Your Oral Microbiome’s Impact On Your Menopausal Journey

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

Thank you for having me. And I always love our talks because they are edutaining..

Sharon Stills, ND

Is that a new word?

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

We can educate and we can really keep it light and have some fun. I love what you do. I have embraced naturopathic medicine for a long time and it helps me in my practice with patients in many ways.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes, it is really a marriage. I had a patient come see me here in Arizona the other day and she said, I have already been to Dr. Gerry Curatola and I wanted to be prepped and I have heard you say, like, you have to have your mouth taken care of before you do anything else, she is like, I am already on, and I was like, yes.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

I had a patient today that had jaw cavitation, very serious jaw cavitation, they were very large. And cavitation, as you know, are necrotic areas of bone, usually where you had your wisdom teeth removed. She had so many gut issues, so many gut. She has been to a lot of prominent doctors that you and I both know and no one can fix the gut issues, she did cleanse for weeks and weeks and weeks, no one, not one of the dentists that she saw could read a cone beam or could see where these cavitations are. They were tremendous and they were filled with parasites, candida, mold, Lyme spirochetes, and heavy metals, they are basically Petri dishes for pathogens because it is warm, it is dark, it is moist, and there is no blood supply, here she is suffering. What meridian is the wisdom teeth on?

Sharon Stills, ND

Small intestine and heart. Jeopardy for $500.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

For $500 000, then. I said, it is also on the heart meridian and she goes, I have an appointment with a cardiologist, I get this fluttering, my heart. It is like the pericardium, the meridian for the pericardium is in that same area. She had these toxic areas of bone that all of these doctors were treating her like she went all down the line. It was like the movie Root Cause where the guy had the root canal and he got seriously ill and everybody is trying to fix him and he is walking on coals, doing all these things and all these medications and everything and it turned out it was a sick tooth, it was this whole debilitating thing. I am going to really enjoy talking about it. I love that you are the women’s health queen and that you are so in tune with reproductive health, of course. But menopause is one of those interesting topics that a lot of women have more difficulty than they should and it could be an easy ride or what I loved. What is that? Andy Weil, he had a senior brother, Andrew Weil. He started everything, he was like anti-aging, anti-aging, anti-aging and he coined the term healthy aging. And when I turned 60, I was like, I wanted to party in a Chinese restaurant and my wife is like, what is with China? I said, I asked my daughter, look up the significance of age 60. And 60 is one of the most important birthdays in Chinese culture because they consider it the completion of one cycle of your life, the yang, younger yang, zero to 60, where literally you are wild and crazy and you are learning a lot. But the second 60 years this we are genetically programmed to live to 120, second 60 years which are menopausal years and post-menopausal, of course, and those second 60 years are really important for healthy aging.

Sharon Stills, ND

I love that. I did not know that about the Chinese culture.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

If you look it up, the Chinese celebrate the first year, I think ten is significant but 60 is major because you are transitioning in your lifecycle from your yang to your yin which is super cool. That is why I have this real great passion to teach and to educate. When you invited me on this, I was like, I am there because I love to teach and I love you.

Sharon Stills, ND

And you had no choice.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

I had no choice.

Sharon Stills, ND

I want to go back. That is good because I am only 55. Now I know what I am doing in five years for my 60th. Thank you.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

I love the Chinese ones.

Sharon Stills, ND

You will be there, of course, guest of honor. You have already touched on a few things that I just want to go back and fill in. What you were talking about, if you are someone who has been sick and going from doctor to doctor and the mouth. See, that is why I always look at the mouth first because I am like, let us just take care of the area of the body that has the most focal infections. You talked about the meridians, each tooth. Can you just talk about the meridian connection a little?

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

We know and, as you know, in bioregulatory medicine there are five levels for the body to self-regulate and heal. We are all familiar with the biological level, the microbial world of antibiotics, and biotics, and bacteria, and the war against bacteria. The microbial level, that bacterial level is often misunderstood and mistreated. My mantra there on that level has been, make peace with your microbes, do not try to nuke them with antibiotics and all the other stuff which just really creates havoc. Full disclosure, antibiotics could save your life. When I do cavitation surgery I do prescribe an antibiotic and the reason is because it is an invasive surgery that is into and with a major connection to the circulatory system. I always tell patients, yes, we need to protect your gut and we need to keep your gut healthy. But at the same time, subacute bacterial endocarditis is a nasty infection and I am going into a hornet’s nest of pathogens cleaning it out, they go like, “Can I use that nanosilver?” I am like, I really want something systemic in your bloodstream. I have had patients do IV antibiotics and IM shots and stuff, but you do need that coverage because of the risk. 

Then the second level, biochemical pathways, we deal with it, I mean, how much of that do we deal with, how there is an epidemic of thyroid disease where hormonal pathways are disrupted. The body’s ability to regulate hormones is really important. I love the work that you do because you understand that and help women so much by taking in a naturopathic approach to hormonal regulation and I deal with it on my end. Because when there is an infection on a meridian, which we are going to talk about in a minute, for example, the upper first molar tooth number three is on the thyroid, the upper first molars are on the thyroid, how many people have. I had a woman this morning she had a horrific infection with a root canal on tooth number three, okay, there was a nodule on her breast, I like, how is your thyroid? It is a mess, my thyroid is totally a mess, she had thyroid disease, all this other stuff. But the most gratifying thing is when we help these patients, the most gratifying thing is when we see them reregulate and it is like, woah, the doctors like, I cured you, no doctors do not cure you, you have this divine light force that gives you the ability to self-regulate and heal and that is the great thing, meridian flow. First, I get the Harvard Medical School program and complementary and alternative medicine. I am just going to take a sip of water and I will repeat that.

Sharon Stills, ND

Well, while you are saying that, I will say a few things while you are drinking. Yes, antibiotics just to go back and touch on that. Because I have been practicing for 21 years now, I have treated everything from pneumonia to erysipelas to strep and I do not use antibiotics because I am trained in bioregulatory medicine, I understand how to rebalance the terrain and the isopathic remedies I used. But I totally agree when someone is going for cavitation surgery. Yeah. We have to. We have to weigh risks and benefits. I will allow them because they will always be like, you do antibiotics? No, you are having like major surgery and we have been doing good things and we are prepping you and we will post and we will get your gut rebalanced but you have to think about the risks and we want you to be safe, we do not want you to not be covered and then you have like major infection afterward and then it is like a total disaster.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

I use the most benign antibiotics and the ones that the gut can self-regulate and heal from and reregulate. That is the amazing thing about our microbial flora, our microbiome, you can really mess with the microbiome, it can take a lot of hits and it does have this capacity to reregulate and heal. It does not do that when your life force is dwindling. When you talk about meridian flow and energy flow, the ability to reregulate is on a microbial level, on a hormonal level, and on an energetic level. These meridians from teeth, I said I was at Harvard Medical School, they put up this tooth organ relationship chart and I was like, this is voodoo, I mean, how does this tooth relate to the breast? How does that lower molar relate to your lung and your colon? I really was skeptical because most conventional doctors really do not get it. And here I was in this program, this is 1996 and I am like, okay, let me see, and sure enough, I started treating people, looking at medical conditions, treating the dental conditions, and seeing the medical conditions literally dissipate or just dematerialize. 

One of the most dramatic ones that I recall was a woman who had, she had heard me speak, her girlfriend heard me speak and she was a health coach and she was diagnosed with a tumor in her left lung that took up, they were talking about removing her lung from this aggressive tumor that was on her left lung and her friend Laura called me and said, “My girlfriend, Lisa was diagnosed with this, what do you think could it be any dental connection?” I said, “Does she have any root canals?” Why root canals? Well, root canals are notorious because they are a major producer of endotoxins. As a matter of fact, there was just a newspaper story that went to 25 million people and I had two calls from root canal specialists, friends of mine, they are like, “Gerry, what is up?” Because I said, it was like, these are four things that this dentist says you should never do, you will ruin your teeth, and charcoal toothpaste, conventional commercial mouthwash, root canals, and mercury, they are like put four of them out there. But the root canal one was out there because there had been already histological studies and scientific studies showing that 100% of root canals produce endotoxins which are bacterial byproducts and they are inflammatory. Again, the word inflammation which is a normal healing process and in some cases, and normal experience. But when it is off the track and it is chronic low-grade inflammation we see lots of bad things happen. To make a long story short, I took out the tooth, the root canal tooth which had an infection around it that was not diagnosed by two other root canal specialists because we used a 3D cone beam and you can see 3D and I took out the tooth and she went back to Texas and I treated the bone, disinfected the bone and we use ozone and we use platelet-rich fibrin and we do all this great healing and she went back to Texas and five weeks later, just five weeks, the tumor had shrunk to 25% of the size.

Sharon Stills, ND

All she did was the root canal.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

They still scared her, I was like, if in five weeks that happens your body is reregulating, it is healing itself. They scared her into taking a little part of the lobe out of there and then they biopsied it and it was benign. Our bodies want to reregulate and heal. The fourth and fifth level, which I know you will appreciate, is psycho-emotional and spiritual. Psycho-emotional issues, I call it stinking thinking. People who stucked for a long time they do not believe they are going to get better and if you do not believe you are going to get better you are not going to get better. That’s like Bruce Lipton, The Biology of Belief, what we believe can change our DNA. Then the fifth level, which a lot of doctors never talk about, is the spiritual connection. Biologic medicine, we talked about the field, we talk about this field, that field is our spirit and we need to be connected spiritually to source and when we are not that it does affect that life force that is in us.

Sharon Stills, ND

All important. You said so many good things, I am like, alright, I have a few things to say. When you are talking about the microbiome and being in a relationship, if you think about it from a pleomorphic perspective all these bacteria, even the bad ones, the ones that cause disease, they all live within us. They all start out as symbionts helping us with circulation, with lymphatic flow, with bone growth and it is just when our terrain is out of balance when it is stinking thinking, or not connected, or fascia is congested, or the lymph is congested, or the pH is off, or we demineralized, or we have chronic infections in our teeth that are sucking our whole immune system, that is when everything goes through this up-leveling, this pleomorphic process and becomes pathogenic. If we understand terrain based and we are not just trying to kill things then we can, like you are saying, we can befriend our microbiome and we can, killing something that lives in your body is part of you is, all the antibiotics, the anti-acid we want pro not anti.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

You know what the most amazing aha moment I had in my professional career? My most aha moment was I go through dental school and everything is about kill, kill decay, Listerine, kill the germs on contact, Colgate Total kill germs 24 hours. Colgate Total was almost going to launch as the first antibiotic toothpaste and then everything was emerging, especially from Josh Lederberg and other people who were working on the microbiome, saying, wait, we will lose that antibiotic war and that because of the ability for bacteria to communicate and they vote, it is called quorum sensing and then they flip the pathogenic switch when they are under attack and they will always win. They paid a much higher evolutionary price and they were on this planet before we were. As a matter of fact, in many talks, I talk about how in Genesis chapters, whatever it is, chapter two verse seven, the verse that says a God took from the dust of the earth and breathed his spirit into it and we became mind-body-spirit, well, no, it was not dust. I had a Jewish scholar who had studied Torah and he said that. he was like, the word is not dust it’s slime. Does that makes sense? Because the Earth was covered with microbial slime. Our creator of your creation is doing evolution, it was from evolution, from taking the slime and bringing spirit, and then these microbe was organized into cells that are human cells and a bacterium, they divide the same and they have the genetic information. I know you know about the mitochondrial bacterial theory that our own human cells were once bacterial in origin.

Sharon Stills, ND

And we are more bacteria.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

We are more bacteria 10 times, right.

Sharon Stills, ND

Our mutual colleague, friend, and teacher, Dr. Rau, 20 years ago he would come in with his Swiss accent that I can not really do justice to. But we are walking bags of bacteria.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

We are walking bags of bacteria.

Sharon Stills, ND

Then we are human cells. I learned from him very early on that when you go to Switzerland, these clinics, these bioregulatory clinics overseas, the dentist, and the doctor under the same roof. He would not always say, I send the patient to see the dentist first because why make my job harder?

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

I lectured to the European Congress of Integrative Medicine, it was about 700 doctors, it was in Portugal last September. Thomas was at the event and he sat next to my wife. And when I got up to speak, I said, “There is one medical doctor in this room who would change my life,” and he was the first medical doctor I ever heard of that if you had a problem, if you had cancer, autoimmune disease, whatever you had, the first place he would look is your mouth and I said, “He inspired me to write this book,” and then I did this whole presentation on sources of toxicity and inflammation and blah-blah-blah and then he got up and he said, he told my wife, he said, “Tell Gerry that was a very good talk.” I want to get to the aha moment, this is really important, really important, the aha moment. Here I am thinking that bacteria are the enemy, we got to kill them. You know what we learned with the Human Microbiome Project? You know what I learned when I started going down the rabbit hole of the oral microbiome 20 years ago? I learned that the bacteria are an intelligent semi-permeable membrane in the mouth that transport minerals, the bacteria transport minerals from saliva to remineralize your teeth. You do not need fluoride, aha, the toxic fluoride poison. Bacteria help to remineralize your teeth. Bacteria transport molecular oxygen to your gums and take ionic oxygen and free radicals away from the gums. There is this whole metabolism going on that bacteria regulate what is going on in the mouth, they help in the production of nitric oxide, this is unbelievable, this is how we stay alive. A healthy oral microbiome is critically important for healthy menopause. If you have gum disease and you are going through menopause you are going to be suffering.

Sharon Stills, ND

I have so many questions. How do the listeners, what are some tips to know and to do to have a healthy oral microbiome?

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

You know, some of the topical things that happened during menopause are dry mouth, for example, and that dryness is part of this hormonal changes that cause that and it is really important that that dryness is addressed. There are different ways you can do that. I mean, I basically created a toothpaste, that is all vitamins. I think for your menopause summit, everyone on the summit gets a coupon code for this. Would you post?

Sharon Stills, ND

I want you to explain. Because that was my next question for you but we can’t roll it in. Because you did create a toothpaste and a lot of the natural toothpaste out there that we think are good like xylitol and charcoal, can you kind of explain why you created yours and why those aren’t as good as they think they are?

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

Like I said a healthy microbiome is essential for healthy menopause. A lot of people are not healthy and they do not have healthy menopause and they suffer. I was talking about dry mouth and what does that do? Well, saliva is the lifeblood of your teeth and gums, if it is drying you are more prone to tooth decay, you are more prone to gum disease, and you are more prone to dysbiosis because you have teeth, gums, and saliva and this microbial flora that is bathing everything with it. It is called the dental sialo-microbial complex. When you have a healthy microbiome, your microbiome transports minerals, ionic calcium, and ionic phosphorous from saliva to the surfaces of your teeth, those minerals are in saliva, and oxygenate your gums. When your microbiome is not healthy it is not working like that, it is actually doing the reverse, it is taking minerals out of your teeth, it is causing inflammation and dryness, and other debilitating conditions, especially periodontal inflammation, gum disease, and gum inflammation. But gums are more sensitive and more friable, the teeth are starting to demineralize and you get chipping and wear and erosion and these kinds of things.

How do we keep the microbiome healthy so that your mouth is healthy? Feed your microbes. This toothpaste is vitamin C, CoQ10, I love CoQ10. I have got a patent on, three patents on CoQ10. This is basically a dietary supplement, you can brush your teeth, your teeth get whiter and you can eat it, I eat it, it can help my voice. I developed this 20 years ago with a lot of research. It took three years just to put this together in a formula that nourishes and supports in a prebiotic way, you know there’s prebiotics and probiotics. Probiotics always got the big hoopla, thanks to Dannon Yogurt and all those companies that like, oh, you need probiotics. Well, probiotics, as we have discovered do not work as good as prebiotics. Because the flora, our microflora, and our microbiome is almost as unique as our thumbprint. And in the mouth, probiotics do not work at all, they were tried as far back as the 70s, in the gut they work. 

Now we are looking at prebiotics. Prebiotics work better in the gut which is a closed system.  In the mouth, probiotics do not work because as I like to say, if probiotics were so with combiotics. That is like salmonella, if you get salmonella infections in your mouth it will blow out your gut. But pathogens or the combiotics, the pathogens, really, your microbiome protects you from deadly viruses and bacteria in the environment around us. If probiotics work so with combiotics and that is why we want to nourish and balance the indigenous microflora. When you have a healthy microbiome you have healthy saliva flow, your teeth are healthier, and your microbiome is working to protect, nourish, and support the entire oral cavity.

Sharon Stills, ND

Why not charcoal and why not xylitol? Because those are two big.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

Thank you. I give patients charcoal capsules when I take mercury out of teeth. We all love charcoal because it binds to stuff. The idea was, well, charcoal bind to pathogens in the mouth, it binds to everything. It will bind to the whole microbiome, it will strip your microbiome. But what is also insidious and stupid about charcoal is that when you brush with it, it is highly abrasive to your teeth. You have people brushing with charcoal which is an abrasive mineral, and they are wearing their enamel. It is come out all over even the American Dental Association’s like, well, charcoal, this is after Colgate, Crest and everybody came out with charcoal. Then there were some natural companies that came out with charcoal and xylitol. The xylitol issue is one which I always get on my soapbox about because xylitol was made from a bio waste, you know that?

Sharon Stills, ND

I do because I have talked to you.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

It was a brilliant invention. A brilliant way of making a sugar substitute, the new method on for the heroine of sugar, we had aspartame and saccharin. Now we have the sugar alcohols and erythritol is another one. Erythritol they just had a couple of months ago studies emerging that a erythritol causes clots and embolisms. The reason why is erythritol is a chemical. By the way, xylitol is chemical, they love to say, it is natural, comes from pretty birch bark, well, no, it’s made from xylan extracted from organic substances whether it is birch bark or GMO corncobs which is the original and now the xylitol were throwing all these corncobs away, GMO corncobs to extract the corn, the corncobs had xylan and they said they extracted xylan, how did they extract the xylan? In industrialized true story and industrialized process of extracting using hydrogenation like how they make margarine from oil, a hydrogenation process using the heavy metal, raney nickel as a catalyst they made a what is called in the organic chemistry textbooks, a high-value chemical known as xylitol. It has 40% of the calories of sugar. It is like, that is good, would not spike your insulin, well, actually, they have found that it does, it fools your insulin. It is a chemical that is not recognized by the human body, a lot of people like, “It is good for you, it prevents cavities.” Because they did studies in Finland showing that xylitol disrupts and even kills streptococcus mutans bacteria on teeth which is the bacteria most commonly connected with dental caries. Xylitol actually disrupts that, well, no, it does not just disrupt that it disrupts the whole microbiome and it disrupts the gut microbiome that is why people have wicked diarrhea and gas, and all this other crap, literally. 

I am here and it is like the darling of the natural products, of the darling of the natural toothpaste and I am like, it is a chemical. Look it up in an organic chemistry textbook, it is a chemical. I have these people come up to me because they are like so bought in on the xylitol thing. I had this one person in Texas, she did a whole oral care line on xylitol and I am like, because she believes that xylitol, keeps the mouth clean and it kills. I lectured to the Holistic Dental Association recently and I had a woman just literally cornered me because I said it is junk science and that was a nasty remark. All science that is done properly is a science that should be reviewed, criticized, and respected. Unfortunately, we can not do that with vaccines and all this other stuff. There was not an intelligent dialog there and that and it really has not been an intelligent dialog on xylitol but I assure would love to have one. 

I have actually been on a radio show in Texas and someone yelling at me because they have the xylitol products company and I was like, xylitol disrupts and disturbs the oral microbiome and the gut microbiome, it is a high-value chemical that is not recognized by the human body, it is not absorbed or recognized. The only thing worse than xylitol is erythritol which often gets paired with monk fruit, a natural ingredient. You have to look at it like that buy a drink that says flavored with monk fruit and then you look, it is monk fruit and xylitol, and, I am sorry, monk fruit and erythritol. What is the problem with erythritol? Well, erythritol is absorbed by the human body but it is not metabolized. Xylitol is not absorbed nor metabolized it just goes right through you. Erythritol gets absorbed then it can not get out. It is linked to esophageal cancer, and it is been linked to thrombocytes clots, and heart attacks, and strokes. You can look that up and just see the science that is emerging on erythritol. Also a high-value chemical.

Sharon Stills, ND

Well, that is something I do. I do this all day long with patients. I just had last night, patients are coming and they are on protein powders and they are like, no, it is a good one, the influencer I follow on Instagram said they drink it and then I am like.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

The Instagram influencer who is getting paid so they drink it.

Sharon Stills, ND

I am like, or as a self-proclaimed health wizard. I am like, I always in when I am doing an intake patient, I am always like, we got to take two minutes, give me the brand name, I got to go online, I got to look at the ingredients and like nine times out of ten, it is got acesulfame, it is got erythritol, it is got all the junk in it.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

I mean, I do was this healthy chip that if you got one of my kids have and I was like, this is good. It was like a healthy chip with all healthy ingredients and then I got down to Maltodextrin.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yeah, you got to read labels and you got. Yeah, that is such a good point. I am not sure how we got that from teeth.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

You are talking about oral care products and some of the crap ingredients.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes. Take home lesson, do not brush your teeth with abrasive charcoal.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

There have been actual organizations that are completely underwritten by xylitol companies. It is a multibillion-dollar like the, I think it is OSIA, and I never joined because once I saw who was underwriting it, I was like, let us make this credible because they know that all the xylitol companies are on display there. But my opinion, xylitol will eventually. I know DuPont probably wants to take me out. Because the majority of xylitol is owned by DuPont subsidiary Tenaska. In Europe is the one that first extracted it then they did the studies in Finland, the ones I called junk science because they were looking for the wrong thing and it was a junk science. They were looking at alcohol’s ability to disrupt the adherence to interfere with aspects of the microbiome and its activity in the mouth and I said, look, strep mutans lives in your mouth and it is a commensal bacteria until you piss it off and then it flips the pathogenic switch and it becomes a bad bug. But there is no such thing as. We went from the germ theory where all bugs are bad, and all bacteria are bad to the good guy, bad guy, the probiotic combiotic, with the probiotic pathogen. The good guys we call it probiotics, the bad guys we call pathogens. Then you have the human microbiome project that changed the game and understanding of pleomorphism, understanding quorum sensing and what that means, and understanding how good guys become bad guys when you pissed them off just like in ghettos in our society.

Sharon Stills, ND

You can be a nice person then someone pisses you off and you get angry.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

Defund the police and now you have gangs on the street.

Sharon Stills, ND

Externally there is a microbiome, internally there is a microbiome, we have the external terrain, the internal terrain. It is good until provoked to become bad. It is still innately good, you got to bring it down the wrong path like a teenager got rough, just real it in. When you were talking about xylitol and all the companies and people are invested in and you have this product line that is about xylitol and you hear this, it made me think about mercury. Because dentists were so invested in mercury and it is kind of a hard thing. You have been put in mercury, amalgam, and silver fillings in a patient’s mouth and then you learn it is bad and like that is just talk about cognitive dissonance. I would love for you to just kind of, because one of the things that makes me the saddest in clinical practice is when a patient comes in, and this happens too frequently, and they are like, I did a good thing, I removed my mercury and I am like, okay, here is the million dollar question, did you do it with a biological dentist, are you protected? It is like a crap shot, sometimes they were, sometimes.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

They go, no, I have a very good dentist.

Sharon Stills, ND

What could you tell the listeners, what are just some things like if you are looking for someone because it is an important thing to get your amalgams out, what do you want your dentist, is it enough that they are smart trained, are there certain things you should look for, what are some tips?

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

That is a really good question. So, let us talk about methylmercury for a minute and truthfully, I was saying that was one of the things, like I was sitting in dental school going, wait a minute. I have a question, why are we putting mercury two inches from people’s brains? They are like, no, what is in the tooth, it is a mercury that is magically locked in, don’t worry, it is safe, meanwhile, I am like, excuse me, then why can not we touch it with our fingers and why is like, if a thermometer breaks in a room you got to close the floor or the building? Nothing was adding up, and I was like, “I do not believe in this, I will never do an amalgam.” Truthfully, I have never placed that amalgam since I came out of dental school.

Sharon Stills, ND

Wow. I did not know that.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

Never, ever. And I am. Okay. You are ready? This is my 40th year as a dentist. I graduated June 2nd, 1983, and this my 40th year. I was like Doogie Howser, I was 12 years old when I. I really gave it away. I talked about being 60, the yang years to the yin years. 

Sharon Stills, ND

You will never not be yang.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

It is up to a you, we manifest is what we believe. Here is the most important thing for everyone to know about mercury, dental mercury. The greatest amount of mercury is when they are first put in and when they are removed. When they are removed is as much or sometimes even more because they are removed with an aerosol-producing high-speed dental drill. Okay. The thing is, if you do not have them removed safely, you are getting wickedly exposed. When I was on The Dr. Oz Show back in 2011 and I was the first biologic dentist to get Oz to do a piece on toxic fillings and the American Dental Association went crazy but everything I said on the show was. Then you can actually see segments if you type my name and put toxic fillings The Dr. Oz Show, you can see the segments because the first words out of my mouth is, Oz is like, he is on the stage and he goes, “Ladies and gentlemen if I drop this thermometer we will have to evacuate the studio,” yet, you are walking around with more mercury in your teeth than this thermometer and it is off-gassing every day. Then he demonstrated with a mercury vapor analyzer what happens even with a toothbrush, hot liquids, and how there is that there is a vapor. One of the interesting things is that he demonstrated that the mercury is not locked in, that it is leaching out. 

We did a 40-minute taping of safe removal, how I do safe removal, the proportions that are in the room, the alternate air supply on the patient, and how the both the assistant and the entire room is protected. All of the air in the room, positive pressure air in the room has a mercury vapor analyzer. We showed how the mercury vapor actually goes on a screen and accumulates from the removal of an amalgam. Safe removal of amalgam is the most important thing in my opinion. The second most important thing is making sure that you do not put something worse. What happened on the Dr. Oz Show, which was really upsetting, is that they cut out the whole segment on safe removal, they just scared the hell out of everybody with their amalgams and everybody ran to their dentist and got their amalgams ripped out of their mouths which you may you want to do a few at a time, you do not want to rip out wobbly amalgams of your teeth because you do not have that much time and the dentist said he could do it all in one day, no way and do a quadrant at a time, that is acceptable. Make sure you find a good dentist, not just a biologic that this but a good biologic dentist.

Sharon Stills, ND

How do you know that you found a good biological dentist?

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

That is a really tough one. I know some of them, I get asked all the time. I am about to create a training program. Because there are a lot of biologic dentists that are not good and a lot of good dentists that are not biologic. I find that it is easier to find a good dentist with good hands, a good head, good heart the three H’s and make that person biological. I have a wonderful woman in my practice, Dr. Jeannie Greco, she is amazing and her hands are beautiful and she is totally in tune with practicing biologically. She is also a young mommy and she does mommy blogging and all that stuff. She is so cool. You got to have her on, she would she be great. She is so spunky, she is really with it. She protects herself because she wants to protect her child.

Sharon Stills, ND

Some of my sickest patients over the years were dentists or dental assistants.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

Yes. People do not realize who are pregnant if you have mercury in your mouth when you are pregnant, it will cross the placenta and it will affect the fetus.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yeah. I do that in my fertility prep. If women come, I love when they come in, they are like, I want to get healthy before I conceive, we strengthen the adrenals, we look at the thyroid, we look at progesterone, and we always do the detoxing. Because once you are pregnant you can not detox.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

Correct. You can not detox from heavy metals if you have amalgams in your teeth.

Sharon Stills, ND

No. You can not do heavy metal, if you have amalgams do not let anyone heavy metal test you. When someone comes to me I send them to someone who, like Gerry, who knows what they are doing, removes the amalgams. Then a piece that I see missed is you have to come back to your doctor like me or whoever your doctor is and make sure they do pre and post-heavy metal testing again because you have gotten the amalgams out. I think sometimes you think, okay, I am done now but you got to remember those amalgams were like a faucet, drip into your body and there is going to be a body burden.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

A great analogy.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yeah.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

That is exactly what goes on. We demonstrated that on the Dr. Oz Show. Everyone should know the American Dental Association was founded in the late 1800s by the pro amalgam, pro-mercury dentists, there was something called the amalgam wars, in the late 1800s there was a dentist that refused to use it, and then dentist that used it, and the ones that refused to use it lost to the ones that used it. Why was amalgams so popular? Why do more than 50% of dentists still place dental mercury fillings? By the way, they are not silver fillings, there are 26% silver alloy and 51 to 52% mercury, and more than half of that filling is mercury. For your dentist to say, I am going to “Hey Susie, I am going to place a little silver filling in the back, you are not going to see it, what would you do?” “Hey, Susie, I am going to place a little mercury filling in the back, and I am going to see it because for him to call it a silver filling is a fraudulent misrepresentation. It is a mercury filling and mercury has terrible implications for female hormonal health, it has terrible implications for menopause, terrible implications for pregnancy.

Sharon Stills, ND

It is a neurotoxin. They took thyroid cells and put mercury into the thyroid cells in the Petridish and that dish and that is what creates the antibodies. One of the foundational causes of Hashimoto’s is often mercury. You have to get them removed but then you have to follow up because you want to make sure your body is cleaned out. I am just looking at the clock and, as always, alright, we are out of time, unfortunately. We have probably gone over it but this is really important stuff. I just kind of want to recap. We learn that every tooth is corrected to a meridian and a problem in the tooth can most certainly affect the organ, it is not necessarily, maybe 100% of the time, it is not always, but in 21 years of practice, he is been practicing 40 years, I see it time and time again. You want your physician, you want your dentist to be thinking about that because it is an important thing. We learned what kind of toothpaste you should and should not use. We learned our microbes are our friends. We learned about cavities and surgeries and you need to have a cone beam. We learned about mercury and having it removed safely and smartly and finding someone good to do that and not giving up, just because you did not find the right dentist the first time, don’t give up. But when you are going to do something like mercury removal you really want to do your homework and you really want to make sure someone is doing the right thing. 

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

I forgot one thing, the meridians for women’s reproductive health are your front teeth. A lot of people who have accidents when they are young and they have a root canal on a front teeth or a lower front teeth or an upper front teeth, your front incisors, four incisors upper, four incisors lower are connected to your reproductive organs and your urinary system.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yeah, bladder.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

Urinary system are four upper and four lower in the front. The last thing I wanted to say, which is apropos to this entire program on menopause, is that you will not be able to regulate if there is oral disease. One of the most important tests is what you just said, the CBCT. I am doing for your menopausal subscribers, I normally do a $600 consult fee to read the cone beam, read the entire cone beam. We had a special for $269 for you for a limited time when this airs, I can give you that. 

Sharon Stills, ND

Thank you very much.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

I will also give a free guide.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes. I mean, I tell all my patients like you got to get a cone beam and then if you are your dentist read it you still have to have Gerry read it because it is so many things it missed.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

I know. Of course, I am teaching dentistry to read a cone beam because 90% of them do not know how to read it.

Sharon Stills, ND

I am going to come to that course so I can start helping read my patients’ too.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

You are more than welcome.

Sharon Stills, ND

I hope the take-home message you all walk away with is that your oral microbiome and the things that we did not even touch upon implants and you should not have titanium implants, they need to be ceramic, they need to be zirconia, the materials that go in your mouth, if you put composites in they need to be BPA free. There is so many things that are important. We are just out of time, unfortunately. Follow Gerry.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

Dr. Gerry Curatola. If you DM me I will send you these guides on cavitation and the top 10 sources of chronic inflammation and toxicity in your mouth. So, DM Dr. Gerry Curatola.

Sharon Stills, ND

Awesome. That is a very generous offer. I know you were going to do that about the cone beam, that is like.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

Yeah, I want to do that. I did that for another recent talk and it was really helpful because it was like a no-brainer. It is the best test and you will get more information that you probably never heard of before from what is being read on that scan.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yeah. I think the cone beam and then the thermography that I do which looks at regulation, and health of teeth, and what is going on in the body when you have a cone beam and a CRT thermography, and then you have got someone who understands what they are doing, you really have a good handle on what does or does not need to be done. Take home message is on your hormonal journey your mouth is so important because we are not just going through menopause and balancing hormones we have a whole body, we have a whole terrain. That is why I love to take this time, we are pausing and we are evaluating. Even before I went over to Switzerland, I just kind of grew up thinking the dentist, you would go and get, they would clean your teeth and then they would give you candy. It is good for repeat business, but I just.

Gerald Peter Curatola, DDS

That is why I did this. You want to know something? I wrote this book for the layperson, for the guy on the drive-thru at Burger King. But I give it to dentists, I gave it to two dentists today that were visiting. There is so much information here that even dentists will read for the first time. I actually get this on Amazon or whatever, but “The Mouth-Body Connection” is a good primer if you really want more if we meet. 

Sharon Stills, ND

It really is. Even when I first started medical school I was not thinking about, I was thinking the teeth, you just go get them cleaned, and if you have a cavity you get a filled. But when I learned from bioregulatory it just was like, mic drop and it just changed everything. That is why I wanted to have this important conversation today. Thanks for bearing with us and going all over the place. Thank you, Gerry, as always, for being here and your generosity, and just for moving the profession forward and helping thousands and thousands of patients. Alright, ladies. When I do my Q&As, if you have more questions about teeth because I know we kind of covered a lot and went all over. We are here to support you. But this is such a foundational part of how you age gracefully. You can be hanging out with me and Gerry when we are 120. We will be back with another one, another interview.