#34 – Lane Freeman: Oral Health Affects the Entire Body

You are at the intersection of wealth, health, and happiness. Welcome to the WealthyWellthy life.

Hello, and welcome to the WealthyWellthy life. The show where I interview thought leaders who teach a counter-cultural approach to money, health, and happiness. I’m Krisstina Wise, bestselling author, and millionaire coach. Your personal guide to a rich, and fulfilling life one millionaire strategy at a time. It’s my mission to help people understand that money, and health go hand in hand because great riches don’t matter if you’re sick, and good health doesn’t matter if you’re broke.

Today, I tackle health wealth with Dr. Lane Freeman. Dr. Freeman is one of the country’s few functional biological dentists, and leading dental surgeons. She has numerous certifications and affiliations including the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, the American Institute of Implant Dentistry, and the American Dental Association. People fly from all over the country, and the world to work with her using her unique holistic method of dentistry. Not to mention she’s my family’s dentist and runs an extraordinary practice in Marble Falls, Texas. What makes Lane so special is her passion for educating her patients on the connection between oral health, and overall systemic health. In this interview, we talk about the idea of holistic, or biological dentistry, and how that approach differs from conventional dentistry. We talk about how your mouth relates to the health of your overall body. We discuss fillings for your teeth. The danger of certain filings, and the factors that everyone needs to be aware of, and we even discuss root canals, and other common dental procedures that are really harming us rather than helping us. This is a real unique interview on a topic that very few people even think about so I hope you enjoy.

All right, Lane, it is so much fun to be here with you today. Thank you for your time, you’re a busy woman. You’re a mom, you’re a dentist, and you have a really thriving business. So, I really appreciate you pulling yourself away to have a conversation with me, and let all of our listeners listen in. So, thanks a lot.

Well, absolutely, it is just my pleasure to be able to be here with you, and just to get to visit about dentistry and how it’s changed, and how we can look at things differently. So, I really appreciate you having me.

Well, awesome. Awesome, awesome. So, just so that everybody gets a chance to know you I’ll be adding your bios. So, everybody will hear all of your great accomplishments, and your more typical bio, but tell us a little bit about you. What are your beginnings, and what drew you to where you are today?

All right, well I am a mom, and so I knew that early on that I wanted to have a career in something that would allow me to spend time with my kids, and I really enjoy being with people. So, I want that to be something I could incorporate into whatever I chose to do, and when I was in high school I just happened to work for Dr. Stewart Nunley. He was one of my – is one of my parent’s very good friends, and I just needed a job, and he gave me a job in his dental office just doing small things. So, I began to watch the way that he was able to work with his patients, and at that point it was very much a conventional dental practice back when I was in high school, but I was able to see that I really was interested in the field of dentistry in the way that you could work with people, and just do lots of exciting things. Something new every day, so that lead to me being interested in going on to dental school after I finished my undergrad, and then about the time I came back from graduating. I was able to come back and join Dr. Nunley, and his practice. And about that time was when Dr. Nunley became very ill with what they thought was ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease and he literally the day I walked in with my dental license to begin practicing was the day he left the office to ultimately be gone for six weeks to undergo testing.

It was determined conclusively that he did not have Lou Gehrig’s disease, but instead had extremely toxic heavy metal poisoning, specifically, mercury poisoning, and so he was able to fully recover, but it took quite a long time. But that was what really was the turning point was when I came into the office the day he came back in, and we knew what was going on with him. We completely changed the way that we looked at dentistry. The way we practiced dentistry, and so for the last 17 years we have been daily trying to make sure that we’re doing the very best thing for our patients from that perspective as far as looking at dentistry, not just the teeth, but how the teeth affect the body, and how the body is affecting the mouth. So, it’s just a very exciting, and I feel very blessed to do what I get to do. I get to spend a lot of time with my family, and they are very involved in our practice as well. And so, it’s just a lot of fun. I love coming to work, I love who I work with, I get to meet some incredible people, and work with them. So, it’s a lot of fun.

Well, and you live out in Marble Falls, Texas, which is really a little bit off the beaten path for having a successful business and practice, and I know people fly in from all over the world to see you so.

They do, absolutely, and it’s always the comment that we get especially as people fly into the larger cities either Austin or San Antonio, and drive out here. It really feels to people that we’re out in the middle of nowhere, but we feel like out here you really get to pull away from a lot of things that are normally surrounding you. There’s not a lot of traffic, we don’t have the same kind of air pollution. We’re in the beautiful surroundings of the hill country with lakes, and hills and everything just slows down a little bit, which is sometimes a really good change for people come out here to have treatment. They get to slow down as well. They don’t feel like they’re right in the middle of the rat race. So, it’s good, but we’re close enough to the big cities to make it where we can still take advantage of that as well.

Absolutely, Marble Falls is such a beautiful place. So, it’s one of my favorite towns. Texas towns, well I think that’s a perfect Segway. So, to get started in our conversation today, and you know most of my listeners if they’ve listened to any number of the episodes they’re very familiar with holistic medicine, functional medicine, work the functional medicine approach, and methodology, and philosophy as opposed to more the allopathic medicine, but so they’re already been introduced, and most of not I’d say many if not most of them are already seeking maybe more alternative medical practitioners as far as maybe functional medicine, integrative medicine, chiropractic, acupuncture, you name it. But I’m guessing there’s very few that have ever been introduced to the idea of holistic dentistry, or biological dentistry. So, I’m really, really excited about our conversation today because this might be a big eye opener for a lot of people listening, and I know that’s part of your passion to get some of this philosophy, and methodology and dentistry out to the masses because it’s just not out there. So, do you mind just taking a second, and explaining what is holistic biological dentistry, and how is it fundamentally, not necessarily specifically. We’ll talk about that in a second, but fundamentally different than more traditional conventionally dentistry.

Yes, absolutely. So, when you define yourself as being a holistic, or a biological dental practice the concept of the philosophy behind that is that you’re not just looking at a cavity, or a broken tooth, or an infection as just how it affects the mouth, and or the function of chewing, or that kind of thing, or how it looks. You’re also thinking about how it’s affecting the rest of the body. The systemic health or acutely with is it causing an infection or is it being caused by an infection somewhere else, but then beyond that it’s the way that we address those things is what sets us apart in that. We want to use materials, and therapies that are going to produce the least amount of reaction. A negative reaction in the body. So, we want to use materials that are considered biocompatible that don’t elicit a response. We want to eliminate infection that can affect the immune system. We aren’t just looking to only restore chewing function. We want to do that, but do it in such a way that we’re not creating enough further problem with the immune system, or with other systems within your body. So, that’s really what sets us apart is how we look at things, and then what materials we use, and therapies we use to correct those issues that patients have.

So, you’re not looking at the mouth as some separate place on the body where you’re just concerned about the mouth, and you treat it as such. It looks like you’re’ looking at the mouth, the teeth, the gums, maybe the jaws as an integral part of the total whole body system.

Absolutely, for the longest time, it’s really been that there was this cut off right at the mouth, of the back of the mouth. From there, dentists did the front part, and the doctors and physicians took care of the rest, and there was no interaction between the two, and that’s really such a silly concept when you think about it because the mouth is really such a gateway, and there are so many interactions that the mouth has that it feeds into the rest of the system, and then when you start really looking at it you realize oh my goodness, this is all connected. And what’s encouraging is that more and more because functional medicine is really coming to the forefront more and more. People are starting to see that that bridge, and there – we’re having so many more conversations with physicians, and doctors who say, “Oh, I was wondering if there could perhaps be a connection” and of course there’s a connection, and then going the other way we have to remember as practitioners as well when we see something in the mouth that could be telling us about something else that’s going on in the body that we have to pay attention to that as well.

So, it sounds like that the health of our mouth could have – or lack thereof, could have a lot to do with the health of our overall body, our overall health, and vice versa our overall health might have a lot to do with the health of our mouth. Is that correct?

Absolutely, absolutely.

So, maybe let’s jump into one thing. I think when many people, including myself, have gone to the dentist, and I’ve been told that I had gum disease, and so I’ve gone through lots of traditional more approaches to cure the gum disease, but tell us about gum disease. How many people that come to your practice have gum disease, maybe what percentage? Then two, I’m guessing based on what we just said that gum disease again, it’s not isolated to the mouth, that if we have gum disease I’m guessing it can totally impact us, our immune system, our impact in so many areas that we’re not even aware of when we – we might not even be aware that we had gum disease in the first place.

Absolutely, so that is really where we always start when we are looking at a patient, and then that’s something that carries throughout someone’s whole career as a dental patient is that the basic structure, and the support system of the gum tissue, and the bone that surrounds the tooth. So, that’s definitely a great place to start. So, the conventional way to look at periodontal disease, gum disease is, unfortunately, has always been to look at the damage that has occurred after it’s already occurred. So, the markers for periodontal disease would be when there’s already bleeding gums when there’s already bone loss when there’s already recession, and you’ve already had lost. And so, unfortunately, that’s been the way in the past where we have started from this point where the damage has already occurred, and now we’re just trying to prevent future damage. Our goal is to find it as it’s getting started, and then correct it before we have damage. So, one of the best ways to do that is to look at the bacteria that’s present even if nothing hurts, even if everything looks healthy, and that has taken us leaps and bounds on beyond where we used to be, because what happens with gum disease to back up just a little bit with periodontal disease is that bacteria that gets underneath the gum line that stays there for a long period of time, then starts to cause a reaction where the bone starts to pull away from the tooth, kind of starts to reabsorb away.

So, you get this bone loss, and then after that the gum tissue follows, and you get these deeper, and deeper pockets between the tooth, and the gum tissue where the bacteria just has a hay day, and if you aren’t able to get down there and clean it out, or you don’t see a dentist or a hygienist often enough, and they don’t clean it out properly, then the result is that you get this bone loss. So, it used to be that that’s where many people would come in, and already the damage had occurred, and there wasn’t anything to do. With the microscope, we can take a little sample of plaque from underneath the gum line, completely painless, put it on the slide, and look at it under a phase contrast microscope, and then the patient can look at it as well, and we can look at a few things. One is how much bacterial activity do you have? Is there a lot of bacteria in there? Second, we want to look at what type of bacteria in there. There are a few certain types of bacteria that are markers for active periodontal disease, and so we will see – if we see those types of bacteria and we see a lot of it. Then we know hey, we have a problem here even if there’s no signs or symptoms for the patient themselves. We know we’re catching this early when the bacteria are just starting to colonize. Then we can take steps, which we can get to in a minute, to flush those out, and give the patients some things they can do at home to keep those areas flushed out. So that we can keep good, healthy gum tissue, and we don’t’ wait until the damage has occurred. The microscope also allows us to see things like an overabundance of white blood cells, which would indicate that hey there might be something else systemically going on here.

We’ve had a couple of times when we’ve been able to refer a patient onto their physician, and they were able to catch some systemic issues. Some immune system issues early on because we were looking at that on the microscope at a dental appointment, which you wouldn’t normally find. We can also see other types of bacteria that would indicate that maybe we need to do some different therapies because these are really tough types of bacteria to get rid of. So, the microscope has really been a game changer. It also allows the patient to really see what’s going on in their mouth because periodontal disease is very similar to heart disease, and that is considered a silent type of disease. It doesn’t necessarily hurt. It doesn’t necessarily cause the gums to bleed, and so sometimes a patient walks in thinking everything is great, and instead we find that they’ve got an overabundance of these bacteria, and we have a pretty major problem. So, it’s really nice to be able to show the patient exactly what we’re looking at, and know that we can deal with the patient individually instead of just a blanket treatment.

Well, and I went through that exact experience, and so my mouth has been my nemesis my entire life, and I’ve gone to lots of traditional dentistry throughout my lifetime, and when I was finally referred to you that – I can’t even tell you the number of dentists I’ve been to, and probably more average dentists, and even really great traditional conventional dentist, but as many dentist appointments I’ve gone to in my life. I go out to your practice, and the hygienist test the plaque in my gum, puts it under microscope and shows me, and I had good dental practices. I was the brusher, and flosser, and rinser, and did everything I was supposed to do because God forbid I ever had another dental issue in my life, right?

So, I was the good kid to do what I was told to do, and I go out and she says, “Krisstina, let me show you these bacteria. Here’s the good bacteria, and these little devils will cause disease, and we have to get rid of those.” And I was shocked. I was too shocked, too shocked, two-fold shocked. One shocked in my entire lifetime to never even know that there’s good bacteria, and bad bacteria that I could see, and then too shocked that with my good dental practices, hygiene practices, what I thought was good hygiene practices I still had these bad bacteria, and then we went through the different therapies to get rid of them, and now the last time I came out. The hygienist said, “Congratulations Krisstina, you have a healthy mouth.” So, it might have been the first time ever, but it was really remarkable to see with my own eyes that this – my mouth wasn’t perfectly healthy.

Yes, absolutely, it’s really helped us be able to do things individually for patients, and show them their progress, and then if one therapy doesn’t work maybe for that patient we can switch them to another. So, it doesn’t just allows us to diagnose, but like you said it allows us to follow that, and then mark the progress, and be able to check that. So, it’s really neat. It’s a good way to involve the patient in their own care.

It is, and it’s interesting this word bacteria again, and working with my functional medicine doctors another place I’ve had to work on is my gut biome. My gut bacteria and really working on my digestion, and getting my gut back to healthy with the good bacteria, and but through so many doses of antibiotics throughout my life. I killed my gut biome, and again trying to learn about that. Like wow, we need these bacteria, and we need good gut bacteria and so it was remarkable again these darn bacteria that in my mouth. I’m like, “Oh, there’s the good ones and the bad ones, and let’s get rid of the bad ones, but we’d have to do a good job of keeping the good ones.” And now I even take some oral probiotics also. That was recommended to keep the good bacteria going, but it really is fascinating.

Yeah, absolutely, and we have to remember that once again that gut bacteria in our mouth. All of that is so connected, and so it is. You’re going to start hearing it everywhere I think.

Exactly, so how important is nutrition to overall mouth health?

It is absolutely imperative just like we were just saying as far as we know how important nutrition is for your gut, for your overall health, for your muscle tone, for your brain function. Everything that is in our bodies is affected by what we put in it, and how well we take care of ourselves, and so nutrition is vital because our mouths are just like the rest of our body, it’s a living organism, and all those tissues are constantly being fed by the blood supply, and turnover of cells, and those things. And it’s a lot of wear and tear thinking about everything you put in your mouth every day as far as what you eat, and drink, and those kinds of things. So, nutrition plays such a vital role in keeping healthy teeth.

We know that cavities can be caused when you don’t have the right minerals when you eat a lot of sugars, and carbohydrates, and things that allow that just feed bad bacteria, and allow deterioration of the teeth, but also the gum tissue is definitely an area where we can see a lack of nutrition when people come in, and that gum tissue is just not healthy, and the therapies that we’re trying maybe are not having much of an effect. A lot of times the next thing we’re looking at is nutrition. What types of things are you eating? Are you getting enough fruits and vegetables? Are you eating enough protein? Do you take any supplements to make up for perhaps what your body isn’t making enough of? Those kind of things, and nutrition is vital to everything we do, and the more that we can do naturally once again going back to the whole concept of being a biological or holistic practice is things that you can incorporate into your diet naturally eating organic foods, and staying away from additives. All of those things affect the teeth, just like the teeth in the mouth and the tissues, just like they affect the body. So, it’s important to make sure that you’re thinking about that as well.

And we’ll talk more about this in a second, but our teeth are bones, are living tissue, and so they need to be mineralized, and if we have some mineral deficiencies our teeth will likely be weak or weaker.

Yes, they can definitely be weaker, and the bone structure surrounding them. Both of those things. The supporting bone, and the teeth themselves if you don’t – if you have some deficiencies, or if you have a very acidic saliva, which would come from possibly a very acidic diet. So, we’ll have just that tend to be more acidic anyway. You have to do things to counteract that because we know that those acidic situations will cause the teeth to start to break down even faster. So, those are things that come into play as well.

So, what are signs of a healthy mouth, and then what are signs of an unhealthy mouth?

Okay, so signs of a healthy mouth, and we can just start with the gum tissue would be just good, healthy, pink gum tissue that has that nice scallop that we’re looking for around the teeth. We do want to know if your gums – if people notice that their gums bleed, but as we mentioned before that’s not always a tell tell sign. I had some people come in and have great looking gum tissue, but as you mentioned you felt like you were doing everything right. Then we will take a little sample, and they’ve got a ton of bacteria. So, in our definition of a healthy mouth, we are looking at the microscope as well. So, a healthy mouth would not have very much bacterial activity beyond just that good bacteria that we would expect to see, and there would not be any bone loss, or there would not be any further bone loss if someone had come to us after already having some damage done. They would not have any more than that.

Teeth that are either have no restorations or they have restorations that are biocompatible that are healthy that are done well that fit the teeth well. Healthy mouth, as far as their bite, and how things are working together. Those are all things that we look for when we’re looking for a healthy mouth. Mostly, though, that the patient feels comfortable with their smile, and it functioning, and able to chew correctly in the absence of those bad bacteria. So, that’s really our definition of a healthy mouth. They look different. Each person has got a very individual mouth. There’s really not any two mouths that are the same. Any two sets of teeth that are the same. So, there’s a different definition for everybody, but those are the big things that we look for.

All right, let’s take the discussion in a place where I’m really passionate about having this conversation, and it’s really so much result of my own health crisis, and my long-time listeners to probably a point of ad nauseum at this stage. I was sick in 2013 and took a long time to try to diagnose what was wrong with me, and to the point of really being on my death bed, and part of that story is that after months, and months, and months of going through just the traditional medicine approach. Doctor to doctor, pill to pill. Different diagnosis, just doctor doctor, but nobody ultimately could figure out what was wrong because I was getting sicker, and sicker, and they had thrown out a lot of disease names, but at the end of the day I wasn’t getting better regardless of what the doctor called my symptoms. They gave it some disease name. Well, a little bit like Dr. Nunley getting the ALS diagnosis. Well, I finally came across a functional medicine doctor months afterwards, and so after a three-hour consultation she says, “Okay, now tell me about your dental history” and so I said, “Oh, well I started getting really sick in January, and November of that previous year just a few months before I gotten all my amalgams taken out of my mouth.” And so, I was telling her, “Oh, well in November” this time it was June, but in last November I got all my amalgams taken out, and replace, and so on and so forth, and she said, “Krisstina, you have mercury poisoning.”

She said, “All these symptoms that you’re talking about are telltale signs of mercury.” So, she said, “Let’s do a heavy metal test on you, and see what we find out.” And so, sure enough, and my levels were so toxic she actually took – we did the test twice because she said there’s no way this could be accurate, but all of that to say that I had lots of heavy metals in my system, in my body that was breaking me down, but one of those off the charts was mercury, and you go back to the timing of this, and my own speculation is that the replacement of the amalgams. I probably swallowed some of that mercury or whatever happened, injested it. And it was just enough to tip me over the edge where it was just my body just gave up. So, I’d love for you to talk a little bit about that as far as I don’t even know in more traditional dentistry if they’re still putting the amalgams in, but even if they’re taking amalgams out I think it’s really important that people understand what the dangers are.

Yes, absolutely. So, unfortunately just to address what you just mentioned. Unfortunately, mercury is still being placed by many dentists. It is still used, and the unfortunate thing is that because it’s a cheap material. It’s a metal which makes people think, “Oh, it’s strong.” So, it is still being used. There’s a lot of controversy over that, and the safety of it, but the research is really indisputable, and it’s getting out there more and more. As more researchers pick it up. So, that’s encouraging, but unfortunately, it’s still being used, and a lot of times, and in kids, and in the underprivileged that don’t get to have a say in what is being placed in their mouth. That being said, with all the mercury fillings that have been used over the last 50 to 70 years on people that we are seeing, there is a danger to just going in, and just starting to drill that out. Mercury vapor is one of the most dangerous forms of mercury exposure, and so when you have a mercury filling, or multiple fillings removed there are certain precautions, and protocols that need to be in place because it is – I have a lot of patients that say, “Well, I ask my dentist to take out my mercury fillings, and he said it was more of a problem to take them out than to just leave them in there.” In some way, that statement is correct, a mercury filling sitting in your mouth is constantly releasing that mercury off of that filling from the day the filling is placed until the day that tooth comes out of your mouth. It’s constantly releasing that mercury vapor, and if you want to see an actual presentation of that there is a video called the smoking tooth that you can see. If you go onto our website there’s a link that’ll take you there, but if you also think about mercury fillings being a metal. They’re referred to as a lot of times silver fillings because that sounds so much nicer. You have some silver jewelry, now you have some silver fillings, but really they’re mercury fillings. Every mercury filling is made up of at least 50% mercury, and then the other 50% or so is made up of other materials, copper, nickel, tin. Lots of different things that can be incorporated in that to make it an amalgam of metals. When you put that in the teeth it’s placed in there more as a mechanical type of filling material meaning that it’s just put in in a way that it won’t pop back out, and so that can cause some other issues that we can talk about later beyond just the fact that it’s mercury. Then with the process of chewing, which causes friction, that causes an increase in the release of the mercury. Also, with the hot and cold things that we put in our mouth day in and day out. You have a hot cup of coffee, and then later you might have an iced to drink or things like that, and those temperature changes cause an expansion, and then contraction of those fillings just multiple times throughout the day, which then also increase the amount of mercury coming off of those. So, with it being in the mouth that’s where you’re getting the exposure. Also, with little pieces break off you wear off little pieces, it starts to corrode around the edges. Those are all additional ways that you can be exposed to the mercury.

Now, if you go in and your dentist agrees to take out a mercury filling or does that because there’s a problem, but doesn’t use any precautions, you are going to get a huge dose of that mercury vapor as they use that handpiece or drill to drill out that filling. They have just created a huge amount of mercury vapor, and not to mention any pieces that you would swallow, or inhale there, and so that mercury vapor also just absorbs right into the tissue as well. So, that being said you really have to be careful if you’re choosing to have your mercury fillings replaced with something more biocompatible. You need to be sure that you’re using someone that is going to follow some precautions. The most basic of the precautions would be a rubber dam, which would be a little like a little raincoat for that tooth that would isolate the teeth that are being worked on from the rest of the mouth, and it prevents those bigger pieces from being swallowed or inhaled. It also provides a physical barrier for that mercury. So, that’s the first layer of protection, but then there’s multiple other things that can be used. Vitamin C, VNIV, which gives an added layer of protection., helps your body with detox with the mercury that’s already in your system along with any that you might be exposed to, using high levels of water, high levels of suction, we use multiple suction devices. We now even use a real large vacuum right in front of the face, to clear the airspace, negative ion generators that blow a stream of negative ions right over your breathing space. Then, of course, the doctor and the assistant have to protect themselves as well with gear. Masks, respirators, covering your hair, and clothing. All those things protecting the eyes that would keep you from being exposed to a larger amount of mercury. So, you have to be careful that it’s done correctly so that we don’t do more harm than good when replacing those mercury fillings.

So, when Dr. Nunley was finally discovered he had heavy metal mercury poisoning was it – did they connect that to being in dentistry, and his career putting mercury fillings in?

Absolutely, so when they made that diagnosis for Dr. Nunley, they began looking at his mouth, and then he at that point didn’t have – he had not been placing mercury fillings in the 20 years that he’d been working. He really hadn’t even been placing mercury fillings. He really moved to only placing composite fillings, but in that time, he had taken out hundreds of thousands of mercury fillings where he had just been breathing that in. He also recalls as a child playing with the mercury that you would roll around in your hand, and he was a huge fish eater. Dr. Nunley was already before we made this change in our practice very health conscious, and ate a lot of fish. I think he would tell you at least three to four times a week they would eat fish, and so that all those things added up along with just our environmental exposures to mercury added up to a lot. It’s also, for some people, there is a genetic component to this, and that some people just aren’t able to detox heavy metals. Others are able, their bodies just don’t have as much as a problem excreting that. They can handle higher doses of heavy metals because their bodies are able to get rid of it, and some people don’t. They just store it up in those cells, and then you finally reach a tipping point when the body just says, “Oh, that’s as much as I can handle” and then you start to see those symptoms show up.

So, when he received that diagnosis they began looking around. He didn’t have any actual mercury fillings, but he did in his mouth. He did though have some metal crowns that they replaced, and then they began the process of detoxing and getting his body to release. He, like you Krisstina, was one of the highest that the lab had ever seen, and so it took a while to detox, and that meant changing things in the diet, changing some lifestyle things, doing some therapies that would encourage his body to release those heavy metals, and so – but definitely, he had been breathing a lot of mercury. So, he has not taken out a mercury filling since that day without a respirator on as of none of us here in this office have done that. So, fortunately, I joined this practice right out of dental school. So, I didn’t have to go through years of that before I was able to be educated and protect myself.

So, I think I’ve heard a  few things, is number one, if anybody listening goes to the dentist or their kids go to the dentist, and the dentist recommends a mercury filling, that would be red flag number one.

Absolutely.

Red flag number two might be that what you said earlier is, “Okay, we recommend that you leave them in, they probably will do more harm than good.” So, that might be yellow flag number two, and then number three would be if they say, “Hey, let’s go ahead and take them out” and they don’t really explain how dangerous this could be, and all the precautions they’ll take, and how serious this is, then that would be flag number three, correct?

Absolutely, and what’s really neat, Krisstina, is there’s about to be a big launch of a teach your dentist organization that is going to be a reference for patients where they can go online, and they can first of all find dentists who have agreed to take out mercury and other metal fillings properly with a certain protocol. And they will have actually signed something that says that they have all these precautions in place, and patients will be able to look on there, and they’ll know the questions to ask their dentist if they go to someone who isn’t already aware of this, they’ll know how to ask their dentist some questions using the right languaging, and knowing what they’re actually asking, and what the answers mean. So, you can watch for that. It’ll be teachyourdentist.org I believe, but they’ll be a link on our website for that as well so that people can really make sure that they’re educated, and that’s what’s really driving this, and that’s what’s neat to see is that patients are asking questions, they’re wanting to know more about their care, and so if a dentist doesn’t want you to ask questions that’s another red flag.

Right, right, just like your doctor. So, I think part of it too is that even if you do ask questions even the best dentist, the best intention dentist, they just don’t know. In the traditional protocol, there’s not an awareness of this necessarily, correct? So, it’s not like anybody is trying to get away with anything or do something wrong, it’s like they fully believe that this is the best thing.

Absolutely, absolutely. I have met some wonderful dentists and had some conversations with them but it’s just the status quo. This is what we’re taught in school that there’s nothing wrong with mercury fillings. That there’s – I know we’re going to touch on root canals later, and we’re just not taught in school. So, unless you go beyond that, and unless you go beyond the American Dental Association for your information, and look at research on your own. Many dentists just don’t know the information, and what I’ve found that’s been so encouraging is that dentists that are willing to then go, “Well, let me go look at that, and do some research on their own.” They’re coming back, and going, “Okay, there is a – we do have a problem here.” So, once again they’re being very patient driven, consumer driven for now I want to know more about this, and logically this just doesn’t make sense. One of the things that I always explain to patients is that logically mercury fillings don’t make a lot of sense because we already know that it’s a very well accepted fact that mercury is one of the most toxic elements that we have on this planet, and there’s so many precautions in place. The thermometer breaks in the hospital, and the whole floor is cleared, and things like that. We know that mercury is an issue. Unfortunately, the thinking was oh if you mix it with some other metals then all of a sudden it becomes magically safe, which we know that really isn’t the case because mercury is released on its own from those mercury fillings. So, when we go in, and take out a mercury filling, anything else that we use in our office we can throw in the trashcan, or it’s okay if it goes down the drain, but when we take out a mercury filling we try to cut it into sections so that we can pop it out in pieces, and once again reduce the amount of mercury vapor that is released in the process. So, when we do that those pieces, we have to set those aside, those pieces have to go into a little jar, and then eventually those pieces have to be picked up by the hazmat people. Apparently, it’s okay to have it in your mouth, but once it comes out of your mouth it’s a hazardous material.

I mean that’s crazy. That is crazy, yeah.

Just logically, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. We put a lot of filters on our drainage system as well. We don’t’ want to be releasing any particles, or pieces that go into our drainage system. We want to block that. We don’t want to be contributing any more to the mercury pollution that’s already in the environment, which unfortunately dentistry has been a big part of. So, we have a lot of protections in place from that end as well, but logically mercury fillings just don’t make a whole lot of sense.

No, they don’t, and hopefully everyone listening if they’ve never heard this before. This is a big awareness, and so for me same thing, I was a pescetarian, so big fish diet, lots of tuna, and then I had an entire mouth of fillings taken out, and I’ve learned since when you’d even touched on some of the genetic, or just our own biological structures for me that I have compromised methylation pathways. So, I have certain genes that don’t work properly. So, you have a few of these dominos, and it can take you down. So.

Absolutely.

Anyway, so let’s go ahead. You have referenced the word root canals, and so this is really like I said, first of all I really want for people to really understand the danger with mercury, and then but the second thing is where I think people might be totally blown away, and I know why it was because this is part of what I’ve just recently become aware of in working with you is that I – after I’ve recovered my health and everything is looking back to normal, and at the point, I haven’t linked back some of the traditional dentistry to possibly the mercury poison at the time, but get to a place. I have a sore tooth that’s really aching, and so I go into the dentist again, and he does some tests on my tooth, and he says, “Oh, I think this tooth is compromised. I’m going to send you to I think it’s called an endodontist, and I think you need a root canal.” So, I got to the endodontist, and she does a test, and she tests my teeth, and she said, “Oh, absolutely you need a root canal, but the tooth right next door to it I think also is a little edgy on the edge here. So, I recommend we do two root canals instead of one, and it’ll be much easier to do all at the same time.” So, I’m thinking sure why not. Makes sense, I don’t want to have to go through this again.

Now, keep in mind I’ve had in my – like I said, my mouth has been my nemesis. So, I’ve had probably, and I know you already know this, but I’ve had four or five other root canals, so this might be a total of six, and not even thinking any of it go through the process, and within I don’t know, a week or so of that procedure I got tinnitus. And so this really loud ringing in my ears, and I’m like, “Oh, my gosh you’ve got to be kidding. I’ve worked so hard to recover my health, and now I have this tinnitus” and it was really loud, and I couldn’t think, and then I couldn’t sleep because I’m listening to ringing at night, and then finally I go to my doctor, which is Dr. Ann Shippy, and I’m like, “Ann, oh my God like really. This ringing has popped up in my ears.” And of course, she’s functional medicine. She’s asking very similar questions, and she said, “Oh my God, you got root canals? Girlfriend, what am I going to do with you?” So, she said, “You’ve got to go out to Marble Falls and see Dr. Lane Freeman, and at least talk to her.” I don’t know a lot about this other than what I’ve learned is root canals aren’t necessarily a good option. So anyway, that’s my introduction to you in bio dentistry and everything I’ve been doing with you since, my entire family, and my friends, and their families now. But will you go ahead and share about root canals, and obviously what I now know, but what I wasn’t aware of just nine months ago?

All right, so yeah. Root canals are an interesting topic. Basically, what happens when you – if a dentist recommends that you’re going to need a root canal it’s either because a tooth has got a really deep cavity that’s into the nerve that’s infected the nerve, or it could be that you have a cracked tooth that is affecting the nerve, and sometimes it can just be for no reason that we can find that a tooth just decides to die, a nerve just decides to die, and either you have pain from any of those things, or an abscess is noted on an x-ray. They see the x-ray, and they tell you that you have an infection, and you’re going to need a root canal. What happens when you have a root canal is teeth generally have one to three main canals that go down through the main roots of the teeth, and those you can usually see pretty clearly on an x-ray, those main canals, they’re pretty large. What most people don’t tell you, or don’t know is there are thousands of accessory canals that go out from those main canals, and they go off in all sorts of different directions. If you were to shoot some dye into a tooth, and then slice it down the middle and look at it, you would be able to visibly see many of these accessory canals, and they go off from all different angles from the main canal.

If you were to look at it under a microscope it looked like a Texas road map. Just thousands of little accessory tubules that are going off in all directions, and nerve endings lived in those when the tooth was alive, and small blood vessels would go out through there. So, when you cut off the main trunk of that you can clean out that main canal fairly well especially with all the advances that we have in dentistry now with microscopes and things, you can clean out those main canals fairly well. What you can never clean out is all of those accessory canals, and even a root canal specialist endodontist will tell you that they know that they can’t get everything, all of the bacteria, all the little nerve endings, and everything that are in those accessory canals. The problem is that it now becomes just an area with tons of dead tissue, and what do bacteria love? They love these areas of dead tissue where there’s really not a great blood supply, the body can’t get in there and do its job, and flush out the bacteria, and keep it flushed out. There’s just enough blood supply to keep those bacteria living, and they can release their toxins, but you set up a bacteria hotel, and once more this is an anaerobic environment. So, these anaerobic bacteria tend to thrive there because they are not exposed to a lot of oxygen. There’s not a lot of blood supply there, and those tend to be the more serious types of bacteria that we see, and so that becomes the adherent problem with root canals is that nowhere else in the body do we leave anything that’s dead. Anywhere else in the body when something dies from an injury where the blood supply was compromised, and then the tissue dies, we know we have to cut that tissue out. We know that’s not compatible with health to have dead tissue in your system, and so in the mouth, it’s really the same thing. When you have a root canal treated tooth, you have dead tissue, and you have bacteria in that.

We did a study here in the office, and Dr. Nunley actually has a paper that was published based on this study, and that was we took all these root canal treated teeth that had no pain, looked perfect on the x-ray, and the reason that they were being extracted was because either the patient, or their physician, or other medical professional was requesting that we remove these root canal treated teeth for various reasons based on the patient’s status and their health. So, but all these teeth were considered perfect in the dental community. We had other dentists look at the x rays and determined that looked like they were done perfectly, and there were no symptoms. After those teeth were extracted, they were sent for toxicity testing, which takes those teeth, and tests them against to see how toxic they are to cells. So, 100% of those teeth came back moderately to severely toxic. We now, since that time, we now have ways to do DNA analysis on root canal treated teeth, or the blood immediately surrounding those teeth, or the abscess that might be surrounding those teeth, and we can actually see what type of bacteria are contained in those root canal treated teeth, and sometimes I’ll get a report back, and there are 15 or 16 different types of bacteria that they’ve just tested just off that one sample that is there. So, that’s the problem with root canal treated teeth is that it’s just a constant irritation to your immune system.

Now, I’ll stop right there just to clarify a little bit. Not everybody who has a root canal treated tooth is going to have a health issue. I’ve got patients that have had ten root canals, and they have never taken any medication in their life, and they’ve never had a day where they’ve been sick. No health issues that are apparent. They’re healthy as can be for all intensive purposes, but then we’ve also had patients here that we’re doing great health wise, and one day had to have a root canal, and right about the same time their health crashed. So, it’s really an individual thing. Not every single patient that comes in do we say, “Hey, you need your root canal treated teeth out” but it is something we want to look at as a possible contributor to what’s going on in someone’s health, and it is definitely something that more and more people in the medical community are starting to look at because the research is becoming so strong with how much bacteria is present in those root canal treated teeth. So, it’s an interesting problem that we have in dentistry. We want to keep teeth, but sometimes you have to ask the question at what cost are we keeping this tooth. So.

Yeah, and it was one thing that when I met with you, and you were telling me, “Krisstina you have dead teeth. You have these dead particles, or whatever you want to call them in your body, in your mouth.” It’s exactly like you said, there’s nothing else we keep dead in the body, and that was such an awakening. Oh my gosh, who would know that. I would never put together I have these dead things in my mouth, in my body.

Right, right.

So, it sounds like I think we’ve hit on two really important areas here. Number one is the mercury, and a lot of people like myself, but I got really sick, but many people are sick these days, and they can’t quite locate the source of the illness. Even they may be looking at other places, more integrative medicine, functional medicine, and because functional medicine is all about finding the source versus treating the symptoms, but in one place it may be still missing the equation is the mouth, and I got lucky that I had a doctor that asked about have you done anything in your mouth lately. We were able to source it there. So, mercury poisoning has very serious effects from feeling crazy like mad hatter’s disease, and can be diagnosed different ways, but then also what you’re saying too even on the root canal side that there’s a lot of autoimmune disorders these days, and it’s just the immune system being on overdrive until it turns into disease, and again some of it could locate back to the immune system constantly fighting the bacteria in the dead teeth, correct?

Absolutely, I always tell patients is that we never want to it to sound like we’re saying, “Okay, if you have this mercury filling removed, this root canal tooth removed, it’s going to fix everything because that was the cause of everything” and that really isn’t the case. I think what we really find in our conversations with a lot of functional medicine doctors is that there are so many components these days. So many layers to our health, and there’s so many things that compromise our health. Everything we encounter in the environment. Everything that has been thrown at our body for however many years we’ve been alive, and mercury fillings can just be one more contributor to that cup being too full, and root canal teeth can just be one more contributor. So, I’m starting to have more patients that are just wanting to be a little more proactive especially with the mercury fillings. Hey, I’m really healthy, but I think I want to just start replacing these a few at a time because we just want to eliminate some of those things. We know it’s just a good step forward to eliminate things that are a challenge either before we have a problem, or when we’re looking for why do I have these problems? This could just be one more contributing factor.

Yeah, and I’m certainly – I know that’s the way I think about it from my own health now is that there’s lots of different things that I’ve had to clean up. It’s simple as reversing my diet, and changing the environment in my house to make sure that even my house and my environment here is a healthy environment, and being very cautious of the products we use, and the food we eat. There’s all these different contributing factors that we need to maybe improve, or fix for optimal health, and like you said this might be one of them, or in my case I think I know I already had lots of issues going on. But probably that mercury having all those amalgams pulled out was the tipping point. It was enough to be too much, and then my body just couldn’t recover.

Right, absolutely.

So, what do people do if they have terrible toothaches, and they get the advice that they need a root canal? What would your advice be?

So, probably at least once a day I have to have this conversation with patients either because they come here first, or they’re looking for a second opinion on what they’ve been told, and if we determined that that is the case, the tooth is dying, or is already dead, and infected, then I always tell the patient you have two choices, most of the time you have two choices. You can have the root canal, and here’s the pros and cons of that, but normally once I’ve gone through the pros and cons of having a root canal versus just having a tooth extracted, most patients do decide that they want to go ahead and have the tooth out if – because they would rather avoid that possibility of reinfection, keeping the bacteria in there. I do have patients that still go ahead and decide to have a root canal, and that is fine because I’ve educated them on what the pros and cons are, and in their case, maybe they’ve decided that at this point a root canal is the best thing, or they don’t want to mess with anything that’s already there. The whole thing is education. Telling the patient you have to know this about a root canal. This is what goes on with that, and this is the downside to that. The upside is that yes you can probably keep the tooth for longer, but maybe not indefinitely, and then the pros and cons removing the tooth. That’s a big decision to remove a tooth, and that’s not something that we take lightly. So, there’s pros and cons to that as well, but those are usually the two options that are given, and I would say the majority of the patients choose to take the tooth out, and replace it at some point with something else.

And then what about a normal cavity?

So, a normal cavity we want to be conservative in how we treat everything. So, if someone just has a cavity we want to be able to clean that out in the smallest way possible. We use a lot of ozone once we’ve cleaned out a cavity to make sure we’re sterilizing that tooth as well, and then filing that with a biocompatible filling material, which is usually a composite type material. There are thousands of options for filling materials, and what we use in our office on a regular basis is materials that we have seen on biocompatibility tests, which I should probably touch on just a little bit. There are blood tests that are available that allows us to see what materials are specifically good for individual patients. So, if you have a biocompatibility test done you have a blood draw done, sent off to a lab, and that lab runs your blood, runs your serum against all these different dental materials. Filling materials, crown materials, cements, bonding agents, denture materials, implant materials, and we get a report back that’s 70 pages long that lists all sorts of different material that are available, and what materials are specifically suitable or not suitable. What you’re really reactive to, and what you’re not really reactive to, and so we want to choose those materials to place in the mouth that are suitable. Now, not every patient we see has a biocompatibility test, and so what we use on a regular basis is what we see all the time as being suitable on those biocompatibility tests, and so we know we’re putting a material in that’s not only strong, and it looks nice, but it’s also good for the patient that is going to be a more biocompatible restoration for them. So, really we’re able to do that in a way that’s good for the patient.

Yeah, that reminds me also again going back to my troublesome mouth, but I have had an implant from a conventional traditional oral surgeon, and come to find out later this was before I got sick, and not too long before because I got all this mouth rework done right before I collapsed. What part of that story is that I didn’t know what questions to ask of course just trusted the doctor. I didn’t even know what an implant is. Just go in, have the surgery, and come to find out when I was with you and your staff is that I have a titanium piece in my mouth, and I’m allergic to metal. So, I have another thing in my mouth that would have never known and was never discussed or anything, and it’s one more thing that my body is probably not too happy about.

Yeah, so with implants traditionally implants have been only titanium, and titanium is definitely one of the more friendly metals, but there is a subset of patients that just don’t tolerate any type of metal. Even if it’s a friendly metal they just don’t tolerate it as well as other people would. There are newer implants that are zirconia implants, that’s a nonmetal. It’s like a really hard ceramic, and it looks the same. The technique is basically the same, but it’s just a nonmetal alternative for an implant. Now, I always tell patients implants no matter what material they are aren’t a great choice for everyone because once you start putting something in the bone, and implanting something, and having the bone go around it that’s a little bit different than setting something on top of a tooth.

So, we’re really careful, as with everything, on looking to make sure that a patient isn’t just a good candidate for something from a bone standpoint, but that they’re also a good candidate from it from a biocompatibility standpoint because that’s just as important. I have a lot of patients just like you, Krisstina, who have titanium implants, and have had them for a long time, and don’t appear to have any issues, but that being said we’ve also taken out quite a few titanium implants on some people that appear to be having some type of reaction to them. So, it can go both ways.

So, some of the things when I visited your practice that I noticed is that I just want to compliment you here publicly that your practice is amazing. Again, I’ve been into hundreds of dental facilities in my life, unfortunately, but yours is totally different. Your staff, they are the friendliest staff of any medical practice I’ve ever been inside of and your office, the entire thing is run like a well-oiled machine. Everybody has ear pieces, they’re talking to each other, you have beautiful artwork, you walk in. If you ever have any nerves about being at a dentist they’re automatically taken away just by the environment, and it’s on time, and your hygienist are incredibly. It’s just so that everybody there is all about healthy, happy people. It’s not a normal dentistry that’s about fixing teeth. This is about no, this is a place to be healthy, and happy, and we’re here to help be a part of that. So, I just wanted to say –

Oh, well thank you. I love my staff.

What an incredible job.

They all, I think the difference is they all really have a passion for what we’re doing. It’s not just about teeth. They genuinely just really enjoy what they do. They’re all very engaged, and involved in what we do, and why we do it, and I think that gives everybody such a purpose, and such a passion for that, and I think it comes across like that. I really appreciate you saying that. That’s our goal for it to not feel like a dental office. Just dentistry, in general, tends to bring about a lot of anxiety for people, and so we want to do everything we can to alleviate that and let you know that we’re going to take care of everything and that you don’t have to worry about anything. So, I appreciate you sharing that. Thank you.

Yeah, well incredible staff, and so some of the therapies too is that I’ve never experienced before is one to look at my own bacteria under the microscope like we discussed, but I had ozone therapy, and my tooth polish was all organic materials that was had essential oils in it. Like peppermint organic essential oils, and everything is organic and bio-friendly. So, it really was remarkable. The entire experience. It was like anything I had ever known.

Yes, anywhere where we can take away additives, and encourage the use of natural things that don’t cost a lot is the best thing. Ozone is an exciting part of our practice that we’ve been able to incorporate over the last several years because it doesn’t have any side effects, and it wipes out those bad bacteria, and we can use it in a lot of different ways specifically with your hygiene visit flushing out under the gum line. Flushing out those bacteria, getting to those areas that normally would be a lot harder to treat, or maybe conventional office they would use antibiotics, and other chemicals, and things, and then incorporating the essential oils have just been really exciting. Patients really like that. You’re not adding things that can disrupt the gum tissue, or cause irritation, and so there’s a lot of great things that they’re able to use. You mentioned the peppermint oil, clove oil, eucalyptus. Those kind of things along with hummus. It doesn’t have any additional additives in it. So, it’s a lot of fun when they experiment with different things that they’re finding with their essential oils, and that patients really appreciate.

Well, it’s a remarkable place. So, well done. All right, just a couple more questions. I know we’re running out of time here, but a big part of WealthyWellthy and what I do here is it’s really about a good life by design, and learning new information that maybe we weren’t aware of before that enables us to make change in our lives. So, that we can feel better. We can make more impact. So, transformation is always a part of the equation, and personal growth, professional growth, that sort of thing. So, many of us. I know I’ve had my own turning point or turning points in life that were big transformation. What about you? Is there any turning point in your life that really has brought you to where you are today that’s been a big lesson learned or just something that was almost an awakening that brought you to – you’re exceptional. You’re not your status quo normal dentist for example. So, I’m curious. What’s behind that?

Well, to begin with, I have just – the Lord has just blessed me in so many ways in allowing me to be able to do this, and so that first and foremost absolutely I would want to give credit there. I think also just the fact that being able to follow along, and beside Dr. Nunley, as we’ve transformed this office, and I think for the first few years with him I was really just learning from him. I was just out of dental school, and so I already had to correct some misconceptions I had from there. Fortunately, I didn’t practice for a long time before having to relearn things, but I think really over the years it’s probably been a gradual turning point in really becoming just so much more aware of the connections that are there.

For a while, you can – when we were first learning to turn this big boat, and go in a different direction where we really connected the body and the mouth, but stories from patients as you just take away some of those burdens, and they make some other changes in their lives, then you hear back the changes that they had. Those little turning points along the way have really allowed us to be where we are today, and you just have a bigger picture of what’s going on instead of just focusing in just on the mouth. So, it’s exciting to get to visit with people like you who are doing this from a whole different perspective of life, and trying to bring that all together for people. So, that’s really –

Yeah, and probably what a gift to that Nunley is a pioneer in this field of bio dentistry, isn’t he?

Absolutely.

Really a leader here, and people I know dentists, and health practitioners all over the world have come and had studied under him, and you, and now you, and you’re carrying on some of his legacy, and continued to evolved it. So –

Absolutely, I am just so blessed to have him as my full-time mentor, and getting to work alongside him has just been a tremendous, tremendous blessing. We really enjoy it. So, it’s a lot of fun.

Well, with that said I’m guessing that maybe your mythologies aren’t necessarily accepted by the traditional dentistry world. So, how do you feel about that, or how do you react to it?

Well, I think because now we have so – even just in the last five to ten years there’s so much more research that is out there, and publicly available, and it’s been done peer reviewed studies or studies that are being done in major universities. Not in dental schools, but medical schools, and other universities that are looking at so many of these aspects of dentistry, root canals, and toxicity issues, and materials like mercury, and those kind of things, and so I really feel very comfortable with defending our position, and defending our philosophy. I don’t expect everyone to completely agree with us, but I’m willing to have that discussion with anyone who would like to line up our research alongside whatever they’re looking at, and I think that’s what made such a difference is we’re very willing to have those conversations, which I think surprises some of those dentists that maybe are like they’re not quite sure, and they think that we might really be trying to take advantage, or that it’s just quack science. Once you start pulling out that research, and once you’re very willing to have that conversation with your fellow colleagues. That makes a big difference. It’s not threatening anymore for either side. Dr. Nunley, and I never want any other dentist to think that we think they’re doing something wrong. We just want us to all get on the same page information wise so that we can take care of patients ultimately in the best way possible.

Right, well that’s great. So, one final question that I ask all my guests, and I love doing a little myth-busting. So, we’ve, I think, busted a lot of myths during our conversation today when it comes to dentistry, but anything else that you come across on a regular basis that in your professional life, or even your personal life for that matter, where it’s just things are spoken as gospel, and you’re like I just know from – that’s absolutely not true.

Well, I think yeah. We’ve talked about so many of those specific ones. I think it’s just more so just – I think it’s something that people realize once they sit and think about it, but it’s just that thing of connecting the health of the body with the health of the mouth. There isn’t just this line that can be drawn here that separates us from the rest of the body, and from the brain. All of those things are connected, and I think just for so long it just hasn’t been mainstream thinking, but it’s getting to be more so, and the more patients go, “Oh, yeah.” Like you said, we have some of those epiphanies when you would do your research, and we would talk. When people think about it, it makes sense. So, you just have to think about it. Those connections being made. So, I think that would be the biggest thing. We talked about those real specific ones, but that would be the biggest thing.

Well, I think that’s great. Well, thank you so much for your time. You’ve been very generous, and you’re remarkable. Thank you for the work that you do, and keep doing it, and I think I’ll be out to see you in a few weeks.

Oh, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

I hope you gained some insights about oral health from my conversation with Lane. If you’d like to learn more about Lane, her philosophy, or her practice. All of those links are available for you at WealthyWellthy.life/podcast. As always, here’s to a WealthyWellthy life. I’ll see you next time.