Latest / Love Your Gut / Ep. 72: Why Gut Symptoms Might Start in Your Mouth with Dr. Michelle Jorgenson

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Ep. 72: Why Gut Symptoms Might Start in Your Mouth with Dr. Michelle Jorgenson · Love Your Gut

• 0:03
  Dr. Heather Finley: Welcome to the Love Your Gut Podcast.
• 0:05
  Dr. Heather Finley: I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:06
  Dr. Heather Finley: Heather Finley, registered dietitian and gut health specialist.
• 0:10
  Dr. Heather Finley: I understand the frustration of dealing with GI issues because I've been there and I spent over two decades searching for answers for my own gut issues of constipation, bloating, and stomach pain.
• 0:21
  Dr. Heather Finley: I've dedicated my life to understanding and solving my own gut issues.
• 0:25
  Dr. Heather Finley: And now I'm here to guide you.
• 0:28
  Dr. Heather Finley: On this podcast, I'll help you identify the true root causes of your discomfort.
• 0:33
  Dr. Heather Finley: So you can finally ditch your symptoms for good.
• 0:36
  Dr. Heather Finley: My goal is to empower you with the knowledge and tools you need so that you can love your gut and it will love you right back.
• 0:43
  Dr. Heather Finley: So if you're ready to learn a lot, gain a deeper understanding of your gut and find lasting relief.
• 0:48
  Dr. Heather Finley: You are in the right place.
• 0:50
  Dr. Heather Finley: Welcome to the love your gut podcast.
• 0:54
  Dr. Heather Finley: Welcome back to the next episode of the Love Your Gut podcast.
• 0:57
  Dr. Heather Finley: I am so glad to be here today with Michelle.
• 1:01
  Dr. Heather Finley: She is a dentist, and we're going to talk today about something that you may not have even thought about, which is how your mouth and your oral health can actually impact your.
• 1:13
  Dr. Heather Finley: Overall health, it's often a huge missing piece that we see with our clients.
• 1:18
  Dr. Heather Finley: And so when Michelle reached out, I was really excited to have her on the podcast.
• 1:22
  Dr. Heather Finley: So Michelle, welcome to the show.
• 1:24
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Thank you.
• 1:24
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I'm excited to talk.
• 1:25
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: There's a lot of things I think we're gonna be able to talk about today.
• 1:28
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I.
• 1:28
  Dr. Heather Finley: Yes, there are a lot of things.
• 1:30
  Dr. Heather Finley: So why don't you just give us kind of the lay of the land a little bit.
• 1:34
  Dr. Heather Finley: Tell us a little bit about who you are, why you do what you do, why you're passionate about this, and then I have tons of questions for you that I know everyone will be excited to hear.
• 1:45
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You know, and I always really like to start about out with why am I here and what, who am I and why, why am I even doing this?
• 1:51
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And it is not an intentional place.
• 1:53
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I did not intend to be where I am at where I am today.
• 1:56
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I am a, was am a general dentist, continue to be, but uh, was practicing as a general dentist, was doing a lot of cosmetic dentistry.
• 2:03
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I was loving what I was doing.
• 2:05
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: My father was a dentist as well, and I just thought I would do it forever.
• 2:08
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: He's in his mid seventies, he's still practicing, you know, I just thought that this was my life, but about a decade in, I got really sick and it started with gut health problems and trustingly enough.
• 2:17
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Uh, you deal with a lot of that and when you have gut health issues.
• 2:21
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You just do what everybody else does, right?
• 2:23
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You start changing your diet, you start throwing away all your food.
• 2:26
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You know, you just, we.
• 2:27
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And so we started doing a lot of that and it helped some, but it didn't help a lot.
• 2:31
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And the other issues were, I couldn't remember things anymore.
• 2:35
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And I've always had a good me memory.
• 2:36
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I couldn't complete sentences.
• 2:37
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I couldn't remember patients' names from room to room.
• 2:40
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I mean, something was really wrong.
• 2:42
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And the big one was numbness.
• 2:43
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I had just painful numbness down my hands.
• 2:45
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Arms.
• 2:46
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I couldn't sleep at night.
• 2:47
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I couldn't blow dry my hair.
• 2:49
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And I was losing dexterity.
• 2:50
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I wasn't able to hold my instruments anymore.
• 2:52
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So I actually put my practice for sale because doctors couldn't tell me what was wrong.
• 2:56
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: They all just said nothing's wrong.
• 2:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You know, maybe you have some IBS, which I despise that because I'm like, okay, great, thank you.
• 3:02
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Now what?
• 3:03
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You know, that does nothing for me to tell me I have irritable bowel syndrome.
• 3:06
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Thank you very much.
• 3:07
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Um, so really they couldn't gimme any help, any answers, and I didn't know how I was gonna continue, but.
• 3:14
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I was in my mid thirties, four young kids.
• 3:16
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: This was our entire livelihood.
• 3:18
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: My husband worked for the practice as well, so this was a big deal.
• 3:22
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And, um, started just looking for other options for work.
• 3:25
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And I thought, well, I could be a nutritionist.
• 3:27
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I've learned a lot about diet.
• 3:28
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Now maybe I can help somebody else in another field with this.
• 3:32
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And ran into another dentist who said, you know, actually you have a lot of the same symptoms I had.
• 3:37
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Have you ever looked into Mercury as potentially the problem?
• 3:40
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And I knew that silver fillings had mercury in them.
• 3:43
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: We as dentists are all taught this in dental school.
• 3:45
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: First year of dental school we're taught this.
• 3:47
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Uh, but I said, well, I don't have any filling.
• 3:49
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: In my mouth.
• 3:50
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And you know, I've taught they're perfectly safe.
• 3:52
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And he said, despite what you've been told and despite the fact that you don't have any, he said, first of all, it's not the ones you have, it's the ones you've been drilling out for the last decade with no protection.
• 4:01
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And he said, maybe you should just get tested.
• 4:03
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So I got tested, and that's what it was.
• 4:06
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Mercury poisonings poisoning off the charts.
• 4:08
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So all of a sudden, all of my symptoms made sense because Ner Mercury affects gut function.
• 4:14
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Mercury affects brain function.
• 4:16
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's a neurologic toxin, and mercury affects.
• 4:19
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Hands and nerves and all of the above.
• 4:21
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So the doctor said, well, if you're gonna get better, now that we know what it is, if you're gonna get it out, you can't keep putting it in.
• 4:28
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And I was a cosmetic dentist.
• 4:29
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I was drilling out all kinds of fillings every single day.
• 4:31
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: 'cause people didn't like the way they looked.
• 4:33
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So he said, you gotta figure out, you're either gonna have to give this all up or you have to figure out how to do it safely.
• 4:38
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I found an organization that had protocol for removing these silver fillings in a way that that mercury wasn't released.
• 4:44
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: 'cause that's what happens.
• 4:45
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You drill on it.
• 4:46
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The mercury that's in those fillings, they're literally 50% mercury.
• 4:49
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The mercury that's in there released as a gas, it comes up right into the dentist's head, but also the patient's head.
• 4:54
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You know, that's getting this work done.
• 4:56
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So I found out there were protocols to do this safely.
• 4:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Started doing that.
• 4:59
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Patients started noticing when you walk in and a gas mask into their, their office, their procedure, they're saying, uh.
• 5:06
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Okay, what's going on here?
• 5:07
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Something's a little different.
• 5:09
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So I would explain to them, and they were always grateful that maybe this was helpful for them too, you know, from a health perspective.
• 5:15
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And then they would start sharing this with friends or family or doctors or people that they knew were kind of, you know, looking for something like this.
• 5:21
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And that's how I learned.
• 5:23
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: A doctor would come to me and say, well, have you heard about the concern with root canals?
• 5:26
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Or, what do you really know about fluoride?
• 5:28
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You know, these are the questions that they were asking me.
• 5:32
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I to all of them would say, well, I don't know anything.
• 5:35
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: All I know is what I was taught in school.
• 5:37
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And you know, there's some really some really sacred cows inside a dentistry.
• 5:41
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You know that these are safe and they always will be.
• 5:43
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And we can't change our mind.
• 5:44
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And even if research shows, anyway, I had to, I had to.
• 5:48
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Be able to bend and say, all right, research is showing differently and my own experience is showing me differently.
• 5:53
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So how does the mouth really impact overall health?
• 5:56
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And so that's where I am at now.
• 5:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: We have a multi-specialty, multi-doctor practice.
• 6:00
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: We get people from all over the world coming to see us because there's literally so much connection.
• 6:06
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Research shows 60 to 80% of chronic disease can start in your mouth.
• 6:09
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So that's where I'm at.
• 6:11
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Why I'm here today is because of simply the place that I was myself.
• 6:15
  Dr. Heather Finley: Wow, what an incredible story and how amazing that it, like one conversation changed everything and you were about to sell your practice.
• 6:25
  Dr. Heather Finley: How long did it take you to start feeling better once you identified that Mercury was the issue?
• 6:31
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So I started having some incremental improvement within, you know, a few months time, but I was about eight years before I felt like I had my brain back.
• 6:40
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I don't even know if I ever really completely be back to what I was before, but there's some other really interesting tie-ins about how.
• 6:47
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Anyway, where, where else Mercury comes from that added to that, I think it probably started even before I was a dentist and uh, just was this cumulative build.
• 6:56
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So anytime you have cumulative toxic buildup like that, it doesn't just go away overnight.
• 7:01
  Dr. Heather Finley: No, it does not at all.
• 7:03
  Dr. Heather Finley: That, that's incredible.
• 7:04
  Dr. Heather Finley: So someone might be listening to this.
• 7:07
  Dr. Heather Finley: Just completely shocked thinking I had no idea that my oral health impacted my overall health.
• 7:14
  Dr. Heather Finley: So let's focus on the gut since most people listening to this have GI issues.
• 7:19
  Dr. Heather Finley: So can you just explain briefly how oral health affects gut health and vice versa, and like what you tend to see in your clients?
• 7:29
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Yeah, it's so interesting to me because, you know, even back in the early 19 hundreds.
• 7:34
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Medicine started specializing and started breaking off into little areas of expertise in the entire body.
• 7:40
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And really what that's done is it's changed the way we all think about ourselves.
• 7:44
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You know, this body that we house, that we're live, that we live inside of the mouth is part of the digestive tract.
• 7:50
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Mouth is part of, yeah, it's, it's the first part, but we, yeah, we call it oral health and gut health.
• 7:56
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I'm like, it's the same thing.
• 7:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's the same.
• 7:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's an open tube off the bottom.
• 8:00
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Yeah, exactly.
• 8:01
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: From the top.
• 8:02
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Is the mouth going into the other end?
• 8:03
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Is the outside going out?
• 8:05
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You know, it's one big tube.
• 8:06
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And it's interesting because I've heard this talked about, and if you think about it, it's actually open.
• 8:11
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's an opening in our body.
• 8:13
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's, you know, it's, it's an opening spot from the mouth all the way down to the other end, and that that opening is cell connected top to bottom.
• 8:21
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So mouth health is the starting point of the digestive tract.
• 8:25
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So there's all sorts of ways we could go with this.
• 8:27
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Number one, you know.
• 8:28
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Infection in the mouth is going to also contribute to gut unhealthy, and I will tell people this all the time.
• 8:35
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You simply cannot have a healthy mouth with an unhealthy gut or vice versa.
• 8:38
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You can't have a healthy gut with an unhealthy mouth because it's all one and the same thing.
• 8:44
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if you have gum infection.
• 8:46
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: If you have a reinfected root canal tooth, which is silent, you often don't know what's happening.
• 8:51
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: If you have infection in the jaw bone where you had a wisdom tooth removed, if you have any of those infections in the mouth, you cannot have a healthy gut no matter what.
• 8:59
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The mouth is connected a hundred percent.
• 9:01
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And you mentioned before we even went on today, h pylori, they found that h pylori, which is the cause of, or the usual cause of a lot of ulcers and issues that way.
• 9:11
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Originates oftentimes in the mouth.
• 9:13
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Yeah.
• 9:13
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So these bugs in the mouth are there for a reason.
• 9:17
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The mouth's actually a, it's a pretty, um, it's a war zone because if you think about it, everything that we put into the body, nearly everything that we put into the body comes in through the mouth, right.
• 9:29
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Our food comes in through the mouth.
• 9:30
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Our air comes in through the mouth, our water comes in through the mouth.
• 9:33
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Everything comes into the body through the mouth.
• 9:36
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So there has to be some pretty fierce warriors in that mouth to be able to fight because there's also bad things that come in through the mouth, right.
• 9:45
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: There's bad bugs in all sorts of things, and air, water, food, all of the above.
• 9:49
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So there have to be some pretty intense bugs living in the mouth to actually be able to defend us.
• 9:53
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Well, sometimes those pretty intense bugs get outta control, and then there, then there are ones that we actually don't want, and those will spread elsewhere.
• 10:00
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if you have gut dysbiosis, gut problems with the biome and the bugs living in your gut, you need to look at your mouth.
• 10:07
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Say, do I have something going on there as well?
• 10:10
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So that's the easiest most, you know, the easiest to understand connection is just the bacteria.
• 10:16
  Dr. Heather Finley: Yeah.
• 10:17
  Dr. Heather Finley: Yeah.
• 10:17
  Dr. Heather Finley: And what, obviously you swallow and then we're looking at stomach acid and if someone doesn't have enough stomach acid and yes, it's, anything that doesn't get killed off ends up in the gut, so.
• 10:28
  Dr. Heather Finley: Yep.
• 10:28
  Dr. Heather Finley: I think I read in your book you said the mouth is the mirror of the body.
• 10:32
  Dr. Heather Finley: And Yeah, it's like it, everything is connected.
• 10:35
  Dr. Heather Finley: Like you said, the GI tract really starts with your mouth and your oral health, so.
• 10:42
  Dr. Heather Finley: What are some of the signs then that might indicate that the mouth is the sign of some deeper gut issues, maybe dysbiosis or SIBO or h pylori, some of the, those are some of the top things that we see.
• 10:57
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Yeah.
• 10:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I love this question because it's something that I talk about every single day with patients.
• 11:02
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Um, we were all told by our moms that if we eat sugar or don't brush our teeth, we're gonna get cavities.
• 11:10
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Right?
• 11:11
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Yeah.
• 11:11
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: That's true, but it's only a tiny piece of the truth.
• 11:15
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The mom didn't know everything.
• 11:16
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Unfortunately, nobody's talking about this.
• 11:18
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Hopefully now more moms are gonna find this out.
• 11:20
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: But if, if I see a patient and they've had a clean mouth, I.
• 11:26
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Nothing's really been going on.
• 11:27
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: In fact, I'll always remember, I see patients like this all the time, but I'll remember, I remember this woman, her name was Kim, and she was just the most diligent patient on the planet.
• 11:35
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You know, you know the type, they'll do every single thing that we ask them to do no matter what.
• 11:39
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So she came in every single, every six months on the dot, like on the day she was there every six months, getting her teeth cleaned, getting her teeth examined, all of the above.
• 11:47
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: She really didn't have tooth to case she'd had someone, she was younger, but we figured it was probably diet related.
• 11:52
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Some other issues.
• 11:54
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: She hadn't had a cavity for forever.
• 11:56
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Well, she came in at her six month appointment and she had four cavities all along the gum line, two molars on each side.
• 12:02
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: She started freaking out.
• 12:03
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Of course.
• 12:04
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Yeah.
• 12:04
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And um, I just said, you have gut problems.
• 12:08
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: There's something going on in your gut, you're not absorbing food properly.
• 12:12
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And she said, well, how the heck, how do you know that?
• 12:14
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Well, the reason is because the body is all connected head to toe, and it needs a balance of everything.
• 12:21
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And if gut function is not, I mean, this is your world.
• 12:25
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: If you have low stomach acid and you're not ion ionizing minerals properly, what happens is you the minerals pass through and don't stop on the way and go and take care of the cells.
• 12:36
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Well.
• 12:36
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The brain needs certain amount of minerals.
• 12:38
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The heart needs certain amount of minerals, and those are life sustaining operations in the body.
• 12:43
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Life will not continue if your heart doesn't continue working and your brain doesn't continue working well, guess what's not.
• 12:48
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Life sustaining teeth.
• 12:50
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So your body can actually live without teeth.
• 12:52
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It can also live without bones because teeth and bones are comparable in this, in this scenario.
• 12:56
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: But your, you can live without teeth.
• 12:57
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: People do.
• 12:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So your body knows this.
• 13:00
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And this says, all right, if I'm not getting enough nutrients, if I'm not getting enough minerals through, either because I'm not eating them or because I'm not absorbing them crop properly, I will have to go find them elsewhere.
• 13:10
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And so teeth are already made bank of minerals.
• 13:12
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if you're getting tooth decay along the gum line, you have.
• 13:17
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Core gut function.
• 13:18
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Mm-hmm.
• 13:18
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The tooth is thinnest along the gum line, so the body's literally mining minerals from the tooth top to bottom, but it's thinnest at the gum line, so that's where the hole will show up first.
• 13:29
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So this is basically your body just trying to take care of itself elsewhere.
• 13:32
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So that's the first sign I see is if I see a lot, if I see a lot of decay period and people brush their teeth.
• 13:38
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: 'cause we can tell, like I can look, I can tell looking in your mouth whether you brush your teeth or not.
• 13:42
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Even if you did it just like really well yesterday I can, I can tell it was like a, a onetime deal, you know, or, uh, no, I've been doing this every single day of my life.
• 13:51
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I can, we can tell.
• 13:52
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if I look in our mouth and your teeth look beautiful, I can tell you're brushing.
• 13:55
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I can tell you're cleaning, you're doing everything right and you have.
• 13:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Nonstop tooth decay.
• 13:59
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You know, you're the kid that always had two cavities when they went into the dentist, or you're the mom who every single time you go to the dentist, you have another couple cavities and you just don't know what to do.
• 14:07
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: 'cause you like, you're literally doing everything you know to do.
• 14:10
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's a gut function.
• 14:11
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's a gut function issue, a hundred percent.
• 14:15
  Dr. Heather Finley: Do you see this a lot with pregnant and nursing moms as well with just like how many minerals they're depleting because I've heard it so many times from our clients where they're like, I never had cavities until I was breastfeeding.
• 14:27
  Dr. Heather Finley: Yeah.
• 14:27
  Dr. Heather Finley: And then we'll run an HTMA on them and like they're in a four lows pattern.
• 14:32
  Dr. Heather Finley: They're minerals are super depleted.
• 14:33
  Dr. Heather Finley: And I'm like, well, yeah.
• 14:34
  Dr. Heather Finley: You know, calcium bones, like all the things, it makes total sense.
• 14:39
  Dr. Heather Finley: So.
• 14:39
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Exactly right.
• 14:40
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So there's three times.
• 14:43
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I see this happen teenage years.
• 14:45
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So what's going on in teenage years?
• 14:47
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Well, you're growing your own bones.
• 14:49
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Think of the growth that happens during teenage years and you know, I, there's a lady who brought her daughter in, she was 18, she just moved to college and like visited a dentist in her college town and he said she had 16 cavities and her mom was freaking out.
• 15:03
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So she brought her in for a second opinion.
• 15:05
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I said, she doesn't have 16 cavities, she actually has 17.
• 15:07
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Then they really freaked out and I said, this is her gut.
• 15:12
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: This is her gut.
• 15:12
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: She is growing faster than her minerals can keep up with.
• 15:15
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So either gut function or she's just not getting enough period.
• 15:19
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You know, she's, you know, college, she's living on pizza and ramen, you know, whatever.
• 15:22
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So she's just not getting what she needs.
• 15:24
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So in that situation, you've gotta supplement, you've got to add more minerals, period.
• 15:28
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You just have to do it.
• 15:29
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The second one is pregnancy and nursing, because you're not growing your own bones, you're growing somebody else's bones.
• 15:34
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You're growing a baby, you're growing a human that has bones and teeth and all sorts of need for those minerals.
• 15:40
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And then the third one is during menopause years, because estrogen, estrogen drops and estrogen actually is what helps maintain mineral balance in the bones.
• 15:49
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: That helps maintain a lot of different things.
• 15:51
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So you got that estrogen drop and you actually need an increase in minerals.
• 15:54
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So we start to see decay around bound menopause age as well.
• 15:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So.
• 15:59
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's interesting.
• 15:59
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Years ago they talked about what caused cavities.
• 16:03
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: There was a re a whole research, uh, continuum that kind of came together and all these researchers came and one guy brought this idea that sugar causes cavities.
• 16:11
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Basically sugar eats.
• 16:12
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Or bacteria eat sugar.
• 16:14
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: They lead to acid, which leads to cavities.
• 16:16
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Another guy, Dr.
• 16:17
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Weston Price, which a lot of people in the nutrition world have heard about, he brought his research that says Nutrition actually leads to the cavities, to nutritional deficiencies, lead to cavities.
• 16:26
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And another researcher, Dr.
• 16:28
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Melvin Page said, actually, my research shows that hormones lead to cavities, hormone changes, lead to cavities.
• 16:34
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Well, I think they're all right.
• 16:36
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It was voted on in the.
• 16:37
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Sugar equals cavities.
• 16:39
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: One got chosen, so that's the one that we were all taught and told forever.
• 16:42
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: This was literally the 1930s.
• 16:43
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: They did this.
• 16:44
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I think they were all right, and they were all right, kind of for the same reason.
• 16:47
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You know, the body needs minerals to stay well, so it needs minerals on the teeth, and sugar eating bacteria will strip those.
• 16:55
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It needs minerals in the body, otherwise your body will strip those and those times increase during hormone changes.
• 17:01
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So these things are all true.
• 17:04
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's all back to the mineral.
• 17:06
  Dr. Heather Finley: Yeah, it's like I always talk about this.
• 17:09
  Dr. Heather Finley: Minerals are the foundation of health and then you also need to be able to absorb the minerals as well.
• 17:16
  Dr. Heather Finley: Vitamin, there's
• 17:16
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: three K too, and acid uhhuh.
• 17:19
  Dr. Heather Finley: There's the, there's the second part of it.
• 17:21
  Dr. Heather Finley: So another hot topic that I feel like is becoming more.
• 17:26
  Dr. Heather Finley: Common or commonly known about is mouth breathing.
• 17:29
  Dr. Heather Finley: So how does mouth breathing affect gut health digestion, or even mineral balance?
• 17:35
  Dr. Heather Finley: I think mouth taping has become very popular.
• 17:39
  Dr. Heather Finley: But even that, like you're seeing a lot of, dental airway specialists.
• 17:43
  Dr. Heather Finley: I know my daughter's dentist is specializing in this and we've done expansion and all the things and have seen like amazing results, so.
• 17:52
  Dr. Heather Finley: Yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that and just kind of explain to the listeners about that.
• 17:57
  Dr. Heather Finley: Yeah,
• 17:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: so this trend of mouth taping is really an interesting one because the body naturally should be keeping the mouth closed at night.
• 18:06
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I.
• 18:07
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: But, so we're gonna go two directions with this.
• 18:09
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I'm gonna talk about why this is in need, why your daughter had to see you, had to do some expansion, you know, why that's even happening.
• 18:16
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And then what are we missing out on when we're not breathing through the mouth at night?
• 18:19
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: What is it doing to the gut function?
• 18:20
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: What is it doing to all those things?
• 18:21
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So first of all, why are we, why do we even have this need today?
• 18:24
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Why are we not able to keep our our mouths together?
• 18:26
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You know, our lips?
• 18:27
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Together at nighttime.
• 18:28
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Why are we not able to breathe through our nose properly?
• 18:30
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Well, this again goes back to Dr.
• 18:32
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Weston Price.
• 18:32
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: He was studying all these different societies in the 1930s and looking at what led to healthy people, what diet, what food led to healthy people.
• 18:41
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And he found that people who were healthier had higher levels of vitamins, fat soluble vitamins, vitamin D three, K two, and water soluble vitamins.
• 18:49
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You know, they're the ones we talk about all the time.
• 18:50
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Vitamin C, vitamin B, vitamin, you know, these are, these are the ones that we get.
• 18:53
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: People had higher levels of those, they had better health.
• 18:56
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I mean, we all know this, right?
• 18:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Yeah.
• 18:59
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: But what he also found is that the people who were healthier had wider mouths, wider faces, wider noses.
• 19:07
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Okay.
• 19:08
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Interesting.
• 19:08
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Right?
• 19:09
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: What about that made a difference?
• 19:11
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Well, when you have a wider nose and a wider mouth and you're able to keep your lips together at night, air passes through the nose and it's really important to do that because the nose is a filter, so it filters out.
• 19:23
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I mean, that's what boogers are.
• 19:24
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's why I tell kill Xlo ton.
• 19:25
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's what your boogers are.
• 19:26
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's all the stuff that, that you actually don't wanna be breathing in.
• 19:29
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: But if you're breathing in through your mouth, there's no filter.
• 19:32
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The tonsils act as a filter, so this often leads to swollen tonsils.
• 19:36
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So what do we do?
• 19:37
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: We take the tonsils out.
• 19:38
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Oh, great.
• 19:39
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Now we've just removed the last barrier between the lungs and all those boogers.
• 19:44
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Right?
• 19:45
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So we need to breathe through the nose because it filters.
• 19:48
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It also warms up the air.
• 19:49
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So it makes it easier for our lungs to use it humidifies.
• 19:52
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It moistens the air so our lungs can use it better.
• 19:55
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It also, when you're breathing through the nose, it creates something called nitric oxide, which leads to expansion of your blood vessels.
• 20:01
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So that air then gets further into the brain, deeper into the muscles, further into the heart.
• 20:06
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: All of those places we need to be breathing through our noses.
• 20:10
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Mm-hmm.
• 20:10
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: This is really important for growth and development of children, particularly, so I'm so glad you're doing this with your child growth and development, that nitric oxide leads to growth hormone increases all of these things.
• 20:20
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So why do so many people struggle with this?
• 20:24
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Why do so many people have crooked teeth?
• 20:26
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Need braces, need expansion?
• 20:28
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Why are no mouths fitting wisdom teeth anymore?
• 20:33
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: A hundred, 200, 300 years ago, we see skulls of people who had all 32 teeth, you know, so all their wisdom teeth in their mouths and straight teeth.
• 20:41
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So what's going on here?
• 20:42
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: This is a nutrient deficiency issue.
• 20:44
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The first bone affected by malnutrition is your top jaw.
• 20:48
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I learned this because I adopted a little boy at two and a half.
• 20:51
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: His top jaw was so small, it fit completely inside his bottom jaw.
• 20:55
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: That's the opposite of what should happen if you look at your teeth.
• 20:57
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The top jaw's on the outside, his teeth were lined up like runway, like airplanes on a runway.
• 21:02
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: They were so terrible, and his birth mother said.
• 21:06
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: One of the reasons we chose you to adopt him is because we know you're a dentist and we know you're gonna be able to fix what's going on with his mouth.
• 21:13
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Well, he was incredibly malnourished.
• 21:15
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: He'd been born at 21 week, like 20, what was he, 23 weeks like super premature.
• 21:20
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: He had been fed through a feeding tube for the first year of his life.
• 21:23
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: He couldn't hardly eat food, so his jaw did not develop.
• 21:27
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: If your top jaw develops too narrow.
• 21:30
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The bottom jaw has to develop narrow to fit inside of it, and so now we have really crooked teeth.
• 21:36
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The top jaw is also the floor of the nose.
• 21:39
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if your top jaw develops narrow, your nose develops narrow.
• 21:43
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So we all like these nice, skinny, petite looking noses.
• 21:46
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So I joke that it used to be that like Meryl Monroe and Robert Redford were like the beautiful faces in our world.
• 21:52
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: But now we look at Justin Bieber with a super skinny nose and Angelina Jolie with a super skinny nose get, guess what?
• 21:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Angelina Jo Lee and Dustin Justin Bieber, they don't breathe.
• 22:02
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Almost guarantee it.
• 22:03
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: They cannot breathe.
• 22:03
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: We need wide noses.
• 22:05
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So when we have skinny jaws.
• 22:08
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: We have skinny noses, and so what happens to happen is the mouth has to drop open to be able to get enough air to actually survive.
• 22:15
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: As soon as the mouth drops open, it changes the growth and development of the face.
• 22:20
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It grows more narrow, more long, more skinny, higher arch on the roof of the mouth.
• 22:26
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And now the problem is perpetuated.
• 22:28
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So nobody's breathing through the mouths at night or breathing through the nose at night.
• 22:31
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: They're all hanging their mouths open.
• 22:32
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: They're getting unfiltered, hot, dry, dirty air, right down their tonsils.
• 22:39
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's up their tonsils.
• 22:40
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's leading to airway issues.
• 22:41
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's leading to kids who are grinding their teeth at night, who have to have tonsils out, who need braces, all of these things.
• 22:47
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So mouth taping.
• 22:49
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: As a result of this, like we have this whole generation of people who can't breathe because of malnutrition.
• 22:54
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: This comes back to your world.
• 22:55
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Malnutrition.
• 22:56
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: We gotta get nutrients in their guts, but because of malnutrition,'cause we're not getting the nutrients we need outta the food that we're eating, food doesn't have it anymore.
• 23:04
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And because we're just not absorbing, our guts aren't, aren't working very well, everybody's malnourished.
• 23:09
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: We don't have rooms in our mouth for all of our teeth anymore.
• 23:11
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Everything's narrow and skinny.
• 23:12
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So they said, all right, let's tape those dang lips closed.
• 23:16
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Does it help?
• 23:17
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Sure.
• 23:18
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Right.
• 23:19
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: If you can continue to breathe through.
• 23:20
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: My husband, Nate tapes his mouth at night every single night because if you have, if your mouth breathing, you are gonna change the biome.
• 23:27
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You're gonna change the bugs that live in your mouth.
• 23:29
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You're gonna dry out your gums leading to gum disease.
• 23:31
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You're going to dry out your teeth leading to tooth decay.
• 23:34
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So we see increases in tooth decay, creases in gum disease when people are mouth breathing.
• 23:38
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And it just feels like the Sahara Desert when you wake up, like it feels terrible and you get bad breath.
• 23:43
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I mean, it's like awful.
• 23:44
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So he.
• 23:44
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Tapes, his mouth closed at night, but he breathes out the sides.
• 23:47
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I hear it.
• 23:47
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: He goes, you know, he is like breathing out the sides of the tape, like it didn't fix the problem.
• 23:52
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Does that make sense?
• 23:53
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It didn't fix anything, but it makes it less dry.
• 23:55
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's better for tooth decay and gum disease, but the bigger thing is to do what you did with your daughter is to go and actually have.
• 24:02
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: That top jaw expanded out, which will also expand out the nose and give the natural room that the body needs to get air in the way it needs to come in, rather than artificially band-aiding it by putting some tape here.
• 24:17
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: But I mean, the tape is better than nothing, but I would much prefer expand and we can expand in adults and in kiddos.
• 24:23
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: We can make everything bigger the way it should have been, the way it should have grown, but didn't.
• 24:28
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if you have crooked teeth, there's no room for wisdom teeth.
• 24:30
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: These are all signs.
• 24:32
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: That your jaw did not grow big enough and most likely this was a nutrition problem.
• 24:36
  Dr. Heather Finley: Yeah, no, it was actually miraculous.
• 24:39
  Dr. Heather Finley: My daughter, she was mouth breathing and, she failed her hearing test because her adenoids were so swollen and at the time we didn't know it, but we had mold in our house.
• 24:50
  Dr. Heather Finley: So that was obviously a big piece there.
• 24:53
  Dr. Heather Finley: Which we've addressed since then.
• 24:55
  Dr. Heather Finley: But yeah, she failed her hearing test and it was pretty amazing.
• 25:00
  Dr. Heather Finley: Now she's, her hearing just fine.
• 25:03
  Dr. Heather Finley: She, and it was way less traumatic as a kid.
• 25:05
  Dr. Heather Finley: I had the herps, which was so traumatic.
• 25:08
  Dr. Heather Finley: Yes.
• 25:08
  Dr. Heather Finley: Um, with the key and like, you literally feel like your nose is growing, as you know, and mm-hmm.
• 25:13
  Dr. Heather Finley: Hers was much better.
• 25:14
  Dr. Heather Finley: So we were very appreciative for her dentist that walked us through that.
• 25:18
  Dr. Heather Finley: But.
• 25:19
  Dr. Heather Finley: It's, it's wild.
• 25:21
  Dr. Heather Finley: Just how common I feel like it is now and you know how much nutrition actually matters and plays a role and comes down to also not only what you eat, but what you can absorb, like you said.
• 25:32
  Dr. Heather Finley: So.
• 25:33
  Dr. Heather Finley: Yep.
• 25:33
  Dr. Heather Finley: Let's chat a little bit about.
• 25:34
  Dr. Heather Finley: Saliva and how saliva is a part of the digestive process and what happens when someone has dry mouth or just poor salivary flow.
• 25:45
  Dr. Heather Finley: I think that goes along with some of the airway issues as well.
• 25:49
  Dr. Heather Finley: So just kind of building on that.
• 25:51
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Yep.
• 25:51
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So absolutely mouth breathing will lead to dry mouth for sure.
• 25:55
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Which, like I said, will lead to.
• 25:57
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Sensitive gums, more gum inflammation.
• 26:00
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It will lead to drying out the teeth, which leads to plaque buildup, which leads to tooth decay, all those kinds of things.
• 26:06
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: There are also some hormone changes in autoimmune conditions that will lead to low salivary flow as well.
• 26:11
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So when you put food in your mouth and even sometimes before you put food in your mouth, when you look at food, your mouth starts watering, right?
• 26:18
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Yeah.
• 26:19
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's the first, it's the start of the digestive process, and so it secretes something called amylase.
• 26:24
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's an enzyme that's mouth specific, so I'm sure that you know all about this, but there are certain enzymes.
• 26:30
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Enzymes break down food.
• 26:32
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: There are certain enzymes that our body has naturally, there are also enzymes that come in with our food.
• 26:38
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: This is why it's so important to eat raw foods, because enzymes are killed at about 130 degrees.
• 26:42
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So we do need some raw foods that bring their own enzymes with them because it helps to break down the food that's raw and the food that's not, but.
• 26:49
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The mouth secretes something called amylase that's an enzyme in the mouth that starts the breakdown of food right here.
• 26:57
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Mm-hmm.
• 26:57
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if you don't have that, if you don't have good salivary flow, you are now sending food down the gut.
• 27:03
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: That hasn't already started that process and the amylase travels with the food.
• 27:07
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So it's still breaking it down as it moves down, and then it hits other enzymes as we hit the stomach.
• 27:12
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: There's other enzymes there as it, you know, there's different things that it go, that goes to this process of digestion.
• 27:18
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if you don't have that salivary flow and that amylase at the very beginning, it really impairs the abo the ability to digest that food down the road as well.
• 27:26
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So there's some things you can do to stimulate salivary flow.
• 27:29
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: One of the things people used to always do was bitters.
• 27:31
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: This is interesting.
• 27:32
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I love learning some of the old traditional things that people would do.
• 27:36
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Um, like if you would go to Germany, there were like kind of, you know, unspoken rules that you should have at least six pickles on the table during a meal.
• 27:46
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So you had your, your, uh, spectral and your, like a few other things, but then you would have.
• 27:52
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Pickles, all different kinds of pickled vegetables.
• 27:54
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Why?
• 27:55
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Well, those are bitter and they create more saliva.
• 27:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Isn't this interesting?
• 27:59
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So they actually have natural probiotics, natural other things as well with them along with it.
• 28:04
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: But a lot of times you can introduce help.
• 28:07
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: For your low salivary flow.
• 28:09
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if you're not getting enough saliva, if your mouth feels dry, you need to do bitter foods.
• 28:14
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You need to do things that are gonna increase that salivary flow.
• 28:17
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Even a little bit of lemon in your water will help to increase that salivary flow.
• 28:21
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I also have a mouthwash that has marshmallow root.
• 28:24
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Marshmallow root is very good at.
• 28:26
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Also increasing salivary flow.
• 28:29
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So you can use a marshmallow root rinse to try to kickstart things.
• 28:34
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You need it to be able to digest properly.
• 28:36
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So saliva's, super important saliva's also where bacteria live.
• 28:40
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So this is why when you have bug bugs in your mouth, they get to your gut.
• 28:45
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Because the saliva's going down with the food.
• 28:48
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if you have bad bugs that are living in your mouth, they're going crazy.
• 28:52
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You have gum disease, you're swallowing all those bugs, and they're hit in the stomach too.
• 28:55
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Now, stomach acid will kill some of them, but not all of them.
• 28:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And this is where the whole SIBO idea is, where it's like the right bugs in the wrong place.
• 29:03
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Well.
• 29:05
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: This is potentially a source for where SIBO is coming from, as well as bugs that are, should be here and up here.
• 29:10
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Body can't deal with them there.
• 29:11
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: They're in the wrong place.
• 29:12
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So saliva is super important.
• 29:14
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Use Bitters to try to stimulate it and marshmallow root Lemon are great things as well to stimulate it.
• 29:21
  Dr. Heather Finley: Yes.
• 29:21
  Dr. Heather Finley: I love that you mentioned bitters because that's one of the very common things that we recommend to our clients as well as bitter foods which I love incorporating, like add some arugula to that.
• 29:33
  Dr. Heather Finley: Add some, you know, dandelion greens and That's so true actually, when I went to Germany.
• 29:38
  Dr. Heather Finley: They did always have like sauerkraut or something else on the table, which I love.
• 29:43
  Dr. Heather Finley: Those are just foods I enjoy anyways, so we live in a very antibacterial world, as you know, and everything is antibacterial, like kill off all the bacteria.
• 29:55
  Dr. Heather Finley: And you and I both know that that's not necessarily helpful, so.
• 29:59
  Dr. Heather Finley: What common oral hygiene practices may be harming the oral and gut microbiome?
• 30:05
  Dr. Heather Finley: Like, where are we overdoing it and what's, what do you see in your practice?
• 30:11
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Love this question because it goes all the way back to oral care products.
• 30:16
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Um, commercial toothpaste.
• 30:18
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: If you look on the tube, you're gonna see that there's a whole bunch of ingredients that you can't pronounce.
• 30:25
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: One of them is Tricent.
• 30:26
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You can actually pronounce that one, but you probably have no clue what that is.
• 30:29
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's a really potent antibacterial.
• 30:32
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So what it's doing is it's killing all the bugs in the mouth.
• 30:35
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: We don't wanna do that because if you kill off all the good bugs, what's going to happen is the bad bugs are gonna flourish, including yeasts.
• 30:42
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So there's so much yeast.
• 30:44
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I'm sure you see a lot of yeast, don't you?
• 30:45
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: A lot of yeast proliferation and guts.
• 30:48
  Dr. Heather Finley: Oh
• 30:48
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: yeah, exactly right.
• 30:50
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You kill off all the, all the bacteria, the yeasts are gonna have a heyday.
• 30:53
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So Triclosan and other antimicrobials that are in toothpaste are really damaging to the gut biome and to the oral biome to both.
• 31:02
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: 'cause it's all the same thing, you know?
• 31:03
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So it is to the biome in general, they're very damaging.
• 31:05
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So I don't recommend any tooth care products that have any antimicrobials in them at all.
• 31:10
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So that's a starting point.
• 31:12
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Um, the next one is mouthwash that burn that you get with like a Listerine.
• 31:18
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's because of alcohol.
• 31:19
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Mm-hmm.
• 31:19
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: These mouth washes are over 50% alcohol.
• 31:23
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Well, what does alcohol kill?
• 31:25
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Bacteria.
• 31:26
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Right?
• 31:26
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: This is why when you go to the hospital and you're getting your blood draw and they use a little alcohol wipe on the arm because it's gonna disinfect the area, it's gonna kill any bugs that are on that surface.
• 31:36
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Well, when you're rinsing with that, you're killing all the bugs in the mouth and you're absolutely swallowing that.
• 31:41
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: There's no way you're rinsing with something that you're not swallowing as well, so you're swallowing that alcohol.
• 31:45
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's going down as changing the gut biome as well.
• 31:48
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So no.
• 31:49
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Alcohol containing mouth washes ever should be used, period.
• 31:54
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So what do I recommend instead for a tooth care product?
• 31:57
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Absolutely recommend Hydroxyapatite products that don't have any kind of antimicrobial in it.
• 32:03
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So my tooth powder actually has essential oils, which some people will say that's an antimicrobial, and it's true.
• 32:10
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Essential oils are really great at controlling bacterial growth.
• 32:14
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It depends on the amount.
• 32:15
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: If I had.
• 32:17
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Dumped an entire capsule of peppermint oil in that tooth powder.
• 32:20
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It sure is.
• 32:21
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's gonna help control or it's gonna kill some bugs.
• 32:24
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: We're like, it's the whiff of essential oil in there to make it taste right, because I didn't wanna put any artificial flavors in there, or artificial sweeteners or artificial anything else is so it's just enough to make it right, but it's not enough to kill any bugs.
• 32:36
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The other one is in our mouthwash, we use colloidal silver, which a lot of people will say also, this is gonna do the same thing.
• 32:42
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's gonna kill all the bugs.
• 32:43
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It depends on the parts per million.
• 32:44
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So the dosage of.
• 32:45
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The colloidal silver is, if you have high parts per million high dosage, it will, it'll kill any bugs just like the alcohol did.
• 32:53
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: If you have low, it will selectively kill only bad bugs, not good bugs.
• 32:57
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So it's really important to make sure that what you're using for tooth care is keeping you healthy as well.
• 33:03
  Dr. Heather Finley: I love that.
• 33:04
  Dr. Heather Finley: And that's a big recommendation that we often give to our clients is just making little swaps.
• 33:09
  Dr. Heather Finley: You know, it can feel super overwhelming to overhaul everything, but it's like, okay, when you run outta something, let's just replace it with a different thing and you know, it doesn't all have to be at one time.
• 33:20
  Dr. Heather Finley: We can do it.
• 33:21
  Dr. Heather Finley: We can do it systematically.
• 33:22
  Dr. Heather Finley: So.
• 33:24
  Dr. Heather Finley: How do you recommend simultaneously supporting the oral and the gut microbiomes?
• 33:30
  Dr. Heather Finley: Like what are, what are some strategies, specific routines, foods, probiotics, whatever it might be that you recommend starting with.
• 33:39
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Yep.
• 33:39
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So one of the things you can start doing at home that's a real simple swap as well, is tongue scraping.
• 33:44
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And this is an old Ayurvedic technique from India, and they swear that it alters gut biome as well, that it does not just, you know, your oral biome changes, but it does gut biome as well, whether it does that or not.
• 33:56
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And some research shows that it's true.
• 33:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: But like I said, it's all the same biome.
• 34:00
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's all the same bugs.
• 34:01
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So what.
• 34:02
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Oil.
• 34:03
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Oh, excuse me.
• 34:03
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: There's two things that Ayurveda recommended.
• 34:05
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Oil pulling and tongue scraping.
• 34:07
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So let's talk about both of those.
• 34:09
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So oil pulling every bug in your mouth, every bug in your body, doesn't matter where it is or what it is, is surrounded by fats.
• 34:16
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: This is just the way they're made All of our cells are too.
• 34:19
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's called the fatty lipid layer around the outside of every single one of our cells.
• 34:22
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So it's surrounded by fats.
• 34:23
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So when you put the tablespoon of coconut oil in your mouth and you swish it around.
• 34:29
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The fat in that oil will attract the fat in the bacteria, and they'll literally.
• 34:33
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Pull to each other.
• 34:34
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So this is why it's called oil pulling.
• 34:36
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It will pull bacteria from every nook and cranny in the mouth.
• 34:39
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's not selective, so it's gonna pull bad bugs, good bugs, all bugs.
• 34:44
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: This is why I don't recommend oil pulling every day of your life because I believe it's gonna remove too many bacteria.
• 34:50
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So I recommend if you have gum disease, you're gonna do it about five days in a row.
• 34:54
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And then you're only gonna do it every four to five days just to kind of keep things under control, but not to eliminate and eradicate all bugs in general.
• 35:02
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So that's one thing people don't often say about oil, oil pulling.
• 35:05
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: They think that it's good every day of your life.
• 35:06
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I don't agree.
• 35:07
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I.
• 35:07
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I
• 35:08
  Dr. Heather Finley: think
• 35:08
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: it's a once a week kind of touchup thing if you need it.
• 35:11
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: If you have gum disease, I don't oil pull at all unless I have something that's coming along.
• 35:14
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: If I feel like I've got a yeast infection.
• 35:16
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And how can you tell?
• 35:17
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I get a white tongue, so if you get a white tongue, often that's a sign of yeast infection.
• 35:21
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: If I have that going on, I I'll oil pull for about three days.
• 35:25
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Just try to get things kind of back into, back into balance again.
• 35:28
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So the second one is tongue scraping.
• 35:29
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Um, I want to challenge people to do a test at home because oftentimes people say, well, I already brushed my tongue.
• 35:35
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's fine.
• 35:36
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Well, the tongue's like a shag carpet.
• 35:38
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: There's so much that can get trapped down in that shag carpet, and we think that just brushing alone is doing the job, but it's not.
• 35:45
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So this is the test I want you to do.
• 35:46
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I want you to get a tongue scraper.
• 35:48
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I have a copper one.
• 35:49
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The reason I like copper is because it's antimicrobial.
• 35:52
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So when you actually scrape with it and then you go stick it in your bathroom cupboard.
• 35:57
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: There's not bugs that are still living on it.
• 35:59
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The next time you put it back in your mouth, you're not just adding yesterday's bugs back to it because they can't live on that copper.
• 36:05
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So that's why I like the copper.
• 36:06
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: But you know, there's lots of different versions of tongue scrapers.
• 36:08
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I want you to get a tongue scraper.
• 36:10
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So I want you to brush your tongue as good as you always have done.
• 36:13
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And then I want you to tongue scrape and I want you to see what's left on there that you didn't know was left on there.
• 36:18
  Dr. Heather Finley: And I think it's pretty amazing.
• 36:19
  Dr. Heather Finley: I've done that before and it's, yeah, it's eye.
• 36:21
  Dr. Heather Finley: It's like
• 36:22
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I thought I was doing a really great job here.
• 36:23
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So what I like to do, the order of things is.
• 36:26
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You're going to, I actually like to brush then floss because if you brush with hydroxy appetite, flossing after brings the hydroxy appetite down between the teeth.
• 36:38
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So brush, floss, rinse.
• 36:41
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: If you're using a hydroxy appetite mouthwash like what I have.
• 36:43
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: 'cause you're adding it all back in.
• 36:45
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And then, sorry, I jumped ahead.
• 36:47
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Brush floss.
• 36:49
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Tongue scrape.
• 36:50
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I want all that junk off of there.
• 36:52
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The last thing you're gonna do is rinse, because I actually want those antimicrobials from the coil silver to get into that tongue surface.
• 36:59
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And I want that crud cleaned off of there.
• 37:02
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So this is the way I always tell people.
• 37:04
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Brush floss, tongue scrape, rinse.
• 37:07
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Seven minutes a day, that's all it takes.
• 37:09
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: This isn't anything fancy or extra anything else, it's just what you're already doing.
• 37:13
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Super simple ways to keep it under control.
• 37:16
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I just have a brand new mouthwash that actually has a prebiotic in it, and that is what's going to encourage good bacterial growth in the mouth and in the gut as well.
• 37:25
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So there's a lot of other dental prebiotics that you can take or probiotics that you can take.
• 37:30
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I don't think they're that essential if you just keep everything balanced on a daily basis.
• 37:35
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I don't think you need to take an extra pill or an extra anything else to give you other oral probiotics.
• 37:41
  Dr. Heather Finley: Okay, well that kind of answers my next question.
• 37:43
  Dr. Heather Finley: I was gonna rapid fire a couple questions, but you already answered most of'em.
• 37:47
  Dr. Heather Finley: It was gonna be, do we need oral probiotics?
• 37:51
  Dr. Heather Finley: No.
• 37:51
  Dr. Heather Finley: No.
• 37:52
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And you're staying on top of it.
• 37:54
  Dr. Heather Finley: Okay.
• 37:54
  Dr. Heather Finley: One thing to stop doing today for oral health, I think that this one you already answered too, but
• 38:00
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: using an alcohol containing mouthwash or a toothpaste with triclosan in it,
• 38:05
  Dr. Heather Finley: and then oil pulling overhyped are helpful.
• 38:08
  Dr. Heather Finley: There we go.
• 38:09
  Dr. Heather Finley: You put that as well.
• 38:09
  Dr. Heather Finley: And then the last one you haven't touched on is xylitol.
• 38:12
  Dr. Heather Finley: Yes or no?
• 38:13
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Okay.
• 38:13
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Xylitol is an interesting one.
• 38:15
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: There's some controversy about it, but it's all about the dosage.
• 38:19
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So xylitol, starves.
• 38:22
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Bacteria.
• 38:23
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: They can't eat it, so it's a sugar that they don't like.
• 38:25
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So really the reason that cavities develop sugar doesn't cause cavities.
• 38:30
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: That's not, it's not that direct of a relationship.
• 38:32
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: What happens is the bacteria that live in your mouth, they like sugar, they eat sugar, and they poop out acid.
• 38:39
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So like basically they excrete acid.
• 38:41
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: That acid then dissolves the minerals on your tooth.
• 38:45
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So does sugar cause cavities?
• 38:46
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Sure.
• 38:47
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: In a roundabout way, right?
• 38:50
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Bacteria eat sugar, whatever.
• 38:52
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if you feed them sugar that they can't eat, then they can't poop out acid.
• 38:57
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Does that make sense?
• 38:59
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So there are, there's a ton of research showing that xylitol leads to less ate.
• 39:04
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: This is why, but the problem comes when you start using it for everything.
• 39:09
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So there have been shown, there's research showing issues with gut function.
• 39:13
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Research is, you know, with issues with other functions in the body when you're using X xylitol on a large amount.
• 39:18
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if you're replacing xylitol as your sweetener of choice, when you're making a batch of cookies or you're, you know, putting whatever it is.
• 39:24
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: That is not how we're gonna use it.
• 39:27
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You're gonna use it in a tooth care product.
• 39:28
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So I actually joke my, not my tooth powder.
• 39:32
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I figured out the research article that showed the damages or the dangers with xylitol.
• 39:37
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I figured out you'd have to eat 13 jars of this powder a day to get as much xylitol as they were using to test and show.
• 39:45
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Problems with it.
• 39:46
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if you wanna eat 13 powders, uh, jars of this powder a day, then you're gonna have problems with xylitol.
• 39:52
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: But if you're using it in very small amounts and tooth care products, you're okay.
• 39:57
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You're just not gonna use it as a replacement sugar in your baking and cooking and everyday life.
• 40:01
  Dr. Heather Finley: Okay.
• 40:02
  Dr. Heather Finley: That's super helpful.
• 40:03
  Dr. Heather Finley: So last question, just to kind of tie up the loose end that we were talking at the beginning of the episode about root canals and amalgam fillings is we know that these can be problematic because you described even just your own journey.
• 40:19
  Dr. Heather Finley: What should somebody do if they.
• 40:22
  Dr. Heather Finley: Need to have a root canal or have been recommended to have a root canal, or they have amalgam fillings that they feel like are impacting their health.
• 40:29
  Dr. Heather Finley: Like what were, what are the steps that they should go through, or what kind of practitioners should they look for?
• 40:35
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So first thing is mercury fillings do release mercury 24 7.
• 40:39
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: When I was in school, I was told that if I told you that I would lose my license.
• 40:42
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Now I can tell you that because it's been backed and shown by research.
• 40:45
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So they do release mercury 24 7.
• 40:47
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if people have symptoms and mercury goes to gut function, mercury impacts zinc, which leads to stomach acid creation.
• 40:54
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if you have mercury levels in your body, it can lead to low stomach acid and gut issues.
• 41:00
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if this is something you feel like.
• 41:02
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Maybe this is a piece of my puzzle.
• 41:04
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Maybe I need to address this.
• 41:06
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You absolutely wanna go to a dentist that will remove them safely because you're gonna get the most mercury release during that removal procedure.
• 41:13
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And if you just do it at a normal dentist where you're swallowing it and breathing it in, and it's way, way, way worse, I tell people, leave'em alone.
• 41:21
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Unless you're gonna do it safely.
• 41:22
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So go to a dentist.
• 41:24
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: There's a two directories you can go to.
• 41:25
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: One is on my website, living well with dr michelle.com.
• 41:28
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I have a dentist directory on there of people who do this kind of thing.
• 41:32
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: The other one is called I-A-O-M-T.
• 41:35
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Hopefully you can put that in the show notes.
• 41:36
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: IAOM t.org.
• 41:39
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's also dentists who will remove mercury fillings safely.
• 41:42
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And what does that look like?
• 41:44
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You are covered, like your face is covered'cause mercury is absorbed through the skin.
• 41:48
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Your nose is covered, everything is covered, you're not swallowing in it.
• 41:51
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: There's a giant vacuum that's at the edge of your, the base of your chin, so it's sucking all the vapor that direction.
• 41:56
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: That's how you wanna'em removed if you're going to do it.
• 41:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Root canals, this is a whole hour talk on its own, but I'll give you the 32nd version.
• 42:03
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Basically the problem is.
• 42:05
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: When you have a root canal, the tooth is not completely clean after no matter what, because there's main canals and there's little side channels.
• 42:14
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I like to think of it as the super highway and the little roads, the exit ramps and the roads that go off through the cities.
• 42:19
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Those roads can't be cleaned.
• 42:20
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You always have dead tissue left in a root canal tooth, no matter what.
• 42:24
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You can get a root canal, but understand it's a place saver.
• 42:28
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's gonna hold that space, hold that tooth in the mouth for a while.
• 42:31
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: If you already have chronic disease, I do not recommend it because what it's going to do is your body is gonna have to deal with that dead tissue and low grade chronic infection 24 7, and it's going to impact you.
• 42:41
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if you already have chronic disease, if you're already struggling, what do you do instead?
• 42:46
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: If the tooth is still alive, we save it.
• 42:47
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: We use ozone, and we actually keep the tooth alive.
• 42:50
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: We fill right over it and we keep it alive.
• 42:52
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: If it's already dead, we remove it and we replace it with a ceramic dental implant.
• 42:56
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I have a dental implant right up here.
• 42:57
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Nobody knows it's there.
• 42:58
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It chews like a tooth.
• 42:59
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It smiles like a tooth.
• 43:00
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's fabulous.
• 43:02
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I tell people all the time, I can replace your teeth.
• 43:04
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I can't replace your health.
• 43:06
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So if this dead tooth in your body leads to chronic disease and nothing else is taken care of it, it's time to get that tooth out.
• 43:14
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And how do you find out?
• 43:15
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You do what's called a cone beam CT scan, cone beam CT scan shows.
• 43:19
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Is your root canal healthy or is there an issue?
• 43:21
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And I find these daily massive infections that nobody knows about, contributing to gut health, contributing to sinus infections, contributing to all the above, and it's a failed root canal.
• 43:30
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I.
• 43:32
  Dr. Heather Finley: So interesting.
• 43:33
  Dr. Heather Finley: It's crazy how it is all connected and just,, I love how you said, we started separating medicine, we started separating everything and I think hopefully at the end now everyone is realizing, I.
• 43:45
  Dr. Heather Finley: We can't separate it.
• 43:47
  Dr. Heather Finley: Everything is all connected.
• 43:48
  Dr. Heather Finley: So Dr.
• 43:49
  Dr. Heather Finley: Michelle, this has been amazing and so informative.
• 43:52
  Dr. Heather Finley: I've learned a ton.
• 43:53
  Dr. Heather Finley: I know that the listeners have, you just had a book that came out.
• 43:56
  Dr. Heather Finley: So tell everybody about your book, where they can find you, where your practice is, in case they wanna work with you and come see you, all the things.
• 44:06
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Yep.
• 44:07
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So the book is actually, there's a little bit about dentistry in there, but it's.
• 44:11
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It's the answer to a lot of concern that we have today, which is where do I start?
• 44:15
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I want to get better.
• 44:17
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: I want to do the right things for my health, but I don't have a clue where to start.
• 44:20
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Like there's all these people telling me different things and there's so much overwhelm in the health world today.
• 44:25
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So it actually has an assessment in it that uses your symptoms.
• 44:28
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You plug your symptoms in and it tells you which of your cells need help first, and it puts you in a season.
• 44:33
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So gut health is a big one in there, and you just need to know, is the gut the first place to start?
• 44:38
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Or is my liver, do I need to detox first?
• 44:40
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Or is it, you know, whatever.
• 44:41
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Whatever it might be.
• 44:42
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: It tells you which.
• 44:43
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Cells to start with first, and then it tells you what to do about it.
• 44:46
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So that's what the book's all about and really it is changing the way we stay.
• 44:49
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Well, that is found@livingwellbook.com.
• 44:53
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So check that out.
• 44:54
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: But also all the products I've talked about, all you know, all of the everything information, all sorts of free stuff all over the place at Living Well with dr michelle.com.
• 45:02
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: And the office is@totalcaredental.com.
• 45:05
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: So those are the three places to check out the book, the practice, and the products, and then the dental office.
• 45:11
  Dr. Heather Finley: Amazing.
• 45:11
  Dr. Heather Finley: Thanks so much for joining us.
• 45:13
  Dr. Heather Finley: Last question actually that I always ask every guest is, how do you love your gut?
• 45:19
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: You know, it's interesting because I have struggled with gut health since I was a teenager, and I love my gut by listening to it.
• 45:27
  Dr. Heather Finley: I love that.
• 45:28
  Dr. Heather Finley: Thanks so much, Dr.
• 45:29
  Dr. Heather Finley: Michelle.
• 45:29
  Dr. Michelle Jorgenson: Thank you.