Dr. Scott Solomons: The Surprising Truth About Dental Health, A Paleo Approach
Fluoride... and more, debunked. Don't miss watching this interview with dentist and great friend, Dr. Scott Solomons:
Watch here to learn more as Trina interviews Dr. Scott Solomons:
The topics we discussed:
- Why is there a decline in dental health?
- Is plaque bad?
- Acellular carbohydrates: what are they and how do they affect your health
- What is paleo microbiology and what does the DNA from the plaque in ancient skulls tell us?
- Why eating paleo creates plaque that does not cause inflammation and health risks.
- Are the “antiseptic oral care products” such as Listerine damaging our oral microbiome and our internal health?
- The nitrogen cycle and nitric oxide production inside the mouth.
- How important is your saliva?
- What happens when your mouth is acidic? (Ph under 5.5)
- Fluoride… we opened THAT can of worms! Find out the REAL truth about why fluoride the research is BURIED so you will never see it!
- The truth about Mercury and how to remove it SAFELY
- How to detox heavy metals, like mercury and lead, from your body?
- What is a gemlike cavity?
- If plaque is not bad, what is BIOFILM MANAGEMENT SYSTEM?
- If you're eating a perfect diet do you really have to brush and floss? (Hint: not really….)
- Dr. Weston Price and “LEAKY MOUTH SYNDROME”
- DENTAL DIET: what vitamins proteins do you need?
- Facial development and tongue posture- how important is it and how do they affect oral health?
- Breastfeeding… YES!!! Why is it so important???
- Gum disease… the link to Alzheimer's!
- Foods are DRUGS: good or bad
- Carb mouth… what it is.
Achieving optimal oral health requires more than just brushing. Your diet plays an essential role to that process. A primal or paleo kind of a diet, devoid of processed foods, is the perfect start to your optimal oral health journey.
Dr. Scott Solomons has always been interested in health and fitness. It inspired him to become a dentist and led him to practice in an ancestrally based way. Scott believes that there are lessons to be learned from our ancestors that can shape and transform our destiny.
He has practiced General Dentistry at Dental Associates of CT since 1989. He focuses on creating healthier patients through a comprehensive approach that combines modern dentistry practices, nutrition, and general health concepts. He graduated from the first-ever paleo-based functional medicine in the world: The ADAPT program of the Kresser Institute. He received his DDS at Columbia University School of Dental and Oral Surgery in NYC, with a concentration in TMJ disorders. He interned with the USCG in Alameda, CA and then went on to receive a Fellowship in Advanced General Dentistry at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Dr. Solomons believes in paleo-based, functional dentistry and medicine. He believes that diet has a major impact on dental health. The Paleo/Primal/Ancestral/Nutrivore Diet is about making more nutritious food choices by eating like our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean that you have to go out foraging in the woods for your dinner! It simply means you should avoid eating foods that are processed and high in empty calories. Instead, stick to the healthy, nutrient-dense foods that have been around for a very long time. A diet high in vegetables with animal meats/seafood, fruits, and some nuts.
In a recent study, they tested groups of people’s oral health based on their diets. Half of them ate a paleo type diet, the other half ate normally, and they checked their gums before and after, and the markers for inflammation and certain things that we can see in the gums. It was shown that redness went down in the people that we're eating a really good diet, even though there was more plaque. But the people that we're eating a standard American diet had worse results, along with the amount of plaque.
Trina is extremely passionate about oral health and achieving it the natural way. It's super exciting that she had the chance to interview someone who has the same views. Watch as Dr. Scott Solomons shares tips, hints and insight, from his 30 years of experience, that will help you get the oral health you desire.
Transcript:
Trina: All right. I'm really excited today, because I have a guest... I've been waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting to get a dentist on here. It's like pulling teeth. Scott, it is like pulling teeth to get dentists to come on camera. Why is that?
Dr. Solomons: I don't know, because, you know what? You're speaking truth to power and a lot of them can't handle it, that's why.
Trina: I love it, but not Dr. Scott Solomons. He is a dentist like no other, and that's why we found each other at Paleo FX back in May, and we've been great friends. And we believe the same thing, and it's like perfect harmony when it comes to dental health. Let me do a quick intro, and if anybody's watching, please, if you have questions, now's your chance to ask the dentist.
Dr. Solomons: Yes, as away, please. Don't be shy out there in Facebook land.
Trina: Yeah, that's right. I've got a bunch of questions I'm going to go through here, and I already know we're going to bring him back, because there're tons of other questions that I have as well, but let me give you guys a quick little low down on Dr. Scott Solomons.
Trina: Dr. Scott Solomons has practiced general dentistry at Dental Associates of Connecticut since 1989. He focuses on creating healthier patients through a comprehensive approach that combines modern dentistry practices, nutrition, and general health concepts. He graduated from the first ever Paleo based functional medicine in the world. The ADAPT Program of the Kresser Institute. He is also on the Kresser Institute review board. He received his DDS at Columbia University School of Dental and Oral Surgery in New York City, with a concentration in TMJ disorders. He interned with the USCG in Alameda, California, and went on to receive a Fellowship in advanced general dentistry in Fairleigh Dickinson University. He belongs to a ton of dental and medical-
Dr. Solomons: Yeah, yeah. You can skip all those. Too much to get into, we'll be here all day.
Trina: I just want to mention a couple things in here. I'll skip over some of them. There's a ton of them. So, cosmetic dentistry, the Association of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, Certified in the safe removal of silver or mercury fillings, so if anybody has questions on that. Also, biological dentistry and belongs to the Paleo Physicians Network, Primal Docs, and the Ancestral Health Society. Welcome Dr. Scott.
Dr. Solomons: Well, thanks for that great introduction. I can't wait to hear what I have to say with that introduction.
Trina: You have a lot to say. I know you have a lot to say. First of all, what's your overview as a dentist on dental health, and how it relates to internal health?
Dr. Solomons: Oh gosh. It seems to be getting worse, actually. There was a time where... So I've been doing this for over 30 years, and there was hope that we were really gaining traction, but with the MyPlate, and all that stuff, that's not really sending us in the right direction. I'm sure all of your savvy listeners know this, but a lot of my rank and file patients come in and it's new to them that they shouldn't be eating six to 11 servings of heart healthy whole grains. It's amazing.
Dr. Solomons: We've seen an uptick in decay, and especially, it's really alarming. Kids will be pretty good until their mid to late teens. So all of you who have children of that age, beware. And then they start to spend time on their own, amongst their friends, they've got a couple of coins in their pocket. They start drinking whatever, the energy drinks, and all that stuff, and then when they go to college, it's unbelievable. They have long study sessions and they're sipping a soda for six hours, if you're in marathon sessions, and that frequency of what I like to call dense acellular carbohydrates. Folks, if you take nothing else away from this, we'll talk a little more about that, but any kind of processed carbs, whether it's sugar or not, is just no good for the germs in our body.
Dr. Solomons: We have germs in our mouth, the plaque, and plaque is not bad. Plaque just has a tendency to misbehave when it comes in contact with these highly processed carbs and sugars. And then, of course, we swallow the stuff, and of course, our small intestines have some germs in them, but because of the stomach acid and other things it's semi sterile, shall we say. And most of germs in our digestive systems are in our colon, but when they get this dense acellular carbohydrate, they do the same kind of misbehaving, and you get inflammation of the gut. You get a leaky gut, you get toxins creeping into the system. You get a reaction by the immune system, and there are low levels of chronic inflammation coming from the entire digestive system.
Dr. Solomons: And remember folks, that the mouth is the first part of the digestive system. We're pulverizing the food with our teeth, so we're starting to break down the food, and we have amylase in our saliva. No other animal really has copious amounts like we have, so we're actually chemically breaking down complex carbs into simple sugars in the mouth. That's my short answer.
Trina: You're saying dental health has declined, right? It's still declining, which also correlates to internal health, is also declining.
Dr. Solomons: They go hand in hand.
Trina: You said that plaque isn't all bad, so explain that, because I know in my mind plaque is not a good thing, so explain what you mean by that.
Dr. Solomons: Two years ago I was on a dental panel. You can pull that up. The Ancestral Health Symposium. Two years ago I was on a dental panel. Al Danenberg was on that panel, and he's a gum specialist. They call those folks periodontists. He spoke about two studies, and it's really cool. I think, again, most of you guys out there know that tooth decay and gum disease, and really a lot of our modern ailments are new, so going back to when we started farming is when we started getting tooth decay, but there's a branch of microbiology called paleomicrobilogy, and they can actually reconstitute the DNA of plaque in ancient skulls.
Dr. Solomons: We've always had the germs that cause gum disease in the same proportions, but we've only just gotten gum disease since the neolithic farming revolution. Al Danenberg spoke about that plaque was there and it wasn't causing problems, and there have been a couple of studies that show that plaque, given a primal, paleo, whatever you want to call it, whole foods' kind of a diet, devoid of processed foods, the plaque does not cause inflammation.
Dr. Solomons: Especially the one study, they took a group of folks, half of them ate a paleo type diet, the other half ate normally, and they checked their gums before and after, and the markers for inflammation and certain things that we can see in the gums, pocketing, that sort of thing, redness, went down in the people that were eating a real good diet, even though there was more plaque. But the people that were eating normal American, standard American diet, the markers went up, along with the plaque.So it's the plaque that's misbehaving from its contact with dense acellular carbohydrates.
Trina: Carbohydrates. What about the role of the modern, probably what the average consumer is using to clean their mouth with, which would be all the antiseptic products.
Dr. Solomons: Right.
Trina: I'm sure that has to play some sort of role.
Dr. Solomons: Right. My philosophy is that the biofilm on the teeth is necessary. It really wouldn't be there if it wasn't. So we're meant to have it, so if you destroy that with all these rinses and alcohols, it's really not good for you. In general my philosophy is try to stay as natural as possible, but I also don't want to be dogmatic about things. Not everybody has the same concerns, so some people are okay with the pill. "Just give me the pill, Doc." You have to realize that I'm stuck in a profession that has standards of care, and if I don't adhere to them I could actually lose my license, so I have to at least tell people that this stuff is out there, and this is what's normally done, but I'm a little abnormal. That's why we love each other.
Trina: That's why we love each other. You're not a little abnormal.
Dr. Solomons: We're just a little bit outside. So, for one thing, the germs in the mouth actually help with... We have a nitrogen cycle, and contrary to what everybody thinks, nitrates, nitrites, there was this whole thing that they're terrible for you, but a stalk of celery has way more nitrites in it than a hot dog. Nitrates, whatever. And our saliva has a lot more, because the germs in the mouth take part in the nitrogen cycle, and it helps us form nitric oxide. Again, maybe of your savvy people out there know that that lowers blood pressure.
Trina: Love nitric oxide.
Dr. Solomons: Nice things. So that's nitric oxide. Not nitrous oxide, which dentists use as laughing gas, but nitric oxide, and it concentrates in the salivary glands. So that's important that you actually have [crosstalk 00:10:16]
Trina: That's awesome. Speaking of saliva, since you brought it up.
Dr. Solomons: Am I breaking up?
Trina: No. Well, a little bit, but you're back. You're good.
Dr. Solomons: Okay, it says I'm unstable on my end.
Trina: Oh. You're ruly and unstable. You're a free radical right now. So speaking of saliva, as long as we don't break up too much, how important is saliva, because I say saliva is the secretion no one's talking about, but saliva is really your 24 hour protection inside your mouth, and when you're using things that destroy what your saliva can do, you leave your mouth in too acidic a condition for your saliva to neutralize and actually function and protect you for 24 hours. What are your thoughts on that and saliva?
Dr. Solomons: Right. A few things. When we look at the formula for tooth decay it's different than probably what you pull up on the internet. They make it very simple, and what they'll say is you need fermentable carbohydrates, susceptible teeth, and cariogenic bacteria. Cariogenic means cavity causing, but all carbohydrates are fermentable, and we've been eating carbohydrates for a long time, so that's not true. Again, it's the dense acellular carbohydrates, so the bacteria in the mouth have never seen this in their environment before, and they can actually change this stuff.
Dr. Solomons: Two things happen. The bacteria ferment the carbohydrates into acids, so the PH of the mouth has to be close to neutral, but any PH under 5.5 that's acidic is going to result in the minerals melting out of the teeth, and when you have enough mineral melting out of the tooth you could end up with a hole, and that's what a cavity is, but the saliva, on the other hand, can counteract that, it can put the minerals back in the teeth, it can control the bacteria. It does all sorts of wonderful things, and of course, you need to not have a dry mouth. There are so many things that can dry out mouths out. So many medications. Allergy medications, over the counter stuff, heart medication. It goes on and on.
Dr. Solomons: And then you have stress. You have people who aren't eating properly, and they're not sleeping properly, and they're under stress, and that's also going to result in a dry mouth, which would increase the decay, because it increases the salivary flow, which helps the plaque grow and keep an acidic environment.
Trina: What about fluoride? Let's open that can of worms, because I guess-
Dr. Solomons: Yeah.
Trina: That's a big can of worms.
Dr. Solomons: That's a really big can of worms. The first thing is fluoride in the water. Let's talk about that, because to me that's a huge thing, because you almost don't have a choice, because if it's in the can of peas... You know, in the city that cans your peas and you have nice organic peas, you're getting fluoride and you may not even know it, so it's everywhere. Based on the principles of pharmacology, you have a chemotherapeutic agent, a drug of some sort, it has to have a certain dose. Maybe a too small of a concentrate. If you took a tiny little bit of aspirin it wouldn't do anything. And again, if you ate the whole bottle it wouldn't be good for you, so there's a therapeutic dose, and then you have to take the aspirin every four to six hours.
Dr. Solomons: With fluoride, how is there any control if it's in the water? How much water do you drink? Are you in an area that already has fluoride in the natural water? In Colorado, many of the wells already have unnatural amounts of fluoride in it. That's actually one of the places they realized what fluoride was doing. Places like Colorado, there were places in Italy that had too much fluoride in their water naturally, and it was looked at as a bad thing because it caused brown spots and white blotches in the teeth. So, number one, we're violating pharmacology because there's no control of how much you take. Number two is, well, who is the target patient? It's children with developing teeth, so not only children drink this water. Everybody's drinking the water, so you're giving a drug to somebody who doesn't need it. I would classify it as a drug. Chemotherapeutic agent, whatever you want to call it. So that's another violation. And then where the stuff comes from, it's actually scary. It's gotten-
Trina: That's great for you to say.
Dr. Solomons: It's an industrial byproduct. It comes from the scrubbers of smokestacks and things like that. But the first thing they noticed in places like Colorado, was the bad things that happened, and they knew it was a toxin, and this, it's called modeled enamel, the brown and white spots, so that was a sign of fluoride toxicity. Now they've brushed it off as just something you see. And I believe it's something like 50% of children could have fluorosis in areas that they put fluoride in the water, but I think it's something like 25% in areas that don't have fluoride in the water because they're getting it from everything. Gosh, it's probably in Budweiser for all we know.
Trina: Probably.
Dr. Solomons: That's a problem. So there's that. So, the supposition, based on the initial studies, what they finally did was they took the water that they knew had natural fluoridation in it, and they gave it to rats, and then they saw that the rats got the fluorosis, so they said, "Bingo, it's the fluoride." At that point it wasn't looked at as anything special.
Dr. Solomons: Then they did an experiment. I think the first place was a Dr. Dean artificially fluoridated water in 1945 in Grand Rapids, and then eight years later he wanted to see what the results were, because he wanted to let the kids grow up. This was repeated right near us in Newburgh. The control town was Kingston, New York. We're on the New York border here in Connecticut. And they compared the two and it looked like, yeah, the kids that were in the areas that had fluoridated water had a 50% lower tooth decay. That sounds amazing, doesn't it? How could you argue with that, right? So that was taken away as Gospel, but those studies were not really controlled for a lot of variables, were they?
Dr. Solomons: It turns out that the initial results were misinterpreted. It's like that correlation when more ice cream is eaten there's more shark attacks. You guys have probably heard that out there.
Trina: Right.
Dr. Solomons: Well, it's the warm weather, and everybody's going to the beach, and of course, so then you get... So they were connecting dots that weren't really connected, so later on, it's gotten to the point where, in July of 2000 the American Dental Association said, we can't actually claim this mechanism anymore that systemic fluoride makes teeth stronger. The theory is that these fluoride molecules would incorporate into teeth and bone, and make it harder, but that actually was debunked by the American Dental Association, almost 20 years ago. The FDA actually-
Trina: I was going to say. I don't think anybody actually knows that.
Dr. Solomons: No, of course not.
Trina: That's buried.
Dr. Solomons: No, that is buried, my friend, that is buried. So the FDA also said you have to delete any government references previously classifying fluoride as essential or probably essential. I can tell you, folks, out there, there's not one chemical reaction, enzymatic reaction that goes on in the body that requires fluoride. There's nothing in the body that we fabricate, skin, nails, teeth, bone, whatever, that needs fluoride. Okay?
Dr. Solomons: It turns out the mechanism... Are you ready for this?
Trina: Yes.
Dr. Solomons: It delayed the eruption of these children's teeth. Eruption, for those of you out there that aren't familiar, it means when the teeth come in. I don't know why we use such a violent word. It's not that violent, but when these teeth come in-
Trina: Because in the middle of the night, when you're a mom, and they're erupting, that's why.
Dr. Solomons: Exactly. Exactly. So what they found was that it was a delay in eruption, so the less time a tooth is in the mouth, being exposed to dense acellular carbohydrates, the less decay you get. So that's the mechanism, right there.
Trina: That's interesting. I knew fluoride didn't save your teeth from cavities. I didn't know about the buried research.
Dr. Solomons: Yeah. I have an article on my website. drscottsolomonss.com on that.
Trina: Yeah. We'll post those when we get done here. We'll get the articles and post them so people can find them.
Dr. Solomons: So, that's my take on systemic fluoride. I would stay away from it. That's why I don't like to drink things that come in cans. You've got to be really careful. I don't think fluoride's good for you.
Trina: Minerals. Right? You would want to put the minerals back in your teeth, because that's what is making your teeth strong.
Dr. Solomons: Right. You don't need fluoride.
Trina: You don't need fluoride.
Dr. Solomons: And calcium supplements, when they go back and they look at all the studies, people who supplement with calcium pills live shorter lives. You need real food. You need to be getting your calcium from real food.
Trina: Real sources, yeah. I want to be respectful, because you're on your lunch hour, so about five to 10 more minutes only, but I did want to touch on the amalgam fillings as well, because that is a pain point for a lot of people, and are they bad, should they be removed? Go into what your common questions that you get about the amalgam fillings.
Dr. Solomons: Right. Okay, so when we were in dental school it was very common for the instructors, professors, to laugh at the idea that there could be any possible problem with mercury fillings. So just to give a little background, they call them silver fillings, but they're actually slightly less than 50% silver, and they're slightly more than 50% mercury. They're also called amalgams, because they're not actually alloys, and I didn't know this. They didn't really teach us metallurgy too much in dental school, but when you make an alloy like pewter, and let's say you take your drill and you drill your little hole and those little shavings come out, it's still pewter, but when we drill an amalgam filling out it's a crystallized version of silver and mercury, crystallized together, and those bonds break and you get raw mercury. It's a liquid to begin with, and it actually vaporizes very easily, so it gets into the air.
Dr. Solomons: When we were in dental school, you mixed the stuff together, you put it in somebody's mouth, an inch from their brain, and if there's a little scrap left over you weren't allowed to throw it in the garbage. Okay, what's wrong with this picture? I can put it near your brain, in your body, your mouth, but it's dangerous to put it... Why couldn't we just throw it out? I don't understand this. Nobody gave me a proper explanation of it, but of course we now are the wiser. It vaporizes and it's highly toxic. Is there any scientist who would tell you that mercury is good for you? I don't think so. So it's vaporizing, and yes, scientists say that people that grind their teeth together, if you have hot coffee, mercury is leeching off of your fillings. There's a video, and I say, look at it with caution on YouTube, because you can't unsee things. It's called the smoking tooth.
Trina: Oh, I haven't seen that.
Dr. Solomons: They take a tooth that's been pulled, and they rub a cloth on it in front of a fluorescent light of a certain frequency, and it looks like it's smoking. That's mercury vapor. So yes, there is that concern. Since I do the functional medicine, I also have a study meet up group with all the forward thinking healthcare practitioners in the area, because heavy metal toxicity is huge. When it's identified, especially mercury, there aren't any dentists out there that know how to remove it safely, or even think that's anything that should be done.
Dr. Solomons: I see patients that come hours to see me with real problems, so if there's any suspicion of a problem coming from your primary doctor, and mercury is one of the heavy metals, the primary exposure is through mercury fillings in your mouth. So at that point considering removing them is a good thing, but it has to be done very, very safely. If I walked up to you on the street and put two drops of mercury in your mouth you'd have me arrested and I'd go to jail, but as a dentist, if I drill a small filling out that's 50% percent mercury, and let's say two drops of mercury end up in your mouth, you can't go after... I'm legally untouchable.
Dr. Solomons: I think that is a poor standard of care. Unfortunately dentists like me are few and far between, so I'm involved with the IAOMT. It's too long to say, but that's an organization, dot org, that you guys can look at. Their mission is to try to keep dubious chemicals out of your mouth, so they have this SMART program, it's called, and basically, it's not rocket science, it's really not. We have to isolate the tooth with a dental dam. We use nitron now, not rubber, because most offices would be latex-free.
Dr. Solomons: So it's a little sheet of rubber about the size of a napkin, we poke a hole in it, and the tooth sticks through the hole, so it's isolated from your mouth. That one tooth, when we drill the filling out nothing goes in your mouth, but it's vaporizing, so we take precautions. We have masks and things. We open the windows, even in the winter. We get the air out of there. We have air purifiers. There's a rinse that we do before and after. We put a cap on the patients, we drape the whole entire body. Again, it's not rocket science, but most dentists are like, "What for?" So these poor patients have no where to go, so I see them.
Trina: So you want to make sure, if you're not near Connecticut, I know you see patients from all over, probably, but you want to make sure that your dentist is certified, right, in taking out-
Dr. Solomons: Right. I don't know how many... You can go on IAOMT.org, and we'll be listed there, and I don't know how many there might be in Montana or Wyoming. I don't know. Again, I would say the lion's share of the protection you get is from the dam, and the nose piece of oxygen. Most dentists use nitric oxide for their patients, sometimes, so that's a combination of nitric oxide and oxygen. So leave the nitric off, put on 100% oxygen, breath through the nose so you don't get the vapor. That's really the lion's share of it. The rest of it, I think, is a small portion of it.
Dr. Solomons: For patients who have real problems, we'd want to do all that, and so that's what people expect me to do. I'll absolutely do that for everybody, but for people who don't have real issues and are not 100% concerned, and they don't want to drive two days to see somebody, just the dental dam and the nose piece and that suction that they use to suck all the water and debris. That's all important.
Trina: I saw a study that said peroxide can break down amalgam fillings and leech the mercury into your body, which is really concerning, because a lot of dental products contain peroxide. What are your thoughts on that? It's a simple... People don't know this stuff. That's what drives me nuts is, people don't understand and don't know this. It's not on the label that says, do not use if you have mercury fillings, so it's just...
Dr. Solomons: Right. It's just not looked at as a concern, so there's no reason to address it. People get the wrong idea. I still have a lot of patients that are normal, that aren't here because of any holistic stuff, and I'm always going to run it by them if they need a filling removed. I still actually have some people that say, "Eh, I don't care. Don't do it." They don't understand that this stuff is cumulative. Mercury has a tendency to settle into your fat tissue, fatty tissues, so maybe not today. You do your whitening with your peroxide in it, but for those people that bleach all the time, there might be a point where they hit their toxic burden, and then it's trouble, because that stuff is in there, in your tissues, and once we try to get it out, chelation, take these chemicals that basically flood your... It's now just flooding your bloodstream and your body's in panic mode, and you're trying to pee it out and it's getting displaced and it's moving around. And it's pretty brutal. It's actually very brutal.
Dr. Solomons: My preference for getting rids of heavy metals and mercury is actually far infrared sauna. Home ones are relatively affordable, and if you're having problems you can sweat it out. Interestingly enough, mercury is mined, but the ore is called cinnabar, and a lot of the local cultures have these sweat lodge traditions. They just knew. It's much gentler. It could take a long time, but have patience because again, chelation can be pretty rough on a lot of people. I went through it. I was toxic with mercury, because I didn't know that I was breathing the stuff in, and I couldn't take the chelation after a while.
Dr. Solomons: There are some scientific studies that show that the far infrared sauna, or really just sweating is a good way to do it. Not to be confused with near-infrared, and also red light therapy, which I think, for skin, which I know that's your thing. I love it. That's another thing I couldn't say too many good things about.
Trina: Really quick, because we're getting late on time and I don't want you to miss your lunch. How bad is peroxide for the enamel or the dentin? We talked about teeth whitening. I make a peroxide-free version of it that will help rebuild the enamel, so just a little bit about peroxide and your teeth.
Dr. Solomons: Mostly it's like a desiccant. It's a free radical, so there's that. It can desiccate the teeth. We have plenty of... I'm in a group practice, so we have people in and out of here all the time that are doing it, and people get sensitive teeth, for sure, when they do it sometimes, but it's been around for a long time. I've never seen any real long-term damage. Very, very rare that there would be any long-term problems with it. Usually, if somebody wants to whiten their teeth, one way or the other, it's usually a short course, so I'm not too... I like western medicine, and feeling good and looking good about yourself. Look at you. I'm just looking at you with this thing. It's nice to look good and feel good, so sometimes we might go out in the sun because we want a tan, and oops, we get a little burned, but that's sometimes. You've got to take the good with the bad.
Dr. Solomons: My take is it's not a hugely bad thing. Yes, you can look at food, and, oh my God, it has oxalates in it, and it's got leptons, and lectins and people wind up not eating anything, so you have to name your poison, I guess. For me, as much as I would... I have different labels of biological and holistic, and all that stuff, but I do fully embrace most of what western medicine can do, because I always say, when body parts fail, western medicine is really king.
Dr. Solomons: Let's say I broke my front tooth in half and exposed the nerve, it's really painful, it's disfiguring, and potentially it's dangerous because that's going to get infected and you're going to have an abscess right under your nose, near your brain. So no amount of acupuncture, not to throw an acupuncturist under the bus, but that has to be fixed by man-made ways, so yeah. My advice is don't break a tooth. My advice is don't get a cavity, because now you're looking at any kind of man-made material.
Dr. Solomons: The composites are much better than the amalgams, but you could look at composite's and say, oh, BPA, and then there's all this other stuff. BPA, for some reason, got the spotlight, but trust me, there's thousands of things. Even the best ones that are recommended by the IAOMT. It's all chemicals. So again, name your poison. You can have a hole in your tooth and you can get it fixed, or pulled. That's a rabbit hole. Everybody's entitled to dive down their own rabbit hole, I suppose.
Trina: Yeah. Anything else you want to add before we say thank you and let you enjoy a little bit of lunch before you get back to seeing patients?
Dr. Solomons: Just that when I saw you last spring at Paleo FX I could just... You exude health and happiness in that you want to help people, and so right away I think we connected. We just knew, before we said anything, before we had a chance to exchange too many words. And then for those of you who haven't seen it, I don't know if it's available. You might have to pay for it, but you gave a talk at Paleo FX that I would have given. Remember that talk?
Trina: Oh yeah. Uh-huh (affirmative)
Dr. Solomons: And it was amazing, so your company, I really admire your products and what you do. And thank you.
Trina: Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Dr. Scott Solomons guys. I'm going to post your website, and then somebody had a question about a gumline cavity.
Dr. Solomons: Okay.
Trina: Can you just touch on a gumline cavity? Is that?
Dr. Solomons: Yeah, so the technical name is cervical decay. The cervix is the part of the tooth by the gum line, and so when we get the biofilm of plaque it has a tendency to form mostly along the gumline. If it's left there for any length of time that colony will lower the PH, make it acidic, and the minerals can leech out. There's another thing that goes on by the gumline... Well, two other things really. People can get a recession.
Trina: Yeah, the receding gums.
Dr. Solomons: But there's a thing called an ab fraction, A-B, as in boy. Ab fraction. It's typically from grinding, clenching, and gum chewing. That constant back and forth compresses the enamel by the gums and it flakes off, so you can get recession, and what looks like a notch. Of course, the plaque love that little hole, that little notch, it's even easier, and the enamels much harder, so if you lose the enamel you might have a little bit of an underlying tooth structure, which we call dentin, exposed, and it's much more prone to decay. If you look at it under a microscope it looks like I'm holding a bunch of straws that you're looking at on end. It's a bunch of holes. So the bacteria can get in there and really stay. So gumline cavities are typical. And in smokers and people with dry mouths, I would say.
Trina: And that makes sense with that too. I made my toothpaste. I have to send you some. I don't think I sent you any.
Dr. Solomons: I have it.
Trina: You have it?
Dr. Solomons: Toothpowder or toothpaste?
Trina: Toothpaste.
Dr. Solomons: Oh, no. I have your tooth powder.
Trina: I'll send you some toothpaste.
Dr. Solomons: Thank you.
Trina: My toothpaste is made with colloidal silver because colloidal silver can actually kill the bacteria in those pockets. I'm talking to you. You know this stuff, but...
Dr. Solomons: Yeah.
Trina: So that's why I made it with colloidal silver, and then the three clays with the baking soda keeps it alkaline.
Dr. Solomons: Right. I love that. Yeah.
Trina: So I'll send some out to you.
Dr. Solomons: Thank you. Very good. That sounds great. So the way that it's going, because we're talking about, if plaque isn't bad, we're moving towards a biofilm management system, and it's interesting. There are these little devices that can be introduced under the gums, and they're using erythritol. You know, like xylitol, these sugar alcohols have bacteria static, bacteria side... So they limit germs, they kill germs and limit germs, and also, they break up biofilms. They don't let them clump together in the colonies so much so they can't concentrate, so that's maybe in the not too distant future, that'll be the norm.
Dr. Solomons: That will be nice, instead of all the scraping and all that stuff that goes on. It'll be a more gentle process because listen, if you're eating a perfect diet do you really have to brush and floss? Not really. We know that from our Paleo, but it's just like, I guess, I don't have to wash my hair and comb it. It probably would really lead to a disease, but gross. So right, I think it's nice to keep your mouth clean and fresh.
Trina: Yeah. Brushing is good, but not brushing to strip away everything and destroy everything, right?
Dr. Solomons: Yeah, exactly.
Trina: All right. Dr. Scott, thank you. It was-
Dr. Solomons: Any more questions? I have a few more minutes it there are anymore.
Trina: I know, but I want you to be able to eat. You're on your lunch hour.
Dr. Solomons: No, I ate. Are you kidding me? I ate lobster, wild-caught flounder, and broccoli. I eat great.
Trina: alk about a dental diet. What would somebody eat if they want to [crosstalk 00:40:29]
Dr. Solomons: We already spoke about... Let me mention Weston A. Price. I'm sure all your listeners out there know about Weston A. Price. He called the stuff the displacing foods of modern commerce. That was his name for processed food, but the real problem is that this dense acellular carbohydrate. Not only does it help your plaque make acids, the other thing is it helps the plaque make lipopolysaccharides, that's a fancy word for something that's a local toxin, and they wouldn't normally do that. These germs don't normally do that with a normal diet, so these things cause gingivitis. It causes swelling, and then eventually your gums can get so swollen that these lipopolysaccharides are able to penetrate into the circulation, so you have like a leaky mouth, and then-
Trina: Yeah. I call it leaky gum serum.
Dr. Solomons: Yeah. Absolutely. Then they're called endotoxins, once they get in, and it causes chronic low levels of inflammation. So number one is, limit the processed carbs. Now, unfortunately, we're hard-wired for carbohydrates. It's in our DNA. It's really an instinct to want it, it's just that it's been so highly processed it literally lights up our brain, just like heroin. Stephan Guyenet has a nice book on the neuro regulation of appetite, and he shows functional MRI's, and this stuff lights up our brains, ladies and gentleman, so it's easy for me to sit here and go, don't eat Doritos, but boy, it's hard to not touch that bowl of Doritos, because it's a brain explosion, so if you can, limit that stuff, and then, really, whole foods. Anytime you have, even if there's carbs in the food, it's locked inside of a plant cell, and this plant has a cell wall, it's fiber. We can't digest fiber, so it breaks down so slowly we're not going to get a sugar bomb, and we don't get a spike of sugar, and that's how we evolve.
Dr. Solomons: So unprocessed foods. If you're going to have carbs, that's fine, but it should really be unprocessed. Then Weston A. Price was very keen on the fat-soluble vitamins. They help with bone and teeth.
Trina: And bone is so important. We forget about the jaw bone as the supportive... And I just talked to friends of mine, the Calton's. They have a new book out about osteoporosis, but we were talking about how the dentist can actually, on x-ray and looking at your mouth, be the first to diagnose this issue.
Dr. Solomons: Absolutely. Yeah. So Vitamin A, D, and K2 are the fat-soluble vitamins that help you make certain proteins that, once you get the calcium in your body, what to do with it. There's a protein, MGLA, which calls for the calcium to come here. It's in our hard tissue, and if we don't have those fat-soluble vitamins we're not making that to the extent we should, and it's not turned on or activated unless we have Vitamin K2. Luckily Vitamin K2 is pretty easy to get. It's in animal fats, butter, dairy. It's pretty easy.
Dr. Solomons: Then there's another molecule in our soft tissues. Excuse me, I have it backwards. Osteocalcin is in our hard tissues. MGLA is in the soft tissue, and that says, get out of here calcium, I don't want you here. So you can get, the plaque in the arteries is 30% calcium, so I think it's the Dutch. In Netherlands, they're doing some studies on reversing the plaque in coronary artery disease by giving Vitamin K2, so the fat soluble vitamins to get the calcium where it needs to be. Calcium supplements, in general though, by themselves are considered a little dangerous. To be honest with you, I would try to get the calcium from the diet and real foods. Then a couple of other things that go on. When I eat an artichoke, I don't know how many people like artichokes.
Trina: I love artichokes.
Dr. Solomons: You have to scrape and discard. No, no. Guess what? Eat the whole thing. You'll be chewing and using your jaw like you're supposed to.
Trina: Well, that's the thing. We're supposed to, and we don't.
Dr. Solomons: Dr. Mike Mew. Another good doctor to look up. Dr. Mike Mew. He was actually on the question part of our panel this year at the Ancestral Health Symposium. We did another talk this year. He's about facial development. It's critical that we chew hard things. If we're not, we're not going to develop the robust jaw.
Trina: That was part of what Dr. Weston A. Price talked about too, is how, when he looked at the third world countries, the first thing you notice is their big teeth and their big jaws, and their smile, but you also have to go beyond that and notice that they're usually not obese, they don't have heart disease, they don't have diabetes, right?
Dr. Solomons: Exactly. So there's that. And the tongue posture is important because now that we're not outside playing in the dirt and all that stuff, we get allergies a lot more in the first world, and so if your child becomes a mouth breather, like this, the tongue is not on the roof of the mouth pushing the jaw up and out, and so you get a constricted arch. So the face, if I turn sideways, can you see me?
Trina: Yes.
Dr. Solomons: This part of the face is back and down, and so-
Trina: Give me a second. Do that again, because I think I was on the screen.
Dr. Solomons: So, this part of your face, your maxilla, ends up being farther back and down, and the arch, instead of it being nice and round, can get very constricted, and then there's really no room for the tongue. It never went there in the first place, and now it can't. And it can cause speech problems, mouth breathing, facial deformation, but the front... So if this is your nose, this is your maxilla and mandible. The bones that you chew with. Right behind those bones is your airway, so as those move down and back your airway narrows, and we're seeing babies that have sleep apnea. Sleep apnea you get secondary problems, ADD, anxiety, depression, all sorts of things, and probably shorter lives.
Dr. Solomons: So, again, going back to the panel this year, Dr. Kevin Boyd, he's a pediatric specialist in Chicago, he's pediatric, but he really does airway. When you identify these problems early on, it's exercises and little spacers. Little appliances that can put the face back where it belongs and take advantage of growth. We can still do that sort of thing when we're adults, but it requires orthognathic surgery. It requires braces and surgery to move the jaws. The results are great. People end up looking beautiful, and they can breathe, and they can function, and then it's a wonderful thing, but it's all about catching it early. So, chewing hard foods is very important, and breastfeeding, breastfeeding, breastfeeding, breastfeeding. Did I say it enough? Breastfeeding.
Trina: Say it again.
Dr. Solomons: It's the perfect food. It's got everything a baby needs, and of course, that suckling mechanism causes the face to go up and out, and that's a beautiful face, that's a beautiful child and will grow into a beautiful person.
Trina: It's also protective of your sinus cavities as well. I know a lot of people, when you don't have good bacteria, the same bacteria in your mouth is probably in your nose, and then that goes to your sinuses as well, so frequent sinus infections is also another thing people suffer with when they have issues with their mouth and jaw.
Dr. Solomons: Exactly. Exactly.
Trina: All right. I think we've taken up almost all of your lunch. Let me see if there're any questions.
Dr. Solomons: Okay. Yeah, I probably have a few more minutes.
Trina: Okay. So let me see what other questions we had on our list that I can go into. We talked about most of these. Let's talk a little bit about systemic disease. There's a connection, and I don't know if you've heard this connection or if I mentioned it to you when we met. And I always say it's death by design. Big cosmos, death by design. The more havoc they can wreck inside your body the better, but I read an article recently about how fluoride can open your blood-brain barrier channel. You get leaky gums. You get leaky gums you get leaky gut, and the next thing that happens is you get leaky brain syndrome, and that fluoride can open the gateway into your brain, and if you're using aluminum deodorants the aluminum can leech into your brain. They've also found the bacteria that causes gum disease in the brains of people with Alzheimer's.
Dr. Solomons: Yes, I actually have a blog... Let me see. I'm looking behind you. Let me see.
Trina: Do you have a blog about that?
Dr. Solomons: I do. Let me see if I can... I've got it here somewhere. So what they found... Actually this was an amazing study. What they found in the brains of human beings, this is obviously post mortem, they used fancy shmancy equipment and the used a variety of them, so it wasn't just one. That's PCR. What they can do is amplify the DNA of the bacteria that they find, and if they have a little bit they can amplify it and go, "Oh, we know what germ this is." So p gingivalis is the germ that causes gum disease. They're finding it in the plaques, the neurofibrillary tangles in the brain, and... This is all one study. This is incredible that a study did all this. What they determined was that p gingivalis makes something, a variety of things, called gingipains. What a word. Gingipains. Like pain. And they cause problems with the neurons and the glial cells, and all that. It gets better.
Dr. Solomons: Now they did not do this on humans. They went to rats and or mice. They found, I don't remember the names, two chemotherapeutic agents that can destroy the gingipains, and actually have a better outcome.
Trina: Wow.
Dr. Solomons: Now, better that you don't get the p gingivalis, and the aluminum, and the fluoride opening up the leaky brain, but there's hope for those who are now suffering. It's a terrible, terrible disease. I've seen many people go through a decade of it. It's pretty terrible. So if there's any way to reverse it there's hope. All from this one study. It's somewhere on my blog.
Trina: I'll look for it.
Dr. Solomons: I did it relatively recently. I thought I had it holed up here. Let's see. I can't find it.
Trina: What is your website for your blog?
Dr. Solomons: It's just drscottsolomons.com. Oh here it is. It's September 16th. A new study shows gum disease may cause Alzheimer's Disease.
Trina: Oh, I love it. I'll post your website too. You have so many great articles.
Dr. Solomons: Thanks. It's not for my health, it's for everybody else's health. I used to have this idea that I'm so comfortable one on one in my room. I've been doing it, it's nice. I get such wonderful relationships with my patients, but I'm not getting any younger, and there's a lot of people out there I can help. So I said, "All right, the internet." For a guy who's approaching 60 I'm getting a little more comfortable. I maintain the website. I do all the research on my own. It takes a while, but I feel like I can, hopefully, reach other people and help people help themselves, really, because if you're the best dental patient in the world you're only the dental office two times a year for a cleaning. We spend an hour, so that leaves 8,758 hours of a given year that you're not in my office. You think I'm causing you not to have a cavity or gum disease, and all the other things that go along with it? No.
Dr. Solomons: Unfortunately it's really up to individuals to educate themselves and find the motivation, and you do a great job. You walk the walk, you look fantastic, so you're going to motivate people to hopefully want to take care of themselves, and I'm trying to be a little bit like you.
Trina: No, I was going to say. I think that's funny, and that's why we connected so well is because you walk the walk and talk the talk too. You're very healthy and health-minded, but more importantly, you want to share the message that you can be healthy, and it's not really that hard, right?
Dr. Solomons: On paper, it's not hard. I will tell you that I have a lot of patients, and friends and family that cannot stay away from those troublesome foods, and it's not that they're weak people, it's that those foods are drugs.
Trina: They're drugs. Right.
Dr. Solomons: Their brain lights up and so we have some people that need the gastric bypass, and I'm not saying don't have one, because they were probably going to die of all the morbidities, so it gets that drastic, that on paper, just stop eating Doritos and sugar pops, but it's very, very difficult for some people. It really is. And my heart goes out to those people. If you have to get the gastric, if that's the last resort, it should be the last resort, but you've got to do it, because you'll be dead. However, bypassing the mechanism of absorbing nutrients, the mouth suffers greatly from that.
Trina: Oh yeah.
Dr. Solomons: Most obese people already have numerous nutrient deficiencies. Again, this on my website. It only, actually, gets worse when you have the bypass, because it's specifically making you not absorb nutrients. That's why you lose weight, so it's got another edge to that sword. It's a lot of good. You lose the weight and you're going to live, but it becomes much more difficult to maintain the teeth. So the message is simple, but for a lot of people, to actually execute it, it can be hard.
Trina: I totally agree with you. It seems really simple. I think one of the best things people can do is change what they're using. Don't you think? Like what you're cleaning your mouth with. It doesn't need to be another toxic chemical, and at least get that environment healthy while you're brushing your teeth, so hopefully, you can create saliva.
Dr. Solomons: Yes.
Trina: That's my whole point. I want to provide the products that create that oral wellness so that your saliva can actually protect you for 24 hours. And when you eat the bad stuff, because I'm not an angel. I'll eat some of the bad stuff too.
Dr. Solomons: Me too.
Trina: At least I know that my saliva's healthy and is going to wash that away, neutralize the acids, remineralize if it needs to, and help reestablish my microbiome. Did I say it wrong?
Dr. Solomons: I totally agree with that approach. If you had to take the one thing. What's the one thing? I look up to Dr. Pearl Mutter, with his grain brain. One thing. He has a whole book. There's a lot more than one thing in that book, but one thing. And that's a smart guy.
Trina: Very smart. Yup.
Dr. Solomons: And then you have Dr. Davis. Wheat belly. One thing. Give up wheat. So if there's one big thing that I would say.
Trina: Dr. Solomons' one thing.
Dr. Solomons: Carb mouth.
Trina: What is it?
Dr. Solomons: Carb mouth. Carb mouth. Get rid of those dense acellular processed carbohydrates, because Weston A. Price, not only were they the foods of modern commerce, they were displacing foods of modern commerce, because the processed stuff displaces the nutrient dense stuff. That's a problem, because the nutrients are the building blocks that you need. The raw calories. The carbs and the sugars are just the electricity or the gasoline to run the engine, but if you're building a building, yeah, you have to put gasoline in the machinery, but you need a steady supply of really good quality building materials, and that's the nutrients. If they delivered nothing but gasoline to a building site you wouldn't end up with a building.
Trina: Right.
Dr. Solomons: And that's a problem.
Trina: You're absolutely right.
Dr. Solomons: It's carbs. Those carbs, just too much.
Trina: Too much. I know. All right. Thank you.
Dr. Solomons: Okay.
Trina: Thank you, thank you so much. And we'll talk again, because I want to talk about pregnancy and baby, so we'll talk again.
Dr. Solomons: All right. That sounds great. Thanks everybody for listening. I hope you got something out of it, and Trina, you're the best. Love ya.
Trina: Thanks Dr. Solomons. Back at yah. Bye.
Dr. Solomons: Talk to you later.
To learn more about Dr. Solomons practice, visit his website here: https://drscottsolomons.com
