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Season 4, Episode 5: Your Mouth is the KEY to your health with Rachaele Carver-Morin

By Jodi Cohen

Promotional image for the "Essential Alchemy" podcast featuring Jodi Cohen, NTP, with text, "The Ancient Art of Healing Naturally" and "Your Mouth is the KEY to your health! with Rachaele Carver-Morin." The image shows photos of Jodi Cohen and Rachaele Carver-Morin.

Join Jodi with her friend and biological dentist Rachel Carver as they explore the crucial role of oral health in overall well-being. Rachel shares her insights on the key differences between conventional and biological dentistry.

  • Tune in to learn more about:
  • The difference between germ theory and terrain theory in dentistry
  • How the mouth reflects the health of the entire body
  • The role of parathyroid hormone, minerals, and antioxidants in tooth and bone health
  • How toxicity and inflammation can shift the oral microbiome
  • The connection between heavy metals, candida, and parasites
  • The potential issues with root canal procedures

This episode provides valuable insights for anyone interested in taking a more integrative, holistic approach to dental and overall health.

If you liked this episode, please consider sharing a positive review or subscribing. You can also find more information and resources on Jodi Cohen’s website, http://vibrantblueoils.com.

Learn more about Rachaele here! https://carverfamilydentistry.com/

About Rachaele Carver-Morin

I graduated from UCONN School of Dental Medicine in 2003 then practiced in Boston for three years before moving back to my hometown in Western MA. In 2009 I opened my own practice and over the last 13 years my practice has evolved from a general practice to a holistic biologic practice. In 2016, I received my health coaching certificate from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. The same year I became a certified ozone practitioner and in 2020 became a board certified Naturopathic and Biologic Dentist. I continue to educate myself about the most holistic way to practice and prevent invasive dentistry. I lecture locally and nationally to dentists, practitioners and lay people to spread the message of whole body dentistry.

If you’re enjoying the Essential Alchemy podcast, please leave Jodi a review on iTunes.

 

Jodi Cohen: Hello and welcome to Essential Alchemy. Alchemy is defined as the power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way. My hope is that the information in this podcast can help you transform your mood, your energy, physical health, or even some dots to help you shift your mental or emotional state. I’m your host, Jodi Cohen, a bestselling author, award-winning journalist, functional practitioner, lifelong learner, and founder of Vibrant Blue Oils, a company that sells proprietary blends of high-quality, organic, or wildcrafted essential oil remedies designed to help you return to your ideal mental, physical, and emotional state. You can find out more about me and my company at vibrantblueoils.com. And with that, let’s get started with today’s episode.

Hi, I’m your host, Jodi Cohen, and I’m so excited to be joined by my dear friend Rachel Carver, a biological dentist who’s going to help us understand the importance of biological dentistry and the very important component that your mouth plays in your health. So welcome, Rachel.

Rachaele Carver-Morin: Thank you for having me, Jodi. Happy to be here.

Jodi Cohen: It’s always fun to connect with you, and I’m hoping that for our listeners who don’t really understand how biological dentistry differs from conventional dentistry if you could explain that a little bit.

Rachael Carver-Morin: Absolutely. So I was traditionally trained 20 years ago to believe that fluoride was the end all be all. We just had to kill all the bad stuff and then everything would be great. And through my own health journey, I suffered from eczema all over my hands after my second daughter was born. And when the conventional doctors just wanted to give me steroids for the rest of my life, it just kind of made me pause. It didn’t sit right with me. And so as I was going through my own health journey, I started to think about dentistry a little bit differently and started thinking, well, geez, we sure do use a lot of toxic substances in dentistry. Is there a better way? And so that kind of propelled me to do some more research and some more learning and got introduced only a few years ago now to this concept of biologic holistic dentistry, which really rides on the whole idea of terrain theory.

Rachael Carver-Morin: So most traditional medicine and dentists, we think about germ theory where there’s a bad bug, we need to kill it and then we’ll fix everything. But we know you could be getting a cold laying right next to your husband and the husband never gets it. If it’s all about the bug, that doesn’t make sense, right? And I think in the last few years we see that this virus that’s out there doesn’t affect us all in the same way. So again, it’s not about that particular microbe, it’s about the body that this microbe inhabits. So instead of just trying to kill all that gum disease and cut out all that decay from cavities, how can we create an environment in the mouth that will just be resistant to disease? And that’s really the key to health. Obviously it’s much easier said than done, but there are some really, really great ways.

If you go to the conventional dentist, it’s kind of like drill fill and bill. That’s what we kind of say. By no means do my colleagues do it maliciously or with any bad intent. Obviously we all get into healthcare because we want to help people. But again, it’s a different philosophy, it’s a different way of thinking about what causes it. And I’ve always been a really curious person. So after I was doing all this research and studying that, I would think, well, why is that tooth having a cavity? Why does that person have gum disease? It’s not that all of a sudden I swallow this bad bacteria and now my gums are bleeding and I’m losing bone. That’s not what happened. And people will say to me all the time, well, my mother, my father had gum disease, so inevitably I’m going to get it.

And there is certainly genetic susceptibility to all types of disease. However, what we inherit is maybe the enzyme doesn’t work as effectively as the detox enzyme. And so when we take in toxins if we can’t detox them, then our whole body becomes more acidic, and then there’s a whole cascade of events that affects our immune system and then can manifest in the mouth. The really exciting thing I think as a dentist is that the mouth is a mirror to the rest of the body. So in Ayurvedic Chinese medicine, we look at the tongue, the texture of the tongue, the color of the tongue, the shape of the tongue, all lets us know what’s happening in the rest of the, I had a new patient this morning and he had cracks all along his teeth or his tongue. And so I was asking him about digestive issues because in Chinese medicine where we see cracks all over the tongue, that is a sign of digestive weakness.

And then also depending on the location of the tongue, tells us about certain organs. So he had a red tip of his tongue, which is heart. So there are no blood pressure issues. So talking about that, and a lot of times the patient will be like, they list their medical history, I’m fine. And then you start looking at these things in the mouth and all of a sudden they’re like, oh, well actually I have reflux and actually I have this and that. So again, and there’s in the naturopathic world, they’ll say 80% of disease begins in the mouth, which is something that’s really important to realize because we know even Hippocrates, like way back BC said, all disease begins in the gut, and the very beginning of the gut is the mouth.

Rachael Carver-Morin: And we forget that the same oral, the tissue inside of our mouth is the same tissue that lines the entire digestive tract.

So again, that’s why we can really get a good mirror of the whole rest of the body. So if we have decay happening, I just read a really interesting article actually about the parathyroid hormone. So the other thing to know is that every tooth is its own organ. We kind of think of teeth as just

what we need to chew our food, but in fact, every tooth has a blood supply, a nerve supply, a lymph supply. And in a normal healthy body, we’re going to take that blood flow from the systemic circulation and we’re going to deposit the calcium and the phosphorus and all those minerals into the outside of our teeth. So that keeps our enamel nice and white, nice and strong. Now, if we have a toxic insult or we have mild chronic infections from say, Lyme or mold or whatever it may be, the fluid flows.

So when we get oxidative stress, right, call them ROS reactive oxygen species, which is just something that happens anytime we have toxicity or inflammation in our body, those substances can actually turn off our parathyroid hormone. Parathyroid hormone is really important for initiating that fluid flow. So when we turn that off, we kind of get a negative pressure backflow. So now the fluid flow is reversing. So now we’re pulling minerals out of our teeth into circulation because we need to keep a pretty neutral pH in our body for health. Our blood has a very small window margin of what the pH can be, and we need minerals in order to create neutrality. So because our food supply is so lacking in nutrients today, and if you’re not getting it in your diet, the minerals are going to have to come from your teeth and your bones.

And so when those things get leached out of our enamel, now our teeth are softer, they’re more susceptible to the normal bacteria and acids that are in our mouth. And again, that backflow of pressure can pull that bacteria inside the tooth. So what I’m thinking now, when I have a person with decay, not only do I want them to have a diet or a supplement with minerals, I want them to be on the SA soluble vitamins. So that’s vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin K, vitamin E two, but that’s not as crucial to the teeth. So D and K in combination with minerals, that’s how we create good healthy bones and enamel. But then thinking about this oxidative reaction that’s happening, that’s also attuned to flu, makes me think, okay, we also need some antioxidants on more which vitamin A. Vitamin A is a good antioxidant, but the other big one is vitamin C.

So I want all my patients to also be on some good vitamin C and that K two, that’s a really important, I didn’t realize that it was a quinolone, which is very similar to coq 10. coq 10 is really important for the mitochondria, making sure that we have good immune defense and good energy production in ourselves. So K two helps with that PTH.

Rachael Carver-Morin: So again, when I’m thinking about the cavity, I’m not thinking about fluoride, I’m thinking something’s happening internally. We need to think about those kind of supplements. So that’s kind of decay, as I said, with gum disease. Then I’m thinking, okay, so what has caused the whole shift in the environment to have this more prevalent of this bad bacteria? And what we’re learning is that anytime again, we have that toxicity in our body, the environment is shifting. So I talked at the conference about being hangry when we’re not said, well, we’re hangry, we’re not ourselves, we’re angry, we act differently.

And so that’s literally what happens. We have these normal bacteria in our mouth, and when there are not enough nutrients because of our poor diet, because of toxicity and inflammation, they literally, these bacteria literally change forms. So we call it ple amorphism. And so they ple morph into this bacteria that’s able to live in this less oxygenated, less nutrient-wrench environment. It’s very similar to what happens in cancer. Cancer we know is a lack of oxygenation. And actually there’s been a lot of studies too showing how there’s a shift in bacterial populations in cancer patients. Again, these organisms are so vital to our health, that bacteria is vital to our immune system. And so anything that’s changing in the body, the whole environment changes. Then the whole population of bacteria changes too. Then you have these more dangerous or pathogenic bacteria that cause tissue destruction, and it’s really our own immune system. So you can think of gum disease as an autoimmune condition because the body’s response to this bacteria is to degrade away the bone and the gum tissue. The definition…

Jodi Cohen: I want to hover on that. No one’s ever said it that way before, and that’s so powerful. Gum disease is an autoimmune condition. So it’s your immune system that’s withering away at your gums to get better access to the bones, to get the minerals.

Rachael Carver-Morin: No. So what’s happening is because of these bad bacteria, they’re stimulating your immune system to come and try to clean up the inflammation. So the bacteria release all these cytokines, which are basically little signals saying, Hey, there’s a problem up here. Come and help me out. And when over. So inflammation is normal. We need inflammation. Every time you get a cut, it gets red and it’s hot because that’s the body’s way to heal. But we know we have the chronic disease when that inflammation doesn’t get turned off, normally it’s we have an injury, the body cleans it up, and we’re done. But it’s something like an autoimmune condition. That inflammation signal never gets cut off because that toxin is still there, the infection is still there. We can’t get rid of a source, and therefore that chronic inflammation is what causes bone destruction.

Jodi Cohen: Okay.

Rachael Carver-Morin: So your body’s, that’s what we want to do. We know autoimmunity stems from the gut. That’s why when we’re thinking gum disease, we’re thinking what’s happening internally? Is there a leaky gut? Are there parasites or mold or heavy metals? The other thing, one of the big sources of heavy metals in our mouth are those what we call silver fillings. Silver fillings are over 50% mercury. And were told, I was told 20 years ago in school, well, that’s okay because once you condense it all in the mouth, it’s fine. It’s stable, you’re not going to release mercury. But there’s a lot of evidence, videos even showing that we do release the mercury vapor every time we chew if we have something hot. I just read a recent article about fluoride. Fluoride increases the corrosion of those silver fillings, therefore releasing more of those heavy metals into your lungs and therefore getting into the rest of the tissue too.

Heavy metals go hand in hand with candida. So if you’re having a hard time with yeast, may want to look in your mouth. Are there a lot of amalgam fillings in there? And heavy metals and parasites go hand in hand too. I know that’s really what ended up being the root of my problem was parasites. And thanks to cell core and their parasite products, I was able to eradicate a 10- year problem in only two months. So it really, really important to see there’s all these connections. And for 10 years I have always been trying to treat symptoms, and that’s how most of us are trained. We treat symptoms. And that gets us only so far because again, we’re not And symptoms, it’s really interesting too in the mouth that we have so many things going on in the mouth that can lead to systemic problems. So let’s talk about root canals.

Dentistry is the only profession that leaves a dead organ in the body and any kind of dead tissue in the body is going to harbor. Viruses, parasites, mold lines, you name it. Because what happens with a tooth, it’s great. And it was so wonderful, the advent of root canal therapy because we’re able to keep the tooth, there’s nothing worse than losing a tooth and having a gap and not being able to chew as well. So the root canal systems, and most of the time you have a root canal and you feel great, you feel nothing. However, now with the advent of 3D x-rays, we can see that there are infections that kind of stay in those root canal teeth. And the reason I actually had a patient this morning and he had had a root canal six months ago by the specialist and said, well, he still has a draining fistula right there.

I said, well, there’s no way we can guarantee to get everything out of a root canal system, although the main canal goes straight down the middle of the tooth, there are thousands of little offshoots, think about capillaries, and there’s no way that you can fully irrigate all of those areas out. And so when you do a root canal taking out the nerve and you’re cutting off blood supply. So he asked me, why can’t you just give me antibiotics? And I said, well if you don’t have any soft tissue swelling. So the antibiotic has no way to get into the tooth because there’s no blood supply anymore. So we use ozone therapy for him, and ozone is a wonderful modality.

Rachael Carver-Morin: Most biologic dentists will use this, and it’s antibacterial, antiviral, anti parasitic antifungal, and it works on contact with the zero side effects, with no contraindication. So it’s an amazing tool, and these are the things that biologic dentists are going to work with.

We have all these different tools that help us help the body heal without all the negative consequences. I’ve just recently started using a lot of homeopathy like Arnica and Hypericum, all these things to try to avoid people needing ibuprofen because the long-term anti-inflammatories really tax our liver and our kidneys, which are already totally overwhelmed in our toxic world today. So that’s the thing about a root canal. It may feel fine, but then we take these X-rays or let’s say you’re a patient who’s been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue. I kind of see those diagnoses as we’re not really sure what’s wrong with you. So yeah, catch up, right? Your mitochondria are not functioning properly. So we have pain. We’re tired all the time. What’s affecting the mitochondria? What’s the toxin? What’s the infection? I truly believe that every disease comes down to toxins and infections.

Jodi Cohen: No, I agree with you. I’m curious, as we’re talking about these wisdom teeth, they cannot wait to yank them out of our children. What are the repercussions of that?

Rachael Carver-Morin: That’s one of the biggest concerns we see with what we call cavitation lesions. So if you have a tooth extracted and the dentist does not remove all of the ligament or there’s any bacteria or anything left behind bone may not fill in properly. And this cavitation lesion, it’s most common in a wisdom tooth extraction. That’s the most common teeth that are extracted all the time from all of us. And again, so if that doesn’t fill all the way back in, what you’re left with is this little pocket in the bone, another place that parasites and lime and all those goodies love to hide because again, there’s no blood supply. So the immune system can’t see them. But what happens is their byproducts, right, their endotoxins, we call them basically their…

Jodi Cohen: Pooping product

Rachael Carver-Morin: That does leach out into our lymph. Let’s talk about that a little bit, right? So one of the reasons why a lot of dental problems can cause systemic problems because we said, right, the lymph drains from the face down the neck into all our lymph nodes. What is the big nerve that runs down here? It’s our vagus nerve. Anybody listens to Jodi? We know all about vagus nerve toxicity, so it’s dental toxins which caused that. Imagine you’ve got this infection in a whim tooth area right here. Where’s it going to drain? It’s going to drain right here.

Rachael Carver-Morin: That’s one of the reasons I love Jodi’s parasympathetic oil. I use it all the time with so many, not just like my nervous patients when they come in because that’s an interesting thing before you have an extraction. If you’re one of those super, super anxious patients and you’re in that sympathetic flight all the time, I already know that that person’s not going to heal as well.

So a lot of biologic dentists who do a lot of these kinds of surgeries, they may sedate you, which is great because you want to be in that parasympathetic mode in order to heal if you’re amped on. So that’s why I’m using oil. And these are things that patients, it’s nothing invasive. It’s so easy. Dab a little oil behind your ear, take the little sugar pellets of some of the homeopathic we use anything, just get you into that right thing. Otherwise, you’re more likely to have these consequences. And so if that base nerve is infected, all of your digestive organs are affected. And we, since most disease starts in the gut, if we don’t have a well-functioning vagus nerve, then we have all sorts of problems. So that’s a big, big, big consequence. And that’s really where a lot of the problems with oral infections lead to problems is they affect that vagus nerve.

And then again, every time you’re swallowing, you’re swallowing the bugs into the gut, which then causes disruption in the gut. So it’s kind of like the chicken or the egg, is it the gut inflammation that causes the oral problems or the oral problems? And I’m not sure there’s a real good answer. I think they just go hand in hand with everything. It’s the same blood flowing through our whole body. So we want our gut bacteria, and if our gut is in good shape, our mouth is in good shape. If our mouth is in good shape, our gut will be in good shape. So traditionally for gum disease, we would, okay, we’re going to numb you up. We’re going to scrape those teeth, we’re going to give you an antibacterial rinse, and send you on your way. What we do instead, we may do some of that deep cleaning.

We’re going to irrigate you with the oz native water. We’re going to give you binders, something like biotoxin binder, which we have the patient open up and swish, and that’s going to help bind up some of those toxins we talked about that those bugs may be giving off. We’re going to give probiotics because we want, again, what we want to do is not necessarily kill the bad, but create a really healthy environment so that the good continue to colonize and overcrowd the bad. So it’s mineral. So it’s thinking about the gut, thinking about the liver. And when you do that, you’re going to, and I’ve been using, I did kind of a mini-study using saliva samples before and after my treatment, and I was getting just this, okay? Because traditionally when you do the saliva sample, okay, now put ’em on metronidazole and all these antibiotics, which I stopped doing it for a while because I said it.

Rachael Carver-Morin: One, it’s expensive. Two, it doesn’t matter what the bugs are, they’re giving the exact same recommendation. And as learning more about holistic care, I was like, I don’t want to be given antibiotics because I’m destroying a huge part of the person’s immune system. So I was so excited to see that just using these products, I was getting, I think one of my first pains, 60% reduction in only four weeks of the bad bugs. The really…

Jodi Cohen: Anecdotal, I don’t have cavities, but I have bleeding gums, and my dentist wanted to refer me to a periodontist, which basically means just sharper knives. And I have seen your talk and I tried your protocol. I switched with the biotoxin binder and night and day I barely bled. It was crazy.

Rachael Carver-Morin: Yeah, it’s amazing. And then also doing some of the more holistic products when we take toothpaste are some of the most toxic subs. And not just the fluoride, but they have the sodium oral sulfate and the dyes. We shouldn’t be putting blue things into our mouths. Again, that’s just adding another toxin. And there’s so many toxins we can’t avoid because they’re in the air, they’re in the water. So anything we can do to minimize our tuss and beauty products is one of them, right? So, we shouldn’t be rinsing with act purple liquids. It is just not what we’re bothering…

Jodi Cohen: Fluorescent green. Yeah.

Rachael Carver-Morin: No, that’s just flavored and you’re wasting your mind what a really great oral rinse is hydrogen peroxide, just your $3 bottle of hydrogen peroxide, mix it 50-50 with water, and swish with that. And for every patient who gets a crown, we have them do that for at least two weeks while they have that temporary in there because the temporaries fit, but they’re not perfectly. So sometimes you get gummy irritation when my patients follow that protocol, when I go to seat, that permanent crown, their gums are perfect, beautiful because if the gums are bleeding and I try to cement something, I might not be able to cement it because there’s too much bleeding and it impairs the cement ability of that crown. So that’s an amazing, super cheap, easy way, and you don’t have to do it every day. But getting, again, we talked about we need extra oxygen to feed the good bacteria.

Jodi Cohen: And for the hydrogen peroxide, is that just something they can go and get at their local drugstore? Is there a special…

Rachael Carver-Morin: The ground bottle you see right by the alcohol on the bottom shelf there? Okay. I like peroxide. I think Colgate makes one called Peril. It’s blue. So again, you don’t have to waste your money on that. And most people have a bottle of head.

Jodi Cohen: No, that’s wonderful. And then we were also talking about the dirty mouth toothpaste, primal life organics. That was easier I thought, than the biotoxin binder. It was slightly easier to access and less messy.

Rachael Carver-Morin: Yes, yes, I use that one. And I like to do kind of rotate, just like with probiotics, I like to rotate my probiotics because we’re trying to build diversity in order to have good, healthy systems. And I kind of feel that way since the mouth is one big cesspool of bacteria too. Same thing with toothpaste. I like to change it up to make sure that, because if I’m always using the same one, maybe I’m only going to have a certain amount of bacteria. I like the toothpaste for bitten because the whole idea behind that toothpaste also is to create the environment. So Retin, so it’s got prebiotics in it. So again, and the vitamins, the…

Jodi Cohen: Jerry’s.

Rachael Carver-Morin: Product, yes. That’s great stuff. So again, that same idea is how do we create a good environment to colonize the good stuff? So again, I probably have four different things, kinds of teeth-cleaning things in my little drawer I like to change. What are…

Jodi Cohen: The ones you have on rotation rein, the primal…

Rachael Carver-Morin: Rein rise? Well, I have the primal life organics. Sometimes I just use, if I feel like my gums, sometimes I’ll be flossing and I dunno if everybody noticed like, that doesn’t smell so good. I’ll just get out my ozonated olive oil and I’ll brush with ozonated olive oil. It doesn’t taste that great, but it knocks out whatever. If I eat something, it’s really interesting. I’ve seen the connection where I didn’t eat as clean that day or that my gums tend to not be as healthy. So a little bit of Oz needed olive oil for one-time toothbrushing and good to go.

Jodi Cohen: Where can they get that?

Rachael Carver-Morin: So it depends on it, there is one company called Pure O three, which you can find on Amazon. They have different kinds of oils and they have some flavors too. So it’s not as potent. It’s not as strong. The one that I use in the practice is from a company called Longevity. And I believe you can only get that through practitioners much.

Rachael Carver-Morin: It’s at one point their plant blew up because ozone is a little volatile, so they weren’t making it. We went six or, and so I had to use Pure, and I was sad because the pure O three didn’t, it’s not as potent as the longevity. So it’s really good for daily stuff, use it in place of Neosporin. So again, Neosporin, we’re putting antibiotics on there, which isn’t great. Again, ozone will kill all kinds of stuff without creating any antibiotic resistance, but for the really hard stuff.

So I put the longevity person has an extraction site or a big wound. My daughter had planners work. I used that to get rid of that. She had a really bad, she had a scrape on her leg and started picking at it and ended up getting an infection on her leg and almost started getting into cellulitis. But I refused to take her to the ER because all they were going to do was give her antibiotics and steroids, and I didn’t want that for her. We used ozone, I used the biotoxin binder and I took that and poured that on her, and within a week it was all completely better. Well…

Jodi Cohen: That’s so interesting. You put it directly on the wound.

Rachael Carver-Morin: I said, why not? I’m going to try a little bit of everything. So I wanted to pull, because she had pus there. I also did give her an injection of ozone gas and that created, that brought all the pus to the surface. So we’re able to get that out. And then I used the biotoxin binder mixed with a little bit of water just to put it on it to also try to suck out the bad toxic reaction from the infection there. So she did great. It took a week. If I had gotten the drugs, it probably would’ve been better in a day or two, but I just wasn’t willing to compromise for overall immunity for something. I was pretty sure that I would be able to resolve it.

Jodi Cohen: And so for anyone who’s listening that’s like, wow, I had my wisdom teeth removed. How do I know if there’s an issue? What’s my next step?

Rachael Carver-Morin: So the interesting thing to think, there’s also something really important to look at that you can look online for a tooth meridian chart. So in Chinese medicine, we have these meridians. Every tooth is on a meridian, so the wisdom teeth are on your heart and small intestine meridian. So if you maybe have chronic IBS or some kind of heart issue or something that nobody can kind of understand what’s causing it, then that might make you think maybe I should go to my biologic dentist, have a 3D X-ray and investigate whether there’s a cavitation because most of the time that’s how we diagnose it is with an X-ray and some biologic dentists will have some muscle testing, kinesiology background, energy medicine. I use that a lot of times to look at, put your finger on the area, and kind of ask. Seems a lot of woo-woo to a lot of people, but it’s amazing.

Rachael Carver-Morin: Everything in the universe is energy. And so when you have any kind of infection or cut or scar, it’s going to interrupt the energy flow and so you can kind of tap into that energy flow to see if there’s a problem in that area. And it’s good if you’ve ever had an extraction

or ever had a root canal and you do have some nagging health things, it would behoove you to check with a biologic dentist, and have a 3D X-ray. Just make sure that it’s not something like that that could be contributing. So many people, you’ll hear so many stories. We remove that cavitation lesion, we take out those root canal teeth and go away. I had a patient who had a root canal, looked kind of funny on the lower molar and I asked him, I said, you have any aches or pains anywhere? He was a young guy and he said, my left shoulder just I can’t get it better no matter what I do.

He was very athletic. And I said, well, interesting because that tooth is right on that same side. We removed the root canal shoulder. Totally healed within two weeks. Really interesting. You see, I see a lot too. Somebody has a joint replacement and then on that same side in the corresponding tooth, they all of a sudden have tooth pain there. So it’s really, really interesting and I encourage everybody to look that up. Tooth meridian chart, you’ll see a bunch of different ones. And I’ve seen, I just had my sixth case yesterday with a woman with breast cancer and she had a root canal on the breast. Breast meridian. I see it all. This is the most common one I see is upper first molar, lower premolar. So if you had a root canal in there and there’s a history of breast cancer, you may want to consider discussing options with the biologic dentist or if you have cancer or have had it, maybe you’ve gotten better.

If you want to really avoid recurrence, definitely have you look in the mouse, and get rid of any root canal to look for cavitations. And obviously it’s easier said than done, especially if it’s the front tooth because it’s going to be an expense. But when we do these things preventatively, I mean how much time and energy do we spend on our sickness? So if we pay a little bit more upfront and prevention, we save ourselves so much time and so much money and emotional toxicity too by taking care of those things that are a potential source of inflammation and infection.

Jodi Cohen: So one final question on the wisdom teeth, like let’s say they come to you, they do the 3D x-ray, there’s an issue. What do you do? Is it another surgery or is there a way to after the fact kind of clean up?

Rachael Carver-Morin: So I mean if they have the wisdom tooth or if it’s been extracted.

Jodi Cohen: If the wisdom tooth was extracted, but somehow they left a pocket and there’s an infection or something’s not quite healing.

Rachael Carver-Morin: So kind of the mainstay we say is okay, we open it back up and clean it out. But there’s some of us who don’t love surgery. We want to try to keep everything intact as possible. So there is a technique we used with ozone so we can kind of measure exactly where the problem is on this x-ray, and then we use a little thing called an X tip, and that helps us drill a teeny, so we don’t even have to cut the gum tissue with this little X tip. You can drill a very small little hole directly into that area and then blow ozone into it.

Colleague, Dr. Griffin Cole, said he used this and he had about 80% success resolving, and he determined success by looking from the before radiograph to the after. So again, totally noninvasive. And again, what you’re doing, if you kill all that bacteria with the ozone gas, then the bone will fill back in. So there is that technique as well, and I use that all the time. All my patients who have root canals once a year, when they come in and I see them, I give them ozone directly above that because ozone is going to kill anything that may be going on up there. So some people are like, well, I don’t care. I’m not taking my tooth out. Okay, well then we’re going to give you oxygen therapy regularly to try to minimize the effect that that could have systemically.

Jodi Cohen: Amazing. Is there anything that we have not touched on that you’d like to share?

Rachael Carver-Morin: Well, the other really big topic is the airway. So if you notice that you’re snoring a lot or you notice that your teeth are really worn, some people, and I used to believe it too, oh well you’re older, so it’s just normal, but the normal rate of tooth wear is one millimeter every 100 years, which is essentially zero, right? So we should not be having wear on our teeth, and most of the time it’s because evolutionarily we’re not growing forward and down enough. All of us are kind of smushed back in, and so that’s affecting our airways. We kind of hit middle age and all of a sudden, all of a sudden we feel like we’re snoring. And it’s not like anything has changed. It’s just that now gravity is kind of having that effect. So I’m excited. I just purchased a photo laser, so now there’s this great noninvasive therapy for those of you who are snoring and maybe you can’t do a CP, pap P and this laser, it’s three 20-minute sessions.

I just sit back and relax and we run the laser and it really stimulates, I kind of call it rejuvenation, and it brings you back to your twenties, your airway of your twenties, which nice and firm and light and really is very, very helpful and maybe you need to touch up once a year or something like that. But super excited about that, the ability to do that because we see that in so many of our adult patients that we may not be gasping for air with apnea, but a lot of us have maybe a mild apnea, a little bit snoring every once in a while. And that’s a really problematic, because if you’re not getting oxygenation while you sleep, it may keep you in a sympathetic state. And when we’re in a sympathetic state, we’re not going to sleep well, we’re not going to repair, we’re not going to restore, and therefore we’re going to have those diseases of aging, right?

Rachael Carver-Morin: The arthritis and the muscle pain and worse give you the possibility of having stroke and diabetes and all sorts of bad things. So most biologic dentists maybe have some background in that airway too, but it’s something that, and there’s a lot of different devices we can even grow even in adults, we used to say, Nope, past age 12, that’s it. You can’t grow the mouth anymore. Absolutely nonsense. I’ve got great cases. I’m doing it all the time where the real problem is people say, I relapsed from my ortho because I didn’t wear my retainer, but that’s not the case. It was the case is that the orthodontist focus on the teeth instead of the entire face, right? The reason why teeth are crooked is because there’s not enough space in the jaws. So grow the jaws and make sure the muscles, A lot of us too have swallow from or where we pinch our cheeks and stuff. Funny. And that affects the way we grow today. Little kids, we see them with all these little squeeze packs and that is going, what’s going to happen when your cheeks are pushed in? It’s going to make your palate really narrow. Then there’s no room for your tongue.

Jodi Cohen: Oh my gosh.

Rachael Carver-Morin: Don’t want any of those actions. So now what we know, so in two and three-year-olds, we can already see what’s happening. And so that’s great because as a kid, you take advantage of their natural growth and it’s so easy once you fix all those habits and they wear special, it looks like a sports mouth guard and it corrects that and helps guide them into the, so hopefully they never need braces. They’re never going to have airway problems because we grew them to the proper dimension. That also affects your brain if you’re mouth breathing, if everything’s narrow, the brain doesn’t even develop properly. And then we have all those issues that go with improper brain development.

Jodi Cohen: My gosh, I could talk to you forever. It’s so helpful. How can people find out more about you, work with you, and connect with you?

Rachael Carver-Morin: So we have, my website is just carver family dentistry.com, and I believe there’s a button on this. It’s Ask the Doctor, but there’s our phone number on there. I do a lot of them since I’ve been doing all these podcasts, we do a lot of, on Fridays, normally I will do some Zoom consults. People have a lot of questions and in email, my email is

Dr*******@ca*******************.com , and that’s also a good way to get in touch with me.

Jodi Cohen: Thank you for your time.

Jodi Cohen: Thank you so much for listening. I hope this podcast empowered you with some useful information and takeaways. If you liked this episode, please consider sharing a positive review or subscribing. I would also love to offer you my free parasympathetic toolkit as a gift just for listening. It will teach you how to activate the most important nerve in your body to turn on your ability to heal. This free toolkit includes a checklist, a video, and a detailed guide. If this podcast prompted any questions, you can always find answers at my blog at vibrantblueoils.com or my book Essential Oils to Boost the Brain and Heal the Body. Until next time, wishing you Vibrant Health.

 

Jodi Cohen

Jodi Sternoff Cohen is the founder of Vibrant Blue Oils. An author, speaker, nutritional therapist, and a leading international authority on essential oils, Jodi has helped over 50,000 individuals support their health with essential oils.