In the past several decades, researchers have discovered so much about mouth health and the hundreds of links between poor oral health and chronic inflammatory conditions that can cripple or debilitate our bodily health. You may think you inherited good or bad teeth, or you may believe your mouth is healthy because you only have a few fillings or a good-looking smile. But the truth is that lack of cavities is not an accurate indicator of mouth health. If you’re like countless others, you may have been told that you have no power to change your mouth health, or you may think mouth health depends on flossing or regular cleanings at the dentist. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
Mouth health is determined by a delicate biochemical balance that is under our own control each day, for better or worse. Contrary to what you may believe, not all bacteria in your mouth are bad. There are hundreds of good bacteria in a healthy mouth, and the key is to have mouth bacteria in a healthy balance, so they protect your teeth and gums from invasion by harmful, pathogenic ones that can cause plaque, cavities, and gum disease. When certain mouth conditions favor bad bacteria or when certain habits or conditions damage good bacteria, you can start to have dental problems.
It may seem radical for you to view bacteria as beneficial to mouth health or to see your mouth as a living, evolving environment that requires your care and gentle daily maintenance. However, when you digest this new paradigm, it will help you understand why killing bacteria indiscriminately is harmful, why even regular professional cleanings cannot promote long-term or sustainable mouth health, and that unnecessary dental cleanings may, in fact, be potentially harmful.
In the past twenty years, dentists, encouraged by marketing gurus, have promoted the idea of six-month cleanings and marketed this to patients as a way to examine their patients’ mouths and find damage to fix. Few patients realize that this damage is caused by harmful mouth bacteria and that fixing cavities and undergoing dental cleanings does not eradicate the disease problem. We know from studies that high levels of health-damaging, gum-disease pathogens are prevalent in the mouths of many young adults and that almost all seniors in the United States are infected. Yet, because gum disease does not necessarily have any symptoms, few people know they have such harmful bacteria in their mouths. Unfortunately, our current system of X-rays and visual examination does not adequately gauge or tell you the true health of your mouth.
The positive side of this news is that mouth damage usually occurs slowly and progressively, and it can be stopped, controlled, and even reversed. To help their patients avoid dental disease and limit the need for treatment, dentists need a better way to measure mouth health. Currently, for example, there is no way to take precise measurements that could alert us to negative health changes, so we can know before a cavity or gum damage occurs.
Waiting for a cavity to become visible is simply waiting for the bacterial imbalance in an unhealthy mouth to sufficiently damage a tooth to the point at which a cavity will form. Recovery and reversal will always be more difficult after this damage has happened, and it would be a relatively simple process before any visual damage. I always knew there was a better way, and fortunately, with an exposure to Swiss dentistry early in my career, followed by many years of experience and study in a variety of different dental disciplines, I discovered it. My passion for preventing cavities and gum disease was accelerated as more information emerged about the many connections between oral and systemic health. This led me to become a founding member of the American Academy for Oral Systemic Health (AAOSH).
In September 2015, I attended an AAOSH meeting and entered their first Oral Systemic Health Challenge. The idea of the challenge was to use the best methods available to gauge mouth health and look for signs of inflammation in the arteries and blood of the attendees. The mouth test was a salivary sample that showed titers of harmful mouth bacteria, sonar testing that illustrated plaque in the carotid arteries, and blood samples that gave clues about systemic or body inflammation. This test was for the dentists, hygienists, and others attending the meeting, health professionals who all value oral health and understand the potentially life-threatening impact of periodontal disease.
The test results were shocking, with most scores averaging only 70 percent out of 100 percent, which was the number allotted for a healthy mouth with no pathogens and no sign of body inflammation or carotid artery plaque. Think about this: These dental professionals who carefully follow the recommendations of the American Dental Association (ADA) were able to achieve only 70 percent out of 100, and most were completely unaware of the many pathogens lurking in their mouths and the plaque in their carotid arteries. Some learned that their carotid artery “age” was as much as twenty-five years older than their chronological age. There was one score—yes, mine—that was virtually perfect at 98 percent.
The reason I mention this is to ask: Why would one score be so different from all the others? I believe that anyone who wanted to do so could use the oral health methods I have used for the past thirty years, and they would develop a similar level of mouth health. I have followed specific strategies designed to nurture a healthy mouth, and I have been tested and found to have a bacterially diverse mouth ecology that has protected my teeth from cavities, my gums from disease, and my body from systemic inflammation and coronary artery plaque. I even wonder if, because my oral care system does not call for flossing, it has protected me from bacteria that could otherwise have entered my blood through gum wounds and potentially deposited in my carotid arteries.
My last dental cleaning was over thirty years ago, and my children have had infrequent cleanings, yet they have all enjoyed terrific mouth health. It is obvious to me that periodic professional cleanings are not essential for mouth health. I would even go so far as to suggest that, for someone with a healthy mouth, professional cleanings can potentially disrupt healthy bacteria and remove a necessary protein layer that is part of the natural mechanism protecting teeth and gums. When your mouth is healthy and disease free, there is no reason for a dentist to aggressively “clean” and disrupt this protective layer, except that it has become an accepted part of modern dentistry’s routine protocol.
Please know I am not anti-dentistry. As a dentist, I believe that, if a patient has deposits of infected plaque and calculus, or debris around their teeth, professional cleanings offer them support and will temporarily remove some of the burden caused by this infection. Furthermore, regular cleanings may be a good maintenance system for those who do not care about the health of their mouths and do not want to take responsibility for improving it.
However, it should be obvious that dentistry’s protocols are built around a disease model, and this is something I wish to challenge. If you have a healthy mouth and do not need a cleaning, why should we promote regular cleanings that can be costly and may upset or damage your healthy mouth ecology? What if, instead of undergoing a cleaning every six months, you could be examined for any signs of a negative change in your mouth health well before any visible damage? What if you could improve your mouth ecology and avoid cavities and gum disease completely and forever? Well, I believe you can. And in the chapters that follow, I will show and explain the strategies that I use.
The oral care products I recommend are part of a wider strategic plan to promote a healthy mouth ecology that will combat cavities and other problems. My oral care plan can benefit anyone with sensitivity, gum disease, recession, and bad breath when it is combined with strategies for sinus, nasal, and digestive health. The mouth care products I have recommended and used for over thirty years are old-fashioned, over-the-counter rinses and toothpaste that are generally regarded as less effective than the fancy, more expensive, professional-grade, or heavily advertised choices. Later, we will discuss why new stronger or “improved” products may be less effective and why, in some cases, they may even be at the center of your dental problems by causing an imbalance in your mouth’s ecology.
Oral care products are only one part of my oral health strategies; however, they are a good starting place. My Complete Mouth Care System features a method of using a specific group of products that have allowed thousands of people to develop, maintain, and sustain amazing oral health for decades. The system evolved as I was working in a busy dental office, questioning patients as I examined their mouth health, because I wanted to know which mouth care products they used. Over several years, I noticed remarkable patterns and that those using one kind of toothpaste experienced better mouth health. Conversely, I noticed certain products and habits seemed to be causing gum recession and sensitivity, bad breath, or broken teeth. Innumerable patients and clients have used my specific system of care. Often it is necessary to also address their immune system health and daily habits and change their toothbrushing techniques to stimulate circulation in the tissues around their teeth. Only when all these strategies are combined will mouth health improve to its highest level, which will be visible as your teeth become strong and shiny and your mouth feels fresh and comfortable all the time, with gums that do not recede, feel sore, or bleed.
Thousands of people have used my strategies to regain their mouth health and witnessed amazing results. There is no doubt that the most successful were conscientious people who followed my directions carefully. The powerful part of these results is that they introduce a controversial idea: You can control your own dental future, become empowered, and experience oral health success that will reduce fear, dental expenses, and the need for ongoing dental treatments. What we do daily, year after year, creates the biggest impact on our general health, and this is the same truth applied to mouth health: Daily care and routines drive health or disease and will determine the outcome for our teeth and gums, for better or worse.
For decades, I’ve taught my method of mouth care through seminars, workshops, articles, blogs, and podcasts. I’ve witnessed incredible success stories as cavities vanished and periodontal disease disappeared, sometimes in a matter of weeks! Some of these stories are showcased in my first book, Kiss Your Dentist Goodbye, but you’ll find many more here. In Mouth Care Comes Clean, you will learn more about the connection between your mouth and systemic health, as well as the impact of diet, nutrition, circulation, and your immune system for ultimate mouth health.
Anyone who has read my first book knows I am respectful of my profession and was a founding member of AAOSH. I passionately believe that oral health is an essential component of good general health. I was an active board member of AAOSH when I published Kiss Your Dentist Goodbye, which was my effort to interpret dental science so that patients could be empowered to know which habits and products could help them prevent cavities and gum disease and even reverse those problems. At the time of publishing, the book was viewed with skepticism by peers who had never learned that teeth can remineralize or heal themselves. Today, however, most dentists and hygienists talk about remineralization, and many recommend my system of care and have witnessed cavities reverse and dramatic improvements occur in their patients’ mouths.
I wrote this book to share the most recent science about mouth health and empower you with some additional knowledge that can transform and elevate your dental health to a state where you may no longer need any dental treatments or even cleanings. As we discovered in the AAOSH Oral Systemic Health Challenge, dental and medical professionals using the well-promoted routines that focus on brushing, flossing, and dental cleanings could not achieve ultimate oral health, and many of their results showed signs of systemic inflammation, which is a serious problem for general health. This suggests that our standard recommendations for oral care are not sufficiently comprehensive or effective.
It is an unfortunate fact that 95 percent of Americans, even those who meticulously follow this traditional dental protocol recommended by the ADA, end up with cavities, fillings, implants, lost teeth, and gum damage or disease, which generate ever-increasing dental expenses for these people, particularly older adults. New advances in oral microbiology have changed our understanding of oral health.
My belief is that successful mouth care requires a three-part strategy that will:
1.Balance your mouth biology to create a healthy oral ecosystem
2.Promote maximum mineralization of your teeth
3.Support your digestive health to maximize the absorption of nutrients and minerals that support saliva and nourish your immune system, which aids tissue healing and regeneration
When you have a healthy mouth ecosystem, it can support as many as nine hundred different kinds of bacteria, and so your fight for oral health is actually not to eliminate bacteria but to control a very few—probably around twenty—that multiply in specific conditions to cause oral damage and disease. This means that most of the bacteria in your mouth are harmless and even beneficial. Therefore, instead of using therapies that aim to strip or eradicate mouth bacteria and its associated biofilm, I will teach you how to cultivate a sustainable, healthy mouth and enjoy the benefits of this ecosystem as it works to protect your teeth, gums, and even your general health.
This new approach can help you avoid many of the costly dental restorative treatments and minimize much of the accompanying fear, pain, and inconvenience. This does not mean you stop having dental visits. However, it does mean they should be different, with a focus on ways to determine and learn if your mouth is becoming healthier. Your personal dental health is within your control. Regardless of your genetics or past experiences, you can take charge of your mouth health, and you can start today—even if you already have fillings, have been told that you are a hopeless case, or think your teeth are too crowded or beyond help.
I firmly believe that anyone can improve their oral health, but it does require effort and good daily habits. However, the benefits from following my Complete Mouth Care System are vast: A truly healthy mouth requires minimal maintenance. You may need an occasional cleaning, but if you follow this program carefully, you can avoid the continuum of ongoing filling repairs that turn into root canals, crowns, bridges, or implants. Please know I am not suggesting you avoid going to your dentist. Instead, I encourage you to find an ethical and caring one who is happy to help monitor your mouth health, give you accurate reviews to build your confidence, and let you know that your efforts are taking you in a good direction that will allow you to enjoy and maintain a healthy mouth for the rest of your life.
In the pages ahead, I will share the oral care strategies that I believe can help you develop and sustain a healthier mouth. I also will point out the dangers of using certain oral care products and the habits that can disrupt healthy bacteria and upset the mouth ecology that we need to protect our teeth and gums at every age. The sooner you start, the sooner you will stop any dental problems and deterioration in your mouth. I look forward to showing you how to achieve low-maintenance dental health with my easy-to-follow plan. If you’re ready, let’s begin!