Root Canals and Heart Disease: What Dentists Don’t Tell You

Introduction to airway and blood pressure 0:00

The other problem cardiovascularly that happens is when you have limited airway space, each red blood cell has less oxygen than it should or than can carry. So what does your body do to compensate? It pumps more of them to your systems, to you organs. This is what we call high blood pressure. Your body just has to pump more of it because each red blood cell that carries oxygen has less oxygen in it. So high blood pressure is directly correlated with airway issues. Welcome to the Natural Heart Doctor show.

I'm cardiologist Dr. Jack Wolfson. Heart problems don't come from a drug deficiency. They come root causes where cardiologists never look. On this show, I sit down with experts who challenge the mainstream rhetoric and talk about what actually builds a heart built to last. Get ready for a dose of cardiac longevity. Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode inside of the heart attack and stroke prevention and recovery summit where the intention here is to

Dr. Jorgensenu2019s health crisis and dentistry pivot 1:00

prevent heart attacks and strokes and then if you're recovering from those to help you on your way to recovery when when it comes to The 100 year heart methodology that we use at Natural Heart Doctor. We've got the eat well, the live well and the think well. Inside a live, well is holistic dentistry. And I found one of the biggest and best authorities as it relates to oral health and wellness. This is Dr. Michelle Jorgensen. And her journey began when she became seriously ill due to mercury exposure from practicing traditional dentistry.

I think that's probably very common. Maybe we can touch on that a little bit. Suicide rates and dent history, things like that. This led her to change the way she approached the dental care she provided for her patients and her own health. this was clearly her epiphany moment. She returned to school and became a board certified traditional naturopathic physician. and therapeutic nutritional counselor. So for over a decade, Dr. Jorgensen has pioneered health-based dentistry at Total Care Dental and Wellness in Utah, attracting patients from around the globe.

And I think travel dent history is extremely important and it's a great strategy. This is a big, big deal that we're going to touch on. Then along with being a busy mother and grandmother, she loves to teach, write, cook and garden. and believes the earth provides all we need to live well. That's why Dr. Michelle, you are on this summit because I love, I loved, loved everything you said. So thank you for being here. Thank you. For the opportunity. You got it. All right, so let's just dive into this, this kind of start me off with the the oral cardiovascular connection, maybe oral gut cardiovascular.

Tell me how it's all related to each other that they're not two totally separate things, right? Yeah, you know, I learned this the hard way personally, actually. So I was practicing traditional dentistry and my father's a dentist. He's actually still practicing into his mid seventies. And I thought that I would just continue doing that forever. That's just how this goes. and that's not what happened for me about a decade and I started getting really sick and My gut was one of the first things that really started to go.

I just had horrible gut pain, but everybody says, Everybody has a bad stomach. You know, everybody has got problems. And so you just kind of write it off. But the symptoms just continued to get worse and worse. I had numbness that I couldn't hold instruments anymore. Had no brain. Couldn't remember anything. Finally, I was going to just quit dentistry and leave completely. Put my practice up for sale. Thankfully, somebody mentioned, you know maybe this could be mercury. Maybe this is your problem too.

Looked into it and that's what it was. Mercury off the charts. So, as I tried to get better, I all of a sudden just started questioning, well, what else a dentistry could be damaging to people's health? You know, What else could problematic? Because I had never heard that mercury could a problem. I never had heard mercury can be an issue for dentists, for patients, or anybody. That was not in the profession. And honestly, it still isn't. You now, when we were just chatting before we started, you said, �I think everybody knows about mercury.� Actually, no.

Everybody doesn't know about Mercury. even inside of the profession, even dentists don't acknowledge any of this. So all of these things started answering, just opening my mind to, is there something else? Is there's something going on here? And so one of very first books I read just trying to learn was by a doctor. He's an M.D. His name is Thomas Levy. You may have heard of him, and he's awesome. And he's also a lawyer, which is what I love about him because when he says something, he is going to only say things he can back up by research, by science.

He's not going put himself out on the limb because he knows legally he shouldn't do that. So I loved that, and one of the very first things that caught my eye in his book was research about heart attacks and strokes and mouth infection.

Oral health, heart disease, and hidden infections 5:00

And we'd always been taught, I mean, inside of dentistry, we've been If let's say you have a knee replacement, that you shouldn't have dental work done without taking antibiotics ahead of time for a couple of years. Or if you a heart stent placed, you should take antibiotics before you dental worked out. So that was very mainstream. Very mainstream that the mouth infection actually loves the heart. Super mainstream, we all know it. Every dentist knows you Should pre-medicate. We call it just premedicating with antibiotics.

because those bugs love to go to heart tissue. So that's just commonly known. But what's not commonly know is where those bug may hide out. That's the thing that I really got my eyes open to. Or where are those mouth bugs? It's no just gum disease. Everybody just talks about gum diseases. There's so much more than gum. As I started learning, and I'll share where all these hidden infections are, as I sort of learning It just blew my mind that nobody's talking about these things and nobody is relating heart health and mouth health, brain health or mouth.

Nobody's relating these cardiovascular disease. And then as I continued to learn, I found this enormous connection between airway and breathing and heart and how airways and sleep issues are one of the number one contributors to high blood pressure. And all of these things just kind of snowballed as I started learning and I starting saying, what in the world? Why does no one know all this? So I sort of go to dentists and saying hey, we need to teach this. And they all said, I don't know what you're talking about.

So, okay, fine. I'll just talk to people. Then they'll ask their dentist for this kind information. Honestly, that's how I got started. And that's how I discovered a lot of these things. Not because, you know, I was trying to find some crazy thing. No, it's this is just really standard. This is how the body works. It's all connected top to bottom and the mouth has a huge part to play in all of it. What if your heart could actually get better, not just managed? What of your recovery didn't depend on adding more prescription drugs, but on finally understanding why your is struggling in the first place?

I'm Dr. Jack Wolfson, cardiologist at Natural Heart Doctor, and we believe heart disease isn't random, it's a message. It's message that inflammation, toxins, nutrient deficiencies, or lifestyle stressors are driving your symptoms beneath the surface. That's why our approach goes far beyond the band-aid, typical cardiology approaches. What we do is if we want to prevent, treat and reverse cardiovascular disease, we help you develop a natural evidence-based plan to help your heart recover. So if you're ready to move past fear, past confusion and past just take this and wait, you deserve real answers.

Visit naturalheartdoctor.com forward slash discovery and get the answers you've been searching for. The answers that can help you achieve your best heart health. Your next chapter with a simple free discovery call should start now. Fantastic opening. Now you mentioned your father is still a practicing dentist. So what does he think about your career? You know, the pivots, The way that it's come around. definitely not accepting of what I did for a lot of years, made fun of it. Because that's really traditional dentistry, is that we're very dogmatic and we also are very strongly taught that our job is to save teeth, no matter what, that any cost we are to safe teeth.

And it really has nothing to do with health. You know, we're supposed to say teeth and so now I like to, say, you know I'm gonna save your health, even if it means you're gonna lose a tooth because I can replace your tooth, but I cant replace her health so yeah, a little bit, scoffing at things but now, 10, 15 years down the road he's saying, There's a lot of people that care what you talk about, what do you say? This is really interesting. Yeah, it is interesting and something we need to know. Well, I think about really certainly from a cardiology profession and it's like, you know, when people have done things a certain way for so many years, they really look to defend that position.

And, you know, to your father's case, how difficult would it be to wake up to the dangers of mercury when you've been putting in mercury amalgams for your entire career and thinking about, wow, I was poisoning people. Wasn't intentional. It's just, again, your dot, Your father did what he did, and I'm sure he was very good at what He did. But yeah, trying to wake up to that reality, I think is difficult for a lot of people. But what I like to say with this Dr. Michelle is, hey, listen, the past is the pass.

We did what we did, you know, maybe one of your kids would say, Mom, why'd you do this to me? And you're like, Hey, Listen, did the best that I could. And your dad's like hey I did best of what knew and that's the way that was trained. But it's kind of like, once you learn the reality, just as you learned, Dr. Michelle, and as open up your eyes to all these things, holistic dentistry, you know, it is like the crime is those of us who would commit the same, like atrocity maybe, if you will, or the sin crime.

It's like when the crimes, learn from your mistakes and move on. Yep. You know one of my most painful experiences personally in this is, in a root canal, there's a lot of issues with root canals and we need to dive into this. But I had done hundreds of root canals myself. And I remember seeing a patient, took a cone beam CT scan, and actually that's a really important piece of holistic dentistry because we can see so much on it. We'll talk about that as well. Took a Cone Beam CT Scan and found that she had three infected root canal teeth all in a row.

I looked on the chart and saw that I was the one that had the root And that was a hard pill to swallow. You know, it was hard to pill swallow, but I just said, you know what, I'm so glad that I've learned what I learned now because this is going to be able to help your health moving forward from here. So aren't we glad, that we can learn and we change and learn new things. But honestly, the profession in general doesn't do that. Thankfully, all of you watching and listening, and you can start asking, hey, just want to know more about this.

I would love to hear what you have to say. It's an important thing for all us to just be really open minded. And don't worry everyone at the end, we'll show you all the links to Dr. Michelle and how you can find more of her information and all of our teachings and stuff like that. I think that's going to really provide a good foundation for everyone. You mentioned root canals. My current opinion on this when I talk to people and talk patients is to never do a root canal Um, and, correct me if I'm wrong, like the vast, vast majority of root canals that are suggested, they're going to be on the molars.

So why not just remove them, uh, you know, the tooth.

Root canals and why they can become a problem 12:00

And then do we leave that area open or do they go with an implant? And if we go within implants, so start off with, root cows, should anyone have a root canal in 2025 and beyond. Let's just talk about what the problem with them is. You know, honestly, the idea of a root canal is awesome. Back in the 18th century, as a dentist the only recourse that someone had if you had a deep cavity, if had you a dead tooth, was take the tooth out. Well, in those days anesthesia was sketchy and I mean it would have been a really difficult thing for both the practitioner and the patient both.

Terrible thing. So this concept of root canals is a great idea. What happens is there's a nerve channel inside of the teeth. And so that nerve channel is removed. nerve and blood vessel, nerve-and-blood vessel channel is removed, the tooth is cleaned out, and then filled up with a plastic-like material. It's called gutta-percha, it's from a gut-a-pertcha tree somewhere in the rainforest. So it is like this plastic rubbery material that seals up the inside of the teeth. The trouble is, is that's not all that is going on in a tooth.

You see those main nerve, blood-vessel channels, they are the big ones, but then there is little, called dentinal tubules that go off of that main canal. And there's literally a mile of them inside every single tooth, And those channels are where nutrients flow and everything, the nerves are transmitted. That's why when you tap on your teeth, you can feel it because there's actually a nerve, little nerve appendage that goes all the way out to the outside of the tooth that we can. So the main channel can be cleaned and filled, but those tiny little tubules can't, they're just too small to clean or to fill either one.

You always have dead tissue left in the teeth after a root canal, no matter what. No matter how well the root canal's done, no matter who does it, how beautiful it looks on an x-ray, there's always dead tissue. And I joke and tell people, you know, let's say you have a gallbladder issue happening and something's going on with your gall bladder. You've got stones, and you need it cleaned out. So the surgeon takes the gall bladder out, cleans it out and fills it up with some plastic stuff and puts it back in.

How successful is that going to be? It's not going be successful because it's dead tissue. So that's the problem with the root canal. It is dead inside of the tooth and that dead tooth is inside you. Always going attract bacteria no matter what. No matter dead stuff always attracts bugs. I tell people if you have a pile of garbage on the floor, how long before bugs find it? Not long, a day of that. So bacteria find the dead tissue and they start to eat. They start get infected, you know, to grow and say, hey, buddies, come on over here.

There's dead stuff. We love dead. Stuff. Then your immune system has to deal with this and constantly has this attack. This is where we see a lot of autoimmune conditions related to these infections because the body's just so distracted dealing with it that it can't deal without the things that come along. So then the bone starts to get eaten away. This infection just sits in here and festers. Here's the kicker. You can't feel it because remember the nerve was removed. So you have no idea this is going on.

But every single time you chew, which you know how many times a day is that or every We put our teeth together to swallow. It's like a piston pumping that infection into the bloodstream surrounding the tooth. And that goes everywhere. One of the places that it loves to go is the heart. There was a study in 2017 somewhere in that era where it showed that they took clots that actually killed people, fatal heart attacks, and they biopsied and said, what is in these clods? over 70% of them had mouth-specific bacteria in them.

So we know that these bugs love to go to hearts and they love be part of these clots and part these plaques and other things that are leading to cardiovascular disease. They also have found the same thing with strokes, with the clouts that actually do the killing with stroke, very mouth specific bugs. Rue canals, how many of 35 million a year in the United States alone. So now what we have is the potential for this festering cesspool of bugs that you're completely unaware of that's literally spreading infection to your cardiovascular system every single swallow.

Could this be a problem? But yes, and thankfully we do have diagnostic technology now. We can take what's called a cone beam CT scan. It's a very specific CT Scan. People always say, oh no, no I would never do that. it's not the one you get in the hospital. Its not like that, it is minimal radiation. we can do really, really low, low dose radiation and we could see what is happening here with old root canals. Another place that infection hides is where you had wisdom teeth removed. People don't know about this one either.

So it's another area where things can hide, where teeth have been removed and under these root canals. Should we ever do a root canal? Well, my answer is no. I'm legally, I am actually required to tell you that that's your first option or that is a option. Well, let me stop for just one second here. I see so many people that ask for a second opinion. They've been told I need a root canal, okay? First of all, I hate that phrase because nobody needs a roots canal. You're not going to die without a route canal you know?

So nobody means root canals. So just erase that phase completely. But they come and saying I was told that I'd need root now. Here's the line in the sand. If the tooth is still alive, then you're gonna try to save it. How do you know if the tooth is still alive? If you have sensation. So if it hurts to hot or cold, if you come in and tell me, oh man, my tooth kills with cold. I'm like, yes, I am so happy. because it's still alive. If it is still live, we have a procedure that we could do where we remove the decay down to the deepest level before it exposes the nerve.

That's the trouble. As if it exposed the nerves, it pretty much game over for this tooth. We remove it down the deepest level and then we use ozone. to kill all the bugs in that deepest layer so we can leave it there without exposing the nerve and keep your tooth alive. So when I have patients that come, if their tooth is still alive, about 80, 85% of the time, I can save it when they've been told you need a root canal. That's the line in the sand. If the tooth has infected, meaning, but how do you know if it's infected?

How do know it if its dead? if it really hurts down in the jawbone. If you have any kind of swelling, anything like that, that means there's no more cold sensitivity on the tooth. It just hurts, it hurts by itself, It wakes you up at night. That means the teeth is dead. At that point, I legally have to tell you, you can get a root canal. But what I prefer is that remove the toothbrush and replace it with dental implant. Now your question, do you to have a dental, or do have replace? No, but there are a couple of things we have keep in mind.

Number one, the teeth are connected head to toe with every other organ system in the body. And when you remove teeth, multiple teeth especially, it actually affects the way other organs work. So if you have a couple in a row, I do recommend you replace them. If it's just one and your chewing efficiency is fine, then maybe you leave it alone. So it is totally up to you. Do you need this tooth to function to chew with? So that's my answer. Should you place it? If you want it, you don't have to. The bigger thing is get the tooth out.

if it infected and dead, get it out because those infections are going everywhere. Love it. Love, it love it crystal clear. Thank you so much doc on that one. You know, I'm missing a tooth. I lost it about four years ago and I kind of like, go back to my mercury amalgam pediadontist who my mom still like talks so affectionately about them. Like for better, for worse, like that guy really messed up my mouth as a kid. And she's like how can you say that? He was such a good man and he always gave you like thing at the end, you know like good for one free like ice cream cone afterwards, right?

Like that going on. Um, and then the only time it bothers me, uh, Michelle is when I, I love hazelnuts and the hazel nut fits perfectly in where the visiting tooth is. All right. What do we do if we've already had a root canal? How do, we decide if that is a problem leading to XYZ health illness? What did we deal with these old root canals teeth? Yep. So, cone beam CT scan is the first thing. And why do we have to take that scan? You know, I'll always remember one of my very first patients I really realized this on, she'd come and she was complaining about a tooth.

She'd had a root canal on it years ago, and it's the same thing I always hear. It just doesn't feel quite right. I mean, you know? So there's no sense. it doesn' hurt necessarily, but sometimes people just say, it just So I took an x-ray, a traditional dental x ray, which is the one your dentist is taking and telling you, it looks fine. Took that xray. It looked fine, you know, there was nothing that I could see on it that, I would say, oh yeah, yeah. This one's concerning for sure. But I had just gotten this new CT scanner and I thought, we're just going to try it.

Let's just see. I take the CT scan, was absolutely shocked. There was a quarter size hole in the jawbone right over top of the tooth. I could not see it. We cannot see this on traditional dental x-rays. Unless it's massive. If it is massive, sure, we can see. But we cannot the extent of damage. So many times I'll have a patient that comes and says, I just have chronic sinus infection. I've been through two or three sinus surgeries. It just doesn't go away. Somebody told me maybe it was a tooth. Will you look and see?

We take a cone beam CT scan. They have a failed root canal on an upper molar that literally has eaten a hole, a dime sized hole in the floor of their sinus cavity and is filling up their sinuses with infection day in and day out. So they constantly have post nasal drip, constantly. clear in their throat because it's just feeding it. It's so disgusting. So if you have an old root canal cone beam CT scan, depending on what you find, get the tooth out.

Old root canals and extraction sites on CT scans 22:00

Like I said, we can replace it, with ceramic dental implants now that are absolutely beautiful. Nobody ever even knows you've lost a tooth, including you. so it is not worth risking your health to have a hidden infection somewhere in your mouth. it just is just not worthy. What do you think about using, I mean, what if someone doesn't have any symptoms, maybe the CT looks okay. You know, sometimes what, if there's, you know markers of inflammation, may be elevated HSCRP, some of these blood biomarkers that would go along with it and like, we just can't solve it.

That's a time when I go back to the oral microbiome, when i go to back the tooth and say, Maybe there is something cooking there. And then maybe also use this opportunity to talk about these retained periodontal ligaments when we have our third molars extracted. Yep, yep. So I have yet to take a root canal tooth out that doesn't have bugs all around it. So even if it looks, you know, on the CT scan we look at it and we say, well, this doesn't have a hole into your sinus. But at what point do we just say you, know what, I'd rather preserve my health before it tanks.

If my inflammatory markers are already showing that there's concern somewhere, we get a lot of patients that are sent from doctors like yourself and others that say we can't. move the needle on what's happening here. We see there's concern, we've done everything in our toolbox to take care of it, and it's not changing. So maybe you better go check your mouth out. You know, I love to see people first, but usually I see People 7th. I'm at the end of the road here for people. But we see so many people and we say, you know what?

Let's just take it out. I can replace it. You know, that's always my mantra every single day. No, nobody likes to lose a tooth. However, we can't replace your health. So let's take the tooth out, let see if it moves the needle on these inflammatory markers and large majority of the time it does. That's the answer. I tell people, would you rather get sick before we deal with it? Or do we just deal it before you get it sick? How about we be proactive in this approach? The second one, like you said, is ligament removal where teeth were removed.

And it's not just third molars. It's just wisdom teeth. Any tooth that's removed, the teeth have something called a periodontal ligaments surrounding them. And that periodontal ligament doesn't just come out when the tooth is removed, especially on a wisdom tooth. Because if you think about it, like these are often removed when they're 15, you know, and they are way down low in the bottom jaw. They're way up high at the top jaw, so their sinuses up here. There's nerves down here, nobody wants to...

create a sinus issue or create an nerve numbness issue. So nobody's going to be digging around when these teeth are taken out, you know, and remove this ligament. A lot of times the ligaments left there and for about 10 days the body doesn't even know a tooth's gone because the leg of it's kind of its indicator, hey, tooth is still here, keep supplying nutrients, Keep doing everything. About 10 Days, body does not know tooth gone. After that time, it is like, I think something is happening here because that ligamen starts to die.

There's no more blood flow to it. The ligament starts to die. But by this time, let me think about if you cut your finger, how long does it take for the skin to grow back? About 10 days, right? So in that 10 day's time the gums have grown over the whole and now you have this dead ligaments. And the gum's are grownover the hole and the body hasn't been stimulated to go bone. So this dad ligamint just turns into this did hole in the jawbone that never actually fully heals. Well, that dead hole always attracts bugs.

Same story with root canals. The same story always attract bugs, there's a second thing I think that goes along with wisdom teeth as well. When you're 15, 16, 18, getting the teeth removed, your body is still in growth mode. So you are still utilizing a lot of minerals to grow bones. You're still using a lots of resources just to, you know, run your bodies. And you stress typically, You are not eating great, There's lot a things. I joke that it's the worst time to put four holes in somebody's head.

Because the resources to heal just aren't there, they're being utilized elsewhere. So it leaves a high likelihood that those areas did not heal properly. What in the heck do we do with those? Well, so then the bugs living there. Again, you can't get your immune system in because it's a dead zone, but they can drop all their garbage out and that spreads through the bloodstream. These are hugely related to the endocrine system, the heart and the stomach. So if there's cardiovascular issues, if their's endocrine issues I immediately look at that cone beam CT scan and say, what does it look like?

Where those teeth were removed? What do we do about it if we see that there is an area that didn't heal? We literally surgically go in and clean it out again. Then people will say, well, why can't I just do ozone or take an antibiotic or do a laser? Why can I not just this? And I always go back to, what's there? It's a pile of garbage. So I can take it antibiotic, it's going to kill the bugs around the pile garbage, but every pile a garbage will attract bugs again. The bugs are going come back. Same with ozone.

I could squirt ozone in there. It is going kill bugs, the piles of the garbage is still there, same with laser. We've got to get the a piles garbage out. for the body to be able to completely heal and not have the effect of that. So those are the two biggies that we call hidden infections that hugely, hugely affect the cardiovascular system. Root canals, old root canales, and where teeth were removed. Makes perfect sense. Beautiful. Thank you. Our ancestors thousands of years ago, they didn't brush and they in floss.

Why do we need to today and do, we to need today? Such a good question. You know, I'm going to add one more thing onto that too. Our ancestors also didn't need their wisdom teeth out. They all fit in their heads. Thousand percent agree with that one. I've got four kids and they will never be losing their wisdom teeth. That's for sure. Yeah. So what's going on? So why does every kid need braces? Why is everybody's mouth, why everybody is teeth crooked?

Nutrition, fluoride, and hydroxyapatite 28:00

You know, what is going? Something obviously has changed, right? Interestingly enough, I adopted a little boy when my son's adopted when he was two and a half and his upper jaw was so small, it fit inside of his lower jaw. It's like the opposite of what should happen. He had severe malnutrition when he was in his early years. And I learned that the top jaw is the first one affected by malnutrition. Not only that, but our teeth are affected my mal nutrition in an interesting way. Well, I'll, you know, and I think everybody listening to this will go, well, go I'm not mal-nourished.

Maybe I've got a little extra 20 pounds in fact. You know I am certainly not, mal nourished, But I will actually argue that you probably are. Mal-Nourishment affects Jaw growth, if jaw growth is too narrow, it will lead to no room for wisdom teeth, crooked teeth and I'm going to argue airway problems. So this epidemic of people who don't breathe, 80% of adults who have some sort of airways sleep deficiency issue because our mouths are too small to fit what's supposed to feed in there. Growth and development definitely is affected by malnutrition.

Why? Because teeth are a ready-made bank of minerals. A lot of times, people will say, I didn't get a cavity until I was 17. I did not get the cavity till I had my first baby. What's going on there? What is happening? Well, the body needs a certain amount of mineral to run your heart and your brain. And they are priority, right? If our heart or brain stops, then we die. So they're priority. Guess what aren't priority? Your teeth and bones. So if you don't have enough nutrients to go around for all of them, your body will prioritize your heart and your brain, and it will steal from your teeth and bones to provide it.

So cavities today are often because of nutrient deficiencies. Our bodies simply don t have what they need, so they steal wherever they can find it and our teeth are a great place to steal it from. And this is where I see people, they'll say, well, I brush my teeth and I can tell they do. Like, you know, dentists, we can't tell. They can just blow on smoke and say no, no I brushed my tooth so good and tell you just did it today and you haven't in, three months. No, but I'll look at people who have beautiful teeth, gorgeous teeth.

they clean them so well. The brush, the floss, They do all the things and yet they still have cavities. Why? Because we're deficient in nutrients. Two reasons. Number one, our food simply doesn't have it in it anymore. Unfortunately, out food doesn' t come from the ground because the gr ound is where the nutrients come fr om. I'm a huge gardener. Anyway, this is a big thing I could talk about for ages, but our foo just doesn t have the nutrients in i that it used to. So we literally are malnourished.

Even though we eat plenty of food, the food does n't it. We have to supplement, unfortunately. Dr. Weston Price was an amazing doctor in the 30s. Everybody knows about Dr Westen Price if you talk about nutrition. He was a dentist. And what he found is that fat soluble vitamins were the key. This is why people didn't need braces, why they didn t need wisdom teeth out, because they were eating enough what are called fat soluble vitamins. These are vitamins A, D, E, and K and often super deficient in our diets today as well.

So we've got to supplement adequately in order to get the nutrients we need. Those fat-soluble-vitamins help you absorb minerals. You might be taking enough minerals, but you're not getting the vitamins to give them in your cells. That's problem number one. Problem number two is we're absorbing them properly because all of our guts don't work. So when your gut doesn't work, it doesn' absorb the nutrients, they just go through to the other side. So the gut function is absolutely crucial to tooth health as well.

That's what I see. People know to brush their teeth. Some people don't. I won't let everybody off the hook. some people take care of their tooth. They're really disgusting. But most people do. Most people, take of the teeth if you're still getting tooth decay, It's because you are not getting enough nutrients. You're simply malnourished. What about remineralizing toothpaste? Yep, so that's the beautiful thing. We have to go down the fluoride talk just a little tiny bit because this is actually really important for heart and brain and everything else to help as well.

So again, in the 1930s, they said, gosh, we're so tired of people getting cavities. What can we do about it? And they found that there were these little pocket populations of the people who were drinking well water and they had stronger teeth. They weren't getting cavity's and the discovered that those little pockets with stronger tea had higher levels of fluorite in water. So they thought, this is fabulous. Let's put fluoride in everybody's water. That's the fluorite in toothpaste. So let's go fluorine in mouth washes.

Look for fluorides everywhere. And we will eradicate tooth decay. First question is, has it worked? Do you know of anybody who gets cavities now? Of course. So, no, it has not worked. But the second problem is they didn't actually know what fluoride did to the rest of the body because nothing you put in you just stays in one place. Well, fluorine historically was used to treat hyperthyroidism. If your thyroid was overactive, they would give you fluorite. Why? Because fluorides decreases thyroid function.

Do anyone who has hypothyroid issues? Only like everybody, right? Could fluoride be a part of this? Fluoride also, just a brand new study just out about a month ago shows it decreases IQ in children. Literally point by point, they can show you take this much fluorine, you decrease your IQ this. It was so linear, it was crazy. it also affects bone health. Bone, basically the brittleness of bones. There's so many problems with fluorite. So I don't recommend fluorides. We don' need to do that, but we need get minerals in.

What do we use? Something called hydroxyapatite. And what is this? In fact, there was just a podcast last week that somebody was ripping on hydroxylapatites. They said, I can't believe how quickly the holistic community has adopted this. This is just crazy. It's so suspect. My gut just tells me this is wrong. I responded and said hydroxiapatit is the mineral your teeth are made of. This isn't something that the holistic community has created. It's actually what your teeth are made of. That's the mineral complex that's here.

So when you get a cavity, minerals are pulled out of your tooth to feed you because you're drinking lots of soda, whatever it might be. let's just put them back. Let's put back what came out, not fluoride. Fluoride never came outta your teeth. Cavities aren't a fluorid deficiency, cavities are a mineral deficiency. So hydroxyapatite tooth products, fabulous thing. This has just been the last three, four years. I have a tooth care product, I've a whole line of hydroxylapatites products. They've been out about two and a half years, we were one of the front runners.

This is blown up lately. Why? Because it works. So if you're losing minerals in your teeth, you are getting cavities, just put minerals back. Hydroxyapatite is brilliant. Finally, we figured out a way to put back what was missing. Love it. You know that the two most famous statin drugs of all time, atorvastatin and rasubastatin have a fluorine atom in the molecular compound. It's actually in this statins drugs. That's so sinister. Um, I mean, remember, as kids, like the fluoride trays and stuff like that.

They're still going strong. In fact, when this study came out about IQ and children, the forums blew up, dental forums, blew, they're like, okay, everybody give us your research about fluorine. We got to defend it. And again, What are we thinking? Why are defending it? Just because we've always said it's the thing. Why we defending? It just say, guess what? We didn't know guys. Let's change and put hydroxyapatite in. So still today, every single time you go to a regular dentist, they're going to say you need a fluoride treatment.

Just say no, just kindly. All right. Talk. Uh, let's wrap it up by talking about airway and talk to me about tongue tie. Yep. So again, we talked about malnutrition, small mouth, all these kinds of things. Well, the mouth is like a garage, if you think about it. And there has to be enough room in the garage to fit everything that belongs there. What belongs here? Tongues, tissue at the back of the throat, uvula, soft palate. All of that has fit inside of your teeth. Well, when we have too little nutrients growing up or heaven forbid, I call this actually the ambient generation.

Airway development, tongue tie, and sleep-related blood pressure 36:00

They took teeth out to do your braces. This was a huge thing for a couple of generations where they would actually remove four teeth. The teeth were crooked, mouth was too small. So instead of widening the mouth and making more space for all the teeth, they just took the tooth out and took easy route. Let's just take teeth and make everything fit. Great, but now guess what doesn't fit? Tongue, tissue, any of those kinds of things. So if that doesn't fit, it has to go somewhere, right? We can't chop off half your tongue.

Where is it gonna go? It's gonna back into the tube that you breathe through. And this is where the problems start. How does tongue tie relate to this? Well, if a tongue is tied down, the tongue actually can go up and forward like it should and out of the airway. Also, when this person was a baby, that tongue's supposed to up to put pressure on the roof of their mouth. to widen the roof of the mouth as they're sucking against a nipple, a bottle, whatever it is. If the tongue was tied down, it couldn't do its job.

So often with tongue ties, we see very narrow jaws. Very narrow jaw, long facial development, no room for anything to live. The tongue, everything is falling back into the back of throat. Now you imagine laying down. Lay down where's that tongue and all that tissue going to go? to the back, back of the throat and you're not going to be able to breathe past it. So you end up tossing and turning all night long, waking up in the middle of night and awake like, why am I, you know, and there's no going back to sleep for an hour or two.

You've got this adrenaline spike, all of these things happening. Why? Because all the tissue that should be up here are back here and they're simply blocking the tube that you should breathe through. When you sleep, You can't breathe. Your body has to breathe to stay alive so it won't let you sleep. We see this so often. Now, why does this relate to cardiovascular issues? Well, number one, that cortisol spike is not good for your cardiovascular health, right? And you drain your adrenaline. You drain everything.

Cortisol should wake up in the morning and you feel like trash. Why? Because you've literally been fighting and running away from a bear all night long. you know, you'll feel terrible when you wake, up you have no energy to do anything. But the other problem cardiovascularly that happens is, When you have limited airway space, each red blood cell has less oxygen than it should or than can carry. So what does your body do to compensate? It pumps more of them to your systems, to you organs. This is what we call high blood pressure.

Your body just has to pump more of it because each red blood cell that carries oxygen has less oxygen in it. So high blood pressure is directly correlated with airway issues. What are the symptoms you should be paying attention to? Like I said, tossing and turning, waking up, can't go to sleep. Insomnia, I can just lay here, and I just can go sleep, feeling just groggy. I swear I slept, but I feel terrible when I wake up in the morning. All of these things. But what in world do we do? We just make room in the mouth.

We make the mouths bigger. Focus issues, ADHD symptoms in kids, this is, they're not getting the fair. They're breathing at night. We make the mouths bigger for kids. we make them out bigger. For adults, we can absolutely do this. And this fixes the problem, not just band-aiding the problems. You will see so many people that have been to their cardiologist and they have, there on the medication, They have all kinds of side effects from medication. they hate the medications. and then they come to us and say, is there anything you can do?

We say absolutely. Let's get a sleep study first of all, let's quantify what's happening. And then let's make your mouth bigger. Let's help you actually be able to breathe. Clip that tongue tie. Get the tongue up and forward, anywhere it needs to go, so you can actually breathe again. We see high blood pressure drop. People get off medication. Everything just resolves. Art, you make it sound really, really easy, but the mouth is so complicated and I know you know that. So it's like, as you do like the expansion processes, do we run it?

How often do, and how do you resolve the fact that you maybe bite issues, maybe TMJ issues related to this? So a lot of times the extension actually alleviates all of those problems because The teeth have to fit inside of the muscles. What are the muscle? Lips, cheeks on the outside, tongue on inside. The tongue and the mussels and lips and cheeks are often fighting. This is why people mouth breathe. Why do you mouth breath? Because you don't have enough room in your mouth, so we mouth tape, we haven't fixed anything.

We're making it a little bit better, at least at night time. When you make more room for the muscles to function, a lot of bite issues result. A lot TMJ muscles, especially if they're muscle-related, also results. If you're grinding, clenching, and squeezing your teeth, signs are worn front teeth. These kinds of things, if you are doing any of that, it's because you don't get enough air at night. When you don't get enough air, you tighten all the muscles. You squeeze your teeth, You tighten your tongue up against the sides of your, your tooth, just to try to get an affair.

So a lot of this creates this muscle tenderness, muscle soreness, waking up with headaches, all this soerness. so when we make more room in the mouth, we stop grinding and clenching. We stop squeezing and all of that tendrenous sores goes away. It is simple in essence, that's one solution solves a lotta problems. All right. Well, listen, everyone, I could talk with Dr. Michelle. You can tell I'm very passionate about this. I love this topic as well. Uh, and it's just, it really is a, uh, not only a semester education, It's almost like a an undergraduate education in this particular area.

So I guess we'll leave it at that. Hopefully you and I entertain everyone. And really at the end of the day, as we said initially, right, if you are sick, or you want to prevent being sick, you better take care of your mouth. You better work with someone like Dr. Michelle Jorgensen and her team. Dr Michelle, we'll put all the listings and the notes and all of the promotional material that people get, but while I have you on right now, how are best people, because people are going to be like, wow, I need this woman and here team or somebody to take a look at my mouth, How can people reach out?

Yep, so my practice is called TotalCareDental.com. So check that out, Total Care Dental dot com. But I'm a big believer in finding somebody close to you if you can as well. I actually have an online directory of dentists that we vetted. We have about 75 on there right now and growing rapidly. Living well with Dr. Michelle. That's my online platform, livingwellwithdrmichelle.com. You're gonna be able to go find a dental directory on there of dentists like me that think similarly, that can provide these services for you.

On there as well are going to be all kinds of free resources, information about everything I've talked about and links to the products, the hydroxyapatite products and gut health products.

Finding holistic dental care and closing remarks 43:00

And mineral products that I have developed to combat all the things that we've talk about today. So living well with drmichele. com. Just go get all of the free stuff on their, so much information. That is so fantastic. Thank you so much, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this episode on the Heart Attack and Stroke Prevention and Recovery Summit. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Natural Heart Doctors show. If this episode challenged what you thought you knew about heart health, make sure you follow the show so you don't miss what's next.

And if you're ready for a deeper personalized approach, you can schedule a complimentary discovery call at naturalheartdoctor.com forward slash discovery.