In this episode, I’m speaking with oral health expert, author, and founder of Primal Life Organics, Trina Felber. Trina’s mission is to eliminate toxic, polluting ingredients from body care products and offer healing, sustainable alternatives.
Table of Contents
In this podcast, Trina and I discuss:
- The amazing story of how her young daughter’s oral health issues—a cavity that formed in utero!—led Trina to focus on dental health
- The importance and maintenance of the oral microbiome…good bugs should be in your gut AND your mouth, but how do you avoid oral “antibiotics” found in mainstream products
- Why gut and dental health are closely related to inflammation and cardiovascular disease, and the link most dentists overlook
- 3 major tips you need to choose dental health products that heal versus degrade your teeth and gums
- Fluoride, glycerin, sodium lauryl sulfate, and other ingredients commonly found in conventional oral health products…are they toxic or not?
- The roles of both red and blue light therapy in tooth remineralization, gum healing (yes, it’s 100% possible!), and reducing oral inflammation
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Transcript
Ari: Hey, this is Ari. Welcome back to The Energy Blueprint podcast. In this episode, you are going to hear from Trina Felber, who is the founder of Primal Life Organics and an expert in dental care and oral hygiene and how to have amazing dental and oral health. We’re going to talk all about cavities, gum disease, how to prevent or potentially reverse cavities and gum disease, how to support the health of your oral microbiome and to avoid the things that harm it, and a whole lot more good stuff around how to have amazing oral health.
She’s also, at the end of this, going to give an unexpected amazing discount on her product, so make sure you tune in for that. You can get the info on all of that at theenergyblueprint.com/teeth. She’s got amazing products and she’s giving a huge discount, so please take advantage of that and enjoy this episode. I personally found it very insightful. You’ll hear I ask her a number of challenging questions that I think nobody necessarily has great answers to out there. Some of this is a question of- that we don’t necessarily have all the research to answer a lot of these questions.
There’s so much controversy, and this is something we talk about in the podcast, but there’s so much controversy around so many different ingredients, whether we’re talking about fluoride or whether we’re talking about sodium lauryl sulfate, or glycerin, or baking soda, or hydrogen peroxide or many other compounds that we’ll discuss here. This is a very, very insightful podcast. I think you’re going to learn a lot and get a lot of valuable takeaways from it. With no further ado, enjoy this episode with Trina Felber. Welcome, Trina. It’s such a pleasure to have you.
Trina: Ari, Thank you. I can’t wait to mouth off with you. [laughs]
Ari: I have to say, I met you in person, what was it, a month ago roughly, and I was laughing my butt off just nonstop, and all the conversations we had together. You were just making me crack up. You have a great sense of humor and I really enjoyed our time together. Thank you for that.
Trina: Yes, it was a lot of fun. When you’re talking about the mouth, you have to have a sense of humor because nobody really seems to care about the mouth until they realize how important it is.
Ari: Yes, totally. How did you get into this whole thing of dental health? What sparked your interest in that? What led you down this path that you’re now on with Primal Life Organics using these crazy devices which I love by the way, but what led to this whole thing? What’s the origin story?
Trina: A two-year-old, of course. It always comes back to the two-year-olds in our life. My daughter at the age of two, my husband was brushing her teeth and noticed that one of her new molars had some sort of defect in it. He calls me over and says, “What’s going on with this?” I’m a nurse, not a dental hygienist. I said, “I don’t know, but we need to take her to the dentist.” We took her to the dentist, and he took one look at the tooth and he said, “That’s a natural cavity that happened in utero when that tooth was being developed.” I had no idea this was even a thing, that it could actually happen.
He said, most likely, I had some sort of trigger or stressor that happened at that exact moment that tooth was being developed. Typically it happens with two, like both sides of the teeth or the mouth, the molars, because they’re being developed at the same time. For whatever reason, it was just one, thank God. He said, “It’s a pretty good defect. We’ll treat it as a cavity. We’ll clean it out. We’ll put a temporary filling in it. The filling will probably fall out every two to three months because it’s a temporary. The tooth will most likely have to be pulled within a year.” I know, I’m pretty sure you know about the tooth meridians, how every tooth is connected with a meridian to an organ.
That happens during development. While a tooth is being developed, so is an organ. There’s this pathway that runs between them. As I was leaving the dentist’s office, he says, “Don’t worry, mom. We put a temporary filling in it. Now, we just hope for the best.” I thought, “Oh my God, there’s no way I’m going to hope for the best.” I started doing research. I went back home, and I started researching oral health and dental care and dental products. Came across Dr. Weston A. Price, and I dove deep into his research and developed my whole entire dental product line based off of Dr. Weston A. Price’s research.
Ari: Beautiful.
Trina: That’s it. That’s the story. That tooth that was supposed to be pulled within a year and the filling fall out every two months lasted the entire life– For me, I was like, “If I can get this tooth one year and one day, I did a good job,” but it lasted the entire life of the tooth that fell out naturally at the age of 12. It had that original filling that was supposed to only last two to three months. Still in it. It had remineralized around the tooth. Yes, that’s cool.
What Trina has discovered in her research on oral health
Ari: Very, very cool. Okay. Where shall we begin in all of the layers of knowledge that you’ve discovered as you’ve been researching and developing products around this area of oral hygiene and dental health, oral health?
Trina: Well, let’s start with what’s available. What are most people accustomed to using and what’s wrong with those products? I’m talking about most conventional tooth products on the shelf. For most people, it’s the two that start with C, or even the natural products, the way that they’re formulated. There’s some ingredients in those that can cause more harm than good. The problem with most dental products is they’re causing more acid in the mouth. They’re creating more of an environment where the bad microbiome, the bad bacteria can grow and cause more problems. It prevents you from having a healthy microbiome inside your mouth.
Unfortunately, mouthwashes, especially those that have alcohol or triclosan or even peroxide, all of those are trigger ingredients. They’re ingredients that are going to wear away at your gum tissue. They’re also going to destroy your good microbiome inside your mouth. Unfortunately, the dental products that we’re accustomed to using are actually possibly creating an environment where you’re getting more cavities, and you’re getting gum disease. Believe it or not, cavities and gum disease are 100% preventable. Not 90%, not 99%. They are 100% preventable. Yet, the majority of adults have at least one cavity and suffer from gum disease.
Ari: I’ve been listening to podcasts lately on oral health, and it’s an area that I’ve been exploring. I think the stats are 80% of adults have gum disease as well.
Trina: Yes, gum disease. We’re familiar with leaky gut syndrome where your gut becomes leaky to toxins, virus, bacteria, things that can cross through and get into your bloodstream. The same thing happens. Your gut actually starts inside your mouth. I always say that that tube that runs from tongue to tail is completely outside your body. We have to think about that as being a tunnel that is completely outside our body. The things that pass through there really should pass completely through except for the nutrients, the good things that we do want to absorb. That starts inside your mouth.
If the microbiome in your mouth is not healthy, and you’re using products that are wearing away at your gum tissue, your gums become red and inflamed. I love props, so I’ll show you. Your gums become red and inflamed just like this, as opposed to being pink and really just really healthy like this. Healthy gums, things will not pass through, only good nutrients, vitamins, those types of things will pass through. Medications. As a nurse, one of the fastest ways to give medication is to put it right there on the gum tissue because it absorbs so quickly.
The problem is when your gums start to become red, inflamed and bleeding, then other things can pass through there. That inflammation and the passing through the harmful things, including toxins, can then cause inflammation throughout the body and travel everywhere. It travels to your brain, travels to your heart, travels to your organs, all of your internal organs. Even for women, especially during pregnancy, will pass through to the baby. That’s why oral health is directly related to baby’s health. It’s directly related to fertility as well as preterm labor, whether a mom will carry a baby full term.
The link between gum disease, oral health, and cardiovascular disease
Ari: Very interesting. I know there’s deep links between gum disease, oral health and cardiovascular health in particular.
Trina: Yes. It’s related to the inflammatory markers. Of course, if you have inflammation in your gum tissue, you’re going to have the inflammatory markers inside the body. It’s also related to the bacteria. If the bacteria passes through– For instance, in Alzheimer’s, when they’ve done some studies on Alzheimer’s patients or victims, they found the same bacteria from gum disease inside the brain. They’ve also found the plaque that’s in the heart is the same plaque that’s in the mouth. That correlation is so strong, and what is really frustrating once you know this information, it’s so frustrating that our dentists aren’t screening for this.
Your dentist really should be the first person that says, “Look, you’re at risk for heart disease. You should go see a cardiologist, and let’s fix your plaque. Let’s fix the bacteria inside your mouth.” The average dentist, unless you’re going to a holistic or a biological dentist, they’re not screening for that. They’re not screening for the type of bacteria that’s inside your mouth. They’re not telling you that if you have gum disease, you are at a very high risk of all the other internal diseases, but especially cardiovascular disease. It’s really important.
The important role of the oral microbiome
Ari: You mentioned some of the links there being, you mentioned the meridians that connect the teeth to different organ systems and you mentioned this inflammation and you mentioned, sounds like the specific bacteria are playing a role in this. What can you tell us about the oral microbiome? This seems to be, from what I can tell, not nearly as well understood as the gut microbiome, but we’re starting to see new ideas emerging. I’m starting to see, especially in the last year, people discussing things like, hey, stop using that mouthwash.
As you said earlier, with the alcohol in it or with the triclosan, or these antibacterial mouth washes, or the chlorhexidine. All these things that are killing off all the microbes because they’re also killing off the certain bacteria that are providing benefits in certain ways. What’s your take on the latest insights into oral microbiome health? I guess we’ll start with two questions. What are we doing wrong, and what are the things that we can do right to nourish the oral microbiome?
Trina: That’s a good question, which I love. I love that question because once you understand what you’re doing wrong or what we are doing wrong as a society, super easy to fix. The first thing to understand is you’re not stuck with the gums or the teeth that you have. It can be reversed and it can be fixed for most people. If you don’t make a change,
typically it’s just a switch in some of the things that you’re using, and stop using the things that cause problems and start using the things that fix the problem, you will really very quickly be able to see a difference. In fact, for a lot of my customers, it’s really a matter of from one dental checkup to the next.
It’s about six months. A lot of them see a huge change in their– Not just their teeth, but their gums as well. You want to move away from pretty much all mainstream dental products. You want to go get away from the triclosan. Triclosan is an antibiotic, like you mentioned. What happens to your gut when you take an antibiotic for seven days, you end up with dysbiosis of bacteria, which means an imbalance. You have too much of the bad bacteria, not enough of your good, healthy bacteria.
Then you end up with diarrhea and other GI symptoms. You have to take probiotics and do some other types of things in order to get that balance of your bacteria back. Inside your mouth, the same thing happens. If you’re using things that are creating that dysbiosis inside your mouth, the triclosan, is an antibiotic. It’s like brushing your teeth with an antibiotic every single day, wiping out your good bacteria, and never being able to replace it. That’s for life, for as long as you’re using something that has triclosan or alcohol or sodium lauryl- the SLS, those types of ingredients. Peroxide’s another one. It’s wiping out your bacteria.
Ari: Quick question before you go on. Sorry to interrupt, but–
Trina: Yes, no, it’s fine.
Ari: Triclosan, didn’t this get banned from hand soap several years ago?
Trina: It might have been, I believe it got banned. It’s because it’s like an antibiotic and it’s causing a disruption in the bacteria. They actually did a study, there was a study done on dental products with triclosan. It wasn’t about the oral microbiome, it was before we started thinking about oral microbiome. What they were actually testing was what does triclosan in your toothpaste do to your gut bacteria? The study found that the tiny amount of toothpaste that you swallow, because even as an adult you will spit, but you still do swallow and absorb some of that, the toothpaste, whatever you’re using.
The tiny amount that was being swallowed or ingested was causing a dysbiosis or the imbalance in bacteria in the gut. Exactly the same things happening inside the mouth with triclosan and same with anything like alcohol and all those others.
Ari: Let’s spend a a bit of time on this. I just looked it up because I was going off memory before, but in 2016, the FDA in the US banned the incorporation of triclosan in household soap products and topical products. This is actually super interesting to me that I only realized just a few weeks ago, as I was looking in depth at some of this oral, hygiene stuff that, as you said, triclosan is an ingredient that is still used in oral hygiene products. This is mind-blowing to me that they already banned it for topical use with washing your hands, but you can put it in your mouth. It’s still okay to put it in your mouth. How could that possibly not cause the harm that was associated with using it on your hands?
Trina: I know, it’s unbelievable, and they’ve even– The same thing with the alcohol based sanitizers when you’re talking about hand sanitization, if you will, same thing. It’s partly because your hand to mouth that– The things that are on your hands are going to be absorbed onto the food and the things that you’re actually putting inside your mouth. It’s pretty in-depth. It’s pretty scary when you think about all of the things that are actually creating that dysbiosis. What that means is when you have the bad bacteria inside your mouth and it’s overwhelming– I usually tell people, you really should not have bad breath.
Bad breath is a sign that there’s something wrong. It’s a symptom of something. As adults, we grew up believing that bad breath is normal and all you need to do is chew some gum or put some breath mins in, or switch with alcohol and your bad breath will go away. When in reality bad breath is a sign to you that there’s a problem that needs fixed or things are going to get worse, and that it’s an imbalance in the good and the bad bacteria. If you’re brushing and using the right products, what really should happen is that your saliva, which is the secretion no one’s talking about, your saliva should actually function to protect you 24/7 because let’s face it, we brush our teeth.
Most of us spend two minutes brushing our teeth or maybe five minutes total doing oral hygiene twice a day, hopefully. What happens the rest of the day, the rest of the 23 hours and 50 minutes it’s really- that’s the component of health that is missing. That’s the missing link is that your saliva is really supposed to be protecting you because your mouth is the gatekeeper. Your mouth is where a lot of things could be killed before you absorb them. Let’s think about what’s happening inside the head here, the space, the open space is all connected.
Your mouth is not Vegas. What happens inside your mouth does not stay inside your mouth. It travels everywhere. [chuckles] You have to think about what’s connected to your mouth directly. Your sinuses, your nose, your nasal cavity is directly connected to your airspace, and your sinuses, and then your lungs, and then your gut. All of those, that microbiome that- anything that’s in there if someone suffers from frequent sinus infections, it’s possible that their mouth has a lot of bacteria in it, or the viruses if you when you get exposed to something can’t be killed.
Then when you’re inhaling, breathing in, you’re going to be breathing in some of that air, that acidic, toxic fumes plus the bacteria and things like that. It’s important if you have an acidic environment inside your mouth, your saliva cannot function the way it’s supposed to. For saliva, your functions, the functions include– As humans, we’re the only mammals that have enzymes in our saliva to start the digestive process in the mouth. That’s why we say digestion starts inside the mouth. It’s the enzymes in saliva. They also have minerals in them. If your saliva has minerals, it can actually remineralize your teeth.
When you’re losing minerals from your teeth, that happens when there’s acid in your mouth, whether it’s from food. Most of the foods that we eat are acidic. Coffee is acidic, tea is acidic, red meat, most processed foods are all acidic. When you’re eating something that’s acidic, minerals leaves the teeth. That means you end up with a pit or a sensitive spot and then a cavity. The products that we’re using are also- most of them are mostly acidic, and the bacteria that causes cavities and gum disease creates more acids, so it off gases and creates more acid, so it can create the environment it can live in.
It’s like cancer, cancer is acidic, the way to kill cancer is alkaline, and cleanses, and things like that, that alkalize the body, same thing inside your mouth. All of that acid means that your saliva, which is supposed to be alkaline- not alkaline, it’s supposed to be neutral, but it’s not. It’s not alkaline enough that when your pH is acidic, it’s not going to be able to raise your pH enough to prevent all of this other stuff from happening. When our ancestors years and years and years ago, their mouths were not acidic, because they didn’t have the sugar in their diet, they didn’t have the processed foods.
They were eating crunchy vegetables and things like that, so our saliva back then could then function to protect them, to remineralize their teeth, to protect them against viruses and bacteria. Your saliva also has anti-microbial type properties to it, that when fungus, anything, candy, that enters your mouth, it’s supposed to be able to take care of it and kill it so that when you’re swallowing it, because everything inside your mouth, you swallow, that’s kind of gross. Everything in your mouth, you swallow, unless you’re spitting all day long, everything you’re inhaling all the toxins and pollutants, anything that you’re ingesting, you swallow.
Hopefully, most of it is dead, so that when it reaches your gut, you’re dealing with stuff that isn’t going to be multiplying because when you get to your gut it’s acidic. That’s when that bacteria that you swallow that’s in your mouth if it’s alive, and it can’t be killed inside your mouth from an alkaline environment, swallow it, it’s going to multiply, hit your gut, your small intestine, which can’t handle that type of bacteria, because the stuff in your mouth is different than the stuff in your gut.
How to support dental health
Ari: Got it. What can we do to support healthy oral microbiome?
Trina: When I started doing my research, I read Dr. Weston A. Price, he was a dentist in the early 1900s. I was so flabbergasted that his research was way before his time, why don’t we know this? Why isn’t this common knowledge? Why aren’t the dentist taking his information and utilizing it? Then I realized it was because he was a part of the ADA way back in the 1900s. He discovered the link between sugar and cavities. He approached, there was actually a panel at one point, they had discussion about sugar and he wanted to eliminate or at least reduce sugar in the diet.
The ADA had the two sides of the panel, him who said get rid of sugar, and the other dentists that said, no. The ADA decided to focus and buried his research and went with the other guys because they knew that if they didn’t- they were afraid that if there was no sugar, no cavities, who would need their dentist? That was the path the ADA took. They went the route of we need cavities, we need gum disease, so we can see our clients. In fact, I was talking to a biological dentist at a previous conference, and he was telling me that at one point–
I don’t know what point this was, but at one point when they wanted to change the frequency that you saw your dentist from every 12 months to every 6 months, they decided the best way to do that was add sugar to toothpaste, so that you would have a reason, a cavity or something that you would need to see the dentist for. Anyway, when I was doing my research, I found, and what I came out with was there’s three things that are so important in dental health. If you know these three things, then you’ll know what to look for in the products that you’re using, you’ll know whether they are going to work for you, and they’re going to do all three of these things.
The first thing is, it has to be alkaline. If a product that you’re brushing with [inaudible 00:24:34] alkaline, nothing good is going to happen. You’re not going to have a good healthy microbiome, you’re not going to be able to put minerals back in your teeth, your saliva is not going to be able to support you because you’re not able to balance out the acids from the diet. We’re never going to be able to get rid of all the acid from the diet, so you have to be able to allow your saliva to neutralize it as best as it can, so it has to be alkaline. The primary ingredient to look for would be baking soda. Super easy, super simple and natural.
It’s going to work inside the mouth, neutralize the acid. When your mouth is alkaline, when you’re brushing with something that’s alkaline, you can actually get through plaque. You can break down plaque because plaque is made from acid. If you want to bust through plaque, you want to brush with something that’s alkaline. I have so many clients that go to the dentist and they no longer have any plaque on their teeth. Their dentist is like, “What are you doing? Why don’t you have any plaque?” It’s super simple, alkaline. The second thing is it has to have minerals in it, your teeth are made up of minerals.
Calcium and phosphorus are the primary minerals, but it also has some other minerals like silica and manganese in your teeth. If you don’t have minerals in what you’re brushing with, that’s the best time to be able to put minerals back in your teeth. Primarily because the food is so depleted, even organic soil is so depleted of minerals, that you’re not going to get enough from your diet. You can’t take a supplement to remineralize your teeth, you can’t take a calcium pill, it’s not going to work to inside your mouth because all of the minerals from your teeth have to come from inside your mouth, but right at the enamel surface.
Mineralization happens right at the surface of the tooth. Indirectly, your calcium that you’re taking will remineralize your teeth, but it goes through your saliva. Then you have to make sure that you have enough saliva, you’re producing enough saliva, and that you don’t have leaky gut or any kind of malabsorption syndrome going on where you’re not absorbing the minerals from your diet or your supplements. The minerals in your dental products should really come from a couple of different sources or a blend of a couple of different sources.
The main new ingredient in dental products is hydroxyapatite. Hydroxyapatite is actually what the outer layer is called of the enamel and it’s calcium and phos, but only makes sense to brush with hydroxyapatite because you’re going to be able to put those minerals back in. Again, it has to be alkaline, if the product has calcium and phos in it, but it’s not alkaline, you can brush all you want and most likely you’re going to be spitting most of those minerals back out into the sink. Another couple of ingredients that work really well that I love is clay. I love a blend of clays, clay is alkaline by nature, and it’s going to have a blend of minerals including calcium and phosphate.
It has such an array of different minerals that when you’re brushing, if you lost a manganese mineral from your tooth, it’s a lock and key, you cannot replace it with a calcium. If you lost a manganese and you don’t have manganese it’s lost until you come- this surface has to be alkaline, it has to be clean, has to be exposed to a manganese when that surface is alkaline and clean. Clay is really great because it has all of those and it’s alkaline. A blend of clays, I like bentonite, kaolin, and French green. French green as I’m a nurse anesthetist by education, and anesthesia, I know as a nurse, I know that if I can reduce pain and I can reduce inflammation, you can speed healing. It happens so much faster.
French green clay is from the sea. It has algae and other plant nutrients in it and is analgesic, and it’s anti-inflammatory by nature, plus it has minerals in it. By using French green, white kaolin, and bentonite clay, along with hydroxyapatite is what I use plus baking soda, you’re going to get everything that you need right at the surface of your teeth, get rid of the bad bacteria because it can’t survive during an alkaline environment, so you’re going to be killing some of that bacteria. Then the last component is that it has to detox your mouth, so it has to be alkaline, have minerals, but it has to pull toxins.
The tissues of your gums, like this, when it’s red and inflamed, the tissue of your gums is polluted with heavy metals. This is one of the portals of heavy metal toxicity getting into your body. Tap water and a lot of processed foods contain tap water, have heavy metals in them. Especially if your gums are leaky or red or inflamed, the heavy metals can get into the tissues of your mouth, sit there for a little while to be absorbed into your blood system.
The other reason I love clay is because it’s going to pull toxins from the tissues inside your mouth. The cleaner your tissue, the faster that you can reduce the inflammation and get those dead gum tissue regenerating, healing and wiping out anything that’s in there that your body can absorb. Does that make sense?
Ari: It does. I have many questions for you.
Trina: Good. Yes.
How to reverse gum disease
Ari: Some people say that gum disease cannot be reversed and that you can’t regrow gum tissue at all. What are your thoughts on those two things?
Trina: I love that question. I usually get that question on social media from an angry dental hygienist. I just want to reach through and go, “Thank you so much. I love it when a dental hygienist posts that question,” “I’m a dental hygienist. I’ve been a dental hygienist for 20 years. You cannot reverse gum disease.” I say, my answer is this, “You are 100% right and you are 100% wrong. It all depends on what you’re using.” If you are going to continue to use the stuff off the shelf, the alcohol and peroxide based mouth washes, the triclosan, all of that bad stuff, you will never regrow gums. You will never heal a cavity. It’s because that is all about the environment inside your mouth. You are 100% right.
You don’t make the change, you will never heal, but your gum tissue is epithelial. Epithelial tissue is the same as your skin. What you’re telling me is if I cut my skin, I can’t heal it, which is not true. We all know that. Why is it that when I cut my skin, I can heal it, but you’re telling me I can’t heal my gums? It’s because of the environment that your gums are in. If it’s acidic, never going to heal it. You’re 100% wrong in the fact that if you make some changes, make your mouth more alkaline and stop using those products, start using the things that are alkaline, has minerals, are soothing like oils and essential oils, you can 100% regrow and heal gum tissue.
It takes longer because you do drink coffee or red wine or eat red meat. All those things that are acidic by nature, but it can happen. In fact, I’ve had so many dentists and we’ll talk about like light therapy as well, but I’ve had so many biological dentists that have had clients using light therapy inside their mouth, specifically red light. What they notice is that the gum tissue heals much quicker and is able to actually regenerate, but also get healed. When I say healed, I mean go from leaky gums, the red, the bleeding to the pink tissue that is more firm and protective of the base of the tooth, the root. That’s my short answer. I love that question.
Ari: Okay. Excellent. A couple more questions for you. Tricky questions. One of them is, it’s interesting as I’ve been exploring this topic more to see how many different opinions there are on certain compounds. For example sodium lauryl sulfate, fluoride is probably the biggest one. You have a lot of conventional dental experts saying- and the majority of conventional dental products are based around fluoride, stannous fluoride or- I forget what the other type of fluoride is. They will say that there’s this robust literature, and I’ve gone and looked and there is some literature to suggest that fluoride has certain benefits.
The problem is fluoride is also thyroid toxic, neurotoxic and is associated with neurodevelopmental problems, is clearly toxic to certain systems of the body. Given what you said earlier about the fact that what we put in our mouth, we tend to swallow, even small amounts of, unless you’re spitting all day, there’s a concern there. Enough that I certainly don’t use fluoride and I certainly make efforts to filter fluoride out of my drinking water. Anyway, so fluoride is one of them. Some dental experts are saying, “Fluoride is amazing. It’s the core of the dental hygiene routine.”
Other people are saying, “No, fluoride is this toxic substance you have to avoid.” Sodium lauryl sulfates, common in many dental care products. Other people are saying, “You have to avoid this compound.” What else? Glycerin is something I’ve even seen people saying negative things about lately. I thought was a totally innocuous ingredient. I’ve seen articles online saying, “You got to avoid glycerin, it’s harming you, yada, yada, yada.” What else? There’s baking soda. Okay, baking soda is something you mentioned. I’ve seen people saying that if you brush with baking soda, that it’s too abrasive and will actually damage your enamel. I’ve seen both sides of that.
I’m sure there’s other examples here. I heard one dentist, a podcast with a dentist out of the UK recently who said- I was pretty shocked by this actually. She said that she can see her natural people. When as soon as she looks in their mouth, she can see who is using natural healthcare products, who isn’t using fluoride based dental care products, because she was saying that the ones who don’t use fluoride have poor enamel. This as a natural dentist, she was saying this, whereas one of my good friends is a holistic dentist who says fluoride is a bunch of crap and you shouldn’t use fluoride and there’s no benefits.
It’s just toxic. Anyway, I’m sure there’s more here, but I just want to present that to you as this array of different compounds that are widely used and that some experts are saying, “These are amazing,” and other experts are saying, “You should avoid this like the plague.”
Trina: Yes. That’s so funny. I love it. I love all this. I’m like, oh God, I can’t wait to talk about that. Let me hit the baking soda really quick, because baking soda is something that some people brush with by itself. I get that question a lot. Is it okay to brush with baking soda? There’s a thing called RDA or relative dentin abrasivity. It’s a scale on how abrasive something is to your teeth. As far as toothpaste is concerned, an RDA above 200 is considered too abrasive to brush with. There are some toothpaste on the market that fall very close to 200 by regular companies.
You want something that’s not abrasive because you don’t want it to be brushing off your enamel. That’s the last thing you want. Let’s to talk about that for one second. If you’re using a hard toothbrush, you are probably brushing off your enamel. That’s probably doing more damage to your enamel than brushing with anything on the market because for the most part, you can’t have a dental product, you’re not supposed to be selling a dental product that has an RDA more than 200. A hard toothbrush–
Ari: Actually, let me add one thing to my list. You just reminded me. I’ve also heard some dental experts saying, “You got to use extra soft bristles because you don’t want to damage your gums.” Other ones saying- I think this woman out of the UK who had a lot of good information, I don’t want to make her sound like a crackpot or something. She was good. I actually liked a lot of what she said. She said that she doesn’t like people using the extra soft bristles because she finds all that does is brush food around, food particles around without actually getting stuff off. Again, there’s just so many conflicting opinions out there. Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to–
Trina: No, that’s good. I say a soft brush, that’s the only thing I sell is soft because the hard bristles will brush away, especially when you talk about enamel, I wish I had my little- I have this one. If you’ve ever seen the lava rocks for gardens and things like that, it has a bunch of holes in it. Lava rock has nothing but holes in it. I always say that this could be the surface of your enamel when you magnify it, all those little pits and holes. If you’re brushing with something that’s hard and brushing against that, you could literally be brushing your enamel off.
The thing is if you’re brushing with a soft toothbrush but using the wrong toothpaste, then sure you’re probably not going to break down the stubborn stuff. You’re going to be able to move the food that’s right there out of the way, but you’re really not going to be able to get the plaque and the bacteria, which is really what’s going to cause problems. It’s going to eat the sugar from the food and create more acid and all of that stuff snowballs. If you’re brushing with a soft toothbrush- so a hard toothbrush also is going to wear your gum tissue away. You’re going to end up with receding gums or really thin gum tissue, which is then going to cause other problems down the road.
You’re going to have the inflammation, you’re going to have the leaky gums, you’re going to have possibly even some bone damage internally because the jaw bone can become infected as well. I say soft bristles always, pair it with the right products and you’re going to do fine. Let me go back to baking soda. I got off on that one, but baking soda, when we talk about the relative dentin abrasivity, the abrasivity score, you want it to be under 200. Baking soda has an RDA of seven, that’s it. Seven. It’s non-abrasive. Dentists don’t understand this.
They don’t know what the abrasive score for baking soda is. When someone’s brushing with baking soda they’re like, “It’s too abrasive. You can’t use it.” Totally not true. Clay is around 80 to 100. Brushing with clay is not abrasive as well. The benefits of brushing with those three ingredients, it outweighs anything else because it’s going to have all the components that’s going to keep your mouth neutral or alkaline and get rid of the bacteria. What I don’t recommend is brushing with baking soda alone, because of the fact that it’s missing the other two components.
Remember I said baking soda was the best ingredient to make it alkaline, which is true, but baking soda does not have any minerals in it, and it cannot detox your gum tissue or any of the tissues of your mouth. You’ll lose those two components. What you can do if you’re in a pinch, I’ve had customers that they forgot, people forget toothpaste and toothpowder all the time when they go on vacation. Typically, when I go somewhere like to an event, I’ll bring at least a dozen with me because people are always walking up to me going, “Oh my God, I forgot my toothpaste at home. Do you have any with you?”
What I tell people, I’ve had people say, “Oh my gosh, I left it. I went and bought something off the shelf. It was horrible. Instantly I had bad breath, instantly my gums and my teeth didn’t feel as good. I didn’t like the foaming,” all of that stuff. What I tell people to do is for a short window, a couple of days, brushing with baking soda isn’t going to hurt you because it’s going to be alkaline, it’s going to support your good bacteria, it’s going to get rid of the bad stuff. Long-term use is not a good idea because you’re not going to be able to put those minerals back in your teeth.
You’ll end up with cavities or sensitive teeth, and you’re not going to be able to pull toxins out of your gum tissue. Same thing with charcoal. People brush with charcoal. There are tooth powders made straight charcoal. The same idea, charcoal is going to pull toxins. It is more alkaline, but it has zero minerals in it, so you aren’t going to be able to remineralize your teeth. Brushing with straight charcoal for a temporary time, fine, a couple of days, a week, fine, but long term it’s not going to put minerals in your teeth. Those are the two to watch out for.
We do make a charcoal version. Ours is a whitening formula. It has charcoal, but it’s blended with everything else. It’s blended with the clays. It’s blended with the baking soda, the essential oil. It supports everything.
The issues with glycerin and sodium lauryl sulfate
Wow, glycerin. I wrote down as you were talking, I’m like writing them down so I won’t forget glycerin. That’s a good one. Glycerin is not toxic to the body. The tooth paste that had glycerin in them. It’s not that it’s toxic to the body. The problem with glycerin is that it’s going to put a band aid coating, like a saran wrap or a band aid coating on the enamel, which means that if there’s minerals present in whatever you’re brushing with those minerals can’t get back into the enamel.
The other problem is that glycerin stays on the teeth for a little while. It doesn’t exactly come off very quickly, which is one of the reasons it’s in there. It makes your teeth feel slippery. If you have sensitive teeth, it can help plug those holes. It’s in there for reasons, but it’s not doing you any good because you’re not going to be able to put the minerals back in your teeth. For that reason, I do not like glycerin. I always tell people do not- if you have a natural tooth powder, or toothpaste- it wouldn’t be in a powder.
Make sure that glycerin is not an ingredient, because if you have those three things, if you have baking soda, you have hydroxyapatite and clay and you have glycerin, the glycerin is going to negate all that other stuff and or at least the minerals and you’re not going to absorb the minerals. You don’t want to brush, in my opinion, you do not want to brush with glycerin at all.
Ari: Got it.
Trina: Did I answer all of your questions yet?
Ari: Maybe sodium lauryl sulfate, and then I have more questions for you before I let you get away.
Trina: Sodium lauryl sulfate. The reason I don’t like it is because I feel that it is overcleaning. It’s going to semi-sterilize the mouth and it’s not super gentle on the gum tissue. There’s no reason to use it. It’s foaming by nature so it’s put in there to agitate and foam, and you can–
Ari: That’s the reason that companies do it, is because people associate soap- like people associate the foaming action with cleaning. They put it in there to make people subjectively feel like it’s doing a better job cleaning.
Trina: Yes. It makes you look rabid. Like you’ve got rabies.
[laughter]
Trina: There was a video once, the old way to brush and there’s the foam coming out of the mouth and then the new way to brush and it’s like super nice and super clean and you’re not looking like you’ve got rabies anymore. It’s put in there to– Right. You don’t need it. It’s not part of the formula. It’s not necessarily [unintelligible 00:45:14] and it’s going to do more harm than good. It could negate some of that. I’m not sure what the pH of sodium lauryl sulfate, there’s so many different kinds of- so there’s chemical compound, there’s also some derived from coconut.
I just don’t feel that that cleansing, that over cleansing is going to benefit you. You really do need that healthy bacteria. Over cleansing is going to sterilize your mouth, and a sterile environment, as far as the- it’s great in surgery. You want a sterile OR, you do not want a sterile mouth. If you have a sterile mouth, you are just setting your mouth up to be exposed to those toxins that are going to take over your mouth. Sodium lauryl sulfate for me is out.
Fluoride
Fluoride. That’s a big word. That’s the f-word in dental care as far as I’m concerned. It’s the F word. Fluoride should not be in your body.
It’s a toxin, like you talked about. That’s probably one of the main reasons I’m so against fluoride. The only way a baby is born with fluoride in their body is if mom has fluoride in her body. When you think about it like that, knowing all the harmful things it does, why would we want to put that in our products, in our mouth, in our body on purpose? Fluoride even at lower doses can be absorbed into the bone. It’s fluorosis of the bone, which basically means it’s a weakened part of the bone. What fluoride does in the tooth is it will actually kick out a mineral and replace it with fluoride.
It’s actually going to get into your hydroxyapatite, possibly even into the layer beneath, which is your dentin. Once it gets into your dentin area, because it can get in there, especially if you have pits that are deeper, it will kick out some of the minerals in the dentin. The dentin has some minerals. It’s fluid [inaudible 00:47:10] has some minerals, but it’s protective of your pulp, which has your blood vessel for the tooth and your nerves. If fluoride is a neurotoxin and it gets into your bloodstream, it can cause problems not just in your neurologic system, but everywhere. This is one of the other ways that it can get in, is right here inside your tooth.
What they did find, and this research was buried, the original study that they did was a short study that showed that fluoride works, fluoride makes your teeth– The whole idea behind it was fluoride was supposed to be harder than your teeth, so it would make your teeth stronger. The initial research that they did, which was a really tiny study, came out and said, “Yes, fluoride works. It makes your teeth stronger.” The longer they did the research, the more they found that’s not true. When they found that it wasn’t true, they pretty much buried the research, never told anybody, they never let anybody know, and they buried the research so you wouldn’t know that fluoride doesn’t work.
That’s my take on fluoride. You don’t need it. Hydroxyapatite. This is where hydroxyapatite comes in and it’s a pretty new ingredient. It has to be nano. You want nano, so you want to make sure that the product that you’re using, it says nano-hydroxyapatite. That’s what we use in ours. Nano-hydroxyapatite is the tiniest tiny. The pits in your teeth are tiny. If it’s not nano, it’s going to be too big. You’re going to be spitting it back out in the sink. You want to make sure that it’s nano-hydroxyapatite because it’s better than fluoride. Here’s the thing–
Ari: Just to back that up. I’ve read studies in recent days directly comparing fluoride interventions with hydroxyapatite. Finding hydroxyapatite is as good or better.
Trina: Or better. It’s not going to do any harm to the body. Calcium and phosphorus [inaudible 00:49:05] in your body anyway, so it’s not going to cause the harm that potentially fluoride could.
Ari: I should say, as good or better at the level of teeth without being neurotoxic, which is a nice benefit.
Trina: Right. If you do ingest it, then your bone could use it because that’s supposed to be in your bone. What’s interesting is your teeth, this is the other component. When people say you can’t heal a cavity, your teeth and your bone are made up of the exact same minerals [unintelligible 00:49:37] and if you break a bone, we can heal it. We know that. The people that believe, if you have a cavity, I ask if your teeth and your bone are the same, then why do you believe you can’t heal a cavity, because you should. If you’re just going by logic, same thing. You should be able to heal a cavity. Teeth are actually harder than bone, and the reason that they’re actually stronger than bone is because of the environment that your teeth are in. They’re always exposed to acid. You have to think about your bone. Your bone is housed in your body. Your pH is 7.35 to 7.45, which is neutral, so you’re not exposed to acidic environments.
Going back to a alkaline, it’s very stable in your body. When you break a bone, super easy for your body to heal because it’s not competing with this acid environment. Inside your mouth, your enamel has to be harder than your bone because it’s exposed to acids on a regular basis.
To heal a cavity, we have to just get rid of the acids, expose your tooth to an alkaline environment with minerals, detox the environment, and you’re going to be able to heal that cavity very quickly. It just depends on the cavity. I’ve actually had customers that needed root canals switch to those three things. Brushing with a dirty mouth, is what mine is called, dirty mouth tooth powder, and actually not need a root canal because they’ve been able to mineralize it.
I always tell people, they ask me, “I need a root canal. Do you think I can heal it?” I always tell them, “If you are not in pain and there’s no infection, then I feel that it’s safe to try to heal it, but if you’re having pain or there’s infection, then I would recommend doing what your dentist suggests just because that shows that it’s a little bit more involved.”
Ari: Do you have a hard cutoff right now, by the way, or can you go a little longer?
Trina: No, I can go. I’m good.
Studies on natural compounds for dental health
Ari: Okay. There is another aspect of this that I will admit, even I find confusing, and I cannot find anybody online who has a good enough answer that I have– I feel I have clarity on this issue. You’ve talked here about sterilizing the mouth using some of these antibacterial compounds, whether it’s triclosan, chlorhexidine, you mentioned peroxide, alcohol, whatever else. We now know that we don’t want to kill off all these good bacteria in the oral microbiome, and that we don’t want to over sterilize and get rid of these good guys. Yet a lot of the natural care products have lots of essential oils in them, which are also very strongly antimicrobial.
The overall implication that we are getting from just the general world out there and the blogosphere, is like, well, all these, the chlorhexidine and the alcohol, the hydrogen peroxide, all these things are too sterilizing, and are harming your oral microbiome. Use these natural products instead that have essential oils which are also strongly antimicrobial.
I guess the first layer of my question is, do we actually have good evidence to suggest that the essential oils are sort of– By the way, a lot of those natural care products are advertised on the basis that the essential oils are antimicrobial, are going to kill off all these bacteria to help stave off gum disease and cavities and whatever else. Do we actually have good evidence to say that those essential oils are selectively targeting the bad guys, but leaving the good guys of the oral microbiome present? Or are they actually just doing the same thing as the alcohols and the peroxides and all these sterilizing agents?
Trina: I honestly don’t know if there’s good research, because, let’s face it, the big dental, big Pharma doesn’t really want research that shows that essential oils or natural products work. They don’t want to do that research because they don’t want the truth or they don’t want the results to be out there. I don’t know.
What I can tell you is that it comes down to a couple of things when you’re talking about essential oils. We use essential oils in our products. I love essential oils. They are antimicrobial, but you have to remember, so is your saliva, and your saliva’s not killing the good stuff. It’s only killing the bad stuff.
What I’ve seen–
Ari: The thing about that is, we can reasonably expect the saliva, based on millions of years of evolving, to perform this role in the oral cavity of organisms, to have properties that are genuinely supportive of beneficial functions, hindering of negative functions. We can’t make that assumption about any other compound, whether it’s synthetic agent, Chlorhexidine or alcohol, alcohol is also natural, but agents like that, triclosan, whatever, or essential oils, we can’t assume that pouring lots of essential oils into our mouth– I’m not saying it’s bad, because I use them personally. I am saying we cannot make the assumption that they, just by virtue of being natural, they are somehow only targeting the bad guys, but leaving the good guys behind.
Trina: I can agree to some– Yes and no. I always like to think about a challenge yourself about this. Essential oils are the essence of a plant. They are plant based, and plants are living things. Plants have to survive in an environment where there’s bacteria, there’s fungus, there’s virus, all sorts– the same thing that we have to thrive in. They have to be able to protect themselves from that, but not kill themselves. They’re very similar to us in that. What I have found with essential oils is it doesn’t just– Yes, in essence it can be true.
Tea tree oil is one. Tea tree oil is something that could potentially, if used in the wrong concentration, be overpowering. There are other essential oils that are not as strong, and if you formulate it correctly, so if you’re formulating an essential oil product with chemicals or other things that are going to alter it, create more of that acidic type of environment, then I think yes, essential oils could be harmful. If you formulate it with things that are not going to cause that acidic type of reaction, then essential oils can, especially if you’re not overusing them. Concentration is another big thing with essential oils. People think more is better, actually less is better. A tiny, tiny amount of an essential oil, as long as it’s the right [inaudible 00:57:38] essential oil in the right formulation, we’ve seen amazing things.
In fact, my gum drops, it’s an oil base. It’s extra virgin, it’s organic extra virgin olive oil. Soothing to the gum tissue. Has essential oil. It has essential fatty acids. It has squalling, it has vitamins, it has antioxidants, all good things that your gum tissue needs. Not alcohol. Alcohol does the opposite. This is going to nourish your gum tissue. Essential oils, when added to that, we used the blend of 11, we’ve had such good– People love– that’s one of our best selling products. We can’t make enough of it because they see the good results from it. It increases blood flow. The other good things about essential oils, they increase blood flow, they reduce inflammation. They can also stimulate some collagen production inside the tissue.
It’s all about formulation, for me, and concentration, so you have to look at the ingredients. You have to know what you’re looking for. It’s really hard as a consumer, really, really hard as a consumer to really look at an ingredient list and go, “I know what that is. I know how to formulate.” Because most people don’t know how to formulate things. That’s the problem. That right there is the problem when you’re looking for– When I talk about big denta, they’re not formulating things to help you.
What you’re buying from big dental. When I talk about big dental, I’m especially talking about the ones that put fluoride in the sodium laurel sulfate, and the triclosan and all those bad things like alcohol. What you’re buying, when you read, they’re selling you anti plaque, anti cavity, anti gum disease. That’s what’s on the front of the label. You flip it over. This is what I teach my customers. You’re like, you flip it over, you have to read the ingredients because the ingredients tell you what you’re buying. When you’re buying alcohol and sodium lauryl, you are buying cavity and gum disease. That’s the big mind of, if you will, from big Cosmo, big pharma, big farm, big everything, big dental. They will sell you anything on the front.
What you’re buying is your own disease pathogens, your own inflammation, your own cavities, gum disease and things like that. It’s all in the formulation and the ingredient. It’s so hard as a consumer, it’s so hard as a consumer to know what to look for.
Why we should perform dental hygiene
Ari: Another way of asking this question is, what is the goal in our dental hygiene? Are we actually trying to kill bacteria every time we brush our teeth, or are we not? Because there is this sort of, again, this counterbalance between like, hey, the sort of the conversation around like, hey, there’s lots of bacteria that are causing this infection that are driving gum disease, and these bacteria are producing these acids that are forming cavities and eating away at your enamel. We’ve got to kill those bacteria. Then if we use these agents to kill lots of bacteria, we’re now potentially killing good guys, disrupting the health of the oral microbiome. I guess to expand this question out a bit, one of the other bigger questions that I struggle with is, when we look through an evolutionary lens, an ancestral lens at oral hygiene, we don’t see that our hunter gatherers had toothbrushes and floss, and flossed and brush their teeth, and brushed with toothpaste. They didn’t do these things, and yet those populations don’t have, from my understanding, they have much lower rates, at least, of gum disease and cavities and things of that nature.
Does that bring into question this entire paradigm around brushing two times a day with these antimicrobial agents? Even if it’s natural, even like with essential oils, shouldn’t we be looking towards them as the people who don’t have gum disease and cavities as the ideal of what we should be doing? Yet we have all this research saying, brushing and flossing is super important to prevent cavities and gum disease. How do you make sense of all this?
Trina: Our ancestors weren’t eating sugar. It really comes down to the diet, the lifestyle and the diet back then. Unfortunately in today’s world, you can’t not eat sugar. Even fruits and vegetables have sugar. Most fruits have sugar, and some vegetables have more sugar than others. You can’t completely eliminate that. What we’re doing wrong is eating more of the processed foods. Even being healthy. You can be paleo, you can be keto, you can be all these great v anything, vegan, and you’re still at some degree eating processed foods. It really comes down to diet, lifestyle, stress. That is the difference.
They did brush. There’s different theories, like they would use branches from trees to help clean.
Ari: I’ve even heard of neme, the use of neme. Neme is a microbial.
Trina: Actually they used to use clay and dirt. I actually went from Dr. Weston Price that’s why I thought about clay. I’m like, oh my gosh. They used to use other things, like chopped up shells and just anything that was semi abrasive, they would try to use. The question about the bacteria, do we really want to kill it? Are we over– It’s a balance. When you have a fish tank, you have to balance it or you’re going to get too much of the wrong kind of– you’re going to get too much alge. It’s a balance. Same thing inside your mouth. You want to kill the bad stuff while allowing the good stuff to live. Really when you talk about science, super easy to do that primarily because the bad stuff loves, it lives, thrives an acid, and the good stuff thrives an alkaline.
That’s why I always say it’s about the environment and swapping what you’re using so that then your saliva can support your mouth for the rest of the day when you’re not brushing. If you’re brushing with stuff that’s good and– I mean, it’s multi factual. It’s not just what you’re brushing with. You have to be cognizant of your diet. You have to make sure that you’re eating healthy foods the majority of the time. If you’re drinking things or eating stuff that’s acidic, you can either– I now have a on the go type of, it’s a called dental boost that you can put on your teeth that will alkalize it, help with the re-mineralization after you eat or drink something, you can switch your mouth with water. It’s as simple as that.
I often say that sometimes you’re not really brushing your teeth to clean them. If we got out of the mindset that you’re brushing your teeth to clean them, we would do so much better for ourselves. Because the whole industry of big dental is about cleaning your teeth and killing everything. Really, if you just brush with water or switch with water, you’re probably doing yourself a favor over using the wrong products because the water is going to not kill your good stuff. It’s the wiping out of your good stuff that is actually causing more damage than the bad stuff. Because if your good bacteria was higher levels in your mouth than the bad stuff, it keeps this stuff at bay. I will eliminate it because it’s more alkaline. It’s going to be more of an alkaline environment.
The one thing we didn’t talk about, tongue scraping. The one area of your mouth that grows bacteria, actually creates that white coating, is the bacteria on your tongue. Just using a tongue scraper in the morning, two or three swipes, it takes 10 seconds, and before you go to bed, it’s going to help get rid of that bacteria and help alkalize your mouth because that bacteria sitting on your tongue, just causing more acid. It’s that acidic environment that’s going to wear away at your enamels, wear away at your gum, create more of the bad bacteria, allow it to grow.
Ari: I always thought tongue scraping was nonsense, to be honest with you. I’ve never done it because it’s never made sense to me, that just taking a metal thing and scraping my tongue a few times is doing something. There’s still going to be a bunch of bacteria on my tongue. Is there any research to support tongue scarpping?
Trina: I’m sending you a tongue scraper. You’re going to do your own research.
[laughter]
Ari: Assigning me tongue scraping homework.
Trina: Yes. You’re going to be doing it on social media. No, I don’t know. I don’t know about the research. Again, it’s like something that is going to do good for you. All I know is, when you scrape your tongue, you get rid of the bacteria, your food actually tastes better, your breath will be better because you’re getting rid of that coating on your tongue. We include it. I have a detox kit that it’s a 60-day supply. We include the tongue scraper because I know most people will not just buy a tongue scraper, but when I hand them one, they’ll use it and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t live without this thing now.” I’m going to send you a whole detox kit to get your mouth and your tongue clean.
Ari: Cool. The–
Trina: The one thing–
Ari: Sorry, go ahead.
Trina: No, the other thing I wanted to talk about when we’re talking about bacteria inside the mouth, we didn’t touch on flossing. Flossing is super important. Even if you water pick, water pick is not a replacement for flossing, you still have to floss.
Using blue and red light therapy to improve dental health
The light therapy inside the mouth, I really want to go a little bit into that because it’s so important. It’s so different. Light therapy penetrates. It’s not just going to be the surface of the gums or the surface of the teeth. Light therapy can actually penetrate the tissue, possibly get between the teeth, the places that you can’t, and into the gum pockets. We both, I think you [inaudible 01:08:12] the teeth whitening system that I developed, blue light-
Ari: Boom
Trina: -red light. I love it. It matches your backdrop. Then the next setting is a red and blue. It’s hard to see on camera, but there’s 16 red, 16 blue, and the lighting–
Ari: That’s right. That’s interesting. On the camera, it just looks like it’s showing up as blue purply, but in real life, you see that there’s red and blue LEDs.
Trina: It can’t see it, yes. Blue light, harvard did a study. This is phenomenal. It’s kind of gross when you think about it. The bad bacteria inside your mouth– I’m going to use my prop again because I love him. Say this is the bad bacteria inside your mouth. He looks nasty. He is nasty. Harvard did a study that this bacteria that is harmful, the bad stuff inside your mouth, the acidic stuff, has this little portion to it that when exposed to the right wavelength, or nanometer of blue light, basically causes that piece to explode. When it explodes, the bacteria dies, which is phenomenal when you think about it. You put this in your mouth, blue light, 15 minutes, these guys are popping away, just dying inside your mouth, and it can penetrate to the places that you can’t necessarily reach with your toothbrush, or where the paste or powder will actually get to. That’s what Blue-light does.
Ari: This is selectively targeted towards the bad bacteria?
Trina: Yes.
Ari: Okay.
Trina: Blue light kills the bad bacteria, not the good. The good doesn’t have that portion to it. Good bacteria doesn’t have that little piece in it, so it will kill the bad stuff.
Ari: I like that. Okay, now, I don’t know if this, Trina, but I’m kind of a big deal when it comes to red light. I’ve written what’s pretty much-
Trina: I know.
Ari: -the book on the subject, the Ultimate Guide to Red Light Therapy. I think it has something like 2 billion reviews right now on Amazon. No, I think it has 1,800 or 2,000 reviews, or something like that. It’s still four years after I published it. It still sells a ton every month. It’s become like the go-to book on the subject.
I reached out recently. I’m doing an update on that book right now. I reached out to all these red light companies that exist right now, asking them to submit their lights to a third party labs to get objective measurements because I’m trying to clean up the whole industry a bit. I got so many messages from these companies that sell red light therapy. They were like, “Ari Whitten, you’re the reason I started this company.” I don’t want to blow it out of proportion here, but to some extent, I spawned a whole industry with that book. There’s literally dozens of companies that emerged because I wrote that book.
Anyway, this is an area of expertise of mine, and obviously I love your light, and I use this red light probably every other day in my mouth because I know the benefits of red light. I want to hear from you, you just told us about blue light, but what about red light? What’s that doing in our mouth?
Trina: I love, and I know that you are the light guy, especially red light. As we know, red light increases blood flow, reduces inflammation, and speeds collagen production, or increases collagen in the tissue. Used for wound therapy to help speed healing, used for anti-aging purposes, used for all sort of things on the surface of the body, but inside the mouth, putting it in the mouth, the gum tissue, again, the same tissue as the skin. It’s going to do the same thing. When you look at the gum tissue, if it’s red, swollen, bleeding, red light therapy on that is going to reduce the inflammation very quickly so that when you reduce, like I said earlier, when you reduce inflammation and you reduce pain, you can speed healing, but it’s also increasing blood flow.
Blood flow does a couple of things. When you increase blood flow, not only do you increase oxygen to the tissue, you increase nutrient delivery, but you also can then get rid of, it’s called the detoxification. You can get rid of the bad stuff that’s in there. Your blood will take it away to get rid of it out of the body. It’s also going to stimulate collagen production, which is really important when you want your gums to look like this. You really want that firmer thicker gum tissue that’s going to cause the junctions to get closer together. The closer the junctions are in your gum tissue, the less of the bad stuff that can actually leak through into your bloodstream. Your gums are highly vascular, lots of blood vessels in here. Whatever’s in the tissue will eventually get into the blood vessels in the gums, and then inside the body.
The problem with oral, like ingesting things in through your mouth with dental products anyway, and food, the toxins, when you eat something and it goes into your digestive system, and by that I mean your gut, we have the protective organ. It’s the liver. It’s going to pull out the toxins, it’s going to convert them from being a oil soluble, so an oil base, to a water soluble so that you can then excrete it through your kidneys. We call it first pass through the liver in medicine, so that when something goes– You take a pill and it gets sent in into your bloodstream, it’s going to go straight to your liver. Your liver’s going to detox a percentage of that out, same toxins, drugs, whatever. That, we call first pass.
The problem with your gums, when you absorb something through your gums, whether it’s a toxin or a heavy metal or whatever, the blood that is getting absorbed into you is the blood that’s going back to your heart to then be pumped throughout your body. Not just your lungs, but it’s going to go to your brain and all of your organs. It doesn’t go to your liver. Whatever you’re absorbing through here, the majority of it is not going to go to your liver to be detoxified and then excreted out. That’s the primary reason why dental products, and really even anything that you’re putting in your mouth, should really be as clean as possible because you don’t want that to be absorbed. The red light therapy is going to help reduce that inflammation, increase the blood flow so that you can get the toxins out, get the good nutrients, start the healing.
Again, the customers or the patients of the biological and holistic dentists that have used red light have had really great results seeing their numbers. When they’re poking at your gum tissue and you’re hearing those numbers get called out, you want them to be less than three. One or two is ideal. When you’re getting fours and fives, you’re getting gum tissue that’s pulled away, and it’s inflamed and bleeding, and that’s where the problem really lies. They’ve seen patients that are using the red light, their numbers go down drastically, and we’re talking within three months. It’s not a long term thing, it happens very quickly. Red light is going to really speed that process up. You have to make sure that you’re using the right products.
Ari: Do you find the blue light helps with that by virtue of the action of killing the bad bacteria?
Trina: Oh yes. Indirectly, yes. The blue light indirectly lights whitens the teeth because that bacteria is like, when you think of plaque, plaque is that yellowish color. That bacteria has that yellowish tinge to it. If you have the bacteria sitting on your teeth, your teeth are going to look yellow. When you kill that bacteria, get rid of that bacteria, that’s going to whiten your teeth, just slightly the appearance of your teeth as well. Indirectly, yes, because that bacteria harbors down into your gum tissue, and it’s going to try and create a little home inside there so that it’s in this environment that it can then create plaque. The plaque is the roof, the house, so that it can then continue to burrow down and then invade your body, cause all the inflammation in the gum tissue.
The cool thing about it is, the gel that I created that goes with this, they’re in these little pods now. There’s two treatments per pod, but the gel is peroxide free. It’s interesting how peroxide whitens the teeth. When I was talking earlier about this layer beneath, this is dentin. The dentin is fluid filled, and by nature, your dentin is either bluish tinged or grayish tinged. When your enamel starts to get really thin, you start to see, it becomes transparent. If you have like a bluish or grayish color to your teeth, it’s typically what you’re seeing, is your dentin. Peroxide works by pulling the fluid out. I say it dehydrates your dentin, pulls the fluid out so that it can look more opaque, and your teeth will look whiter. The stronger the concentration, the faster that happens. That’s also why peroxide treatments hurt because they get into the dentin. There is your nerves. As soon as peroxide touches your nerves, it hurts. That’s why peroxide treatments hurt.
Ultimately what peroxide does, is it weakens infrastructure of your tooth. By pulling the moisture out, you’ve just weakened your tooth. Now you’re more prone to fractures or even cavities with peroxide, and all the other damage that peroxide does. When I was wanting to create the whitening effect, what I wanted to do was thicken up your enamel, because if I can make your enamel thicker and harder, you’re going to not see your dentin, and your enamel should be white. It’s the whitest part of your teeth. It’s white by nature. You thicken it up, your teeth are going to look whiter, you’re going to have better dental checkups, and you’re going to be cavity resistant just because of the thickness of your enamel.
My gel is an olive oil base, so it’s not like the peroxide, it’s going to go on thicker, feel a little bit different, olive oil soothing to the gum tissue. Has hydroxyapatite, the nano hydroxyapatite to fill in those holes, relay down the structure of your enamel, has two different clays for the same reason. Plus that’s going to detox the tissue. Then it also has the essential oils to help with everything else, the blood flow. They also are whitening to the teeth. The essential oils will help whiten the teeth, and then reduce inflammation of the gum tissue as well.
Ari: Basically this is teeth whitening via re-mineralization of the enamel. That’s the goal, rather than just to bleach stain the teeth so they look whiter, but it’s actually to thicken the enamel and re-mineralize.
Trina: It actually gets to the root cause. The root cause, you get it? [laughs] The root cause. The root cause, sorry. The root cause of teeth that don’t look white. Of course there’s staining, and teeth that have a thinner enamel will stain easier, or if you have pits in your enamel. I always like it when I get emails from customers that use my charcoal toothpaste or tooth powder and they email us and like, “Oh my Gosh, you made my teeth gray. I can just see the gray. The charcoal went in.” I laugh and I’m like, “Yes, I know you hate that, but for me, that just tells me you have pits in your teeth and you really need this.”
I start them out with the white formula of tooth powder. I say, “Switch to the white, re-mineralize your teeth. Get those pits filled in, and then you can use the charcoal one,” and they’re like, “Oh, yes, that totally worked.” It’s going to fill in the enamel, get to the root cause, which is the thin enamel, and rebuild the enamel. I love the fact that this is the long term answer. It’s something that you’re going to need to do. For the teeth whitening, we recommend doing five treatments a week for a month. That’s what comes in the kit. You’ll get one month supply of the gel. Then after that, if you feel like you still need the whitening, your teeth aren’t as white because your enamel’s still pretty thin, you just continue to three, four, five treatments a week until you get the results. Then you can back off to one to two treatments a week.
Again, if you want to– Go ahead.
Ari: Just the process of using this is squeezing out with the gel that’s in the pod, applying it all over your teeth, and are you combining that with the blue light?
Trina: Then red or blue, or the combination. You can put blue light on, you can do red light, or you can do a combination of both. Most people do the combination of both. When I recommend the blue is when– I like to use blue when I get sick because I feel like a lot of times it’s a viral or a bacterial load. I’ll try to do the blue just to re-balance bacteria inside the mouth.
Red. If you’re going to do red light, you don’t have to necessarily do it for a 15-minute treatment. Some people will do the blue and red treatment, and then later on in the day, if they have gum issues, they’ll pop this back in and red for about five minutes. You don’t necessarily have to use the gel with it the second time. I have gum drops that people will put on, or just even olive oil on your gum tissue, just so that there’s some nutrients while you’re doing the red light. A five-minute treatment would be all you need. Of course you can do longer, you can do a full 15, 16-minute treatment, but as a second treatment during the day, if you just want to do a five-minute treatment, the red light is phenomenal. You know.
Trina’s recommended oral hygiene routine
Ari: Last thing. Who would’ve thought this would be an hour and a half long episode?
Trina: No.
Ari: Trina, thank you so much for your time. This has been a lot of fun and very insightful.
Tell us, as a last question, what an overall optimal oral hygiene routine should look like.
Trina: I’ll show everybody. This is my dental detox kit. It’s everything that you need. If you get the kit, you also get my whole protocol, which spells out exactly how to use everything and what order to use it. In a nutshell, I always say it’s pretty much the same thing morning and night. You just flip two steps. In the morning, it’s breakfast, think about breakfast. You’re eating breakfast in the morning, so you brush and then floss. The reason that you want to brush first is because, through the night, you’re probably just getting bacteria that’s growing. You’re detoxifying. Sleep is when we detox the body. You want to brush to alkalize your mouth. You spit, but you don’t rinse your mouth. Most people don’t rinse with my products. They literally just spit and then let the magic still happen.
When you floss, the [inaudible 01:23:16] paste that’s– With the kit, you get powder. I always recommend people start with powder. The powder is going to floss between your teeth. That will actually help re-mineralize and get those minerals between your teeth, and detox between the teeth, because that’s what the clay will do as well. Breakfast, brush, floss. You can tongue scrape first or anytime during the process. I think on my protocol, we tell you to tongue scrape first, and then the gum serum is the last thing that you would do. You just put two or three drops on your gums and put them on your finger and then rub them on your gums. That’s going to help reset the gum tissue and nourish it, but also allow anything that’s stuck in your gums, the essential oils will help to deep cleanse that.
At night, you’re not going to brush first, you’ll scrape your tongue, and then you’ll floss first. At night, the reason you floss first is because you’ve been eating food all day. You want to get the food out before you actually brush, and then brushing. Then after that, the gum serum as well.
If you’re going to do the water pick, I say you fit it into that schedule, you don’t remove the flossing again. I would probably fit it in after I do the tongue scraping, so before brushing or before flossing at night. Right after your tongue scrapping, it should be right in there.
Ari: Excellent. The whitening kit, the gel, apply that when?
Trina: What I typically recommend is just with a tissue or a soft something, just wipe your teeth dry. That will just help a little bit with the gel. Then that can be done, I say fit it in– The most important thing with that is to fit it into your schedule when you don’t have to make room for it. For instance, when you’re checking emails-.There’s two things you can’t do when that’s in your mouth. You can’t talk and you can’t eat. Just fit it in when that makes sense. You just don’t want to–
Ari: Important question. Can you still make love with this thing in your mouth?
Trina: Yes, of course you can.
Ari: [laughs] All right. That’s all I needed to know.
Trina: Some people do it when they’re making dinner. I’ve had so many moms say, “I’m making dinner, I snack.” They put it in their mouth when they’re making dinner so they can’t eat. That way, they’re hungry when they sit down. That’s another–
Ari: Then the kids are like, “Mom, you’re so weird. Why do you have that crazy thing in your mouth again, making [unintelligible 01:25:47]?”
Trina: [laughs] Then the kids want to use it, and kids can use it. You just have to monitor them initially. My kids use this. It’s funny because the kids pick up on the fact that when it’s in your mouth, you can’t talk. That’s when they misbehave, and you’re like [inaudible 01:26:01]
Ari: [laughs] [unintelligible 01:26:04]
Trina: They’re like, “Mom, it’s so funny.” [laughs]
Ari: All right, Trina, thank you so much for this amazing episode. This has been a lot of fun. I have a question. This is something we have not worked out beforehand, but can you offer my listeners any special deal? Hook it up, let people listening to this give us some kind of discount. What are you going to give people?
Trina: Let’s see. Just because you’re the red light guru, you know how much I love light therapy, 60% off. How’s that? 60% off the teeth whitening [inaudible 01:26:40]
Ari: That’s a lot better than I thought you were going to do. I’ll take it. Yes.
Trina: That’s how much I love you.
Ari: Thank you.
Trina: That’s how much fun we had. 60% off. If they want to order this, they will get the chance to order this at a really good price as well, the detox kit, and I do recommend doing this because this is made to go with this so that this is supporting your mouth making an alkaline–
Ari: Wait, for listeners who are not watching the video, you’ve got to say what this and this are, because all they’re hearing is this and this.
Trina: This and that. You’ll get the teeth whitening system, 60% off. Make sure you click through Ari’s link because that’s–
Ari: We’ll set it up at theenergyblueprint.com/teeth.
Trina: Yes. That way, you can get that link so that you get that discount. Going to the website, you’ll pay 60% more.
The other this was the dental detox kit. It’s the 60. They detox your mouth, has everything that you need. You can get that when you order the LED. I will also give Ari another link for just the detox kit in case you’re not interested in the light therapy. You can then get the detox kit at the reduced price as well.
Ari: I will admit, I’ve never used the tongue scraper, and I have never used the teeth whitening gel, but I use this thing all the time. I should say what this thing is, for people listening, this is the light device, the light therapy device. I strongly recommend people to get the light therapy device with it and just give your gum health a little boost in there as well.
Again, for people listening– Trina, by the way, amazing discount. Epic. I thought you were going to say like 10%, 15%, something like that.
Trina: Oh no. No, we go bigger, we go bigger here.
Ari: I dig it. Thank you so much. For everybody listening, get that at theenergyblueprint.com/teeth, and we’ll put the links there to get that discount from Trina’s company, Primal Life Organics.
Trina, epic, thank you so much for this hour and a half long conversation. It was a lot of fun and extremely insightful. Thank you so much for hooking it up with the discount for my audience. I look forward to our next conversation and our next hangout where you can make me crack up nonstop, again.
Trina: Thanks, Ari. I always love mouthing off with you. That was great. [laughs]
Ari: All right. Talk to you soon, my friend.
Trina: Thank you.
Show Notes
What Trina has discovered in her research on oral health (05:3)
The link between gum disease, oral health, and cardiovascular disease (09:35)
The important role of the oral microbiome (11:00)
How to support dental health (22:22)
How to reverse gum disease (30:10)
Myths and facts about oral hygiene products (32:00)
Fluoride (46:00)
Studies on natural compounds for dental health (51:40)
Why we should perform dental hygiene (1:00:00)
Using blue and red light therapy to improve dental health (1:07:40)
Trina’s recommended oral hygiene routine (1:21:50)
Links
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