Dental Health with special guest Dr. Michelle Jorgensen

Transcript:

Leah: Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. We're a family run Minnesota company that specializes in real food nutrition education and counseling. My name is Leah Kleinschrodt. I'm a Registered and Licensed Dietitian and your host for the show today, and I am very excited to be joined today by a special guest, Dr. Michelle Jorgensen, a functional integrative dentist, board certified traditional naturopath.

And she's also an author, a speaker, a great educator, and I first learned of Dr. Michelle perhaps two to three years ago from another podcast she was on, she was an immediate follow for me on all my social media accounts.

I just remember being struck in such a good way at her ability to distill down really complicated biochemistry, biological concepts and just make them really simple, digestible bites that were easy to understand. And I've since heard her speak on many other podcasts. I know our audience will walk away with very actionable steps to take not only better care of their mouth health, but also better care of their whole body health as well.

And some of our listeners know that our founder, the late Dar Kvist, she was a teacher in her other life before beginning with nutrition and, but education really continued to be a mainline in her big passion as she switched careers over to help people with healing through real food. So I can only imagine what a dinner conversation or a coffee date between these two women would have looked like.

But a little bit more about Dr. Michelle. She founded and works in a thriving dentistry practice in American Fork, Utah. It's called Total Dentistry Care, and then she and her family also established and run something called the Living Well Homestead, where they grow and they harvest. They preserve their own food and medicine as well as they share this bounty and educate with their local community as well.

So it's such a unique blend of passions, experiences, interests. I just love it. And so it was hard for me to decide. I was putting together some of these interview questions of like, what rabbit holes do we want to go down? But luckily our listeners helped us out with this. I put out a call for questions to our Dishing Up Nutrition Facebook page.

And you all had questions about fluoride, about dry mouth, about receding gums, oil pulling, root canals, tooth plaque. How do we take care of our mouths especially for women as we move through perimenopause and menopause? So lots of different really great questions came in, and we're going to work as hard as we can to get through as many of those questions as we can in the time that we have.

So I'm going to turn it over then. Without further ado, I want to welcome Dr. Michelle Jorgensen. Again, it's so good to have you here today. So glad you're taking some time out of your busy schedule and we appreciate that you're here.

Michelle: Thank you. I'm really excited and you know, I just love what you do. I love this idea that we can take control of our health and it really starts with what we eat. So thank you for all you're doing.

Leah: Yeah, when I first heard you on that other podcast and your messaging, I mean, I know a lot of your realm is in the dental world, mouth health, all this stuff, but you have that such interesting crossover with the homesteading real food, getting your hands in the dirt.

So I know you have that whole side to your life as well. I think it's such a great blend of both of those worlds, and I think it really lines up really well with our messaging. When the opportunity presented itself to have you on, I was super excited. I nerded out, I fangirled a little bit, so I'm really, I'm really excited for you to be here.

Michelle: Thank you.

Dr. Michelle’s background

Leah: Yeah, it's. But I would love for you to lay out a little bit of your background for us. You know, a little bit of your superhero origin story, if you will. I want to know, like, how did you end up in the field of dentistry? Like were you that little first grader sitting in class, you knew exactly what you wanted to do, you were always interested in teeth and mouth health and things like that, you know, were you always a little bit more holistic health inclined, or did that come with time?

I know a little bit about your personal health journey, especially as you got into dentistry practice and had been practicing for a while, but I know our listeners, not everybody knows that story, so I'd love for you to weave that in there as well. Tell us a little bit of that background and your personal health journey and lay some groundwork for us.

Michelle: Yeah, thank you for the question. So, my father was a dentist. I grew up in dentistry and I've always in been interested in just medicine, how the body works. That was always a way that I trended in school. But interestingly enough, as a senior in high school, we were all challenged to do, they called it an eye project.

So we wanted, we were supposed to learn something about ourselves, and I thought, well, I really am curious to see; should I go into medicine or should I go into dentistry? Which direction should I go? So at the time, I actually interviewed every single doctor that was in my neighborhood and every single dentist that was in my neighborhood, anyone that we knew that was either a doctor or a dentist.

And we actually lived in a fairly small town, so there weren't that many to choose from, but we, but I talked to all of them and I said, okay, what would you recommend that I do? Every doctor told me to be a dentist and every dentist told me to be a dentist. So I said, well, the consensus seems to be that a dentist is the best way to go.

And really, for them it was talking about lifestyle. They said, you know, your dad has a lot better life than we do. The doctors were saying, they said, you know, we're on call. We have weekends, and if you plan to have a family and be a mother then a dentist is just a better way to go. So that made my decision.

I went through school quite quickly, actually graduated from dental school at the age of 23, which is really fast. And I think now why was I such in a hurry to get so responsible and grown up and have to take care of all these, you know, grown up things. I had a lot of years left of that, so I was starting in dentistry.

Actually, I was able to practice with my father at about four years in. We started a practice together and I thought that that's just what I would do. No, it was not holistic. It was very just traditional based good dentistry. Excellent dentistry. We were focused on caring for the patient, not just their teeth, but also how do we make it so it's a fabulous experience to be in our office, you know, how do we make it so people actually look forward to coming to the dentist?

And we were doing a great job of that, and I thought that that's just how my career would go, that I would just keep going. My father is literally still practicing in his mid-seventies, so I thought that that's what I would do for the rest of my life as well. But like you kind of, you know indicated here, about a decade in, I started getting really sick and my father, like I said, is still practicing at 75.

He's never had a sick day in his life, and so this was not something I expected to happen to me. But I was raised in traditional medicine. My grandfather was an internist, my father was a dentist, so I just started going to doctors, you know, to try to figure out what was going on with me personally.

And I got no answers. Nobody could figure out what was going on. And the symptoms were gut health issues, which so many people have gut issues. So it's almost like this is the norm anymore. Right? Oh, gut, gut issues. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody has that. But you know, we did everything that everybody recommends. We threw away all of our food.

We started over, you know, we emptied all the cupboards and we got everything new and we started really eating cleanly. Cleanly, honestly wasn't even a thing back then. It was more just whole food based, you know? And so we started eating that way and it helped some, but not a lot. Sometimes I couldn't even drink water without the pain, so I knew something was really wrong.

But the biggies were my brain. I have always had just a kind of a good memory; quick, quick brain. I can remember patient's names for forever. I can remember their whole life story when they would come in, and I stopped even being able to remember their name from room to room. So something was really wrong.

I couldn't complete sentences. My brain was just not working. And then the big one was numbness. I had just numb hands all the way down my hands, my arms. I couldn't sleep at night. I couldn't blow dry my hair. I couldn't write with a pen. And so I even got to the point where I was losing dexterity. I couldn't hold my dental instruments the way I needed to, to do my job.

And again, no, no answers. I was getting massages two and three times a week. I was going to the chiropractor twice a week. I was taking supplement after supplement. I was trying all the pills that people were recommending and nothing. It was, it just nothing was improving.

So eventually I put my practice for sale. And we didn't know what we were going to do. I was in my mid-thirties, four young kids. My husband worked for the practice, so this was our entire livelihood. We still had debt on the practice, on schooling, and you know, we were really in a pretty desperate situation, but I had gotten no answers; no doctors could help me.

So I was looking for other options. And interestingly enough, I was looking at potentially being a nutritionist and working at a large dental practice. Because I'd learned so much about nutrition, you know, trying to…

Leah: There you go.

Michelle: Gut issues. Yeah. So I was talking to a dentist in Pennsylvania who had a nutritionist in his office and I said, how does this work? You know, maybe I can do this job even though I can't hold an instrument anymore. I can do this job because I don't need to. And he said. Hmm. Your symptoms sound a lot like mine.

Have you ever looked into mercury poisoning? Now? I knew that silver fillings had mercury and then we were taught this in school, but I had been told that they were completely safe and that if I told anyone that they could affect their health, that I would lose my license.

So I said, well, no, I don't have any fillings in my mouth myself, and I've been told they're completely safe. And he said, well, regardless of what you've been told, it probably would be worth getting tested. And he was right. I had never been tested for that. So I got tested for mercury levels and it was off the charts.

Leah: Hmm.

Michelle: So it wasn't the fillings I had been, I had in my mouth. I didn't have any. It was the fillings I'd been drilling out for the last decade, breathing in all the vapors that it produced and basically poisoning myself. So mercury is a neurotoxin, so it fried my nervous system, including my brain, my hands, all of those things.

My gut; the gut is largely nervous system based; vagus nerve. It was ruining, literally killing me slowly with mercury poisoning. And I had never heard that this could happen to a dentist. So that's where I was. And I had to figure out could I get better? Like what did I have to do? So I started changing the way I was practicing.

I thought all the patients would leave because they would think I was just the crazy person. But as I started explaining why I was doing what I was doing, they would say, well, isn't this probably better for me too? Actually, yeah, I had to find organizations that were doing this. I didn't even know they existed.

And then patients started asking me other hard questions like, well, what do you really know about fluoride? Like I've heard there's some concern here. And what about root canals? Like you, you do them right? But should you, are they really as healthy as we think they are? And I didn't know the answers to any of these questions, so I started having to research and search and find just random education wherever I could.

And my practice completely changed. So now we are focused on number one, how does the work that we do affect your overall health? But number two, what can we learn about your health by looking in your mouth? So that's what's so amazing about where we're today and now we have a multi-specialty, multi-doctor practice. People fly from around the world to come and see us. I never would've imagined this when I started in dentistry.

Leah: Yes, it sounds similar. Dar, our founder had kind of a, a vision for herself too, of wanting to take real food and make it worldwide. It sounds like you've kind of done some of that too, of like this, like you've reached corners of the planet that you never even thought was possible.

It came with its trials and tribulations and your own learning, your own persistence, your own experience, but you were able to kind of flip that script around and use it for good on the other end. And you were the first, you were one of the first, if not the first dentist that I had heard talk about gut health;

Talk about like our airways and the health of our airways, the size of our airways, sleep apnea, dead teeth, rethinking what we know about root canals and fluoride like you mentioned, and so many more things. So it is very clear that you do things differently than most traditional dentistry practices more than what you know differently than what you were formally educated on.

Michelle: Yeah.

Leah: So I'm kind of curious, like what does an appointment look like for you? Like say, I'm a new client coming in to see you like I fly or drove from Minnesota to come in and do an evaluation with you. Like what does that appointment look like?

And then what kinds of things maybe on a weekly basis are you helping people with? What kinds of things are you seeing with your, your patients? Your clients?

The holistic dental approach

Michelle: Yeah. Great question. You know, it's interesting, the typical dental visit would look like you come in, you get some x-rays. The dentist comes in, pokes around at your teeth a little bit. Maybe they do some gum measurement to see, you know, do you have gum disease? They poke at your teeth a little bit. They look at those x-rays. They say, you have a couple cavities. Get, let's get you scheduled back. You come back, you get a couple fillings done. You leave and you do it all again six months from now.

Leah: Yep.

Michelle: Right. But did anyone ever talk to you about why did you get those cavities? Or what can you do to prevent them in the future other than just brush more? Right? That's all we're told is brush more, floss more.

Leah: And less sugar.

Michelle: And less sugar. Exactly right.

Leah: Yep.

Michelle: Did they talk about the materials that they were using? Did they give you options? Did they tell you what those materials could potentially do to your health? Did they even look at your health history in depth and say, oh wow, that chronic fatigue that you've been experiencing for 15 years, it lines up perfectly for when you got your wisdom teeth out.

Hmm. Let's chat about that. Mm-hmm. So we flip that entire thing upside down. We start with your medical history, and oftentimes people are coming to us and we are the last doctor on the list. They've already been to six, seven doctors. You know, they they've been trying to get answers for chronic disease situations.

So this is often autoimmune disease. Things like arthritis, things like lupus, other autoimmune conditions, Hashimoto's, thyroid problems. A lot of people that we talk to have fatigue issues. So they've already been dealing with adrenal problems or thyroid issues. We have a lot of people who come with heart problems;

High blood pressure, cannot control that. Swallowing issues interestingly enough. Sleeping problems. I can't go to sleep, I can't stay asleep. And cancer things even like cancer and chronic serious disease issues. We see everything across the board. So we look at it and we say, okay, let's first of all, put timelines together. When did some of this start happening? Let's look at your mouth and see if there's any correlation with any of the procedures you had there as well. Let's look at the procedures you've had. Have you had a root canal done? And then we do a cone beam CT scan. That's what it's called.

It's a 3D scan that shows everything in the head, everything in the mouth, everything in the neck, in the airway, everything in three dimensions. I literally can look inside of everything. What we're able to see there is shocking. One of my favorite stories is a patient who'd had a root canal done and she said it just bothered her.

This is often what people will say, it doesn't hurt, but they just say, it just doesn't feel right. And I took the regular dental x-ray, like you'd get in office, you know, the kind that goes in your mouth, you know, I took the x-ray and we looked at it and I said, it looks fine. And every dentist that looked at it would've said, it looks fine.

You know, it looks fine. But I had just gotten this new cone beam CT machine, so it's a dental specific CT machine you take in the dental office. And I said, let's just go take a scan for the heck of it.

Leah: Yep.

Michelle: We went over and took a scan. We found a quarter size hole that had been eaten away in her jawbone above the top of this tooth. That infection was literally spreading through her entire system every single time she chewed on that tooth. And I couldn't see it on the dental x-ray. So we take these 3D scans where we're able to identify what's happening. So on a daily basis, we find failed root canals. They don't hurt; nerves gone, you don't even know it.

The literal infection going everywhere. We find areas in the jawbone that didn't heal right after wisdom teeth were removed, after just any tooth was removed, we find gum disease that no one's been able to figure out. We find tooth decay in people that brush their teeth perfectly, floss their teeth perfectly, have a beautiful diet, and still getting tooth decay.

These are the things we see on a daily basis, so we find the root cause reasons for the problems, and often they start in the mouth; a failed root canal, an infected area where a tooth came out, a gut problem, where the gut's not absorbing minerals properly, and it's leading to the body literally pulling minerals from the teeth to take care of the rest of it. So constant tooth decay. This is why moms, when they have babies end up with a cavity or a crown or a root canal, or moms when they're nursing or teenagers end up with a bunch of cavities.

Why? Well, maybe they're not brushing as well as they should, but they're also have a high demand for minerals in the system because they're growing, they're changing, and their bodies can't keep up. So their bodies steal it from the teeth. This is what we see on a daily basis. How to stay well, how to never have a cavity again, but also how to reverse chronic disease that you've been struggling with and never been finding answers.

So it's about a two hour visit where we sit and we go through all of this information and then we create a plan. And sometimes people say, this is so overwhelming. I say, you know, you are right. But don't look at it all, all at once. I just need to look at step number one. Step number one is this. And that's where you're going to start.

And you're going to see a noticeable change with even step number one, which will then propel you to be able to do step number two, step number three if necessary. So that's what a visit with us looks like. It's very comprehensive. People usually say, whoa, that's the most comprehensive visit I've ever had in a health provider in general at all. Like never at a doctor or a dentist like, and nobody has spent this much time and really figured out what's going on with me.

Leah: Yeah. And you need that time to go back and to do that thorough history, to ask those questions, to really listen to what clients, patients are telling you, and try to connect all those dots.

Michelle: Yeah.

Leah: And yeah, you're right. It's like, I'm sure, because our clients feel the same way. Sometimes it is a little overwhelming. You get the deer in the headlights kind of look right away. But it's like, no. It's like part of our job is to help you kind of put the steps together, walk them through, make it a little bit more manageable, bite size like we talked about earlier. And kind of walk through that with the clients, with the patients.

Nutrition-related mindfulness from a dental standpoint (#1: preserving the outside of the teeth)

So when you are taking that history, you're talking to patients in that first visit or two, what specifically from a nutrition perspective, what kinds of things are you looking at with their nutrition? What kind of questions are you asking? What, what are you looking for? What does your detective work look like?

Michelle: Yeah, so a couple of different ways from nutrition standpoint. Number one, topical nutrition. So this is acid on the teeth, and we can tell because teeth should be shiny, they should be highly mineralized. If teeth are dull. So if they kind of a dull matte appearance to them, or if they're even kind of scooped out, what that usually tells us is there is a high acid component in the diet, and a lot of people blame it on the gut.

They say, oh, I just have acid reflux. Well, actually, I'm going to push back on that one a little too. I often find that acid reflux is due to low acid and the food doesn't digest properly. It sits there and ferments, which leads to bubbles that come up that are acidic.

But the acid is actually not the problem. They need more acid. So we look at that dull matte appearance and we talk about it. We say, okay, are you drinking lemon water? Oh yeah, lemon water's great for my digestion. It's great for my system. It is. Are you drinking it all day long? Yeah. Yeah. It's great all day long.

No, it has a pH of like 2.2. You literally are dissolving your teeth away. You drink it once. You give your mouth a break and give it a chance to regenerate. You know, don't brush your teeth during that time. So we're talking about that a lot. Electrolytes, very acidic, energy drinks, soda, all those things that I'm sure you're not recommending.

But all those things are very acidic. Most acidic drink we've ever come across: Crystal Light. People are doing weight loss management. And it's extremely acidic. So that's topical nutrition that we talked about. We say, oh wow, you, we've got to totally reduce this acidity and snacking. People are very, you know, this is kind of a cultural, a little bit of, oh, I'm just going to eat little meals.

I'm going to eat little meals. I'm going to keep, you know, all this up. The problem is, is every time you eat. The acid in your mouth increases, right? Because it has to help digest the food so your mouth gets more acidic. When your mouth gets more acidic, the minerals in the teeth literally are dissolved into the saliva.

Like this is what happens with acid. It just pulls minerals out of the teeth. So if you're constantly snacking, you're constantly creating an acidic environment. Your mouth needs about a half an hour to 45 minutes to recover that pH balance. So if you go snack again an hour from now, you are doing another acid attack.

Leah: Sure.

Digesting properly is critical (adequate stomach acid is key!)

Michelle: So you have to give your mouth time to recover in between eating or drinking both. So this is one thing that we see. The other thing that we see is from a nutritional standpoint, you have to be able to digest properly and you need enough acid to do that. So we constantly talk about that and look at how do we identify you have low acid and you're not getting the minerals here, so your body's pulling them from the teeth.

Leah: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. What an interesting way to frame that. I never have thought about it like that before and I'm sure you have a little bit more to say about that. We do need to take a quick break, but I am very curious to come back and hear you finish out that thought, Dr. Michelle. So just hang with us for a minute. We will be back on the other side of break.

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We are back from break and Dr. Michelle was telling us a little bit more about what she looks at from a dentist perspective and from a holistic health perspective on what kinds of things does she look for with her clients, with her patients, in terms of their nutrition and you were talking about, okay, well we have to think about nutrition, topical nutrition, or what's, like, what's going on in the mouth that is like on top of, or like directly interfacing with our teeth. So that's one piece of it and I think you have more that you want to say on that topic.

Tips for internal nutrition (minerals are key)

Michelle: Yes, the second one is the internal nutrition. So I often talk about those minerals on the outside, minerals on the inside.

Leah: Yes.

Michelle: And some of the clues that you have, nutritional issues that really, it's an absorption problem. So many times I'll get a mom that comes and they say, I have three kids. Two of them have never had a cavity and one has a cavity every single time we come. We eat the same, we brush the same, like what is the difference? Or I'll get a mom that says, well, this crown is from this kid and this crown is from this kid.

And I'm, I want to have another baby, but I'm really worried that my teeth aren't going to make it through the pregnancy. What can I do? Or a teenager that shows up with 17 cavities and they've never had one before. But yet we look in their mouth. They're brushing. Like we can tell, we can tell, we can actually tell, you know, so they're brushing the teeth are clean, there has to be something else going on.

Leah: Mm-hmm.

Michelle: So the way the gut works is there's, there's a couple of different steps that have to happen to actually be able to get minerals into the system. All of these are signs that there are not enough minerals in the system. The body, it has a little bit of a triage where it goes. Okay. What's the most important thing?

Well, my heart has to keep beating, my brain has to keep firing. Those are non-negotiables. But I can actually live without teeth. So if I have to pull minerals from somewhere, I'm going to pull them from the teeth. So, you know, this is just the body kind of doing a pay Peter to, you know, a, it's, it's, it has to do something to take care of itself if it's not getting enough minerals through the diet.

And there's a few different reasons. Number one, you might not be eating enough, right? That's the first reason. We are actually quite mineral deficient in our diets today. A lot of the minerals have been stripped from our food, so I encourage people do an electrolyte. 2:00 PM, it's a way to pick you up and give your cells a recharge, but it's also a way to give yourself more minerals.

Add minerals to your water, especially, oh, this is a big one. If people are doing reverse osmosis water, which a lot of times people are really wanting to clean their water, it pulls out the fluoride. I recommend it. It also pulls out all the minerals, and this water becomes hungry. So now when you drink it, what it does is it pulls minerals from you to help balance the water.

So I see rapid increase in tooth decay in people who have now installed a reverse osmosis filter on their kitchen sink or in their home. All of a sudden they're getting cavities like crazy and they're saying, what just happened? You've got to add minerals back to that hungry water to balance it, otherwise it will steal it from you.

Adequate stomach acid is key for absorbing minerals

So that's the first is you have to get enough minerals in, but the second is you actually have to be able to absorb them properly. So when minerals hit the gut, the stomach acid ionizes those minerals and allows them to be absorbed better. So if you do not have enough stomach acid, you cannot do that.

I recommend testing this a very simple way. You do a quarter teaspoon baking soda and a half a cup of water. So just mix it up, you drink it and you time to see how long it takes you to burp. What in the world is this about? Well, that baking soda interacts with your stomach acid and creates a little bit of a chemical reaction. So this is just like the old science fair experiment where you dump baking soda and vinegar and you make those volcanoes. Remember in fourth grade?

Leah: Yep.

Michelle: Oh, you're making a volcano. You should be burping in two to three minutes if you have enough acid. If you don't burp, you don't have enough stomach acid. You have got to work on stomach acid. Sometimes you may have to supplement it with something called betaine, which is a beet derived stomach acid basically. You may have to supplement it for a little while, especially during foods that have minerals that you want to absorb. So that's step number one, ionize the minerals.

Step number two is once those are absorbed through the intestinal lining going where they're supposed to go, you need vitamins to grab them, particularly vitamin D and vitamin K2. So D3 K2, they grab the mineral and they put it into the cell. So a lot of times people are supplementing with minerals, but they're not supplementing with vitamins. Vitamin D3 K2. And this is why I believe we see a lot of dental decay, a lot of other issues during the low sunshine months, right?

Leah: Yes, that's right.

Michelle: So that’s right now.

Leah: Yep.

Michelle: December, January, February we get sick. We, because we don't have that vitamin D that we need to be able to actually escort the minerals where they're going. So I always recommend tooth specific minerals. I have a tooth bone formula that I sell, but you can find others along with a vitamin D3 K2 supplement.

D3 grabs it, K2 puts it in the cell. Those are absolutely essential. And so if I see somebody who is getting cavities and it doesn't make sense, I say, all right, minerals on the outside, we want to do hydroxyapatite, so we're going to do hydroxyapatite containing products. Hydroxyapatite is just the mineral your teeth are made of. That's all it is.

Leah: Yep.

Michelle: So we just want hydroxyapatite loaded into the teeth, toothpaste, tooth powder, mouthwash, mints, like whatever you can find with hydroxyapatite, put them in there. I have products for all of these. You can go and find them.

Minerals on the inside, so this is a mineral supplement, plus a vitamin D3 K2 supplement, and make sure your stomach acid is actually working correctly. So you may be eating the very best food in the world. If you're actually not absorbing it, it's not getting where it needs to go for your body to function like it should.

So use your mouth as a dashboard. If you're getting tooth decay that doesn't make sense. If you're getting tooth decay during those high mineral times, which is pregnancy, nursing, growth, and you know, child growth, especially puberty. If you're getting cavities along the gum line, that is a huge sign that you are mineral deficient.

So these are all things to look for. Use your mouth as a dashboard to say ah, my minerals are low. They've got to be low. Otherwise I wouldn't be getting cavities like this. Yeah, so really the dentistry is so crucial to understand what else is happening in the body.

Leah: Love that so much and you, you, I had questions on the vitamin D and the K2 and you wrapped that up and put a nice bow on it. So I'm so glad you visited that. Because we talk about that a lot with our clients, like a lot with bone health. But now we know there's the connection with teeth health and how we absorb, utilize those minerals, make sure they get to the right spot. So, and yeah, this time of year we really have to think about that vitamin D.

I mean, maybe it's a little sunnier where you live, but up here in Minnesota, like it's, yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty dreary. We don't see enough of the sunshine. It's not strong enough this time of year. So like making sure, especially this time of year you say see that pattern with, more tooth decay or more problems can crop up this time of year, which is, again, huge connection.

And I just went to the dentist, what, a month, month and a half ago. Like, none of this, none of this stuff comes up in a conversation at that point. So I'm glad, so glad you're bringing, bringing some of this up. I do want to launch into some of the questions that we got from our listeners, and by far, the most popular topic, and you've, you've touched on this a little bit, but I want you to do a little bit deeper of a dive here.

Is fluoride recommended?

By far, the biggest popular, the, the topic that we had the most questions on was about fluoride because we, you know, most of us, we live in cities where the fluoride is added to the water supply. Unless you have like a system that purposely removes that fluoride. It's added into our toothpaste. I just brought my kids to the dentist earlier this week, and we always get the question of like, do you want the fluoride treatment on their teeth?

And so like we, we see that fluoride and the whole idea is like, this helps and what we've always been told, this helps prevent cavities. It keeps our teeth healthy. You're going to, your teeth won't crumble and fall out of your head. So, I want to hear from you. Again, I know a little bit of your background, but I want to hear from you a little bit more like, okay, how did actually fluoride come to be part of dental care to begin with.

What does it actually do and is it necessary to have in your toothpaste, in your mouthwash or like, and you, again, you've touched on this a little bit, but if not, like what do we put in into the toothpaste instead?

Michelle: Great question. So fluoride was honestly implemented for a great reason. So what they found in the 1940s is that people who had higher levels of fluoride naturally in their water, these were people that were drinking well water, so they had stronger teeth. They weren't getting cavities. They also had kind of splotchy teeth. They didn't necessarily look great. They had white and brown and tan splotches all over the teeth, but they didn't get tooth decay, so they said, all right, too much fluoride isn't good. It's actually creating these really ugly splotchy teeth, but maybe a little bit of fluoride would be very beneficial to reduce tooth decay.

And there have been thousands of studies that have shown that fluoride does exactly that. What it does is fluoride incorporates into the mineral structure in the tooth itself. So the mineral that you see, like when you smile, what you're looking at is something called hydroxyapatite. When fluoride is introduced into the diet, to the toothpaste, whatever it is, the fluoride actually bullies calcium out of that mineral and replaces it.

So it becomes something called fluorapatite. Fluorapatite is stronger and more brittle, a little more resistant to acid attack. So your teeth aren't going to dissolve as easy in acid than they are, you know, if they don't have fluoride in them. So it's awesome. It strengthens teeth. But I want to ask a question here. I want everybody to think about this. Its purpose was to eradicate tooth decay. Did it work? Has anyone had a cavity since 1940?

Leah: I would say yes.

Michelle: And there would not be dentists if the answer was no. Right?

Leah: Yep.

Michelle: So it did not fulfill its purpose, right? It's desired purpose of eradicating tooth decay. So just shelf that one for just a moment. Anything we put in our bodies, anything we put in our bodies, you talk about this I know, goes everywhere. We call this side effects in the medical world. Oh, this medicine has a side effect. Well, everything has a side effect.

If you eat an apple today, it will have a side effect. You know, it has the effect we want or the intended action. It also acts on every other cell in the body. That's what everything does. Like there is no little like tag on something that says, hey, only go affect this cell. Only go affect the tooth.

That's not how things work when we ingest them. So when fluoride is put in toothpaste, in mouthwash, when it's put in our water, when it's put in processed foods, it's largely in a lot of processed foods because the water used to process those foods is fluorinated. So when it's put in the body, it's going to act on every single cell. That's when the problems come, because fluoride is very similar to iodine, chlorine, bromine. These are called the halides. If you remember back to your, you know, high school chemistry class. They all sat next to each other. Fluoride's the bigger bully.

It's the biggest, like it's the biggest cousin of them all, and it bullies them all out. So fluoride acts on other things. The big one it acts on is thyroid function, because thyroid hormone is activated by iodine. Remember, it's one of the ones that fluoride bullies. So fluoride pushes it out. And the thyroid hormone, if you go have a test and now it looks like it's just fine, you have plenty of it.

It's been activated by fluoride, not iodine, and your thyroid actually can't use it. Your body can't use it. So, so many people have low thyroid symptoms, fatigue issues, thinning of their hair, like a lot of things like that, and, but their testing looks just fine. No, this is, it's starting to be called type two hypothyroidism because it's fluoride based.

In fact, in the 1970s, fluoride was given to people intentionally to decrease their thyroid function if they were hyperthyroidism to decrease their thyroid function. So now we have all these people who have low thyroid function, low energy, all these problems because of fluoride. That's problem number one.

Problem number two that you just said, you know, vitamin D, vitamin K. You talk about it for bone health. Guess what bones are made of as well? Hydroxyapatite. The same mineral. Well, it changes the structure of tooth. It changes the structure of bones, changes the density of bones, and makes them more brittle, more prone to fracture.

This is not okay. This is strike number two. Strike number three came out just in January, actually a new research article showing higher fluoride levels even in moms that birth children will lead to lower IQ levels in children, particularly male children. This was a brand new study January, 2025 that came out. So strike three for me. It decreases thyroid function. It decreases bone strength and it decreases IQ levels.

Leah: Wow.

Michelle: So if it were perfect and did none of that, but still didn't stop cavities, I don't know that I would even be for it. But it does all these bad things and it didn't stop cavities.

Leah: Sure.

Michelle: So a cavity is not a deficiency of fluoride. Fluoride being pulled from the tooth is not the reason you get a cavity. Minerals are the reason. A mineral being pulled from the tooth is the reason you get a cavity. It creates a hole in the tooth. When mineral leaves a hole is there, the bugs crawl into the hole.

They create more acid, they dissolve more minerals. The bugs crawl deeper, and that is what a cavity is. It's bacterial. It's bacterial infection, literally. So to resist decay, we need stronger teeth. We just need more minerals in our teeth. So thankfully now we have products that have hydroxyapatite.

Remember, that's what your teeth are made of. Let's just put back what was lost. So hydroxyapatite containing tooth products all across the board. Toothpaste, tooth powder, mouthwash. I have mints, like all of the above you can find now. You do not ever need fluoride again. There is no need for it. It causes too many side effects and it did not reduce, it did not stop tooth decay.

Let's just put back what was lost and talk about gut function and these other issues that actually lead to tooth decay. You don't need fluoride. What do you do when you go to the dentist? You tell them, no, thank you. Because honestly, that professional fluoride treatment that they're giving is topical. They're going to swallow a lot of it.

Leah: Yeah.

Michelle: At one time. It's not going to benefit you long term over a long haul. Just use hydroxyapatite products every single day. That's all you need. That's all you need. You do not need that professional treatment. It does not benefit you. So fluoride is out. In my world it’s out, but not in most dental worlds.

Leah: Absolutely right. Yeah. So fluoride out, minerals on and minerals in.

Michelle: both.

Leah: So, yep. For both of those. Absolutely. Love that. So yeah, it's such a, again, I like you see that progression, you the, it was good intentions. But like unintended side effects, as you said unintended consequences there. So we, so we just, we need to be educated, which is a big part of what you do. And then we make different decisions based on that education.

Addressing gum recession

Leah: So, okay. That was fluoride. So, another big question, and again, I think we can kind of wrap this into one fell swoop here is like, in general, as we age, aging takes a toll, I mean, on our bodies, but on our teeth as well. Our teeth are not exempt from that. Receding gums, that's a common thing that people get diagnosed with or hear about; dry mouth can affect some people.

I, I kind of mentioned at the beginning of the hour with perimenopause, that's a big transition women go through. So I guess, you know, in general, as we age, is there anything unique or special or things that we need to be thinking about differently to keep our mouths healthy, to keep those teeth healthy, to kind of prevent some of those like things that we just chalk up to old age?

Michelle: Yeah, there’s two different categories here. And one of them we've largely already tackled. Your teeth will stay well if you provide them the minerals they need period.

Leah: Okay, perfect.

Michelle: So you should not have tooth decay. You should not have, you know, things that are related to the tooth portion. Now, gum recession is another situation entirely. Gum recession is, the gums of the support structure for the tooth. So there are gums. The gum connecting to the bone and the tooth is called the periodontal ligament. So there's a ligament that connects the two together, and then there's the bone that holds the tooth in as well. Now, if the gum is affected by gum disease and about 70% of the population has some level of gum disease.

So this is very, very common. Why? And there's thousands of research articles showing the connection between gum disease and heart health and you know, leading to higher risk of high blood pressure and heart attacks and strokes and diabetes and low birth weight babies, and on and on and on and on.

I could just list a whole big old long list here. We need to make sure that the gum disease is under control, that there is no disease in those gums. So the first starting point is go to the dentist, and dentists actually are very proficient at diagnosing and treating gum disease. Thankfully, this is not anything out of the realm of normal dentistry.

So go and make sure that they're measuring the gums. What are they measuring? Well, if there is disease in those structures, the gums, the ligament, the bone, they will shrink away and shrink down the tooth. This is why you get gum recession. One of the reasons. I'm going to talk about the other reason though.

Is this disease? Is this gum disease that's leading to the gum recession to the gums shrinking away? Possibly. You know, there is gum disease in a lot of people, so possibly, so you, the dentist can help with this. The other thing that I recommend is balancing the biome, basically the bugs that are living in the mouth.

Oil pulling is something that has been used for thousands of years to do that. Does it work? It does. Does it take a lot of work? It does. I mean, it's swishing oil around for 15 minutes a day. 15 minutes doesn't sound like a lot, but it is, you know, it's a lot. So I actually have incorporated a prebiotic in my gum health mouthwash and a couple products that I have that actually feed good bacteria and starve bad bacteria.

That's the goal. We just want to keep that balance good in the mouth. So there are things that you can do to do that. So that's question number one. Do I have gum disease? Is that what is leading to the gum recession? If the answer is no. If your gums are completely healthy, there is no disease in any of those supporting structures.

Then the next thing we look at is the way the teeth come together. Because if the teeth when biting are flexing, rather than hitting straight up and down, if they're flexing, it will lead to a kind of a flex point in the tooth and the gum will move down to find a more solid place to attach to. So sometimes you'll see recession just on teeth that touch each other, like one right on top of the other, and you go, oh, why do I just have recession here?

That's because of the way they hit together. So this may actually require some reshaping of those teeth slightly, or even orthodontic movement. But another huge one is sleeping issues. If someone is not getting enough air at night, what happens is when the body goes into deep sleep mode, all the muscles relax, including the muscles that hold the airway open, hold basically the space open for you to get enough air.

So if you have a small mouth, if you have a crowded mouth, if you have a tongue tie, if you have things, if you have swelling in the back of your mouth because of a failed root canal, something going on, when your body goes into that deep sleep relaxed mode, all of those tissues fall back and block your ability to breathe and your body says, I'm going to die unless you do something.

So you squeeze your teeth. You grind your teeth sometimes even, and it engages all those muscles and pops the airway open, and now you're breathing fine, but it also takes you immediately out of deep sleep. So if you are grinding, clenching, tossing and turning, wake up, your, you know, your, the bed clothes, like all your sheets and things look like a tornado hit, you are not sleeping.

You are not getting what you need at nighttime. And most likely it has to do with the space that you have in your mouth. This kind of grinding and clenching can lead to overall gum recession. So you have to look at the way the teeth are fitting together. Is there enough room to breathe?

Do I have these other symptoms? Am I waking up fatigued all the time, even though I felt like I slept? You've got to look and see, is this actually a sleeping and airway problem? So disease. If that's not disease, then you have to look at the way the teeth are hitting. Or am I actually breathing enough? Getting enough air?

Leah: Wow. Yeah. Connecting, yeah, those airways, how you sleep, all of that to what's going on with the gums again, like who, who would've thought?

Michelle: Yep.

What are the benefits of oil pulling?

Leah: Yeah. Amazing. Let me, just before we wrap up, let me drive us back to that oil pulling really quick because that was one question that did come in. Can you just tell us a little bit more about that? Like right way, wrong way; are there were just like any little specific tips about like how you go about doing the oil pulling? Because I, like you said, if there is that disease piece with the gums, the oil pulling could be one option. And I know we talk a lot about like coconut oil with our clients and, and using good fats and oils and stuff like that. But just hit on that point a little bit more for me.

Michelle: Yep, so oil pulling has been around for thousands of years in Ayurveda, so it's been used in India for forever. And actually there are some studies showing that it has an effect beyond just the mouth. I think it's actually great if you want to do it.

What you do is you take a tablespoon, maybe sometimes a little less than a tablespoon of oil. You can use a bunch of different oils. I like coconut oil the best because it's the least flavorful. Sesame oil is another, but sesame oil has a lot of flavor to it. So coconut oil is fairly mild.

You're going to take maybe, half tablespoon to a tablespoon of oil, you're going to put it in your mouth and you're just going to swish it around. It takes a bit for it to actually liquefy, but you're just going to swish it and you want to pull it through the teeth.

You need to swish it around for 10 to 15 minutes, which sounds like a long time. So you don't just need to stand there looking at yourself in the mirror while you're doing this. You can walk around, unload the dishwasher, you know, whatever.

Leah: Yep.

Michelle: Whatever you need to do, do it during the shower, excuse me, but do not spit it down the drain if you're the shower. After you're done rinsing, you know, after you're done pulling, you're going to spit it into a tissue. Throw that away for a couple of different reasons. Well, number one, you don't want to clog your drains.

That's the biggest reason. But also that oil is full of bugs, like it's really disgusting. So throw it away, spit it out, throw it away on a tissue. What is it doing? Every single bacteria, virus, whatever it is in your mouth, is actually surrounded by fats. That's just the structure of them. So it has this, what's called a fatty membrane on the outside.

So when you put fats in your mouth, the fat in the coconut oil will attract the fat in the outside of the membrane of the bacteria and will literally pull it. So it's going to be pulling bacteria from all the nooks and crannies in the mouth. This is why it's beneficial because just brushing only reaches where you could brush.

Rinsing even reaches less, but oil pulling sometimes will get into some of the nooks and crannies where bacteria are living. So you're pulling it out from all of those places and you're spitting it out. I recommend doing it for five days in a row. Because you're really wanting to kind of get things balanced, and then at that point you're in maintenance mode.

You only need to do about every third day. So five days in a row, get on top of it, and then about every third day at the top of that. If you have tartar on your teeth, however, you're not going to be able to get all the bacteria out. So tartar’s the hard crusty stuff that gets on there. I like to think of it as condos for the bacteria.

So you have to actually bulldoze the condos, which the dentist is going to have to help you with. You got to get rid of the condos and then you can get rid of all the bugs. You can't evict the bugs unless the houses are gone. So make sure you get the teeth cleaned. And then oil pulling is going to be really efficient and effective.

Leah: Awesome. Yeah, I love that analogy. The condos and everything. So like you said, it's like just still go to the dentist. They're going to help you clean that part off, so…

Michelle: Yep.

Leah: Okay. Well this was awesome. You know, as we wrap up the show for today, is there anything new you're working on that gets you excited or anything you have your eyes on in the horizon in the field of dentistry or, or even homesteading? I know we didn't really talk too much about the homesteading piece with you. Just anything that's kind of on your radar that you're excited about?

Michelle: Yes, I've been filming; it's called The Living Well with Dr. Michelle Show, and it's actually here on site at the homestead, as well as other places. We're patterning after Mr. Rogers, you know, Mr. Rogers; he had things that you would do every time you would learn how, and then you would go places and learn how things were made.

And so we're doing that. We've filmed two episodes released the 1st of January, I believe January 6th. So watch for that on YouTube. What we're doing is we are really focusing, episode one is all about vitamin C. What is vitamin C? You know, I do the science behind what actually is it; very simply. And then I show you three recipes how to incorporate it every single day in your life.

We go to the store, I show you how to pick the best citrus, to get the most juice, and I tell you about things like, how the zest of the citrus actually has the most vitamin C in it, so how do you incorporate that into a meal? That's what we're doing. I'm showing you what living well looks like and how you incorporate into your everyday life. So please go check it out on YouTube: Living Well with Dr. Michelle, and every two weeks it's going to be seasonal. How do you keep yourself well seasonally using what the earth provides and what you can just simply do at home on your own, for you and your family and friends, whomever else it is. What does it look like to actually live well?

Leah: Yeah, I look, I am super excited about that. I can't wait to tune in and kind of keep tabs on that new project and stuff like that. Awesome. Yeah, super excited about that. And then anything else in terms of like, where else can we find, you know, you mentioned some of your products, we mentioned your dentistry practice, Total Care Dentistry out in Utah, which you know, is not, it's a little hop, skip, and a jump here from Minnesota.

Not too bad. You know, you take a good, couple of day trip, we can go out and see you. But also could you work in, like if people don't want to travel to you, like how do we actually find professionals that kind of like similar mindset to you or like do things similar to, you know, do work like you do?

Michelle: Yes, absolutely. So products, you're going to find that livingwellwithdrmichelle.com. You're also going to find all sorts of free info on there. So go check out the blog posts, I mean, all sorts of things. If you're interested in the baking soda test I talked about, there's info on there. There's a gut health test you can take.

There's a remineralization guide. I mean, all this stuff's for free, so go check it out on that website. If you are looking for dentistry, yes, you can come here to Utah: totalcaredental.com, or on that same website, livingwellwithdrmichelle.com, I have a directory and these are dentists that have been vetted by me all around the world actually.

So go on that directory. It's free to you for you as a patient to go and find somebody that's closer to home for you. So please go on there. Those are dentists that are doing things the right way, and then all the socials, so just come check it out.

I'm always doing fun stuff. I have good information on there everywhere. It's Living Well Dr. Michelle, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. Make sure to tune in. January 6th we're doing the show. You're going to love it. I think you're just really going to enjoy learning how to live well every single day because that is my mission.

Leah: Yep. And it, I, let me tell you, I think it's a mission well done. And I know there's more to come, but I think you're a great follow on social media. So much fun and interesting information. Again, bite size, it's digestible. You walk away with those very actionable things. So lots of different free resources.

We appreciate that. And like you said, go on that directory. If there's any listeners here that are local here in the Midwest, Minnesota, anything like that. If you're just looking for somebody kind of in that similar pathway or kind of have that holistic mindset. Check out that directory so that, you can get connected with someone like that too.

So, Dr. Michelle, I really appreciate the opportunity to have met you via video here today. But I just to get a chance to pick your brain, get to chat with you, and just introduce your work to our audience. I think it was a long time coming. I'm glad we were able to make it work today.

And again, you put out so much free, wonderful content for even our listeners. And so, you know, if they didn't get their questions answered from the show today that we did, I'm sure there's at least a couple dozen articles or something that they could find from your resources to get their questions answered.

So I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to chat with us to share everything in that big, beautiful brain of yours and we appreciate it and hope you have a great rest of your holiday season.

Michelle: You too. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Leah: Yes, very good. Our goal at Nutritional Weight & Wellness is to provide each and every person with practical real life solutions for everyday health through eating real food. It's a simple, yet powerful message that eating real food, it’s life changing, and we'll talk to you all next time.