How Dental Health Affects Brain Health​

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Porter. It is a pleasure to be here.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

Yeah, well, great. First of all, what changed in your thinking that said, hey, I’m not gonna follow the mainstream dental world. I’m gonna figure out what’s going on with somebody’s mouth and why it’s affecting their brain and their body, just their overall health. What caused that to happen?

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

I came out of dental school and it was really, I have to be honest, there was something inside me that said, you know, most dentists are mechanics of teeth. It was like drill ’em, fill ’em, bill ’em. Maybe thrill ’em a little bit, but mostly grill ’em and fill ’em, you know. The thought of being a mechanic of teeth after all the education that I had seemed so unnatural to me, and that propelled me. It was one of my classmates said to me, you know, they’re starting this masters program. It was 1983, they’re starting a masters program in holistic health. 

And I looked at him and I was like, what’s a holistic health? And he goes, oh, that’s when we look at everything, in the body, we look at different systems of medicine and this and that. It was a two-year program. It was started by, really, a pioneering chiropractor in New York, Alan Pressman in 1983, put this program together, and it was all about what would be called integrative medicine and integrative nutrition. And I got exposed to so many different types of medicine that was so important in helping somebody be well. And so that began the track for me from 1983, to begin to think differently. But I always say, I was still in the closet about being a holistic doctor, because I didn’t want to be looked at as a cuckoo quack by my colleagues. 

So, as a clinical professor, I was teaching at NYU, a clinical associate professor. And I then came across Harvard Medical School in 1996, and ’97, did programs on a complimentary and alternative medicine. So it was like complimentary medicine. And I said, yeah, I need to know more about that. And went up to a Deaconess Hospital up in Boston. And it was, Dr. David Eisenberg was giving these programs. There were a lot of different medical people there. I was the only dentist. Again, I was like the guy who was like, what am I doing here? And they were all like, what are you doing here? So, I then took that knowledge and that information and I said, you can not have a healthy body if you don’t have a healthy mouth. 

So you could try to fix the gut. You could try to reverse Alzheimer’s, you can try to detox, but you really can’t, if 90% of toxicity in the human body comes from the mouth. So, I’ve really, honestly Patrick, I’ve dedicated the last 20 years of my life, maybe 25 years of my life to trying to bring the wall down. And we are now bringing the wall down between dentistry and medicine that went up 150 years ago. 150 years ago, they said, if you want to study just this part of the body, we’ll send you to a dental school, but it’s not connected to all of this. And so in Europe where biologic medicine had its beginnings and roots, that’s where if you wanted to become a dentist, you went to medical school first, and then you sub-specialize. Like a heart specialist, a neurologist, a gastroenterologist or anything else.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

Right. Yeah, my brother-in-law’s actually an MD dentist. So he did that. He went to medical school first, then he became a maxillofacial surgeon.

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

That’s fantastic. Yeah, that’s fantastic. I have an MD DDS across the hall from me, is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon. And there’s a much better foundation, especially when you’re doing this massive surgery in this area, you know, two inches from your brain.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

That’s amazing what they can do today, like rebuilding jaws and things like that, I’ve seen from car accidents. But let’s talk about the 800 pound gorilla. You talk about this 800 pound gorilla that’s in the wellness space. Tell us a little bit about what you mean by that.

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

Yeah, it’s so funny. My first slide in all my lectures is always this 800 pound gorilla on a cell phone. And I was like, oral health is often left out and it’s the 800 pound gorilla in the room. In other words, as I said, 90% of toxicity in the human body, 90% of chronic inflammation, gum disease is the body’s number one source of chronic low grade inflammation. 

And that causes the propagation of harmful bacteria, resident bacteria in the mouth that flip a pathogenic switch and they pass the blood brain barrier. One of them is porphyromonas gingivalis. It’s a very common bacteria. It’s the number one bacteria related to gum disease, crosses the blood-brain barrier. It’s in your brain, and it actually forms these, they call them gingipains, and gingipains destroy nerve cells and leads to progression of Alzheimer’s. And then you have a dentist putting mercury in and they call it, oh, we’re gonna put a silver filling in there. But in actuality, it’s 52% mercury.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

And tell us, you were talking to me a little bit before the recording about mercury. ‘Cause I didn’t even realize that. I mean, I had some dental work done with mercury fillings were being removed and I don’t get headaches ever, but for a couple of days I got headaches and I did a detox because I figured something happened.

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

And I’m glad you did.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

Tell us a little bit of what’s going on.

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

Yeah, that’s essential to do that. And that’s one of the things that everyone listening to this podcast should know. And I’m really excited Patrick, to leave the listeners and viewers with five major things they should do for their dental health. I’m gonna save that till the end, so they listen.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

All right, that sounds great.

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

But the reality is, is that the unsafe removal of dental amalgam which is 52% mercury, causes a huge, a huge amount of exposure. And so there is a very strict protocol and a fellow biologic dentist, a friend of mine created something called a SMART certification for all dentists, removing amalgam. It’s safe mercury amalgam removal technique. So ask your dentist if he’s smart, SMART certified, because that is the proper protocol to prevent not only you from being exposed to an unsafe level of mercury, but the dentist, the staff. 

Mercury vapor, when you stick a drill to a dental amalgam, it creates a cloud of mercury vapor. It’s invisible, tasteless and odorless, and it rapidly passes the blood-brain barrier. And so headaches, fatigue, nervousness, gut problems, cognitive decline, all of these are symptoms of mercury toxicity, but there are actually about 10 symptoms of mercury toxicity that are the exact same symptoms of the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. So I find it really interesting that the neurotoxic effects of dental mercury and the cognitive decline and everything else that goes on, depression, all of the things that happen as signs and symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, many of them correlate. 

When I came out of dental school in 1983, dentists had the highest rate of suicide and depression. And I was like, wow. So yes, it is intense. They work in little places and they have to be perfectionistic, but they’re exposed to so much toxicity. Number one, I believe the number one external toxicity is mercury and heavy metals.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

Wow. Well, tell us a little bit… We’ve heard from other doctors about the gut biome and things like that, but you’re talking about The Human Biome Project. How has that radically changed how we think about, whether it be dentistry, gut health, brain health, Alzheimer’s disease? Give us the scoop on that.

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

Yeah, The Human Microbiome Project launched in 2002 and it was really a major deep dive, kind of like Jacques. Remember Jacques Cousteau and the underwater. He invented scuba diving. It is really the kind of thing that, it opened our eyes to a whole new universe. It was a Star Trek adventure when we started to understand that the bacteria in and on our bodies outnumbers our human cells by 10 to one. And the genetic information from those microbes is some estimates, 100 to one. What’s also interesting is that we realize that we’re, so we are in essence walking bacteria containers. 

But we’re really a compositive species. So these bacteria, for example, in the gut will produce neurotransmitters for the brain. So if you are depressed, you may have an imbalance of a neurotransmitter because of your gut being messed up and not having that type of production. The other thing is that in the mouth, the biggest aha moment in my research with the oral microbiome, and this led me in 2006, I established a research wing at New York University, Curatola Wing For Clinical Research, because I was passionate about looking at translational research, how one thing connects from one area to another. 

In the mouth, an imbalance, what we realized is that everything we were trying to do in the mouth was wrong. The bacteria in the mouth performed vital functions. They keep us alive. When the oral microbiome is imbalanced, these bacteria transport minerals from saliva to the surfaces of your teeth to re-mineralize your teeth. It transports oxygen to the gums. And I use my hands a lot because I’m Italian-

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

Yeah, that’s fine. I didn’t tell everyone you were from New York, but now they know, so.

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

I use my hands. So, I sit on my hands. Patrick, if I sit on my hands, I can’t talk. So it takes molecular oxygen that’s in the air to the gums and it takes ionic oxygen or what we call free radicals and waste products away from the gum. So there’s this, the bacteria in your mouth actually protect you, aid in digestion, protect you from deadly viruses and bacteria in the environment around us. And it’s an important regulatory function. By trying to kill it, it’s like killing a coral reef protecting an island. 

So the Listerine, kill germs on contact and, you know, xylitol kills bacteria that cause gum disease are all of this stuff. So whether it’s natural chemicals, natural herbal oils, that are anti-microbial or they’re synthetic chemicals like triclosan, which we put into the number one brand of toothpaste for 20 years or 40 years, we really have a major problem when we’re trying to eradicate something, that’s basically keeping us alive. So, what we learned through that human microbiome exploration is that many diseases that we have, like psoriasis is a microbiome imbalance on the skin. 

Ulcers are an imbalance, you know, an overgrowth of H. pylori and this and that. In the mouth, it’s the imbalance that causes disease and inflammation, which is linked to Alzheimer’s. It’s not a specific bug that flew in your mouth and set up shop and caused a problem.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

That’s awesome. Well, we’re talking with Dr. Curatola who actually funded the wing. I was gonna talk about that earlier, but you’ve had 20 years experience. So you’re not just sitting in a dental lab, working with. You’re working with people. You have a research wing. You actually have patents. So tell us a little bit about, you know, when you’re sitting there working with people and you’re thinking, do you see a problem? You go, how can I invent something different? What goes on in your mind that has you thinking like a dentist inventor? There’s not too many of them. So tell us a little bit about that.

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

And I’m so glad you asked that. That’s such a terrific question. What goes through my mind when I look in someone’s mouth? Because I often have patients tell me, no one ever, no dentist ever looked at my mouth like that before. Like for example, I will look in the mouth and I’ll see cavities. And my first thought is, why? Why is their microbiome out of balance that’s causing them to be so cavity prone? And many of them say I was cavity prone my whole life. So they’ve had this imbalance in the microbial flora for all that time, or they have a high vaulted palate. Their tongue is tied down. Their face is narrow. They have a crowded mouth and they’re… And I’m like, you breathe and sleep at night, and that puts you at risk of stroke, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, high blood pressure, even bedwetting is related to airway disease. 

And in children, it’s hyperactivity disorder and bedwetting. And adults, they just get up and go to the bathroom a lot in the night because they’re not breathing. And their bladder loses continence because the brain is looking for places to get oxygen because they’re not getting it from in the mouth. So these are the kinds of things. And they’re like, oh my God, no dentist ever even remotely looked at that. The number one source of obstructive sleep apnea is upper airway resistance in the mouth. So in the mouth, the orthodontist pulled teeth, made the jaw smaller, and it’s basically like a friend of mine, Dr. Felix Liao wrote a book, “10-Foot Tiger, Three-Foot Cage.” I think it’s “10-Foot Tiger, Three-Foot Cage.” 10-Foot tiger is your tongue, the three-foot cage is your mouth. 

And that imbalance causes the tongue to sit further back in your throat, which is like a rubber stopper in a bottle suffocating you at night. And it can be corrected by just a dental appliance that expands the arch, opens the airway, releasing the tongue-tie. And we even do things like myofunctional therapy. It’s a form almost like speech therapy to correct the tongue position and posture in the mouth. So these are the kinds of things that I always look for. I look for root causes of disease, and that’s the biologic orientation, biologic dentistry, which is a cousin of biologic medicine. We look for root causes of disease in the mouth. And my commitment and my research in the microbiome help me to understand there’s a lot of dentists are still in the bug killing mentality. They’re still like, you gotta kill those bacteria. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill. You got an infection. Kill those bacteria. And you know what? Infections result, if you go to the root cause, from an imbalance in the microbial flora, which reduces your immune response. 

You have a reduction in the immune response. It makes you more prone to type two diabetes, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s, and even cancer, many types of cancer. Prostate, pancreatic, the number one tumor. A number one bacteria in colorectal tumors is fusobacterium nucleatum, the most common bacteria in the mouth. And in a balanced microbiome, it is not problematic. When it goes out of balance because of bad diet, bad oral care products, which we’ll talk about, I spent 20 years studying the microbiome and created a formulation called Revitin, R-E-V-I-T-I-N. Revitin.com, that product you can basically eat and swallow. It’s a toothpaste that you can swallow. It reduces inflammation. 

We’ve done blind clinical studies. And every doctor that works on a clinical research project with this is like, I can’t believe how quickly this works. All Revitin does is respect the natural flora in the mouth. So these are the kinds of things. So yeah, I haven’t been drilling, filling and billing. I’ve been trying to do more than that for a long time.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

Yeah, no, that’s great. I was just gonna ask about, you know, when you go to the dentist and they always check for, do you have a one or four, you know, blood or gum line or whatever. So, there’s seems to be an epidemic of people. I talked to people. Their gums are bleeding all over the place. Tell us a little bit about what’s going on, and then how does that lead to Alzheimer’s Disease?

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

This is so good. That’s a great, great question. So there’s a condition that has existed for the past year 1/2 called Mask Now. We had this public policy on mask and I understand the reasons for it. But what wearing a mask does. And there’s a lot of infectious microbes out there besides coronavirus. And I believe that the biggest message of the coronavirus pandemic is to take inventory of your health and be your doctor, be your primary care provider by starting to take charge nutritionally. I have cornerstones of oral health that have the same cornerstones for a healthy body and we can talk about that in a few minutes. 

But the most important lesson to me, of the people that succumbed to the coronavirus were people that had comorbidities that would not diagnose like airway disease, which we just spoke about and other undiagnosed systemic problems, hypertension, and diabetes, which by the way, are related to airway disease. So airway disease, just to quickly fill in a blank that I didn’t prior, it forces you to breathe through your mouth and you can’t breathe through your nose. So you have upper airway resistance here because of your palate may be highlight that, constricting your ability to breathe through this triangle. So it’s like that. So it’s one of the top five things that I think everyone should do, is get a sleep study and get evaluated for obstructive sleep apnea. Very, very important. Secondarily, I think it’s really important for everyone to get a, what we call a CBCT, a cone beam. 

It’s called a cone beam. A cone-beam computed tomography. It is a 3d of your whole head and neck. We could see all kinds of stealth infections. And there are people walking around with a lot of stealth infections in the mouth. So mass mouth, what you were speaking about, everybody’s gums are bleeding. I was “The Doctors TV Show.” I was on “Good Morning America.” I was on AOL Health and Huffington Post, all of these. MSN. And then I tried to raise the alarm for people to have better hygiene during the pandemic ’cause they weren’t gonna their dentist for it cleaning. So we had a perfect Molotov cocktail, Molotov cocktail for a gum disease and tooth decay, by this imbalance in the microbiome that was occurring. 

So I was literally giving Revitin toothpaste out and tell him, rub it on your gums. Leave it on when you go to sleep to help stop the bleeding, reduce the inflammation. And it was important people were not changing their mask. They were wearing their mask for a long time. Then we had this really ridiculous thing of, oh no, don’t wear one mask. Wear two masks and three masks. And the reality is it raised levels of carbon dioxide. They were not getting enough oxygen. It caused a gross imbalance of the oral microbiome, and that imbalance caused the production of pathogenic activity, leading to gum disease and tooth decay. And just yesterday I had a patient, never had cavities and they’ve got three gum line cavities, the bleeding gums. But now let’s just take one minute to connect the dots of the gum disease to Alzheimer’s disease, the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. 

If you have gum disease, you dramatically increase your chances of all kinds of cognitive issues, including the onset of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, all kinds of cerebral vascular disorders. And the reason is inflammation, chronic low grade inflammation. So you get the main bacteria that goes from benign to harmful is porphyromonas gingivalis and fusobacterium nucleatum which carries P. gingivalis on its back. So fusobacterium nucleatum are actually worse. We call them F. nucleatum. They’re the big bully when they’re pissed off. And that’s what happens. Think of it as happy, happy, happy, and then they’re mistreated, and it turns into “Gangs of New York.” 

It really is. And often in my lectures, Patrick, I show pictures of beautiful brownstones in Brooklyn, New York and how they’re all nicely kept and the lawns of mowed and the cars clean in the driveway, and everybody takes care of. And, you know, my father used to tell me about growing up in Brooklyn and parts of Brooklyn, where it was an incredibly diverse community. You had Italian and Jewish and German and African-American and Chinese and all kinds of diversity. And everyone, there was kind of a code of respect and people, most of them were immigrants and they took care of, and they were very proud and took care of what was there. And then we had an environmental conditions and environmental economic policies like welfare and things like that, that started to breed an unhealthy economic environment, where there were people leaving that community. And I showed, the second slide is all these burnt out brownstones, burned out cars on the street and gangs roaming around and cracked vials and yada yada yada. 

Well, how did it go from that to that? And the answer is, it was a change in what naturopathic doctors call the terrain. So think of our mouth as a terrain. When we do not respect that terrain, when we do not nurture and support that terrain and our diet is terrible, we don’t exercise. Believe it or not, exercise is important for the mouth as well as the body. It’s very important for circulatory and immune system competence. Even the fluid flow in the tubules of the teeth are affected by exercise. 

Stress, controlling stress. This was a major thing during the shutdown. So you had people wearing a mask and then they’re freaked out. They’re in what’s called a sympathetic mode of their autonomic nervous system, which is often called fight or flight. And what that does is that causes saliva to dry up, which leads to tooth decay and gum disease. And now you have, this is connected to this. If there is one super important thing I can share with you, and I’m so happy you had a dentist on, because this is really connected to this. And I’d like to, you know, when we finish, I can go through the five steps that people need to take to make sure this is happy, because when it’s unhappy, those microbes that are helping you, now they flip a pathogenic switch and they are harming you.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

We need to get you on with, some good friends of mine started a magazine called “Dental Sleep,” the “Dental Sleep” magazine.

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

Fantastic.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

And they interviewed me and now they promote BrainTap because people wearing appliances can’t get used to them. So we created a series where they put the brain cap on and get used to wearing the air. But one thing I didn’t know, and maybe our listeners didn’t know is that dentists can do these take-home sleep labs if they want. So tell us a little bit. What do you recommend? You’re talking about getting this palette thing fixed.

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

Yeah, no, let’s talk about that because that’s important because the primary go-to for medical doctors has been CPAP and BrainTap helps them to get used to this ’cause most people, they get claustrophobic and they don’t want to wear it. And they may have a severe airway obstruction, but there are long-term problems with wearing CPAP because it is a forced air. So CPAP mandibular advancement appliances that pulls the lower jaw forward to open the airway is another thing. These are two systems that treat the symptom and not the cause. It doesn’t correct the architecture. 

As a matter of fact, long-term CPAP use actually stretches because it’s forcing air along the windpipe. It stretches the tissues and the muscles so that they become more flacid when you’re not forcing air in, kind of like a balloon, you blow up too many times. So I have a lot of concerns about CPAP, long-term CPAP wear. It’s dangerous, because if they don’t wear it, they’re a real sitting duck. Let’s say they go away and they don’t want to take the CPAP with them. Now they’re a real sitting duck. They’re worse than they were. The mandibular advancement appliances, which I tried years ago actually stress the TMJ, and they have been known to, as they bring the mandible forward, you get a maxillary intrusion. 

So it kind of affects the orthopedic relationship of the teeth in an adverse way and putting stress on the joint. So there’s Dr. David saying, and the company is called Vivos. And they had, he came up with a brilliant appliance that actually opens and expands the airway so that the tongue has room. In other words, “10-Foot Tiger, Three-Foot Cage.” We want a three-foot tiger. We want a 10-foot tiger, 10-foot cage rather. And so what we want to do is open that airway. It actually helps relieve the TMJ and a lot of people stop clenching and grinding as well because they’re getting the oxygen they need. 

A tongue-tie is so easy to correct. We use a laser to do it, and it is essential for proper tongue posture. Really tongue should rest forward against the inside backs of the upper front teeth. And a lot of people, the tongue is in the back of their throat, and we see it all the time. Just so everyone knows there’s over a billion people on the planet suffering with undiagnosed, obstructive sleep apnea. So everyone should get, and we’ll talk about it. Everyone should get a sleep study. They’re easy to do now. It’s a little disposable kit you can get sent to you and go home. We do virtual consults constantly with patients about their airway and their sleep study. We do that and we do something called a CBCT review. We can analyze their CBCT and actually show patients virtually in a Zoom like this. And we could also review, we have a respiratory therapist review as a sleep study, and we can review that, then we have a good idea of what is going on. 

The actual treatment is nonsurgical. Most of the time it is nonsurgical. And with the exception of the releasing the tongue-tie, which is a laser minor surgical procedure, the actual expansion of the arch is done with a series of appliances that is a nonsurgical. Stimulates production of stem cells in the maxilla and mandible. So you get this wonderful correction directed therapy without it being obtrusive and it’s a removable appliance as well.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

That’s great. We’re here talking with Dr. Gerald who is the Dentist of The Year in 2021 in New York. So that’s a pretty big getting out there. So you’ve had a lot of accolades. You’ve been out there a lot. You’ve seen things come and go. Let’s get the rubber meeting the road here. What are the five dental tips you can give our listening audience that can help them prevent and reverse, maybe even cognitive decline, because that’s why we’re here. So, let’s give him some action steps on what they can do.

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

Great. The top sources, dental inflammation, and toxicity, chronic oral inflammation and toxicity, which is closely correlated with the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Number one, heavy metals. Heavy metals, bad. Number two, gum disease. Gum disease is that . I would call those two a tie. So gum disease is chronic low grade inflammation. Porphyromonas gingivalis crosses the blood brain barrier with fusobacterium nucleatum. And it causes the production of things like gingipains and the production of amyloid plaques, and destruction of nerve tissue, nerve cells, all that. Right. 

Third thing that I didn’t speak about where these stealth infections in the jaw called cavitations. Cavitations are really interesting because with the advance of new technology like CBCT, we actually have started to observe that where people have their wisdom teeth out, the bone never healed. And 1931, an orthopedic surgeon called that a cavitation. It’s like a hole in the jaw. A cavity is a whole in the tooth. It’s also called jaw osteonecrosis. Cavitational osteonecrosis. What’s the significance of this? It is a source of chronic inflammation, and it can store a host of pathogens from parasites, mold, candida and yes, even heavy metals. So cavitations, it’s important to know if you have them. 

The heavy metals are not just in mercury fillings. There are crowns that have metal in them, and that metal could be nickel or even lead. There are airway. We spoke about airway as well. So those are the top things that, you know, have very significant impacts on the health of your brain and the health of your body. So the five things that everyone should do. Number one, CBCT. It’s a 3d scan. A trained biologic dentists can read it. We do virtual consults all the time for this type of thing. Home sleep study. Home sleep study. Really important. Ruling out and seeing if you have any level, and the home sleep study gives you any level of airway insufficiency or upper airway resistance, leading and primary cause of obstructive sleep apnea, home sleep study. Third thing, get your cap, get your metal fillings removed, in my opinion. If there are open margins, especially which many of these amalgams do have that, I recommend safe removal. If you do have amalgam fillings removed, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to do it safely. Same thing with metal crowns. We actually treat metal crowns as unknowns because there’s nickel. We get them analyzed all the time. There’s nickel in there and that kind of thing. 

Treating your cavitations. I think that’s important because those are a source of chronic inflammation. And the fifth thing that you should definitely do is go in your medicine cabinet. And I have to sound like the guy on network. I want you to go to your window and say, I’m mad as hell. I’m not gonna take it anymore. Go to your medicine cabinet and get out the detergent toothpaste. That disturbs the microbiome, right? We have an epidemic of gum disease, and gum disease, study after study, connecting it to Alzheimer’s disease. 

Go to your medicine cabinet, get the junk out of the trunk. Alcohol-based mouthwash, a chemical toothpaste, read the ingredients on your tube of Crest. There’s everything from propylene glycol to saccharin, which has long been used many years ago, is linked to cancer and mice and everything else. Aspartame, all this junk, and even your natural toothpaste. If it has xylitol, get rid of it. It’s disturbing and denaturing to the oral and gut microbiome, which is why xylitol causes wicked intestinal gas and diarrhea in the gut. But the body doesn’t know what to do with it. It’s a high value chemical. It’s not a natural sugar. It may come from pretty birch bark, but it is not a natural sugar. So those are the kinds of things. Those are the top five that I would say, Patrick, are really important, and that should help people on their path to really having an Ayurvedic medicine. They say, you cannot have a quote unquote, clean body without a clean mouth. And that’s not a detergent, you know, kill everything, that is clean living, healthy, balanced, clean system.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

Right. I want to just talk just a little bit more about a couple of items before we let you go, if you have a few minutes here. Number one is that you invented this technology using prebiotics. So, some people don’t even know what biotics are. But why would they need a prebiotic and how can they find this Revertol .

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

Revitin or Revitin. Revitin, Revitin. My son-in-law’s French. He says Revitin. So, your first question was prebiotics, and what are prebiotics versus probiotics? There’s a lot of attention being played to, in the world of the microbes, and I really want to thank the Dannon Yogurt company because they did all these commercials on healthy bacteria in yogurt. Because prior to that, I had been working on Revitin for years, as a way to promote what we call microbial homeostasis. Balance the microbiome. 

The body does this amazing thing, and this is all these, a core fundamental principle of biologic medicine, that our bodies have this divine life force, and we call it spirit. In our data, they call it prana. In Chinese medicine, they call it chi. But we have this amazing divine life force that gives us this God given ability to self-regulate and heal when we respect the body. So the way we do that in the mouth, is we promote microbial homeostasis. Probiotics don’t work in the mouth because the mouth, what I like to say is, the mouth microbiome makes it very inhospitable for pro and con biotics to set up shop. In the gut, probiotics are more effective, but now we’re even moving away from that. So probiotics are more effective in the gut, and so is salmonella and E. coli or any other kind of con, pro and con biotic. 

In the mouth, the oral microbiome basically protects you from all foreign bacteria. So we tried using probiotics in the mouth. As far as the 70s, they just didn’t work. So there was a couple of companies recently that jumped on the probiotic craze and said, oh, we have probiotics in here. We have probiotics in here, we have probiotics in here. And it was really, you know, if you look at clinical research, which they didn’t really have much, there was virtually no effect from probiotics. Prebiotics are ingredients that nourish and support the indigenous microbiome, which is as unique as our thumbprint. So you and I have similarities in the microbes in our mouth, but there are differences that are as unique as your thumbprint and my thumbprint. Prebiotics are where it’s at. 

We’re looking at spore biotics, which tend to have better stability, and they have an effect of looking at bacteria phages, which are almost like many viruses that attack harmful bacteria. Lots of interesting things going on in the microbial world. But I designed Revitin a natural product that you can eat. And it’s loaded with vitamin C, cocuten, vitamin E, vitamin D3 and K2. And then it’s got minerals and prebiotics like cranberry seed oil. Xanthan Gum is made from bacteria. These are prebiotic nutrients that are in a Revitin, and it is safe to swallow, which most toothpaste, including natural mint, most natural toothpaste is not.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

So you can go to R-E-V-I-T-I-N.com. I just went there and I saw the doctor. You’re right there on that page. So you can go there, you can buy the product. Try it out. I know that a lot is linked to, we were talking before, I’ve been to a lot of conferences now, and people are starting to wake up about the mouth. We talked about how, and maybe you just want to comment just in partying because I thought it was an interesting fact, you know, factoid that we might leave them with. But your teeth are actually linked to all the different organs. 

A doctor did a talk at the Natural Medicine Conference that I go to every year in Las Vegas in August, I was blown away because every condition somebody had, he would say, he would have a look at their mouth. They either had a filling, or they had a cavity, or they had something going on and it correlated with that part of the. So tell us a little bit about how that works, ’cause I know holistically you’re talking about it, but I mean, this is actually, physically it’s linked.

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

Yeah, it is linked. And what’s interesting is that this is like ancient wisdom and modern science coming together because you hear a lot of speak about, a lot of talks about the field, the body’s field. We have this electromagnetic field that extends a foot and a half from our body, which we never spoke about. That’s actually, it’s a spiritual field. That’s really where the spirit is. And it’s funny because we always thought like spirit, oh, that’s religious. That goes back, you know, that’s in church. You talk about your spirit, The Holy Spirit, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The reality is, no, no that spirit is a real thing. We are mind, body, spirit. And you are, I know as a doctor yourself, and I so appreciate all the work you’re doing with brainstem and all that. And when I went and checked it all out, I was really fascinated by your research and your work. But in this field is where we see energetic meridians, right. 

Now, Chinese medicine talked about this for thousands of years, right, that there are meridians in the body. But what they found is that your teeth actually have meridians to organ systems. I guess the best way to look at it is this. Your teeth are like circuit breakers for your energetic immune system. So if you flip a breaker, let’s say you had a root canal on an upper first molar, and a friend of mine in Texas, Dr. Stewart not only did a meta analysis of like 400 women who had breast cancer, and he found an unbelievably high number that had breast cancer that had a root canal on one side of the other side. Very often the side they had the root canal correlated with the side that the breast cancer was found on. And you have people, like canal is a procedure we could probably talk for another hour 1/2 about. But suffice it to say that when you have a blockage, an energetic block that’s created by inflammation and root canal produces endotoxins. So do metal implants. So do cavitations. 

So do heavy metals. They are an energetic block. And what we see with an infection around a tooth, it’s like Star Trek and The Enterprise, you know, when Scotty had the shields up and the Klingons would fire a missile, it would bounce off when the shield’s up. But when the shield’s down, they were vulnerable to attack. So it doesn’t mean if you had a root canal, you’re gonna get cancer. What it means is your body’s ability, we fight cancer every day. And your body’s ability to fight that cancer is reduced when there is an energetic blockage and your energetic immune system is not working at full capacity. Your shield is not fully up. And that is another big, big message behind what we’ve all come through over the past couple of years now. We’re in the second year of this, for this global pandemic, is that we need to nourish ourselves in mind, body and spirit.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

Yes, I agree. That’s great information. So as we round up the talk, which was exciting, I hope everybody got as much out of it as I did, sitting here listening to you talk and answering my questions. Is there anything you want to reinforce that you’ve talked about? We’re gonna share with them, of course, how to get, get to the website, find out more about the prebiotics, because that’s something I’d never heard of before, and I’m in this industry. So it’s like, what? So you’re sharing some things that are breaking news, really. And they can start to change their brain by changing what they do orally. So anything you want to reinforce with that or?

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

Top five things. CBCT. Home sleep study. It’s a disposable thing. Get your heavy metals out of your mouth. Treat your cavitations. Clean out your medicine cabinet because that’s gonna help you much more, and we can talk about things like nutrition and all that another time. But right now those are the top five. And I will leave you with this. Be true to your teeth, or there’ll be false to you.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

There you go. That’s really good. Okay, but I’m gonna tell you, stay in the research lab. Don’t go out on the comedy tour yet, but that was good. I liked that. We need you in there researching, helping us out from the inside out. I love this. And so, there you got it. Dr. Gerald is telling you the truth about the tooth, right? So here we go. So get out there and learn more. I’m not gonna try to one up you all the time. But let’s get our there. Let’s get our oral hygiene and don’t believe what you see on television, in the news. I mean, here you go. Do your research. Get out there. He’s been well-researched, well-documented. Go to the website. Again, it’s R-E-V-I-T-I-N.com. Go there, read all you can about it. Searching, he’s got a YouTube channel too. You can hear more wisdom on his YouTube channel. 

Follow him on social media. He’s out there in the media all the time. He’s been on “Dr. Oz,” who’s a good friend of ours. I did a program with Dr. Oz. Incredible man, getting the news out there. Just stay tuned. You might seem now on any broadcast out there now, because this is big. I mean, this is something that’s cutting edge, right? I mean, most people don’t know about it. 

Most dentists even don’t know about it. I’m gonna go back to my dentist because in two weeks, I’m getting my last filling removed and replaced with something good. I’m gonna say, you might not be my dentist if you can’t answer this question. And I’m gonna ask him if he does the SMART process, because I don’t think he does. So I might be looking for another one before I get that done. So thanks a lot for sharing with us. Thanks for taking time out of your schedule to inform, enlightening and help people because we all have one way to go. We all have a brain. We need to keep it healthy. We’re the first generation that says, hey, I want to age but I don’t want to be old, right? We want to keep our wits about us, keep our memories. Be there for our family, friends and coworkers. So thanks again, Dr. Gerald. I look forward to being with you there in New York, next time we were able to travel there.

Gerald Curatola, D.D.S

Absolutely. Absolutely, Patrick. It was a real pleasure, and thank you for having me.

Patrick K. Porter, PhD

All right, if you’re here for the next speaker, they’re gonna be right back with you. Again, you’re at the Reverse Alzheimer’s Summit. So if you know anyone out there that has teeth in their head, you need to have them get tuned in, watch this last talk. It’ll be live for the next 24 hours. They can do it for free. Get them out here. Let them learn about what’s going on with their oral health. And you might find it was actually influencing their anxiety, stress, and all that ’cause inflammation leads to all those mental disorders as well. So thanks a lot, again. Thanks a lot, Dr. Gerald. And now be ready for the next speaker. Just click below. Let’s keep going. Thank you.