Bleeding Gums, Alzheimer's & Mercury Fillings: The Truth About Your Dental Health — with Carol Wells

Neil Silvert: Welcome to Your Grey Matters, the podcast that unveils the miracles already amongst us. Here, we believe that the human mind cannot be defeated. Tune in to discover the fascinating people with extraordinary stories, innovative products, and groundbreaking services. With your host, Neil Silvert, who's earned his gray hair and still has use of his gray mat. So do you remember when you were really, really young and your parents got you all ready for bed and you put on your pajamas and you got washed up and you s quickly were in a routine that included, I hope, brushing your teeth. And before you knew it as you grew up you were in a system, hopefully of getting your teeth cleaned regularly, seeing your hygienist, seeing your dentist regularly. And Before you knew it, you were in this routine. And I was in that routine. I'm even married to a dental hygienist. But recently I met someone who views dental care very, very differently. I ask you, what if your next visit to the dentist could tell you more than whether you have a cavity? What if it could reveal to you clues about inflammation? Your immune system, your cardiovascular health, and perhaps even your brain. Most people think that dentistry is solely about teeth. Today's guest, however, believes it should also be about your overall health. Hi, I'm Neil Silvert from the Your Grey Matters podcast. We're glad to have you back. And as you know, we believe That the human mind cannot be defeated. We will always find a way to do things. And in that light, today we're being joined by the well-known, very esteemed Carol Wells. Carol graduated as a dental hygienist in 1977 and spent 30 years in private practice until 2007. A periodontal co-therapist. That person looks beyond the gums themselves and examines the many factors that contribute to periodontal disease. This can include diabetes, cardiovascular disease, nutrition, stress, inflammation, and your mouth, the health of your mouth can affect your overall health. Carol's expertise is understanding how the body Is impacted by the mouth. What is now commonly known as the oral systemic connection. Her philosophy is rooted in biological dental hygiene, an inter integrative approach that seeks to understand the root causes of health challenges rather than simply treating symptoms. Carol, welcome to the Your Grey Matters podcast.

Carol Wells: Thank you very much, Neil. Thank you very much for this opportunity.

Neil Silvert: Thank you, and thanks for coming on. We appreciate you. So, Carol, let's jump right into this. I just gave people an awful lot of terms. So why don't we start with biological dentistry? Carol, what does that mean?

Carol Wells: That means that we take into account what's happening in your mouth can affect your whole body. And it's very similar to the best analogy I have is if you have a sliver in your finger and that sliver gets infected, you know within what? Usually half hour, 45 minutes that there's a sliver in your finger. And your body tells you that by sending in messages. The area gets hot, it gets painful, and it turns red, and if it's left there long enough, you end up with pus there. So your body, that's an inflammation cascade and inflammation response. So when you're dealing with dentistry in your mouth, people have infection that can be happening in their gums, but they don't realize that it's exactly the same inflammation cascade that goes on. When you have there's certain types of bacteria that survive in our mouth and there's a lot of disease related bacteria. Right now we are able to establish that there are over seven hundred different species of disease related bacteria that can survive in our mouth. Technically we can only culture fifteen of them right now. So basically the bacteria know more about us than we know about them.

Neil Silvert: So let me ask you about the word cascade, just as you're continuing on. For those of us like me who don't know what you mean by cascade, perhaps you could explain that word and then go back to this crazy number that you just gave to us.

Carol Wells: Well cascade just means if it's going on in your mouth, it can enter into because your mouth has a vascular system, the gums have their own blood supply. So any of this bacteria can enter into the bloodstream through your mouth and affect different parts of your body. So that's what I mean by cascade.

Neil Silvert: So that's why you're saying that the health of the mouth can affect everybody's overall health. Wow. So Carol, I'm sorry that I inter I interrupted you, but I wanted to make sure that we all understood this most important thing that maybe most people don't understand. The health of your mouth can affect your overall health. It's not just your teeth and your gums and your tongue. Fair enough, Carol?

Carol Wells: Correct. Right now research is telling us that most diseases start with inflammation basis. And that includes heart disease, kidney disease, liver disease, any of your organs in your body, it has to be an inflammation response. So once that inflammation sets up, then disease can set in afterwards. So we're finding we have in biological dentistry we're able to use a microscope called a phase contrast microscope that we can actually take a sample t takes two seconds chair side you look at the microscope and you can identify some disease related pathogens. Now there's two different types, there's gram negative and gram positive. We can check the gram negative, but we know the really bad guys hang out in the same environment. If you have the one set, you're gonna have the other set. And that's what we're able to culture. But when I was working when we had to s do a culture, I didn't have a laboratory in Canada that could even culture these bacteria. They all had to go to the States. And everybody always had the same bacteria as soon as there was a lot of disease related bacteria. So with the microscope you're able to identify that and then you can learn how to treat the gum disease, the inflammation that's going on in their body. For some people that when I was even working that they would come in and things were changing drastically in their mouth. They're, you know, historically had healthy gums and everything else. And then all of a sudden the gums just started bleeding uncontrollably, both for them at home and for us in the in the dental office. And I would advise them to go s to the doctor and get some blood tests to check up things. And what they found was that maybe three years later they end up with a full blown diabetes, which Is an indication of bleeding gums.

Neil Silvert: my god. So wait a minute, this microscope, Carol, is this kind of a microscope found in every dental office or is this a specialized piece of equipment?

Carol Wells: Don't I wish it was in there in a dental office? I was fortunate. The office that I work for in Hamilton, we had five hygienists, four hygienists and a career specialist for the children's group, and all of us had our own microscopes in our operatory. So it's a chair side evaluation. The patient can actually see it looks like for lack of better term, swamp water. When you see this bacteria, live bacteria moving around. So you always start the appointment by looking at this bacteria levels and then you can rate the success of your home care, of what you're doing. Like people when they have infection in their mouth, it's not something that the person can get rid of on their own and it's not something the clinician can change. It has to be a codependency that you have to work together. So you have to understand where you're starting and how you can improve. by your oral hygiene and that takes you into the next step of the biological part of it because we're finding that if you're able to use ozonated water, that would disinfect the gum space where this disease related bacteria live.

Neil Silvert: I don't think it's using ozonated water.

Carol Wells: N I don't I only have a few dentists in Toronto that will use oz that uses ozone. Because ozone you can use for treating decay in your mouth. If the decay is what we call in Sympia, just starting in the tooth. They can use ozonated gas to actually seal that tooth so the decay doesn't move further. They can use it in dentistry and actually you can drink ozonated water.

Neil Silvert: So Carol, I wanna add something. for those who don't know, I've been a diabetic for twenty something years. And I've always felt, especially since meeting my bride, my dental care has been very good, it's been very deep. but there's a possibility, I'm not pointing the fingers at anybody, that something in my gums might have predicted that I was diabetic or becoming diabetic. Is that what

Carol Wells: Could have. It yeah, definitely. I mean, for the people that when I was treating them and it wasn't uncommon when you saw these changes happening in their mouth that it was actually they turned out to become a diabetic.

Neil Silvert: wow, wow. Now, I have to say, and I'm certainly not debating you, Carol, at all. I brought you on because I respect what you're saying and we believe in knowledge on this podcast. But I'm so thankful every day that I met my bride because my oral health was really not good and thank God for her that she taught me all the good stuff and introduced me to dentists and things. So you're not I don't get the feeling so far. That you may see a different way of treating people and exploring the mouth, but you're not knocking down dental care, I presume. You're not beating up on dentists, are you?

Carol Wells: Not at all. This is all newer information. I mean, when we when I was in school, back in 77, I mean we had to go through classes of histology and physiology and all of the different classes and we had to learn about the body because we're working on a person. And so the question was actually asked, why do we have to know, you know, how the heart, how the lungs, how everything works? And it's because we're working on a person. We have to treat them as a person. But that education stopped there. So now we're finding that all of this new information and unfortunately dental schools are just starting to get into a lot of this information. I find I work with a lot of people in the States, with the International Academy of Biological Dentistry and Medicine. And they are moving leaps and bounds in moving Dentistry forward in a healthy fashion as opposed to just It's really hard and I don't know if this needs to be edited, but to th not to throw the dental profession under the bus because it's understandable that this is newer information and you have to seek it out. It's not being taught widely in schools yet. And hopefully that's gonna change one day. I use the analogy of the Dr. Simulweis. I don't know if you've ever heard of Dr. Simelweis. He was a physician on obstetrician and he instituted washing your hands before you deliver a baby. There was two I believe it was Austria, there was two different hospitals, one for prostitutes, one for wealthy people, and more of the babies and the mothers died in the one hospital than the other hospital. And until one of them they would go deliver babies, deliver the baby, the baby and or the mother would die. They'd put them down in the autopsy room. They'd do the autopsies the next day and then without washing their hands, go deliver more babies. And so more mothers and more babies died. Until one of the surgeons actually cut his hand and he ended up dying. He upset us as well. So Dr. Simovise decided that everybody needed to start washing their hands. Well, they threw him out of the colleges. They threw them out of the hospitals because this was unheard of.

Neil Silvert: But he made a difference. His discovery, what you're saying, changed the direction of surgeries, which I think is what you're talking about as changing directions in the dental world. Is that what you're saying?

Carol Wells: Correct. Well it's ba basically a paradigm shift. We want to shift to making things healthier than controlling disease states. unfortunately in the general hygiene profession that again, I don't want to throw the dental profession under the bus, but if you're going to a dentist and or a dental hygienist and you're having your teeth cleaned without treating the bacteria as a disease related bacteria, you're not really helping the body.

Neil Silvert: And people are not dealing with that normally in their dental care right now. No. Is that correct? So I want to ask you something, if we can make it a little more practical for people to understand. Many people seem to think that bleeding gums are normal, but I think that must be a warning sign and just before you answer, about a dozen years ago someone who I'm very close to had bleeding gums a lot. And I sent him actually to a dental hygienist who I know and her dentist. And he was having the beginnings of cancer in his mouth. So bleeding gums certainly didn't seem to be normal. So perhaps you can discuss what happens when you have bleeding gums.

Carol Wells: Well, that's the only signal you're gonna get that there's infection going on. And actually people that smoke may not even get bleeding gums because the something in the smoke changes the chemistry and in the tissue. But it that's the first sign that you have something. I mean, if you were washing your hands and your hands started bleeding or you started brushing or washing your face and something started bleeding, that would alert you that there was something wrong. But because there's no pain involved When there's bleeding, people perceive that there's no damage being done.

Neil Silvert: boy. I would like you please to give people an understanding of what is inflammation and why is it so important to be aware of it.

Carol Wells: Because most diseases start with an inflammation basis. So from anything I did do a lecture down in Arizona a few years back and I have research papers that can link back to most diseases. It's uncanny when you start going down that rabbit hole, just what information you can find. I mean, right now they're looking at the It's called a spirochete, and you can see this with the face contrast microscope. And they're looking at Alzheimer's brains and when they're doing their autopsies. And they can find these oral spirochetes in Alzheimer's brains. So there's probably twenty research papers now that give us that information.

Neil Silvert: My lord. Isn't that interesting? Because I guess the our war is against inflammation is what you're saying. We have a healthier body everything if we're doing what we can to be aware of inflammation and to know how to battle it.

Carol Wells: Well that's right, but it can start in your mouth but then you can get into the gut health. And once it gets I mean, because the mouth is connected to the rest of your body. I always say that physicians don't pay attention to the mouth, dentists don't pay attention to the body, why not? That marriage needs to change because you know, w why are we separating what happens here when we have the whole gut dysbiosis going on and As soon as your gut, like we know that this bacteria can survive in your intestines. Take the amoeba, it's a one cell parasite, one cell animal. And it reproduces in our intestines and we can see that on a phase contrast microscope. You can actually see it moving around.

Neil Silvert: Well, th this is phenomenal actually. So are you telling me, did you just say something controversial to our dental care that one group is not watching the mouth closely enough and another group is not watching the body enough? but what we're really talking about is how they affect each other. Well, that's that's that's it so interesting to me. I gotta ask you something though, pragmatically, okay. There are certain procedures that people have all the time. And I'm wondering if they affect the debates, the discussion. By the way, are there debates? Are there discussions going on between botanical health professionals and non dental professionals?

Carol Wells: There's many, many there's two sides to every coin. So you've got the pro, you've got the con. So if there's an issue, you're gonna have a pro and con for almost every issue that we have in life. So dentistry and medicine fall right into that. There's actually one medical doctor in US, Dr. Charles Whitney. He has a dental hygienist working in his medical practice that can evaluate the health of people's mouths before he does any treatment. And that would be the model the biological world would love.

Neil Silvert: So okay, so that there's a deeper deeper investigation into the mouth, what's going on at all these levels that you've mentioned, and then specifically it could be related to even the brain with someone with Alzheimer's, God forbid, or in the gut, or in the bloodstream. So ladies and gentlemen, we're talking about the cleanliness of your mouth really does partake take part in the In your overall health, that could really happen.

Carol Wells: Definitely. Definitely.

Neil Silvert: And it makes total sense to me because what do we do every day, more than anything? We breathe through our noses and our mouth, we eat through our mouth, we send that food down our throats into our system. You're now suggesting that bacteria seven hundred types c could enter the bloodstream and have an effect. This is incredible. Carol, let me ask you about some practical or pragmatic situations. that people go through in their dental office. For example, I think of a root canal. Root canals I think have helped millions of people save teeth. But first of all, what's a root canal, Carol? Because I paid a lot for it.

Carol Wells: So a root canal, once you have decay inside of a tooth, there's there's the tooth has the outside layer which is the enamel, then the dentin, and then what we call the pulp. It's actually a nerve supply and it's connected to the body through veins in your and arteries in your mouth. So every tooth has a blood supply. So what happens when the decay enters into the tooth far enough into that pulp chamber the body shuts off that blood supply because it doesn't want that disease that's caused the cavity to enter the bloodstream. So it shuts that off. So the nerve actually then either starts to die or it dies, and that's when it becomes painful for the person. You know, if they eat something hot or cold, then they know that the nerve is dying or is dead. So what a root canal is they go in and they actually use files to remove that nerve. So they go in and So a front tooth say has one nerve canal. side teeth maybe have two, molars maybe have three, four, and some have little subsidiaries of five. So the problem with root canals are is that when they're doing these files, there's no way to systematically know that you've removed all of that dead tissue. All of that nerve tissue needs to be removed is one problem. The second problem is with that body shutting off the blood supply to that tooth, now that has nowhere to go. So then what they do with the root canal is they fill the inside of the tooth with a plastic material and seal the tooth and then ideally put a crown on that tooth to make it more stable. So that enters a lot of difficult problems because inside the tooth, inside the next layer bes under the enamel. is called dental tubules. These dental tubules are like millions and millions of straws. Technically my research shows me that if you take the dental tubules from a very front tooth, line it up end to end, it would reach seven miles.

Neil Silvert: Are you kidding? Holy moly.

Carol Wells: How do you sterilize seven miles of dental tubules? Is the question that is now raised with root canals. So once you can't sterilize them, we know you can't sterilize them, people are using ozone to help mitigate that bacteria. But even a speck of bacteria that builds up inside that tooth over time is like a pressure cooker. It will build up pressure inside the tooth until it's not. I if a root canelo fail now, it's when it will fail. And that's what the biological world is looking at. It's not if it fails, it's when. And because it's like a ticking time bomb.

Neil Silvert: So are you saying a root canal can fail and then you can end up with a tooth driving you crazy again in the

Carol Wells: Well, that's when people get the swollen face. Because the tooth is a hard structure, so it can't give. There's no once that pressure builds up like a pressure cooker, once that pressure builds up inside the tooth, then it blows out the bottom of the root. And that's how people end up with the extra like they have to have dental surgery or remove the tooth and things like that. My analogy for root canals is quite simplistic. If you have appendicitis, you go to the doctor and they in an alternate world, they would suck all the poison out of your appendix and fill it with a plastic material and leave it in your body. We know that can't be done.

Neil Silvert: Right.

Carol Wells: But that's what we do to teeth.

Neil Silvert: Why? Why can't it be done? And I get nervous when I hear the word plastic in my body.

Carol Wells: Well they're considered it's called gutta perca, it's considered inert material. But it's my I the last paper that I wrote is Root Canel and Gangrene, what do they have in common? Because we can't

Neil Silvert: Are you kidding me?

Carol Wells: No, no. I have a published paper, Root Canal and Gangrene. What do they have in common? To take it one step further, there is a movie out by a lot of the biological practitioners in the States that's called Root Cause. And it talks about a man who got a tooth injury. They did a root canal, cascading many years later, developed all kinds of autoimmune problems and things like that. They discovered it was the root canal that was causing all of his problems. And the endodonic community has taken it off Netflix. You can still find it on YouTube, but the endodonic community complained so much that they removed it from Netflix.

Neil Silvert: So if I've had a root canal, if somebody's had a root canal in their past, should they be panicking or

Carol Wells: Well, there's a lot that you can take into consideration. There's what they call the it's C B C T scan. It is a cone beam computerized tomography three D imaging. And if you have one of those, they can show you whether there's a an abscess at the at the apex, the root of the tooth. So and Some people can have root canals and they don't become problematic. And the reason for that is that we have an immune system. So if your immune system is taxed, then these disease related bacteria that live inside the tooth now are able to proliferate. They can grow faster. And then your immune system tries to kick it in. That's why if they treat you with antibiotics for a root canal tooth, that's only a temporary measure because nothing can target the bacteria inside the tooth.

Neil Silvert: So what I'm hearing you say is that we need to really take care in addition to the way that you would like to see dentistry done, there's a lot of work that we should be doing to keep our immune system in tip top shape. Boy, that's a topic in itself, I guess. Let's move on a little bit, Carol. What's your position or your belief system with biological dentists about amalgam fillings? We've all had fillings, I've had a few, I have a few silver fillings in my head. I got it done, I don't think twice about it, and frankly I'm comfortable. I've not had a problem since. And I'm not debating you at all. I have no basis to debate anybody in this except say, at least when I get all these things done I seem to feel okay. So what's up with fillings?

Carol Wells: Well, we know that they're fifty percent mercury. So that in its

Neil Silvert: Wait a minute, Mercury's poison, what did you just say?

Carol Wells: Filling Amalgam Fillings is fifty percent mercury.

Neil Silvert: And are we using amalgam fillings nowadays?

Carol Wells: Yes, there are some dentists that still use it.

Neil Silvert: Wait. So are you saying though that most of the fillings or many of the fillings are not mercury filled puddles?

Carol Wells: Well, you would have to have a white filling. There there's no alternative to there's not a lot of alternatives to filling teeth that have cavities and that's the problem. So what we want to do is start preventing cavities. But to go back to the amalgam, when you have an autoimmune problem, then amalgam fillings can be very detrimental for you. Right now they're saying children should have well no, sorry, this was like 30 years ago, children could have one amalgam filling. teenagers can have two, and adults could have three. And then we're saying, well, if children can't have any, why are we putting them in adults still? So in that my office we actually stopped using them. But the problem with using mercury is that the way you prepare it, the way you put it inside the tooth. I'm actually a restorative dental hygienist as well. I went back to school and I was placing amalgam fillings. And what happens is as soon as you start placing it, these mercury vapors go in the air. So every dental office would have contaminated mercury air.

Neil Silvert: Are you telling me anybody who has these fillings should rush out and get them removed or what do you think?

Carol Wells: Well the again it is something that is just newer information coming out. I mean, this has been an issue for most of my dental career. So it they're saying that if it's if it's stable, if there's no decay around it, or if you have autoimmune. They're saying pregnant women shouldn't have these right now. They're saying children shouldn't have these mercury fillings. And people with that has autoimmune we're finding that it is can mimic MS. So people that have neurological disease, if they have amalgam fillings, I would look at doing something differently for them. But again, it depends on your immune system. I there's a an acronym that we've used and it's called honest age. There's so many factors. It's Everything is multifactorial. There's not one cause for one thing. So you have to look at as a as a pie and look at what factors are affecting you and what needs to be changed. The other thing with removing mercury, like these dentists in the States from the International Academy of Biological Dentistry and Medicine, basically have hazmat suits on when they're removing these dental fillings, the amalgam fillings, because they know the mercury vapors are gonna go in the air. They're going to affect the breathing for the dentist, the patient, the assistant, and everybody in that dental office. So they have specific rooms where they take out these amalgam fillings with their hazmat suits on. The patient is completely covered, has an independent breathing apparatus. And then once these fillings are removed, then they're actually everybody takes off everything, moves to another operatory to place the new filling, which would either be a white filling. Or an inlay or crown or something similar to structure as opposed to putting in another amalgam filling. Do you know with amalgam fillings or with thermometers? If you break a thermometer in a school, you have to call a hazmat team. So you're not gonna find thermometers anymore in schools and things like that. But that's how poisonous this stuff is. It's a neurotoxin.

Neil Silvert: And it could end up in your tooth.

Carol Wells: It can end up in a lot of people's mouths. I mean that was it's been around for a hundred and fifty years. Actually that was my research paper when I was in expanded duty dental hygiene back in ninety one. I got the amalgam. I had to research the amalgam. And the interesting thing around crematories, when people with these metal fillings in their mouth are being cremated. The air around crematoriums are saturated in mercury.

Neil Silvert: my god. so everybody, we're not signing off yet at all. We got much more to go. But if you want to take a break and go brush your teeth and floss right now, I think that's a really good idea. You want to protect your chompers, I think you should anyways, but holy moly, I gotta ask you the big debate, Carol, or one of the big debates. Let me say it. Fluoride People are talking about fluoride in the water, not in the water. Talk a bit about what's the controversy. What's fluoride please? What's your positioning on it? Because I think every time I take a drink of water I probably I'm drinking some fluoride.

Carol Wells: Correct. If you're drinking tap water, you're drinking fluoride in local communities. So we know that fluoride's a neurotoxin. So anything Dr. Phyllis Molinex was a neurologist? She was a research s doctor at Harvard University and they asked her to do a t a toxicology study on fluoride and she found that it alters the brain chemistry at one dose.

Neil Silvert: What do you mean alters? Good or bad altars?

Carol Wells: It's negative. It has a negative impact on IQ. So what's happening now is that the we there was a coalition that actually sued the EPA in California and the case was won. The judge did decide that it is a neurotoxin, that it does affect children's IQ, and so now the EPA, we're waiting for the EPA to come back and either do an appeal or not do an appeal. But there's a lot of cities and states in the USA that is dropping fluoride. Like I think Florida just dropped fluoride. I'm in three different coalitions to stop the treatment of fluoride in community water. Technically, even if you look at the tube of a toothpaste, it says on the back, if swallowed contact poison control. So there's YouTube videos out there right now that they put ten glasses of drinking water. And technically, if you drink those ten glasses of drinking water in one day, we should be sitting in poison control because everything that we cook, everything that we drink, everything that we wash our clothes in, everything that we bathe, we're just being so inundated with so much fluoride.

Neil Silvert: You mentioned Florida, but what's in the US? Two part question. Are we seeing this also in Canada? And what's the purpose of a neurotoxin in water? There has to be a reason for it in somebody's mind.

Carol Wells: The reason they put the fluoride in the water to begin with is that a doctor in Grand Rapids or a dentist in Grab Rapids found that the people that didn't have a lot of decay in their communities and they realized that there was the phosphate companies. It's it's a byproduct. So when they're making aluminum smelting, when they're doing all of these phosphate companies have all of this waste. So the wastewater contained fluoride. So they found that if they put it these people that were consuming it, the enamel got stronger. The enamel on the tooth, the outer layer got stronger. So once it gets stronger, but that becomes a twofold problem because if the enamel becomes stronger The layer in the middle, the dentin, is much softer. So then the decay it takes a lot longer to get through to the enamel that but once it reaches the inside layer, it just mushrooms out. We're finding these decay that just is the whole inside of the tooth, which then leads to a root canal because it affects the nerve of the tooth.

Neil Silvert: So this is fascinating because frankly I always understood the fluorides in the water simply to prevent cavities.

Carol Wells: Well it prevents cavities by making the enamel stronger, but

Neil Silvert: You're saying that it hurts the inside of the tooth and as you just said

Carol Wells: Byproduct of it hurts. It makes the it does it hardens anything. And the next thing about fluoride is that anything that can calcify will harden because of the fluoride. So we've got our pineal gland that's now being calcified, and that's our sleep regul regulation.

Neil Silvert: Just explain Calce Fight for any of our listeners who don't understand that, please. Okay.

Carol Wells: It hardens it. It hardens. So what they're finding now it's now called skeletofluorosis. People our age, when we fall, we break a hip. That can be very dangerous, just you know, we know that a lot of people have a lot of difficulties if they break a hip once they're in their seventies. So it's called skeletofluorosis because we know that the fluoride ox actually hardens their bones too. So then now the issue is why are we still using fluoride for the whole population, so we're mass medicating everybody with fluoridated water.

Neil Silvert: You know, I'm I'm I'm not usually slimy to the point what I like of not knowing what to ask you next, but it's almost like this is an is this an all or nothing discussion? Like should we just getting f get fluoride out of water? Should people like be storming in demonstrations? I'm not trying to be funny here. Like is this or are you seeing that there's a better understanding of it? And as you said c cities are now starting to remove fluoride from their water systems, but this is a big issue I would imagine.

Carol Wells: It's it's huge. And the problem with this is that right now they've convinced the dental population. I have a American Dental Association, it's called the White Paper. I believe it's dated back in nineteen seventy nine and it basically said dentists don't need to know the science behind water fluoridation, but to not support it is overt neglect.

Neil Silvert: Wow. Okay, I'm gonna move on from there in interest of time, but I'm gonna filter my water more.

Carol Wells: That's another problem because only reverse osmosis and distilled water is filtered water that removes fluoride. Unless you get some device that are saying now they can be I believe it's called santiva that it removes maybe point ninety nine percent, but there's no way to measure that. So you know with reverse osmosis or distilled water you're not getting fluoridated water. But then You need to add some minerals back in, like just putting salt back in your water. So that's what I do when I drink my water.

Neil Silvert: So like twenty minutes ago on this podcast we were talking about inflammation as such a dangerous part of our whole overall health, but now we're here talking about something that's supposed to prevent the g us getting inflammation could be more dangerous than the inflammation itself. Or am I hearing this wrong?

Carol Wells: No, that as I said, it's multifactorial. There's so many things that affect the person that you have to look at everything. And that's what the biological community wants everybody to be aware of and to be looking at these things. And if you need to make changes, what do you need to how

Neil Silvert: Incredible. So let me ask you, there's some technology that I think the biological dentist world is using. You touched a little bit about the microscope. I just want to go back for a minute. I'm curious because I think you were talking about a phase contrast micro micro microscopy, but also there's something the about the cone beam computed. Tomography. Can you talk on these for a second? Because I haven't heard of these tools in my dentist's office. Not that's necessarily bad. I'm just curious.

Carol Wells: It's just one step further to being able to help people become healthier instead of managing a disease state. Because unfortunately, if you see your dental hygienist and the bacteria isn't addressed, the bacteria like deep dark moist area, so that's they're gonna survive. Your gum space is like a collar on a tooth and they live in that gum space. So normal brushing and normal flossing doesn't may not be able to reach that gum space. We call it a pocket. And we find that these pockets can it's almost like the bottom of a pond. You can be walking along and all of a sudden it dips down in one area and then comes back up. So you need to know where those areas are. So one, you as the patient can target that area differently. Because if you have, say, like a long fingernail, you can clean a short one quite easily, but if you have a six inch long nail, how are you going to clean that differently? The same goes for the gum space. So that's where the bacteria like to survive is in those deep dark gum spaces.

Neil Silvert: So now I understand. So when I get my teeth cleaned, one of the things that they do is they count the pockets or they measure the pockets, which I imagine that they do for most people. But I never understood what pockets were in this term. So that's interesting.

Carol Wells: Right, so we can actually walk a measuring tool around and measure the gum space. So that's what you want to know when you're with your dental hygienist. Do I have deep pockets? We consider one to three easy to clean with your brush, with your floss. But anything deeper than a three millimeter, and it's graded in millimeters, anything deeper than that makes it more difficult. I've treated people with nine, ten, eleven, twelve millimeter pockets that may have been able to lose their teeth, but treating it with an antimicrobial, first of all, knowing what bacteria is present with the face contrast microscope and targeting that bacteria with an antimicrobial or ozonated water helps to get rid of that bacteria on contact and then you follow up with the appointments and if the body's healthy enough may be able to heal that gum space because the problem is The gum is up here and the bones down here. So you have this deeper space. So you have to be able to target that. And that's what the phase contrast microscope helps the best to know what type of bacteria you're dealing with. Another point nine out of ten people have disease related bacteria in their mouth without even being aware of it. Because the bacteria come from three different places. It comes from your parents.

Neil Silvert: Well,

Carol Wells: if you're sharing forks. If you're kissing your partner and they have disease related bacteria in their mouth, they can share it. And your pets have the same type of bacteria. That's why dogs and cats end up losing their teeth at their end of their life. People still lose their teeth and that's because of the periodontal disease or the infection in their gums.

Neil Silvert: my God. And of course, and I'm biting my tongue sort of not wanting to make the connection p between deep pockets. You were talking about in the deep pockets that you need to get all of this help when you go to your dental office, which I guess is a whole other topic that we should take on at a different time. Just one or two more questions. And thank you, Carol. Ladies and gentlemen, We have to take care of our mouse and we have to do the best that we can. Of course, if you're going to a health professional, a dentist, you're seeing a dental hygienist, we're no way suggesting that you should phone them up and change your dentist or anything like that. This is just as Carol is saying, a growth of knowledge, a movement into the future, maybe of how dentistry will be handled. And that's what this podcast is about, as you know, is Changing in technologies, changing in the way that we do things and perhaps disrupting the norm. That's why it's called disruptive technology. Carl wanna ask you about something called thermography. Tells me that there's a lot of debate on that. Just in a couple of short sentences, why is that and why is that what is that? Why is there a debate?

Carol Wells: Well, it's it's an infrared camera that's able to see inflammation. So what you do is you sit in a room and they're able to do a thermography camera picture and see if there's inflammation. So say if you have a root canal and you want it that will show the inflammation that's going on by the different colors within the thermography. They actually are using thermography instead of doing a mammogram for breast cancer and things like that. But s right now the mammograms are typical treatment for looking at breast cancer for women especially. But thermography is one that's non evasive and you can see the inflammation and know whether something needs to be treated or not treated. So it's just another line of prevention. It's something that it's I mean, thermography's been around for many, many years. You know, if you talk to an electrician, they can go up to your electrical panel and use the same type of camera to see if there's hot spots. So these are looking for hot spots in your body.

Neil Silvert: So what I'm learning today, and thank you, Carol, is as we just said it a minute ago, technology is changing, the way that we handle the mouth is changing. It's obviously a developmental process. Why is oral health becoming even more important as we age? I mean, to me it should start from day one. But as we get older, is it much more important? Maybe talk about that a bit.

Carol Wells: Well, definitely. I mean, it's it's something that it's hard to reverse once you start that inflammation process. So you want to be able to protect yourself as long as possible. If people what they're finding, say in long term care right now for people that aren't able to even take care of their mouth the way they used to take care of, they're all getting aspiration pneumonia. And they're finding that the disease related bacteria is responsible for that type of pneumonia that they're getting. So it's something that you want to be able to learn how to take care of your mouth properly and effect the words effectively. We know everybody brushes their teeth. We know most people want to floss their teeth. But the words effective. So you can brush your teeth a hundred times a day, and if you're not effective the first time, you're not going to be effective every time you brush. So you have to learn how to become effective. So we had child life specialists and we would have learning sessions. I mean, they make these purple tablets that you can chew on them and then spit them out, and it actually identifies where the plaque is, where The plaque rests on your teeth and it can actually change the color. So you can see plaque that's 24 hours old, or you could see plaque that's 48 hours old. And once the plaque gets really hard on the teeth, then it becomes what we call calculus. And that's what dental hygienists specialty is at is removing this hard deposit. But to take it one step further, that hard deposit is I have pictures of California, when I was in California and you look at all the boardwalks, and you see all of the wooden pools that support this boardwalk, but then you see all the barnacles from the ocean that just accumulate around there. And that's similar to my analogy of what the calculus does in your mouth, because the bacteria build that calculus as a as a nest, a home. So removing the calculus itself doesn't treat the bacteria. Wow. So you want to take it. a few steps further and treat the bacteria with an antimicrobial or ozonated something that's going to eliminate that bacteria.

Neil Silvert: Well, as we start to wrap up, Carol, what I think I'm learning from you today is that biological dentistry isn't trying to replace traditional dentistry. I think I heard you say that, but rather it's an encouragement of practitioners to look more deeply at the body mouth connection and for the whole the whole science, the whole dental world pro of professionals to look at more advanced treatments, new technologies. ways to differently understand the way that we've done things in the past and then move from there. So in many ways it's it's a development of technologies and a development of new thinking, I think, but I don't think that it's such an easy discussion.

Carol Wells: No, it th it for some people it's going down the rabbit hole and looking at it and then having to look at what they've been doing in the past and then how to move forward with this information. Because it's not something that the schools are teaching. They're starting to in dental hygiene, talk about the bacteria a little differently. I mean, when I was in school, if people came in with plaque on their teeth, we didn't motivate them enough to be effective. So we became We were supposed to be motivators. That's what I was taught. You had to motivate them to brush and floss better. But you can brush and floss and still have problems because if you're exposed to these problems, they're able to survive in your mouth this particular type of bacteria, then it opens you up to a whole other problems that could affect every part of our internal network.

Neil Silvert: Wow. Well, I have to say that I want to thank you for everything that you've taught us today. I have one more question after we finish, but could we will post your website? Where do you want people to go to learn more about you, learn more about your beliefs? So what is your website?

Carol Wells: It's called wellness for life dot B as in Bobby Z as in Zebra.

Neil Silvert: Okay, wellness with the number four. The y so wellness the number four life dot B Z. Okay, thank you. Just as we start to sign off and I just want to make one comment if I can. I am indebted to my dental professionals who I've gone to for years. My own kids are dentists, my bride is a dental hygienist.

Carol Wells: The number four, correct. Correct.

Neil Silvert: I've been I have been on my own I guess I've been traveling down the road trying to figure out better health and better aspects of how we can do better, especially because I'm a senior with diabetes. And that's what motivates me. And I see as a d as a diabetic, I'm seeing a dentist at least four times a year. I'm getting my teeth cleaned. We're doing the best we can. Everybody, we encourage you. Carol, I want to thank you so much for coming on today. We really thank you at the Your Grey Matters podcast. everybody, listen to Carol. Take her seriously, read her work. Don't be afraid to ask your dental professional about any of this. At the same time, know that no matter how you live, it starts with you having good dental care and that starts With your own responsibility, it is yours to do the best that you can with your own mouth. Toothpaste, toothbrush, floss, whatever your professional suggests, please do not ignore something that can clearly affect your whole body health. Thank you, Carol. Thanks for coming.

Carol Wells: Thank you so much for this opportunity. Thank you.

Neil Silvert: A pleasure and everybody, we'll see you next time on the Your Grey Matters Podcast. Thanks for watching. If you found it interesting and you liked it, give us a thumbs up. If you're ready to subscribe, click right here. And if you'd like to see another episode, click right here. Tell a friend, send us comments. Thanks a lot.