The Empowerment Couple
Ready to supercharge your life with a symphony of laughter, wisdom, and transformative insights? Welcome to The Empowerment Couple Podcast, where entertainment meets empowerment, and education expands your world! Join Zuri and Mikey Star, your empowerment and expansion coaches, on a power-packed journey each week. Laughter and wisdom collide in a perfect blend, creating a space for the empowered posse to play. Dive deep into personal development, relationships, spirituality, career strategies, and other crucial topics that will inform and allow you to co-create your most beautiful life. Featuring top guest experts, every episode is crafted with your empowerment in mind. Subscribe now and let The Empowerment Couple Podcast be your soundtrack to happiness, transmuting your worries and filling you with an abundance mindset.
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The Empowerment Couple
Mouth Matters and Tooth Truths: The Oral Health Secrets No One Told You About With Dr. Staci Whitman
Looking in your mouth reveals more than just your smile—it's a window into your overall health that most of us have been taught to view all wrong. In this eye-opening conversation with functional dentistry pioneer Dr. Staci Whitman, we journey beyond the standard "brush, fluoride, avoid candy" advice that's failing millions worldwide.
Dr. Staci Whitman, a leading authority in functional dentistry, is on a mission to revolutionize oral healthcare.
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Well, today we are going to be talking about some mouth matters and tooth truths.
Speaker 2:Tooth truths.
Speaker 1:Say that five times fast. Tooth truths, nope, tooth truths. I'm already done. The oral health secrets no one told you. With Dr Stacey Whitman, are you ready for some tooth truths, tooth truths.
Speaker 3:Tooth truths, tooth truths, tooth truths, tooth truths, tooth truths, tooth truths.
Speaker 1:See that Are we ready for tooth truths. Tooth truths. Tooth truths and a lie.
Speaker 2:Tooth truths and a lie.
Speaker 1:That's pretty good, but your mouth matters Sometimes you say really cute jokes.
Speaker 2:I know that one was good, yes.
Speaker 1:I would say many times, not some Like what is this? Some bullshit.
Speaker 2:Again, we're speaking tooth truths here.
Speaker 1:Tune in now. Yes, tune in. Okay, tune in as.
Speaker 2:Dr Stacey shares her knowledge and insights on creating happy teeth and healthy lives.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Empowerment Couple Podcast, where your path to self-mastery expands.
Speaker 2:Empowerment Couple podcast where your path to self-mastery expands.
Speaker 1:My co-host is empowerment coach Zuri Starr and he's expansion coach, Mikey Starr. Together we are the Empowerment Couple. Our mission is simple to serve you love, so you can make informed decisions to regain and maintain your personal power.
Speaker 2:We'll take you on a journey to a life filled with purpose, passion and limitless possibilities, while sharing stories of transformation, wellness hacks and healthy habits backed by science and ancient wisdom.
Speaker 1:Plus, we'll keep you entertained with engaging games, banter and funny innuendos along the way. Each episode is an exciting blend of education, entertainment and empowerment designed to help you create a mindset to be a magnet for more love, happiness and abundance.
Speaker 2:Together with our special guests. We are dedicated to sharing information that empowers you to create your most beautiful life A one Z, a two Z, a three Z your most beautiful life. I got nothing. I got nothing. You're supposed to say something I forgot.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the show. We have Dr Stacey Whitman, a leading authority in functional dentistry. She's on a mission to revolutionize oral health care. With a unique blend of scientific expertise and compassionate care, she's dedicated to creating a cavity-free world. Dr Stacey is a board certified in pediatrics, integrative dentistry and naturopathic dentistry and is one of the only dentists in the world to have her functional medicine certification from the Institute of Functional Medicine. She founded one of the leading functional pediatric dentist office in the country, where she takes a whole body and holistic approach to her care. She's the co-founder of the Institute for Functional Dentistry, launching in 2025, and lectures globally on functional dentistry and the oral systemic connection. Okay, well, welcome to the Empowerment Couple podcast. We have Dr Stacey Whitman here with us today and we are so excited to have you here with us, and I met Stacey in September in all places Battle Creek, michigan.
Speaker 2:Answering the call.
Speaker 1:Creek, michigan, answering the call. Answering the call to stand with people who were fighting against Kellogg's using artificial dyes and also BHT. We delivered over 400,000 signatures and Stacey was one of the speakers that I was lucky to introduce that day as the emcee and I didn't know anything about Stacey Pryor, but then I introduced her and I was like, oh, that was like one of the best speeches of the day and I was like I have to get her on the show. And the other backstory is that Vani had text me right after the Senate hearing leading up to announcing the Kellogg's March. And she says, hey, can you come to Michigan? And at the time I was in Spain and I was in Spain with my daughter just my daughter and I to get dental work.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because it is so expensive to get dental work done here, even if you have dental insurance. And so I was like, oh, this is, like you know, a line that I'm meeting stacy at this event and she's speaking truth to all of the things, um, that I, you know, have studied about, about oral health. And I told mike I'm like we have to have her on the podcast.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, most certainly. I mean we've covered. We've covered all kinds of different ways of healing the body and we have not yet talked about the entrance into the whole body.
Speaker 3:Gateway. It's the gateway.
Speaker 2:Right Gateway into the gut gateway, into the bloodstream gateway, into everything. So, yeah, I mean, you live and you breathe and you eat out of that orifice. So it has to be, it has to be spick and span right.
Speaker 3:Indeed, you can tell a lot about a person's health by looking in their mouth, and I would argue the mouth is the start of the gut. I want people to start thinking of it that way because I think people will start taking it more seriously. I want people to start thinking of it that way because I think people will start taking it more seriously. So, yeah, it's really important.
Speaker 1:It's really important. And how did you get so passionate about it? Because obviously you're super passionate about this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, ooh, this is a long story I'll consolidate, though. I mean I didn't. I wasn't raised by medical doctors or dentists. This was a total rogue move. I was an artist and a theater kid and a dancer and on, and that's what I was studying in college and English. I didn't know what I was going to do and I was just worried about my future and supporting myself. So I did a 180. And I went into pre med and then I ended up in dental because I had a very severe bicycle accident when I was 10.
Speaker 3:And I really I broke my jaw and I knocked teeth out and I was in and out of dental offices and so that always piqued my interest. But then I would be working with my hands, kind of like with my art and my sculpture. So it was really piecemeal. But I remember on day one sitting in my first dental class and like looking left, looking right and just saying where am I? What is happening? And from the very beginning I just didn't have a great feeling about how we were approaching dental health. It was all being approached from a surgical standpoint, from end stage disease, putting out fires, and it never made sense to me.
Speaker 3:I was raised a little more holistically. I was raised in rural Maine. We had a garden. My mom cooked all the meals we canned. She wanted us outside getting dirty, like that whole thing, and to not talk about prevention and how the dots are connected between the mouth and the body. It just never resonated with me. But of course I just blinders up, head down, went through dental school, got out, practiced as a general dentist so I've seen adults and then the amount of disease that is out there. I really don't think people understand how rampant decay and gum disease and periodontal diseases I mean these are the top chronic diseases. Globally, 80% of people have gum disease and 50% have periodontal disease and we know periodontal pathogens. That's when you have chronic bone loss. Periodontal pathogens are the ones that are causing issues in the brain like Alzheimer's and dementia, in the heart, like cardiovascular issues, fertility issues, autoimmune issues, cancers, et cetera. Okay, so it's a big deal so, but I got out and I practiced as a general dentist and it was just turn and burn.
Speaker 3:Now I had no time to speak to my patients and I was miserable. I was truly miserable. I was so depressed. I was like this is why dentists are so depressed and I almost moved to New Zealand. I was going to abandon my profession. I wanted to just go surf and snowboard and bartend. I was like, well, you have all the student debt. That is not smart. How do I salvage this? And I thought, well, what's the most upstream that I can get so that I can educate and course correct and help things when they're smoldering and not full blown emergency fires? I wanted to practice more. I wanted to be more like a dental physician. I wanted to think about how the pieces all fit together to really help my patients. And so that was pediatrics I wanted. I had to get to the kids and the parents and, like, course correct all the mistakes we've made with some of the education and how we're approaching dental health. And so that's what I did Back to school, became board certified and went out as an associate and, lo and behold, the same thing happened.
Speaker 3:I was still miserable because now I was seeing kids in a traditional model. But pediatrics is even faster. You have even less time with the child. So now, instead of 30 patients a day, I was seeing 70 patients a day and it was just awful. So I just was at a loss and I started reading.
Speaker 3:You know, I was exposed to Weston Price's work nutrition and physical degeneration and then Dr Stephen Lynn out of Australia, a functional dentist, kind of modernized that and his book really changed my life because he spoke about how he almost left dentistry too and I just kept meeting people in the biological dental world, the holistic world. I went to conferences, then I started additional trainings and I now have my own practice where I've taken all of that education from the past 12 years, put it together and I created a functional pediatric dental practice which is, from what I'm told, one of the only ones in the country and I now love my job ones in the country and I now love my job and it's wonderful because I'm really helped. I see the change in these kids and in these families and it's in, in, it spreads. That's the cool part and there really is an awakening. People want answers and they want. Everyone wants to be healthy. They just want tools.
Speaker 1:And also I think they're confused, right? So that's the thing that is so prevalent with all things health is that you are told so many different things. It's confusing and like one person will say, you know, do this, and another person will say, do this, and then you know, all of a sudden you're controversial and it just it. It's hard to know unless you have somebody that you, you know, trust and you know you, you somebody that you trust and you have a good experience. It's really hard to find support.
Speaker 2:Indeed, it's hard. You have the game that you have going on. Huh yeah, so I have this game.
Speaker 1:We always play a game on our show because we've found that you know people learn best when they are having fun or when they, you know, you add a little competition factor and also we just try to entertain with as much education as possible. Um, it's also something that you can listen to with people, and we find that on social media, people usually resonate more with just the game than listening to people chat back and forth.
Speaker 3:This is like with kids gamify it If you want to get energy done in life. Make a game success. So I love this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a bunch of science behind it, and I was like Mike, we're doing a game, and also like, if we're going to show up, I want it to be fun. I want my life to be enjoyed. So we are always trying to have a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:How can we, how can we talk about, uh, oral health without smiling right you're gonna have to smile, right, yeah, yeah, smile.
Speaker 3:You know, when you see them and smile, there's a cascade of responses in your body, you know, like parasympathetic and calming, and it's really, you know, I wish more of us did that yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:Um, okay, so this is just a rapid fire game. I have 30 topics that are kind of controversial and okay, so well, so it you know, like this sets you apart from, maybe, like somebody who believes in it's okay to have artificial dyes in your toothpaste, for example. Okay, so, okay. So I'm going to say the thing and then, and Mike's going to listen and like, take note, because he's going to, he's going to flag which one that he's most surprised by, because I do think you're probably going to surprise us with something, one of your thoughts on something that people think is good and actually it's not good. So you're the expert.
Speaker 3:Amazing, I think this is the best thing that's ever happened to me right now. Okay, well, you can use this all you?
Speaker 1:want, and, and what I want you to do is just yes or no. We're going to try to go quickly, because I would like you to be able to use it however you would like for educational purposes, and then you can dive into each one if you want.
Speaker 3:And yeah, I think like this is how we learn, so yeah, or we can dive into ones that maybe were surprising or need more.
Speaker 2:Exactly Got it.
Speaker 1:Time to answer afterwards.
Speaker 3:The goal is yes, no, and you can also use maybe, if you're like, thank goodness, because there might be might be okay, because there might be a maybe, and human health isn't black and white, right so, and it's like you don't want to give the advice.
Speaker 1:As you know, I would imagine if I were a dentist, I wouldn't want a blanket statement you know a serious thing, you know, and like, because we're all so different, um okay let's get into it ready, ready, I'm so ready, okay.
Speaker 1:So let's just do a practice so that you know I'm gonna say, and like, because we're all so different, okay, let's get into it, ready, ready, I'm so ready, okay. So let's just do a practice so that you know I'm going to say artificial colors, no, okay. So it's going to go like that, but I'm going to go fast, cool, all right.
Speaker 1:Here we go Play along with us at home. Mark down anything that you think is kind of funny or that you're like what? Okay, ready Remineralizing gum, maybe Tongue scraping yes. Pulling wisdom teeth, maybe Mouth tape Love it. Sleep study. Sleep study, maybe. Biocompatibility testing yes. Water pick yes. Carrageenan no Mouthwash, no Amalgam, no Oral microbiome Love Hydroxyapatite.
Speaker 3:Love. Well, depends on this type and source. We'll get into that. Braces Maybe, but hopefully not Oral probiotics.
Speaker 1:Yes, usually. Baking soda yes. Sodium lauryl sulfate no. Oil pulling yes. Fluoride no. Breastfeeding yes. Gut health Love Xylitol yes. Electric toothbrushes, maybe Flossing yes. Veneers, no.
Speaker 3:X-rays when necessary yes. Mouth guards yes.
Speaker 1:Hormonal health yes.
Speaker 3:Root canals Maybe to no Artificial flavors?
Speaker 2:No, Woo, you got through it right. All right, the only you had to resist.
Speaker 3:There I noticed you were like, oh well, it's so hard because it's so nuanced, and this is what I'm just going to add before we get into it. This is what I don't like about social media is that I'm going to just open up here it. It seems like, especially all of a sudden, everyone's chasing the algorithm and we're all struggling to grow our platforms and be seen and get our content out there. So what does it fear? Sensationalism, and I just see so much black and white and it's just not. Everything can be so nuanced, which is why I said a maybe. Yeah, it requires conversations, and so I encourage everyone listening to try to be someone who doesn't look at life black and white Like this is good all the time. This is bad all the time. I mean, there are some things food dyes, for example, bht, for example, but you know. But we'll dig into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. Well, which one was most surprising to you?
Speaker 2:Actually there's two of them. Zuri did this thing on me and and I got all of them right, except all of them the same as you, except for amalgam. For some reason I messed up on amalgam.
Speaker 1:Because that was like mercury yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:I was like wait a minute.
Speaker 3:I said no, didn't I yeah you did, you did. You did.
Speaker 2:Okay, I said yes, and then, and then, and then she's like no, that's, that's mercury. Oh, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Well, that doesn't count you, it was a word. Yeah, yeah, exactly, and, and I messed up on fluoride.
Speaker 3:I know fluoride is bad, however how bad is it? Fluoride is nuanced. Sorry to interrupt. Yes, nuanced, sorry to interrupt. Yes, how bad is it? So the reason that question's nuanced is I would answer it a little bit differently if you said systemic fluoride, water fluoridation and supplementation versus topical fluoride toothpaste rinses, okay, okay, let's dive into that.
Speaker 3:I have opinions of both, one is a hard no. Water fluoridation supplementation to me is a hard no, and this is in the news a lot lately, but I've been speaking out about this for 12 years. I want everyone to know. I was trained as a traditional dentist and I used to promote water fluoridation. In fact, in Portland, oregon, where I am, we don't have fluoride in our water and it was a ballot measure in 2012.
Speaker 3:And I was on the pro fluoride team volunteering, picketing with my pin, handing out flyers like we need a fluoride, you need it, you need it, you need it. I was hell bent on it, but at that point, I'll be honest, I had not done my due diligence. I went to school and was told by higher up elders that this is what we do and fluoride is what everyone needs and that's what dentists do and that's it and you don't question it. I had never heard ever that there were concerns with fluoride. Until that campaign, I sat with the pro fluoride side to listen to a debate and I was fuming and I was like these tin hat brigade woo, woo, caucus, blah, blah. You know I was that and I listened and I was the first time. I was like whoa thyroid endocrine disruption, neurotoxicity, bone cancer.
Speaker 3:I had never heard of it, absolutely. And so then I went and started like PubMed, pubmed, nih, and it doesn't take long for you to raise an eyebrow and say, oh my gosh, where's the safety data? There's no long-term safety study, et cetera, et cetera. This got grandfathered in from an observational experiment, essentially, and so now pops in the TASCA trial. So the TASCA trial is basically the trial that just concluded, and it was over the past seven years, the people versus the EPA, where the people said, hey, epa, where's your safety data on water fluoride agent? And the EPA kept delaying and delaying and appealing and never answering the question. And so there was a trial and everyone can go onto the Fluoride Action Network. They have it beautifully outlined, you can see all the testimonies of the experts, and what was interesting about this trial is the judge, for the one of the first time, said hey, dental community, american Dental Association, I know you guys like fluoride. I don't really want to hear from you. I want to hear from the endocrinologist, the epidemiologist, the neuroscientist, the biochemist. I want to hear from these scientists about what it does to the rest of the body, because the mouth is connected. What happens in the mouth doesn't stay in the mouth, and now we're talking about ingesting something.
Speaker 3:So the judge ruled last fall that there was an unreasonable risk posed to current water fluoridation practices because there's no safety data, and he put it on the EPA to do something about it. He said now it's in your hands to correct this and actually manage this and regulate this. This came after the NTP report came out. Finally, it was the National Toxicology Program's report that was also under lock and key for years and he received it because of the Freedom of Information Act. And as no surprise, it said you know, the fluoridation practices are associated with lower IQs in children. The way we're doing it currently.
Speaker 3:Now the backlash on this is, it will say, at 1.2 milligrams per liter, and the US now fluoridates at 0.7 milligrams per liter. We used to do 1.2 up until 2015, but they dropped it because of osteosarcoma issues and concerns. So they dropped it. But here's the issue If you dig into that report, there are sections where it says even at optimally fluoridated levels, there are concerns with pregnant women and children, even at 0.7, but the mainstream media, the American Dental Association, they're not pulling from those paragraphs, they're. They're cherry picking what they share with you.
Speaker 3:The other thing is, if you test water fluoride in your community, do you think it's actually exactly a 0.7 milligrams per liter? Of course not. So I was in a campaign where we tested some areas around us. Some were as high as 2.2, 1.8. You know it's all over the place. Was that in Portland or no? Because they are around Portland, yes.
Speaker 3:So I encourage everyone to ask, because it's really hard to titrate it, you guys, how they add fluoride? They're these huge 50 pound bags of hydrofluorosilicic fluoride acid. They dump it in. It has skull and crossbones on the front and so they're just titrating it. This is not very scientific. They just are dumping it into the water supply.
Speaker 3:Now here's the other issue. Okay, so that's at one liter. Now I drink more than a liter of water a day. The American Academy of Pediatrics wants pregnant women drinking three liters a day. So now we're saying, well, but with the safety standards we're regulating water so you can only drink one liter a day. But no one knows that.
Speaker 3:So people are getting too much water. You're drinking it, you're cooking with it, you're making your soup with it, you're boiling your pasta with it. Plus, people don't understand there's a halo effect too. So pharmaceuticals many pharmaceuticals have fluoride in them. It makes it more bioavailable. So you're getting fluoride from your prescription meds.
Speaker 3:You're getting fluoride from any processed food that you consume your Gatorade, your Hi-C, your canned soups. They're not filtering the water in these factories, so you're getting it from ultra processed foods. You're getting it from black tea and green tea and I'm not saying don't consume those things, but you know kids are swallowing it. We're brushing with it. Now we need prescriptions. It's just too much. So there's no safety, a window of safety and toxicity is very narrow. There's no safety, the window of safety and toxicity is very narrow. And it's being associated with five to seven IQ point drops in children whose pregnant moms and in formula fed because that was fluoride water were exposed to too much fluoride. And there's copious amounts of data on this. To me it should just take one study, but we have dozens of very high quality studies that are pulled in this NTP report in this trial and there was just another meta analysis that came out. But for some reason, fluoride the burden of proof should be on safety, but with fluoride it's the opposite. It's like we have to prove it's unsafe, it's wild.
Speaker 1:And then yeah, that's like a common thread though.
Speaker 3:Yes, I know, with many things I know.
Speaker 2:And if it's not fluoride, it's red dye. It's going to be something right.
Speaker 3:I know, I know. And then the other thing is fluoride is antimicrobial and so what is it doing to the gut microbiome? No one is talking about that. It's not selective. There aren't any studies on this. I would love someone to do a study on the gut microbiome with people who drink fluoridated water versus those that don't. I think that would be fascinating. So what's even wilder and this is what the public really needs to know you know it was touted as the top public health, you know, achievement of our century water fluoridation. That's all just smoke and mirrors. You guys, oh yeah, are still the number one chronic disease in the world, whether your community is fluoridated or not.
Speaker 3:Countries that fluoridate have the same decay rate as countries that do not. We're one of the last countries to fluoridate our water. 97% of the world does not. But also, the Cochrane Collaborative came out in December that's the gold standard of all medical review and they found that fluoride slow down not so fast. Fluoride actually doesn't work as well in our water as we thought. It only reduces decay by one quarter of a cavity per person. One quarter. You see the number 25% reduction. That is extrapolated data. That is inaccurate. It is one quarter of a cavity, so that's not statistically significant. Yes, Other point is I went to dental school to learn to fix a tooth. I can fix a cavity a one quarter of a cavity in a tooth but I can't fix a developing brain. That goes awry, you know with a neurocognitive disorder.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we, we have some experience with fluoride. I want to, I want to share with you that we left LA and when we lived in LA, we in 2017, we bought a house in Vermont. So you were talking about growing up in Maine, which which is where we're we're filming this today, but we left LA and at the time, we were spending like a couple hundred dollars on filtered water that came in glass bottles that was delivered to our home Sometimes he would break them and I was like, oh, you know, like the amount of water that you're supposed to drink, that was healthy and like it was tested, and they would constantly send us the monthly test and we were spending all of this money on water being delivered to us in LA, because we knew what was in the water, because we had been working on these issues for a long time, and so then we moved to Vermont, get a house, we have a well and I had to find a different dentist, and we had a biological dentist. There in LA, it's easier to find that type of support, and so, of course, we were well-informed about all the things.
Speaker 1:However, when we got here, there's nobody we could find, so we took her to a pediatric dentist, my daughter and she had some decay in her molars. And so we get there and they're like, okay, well, here's what we can do, we're going to extract and then we'll do a root canal. And you know, it was like all of the things that they would have totally been against at our other dental office and they said, well, have you fluoridated your? Well, yet, I'm not joking. And I was like like my whole body kind of went numb and like cold and I was like what, why do you?
Speaker 1:think we moved here out here for a while and, like we did extensive water testing when we were in the like you know um home buying process, you know it was so mineral rich, and I was like, oh my gosh, like this water is just pristine. Like when we found this house and it wasn't even our first choice, but I was like but the well, you know what I mean? It was really a part of our decision-making and they wanted us to fluoridate our well.
Speaker 3:I grew up in a well, too, I did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I just think, like this is the education that they were given. You know, and it's such a small community, these people my daughter went to school with and it's like they thought I was crazy. They're like, oh, she doesn't want to fluoridate her.
Speaker 3:Well, like Dr Strangelove or whatever. Yeah, it's unfortunate. It's like they just have one tool in their toolbox, but the but the thing is that's a bandaid. I mean, if you look ancestrally which I think we showed many times we didn't grow. Humans don't have fluoride in their body. We're not fluoride deficient. No one has a disease because of lack of fluoride.
Speaker 3:That is not why we get decay and moved to agrarian societies, because we started growing corn and wheat. Then we started building it and processing it and the industrialized revolution happened and everything was soft and squishy and sugary and flowery and that's when decay skyrocketed. But no one wants to go upstream to talk about this. I mean, I haven't used fluoride since my teen years and that was a long time ago. My teeth are great. My kids have a long time ago. My teeth are great. My kids have never had it. Their teeth are great. I have plenty of patients who do not use it. Their teeth are beautiful. I have plenty of patients that do that get decay. It's not the fluoride and I will say fluoride is no match against big food period yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, I love that mic drop boom indeed period.
Speaker 3:But it's, it's an easy, it's the no different than you going to the physician and they have three minutes with you and they write a prescription. They code it and they write a prescription. The dentist is like I don't have time to dig into mineral deficiencies, vitamin deficiencies, airway health, gut health. You know all these. We're not trained in it, so they don't know about these things, unfortunately. So they just say use fluoride, brush your teeth, floss your teeth, don't eat candy bars, use fluoride. And it's so much more involved in that decay is very often a nutritional deficiency.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and and it made me really dive deeper into less leaning on the biological dentist that we had and more into like OK, I've got to figure this out, like you know. And then we finally found somebody was two hours each way, so you know, that meant like driving in the snow and all of the things when you move back East, um, and I do what you gotta do but you do what you have to do.
Speaker 1:But what I really found was like I have to, I have to figure this out, Like we can't roll back the clock. But there was things that we did with, like you know, crackers and things that I'm like, oh my gosh, I wish I would have known that, even though they're organic, even, you know, it's like things that I just didn't think of, you know, and like I wish we were educated young, Like if we had had, you know, a second child, like that would have been helpful to know, you know.
Speaker 2:It would be helpful to know when I was a kid.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I know Well and that's why I went to Peds, so it's important for those listening. And this gets me. A lot of people get upset when I say this, but crackers are one of the top reasons we have a cavity epidemic, because that is a staple in so many kids' daily lives and you don't think anything of it. You are, you're like well, they're organic, non-gmo, they're fine, they're yellow with turmeric, it's fine. Right, it's not that, it's the flour, it's flour acts like sugar in the mouth, and then, on top of that, they tend to be nutrient devoid, and so are our kids mineral and fat soluble vitamin optimized? No, we're not. We're magnesium deficient, we're vitamin D deficient. We're inside all day. We're not outside magnesium deficient, we're vitamin d deficient. We're inside all day, we're not outside. There's junk light, mitochondrial health, metabolic health, I mean it. It's all connected, all the things everyone's talking about. It connects back to oral health too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, every single system in your body is interconnected, so there's no way of of experiencing positive health if you have negative health going on in your mouth or anywhere else in your body.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I mean, if your gums are inflamed and bleed, like many people's do, and they just ignore it, that is systemic inflammation. That is a huge red flag that your body is begging you to get healthy, and we all seem to be familiar with the term leaky gut. Well, if your gums bleed, that's leaky gums. So you are now creating an entry point of oral bacteria pathogens, because if you have got swollen, inflamed gums, you have oral pathogens to get into the bloodstream, to get into the lymphatic system, and they can travel all over the body. They release exotoxins, endotoxins and increase inflammation. And this is why we're seeing oral bacteria in the brains of Alzheimer's patients and dementia, you know patients, and in heart disease and fertility issues, and you know people who have low birth weight, babies and even miscarriages, autoimmune diseases. It's now oral pathogens are now linked to colon cancer, pancreatic cancer, it goes on and on, and so it's incredibly important.
Speaker 1:And it comes back to the microbes, you know, and those microbes love crackers, they love fermentable carbohydrates, that's what they feed on, and I feel like what would have been great as a young mom with a young child as you know, she started to get cavities is, first of all, just like five minutes of education of like hey, read this book, or hey, you know. Instead, what I have experienced multiple times is kind of like shame culture. You know where you go in and they're just like, oh, are you drinking soda? It's like no. Like. Are you eating candy? No, like we're an organic household oh, I breastfed her. Like it just started so early that it was like there wasn't the education that I felt like as a mom. Oh, like this is really empowering. I know what to do now and like I can reverse some of this. You know I can prevent it.
Speaker 2:But she did eat a lot of crackers.
Speaker 1:She did eat a lot of crackers she was a cracker eating fool yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but still, I mean, I'm with you. I have worked with colleagues that are like that and they just don't. It's not coming from a bad place, I don't think. It's just the way we're educated and trained, and I just think people aren't thinking outside of the box. They're not. We're not taught to connect the dots, we're not. We're taught medicine's compartmentalized.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'm taught to stay in my lane. It's the teeth, it's the teeth, it's the tongue, it's the gums and that's it. I don't need to know anything about the gut, I don't need to know anything about hormone health or you know, immune, the immune system, or metabolic health or mitochondria, like. But and this is where functional dentistry comes in Functional dentistry is, yes, my specialty is the mouth. However, I look at it through the lens of the entire body and I need to understand all the systems, and there's not training for that in dental school, and that's why I'm working with a couple other lovely colleagues. We've co-founded the Institute for Functional Dentistry. We'll be associated with the Institute for Functional Medicine to try to get more dentists trained this way, because I do think there's a lot of dentists out there that they are dissatisfied too.
Speaker 3:They're depressed, they hate their career, they're burnt out. Nothing we do makes a difference. The patients keep coming back sick because we're missing the root issue. With many of them yeah, with children. What I'm seeing and this is where I really like to tell parents this this issue is bigger than you. We are chronically, epigenetically mineral deficient and it is passing from generation to generation, and that we're seeing that in teeth and under mineralized teeth it's called hypoplastic enamel, is what I believe to be a silent global epidemic. I see it skyrocketing in my practice, and that's when the teeth come in either crumbling or defective. The armor, the enamel, isn't thick or it's crumbly, it's just deficient, and so those acid attacks, they just dissolve the teeth so quickly and this is when breast milk gets blamed or you get accused of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we definitely. I breastfed for two a little over two years and I definitely got told oh well, the decay is coming from that. I mean, the journey we've been on together as a family has been wild when it comes to dental health and all three of us and I'm like mike and eric making faces because I was like. Well, sometimes my gums bleed, like you know honestly, just before we met you.
Speaker 2:Uh, we're all flossing, just in case you ask floss and water pick.
Speaker 3:Yes, please, and we're in the same age group. So what I do, you know, as we age we do lose a little bone around our teeth, and so I really like floss and then water pick, like alternate every other night. Night they will do slightly different things, but eating gums can be a sign of vitamin C deficiency, kind of zinc deficiency, or B2, b6, b b9, so it could be nutritional too.
Speaker 1:And if you mouth breathe, yes, I'm, I'm mouth taping now I'm trying to get this guy on board, oh do it.
Speaker 3:It you will. It will change your life.
Speaker 1:So tell us, like if you could pick five things and I I know I threw some random shit in that list but like if you could pick five things and I know I threw some random shit in that list but like if you could pick five things that you could empower people right now, whether you know at any age, or if you want to talk cancer, if you want to talk pediatrics, like I've, I've consumed a lot of your content and I'm, like blown away by a lot of it. But if you could summarize like just a few things that you think would be digestible and tangible, that all of us have access to.
Speaker 3:Yes, I love low cost, no cost tips. Um, well, I I really am a. What you put on your fork makes so much of the difference. So I'm a big advocate for just a whole food diet and whatever that means to you. But we have to start cooking at home more. We have to go to farmers markets, we have to talk about regenerative agriculture and less stuff from more stuff from farms, less stuff from boxes and packages and factories. That, I think, would correct about 95% of the dental issues out there, to be honest with you. So that's very important.
Speaker 3:The other thing I would say is prioritize your sleep and sleep hygiene and with that I'm kind of cheating is how you breathe so you can do all the things correctly in life. Be, you know, the best at resistance, training and all the supplements and all the things. But if you're not breathing optimally and oxygenating and restoring um, you will feel like garbage and it's going to have a lot of downstream effects for sure, uh, including cardiovascular. And you know it can affect mental health, gut health, obviously your teeth. So people who mouth breathe are more likely to have gum disease and cavities too. So either work with an airway trained doctor to figure out why?
Speaker 3:But a little simple hack is mouth taping. You just want to make sure you can breathe through your nose for three or four minutes without feeling panicked. If you feel fight or flight, you probably have some obstruction. You have a deviated septum. You need some work with the neural feedback loop to train your brain. This is safe. So work with someone. But so I would try lip taping and you can put it on for 15 minutes while you're chopping vegetables for dinner and then wear it for a show 30 minutes and wear it for a movie, and then you're good, you know and just put it on and then it ends up in your hair and you're like, wait, maybe I bought the wrong product.
Speaker 1:I well, yeah, I know I've tried a few different ones and now now I'm good, now I'm, I'm happy it's working and I love it, and so I'm kind of like the I'm the guinea pig usually for these things, and so he's yeah, yeah, well, we'll see about that.
Speaker 3:I mean, I can see it on my aura ring. My sleep scores are so much better if I'm lip taping or mouth taping or sleep taping and if I forget it for some reason, I'm traveling. I mean, I sleep like garbage absolutely.
Speaker 1:I'm actually noticing a difference that I I crave it. Now I'm like, oh, it's time, Like my body knows that it's, it's good for me. Initially it was like forcing myself to do it, but I like your tips about, um, you know, trying it at different times during the day.
Speaker 3:This just works for you. So the other thing I'd say is hydration I mean in electrolytes and minerals, you know. So that's profoundly important. Our saliva is this golden elixir in our body that we just ignore. But your saliva protects your teeth. It has immune cells in it, it has enzymes for digestion, it has calcium and phosphorus for natural remineralization. Many of us our saliva is not optimized because we tend to be acidic and we're dehydrated and we're nutrient devoid. But hydration is really important From a hygiene perspective.
Speaker 3:I can't emphasize flossing enough. If I had to pick, I think flossing is much more important than brushing. It's not just to remove food from between your teeth, but it's to shake the biofilm off. So the biofilms, your sticky plaque, that's the bacteria and a lot of pathogenic bacteria are anaerobic, so they love to live in all the nooks and crannies with low oxygen. So we're shaking the biofilm off so it can't sit there long enough to release acid to leach the minerals out of your teeth. But the bummer is it will come back again. So it's like you're shaking the rug off. Every day you have to clean, clean between um gosh, what else?
Speaker 3:Um, I think most of us do need some sort of remineralizer. Now why? Why I said no to gum. I just think it's overkill. I don't think we need this much remineralization, but I do like an active ingredient in toothpaste. Yeah, so I said a remineralizer. And then I guess. Just, I'm a big advocate of knowing your nutrient levels. You know, I think it's hard to test kids, but test, don't guess. Like how would you know what your vitamin D level is unless you test it? How do you know if your nutrient optimized but people who are vitamin D optimized are less likely to have disease? You know vitamin D deficiency is linked to cavities. In fact, what's so interesting? I only recently learned this Before water fluoridation, dentistry would approach their patients talking about vitamin D and calcium and nutrition first. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, yeah. I wonder why we got rid of that.
Speaker 2:Well, because there's money in treatment, not a cure.
Speaker 3:We patent vitamin D and make billions.
Speaker 1:You know what's interesting. You know what's interesting when you did say something about, uh, bleeding gums, because it, you know it's, it's stuck, and I was like, whoa, you know, I really only get that during the winter.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what I'm noticing, and so it's definitely vitamin d deficiency, we have less sun totally vitamin c, and women may notice their gums bleed more when their hormones fluctuate too, and that can be normal. So certainly there's pregnancy gingivitis, but some notice it around. You know their cycle, and that's a whole other talk that I could get about women's hormones and oral health. But there is something there and we're not getting paid attention to and no one's talking to us about this. But you know, yeah yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't want to take up too much more of your time, but I want to give you time to talk about how people can find you and how we can connect with um. I want to talk about fig, which is toothpaste that everyone needs to know more about, so talk to us about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I I'm mostly on Instagram and I'm trying to get more on YouTube and I really do that just for free education. You know that's we were both talking how we started kind of our platforms in 2020. And just trying to help people as much as we could, and so that's the whole premise of my platform and and I try not to algorithm chase, so I hope I hope I don't, but you can find me there. I have a website, drstaceycom, so my handle on Instagram is Dr underscore Stacey, and you spell out doctor, and it's S-T-A-C-E-I.
Speaker 1:And we will link everything in the show notes.
Speaker 3:So my website's drstaceycom. I have more education there, but I do offer online consultations. But, most importantly, I have a newsletter that I've been putting out weekly. I just reformatted it and it's it's called open, wide Um and it's it's about all things. So it's not just dentistry but it's about community and life and support and pop culture and the latest science and my thoughts on all kinds of things, and there's always like a really great, easy tip that's accessible to everyone, so great title, by the way. I'm thinking of having a podcast someday.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you are someday.
Speaker 3:And then we're also fig. That's yes. That's a toothpaste I co founded with Dr Mark Burhenne, who's also a functional dentist, online quite a bit, and it stands for feed your good guys, because we want to focus on the oral microbiome. So that's truly the premise of our brand is oral microbiome supportive ingredients. So we took out all the things that can disrupt. So we took out the emulsifiers, the surfactants believe it or not the essential oils you know coconut oil these things are all antimicrobial and can have impacts and we just cleaned it up. And then we did put in hydroxyapatite which, if sourced from the appropriate manufacturing facility, ours is SCCS approved that's the Scientific Committee for Consumer Safety out of Portugal. It's called Fluidinova. It's a wonderful biomimetic material. It's basically calcium and phosphorus, which is what's in your teeth and in your saliva. So and we are, we've won awards and we just had some comparative studies come out and we are performing as well and even better than fluoride, which is really cool, yeah, so we're very excited about that, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll link everyone to FIG as well in our show notes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I have a little discount for all your listeners too that you can throw in there. But I see a lot of changes in my patients with it. They their teeth. We just get a lot of great feedback. People say my teeth just feel smoother, they feel stronger, my mouth feels more hydrated and I think because so many of the these gross ingredients that strip were taken out, and that's likely why you said something about mouthwash.
Speaker 1:You said no, because it strips right.
Speaker 3:Yes the no with mouthwash. Of course it depends on the type, but if you were talking more traditional, like Listerine and the prescription one that the dentist will write for you, those are very strong antimicrobials and astringents and alcohols and they just carpet bomb and there's actually studies now to show particularly Listerine and Chlorhexidine, they impact the nitrate-reducing bacteria that live on the dorsum or on your tongue. That affects nitric oxide levels and nitric oxide levels and nitric oxide levels affect cardiovascular health and there's studies showing people who use these mouthwashes consistently tend to have higher blood pressure and it can affect sexual health because nitric oxide is really important for sexual health, so more likely to have ed.
Speaker 2:So it's a big deal there's so many nasty products out there, isn't there and they all have blue dye, nasty red dye.
Speaker 3:Get it out of there yeah, so gross.
Speaker 1:I think that it'd be fun to also have you come back on the show and talk about how, um, when you find your romantic partner, a lot of it is about your microbiome and like that's to me, that's so fascinating. We haven't had a.
Speaker 3:I really like you. Can you take this test?
Speaker 1:But also like that you're taking the test.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, why not?
Speaker 1:Are we compatible in all of the signs?
Speaker 3:And then I need you to spit in this cup, yeah well, I really do want everyone, so I'll add that one too. And this isn't a low cost, no cost per se, but it's really important. I think everyone, just like we do blood work, I want everyone to know what their microbiome is. It's just like gut mapping. Maybe you just do it once every few years. But here's an interesting thing. We see this all the time. Patients can seemingly be healthy and we test them and they're really high in P gingivalis or F nucleatum or T denticola. These are pathogens and they're linked to cancer and they're linked to Alzheimer's. And how would you know unless you test it? And so at that point you're asymptomatic, it's just, it's a higher level, but you can do things to eradicate them so that you're lowering your risk for all these long term chronic systemic diseases. You know that you might literally get 10 or 20 years down the road. Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's such good advice and I think that you know you have to invest in your health and you know you have to stay vigilant in this country in your health, and you know you have to stay vigilant in this country. I know it's our podcast goes globally, but we're always talking about like if you're in the us, this applies to you.
Speaker 2:Yes, totally so what I find funny and interesting is that, uh, just before we have someone like stacy, who's well, uh, renowned in regards to, you know, knowing about oral health and all that stuff, you and I are in there flossing our teeth and getting ready as if she's going to be able to view our teeth over the screen. Hey man, I got like dental fear.
Speaker 1:I'm like, okay, what's happening with my teeth? I'm going to the dentist. It's like you'll never clean your house like as clean as when somebody's dentist. It's like you'll never clean your house like as clean as when somebody's coming over. Like you'll never brush your teeth or clean your mouth as clean as when you go to the dentist.
Speaker 2:Right, that is correct so.
Speaker 1:But when you're on a podcast, obviously she's not going to be looking in her mouth. But when she said oh like, oh um, you could tell a lot of whether your teeth you know are your gums are inflamed. That means there's inflammation in your body.
Speaker 2:I was like, oh shit yeah, she, I, I and the teeth, you know, the gums bleeding.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh, like the amount of red I saw in my sink. And it was not red 40 or red three or red four, it was blood. I was literally.
Speaker 2:I was all smiles when we first started talking to her and then she talked about all the things that you know going on with your mouth. And every time she mentioned something like my mouth got you know more and more tight. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I may have to take another look at this oh my goodness. Okay, sending you the highest vibrations.
Speaker 2:You are held, you are loved, but it is the truth.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying you weren't saying anything wrong, it's going to get cut because we already have too much, so just key takeaway okay, my takeaway, my key takeaway, my takeaway takeaway. One of my key takeaways is the the fact that if you are struggling with sleep or focus or chronic fatigue, that it might not be your diet or stress, that that it could actually be your airway health, and that because your mouth controls more than just your smile right, it's like it's how you breathe, it's how you eat, so it's crazy Like when you are on a health kick, you should start with your mouth.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Yes, exactly, detox what's going in that mouth.
Speaker 2:Detox starts with what's going in your mouth. Most certainly yeah, I like that yeah, mm-hmm.
