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Did you know that the health of your mouth is closely tied to the health of your body? It’s true.
My guest today, health-based dentist Dr. Michelle Jorgensen explains how many of today’s chronic diseases are associated with what’s going on in your mouth and teeth. Michelle’s story is a familiar one. After practicing conventional dentistry for 10 years, she began to develop symptoms that couldn’t be explained or treated. She discovered her condition was caused by mercury poisoning from performing standard dentistry procedures. Not only did her research into her own health resolve her issues, it completely changed the way she practiced.
For the last 10 years, she has been paving the way in Functional Integrative dentistry and created the Total Care Dental and Wellness Way, a health-focused method for treating dental and overall health. Patients from around the world seek out her care and come to Total Care Dental and Wellness to have their health restored.
One thing Michelle makes clear is how critical nutrition is to a healthy mouth. If you are concerned with good oral care, this episode is a must-listen. In this episode, we’ll cover:
- Michelle’s story of mercury poisoning
- The history of mercury fillings
- What to do if you have a mercury filling
- The importance of nutrition when it comes to oral health and the connection to fat-soluble vitamins
- What are root canals, and how do they affect your health
- Why have our mouths gotten smaller over generations
Resources:
Healthy Mouth, Healthy You by Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Find a health-based dentist near you:
International Academy of Oral Medicine & Toxicology (IAOMT)
International Academy of Biological Dentistry & Medicine (IABDM)
Connect with Michelle:
Websites: Total Care Dental | Living Well with Dr. Michelle
Instagram: @totalcaredentalutah | @livingwellwithdrmichelle
Facebook: Total Care Dental | Living Well with Dr. Michelle
Episode Credits:
Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connelly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And, of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Patreon supporters, and listeners.
If you’re ready to take your support for a nutritious, sustainable, and equitable food system to the next level, join my Global Food Justice Alliance community on Patreon. You will have access to ad-free podcasts, exclusive videos, a discussion community, and much more. Go to sustainabledish.com/join to support my work.
A big thanks to the sponsor of today’s show, LMNT. Do you often suffer from headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue, or sleeplessness? It could be from an electrolyte deficiency, and drinking plain water may not be enough to replenish lost electrolytes. LMNT is a drink mix that has everything you need and nothing you don’t – no artificial ingredients, food coloring, gluten, fillers, or sugar!
LMNT comes in lots of great flavors, and when you go to sustainabledish.com/LMNT, you’ll get a free sample pack with your purchase. Plus, they have a convenient subscription program that makes it easy for you to keep your favorite flavors fully supplied. Head over to sustainabledish.com/LMNT to give it a try.
Transcript:
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connelly, who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance, an initiative advocating for the inclusion of animal-source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at global food justice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now, on to our show.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. I have never done a show on this topic. And I’m super excited to do it. So I’ve got Michelle Jorgensen with me today. And she is a natural dentist. Or how would you describe what you do, Michelle?
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Well, there’s a little bit of a longer story, but you know, I call it health based dentistry. But I’ll get into a little bit more of the different versions that people may have heard of.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Sounds good. Yeah. So um, so you were recommended, because one of the folks that works for me is your son, who I adore. He is fantastic. And told me a little bit about, you know, some of the work that he had done for you, which he used as his like resume to work for me, and I was super impressed. And so I’m so curious to learn more. Let’s get into first, how did you even come to do what you do today?
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Yeah, great. You know, my story is always an interesting point to start with. So just like my son, Josh is now in medical school and going to be a naturopath. I have also followed along in the footsteps of my father, my grandfather, and my father is a dentist. And I actually have three younger brothers that are dentists as well. So this is definitely in our family. But it was all traditional dentistry, traditional medicine, my father or my grandfather was an internist. So traditional doctor. And that’s how I started practicing. And that’s just how I thought I would continue practicing for years. But about eight years into practice, I started actually getting really sick. And I didn’t know what it was. I started having a lot of gut problems, which I know you talk a lot about gut health and all of those kinds of things. And so nothing was on my radar, other than just oh, lots of people have gut issues. And this is just how you deal with it. So of course, I started changing my diet. We started, you know, removing packaged foods, and processed foods and eating a lot more plants. And you know, all the things everyone does. And it made some difference, but not a lot of difference. So I knew there was still something there. The big pieces, though, that were really alarming is my memory just started slipping. And I’ve always had a really good memory. I’ve always could remember patients, you know their entire stories. And I would see a patient in the office and I couldn’t even remember their name. And it was so startling the difference from what I used to do that I knew something was really wrong. But the big one was my hands. I started having such numbness in my hands that I literally couldn’t even hold the instruments I was supposed to be using anymore. I couldn’t change out the burrs. I couldn’t… I couldn’t do what I needed to do. I would be awake all night long with my hands completely asleep. I couldn’t blow dry my hair, brush my teeth, anything that would raise my arm up. So of course everyone thought, Oh, this is carpal tunnel. This is… it’s called Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, you know? And so I went for all of those things, all the testing, all the X rays, all the everything. And everybody said no, we haven’t… it’s kind of a problem. But it’s not really, doesn’t really explain what’s going on, you know, chiropractor visits, massage therapists, and on and on and on and on. So finally, with no answers, I had my practice for sale. And you know, I was in my mid 30s. At this point, Josh, actually my son was you know, he was probably in his maybe junior high if that. So we had a young family, my husband worked for the practice as well. And this was just really concerning because we thought what in the world are we going to do for the rest of our lives? Now, you know, this is where our income and our livelihood is coming from. So in speaking with another practitioner, he said, you know, have you looked into mercury poisoning at all? You sound so much like me. And I hadn’t even thought about it. Then I said, Well, I don’t I don’t have any mercury fillings. I’ve never had a feeling either you shared with me you don’t have it. You’ve never had a filling. Neither have I. And so I didn’t have any mercury fillings. And he said, No, it’s not the fillings you have. It’s the ones you’ve been drilling out for the last 10 years with no protection. And no one had ever said a word about this and all of my dental training and all of my you know, decade or so, in dentistry. My father in dentistry – no one had ever said that the mercury in those fillings being drilled out could be a problem. I was a cosmetic dentist. This was a thing I love to do. So I was taking out all those fillings because they were ugly, and inhaling the handling of mercury vapors the entire time. No idea. So dentistry doesn’t talk about this. The dental profession tells you the old – this is basically the talk I learned in middle school is yes, those fillings have mercury in them. It’s completely stable, not a problem at all. And if you tell anybody that it could affect their health, you will lose your license. So, you’ve now received the dental school talk about mercury fillings. And it really hasn’t changed today. So I didn’t know that this could be a problem get tested. And sure enough mercury toxicity off the charts. So all of a sudden, all my symptoms made sense because mercury is a neurotoxin. So the numbness, the memory issues, all of these things, even the gut problems are 100%, tied to Mercury. So when I finally figured it out, I said, get it out. You get it out, do I know what do we need to do? And the doctor said, Well, you can’t get it out while continuing to put it in. It won’t, you won’t get any better. So you’ve got to figure out can you change the way you’re removing these things, if you’re actually going to get better? So I had to go in research and say, Well, is there is there a way to do this. And I found that there are organizations that have been based largely around this mercury issue. I didn’t even know they existed. They already have protocols in place. And so I started following other protocols, got the equipment necessary to be able to do this safely. And I just started doing it for myself, you know, this was for my own health. And then I started thinking, Well, gosh, this is good for the patient right now, too, you know, they’re not breathing at all in or swallowing at all. And, wow, this is probably good for my dental assistant that sitting right here next to me, and oh, the hygenist sits in the room over, the receptionist at the front, you know, this is probably good for all of us. And so started thinking, wow, okay, I’m glad I found this. And then patients started saying, My doctor’s actually been looking for somebody that does this, can we tell them about you? So you know, of course, that’d be great. And so doctors started reaching out. And before long, they started asking me about other things I had also never heard of. Have you heard of ozone? Have you done this? Do you do this? I hadn’t heard of any of these things. So to be able to work with them, I would say, Well, I let me go learn. Let me go find what it is you’re talking about. Because you obviously know about my profession more than I do. So let me go learn what it is. I’d have to go to all these obscure classes in different places. I mean, I learned ozone from a veterinary conference. You know, I just had to go different places to try to learn these things, and eventually started thinking, wow, what else inside of my profession affects health that I didn’t have a clue about. This is a little terrifying. So in the process, I wrote a book about this. And I’ve completely converted my practice to now. I employ five other doctors and we provide basically health-based dentistry under one roof, where the focus is root cause. What is the cause for your illness? What is the cause for your chronic disease that you’ve not received answers to could actually lie in the mouth. And I’ve been shocked. Research shows that 60 to 80% of chronic disease is either related… either caused by or related to something in your mouth. So this has sent me on an entirely new quest to figure out answers for people who have not been able to find answers, because that was me.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Are people still using mercury to make fillings? I don’t know.
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Oh, yeah. Yep.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Why?
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
A good question. So yeah, it’s called. So anytime you hear silver fillings or amalgam fillings, those are 50% mercury. They have been 50% mercury since they were instituted and they still are today. The reason is, well, it’s a little bit honestly, it’s political and legal. So there are other countries, multiple European nations who completely banned it. They’ve outlawed it completely. Just in, I think it was 2019 the FDA did say that they should not be placed in pregnant women or children under the age of six. So in the US, that is the, and it’s only a… it’s not even a requirement. It’s just a recommendation. However, a lot of times this is used in children because people think, well, this is an inexpensive filling material. It’s easy to use in a kid because you can do it even when the mouth was wet. Like if there’s saliva everywhere. You know, sometimes the white fillings actually, they’re hard to do because they can’t get wet. Well, it’s hard on a moving target. So these are easy, you plug them in the hole, they work. But here’s the other issue. If they were ever to American Dental Association, FDA were to come out and say these mercury fillings are dangerous, every dentist who’s ever placed one would be under a class action lawsuit. Because
Diana Rodgers, RD
Oh my gosh!
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
of the country we live in. That’s the way our country works. So our country cannot do it. Those organizations cannot and will not ever be able to say that other countries have. Like I said, many European nations have totally banned it. But the US can’t just because of the legal implications. So what that means is we have to be educated as consumers to say, Okay, this isn’t okay. These regulatory agencies can’t say it, but we know it. So now what are we doing? So there’s a lot that I’ve learned.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Wow, so yeah, as entering this podcast, I told you I’ve never had a cavity. My knowledge of dentistry is just consumer level, pretty much. So but I’m imagining most people who are listening to this probably have had a cavity, maybe likely do have mercury fillings. So what do they do about it now?
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Yeah. So, I will often tell people it… so there’s research. There’s scores of research that shows actually that these fillings do release mercury day and night. They are nonstop releasing mercury. It’s a low level, but a low level of you know, just because it’s a low level doesn’t mean it’s not toxic. And unfortunately, mercury loves to lodge in the brain. It’s one of his favorite places and the nerves, it also interferes with gut function. So you talk a lot about gut function. Mercury interferes with the binding of zinc and zinc is necessary to create stomach acid. So if there’s mercury that’s free-floating in the body will actually lead to low stomach acid, which leads to low absorption, which leads to probably a lot of the things that you already talked about. So one of the most important things is, it is good to get it out. But it’s actually more dangerous to get it out unsafely than to leave it be. So I will tell people that if you don’t have a dentist that can remove them safely leave it be for now because it’s actually worse to release all of that and let it loose in the body. You’re gonna have a lot of effects from that. So what do you do? There’s an organization and I can have you add this to show notes, if you’d like at the end, called the IAOMT. They’ve researched this heavily. And they’ve created a series of protocols, things that you need to do when removing it. So it includes everything from getting your body ready to detox the mercury, all the way through the things that we use during the procedure. We have drapes that we put over your body, over your face. We put oxygen, you know, on your nose, you’re not breathing it in. We have special dams that catch the mercury and big old vacuums by the chin to catch it as it comes out. And anyway, a lot of different protocols. So there are dentists who have been trained in these methods, and there’s a dentist finder on their website. So you can go on there and type in you know, where you live, and find someone who’s actually been certified through this organization. And that’s what I would recommend. Otherwise, leave them and until you can find one because there’s more risk of removing them unsafely than just getting the low level of constant mercury that you have right now. You need to wait till you can get it out safely.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And I’ve also heard that for people with heavy metal poisoning, same thing, that messing with it and trying to detox with a practitioner that is unfamiliar with it is is can be quite dangerous. So I’m curious what you did. Did you do any kind of? Is it chelation therapy? Or, you know, how did you recover from the mercury yourself?
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Yeah, I did real kind of light sort of treatments at the beginning with chlorella and some of this, you know, some of the easier chelators. They told me that I would need IV, IV chelation, which I’ve since learned, it’s actually not the way to go about doing it with mercury. And so I’m glad I didn’t do it at that time. But I just didn’t, I didn’t have time to do it at the time, either. They told me I would need 97 treatments of IVs. And I said, Well, in what lifetime am I going to find 97 plus hours to sit here in your office and do this. So I worked on a lot of other natural things, opening up my detox pathways, liver, kidney, getting everything really detoxing nicely. But it’s been a slow process. And I’m actually currently just in a massive brain detox program right now. Because I think I’ve detoxed my body pretty well. Mercury is interesting, it will move from high concentration to low concentration. So wherever it’s highest in your body will stay there. So I got my body all cleared now really nicely. And so now I’m hoping I’m helping it move from my brain to the body. So then I could detox it there as well. So I am using some chelators right now to be able to dump whatever is left.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Wow, wow, that’s an amazing story. What’s the name of your book?
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Healthy Mouth, Healthy You. And it really has some really good information, everything from it, you know, I talk about so you asked, okay, what is the kind of dentistry that I do? What is this even called? When I first started getting into this, the only term that I could figure out and this was almost a decade ago now, the only term that really seemed to fit it all was holistic dentist. But what I found is that that brought so much misnomer with it. You know, when you use the term holistic, they think I’m going to be wearing tie dye and I’m going to have incense burners and we’re going to be saying peace and you know, that’s what we’re going to be doing the whole time and that we’re not going to be based in science. That’s usually what people assume when you say that. Well, that’s completely, completely 180 different from what my practice is. If you walk into my practice, you’ll think whoa, we just like got you know, this is like space age technology. We are on the cutting edge of everything when it comes to treatment. Because we have to be because we have to defend what we do. Because we are not necessarily mainstream. So if we’re not mainstream, we have to say no, no, this is why we do it. And here’s the 10 research articles that support what we do. So we are incredibly scientifically based. So holistic, kind of fits because holistic also means we’re looking at the whole body but it just brings this like hippie vibe that we are so not and so I like I started using the term biologic. That’s what a lot of dentists that are like me to use, but nobody knows what that means. That’s like Yeah, I mean, do you know what that means? You know, biologic dentists. It’s like no, no, no sounds okay. So you know, we started using that. Health-based makes a lot more sense. Now we’re calling ourselves functional dentists because people know about functional medicine that it’s all root cause based. And so we’re trending towards that, that were functional and integrative dentists, you know, we’re bringing all the things that really helped… to help the body, be healthy all under one roof. We talked a ton about the things you talk about with nutrition. That’s huge in our world, because that honestly, is one of the very baselines for tooth decay is nutrition.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, you know, I, um, I have a new dentist. His name is actually Steve Martin, which is kind of funny. And he was asking me what I do for work. And when I told him that I do nutrition, and then I focused on the importance of animal-source foods. He was like jumping up and down. So excited, more than any other medical professional I’ve met because he’s seen the damages that, you know, a vegan diet does to the mouth. And I know for those listeners of mine, that are familiar with Chris Masterjohn, he is a nutrition PhD that does a lot of research. And when he was vegan, he developed like, just gaping holes in his teeth. So can you talk a little bit about the importance of nutrition and specifically about animal-sourced foods when it comes to cavities and oral health?
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Yeah, you know, and the starting point of this is Dr. Weston Price, which is interesting, because so many people in the nutrition world know Dr. Price, but they may not always know that he was a dentist.
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Yeah, yeah. Please talk a little bit more because I actually haven’t done a podcast talking about his work in a long time.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, it’s fabulous. So he was a dentist in the 1930s. And he was actually head of the American Dental Association research department.
Diana Rodgers, RD
No, I did not know that.
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Yeah, he was. He was huge in research in the American Dental Association. So at that time, this was very mainstream. Now, you are lucky to have found a dentist who knew anything about fat-soluble vitamins, who knew anything about plant and, you know, animal source nutrients because very few dentists actually even know anything about this. But he was a dentist. And, you know, it’s interesting. He was dismayed at the amount of tooth decay he was seeing, particularly in children. And I always kind of chuckle and think, well, what would he think today because actually, tooth decay is increased since the 1930s. So it’s even worse today. But he decided he and his wife went on a world tour to find indigenous societies that had not been touched by the modern diet. And so they were eating the things that they have been eating for centuries. And I like to say that he was at the perfect time for two reasons. Number one, there still were indigenous societies that had not been touched by the modern diet because we couldn’t find them today. If we were to go and investigate and research we couldn’t actually find these little pockets of people today. But the second thing that was beautiful is that he had a camera. And he was able to photograph his findings, which makes them so much more profound to look at what he found. So as he went through all these different societies, and he was going to aborigines and in new Inuits in Alaska, and people in Switzerland, and all these different pockets of places, they were eating different foods. What he wanted to see is, how did diet equates to health and he looked particularly at tooth health, face development, so growth and development in the face, but also he was looking at overall health. And that the little pockets of societies that he found that had the best overall health had commonalities. They weren’t eating the same things, because obviously, you have people eating whale blubber in Alaska, and people in Switzerland eating, you know, cream from grass-fed cows, but what he found is that there were commonalities of nutrients in the foods that they were eating. And the commonality was, they had four times the amount of water-soluble vitamins, which the primary one of that is vitamin C, but 10 times the amount of fat-soluble vitamins. So those are the vitamins A, D, E, and K. And those vitamins can largely only be found in animal sources. So he was finding them in the blubber, or in the cream, or in, you know, in the meat itself. That’s where he was finding these vitamins. And the people that were most healthy had 10 times the levels of people in the US at the time of those vitamins. Now, again, I often will say, What do you think it would be today? I would think it would be probably multiplied by that not just 10 times more, but probably significantly more than that even than what we’re eating today. And in those societies, he found health, dental health, growth and development, health and overall health.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and I should add that his hypothesis, when he set out on this world tour was actually that it was the meat that was the problem, like his initial idea was that a vegetarian diet was the healthiest. And he was pretty shocked at what he found. And so anyone who’s listening that wants to see these photos, the book is called, I believe it’s called Nutrition and Physical degeneration. Yep.
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Yep. And there’s a Weston Price, Weston Price Foundation online, you can look, and they have all of these. If you just Google Weston Price, you’re gonna see a whole bunch of photos that he said the photos are really, really priceless in this in this research that he did.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, so I’m so glad you brought him up. I do think sometimes this idea of well, you know, raw milk is the panacea is not necessary, that gets a little too heavy sometimes from, you know, just as somebody who doesn’t necessarily think you have to drink milk to be healthy. But this idea that it’s animal source foods as the most nutrient-dense foods is definitely in line with my philosophy for sure.
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
And a lot of the people weren’t drinking milk. And so it wasn’t the milk. That was the answer. It was the fat-soluble vitamin that was the answer. And I talked about this with people all the time, what he found, in fact, there was one, there was one family that was particularly interesting. There were two brothers. And one of the brothers had maintained the his natural, the indigenous eating the cultural eating of his ancestors. He was eating the way that his parents had, grandparents were eating. The younger brother actually started eating processed foods. And they said it was things like jams, and candies, and sugary drinks. He had started adding those things in his diet. And the difference in those two boys was startling because they had the same genetics, you know, they had the same family, same environment they were living in, but the food was the only difference. And the younger, the younger brother had already lost multiple teeth, his face, even the growth and development of his face was much longer and more narrow, which I can talk about that there’s a huge component actually, that goes into this growth and development. In fact, that probably would be good to talk about but I do want to finish up why is it important to have these nutrients? What Weston Price found is that these nutrients lead to cavity-resistant teeth. So he noticed two primary things that really showed up with these people who were eating these diets. Number one, they did not they did not have tooth decay. They just didn’t. And it wasn’t because they had fluoride, that’s a whole nother talk I can give about do we need to do fluoride? No, they don’t have fluoride. And these people did not have fluoride. That’s not the reason. It’s because they were building cavity resistant teeth. And the reason that works is kind of like the idea of an umbrella. So an umbrella has tightly woven fabric that makes it water resistant. Well in the tooth itself, the outside layer of the tooth is called enamel. And there are minerals in that layer, it’s called Hydroxyapatite. It’s the crystal structure that those minerals are in inside that inside that enamel. Well, if that enamel is full of minerals, it’s like that tightly woven fabric on an umbrella. And it will literally repel things from the tooth. So if there’s enough minerals there, then there will you cannot get a cavity, almost regardless of what you eat. If you eat enough sugar, it’s going to change your body. It’s going to change actually the blood sugar balance of calcium, phosphorus, it’ll pull minerals from your bones like it’ll cause all sorts of issues. So it’s not just the fact that it’s sugar, but it’s just that the tooth itself is cavity resistant. So why do the fat soluble vitamins matter? Well, fat soluble vitamins are the things that grab the minerals and enable them to get into the self. So the way I have way I discussed that is that vitamin D grabs the calcium out of the blood and Vitamin K2 puts it into the cell. And interesting enough, they did not have vitamin K2 it had not been identified when Dr. Price wrote this book. So he called an activator X. He didn’t know what it was, but he just call it an activator x. Well, they’ve since named it vitamin K2, which I wouldn’t because it’s confusing with vitamin K1, which is a very different vitamin. But vitamin K2 is the one that actually puts it in the cell. So you have to have minerals available, but you must have the fat-soluble vitamins in order to actually incorporate the minerals where they belong. So that’s the connection between Dr. Weston Price and cavity-resistant teeth. And it’s actually pretty huge.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and the reason why you need to eat whole food in its whole form and not just take a bunch of supplements and hope for the best.
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Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
And you know, it’s difficult because you often can’t get some of these things from whole foods anymore. They’re just so vitamin deficient. And so often, I’ll recommend a little bit of both, you know, you should take vitamin D and Vitamin K supplement along with all of the food types that you recommend that are full of those vitamins as well, just to make sure you’re getting enough because in our factory farmed world, it’s often difficult. The vitamin K2 comes through grass. So if you have an animal that’s only been fed grain, they actually won’t have vitamin K2 in their tissues either. So they have to have been fed green growing something in order to have the K2 in their tissue for you to be able to get the K2 from them. So these are some tricky things in our food sources today.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Interesting, interesting. And so that would be mostly from dairy products,
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Dairy or meat or any of those things that come from any animal. More so an animal that has to have eaten something that contains vitamin K2 be able to have K2 available for you.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Interesting. I have some friends that are doing some research right now into… well, in the case of beef cattle, they are getting grass in the beginning, they’re just finished on a feedlot, but dairy cattle, it’s a little bit different. So I’d be curious, with, you know, looking at feedlot cattle versus dairy, you know, conventional dairy cattle and seeing the K2 difference there.
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Yeah, it will be different. That’s why I recommend the Kerrygold butter because that is from grass-fed cows.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Can you talk a little bit about what is a cavity? You know, you talked a little bit about how to prevent them. But what causes a cavity to begin with?
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Yep, so the tooth itself, like I said, the outside layer is called enamel, and it’s full of minerals. And there’s different things in the body that can change the minerals that can actually leach or pull the minerals from the tooth. So number one, it could be acid on the tooth itself. So if you’re just swigging Diet Coke all day long, and you can say, oh, there’s no sugar in it. Well, no, but guess what? It’s full of acid, it’s carbonic acid. So any acid will actually dissolve minerals. You’ve seen these experiments with a… pour Coke on the top of like, terminals on a car battery, and it just literally dissolves all the mineral buildup, and crud. It does the same with your tooth; it will dissolve minerals. So does other acid like lemon juice, some people think, oh gosh, I was taught I should be drinking lemon juice at the beginning of every day. You know, that’s not a bad thing to alkalize your own system. But if you continually bathe your teeth and lemon juice, it’s the same as if you’re bathing your teeth in Diet Coke, it’s acid. So it will pull the minerals out of the tooth. So will acidic foods, but the main cause of acid is actually bacteria on the teeth when they eat sugar. So this is the reason they say sugar equals cavities. It’s not sugar that causes the problem with the bacteria on the teeth. So that’s why we tell you brush your teeth because then that gets the bacteria off. If the bacteria stay there and they consume sugar, you fed them sugar, they eat it. Their byproduct is acid. So if the bacteria eats, poops basically on your tooth, it’s going to poop acid, and it’s going to dissolve the minerals on the tooth. So there’s a lot of other bodily functions as well if your body is deficient in minerals. So we see this in pregnant women. We see this in people who are nursing or breastfeeding their babies or growing teenagers, the demand for minerals is high, like you got a growing person inside of you right now or you are a growing person and you’re growing tall. And you know, you need all these minerals. If you don’t have enough because you’re not eating properly – all the things you teach them to do, then your body will actually find minerals somewhere to be able to use for its processes, and the teeth are already made of minerals. So your body will also change the balance of things in your own system and will leach minerals from your teeth to feed your bones or your baby’s bones or whatever it might be as well. So any of these processes can pull minerals out of the tooth. When the minerals are pulled out, it leaves a hole inside of them -inside of that mineral matrix and bacteria crawl it, then it’s harder to get them cleaned out because they’re inside of that hole now, so they sit in there, they eat the sugar again, they poop out the acid they make it makes a bigger hole, they crawl in deeper and so really all a cavity is, is just bacteria that have invaded deep into the tooth. And if they go far enough, they’re gonna kill the tooth. So that’s what a cavity is, which is why we talk about adding minerals back in adding minerals through your diet, adding minerals to your teeth, and so many different ways. I have a remineralizing tooth powder that I have now that we’ll add minerals right to the outside of the tooth to make it more resistant. We have a remineralization kit which has minerals and vitamin D and K that help from the inside to add minerals back in we encourage healthy diets, all those kinds of things. Because if that bacteria is just in the outside layer just in that enamel inside the crystal still if you add enough minerals in you can actually seal that tooth back off and in essence heal that cavity.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Wow, that’s amazing. And so if someone is going to a typical dentist who might be doing a mercury based fillings for cavities, can they ask for something different or do they have to switch dentists?
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Now they’re… I would say large majority of dentists now will give you an option. So the other option is something called a resin filling and it’s a glass resin mixture and the large majority will… so any filling that’s white color is going to be that material it won’t have mercury in it. But if it’s still the outside layer the tooth try to remineralize it, try to put minerals back in. Don’t even get filled. Once it’s extended into the inside layer, the tooth which is called dentin, you do need to get it filled. So that’s when you look for a dentist who will do the resin or composite. Composite is another name for it a resin or composite filling to be able to clean out that bacteria seal it all up and then you hit the minerals hard so that you don’t get another one.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And then other than, you know a typical whole foods type diet that I recommend, are there certain foods that you strongly recommend that maybe people could focus a little bit more on?
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Largely the ones you do talk about the ones that have fat soluble vitamins, you know, the fats in them. One thing I will… if people are vegetarian… vegans are challenging. I will say some of the worst teeth I’ve ever seen are those that are from vegan patients. And they’re often the ones that are most health conscious. So they’re very frustrated because they’re like, I am working so hard. I’m killing myself to eat like this. And I’m like, Well, unfortunately, it’s not doing you any favors. You feel good. Typically, people on a vegan diet feel good for three to six months or so. They feel great. Like their bodies are like dumping all sorts of stuff, they feel great. And then things started to fall apart, including the teeth, including the mouth. So if you’re starting that way, or you’ve been largely plant based things that I recommend adding that are easy, our butter, again Kerrygold butter, chock full of vitamin D, and K wonderful. Eggs, particularly the yolks have D and K as well pasture pasture raised because the others don’t have much of anything in them anymore. Again, the chicken has to have eaten something that has it in it to be able to have it for you. You know, people don’t like equate these this very often. They’re like, Oh, well, where does the chicken… where’s the egg get the nutrients from? Well, it doesn’t just appear. The chicken gets the nutrients from the food they eat. So the chicken has to be eating food that has that in it to be able to create an egg that has that in it for you. So these are the reasons that the sources for this are so important. Unless they’re eating it, they don’t have it either, so they can get to you. So egg yolks are important, cod liver oil, that’s one that people have talked a lot about. For decades, cod liver oil is a really rich source of this. Bone broth is another really great source of it. Those are all things I recommend. Fish are a fabulous source of these vitamins that you need. So I’m sure you talk about all of these things.
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Oh definitely. Yeah. And so let’s move on to root canals and hidden infections and the ramifications of that and, and how to deal with it.
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Yep, so if the cavity extends to the nerve of the tooth, the way a tooth works is it’s a closed system. So there’s a nerve and a blood vessel on the inside of the tooth, and once infected, so if the bacteria have moved all the way to that blood vessel and nerve, it will kill the nerve tissue and blood vessel tissue inside of that tooth. And that’s when you get a toothache and abscess to swelling, all those kinds of things are because the nerve on the inside of the tooth is actually dead. Because of most likely bacteria. Sometimes it’s trauma, you know, if you break your tooth off, it’ll sometimes kill the tooth too. So what’s been recommended, has been a root canal. And this came about in the late 1800s. You know, people were tired of pulling teeth, it was the only option. And honestly pulling a tooth without being able to get someone numb? I can’t even imagine. This is largely barbers doing this too. So they figured out that they could clean out the inside of the tooth and put filling material on the inside where that nerve and blood vessel tissue was, and the tooth could stay there. Well, the concept of it is fabulous. Like being able to retain the tooth in the mouth, you put a crown or something over top of it. It’s still chews, still smiles. It still functions. I mean, the idea is wonderful. The trouble is, is that on the inside of the tooth, it’s just like everywhere in the body, you know how in our body, we have big blood vessels. We have big blood vessels, then we have the teeny little capillaries. So the big ones go to the main area. And then there’s the tiny little ones that go out clear to the end of our fingertips and the end of our toes, the same thing happens in the tooth. There’s the main channel inside of the tooth. But then there’s tiny little channels that go off all the way to the outside of the tooth. That’s how the tooth gets the minerals that you’ve been feeding and it has to go along these tiny little pathways. Well what a root canals done, they can clean the inside of the tooth really well, that main big blood vessel nerve channel super well, they clean it, they disinfect it, they fill it up. But it’s impossible to clean all of those little side channels, you can ask any dentist and they will tell you this is true, it’s impossible to clean all those little side channels. So now you have dead tissue, dead nerve tissue, dead blood vessel tissue. Well, bacteria love dead stuff. I tell people all the time – if you have a pile of garbage on the ground, how long before there’s bugs in it? Days? I mean mere days and that’s full of bugs. So bacteria love dead stuff. So they will find that dead tissue inside of that tooth and they will reinfect it. Now what it’s doing is it’s asking your immune system to keep it healthy to keep that infection at bay. So what we see is a huge correlation between chronic disease and root canal teeth. And this is the why because it taxes your immune system to keep that tooth healthy. It taxes your immune system and those bacteria even though they haven’t perhaps haven’t gotten huge yet they are spreading every time you chew on that tooth, you’re in essence sending those bacteria through the bloodstream to the rest of the body as well. So everything is connected top to bottom. And there’s an enormous connection between root canals and cancer, particularly breast cancer. Interestingly enough, between heart disease, there was a crazy study that showed that over 70% of the clots that actually killed someone in a heart attack had mouth-only bugs in them. Like it’s a huge connection. It’s not just little, it’s huge. So what do you do? So, what do you do, because these are often silent infections, the nerve’s gone, it doesn’t hurt anymore. And I will find someone who has a failed root canal, they have no idea it’s there. It doesn’t hurt at all. And there’s a cyst the size of a ping pong ball in their sinus from this failed root canal. All they know is they’ve got a sinus issue. They don’t have a clue that it’s actually the tooth that’s causing it. So when we show it to them, or a hole in their head, like somebody shot a bullet through the face, because it’s eaten all of the bone away around the end of the root. I mean, crazy stuff I see every single day, and they’re sick. They’re sick, and they can’t find answers. And they don’t know why. And I take their CT scan, and I go, Whoa, this might be why. So that’s the big one is how do you find these things? So we use a dental specific CT scan called a cone beam CT scan. Oral surgeons often have them more and more dentists are getting them. We can identify these infections on those scans. And it’s crucial. We do this for every new patient because we are shocked at how many of these infections we find that are affecting them and making them sick. And they don’t even know they’re there.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So what is your protocol, then once you find this?
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
So once a tooth is dead, and it’s infected, there’s only one thing we can do. You can retreat, you can redo the root canal. But I tell people, why? Because all they’re gonna do is take out the filler material and put it back in. It’s not going to get to the root cause. It’s not going to get to those little side channels that are impossible to clean. Some people do choose to have them retreated in my… by them a couple of years. But I always say what is it costing you and those couple of years of immune system, but that’s always their choice. So the option, the only option that takes care of the problem and has it gone is to remove and replace the tooth. Nobody likes to hear that. But it’s funny because anymore, my patients have heard me talk about this so much on social media or wherever it might be that they come in telling me ahead of time. I know I know. I’m just going to have it taken out like Well, I’m glad that you gave yourself the bad news before I had to. But we can replace teeth. We can replace them with ceramic dental implants. I have a dental implant right here. It’s like it just it chews like a tooth. It smiles like a tooth. It’s like I never lost my tooth. And I don’t have to worry about it taking me out, you know taking my health away.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Anything else? Gum disease tips. Any other thoughts you could have for the novice, concerned, health conscious person who wants to know more about dental health.
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
You know, one of the things that I talk about a lot that we’ll take it back to Weston Price here a little bit. So one thing that he noticed is that faces were not growing the same when people stopped eating these fat soluble vitamins and the foods that contain to them. What he found is that people’s faces started being a lot thinner. They started having crooked and crowded teeth. Or some of these societies they no one had crooked teeth ever. Well, how many people do you know that have braces? I mean, almost everybody, right? Well, why does everybody have braces? And how many people do you know have had their wisdom teeth removed? Almost everybody, right? Why? Our mouths have gotten smaller. And because in the… it used to be we look at skulls of you know people who have died centuries ago and their mouths contain all 32 teeth, all the wisdom teeth, everything had plenty of room to fit and they were straight. So what’s happened? Well, as we’ve changed our diets, the bones have not grown as strong. And the first bone that’s affected by malnutrition is actually the upper jaw. So this is proven the maxilla is the first bone affected by nutrition. So if as an infant or even if the baby isn’t breastfed or doesn’t have good nutrition as an infant, the jaw grows too small. Everything’s changed in the growth and development. And what happens is oftentimes, the tongue and everything else that should fit in the mouth can’t and so it falls backwards into the throat. What we’ve seen is a rash of children who have ADHD, who have bed-wetting, who have focus issues, who have growth and development problems and crooked teeth. What is this? These are mouths that are not growing properly. And these… it’s leading to children not being able to breathe adequately when they’re sleeping. If your child fits any of these categories, you need to look into growth and expansion appliances. There’s things that they can do while growing to direct their growth in order to have enough room to breathe. Because if that child doesn’t get enough room to breathe, what it turns into as an adult with enormous issues with sleeping, sleep apnea, insomnia, all sorts of things. You can try every sleep hack in the book, but if you simply don’t have enough room for everything to fit in the back of the mouth, it won’t. So this is one of the things that Weston Price was finding is that as nutrition changed in today’s diets, not only the level of nutrition and the vitamins and things in the food, but also the kinds of foods. So when we feed babies soft foods, things that don’t actually require a lot of chewing, or a lot of muscle development, the face doesn’t develop. So I’m so glad to see the trends. I have a little grandbaby. And they like let her eat like steak, I watch it and I, you know, have a little panic. So I’m like the old lady who goes, we don’t feed babies that, you know, they’re feeding their baby this, and it’s getting your muscles working in our faces developing and our jaws are doing what they should do. We went entire generations of people whose faces aren’t right because we didn’t give them the right food. So we’ve got to give them the right food. We can affect the growth and development, even an adult we can fix you if you can’t breathe. I can fix you if you can’t sleep. We can make things bigger, and it gives you enough room to breathe again. But this is an enormous one that relates back to nutrition and shows up in literally every day of your life if you can’t breathe.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, wonderful. Well, thank you so much. Let people know where they can find your website, your book, learn more about the work you do. And what was the name of the website again, that you mentioned? Where they can find a local… You’re in Utah, is that correct?
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
I’m in Utah, correct. We do virtual consults for people all over the world, if you’re interested. There’s information. So my website is total care dental. So total care dental, and on Instagram, social media, anywhere you want to look for us. We’re total care dental, Utah, so you can look that up. But I also have another outreach is I really started to teach people about these nutrition aspects. I wanted to do it in a way that I live at home. So I have a homestead. We grow our own… we raise our own food, all of these things here and make own medicines. And so I teach that also through a platform called Living well with Dr. Michelle. So that’s the website, that’s the Instagram social media everywhere living well with Dr. Michelle. Check that out so much information there on everything. People are always like, Oh my gosh, I’m so glad I found you. There’s so many little tidbits and things that I love on here. So check that out. The books can be found on the websites, but also on Amazon – Healthy Mouth, Healthy You is my dental book. I also have four other books on nutrition and self sufficient living, all of those kinds of things. If you’re looking for a dentist near you check out iaomt.org and that is where you can find a dentist find or have someone near you.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Wow, you’re like the dental version of me.
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Yep.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Awesome. Well, I really really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for your time, and I hope everyone goes and checks out your stuff. So thank you.
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen
Thank you.
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