that's what I ended up doing. You know, I didn't think I like business. I wasn't going to hang in the hospital and I was doing research with a great professor. And I thought I would stay. So I ended up staying in an extra year to get a master's in him, you know, but I just felt it was a little slow from me. The whole grit writing and the whole research side. So I tried that and then I decided I was going to play the dental school or I ended up going to dental school. Yeah. Well, I mean, now in retrospect looking back, it's interesting because you've been able to kind of flex those business skill sets through these enters that you're launching. Then when you think about your art background, like dentistry is very, when you think about like the aesthetics of your smile and like of your jaw, I mean, we can get into the mouth mapping technique later. But there is like an artistry to that. But then you also have like your credentials and your background in medicine. So you found like a very interesting way to kind of combine all three disciplines and what you're doing today. It's true. And it translated for me living in a lot of different aspects of dentistry and eventually now the connection of dentistry and medicine, which is all of health care. And it's my passions that kind of drew me there because I had this college's experience of being a lacrosse player, but having kind of an evolution over sophomore junior senior year to be undefeated. A senior year to have an amazing coach, amazing players, great team, national championship. We win. By the way, I played my fraternal twin brother on the other team of Maryland. And so that was kind of an interesting bragging rights for the rest of my life. But when I got out and went to dental school and then got into dentistry, I couldn't believe that it was not a team sport. And it was very much a fragmented solo sport. And so it's interesting how our experience in our background says, oh my god, we got to change this. And that's what put me on this whole path of being very clinician, academic, be a specialist in dentistry, you know, always try to be the best. I think that's a bit of an athletic mindset to really work hard and out work people and, you know, really apply yourself. But also my interest in being entrepreneurial and being a creative thinker. And it's a great industry because someone who's a bit like that can really try to reinvent, reimagine, break rules and push people that I kind of bring to this out of their own comfort zone. And I've enjoyed that. Oh, I love that. I also have a background in athletics. I was a rower in high school. So I did do it in college, but there was something to be said about doing like a really challenging sport. And that instills a lot of values in you. For me, it was grit and it was discipline. And those are like fundamental that I see have like transcended beyond the sport of rowing and kind of permeate into what I'm doing now as well. Oh, especially that sport. Yes. I always say Cornell. Harder is working athlete is a rower with a row. Oh my god. That's why I did not row in college. I did that in high school. Redone. I want to have a life now. But there is really something to be said about like having that background as an athlete. And maybe it's a competitive mindset, but maybe just like a more focused in sharp mindset or being more resilient from like bouncing back from failure or any setbacks. That's exactly right. Because if you don't try it, you don't fail. So the truth is you want you need to go after it. And if you fail, you have to have that mindset that that's part of it. I mean, you know, it's like Roger Federer talking about how many shots he's missed, about 50% of his serve he's missed. He's one of the greatest tennis players that ever played, right? And that's the truth. And that's kind of that athlete's mindset that I'm going to go out there. Gretzky says I miss every shot I don't take, right? You know, those and he's the great athlete saying it in every athlete who really applies themselves. Well, however, when lose a draw knows that that grit, that determination, you don't let failure stop you. In fact, it inspires you to say, let's go. Yeah, there's a really great clip that I saw on social media from probably like a longer form podcast with Arthur Brooks. And he was talking about, yeah, he's brilliant. And he talked about how he has, you know, his students write down like their list of failures and leave blank lines beneath the failure event to reflect on it and like talk about what they learned from it and how it made them grow. So it kind of trains your brain to start to look forward to failure because you start to see it as a growth opportunity. Like as a good thing rather than programming your brain to think it's a bad thing or to feel resistant to wanting to even try. And I think that's a beautiful practice to do because it kind of tricks our brain into getting excited by the opportunity even presenting itself and feeling less afraid to take the risk. It's so true. It's so true. And you see it in business, you know, your advice also startups and you see, you know, when you talk to the young entrepreneurs and the founders and they get a little sidetrack because they're difficult to raising money or maybe their, you know, initial rollout didn't work properly. And you need a little bit of that older wisdom because as we get older, we experience these things. You realize that's part of it. But when you're young, you can get sideways on it and say, Oh my god, OMG, I failed. No, no, no, no. You took the risk. You stepped out, you know, and now take those learnings and apply them and go forward. And you see the entrepreneurs that fail their first time, second time even. And then the third time they kill it. And that's what it is. It's just keeping that mind just super focused and realizing that it's all part of that process, you know, process of growth. Yeah. And mindset is so important too. It's, I really do believe that the thoughts that we allow to kind of linger and sit in our brains are what shape our lived experiences in our reality. And it's interesting because when we think about holistic health and wellbeing, like we think about our health from a very physical perspective, like what's wrong with our body. But what it really excites me is, you know, kind of the emerging conversation and mental health and really understanding like our emotional health as well. And so it's, it sounds like mindset is a very big part of your wellbeing practice or something that you, you keep really central to what keeps you healthy. Can you share a few other practices or ways that, you know, you try to stay grounded? I would say that anybody who has a mindset of growth, of pushing me on below, of being creative, we have to take care of ourselves. Our bodies are mind. And today we know so much more. And we know that you want to wake up the right way. We know that meditation and breathwork and journaling and fitness and proper sleep and proper nutrition and how we manage these stresses in our lives. All these kind of pillars of health and longevity is really important to pay attention to. And the earlier you do this, As a young person, you get into those, as Boushad would say, high performance habits, right? Or Robin Shaw or the 5AM club, and you listen to these people. There's such a wonderful learn. So, you know, I've adopted that mindset. I've always been an athlete. I always worked out almost every day. I feel like I gotta get motion going. You know, you gotta move in. You know, you look at the science and the research and fit this in motion is probably at the top of the list because it drives everything else. Even if you got a sweet tooth as long as you're burnin' it, you're net neutral, you know, you're workin' it out. You're workin' out and the truth is, you're gonna sleep better, you know, because you get that blood going and you really got, you know, your system's going. And also elevates mood because that title of this podcast is Sponun about endorphins. - Yeah, and you love endorphins. You're just talkin' about it. - I'm a big fan, you know, I'm a cyclist. LaCrosse play became a cyclist for the last 30 plus years. And it brings me so much joy, but it's cathartic. And, you know, I got a bunch of patents, I remember almost 30 patents now. The main ones came when I'm riding a bike and just free thinking and there's flow. - Flow now. - And then I, I literally, the big one I've had which developed this way to accelerate formulations for whitening and therapeutics. I mean, this mouthpiece with light and heat and my gloscience company, it all came out of just kind of like getting on the bike and then no outside thinking and all of a sudden, I had a mental image of it that I got home and drew it on a piece of paper and that became something very major. It actually launched the billion dollar device devices for whitening. So, you know, it really is interesting what we learn. And it's part of that mindset of continuous improvement and really learning. And I think if you get that early and excited about it, you know, it keeps you focused. And then there is something amazing about having the coaching from outside your family, whether it's music, whether it's any type of group dynamic, athletics where you can learn from these coaches to you gotta have work everybody. You gotta put the time in it. It's not gonna come to you. How hard did you work for rowing? Oh my God, they both indoor and out on the board. - Oh yeah. - Right. - It was up and down the Harlem River. It was not a glamorous river. - It ain't go average. Don't be falling in that river. - I did once. - Actually. - Kind of, it was not good. But exactly. I mean, those are really spot on points. And I think when you're also in a practice or some sort of like movement that's tapping you into flow, you are allowing yourself to let those creative ideas come to the surface. And I mentioned earlier about my day job outside of the podcast is in innovation consulting. And I'm very interested personally to learn more about how creative ideas generate. And what is the optimal environment to get those juices flowing? And I think flow is a huge part of the equation. I actually got to interview one of the leading researchers in flow, Stephen Kotler, and Adam on the podcast. And I mean, anyone who's listening to this should also go tune into that after because he can way better articulate the signs of flow than I can and the neurobiology behind that. But it is really fascinating because when we do think about, tapping into those flow-like states, it does kind of spark a cascade of other endorphins and positive experiences in the brain that I think help us cultivate and create a more healthy, well-rounded lifestyle. And which is why I think flow is really important. And to your point, it was through cycling and through those moments of more stillness that you came up with these innovative ideas that really changed the dental industry. And I'd love to talk a little bit more about that and kind of come back to the path of medicine and why dentistry in particular. - The whole concept that dentistry is separated from medicine is like your GI doctor is completely separate from healthcare medicine or your cardiologist. And we have a different group of cardiologists. And it made no sense and happened for political reasons literally in 1840 when the first medical school and these guys knocked on the door and they said, "We gotta open up dental division part of the medical school." They were doctors that were doing dental procedures. Anyway, it's called the Grand Rebuke. They got the big hand and they said, "Go open up your own school." And the United States literally from 1840, they raised money and they opened up a dental school right close to it in Baltimore, University of Maryland. Now dental school was the first one dentistry in medicine separated. In Europe up until about 18 years ago, you'd be an MD first and then you'd specialize in dentistry. One dental school in the country, Harvard, has the dental school within the medical school. So they're getting closer and that's because they had this amazing dean. But now it's going full circle because the research and the science now supports that yes, the mouth is connected to the body. It is the start of the digestive system. You're not supposed to be breathing through your mouth. Your nose is all designed for multiple reasons of your immunity and your filtering through the nose. And now we know all the problems of beating through your mouth. And we know all-- Mouth taping is huge. Mouth taping jaw development, young kids, you breathe through your mouth and your whole face development is completely different. You have long face, you have narrow watches, you have a palate that's like a funnel. And your aesthetics is off, but your will be laden with inflammatory diseases as you grow up. And so there's so much science now 54 systemic inflammatory diseases. You name it disease. I cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cognitive function disease, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, all linked to inflammation in the mouth. In the bacteria that causes inflammation, you'll find them in all these distant organs. And the immune response is one of the most complicated systems we have in the body. And we know what happens when it gets overworked. Look at COVID. Anybody with a couple of chronic inflammatory diseases ended up on a vent. If you had a periododonal disease, you were five times more likely to end up on a vent. Just like if you had diabetes, a cardiovascular disease, and it was really sad to see all of that in those people dying. So people now, I think, becoming more aware, oh my God, my oral health regimen, which is so preventable, and we can go so upstream into a wellness model, we believe oral health leads to overall health, because it starts there. Because if you have inflammation in the mouth, you're going to have it in another part. So your body and all the same rules apply. All the same rules apply. Immunity, microbiome, balancing act, what's called homesthetic balance of good and bad bacteria in our gut is the same thing. The mouth is the second biggest microbiome in the body. Right? So you've got 8 trillion in the gut, and you've got 8 billion in the mouth. Wow. 600 species of bacteria. And it's all about a balancing act of these bad bugs, that causes inflammation or decay, and the commensals, the good balancing bacteria. That's why at Smile House, we do celebrate diagnostics as a standard of care. That's why at Smile House, we do CAT scans, the CBC teeth, intraoral scans, and this whole mouth mapping is all about an integrative approach. Medicine's always ahead of the industry. It's just more collaborative. Dentistry's finally starting to be like that. And I'm bringing in the bell and saying, listen, everybody, and I did Smile House with my sons and my colleagues. We have about 11 docs involved to say we got to change the profession. So this mouth mapping is where we take aesthetics, structure function and biology, tie it all together, where the technology ladders up to each one of those divisions. And we take a comprehensive approach of diagnostics to make people healthy. So we can get upstream, and that's what wellness is all about, getting early and getting preventable, because unfortunately, Western medicine lives in a sickness model. Exactly. And oftentimes, we only start to really bring our attention to those issues when it's an actually an issue. So again, it's not being preventative. It's like-- That's exactly right. You don't want to address your health when there's a crisis. You want to get ahead of it. I love the integrative model. I think it's so fascinating. And growing up, I always thought, OK, dentistry's going to the dentist once or twice a year, get a teeth cleaning. Make sure I don't have any cavities. I went to-- got braces as a kid. I think I have a pretty nice smile. Great. You have a great smile. Thank you. And thank god my parents invested in my smile, because we can talk about this too, but your smile indicates warmth and likability. And there's just a-- it contributes to body language and energy and how people kind of pick up on you and perceive you. And so having a really nice smile, I think, is so important for your own confidence, for your own well-being. But that's maybe more of an aesthetic perspective or approach. But growing up, it's like, I just went to the dentist and really think about what oral health really meant, because I always have good teeth. We knew enough, if you roll back the clock, we knew enough. Like, Florida, it was one of the great public health breakthroughs because the decay rates went down 65% back in the day. And today it's different because Florida is in so many different products. So that whole conundrum of fluoride and water, you can argue it a couple of different ways. But basically, at the right dosage, it's very, very important for decay prevention and making teeth very hard. But the truth of the matter is that dentistry and medicine knew a certain amount 40 years ago. When we go back to 1950, it took about 40, 50 years to double the medical knowledge. In 2027, it's going to take about 72 days to double the medical knowledge. So think about that and think about all of the new biotechnology and quantum computer and AI and what it's impacting in health care. And now, we're going to talk about the new biotechnology Now it's coming into dentistry also. And so dentistry is a whole different game now because of CAT scans and all these new technology and everything's digital. Our testing of salivary diagnostics, you know, we get these reports back in about 10 days. I'm working with a group in the United States that we're doing what's called DMI. It's one of our pillars of smilehouse, dental medical integration. We'll be able to take a little fingerprint. And in a little fingerprint of blood, find out all these biomarkers in three different machines that's going to allow us to do a baseline lipid test, HDL, LDLs, inflammatory markers, C-reactive protein for cardiovascular possibilities. And so you'll go to the dental office because people go to the dentist more than their doctors. And we can take that data with a patient platform and give it to their doctors. And as long as there's a little bit of dental insurance for people who have dental insurance, but get that data and get it to their doctors to be able to be preventable. So now there's a tie-in together. And there's going to be an integration. I would say over the next 10 years, and we're looking to kind of lead that charge and show this is how you can do it in a viable business model. I love that. And, you know, it's really exciting to be at the forefront of this as well because we need that integration of the data. Like we need our primary care physicians to have access to that and our dentists and, you know, even like more functional medical practitioners as well to take that integrative approach. It's so interesting because I really, I've been lucky to have good teeth, I think. And I've never really had cavities, maybe one or two, whatever. I tried it. Yeah. You're a fluoride, baby. You know. Meaning that I have. Because what happens with fluoride, whether it's in the water or it's in the fluoride treatments when you went to the dentist or it's in your toothpaste, the truth of the matter is that gets incorporated into the enamel. It's called a fluorapatite molecule. And it becomes like super resistant to decay. You also probably had parents that, you know, you weren't going to sleep with gummy bears. No, no. You know, all that sweet stuff. And if you look at the arch form, how wide and beautiful your smile is your tongue can actually lives in a three-bedroom or, you know, kind of a penthouse apart. And we love that. And what happens is your tongue can move forward. That means your airway is open. That means you get into deep regenerative sleep. So if you wear an orro ring and you look at your. I don't know, but I should. If they're amazing. That or a whoop or a your apple watch, but you've got to see, where's my REM sleep? Where's my deep sleep? You have at least 12, 13, 14% of deep sleep because that's where you regenerate the body and you fight the oxidative stresses and environmental toxins, all the things that cause problems as we get older. So if you don't get into deeper generative sleep, now you are developing hypertension in all of these kind of diseases. Unfortunately, if you have a small arch form, in other words, you develop with small arch forms where you didn't have power to the expansion or, you know, there was an interceptive orthodontics, you are more prone to these problems as you get older. But we didn't know that for years. Now we know it. And now our knowledge is just growing, you know, so much, so much is happening if we think about it day to day. Amazing. Yeah. When you think about some of like those basic fundamental practices that anyone can do to strengthen their own oral health routine, what are those principles? What does it come down to? Yeah. It's a lot of floss more. So I guess I can do a better job of that. There's options to flossing. It's the mechanical removal of plaque. You wake up in the morning and put your tongue on your teeth and it's like that sticky. It's this polysaccharide that's in our saliva. Saliva is very interesting. It's a pH balancer. It keeps our mouths from demineralizing the teeth and a low pH where the low pH, in other words acidic, it's where the bad bugs live. So that's why we pH test every patient. It's very important that you have this saliva, right? People who don't have saliva get into all kinds of problems. So as a young person or a healthy person, you have this great saliva. And in it, that's where the different bacteria, you know, the 8 billion guys, they kind of get in the sticky substance they get on your teeth. You got to remove it. How do we remove it? Today, we got electric brushes that sell for 30, 40 bucks, fantastic. Do all the work. Well, I have one of your electric toothbrushes and the water floss or no. Oh, God, I'm so happy. Yeah. I'm ducked out. So you do an electric brush. The water flosser gets between. And the regimen, and we call out, we have a whole oral health regimen and we'll have it as part of the podcast. We'll send it to anybody who wants to have it. We put together all the order of events and the tools to have a really healthy mouth. That it'll take you about three, four minutes in the morning, three, four minutes at night. Electric brush, water flosser, floss. We have this immunity rinse that raises the pH and oxygenates. How is it? What you spray? I have that. It's fantastic. It's a great breath, freshener. And of course, a tongue scraper. And if you do these steps and you do them in a very good sequence, it can even be a little bit out of sequence. But if you pay attention, you say, this is a priority. Because this is now just avoiding having my teeth drilled, which would be pretty good motivation on its own. But this is how I'm healthy. It's like, why do we do yoga? Why do we go on a bike? Why do we go for swim or what? Why do we do that? We do it because of the way it makes us feel. We feel good. We get in door-fin-high. We do it. We do the right thing. We look better because now we're in shape. And so that all plays into. Now we have a healthy smile. Our gums are in inflamed. It's a positive rapport spiral of those practices. And it layers on each other. And you want to get it this habit really early. It's like anything else. You want to watch a nutrition. You want to get really early. So people unfortunately wait for the '60s and all of a sudden they've been obese for decades. Yes, you can reverse it. But a lot of damage has been done. And yes, you can get healthier. But why not stop as early as possible? So a young person like you, having a podcast like this that raises awareness, is phenomenal because people will be inspired. I see a lot of young people. They don't go to the doctor. And they don't go to a PCP. And they actually might go to a dentist more than the PCP, right? I think there's fear because we feel like when we go to the doctor, there's something wrong with us. Exactly. But no. No. No. You've got to learn where you're at. And so many young people have some very strange things going on. Cullen cancer is on the rise. Oral cancer, the morbidity rate hasn't changed in 50 years. And so there's a lot of the systemic and flamm diseases that are going up and people have to know about it because you have to change behavior. Exactly. And that's the hardest thing is to change your behavior. How do you do that? Well, you get motivated when you find out you've got something that you really have to pay attention to. So if you have an attitude like I don't want to know, that's not the attitude because if you stay in up late, you drink a lot of alcohol, sugars the animal between sugar and alcohol, you'll have a blood glucose level that's going up. By the time you get into a couple of decades later, you are the prediabetic or diabetic. 70% of this country has an obesity problem. It's pretty crazy. And you got in the close to that number, you're the prediabetic or diabetic. So we're not doing something right. And we got to sick this model that spends a billion dollars a day on cardiovascular disease. We have a sick this model that spends 20% of our GDP of this country, of what we output, close to 18 to 19 trillion dollars, 20% has spent on healthcare. And we're like the sickest. Well, and it's like, are you kidding me? We have unbelievable resources, unbelievable universities at knowledge. And so, yeah, you got to shake the tree, you got to rattle people and say, come on here, we can do better. Well, tell us a little bit about the technology that can help turn the data that we're getting into better insights and actually get patients to get excited about taking care of their health. And then, in the small house, there's a bunch of cool, different technology that I got exposed to and all these different X-rays. And it was a fun experience. That's it. That was the idea that we had. And I think medicine is doing this also. You go to these functional medicine places. You go to a place like Extension Health, Jonathan Quo, Atria Health. They've built these kind of places, solace. And they're amazing because they're raising the bar. You know what Mark Heimonds group did with function medicine and that ability to understand things. And as that's getting out there and the people like you men and people getting those, that podcast information out to people and making it accessible, people are starting to wake up and to listen because they understand what kind of behavior drives the health. We know so much more about longevity. So we call small house the Center for dental longevity because we believe that oral health really leads to overall health. And what we've done is we've done it based on three pillars of our strategies, which is to have unreasonable hospitality, right, to quote Wilgodara from 11 Madison. He wrote this amazing book. But it's to have this incredible hospitality approach to look, to feel, to smell, to touch of walking into a healthcare facility. I call it the rule of opposites. I told my team, we are doing everything in the profession. We're doing the opposite. You walk into a healthcare facility. You have fluorescent light. You don't want to be there. I'm like, it's so funny because my dad hates going to the dentist. He's like, "Still, I don't want to go." Oh, I'm bringing him in. Let's get him in. Exactly. We'll change his perspective. Exactly. But in the industry, it's not a welcoming environment. No. No, people hate it. The medicine dentistry normally, unless you're like a special place, people behind the desk, their heads are down. They're belly-saying, "Holo, you're waiting 45-50 minutes. They don't think your time is worth anything." You walk into this place. [BLANK_AUDIO] like you're in a members club. We want it. It's amber, it's warm, and the whole idea is we're gonna illuminate you, illuminate your thinking about the health. And for me, it's very personal, because I have a whole family involved. My two sons, my wife, you know, and they got the doc that, you know, helps drive the clinical side. But you walk in, we have this amazing person who's an expert at jaw release and relaxing the jaws. We hold so much tension into our jaws, and the muscles get tight, and everybody's walking around in New York City with, you know, master of tightness and TMJ or MTPD. And so we have that as part of the patient experience. Everybody experiences a few minutes of it, can make an appointment, and it looks like, you know, it looks like the mirrors of the hair salon with a great chair and great art. And, you know, we just created a very warm environment. So you actually could look forward to going to the dentist. If you looked at the reviews that we got in the six weeks, we have almost a hundred reviews. So I've never been to a place like this. And I really wanted that, because I want that now the young professional to say, me too. I want the doctors to apply to the surgery, the PCPs, the place to say, let's make it inviting. And you really have the integrated functional medicine people right there. They get it. They got it, you know, before us in dentistry. But I've always felt that you had a break the rules since I've been at this profession for three and a half decades. And so that's what we're married to. We take an unreasonable hospitality approach. All of the specialists of dentistry, from pediatric dentistry to prosthodontics, I'm a prosthodontist, which means kind of the band leader for treatment planning and restorative and aesthetic dentistry. And I was known initially for aesthetic dentistry, because I'm one of the first guys in the country in the early '80s to do porcelain venerals. And so I've always taught a lecture about it and then evolved into these other specialties. But I have three prosadons like myself, two parodontists, two orthodontists, three ceramists. So with building these beautiful little sculptures, they look just like natural tea. You know, and it's always for me just building a great team. And what I've learned from building companies is it's really comes down to the people and the culture that comes from the leadership that realizes how important it is to take care of your people. Because if you take care of your people, they're going to take care of it. They're going to serve. They're going to serve at the highest level. And so it's all the specialists under one roof. As the second pillar and the third pillar is this DMI, dental medical integration. And using this new technology that ladders up this aesthetic structure function of biology, which is our mouth mapping, which is what I described with all these new technologies, to really make it efficient. So in an hour and a half, you could have a great kind of this cleaning using all this new cool technology. But also all the diagnostics that we take a deep dive we can unpack all of this for people so that we can get to any problems in the mouth, which will then we solve. And then we help people think about that whole wellness approach. I have a breath work. What am I, Genesis, is into all that whole breath work. And all of that breathing, because we know it. We know it from meditation and breath work. When you have a long exhalation, you get into that parasympathetic mode, right? We calm down. It's that stress management. And we see it in the jaw. We see it in the muscles. We see it in the neck. We see it in the wear on the teeth. We have the intral scan that we take the images. We overlay over six months. We can see if you're wearing down your teeth, you're grinding your front teeth. So there are ways to really protect. So we're right there with our healthcare professionals. The only problem is we don't communicate enough. And that's what we're really pushing is to integrate it together. Absolutely. I think from the patient side, the most exciting thing is getting to really be in that experience, because it is really inviting and welcoming. And I felt like I was like luxuriating, but I was going to take care of my teeth. And then I started to think more like actually how integral, feeling, making sure that my mouth is healthy, how that plays a huge role in just the rest of my health and wellbeing. And from maybe a more optic perspective, wanting to have a beautiful smile and really invest in that. And I think if we can get people to be more excited around feeling empowered with their health data, they will probably feel more likely and more motivated to do the practices that keep them healthy and to get excited by carving out the extra five minutes in the morning to do the five-step routine. Instead of just mindlessly doing these activities, you can be mindful about it. And it's educating and it's access to care. Let's flip the coin on that one. We have a foundation. We have the Glow Good Foundation. And we go where people, we call it the "Dedal Desert" so they have no access to care. So we started this foundation when I started Glow Science, I started the Glow Good Foundation by wife and I. And we went to East Africa and to Kagali with the Starbucks team and we were helping people over there. And we came back, a person was getting a cleaning who you might know, this singer named Lenny Kravitz, and he corners me and he says, "Johnny, "you gotta come help my people." They go, "Lenny, you're half Jewish and you're half Bahamian. "Where do you want me to go?" He says, "The Bahamas, it alludes to where I live. "People walk around in pain. "They think it's normal. "They can die from a beasting. "They have no access to any medical clinic. "Dennel, there's nothing. "I want you to come down and you want you to see it. "I want you to help these people." And that was 10 years ago. Well, I'm gonna fast forward 10 years. We have a 14-chair freestanding clinic, free for the people. Henry Shine cares, Henry Shine gave us all of this equipment. We built this great facility. And we go down there, I go down normally with about 100 people. We also have some doctors from Bahamas who keep it going between our visits. And you see what happens when you don't have access to care with a modern diet of sugary drinks and ultra-process foods and no knowledge and nobody goes into the schools. We have Harvard, BU, NYU, and NOVA with their public health teams going into the schools. We've now gone into all the schools multiple times and you see the young generation and never gonna act like they're parents. So it's this unbelievable little microcosm of what happens when you don't have access to care and education and what happens when you do. And it's such a difference. And what's interesting is when you come down with the doctors and the nurse practitioners, they all got hypertension, they all got diabetes and they all got cardiovascular disease and they got all the inflammation in the mouth. So you see all of these inflammatory diseases overriding their immune response system 'cause there's so much inflammation in their body. One thing leads to another. So it's really very telling for us in the United States because here we are sitting with a sickness model that it's so preventable and we have better access to care and where we don't have access to care in this country, we gotta do something about it. - Right, yeah, I'm so happy that you bring this up 'cause it's so easy to forget that. It's like to take the things that we do have for granted and when you put it in that perspective, it's even more important. Like if you have the resources and the access to actually take advantage of that and to invest in your healthcare and to keep yourself healthy because it's not just good for you, but it's also pro-social. Like if you're keeping yourself healthy, it's gonna help the rest of society in multiple ways. And I think that's fantastic that you launched that initiative to give back because doing this kind of work and to be at kind of the cutting edge of this research and to be an evangelist of this concept of really what it means to have an investment in your oral wellbeing. It's so important to be able to make it inclusive to other people as well and to give back in that way. So I love that you launched that initiative. - We love it. You know what's really interesting is that to a person 'cause Henry Schaun came and they videotaped and it debuted a lot of the doctors and to a person they all said very similar things which is we get more out of it than the people we serve. It's very interesting because like Simon Sinek would say, right, I find my why. Why we do what we do. So here you are doing something helping people but at the same time you're really helping yourself. It's so powerful because you know, my practice has always been very internationals because I'd lectured a lot outside the country. I would have people come visit and then end up staying for a couple of years. And so I got like a big alumni group whether they're from Chile or Ecuador or Madrid or London. And we all bring them back at least once during the year and we all get back together. And it's just so wonderful personally for all the things I do. Nothing brings the joy like that. 'Cause I see how happy it makes the professionals who are putting in those 13 outward days and then going back to their practices, back to their homes and really feeling inspired. I said, where are we going back? It's like, we want to help these people. You know, it's pretty spectacular because everybody wins. Exactly. And this is a great segue into kind of where I want to land with the interview, which is focused on happiness and cultivating joy. And so, yes, research does show that helping other people is a very great strategy to actually boost your own wellbeing because when you give back, you're actually giving to yourself in a way to the point that you just described. But I would love to hear from you about your own perspective on happiness and what that looks like now has that shifted over your life. How do you define happiness and what it means to be happy? You know, I think that we look, we evolve from a certain starting point we think about, you know, back to the dinner table conversation and growing up, for me personally, athletics was a very big deal for me and my coaches and my teammates was a very big deal too. helped me set the stage of kind of this collaborative approach to life. You know, we're social beings. There's so many studies that show as people get older and it's loneliness sets in, and mental illness sets in, you know, it's so negative to our complete health and our future and longevity. And flip that conversation and having a social network. You know, I was just in the fortune to be in Sardinia. It's one of the blue zones. And you got to centenarians. And when butiner did the blue zone book and when he did the studies, when Dan did that, what he found was the social connection was one of the number one thing of the connecting dots of these five blue zones was one of the great things. And for me, I've always been such a social animal about that because from the teammates to our friends. And I have, you know, these wonderful, very blessed, these social networks for me. And, you know, I'm married right now, 43 years. I have this amazing wife. And the biggest decision we do make is the person we marry. What's the secret of that? Well, I have, I mean, I have some theories on this because, you know, my wife Stacy has put up with me. But the truth of the matter is, you know, like any relationship, you put your time in and it's you put the effort in. And you don't get sidetracked. And even though when you do get sidetracked, you get back on track, you know, the luck and the fortunate and the leap of faith of finding a mate with your value system aligns. And I've always, I told my sons, my oldest son just got married to this wonderful Christina Velcova who you might know. I heard. And my son Cody now has a fabulous girlfriend, Abby. And, you know, they know that my rule is that the person you're going to marry, you're really a settle in that alignment has to be there. And, you know, you really want something, but I say it funny. I say make sure whoever you marry has it together, much more than you do, you know, I don't want to get into what I think about relationship advice. Part two, part two, part two, part two, part two. But for me, you know, the happiness comes, I think, from challenging myself. Everybody knows me. I'm very kind of high energy, optimistic. And I get, I'm always learning. I always want to learn. I always, I've always kept the mind open. And I think I also get that from athletics because you know that, you know, you put that effort in and you get to a level and then you get to that next level. And it's, you know, it's that journey and it's not linear. Everything is Zagin, Zagin, Zagin, Zagin, Zagin, the people that we surround ourselves with. We, of a friend who used to sail the time. We are the company we keep, right? And how we're inspired and impacted by the people we meet. And then we, we befriend. It's just the truth. You think about the people that impact us. So the social network, the optimistic mindset, you know, we have a choice. You know, you wake up in the morning and you could feel miserable. And if you don't get yourself out of that miserable feeling because you'd be the Adalousie United Sleep, were you worried about something? You got to do these high performance habits. Boot shots got that together. So to Charmer, you like set yourself. And if you don't get a sweat or you don't go for a walk or a run or a swim or a ride, your energy is not going to be able to handle especially in a crazy place like New York. What's coming at you? So what brings the joy for me where I've evolved to is, is to be a little bit of that servant leader where I can impact and serve both with my family, my friends, my profession. I feel very strong about this special country. God bless America that we live in that we should never take it for granted. And especially today, there's so much going on with negativity around us. And you know, what's happening where the leadership is a little flipped. So, you know, even the young people, you know, to get active, but to keep a positive optimistic mindset that everything is possible. You just have to work together, get a listen to each other. And my biggest joy is my, is really truly my family, you know, and we have a very close family. So to have a project that we all work together, I feel very blessed. Oh, it's beautiful. I love kind of all the different angles that you've just taken and thinking about happiness and how community is so centric to that, but also, you know, the idea about giving back and keeping that optimistic and positive mindset, which to not be confused with toxic positivity, which is a whole separate thing, it is very important to be optimistic in life because like we talked about earlier, our thoughts do create our reality. But to the blue zone comment, I ask every guest what brings you in doorfins and you've kind of peppered in your answer throughout this interview, but we will land on that question. So think of something maybe different from what you've shared already. The common denominator of what I hear is something related to the relationships that these people have in their lives. And it supports the research and the science. The strength of our interpersonal relationships is one of the strongest predictors to our well-being. And so that's why community is so important. And that's really why, you know, I'm doing this. It's a pleasure and a blessing and a privilege to sit here in front of microphones and have an hour of your time. The cherry on top is to share it and anyone else can can tune in and listen. And that's where the satisfaction comes in. For me, it's hosting the live podcast events where I get to see in real time that feedback and the direct impact that a conversation or is making on someone's day, their life, whatever it is. So for me, I also do feel that like immense joy and gratification from being in community with people. Yeah, how good that makes you feel. And in this type of platform of podcasts, so many of us, we take that time and it's we could be multitasking, you know, you're going out for a walk with me while we're listening to a podcast. You know, when I ride, if I ride by myself, it's ambience. So I can hear cars. I'm not, I don't want to get killed, but I can listen also to a podcast. And we can learn so much. So it's right. It's a bit of having that curious mind, but always, you know, oh, you're in your 60s. Oh, you're in your 70s. Yeah, I'm just starting, you know, that mindset. Let's go, you know, because, and it's not to be a polyanna, you know, it's just that negativity. And, you know, Tony Robbins got it right 35 plus years ago. It's all about, you know, our mind of how we feed our mind. If you're going to feed it with negative thoughts, if you're going to feed it with what's wrong, if you're going to feed it with a failure, you're in negative land. You're I call it sliding sideways, right? And it's going to persist. You're going to play into it. And it reinforces. And it's, and it's completely neurobiological. I am also, I'm enamored by neuro. It's just so fascinating to understand how the brain works. But think of it. It's a neural network. It's just, it's going to run that song's going to keep playing of negativity in your mind. No, get rid of it. Your focus is on positive stuff, the great things you live. Why do gratitude journals work? They work because they focus you on what we need to be. Think about it. We have access to everything. We just have to apply ourselves. You can't figure it say, oh, it's going to come to me. No, go after and get it. And you choose happiness, which is something you mentioned earlier. I completely agree with that. And it comes down to the intentionality in the choices that you make and to choose to surround yourself in the environments with the people, the things, the experiences that bring you joy, that bring you the endorphins. And so I think this is a great segue into my final question for you, Dr. Jonathan. What is something besides cycling that brings you endorphins in life? I mean, my easy one is whenever I could be out to dinner, I could be hanging out wherever at the house. When I got the whole family together and my sons and their girlfriends and we're all together whether it's around a dinner table, nothing makes me happy. Nothing makes me happy. Family is for me the best. And you're all in business together. And to that point, where can my listeners come visit Smilehouse, connect with you, stay up to date with all the really incredible work that you're doing in this space? How can people follow along? So Smilehouse.co is our website with newsletters. You can book appointments online. My Instagram is @Dr.Jao in Levine, @Dr.John Levine. But Smilehouse, and we have two practices. We have JBL New York City Uptown, which has been around for 35 years on Fifth Avenue. And this is on 55 Warwick Street and Tribeca, where it's this kind of newly reinvented blank canvas. Everything we learned uptown and through my career. And this is what we're throwing at this thing in Smilehouse. And I do have a book coming out in September as our third book and it's all about the connection of the mouth and the body. It's called Oral with an exclamation point. And excited about it because we talk a lot about these things that we're talking about, the connection of the mouth and the body and these inflammatory diseases and growth and development for the young people of what's important and what moms need to know. So excited about that. So you know, stay tuned on that. But this was great. I love talking to you about all these different aspects of life. This has been fun. We'll have early congratulations on the book and very excited for you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me.