EP 282 Can the Bacteria in Your Mouth Cause Fertility Challenges

Dr. Katie Lee is a dentist, speaker, author, and coach who lives in Aurora, Colorado. Dr. Lee graduated from University of Illinois at Chicago in 2010 and was an owner-partner in over 80 DSO supported dental practices throughout the US and served as Clinical Partner overseeing 5 states. Currently, she consults for health technology companies and provides implant education for general dentists. Dr. Lee has two passions in her profession: dentistry itself and making other dentists successful. Her passion about the oral systemic health link comes from personal experience. Dr. Lee was involved in an ATV accident as a teenager, which left her without many teeth and rendered her jaw immobile. Dr. Lee experienced how oral health affects systemic health and the benefits of dental implants. Her first-hand journey in recovering from the effects of dental trauma led her to specialize her career on the mouth-body connection® and dental implants. Dr. Lee searches for proven technologies that improve clinical outcomes and the patient experience and loves to educate her peers on those technologies. Dr. Lee authored a book entitled Saved By the Mouth to educate patients and clinicians on the importance of oral health. Dr. Lee has won many accolades, including Top 40 under 40 Dentists in America, and International Woman of the Year in Dentistry. She has been featured on local Fox and NBC news stations discussing the importance of oral health.

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 For more information about Michelle, visit www.michelleoravitz.com

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Transcript:

Michelle

Michelle: [00:00:00] Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Lee.

Katie: Thanks. I'm really excited to be here.

Michelle: I'm so excited to have you on actually, this is a first, I have never spoken to a dentist on this podcast, but it is such an important topic because there's such a correlation between inflammation in the mouth and also unexplained infertility. And I'm very excited to get started before we get started. I would love for you to give us a little bit of a background on yourself, how you got into the work that you do.

Katie: Sure. Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. I feel honored that I'm, I'm the first. Hopefully, I don't mess it up for the rest of us dentists out there. My journey into dentistry was. Of tragedy. So when I was in high school, about 14 years old, I was involved in a ATV four wheeler accident where I crashed into a telephone pole headfirst without a helmet on, broke every bone in my face from my eyebrows down and naturally, or I [00:01:00] guess as expected, lost a ton of teeth and my jaws were wired shut immediately, even though I had lots of teeth that were displaced and broken.

Katie: And, they were wired shut for two months. I'm I couldn't eat and so I was on a liquid diet and My family didn't really know anything about nutrition. So I was Having pudding jello ice cream, you know with Hershey's syrup box mashed potatoes You know all the things that you should not eat to be healthy or maintain your teeth And so I just started developing a ton of dental infection And, , that combined with not being able to eat nutritious foods, you know, my body really started shutting down.

Katie: , I lost a ton of weight, my liver enzymes spiked, my kidneys started shutting down. And so I learned from a very early age just how much your oral health affects. Not only your mental and emotional health, but your, your physical health as well. And, you know, it was nine surgeries in four years, , that it [00:02:00] took to reconstruct my face and my jaw.

Katie: And then once that was done and only then was I able to my teeth and, and finally replace the missing teeth and fix my smile. So that really. Got me interested in what I do. And then once I got into dentistry, you know, I started going down this journey of oral systemic health. And from a personal experience, I had a lot of fertility issues.

Katie: I went through about six years in fertility treatment. And so just really started diving into, you know, how can. How does the mouth affect this and what can I do as a dentist to help other people?

Michelle: Yeah, I mean it's definitely something that I think a lot of people do not I don't want to really correlate, but let's, let's actually really break this down because like , how can your teeth impact your body? 

Katie: From a high level? Start there? Yeah. So, , there's a couple different ways that the teeth and gums are really affected to the rest of the body. And, the first way that I About is bacteria. So our body [00:03:00] has types of microbiomes and the first real microbiome that we get or we're introduced to is the one in our mouth and we get that, you know, we used to always think that babies were sterile.

Katie: We know that they are introduced to some bacteria when in utero first microbiome that we get introduced to is through the mom's vaginal canal. And then Through breast milk and from family members when we're kissing, , and, you know, eating and drinking after them, we get this whole microbiome and the microbiome in our mouth is super important because it's what establishes and feeds our gut microbiome.

Katie: And so we know that when we develop dysbiosis in the mouth, what actually happens is that bacteria then go through our gum tissue, or we swallow 80 trillion bacteria a day. And so the bacteria that are in our mouth. We'll go to other places in our body that they're not supposed to be and start to cause damage.

Katie: So that's one way that the mouth affects it. And then the other way is through inflammation. So again, when we have these foreign invaders in our mouth, what we know [00:04:00] is that our body elicits an immune response. And that immune response, unfortunately, doesn't stay localized to our mouth. It will break down our gum tissue, making our gum tissue permeable, again, allowing what's in the mouth to get to the rest of the body.

Katie: But it also triggers an inflammatory response in other parts of the body, too. And this becomes really important in fertility, because that's when people can start to develop things like endometriosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, and things like

Michelle: yeah. And also, as you're talking about this, I'm thinking about all these like alcohol rinses, you know, mouthwashes. So that's huge because people are like, oh, I want to get rid of my mouth bacteria because I want to really clean mouth. So like, But that messes up the good bacteria. So talk about that. I mean, you know more about this than I do

Katie: Yeah, no, I mean, that is such a good point. I'm so glad that you brought that up, because The way I was trained, even 10, you know, back in, I graduated in 2010, you know, we were [00:05:00]taught the, the more it burns, the better it's cleaning, right? Like you want something in there that's burning. You want something that's 99 kills 99.

Katie: 9 percent of all bacteria. But what we know is that's actually really bad. And to your point, , those types of products are not selective. So they're killing everything that's there. The good and the bad, when really we want to control the bad, support the good. and kind of let the body do its own thing.

Katie: The other thing that's damaging about alcohol mouthwashes is that it dries out your tissues. And we know that when you have dry mouth or dry tissues, the bad bacteria love to go to those surfaces and take up shop. And it really supports them colonizing and growing their little, , microbial communities.

Katie: So we want to have saliva. Saliva protects our teeth and gums from bad bacteria. So an alcohol containing product is not good for our health.

Michelle: Now what does a person do if they were a c section

Katie: Yeah. So, you know, there's lots of things that people can do throughout their life to [00:06:00]support their microbiome, you know, C section babies. We know that unfortunately they, they don't get exposed to the. you know, good vaginal bacteria during birth, but there's lots of things that they can do to support their microbiome.

Katie: So I'm a, you know, people always talk about taking probiotics and probiotics are great. And what probiotics do is they're actually going to put bacteria into the body. , so it'll, it'll help replenish the bacteria that is missing from the gut. What people also don't understand is that they need to feed the good bacteria that they already have.

Katie: So you cannot forget to take. Prebiotics, eat prebiotic food, take prebiotic, supplements. That way you can feed and help nourish the bacteria that's already there.

Michelle: Yeah,

Katie: We're introduced to so many bacteria every single minute of the day. You know, I, I wouldn't be as concerned once you get into adulthood about having a c section or being a c section baby because by that time you've been exposed to really everything that you need in your life.

Katie: At that point it's just about nourishing and keeping it in balance.

Michelle: Yeah. For sure.[00:07:00] It's interesting cause I was actually at, , microbiome labs. So are you familiar with them? So they actually have an enzyme like mouth. It's like a mint freshener, but it's like an enzyme one. And there was a guy who was talking about oral health. It was a presenter and he was talking about that and I thought that was really interesting and he also talked about Mouth breathers people who go to sleep and yeah So let's talk about that because that's really important and it's a big thing now people actually tape their mouth

Katie: I know, it's just that you don't. Yeah, thank goodness for Instagram, you know, because you'll see someone on Instagram taping their mouth and all of a sudden everyone wants to tape their mouth, so this is really important because You know, there's a really good book out there for people to read called Breath by James Nestor I don't know if you've heard of it.

Katie: A patient actually recommended it to me And it basically talks about that over time because of our high processed diet We've gone from eating You know, super fibrous, tough [00:08:00] foods to eating high processed carbohydrates and softer foods. And because of that, the structures of our skull and jaws have actually, , shortened or shrink.

Katie: And because we have smaller jaws, it's why we no longer can. Make room for our wisdom teeth. So most people actually have to extract their wisdom teeth now. And what we know is that the smaller our jaws are, the less room in our mouth for our tongue and our airways actually start to shrink. So what happens is when we go to bed at night.

Katie: our tongue falls to the back of our mouth and our airway collapses and we essentially start choking on our tongue. And so we start to breathe through our mouth. And the problem with this is our nose is, is such a, an incredible organ. It's designed with. millions and trillions and billions of of cilia in there to filter out the pollutants in the air.

Katie: But when we're not breathing through our nose, we're taking in all of that dirty air through our mouth and it goes straight into our oral [00:09:00] cavity. We're introducing new, , microbes into our oral cavity that disrupts our microbiome. We're drying out our tissues. And again, we talked about dry mouth leads to increased bacteria formation, increased plaque formation, but then all that dirty air is also getting into our lung system, , which is not good and will trigger an inflammatory response.

Katie: And so people don't realize that mouth breathing. causes or exacerbates allergies, , it also causes oral dysbiosis in the microbiome and therefore gut dysbiosis. And so one of the things that people need to do is to retrain themselves, how to breathe through their nose. So really great way to do that is by mouth taping.

Katie: And a lot of patients will say, well, doc, I, you know, I can't breathe through my nose even during the day. And I'll say, well, you've got to retrain yourself how to use that part of your body that you haven't been using forever. So I encourage them to start taping during the day, you know, maybe just do 15 minutes at a time and slowly the nose will start to open up and work again.[00:10:00]

Katie: Now, if someone has something more severe, like sleep apnea, they absolutely need to get a sleep test, , to get that diagnosis and then get treatment because. Sleep apnea is where you're actually choking at night. You're not breathing. You're waking up more than five times per hour because your oxygen is desaturating more than, more than 10%.

Katie: And so those people need supplemental treatment such as a CPAP or an oral appliance or something like that. But sleep apnea is horrible for your brain. It kills brain cells. It's really hard on your heart and it's fatal if it's left untreated. It's just a matter of when. So I'm really glad that you brought that up.

Michelle: that's actually really scary I do know that there's a correlation with weight gain And sleep apnea. So like, it's interesting because it's the whole thing. Like if you're taking care of your body and you're healthy, that impacts all the other things in your life, like your sleep.

Katie: Definitely. Sleep apnea, what happens is when you, you know, when you're asleep and you stop breathing, what [00:11:00] happens is your body sends this rush of adrenaline to your brain stem to wake you up enough to take a breath. When you're doing that, you're stressing your body out, so cortisol is released.

Katie: Cortisol causes systemic inflammation if it's released at high levels over time. , we also know that it, , lowers our insulin

Michelle: Right. And then we gain weight because of that.

Katie: yes, making us crave carbohydrates, making us gain weight. And so a lot of people have probably noticed that, and I, I notice this all the time. If I don't get a good night's sleep, I, all I want the next day is carbs, right?

Katie: Carbs,

Michelle: It's the quickest energy.

Katie: I want. So it is crucial.

Michelle: Yeah, for sure. I mean, cause that's what it is when you're tired, you want quick energy and the body knows instinctively that you'll get it with carbs.

Katie: Absolutely.

Michelle: course, that's not a very good source of energy. It's not, , an efficient one.

Katie: Yeah, you run out of it very quickly.

Michelle: And then other questions that I have is over brushing.

Michelle: So some people think, okay, after everything that I eat, I'm going to brush my [00:12:00]teeth. What are your thoughts on that?

Katie: Yeah, so there's a balance there, right? And what people want to try and avoid is brushing immediately after eating and drinking. Because we know that after you eat and drink, the pH in the mouth is going to go down. So what happens is we put something in our mouth, the mouth is the beginning of our digestive system.

Katie: And so our body releases an enzyme in the mouth called amylase. And this amylase is an enzyme that starts to break down the carbohydrates in our mouth. So in order to do that, the pH has to drop. The pH also drops just because most of the stuff we put in our mouth is acidic anyway. And so you combine acidic food and drink with an acidic pH from, from the amylase secretion, and you're setting yourself up for a disaster of erosion and cavities.

Katie: And so if you're going to eat or drink something, I always recommend to wait at least 30 minutes, before you brush. But people absolutely need to brush minimum twice a day. I mean that's like non negotiable I always recommend morning and night [00:13:00] if they can get one more in there during the day. That's great But if they can at least do two minutes morning and night, I think people are going to be pretty satisfied with

Michelle: yeah, for sure. Now my other question is mercury fillings.

Katie: yes

Michelle: Yeah, let's talk about that because for a while, oh, it was like no big deal and now they're finding that it is. So it's kind of like brushed off a lot of times. I remember going to the dentist and asking for the white filler and, and he was kind of giving me pushback on that.

Michelle: Yeah.

Katie: And there's, unfortunately, you know, a lot of dentists out there that still believe that way. , and, you know, I hope your audience doesn't crucify me with this because I don't believe this. But their, their mindset is, and it is true, mercury fillings are stronger than the white composite fillings.

Katie: Also, they're less technique sensitive when putting them in so if you're putting in a white composite filling little dental nerd out here You have to have everything completely Isolated [00:14:00]otherwise the white filling won't bond to the tooth and the filling will fail really quickly and the patient will get decay right underneath that Filling when you're packing in the mercury fillings.

Katie: I mean, you're literally just

Katie: It's called an amalgam, so it's an amalgamation of all this material. And so it doesn't matter if there's saliva. It doesn't matter if there's blood. , because it's not bonding to the two structures. So the dentists don't have to be as careful and think about it. I mean you're working in the mouth where there's tons of saliva and bleeding and things like that.

Katie: So they're much Less technique sensitive to put in and they are stronger. , now the downside is they're filled with all kinds of things that are terrible for you. And we know, you know, think if you think about a mercury thermometer, right? There's a very small amount of mercury in that thermometer. But if a thermometer breaks in school, they shut the entire school down and call in a hazmat team to come clean it up, or a biohazardment team to come clean it up.

Katie: Yet we're plugging this stuff into people's teeth. And the hard [00:15:00] thing about teeth, or the thing that people need to understand is that teeth are organs. And they have a blood supply, and they have a nerve supply, and to put that, that type of material, especially mercury, near blood supply that's connected to the rest of the body, or nerves that are connected to the rest of the body, in my opinion, is dangerous, you know, if we just use a little bit of common sense.

Katie: And so I don't like mercury fillings. And now we're left with a bunch of patients that have them in their head Now, what do we do to remove them because you can't just go in and start Drilling them out and creating all this mercury vapor, right? Because it's not good for the dentist or the patient

Michelle: So there's a biological dentists that specifically specialize in removing them. What are your thoughts on that?

Katie: I I think it's really important to Go to someone that understands how to remove them correctly correctly. I would not consider myself You know the gold standard biologic dentist, you know, and the fact that I do all zirconia [00:16:00] implants and things like that But I definitely believe in safe amalgam removal because it's actually more dangerous for the provider who's removing the, the mercury filling and the assistant who's suctioning everything out than it is for the patient because we're creating all this vapor that's coming out of the mouth.

Katie: Sure, it's coming into your body, but we're the ones that it's getting on our skin. You know, it's settling up next to our thyroid. So a lot of dentists have thyroid issues, myself included. This happened to me early on in my career when I started learning about this, they have fertility issues. , and so it's really important that dentists understand how to remove them safely.

Katie: So I, I definitely, if I was having mercury fillings removed, I would make sure my dentist knew how to do it appropriately.

Michelle: Yeah. Oh my god. You're giving such good information I really appreciate it because I think these are all questions that people have and you're giving a very well rounded very balanced Information

Katie: I always say, you know, there's amalgam dentists, right? Like the traditional You know, every day dentist , and then there's the biologic dentist that do everything on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Katie: I would say I'm [00:17:00] over halfway to the biologic dentist, but not all the way quite there.

Michelle: Well, I guess it's kind of like traditional medicine.

Katie: Yes. Traditional medicine. Yes,

Michelle: It's, it's a little bit more of a holistic way to look at

Katie: Yes. Yeah,

Michelle: , and of course, even with what I do, even though I specialize in alternative medicine, I'm very much in the world of Western medicine because a lot of my patients need sometimes like conventional medical care 

Michelle: so it's nice to have a balance of both.

Katie: Yeah. I still, you know, I joke all the time. I still believe in science, right? , I still do testing. I still do modalities. There's a time and place for everything. I just think we need to be a little bit smarter about how we approach, you know, healthcare and dentistry and, , not use bad materials that we know are horrible for us.

Michelle: 100%. What I'm finding actually is a lot of people in my world are very much now into studies and science. So there is a bridge that's coming together. And I see a lot of, REs that I have developed great relationships with are [00:18:00] very open to what I do to help their patients. So I'm starting to see this shift of everybody coming together, which I love.

Katie: That makes me happy because, you know, I did infertility treatment for six years and I saw some of the best specialists in the country. Not one asked them about my oral health. And there's so much research out there about how oral health affects infertility and you know Thank goodness. My oral health was fine.

Katie: Of course. I checked it before, you know, I went and did all this stuff But you know, it was just kind of shocking to me how siloed and hyper focused they practiced, you know, and just looking at the reproductive system and nothing else

Michelle: Oh, yeah. And even in Spain, they'll check even the vaginal microbiome, which I find so interesting because there's a correlation between that being off and then fail transfers. So they do that like automatically and it increases their success rates and they'll give them like vaginal, Probiotics

Katie: I love that

Michelle: And, and that's like a thing here. It's not so as we [00:19:00] learn, I mean, and then of course, when I read it starts with egg, that's what really got me into the whole teeth thing and then seeing the science with that. And now, like, even for my intake form, I always have a section that talks about like, have you ever had dental work done because it's important, but you know, you learn, it's not something that I knew like automatically, but as I got more into it.

Michelle: I learned. Another thing that I wanted to ask you, what are your thoughts about fluoride? Because I know this is a very hot topic.

Katie: Hot topic right, you know, I think I think it's a, another conversation like mercury, right? I think for a very long time, we had this major issue of, we call it caries in the dental field, which is just cavities. And so we had, you know, dental decay is like the number one disease in the world. And we had all these.

Katie: You know, kids and people that had rampant decay and instead of looking at diet and microbiome, which is what we should have done, we said, okay, well, let's create some sort of chemical or product [00:20:00] that we can do to treat right. We're treating the symptom, not the original form of what's causing it. And so they created this.

Katie: But what we now know is that when you. swallow it and you ingest it systemically, it's not good for you. It's a, it's a neurotoxin. And there's so many, I think there's so many other ways that we can combat dental decay where we can get around using fluoride. Now, if I have a patient that comes in that's refusing to do any of these other things that I'm talking about, and they're a teenager, and they have rampant decay everywhere and I know they're not going to make any lifestyle, nutritional, or oral habit modifications.

Katie: May I put some fluoride on their teeth? Sure, but it's going to be something that's isolated that they're not going to ingest and swallow. My preference is to not use that because I know that even if I put a little bit in their mouth, it's still going to get in their system. But not treating someone with rampant decay and having Having them lose teeth because of it, or worse, develop an abscess, which we [00:21:00] know abscesses are horrible for our overall health.

Katie: To me, that's doing more harm than painting a little bit of fluoride on teeth. But I actually recommend to use products like Nanohydroxyapatite is awesome. It was developed for NASA a long, long time ago to help astronauts, , you know, to prevent them from, from getting decay. So if it's good enough for NASA, it's good enough for me, right?

Katie: So I love Nanohydroxyapatite. I love M. I. paste. , I also love arginine. Arginine is something that a lot of people don't know a ton about, but there's a ton of research out there showing that toothpaste that are high in arginine, like Tom's for example, , prevent tooth decay and also help treat tooth sensitivity.

Katie: So I think we have

Michelle: I love

Katie: so many great things out there that we could use in addition to, you know, making sure that we're balancing and nurturing our microbiome. Not eating Jolly Rancher is incredible.

Michelle: Yeah, exactly. My kids have been fluoride free. They don't get fluoride. They've been using fluoride free toothpaste. [00:22:00] They have never had cavity.

Katie: Amazing. Yeah, and they, and they should never need it, right? Our,

Michelle: They floss too.

Katie: Yeah, I mean, so there you go, right? And, but what people don't understand, and I would have patients come into my practice, and they would say like, well, I want fluoride free. And I'd say, okay, tell me about your diet. And it was breads and pastas and carbs and sugar and five cokes a day.

Katie: And they don't brush or floss their teeth. And they think oil pulling is going to solve everything. You know, and I'm like that, we can't do that, right? We need to, we need to intervene here. But if, someone takes a holistic approach to their oral health care, they should never need fluoride. And we know that our cavity causing bacteria really peaks and starts to decline in mid thirties.

Katie: And so if parents are healthy, Their kids are going to be healthy because you're number one modeling healthy lifestyle But number two you're transferring all of your microbiome to your kids And so another thing that people don't realize is that if a parent's mouth is Full of [00:23:00] cavities and gum disease the kids mouth is going to be full of it because you're sharing the same bacteria So good for you for you being healthy and then keeping your kids healthy, too.

Michelle: Thank you. I love how balanced this conversation is. It's amazing information. , I just love this because it's so important and it's, it's information that a lot of people just don't have access to, and it's not even like, sometimes it's not even knowing that you need to have access to certain information, but it's like.

Michelle: So important. And it could be like that one thing that people are not looking into when they're going through fertility treatments or just challenges overall,

Katie: Yeah, and we know that fertility treatment actually increases our inflammatory levels and increases the leakiness of our gum tissue. So if the mouth isn't healthy to start, or even if there's a little bit of dysbiosis going on, fertility treatment is just going to exacerbate it. So it's best to get it treated, you know, it's safe to do it during pregnancy, but it's always best to do it beforehand.

Michelle: Yeah, [00:24:00] for sure. So now, let's talk about Peelu gum. So you hear about Peelu gum, , that it's very good for your teeth. I just was wondering what your thoughts on it or if you know, like how it can impact

Katie: I actually don't know what that is.

Michelle: Oh, so Peelu is from a tree. It's the Peelu tree, I believe. And so they create this gum and it's sugar free, but it's like natural sweetener and it's supposed to actually help clean the teeth.

Katie: Okay.

Michelle: Yeah. So look into that. Yeah. If you find out anything, email me.

Katie: Yeah. Do you know what the sweetener is in it? Is it Xylitol or do you know what's in it? Yeah. So anything with Xylitol I love, , Xylitol is a natural sweetener that tricks the bacteria in your mouth to thinking that it's sugar because that's what the bacteria thrive on.

Katie: So the streptococcus mutans cavity causing bacteria in the mouth. What it does is it feeds off of sugar, so that can be sugar from candy or gum or, you know, breads, pastas, processed [00:25:00]carbohydrates, things like that. And then it excretes lactic acid on the teeth and that's what causes cavities. So xylitol, what it does, is the bacteria still thinks it's the sugar that it wants to eat, but once it eats it, it can't metabolize it, so it actually starts, from ingesting the xylitol.

Katie: So I love that. I'm gonna look that up. I haven't heard of that

Michelle: Yeah. They have it at Whole Foods. It's kind of like a more natural, you know, more natural, but it's supposed to be good for the teeth. Like I think that back in the day people used to chew on it. It was from trees and they would just chew on the actual whatever that was. But

Katie: which that's good too, because again, you're chewing on fibrous branches, right? And that's really good to stimulate saliva. It's really good to work on your jaw muscles and it's really good to develop the structural skeleton of the jaw on the face. So

Michelle: yeah, so maybe, a little gum chewing is okay.

Katie: Oh, I love gum

Michelle: strength.

Katie: recommend it all the time. Yeah. That's actually one of the things that I do recommend for my patients. , because you know, like I mentioned, it stimulates [00:26:00] saliva. Saliva is like our best protector that we have of our teeth because it neutralizes the pH. It actually coats our teeth in, You know, this like biofilm, right?

Katie: That's super healthy. So it protects the teeth from getting any bad bacteria stuck to it. So I'm a big fan of chewing gum. I think it's great. I recommend it for patients all the time. As long as it's sugar free, of

Michelle: Yeah. So this might be the ideal thing, the Peelu gum.

Katie: Yeah.

Michelle: I happen to love it. So it's kind of my guilty pleasure. I try not to do it too much cause I know like it's just, you don't want to wear down your teeth, but

Katie: should, I mean, you shouldn't, unless you're really grinding it, like you shouldn't be wearing down your

Michelle: right. So it's, it probably protects it anyway. Okay. Well that's good to know. Cause I

Katie: habit to do.

Michelle: I learned something new. It's nice to hear that you, that you actually promote that or that you support doing that. That's awesome. Wow, this is great information. I know you also have a book about the mouth.

Katie: Yes, so I wrote a book called Saved by the Mouth and it's all about how oral health [00:27:00]affects , virtually every organ system in the body. So we talk about brain health, heart health, cancer, fertility, of course, , aging, gut health. And so I wrote it from the, or I wrote it as if I was having a conversation with a patient because I wanted the information to be easily digestible.

Katie: And entertaining. And so every, as entertaining as

Michelle: I love that.

Katie: guess. And so every chapter actually talks about a situation that I had with a patient in my practice and them having to deal with whatever ailment they were dealing with. And so it's, I think it's really relatable. It's a quick read.

Katie: , and what I like about it too is it also goes over super simple daily modifications that people can do to improve their oral health and it doesn't have to be like a life changing makeover. They're just small things that you can do to improve health and then also what to ask your dentist for and you can go to any dentist and ask this.

Katie: It doesn't have to be a biologic dentist. You know, asking for things [00:28:00] like salivary testing, that's super important to know what's in your microbiome. Asking for your gums to be measured, so you actually know if you have a gum infection, things like that.

Michelle: Fantastic. And then you had also talked about how like when people are pregnant, sometimes people will say, don't do any dental work during that time. So talk about that. Cause that sounds like it's an important thing for

Katie: it is. It drives me insane. , and I was trained that way, by the way. So, you know, people aren't doing anything wrong. It's, it's, it's, you know, a product of the education system, unfortunately. But what we know is that when people have gum infection, it affects fertility in all sorts of ways. You know, it. It affects not only men, or not only women, but also men.

Katie: And We know that if once a woman is pregnant, if she has gum infection, she is 30 to 50 percent more likely to have a preterm birth, a low birth weight baby, or stillbirth. And we know that of [00:29:00] pregnant women, about 40 percent of them present with some sort of gum infection, whether it be gingivitis or gum disease.

Katie: And yet, 56 percent of pregnant women avoid the dentist. So, with those statistics alone, you know, it only makes sense that we need to be treating our oral health ideally before you even start to try and get pregnant because it will help you get pregnant. But, you know, I, I always get questions from patients being like, well, I'm pregnant now, you know, what do I do?

Katie: I, I feel like I might have something going on. Well, you absolutely should go to the dentist and get this treated because you want to try and avoid any sort of pregnancy complications and, and again, patients with perio infection gum disease or gingivitis are at much higher risk for, you know, having a complication with their baby.

Katie: And we know that if they get perio treatment while pregnant, their medical costs will reduce about 74%. So it's very important for the outcome of the pregnancy for the mom, but also for the outcome of the pregnancy for the baby.

Michelle: Wow. That is

Katie: the [00:30:00] dentist.

Michelle: important. Chinese

Katie: I don't get elective care now What I'm what I'm not saying is to go get veneers done.

Katie: Like so I don't want people to mishear me I'm saying, you know If you have a gum infection or tooth abscess, you absolutely should go get that treated while you're pregnant All elective care can can wait until after baby's here.

Michelle: Such a good point. Interestingly enough, Chinese medicine, the teeth are an expression of the kidneys. Chinese medicine, the kidneys are not what we look at in conventional medicine. The kidneys are actually what houses your reproductive essence and health. So it's so crazy how there is this correlation.

Michelle: I see this a lot. I see this quite often, actually, even with, the heart and brain different. Topic, but the heart houses the brain. This is how we're taught in Chinese medicine. And now they're seeing in heart math that there is this correlation between the heart and the brain. And there's a communication between the heart and the brain that it's measured.

Michelle: So it's interesting how science is [00:31:00] connecting, you know, you're connecting the dots between what was talked about in Chinese medicine. That may not. Initially makes sense, but then you're seeing in science things that are proving those things. So it's pretty wild that we're coming to this place where it's bridging.

Michelle: You're actually seeing the two connecting.

Katie: knew about the meridians in the teeth, but I did not know about the kidneys and fertility in teeth. That just like really blew my mind.

Michelle: Yeah, for sure. And it's interesting because as a child, you know, when they're, when they're little, you know, their, their body's developing and as they get closer to kind of reproductive years, that's when their real teeth come out. And then as, , the reproductive health declines and they're getting really old, the teeth fall out.

Michelle: So it's kind of like this connection to essence.

Katie: I just got goosebumps.

Michelle: Very fascinating. It's just, the human body is

Katie: And it, it's also tied with, with microbiome, right? Like when we're born, our microbiome [00:32:00] is the least diverse. , and the least strong. It's also the strongest, like what you say, in our reproductive year. So I always tell people, you know, when you're in your 20s, and, you know, you're invincible, and you can go out every night, and not get any sleep, and eat whatever you want, and never get sick, that's when your microbiome is the best.

Katie: But then also, as you age, our microbiome starts to deplete again, in not only numbers, but also diversity, and then that's when we die. So it's, it's funny how this all

Michelle: Yeah. Isn't that interesting? We have these like peaks and then valleys, so it's pretty wild.

Katie: that is wild.

Michelle: Yeah. So we're like building and then we're kind of sloping and going down. And then also I was curious to know your thoughts about like neem rinse or a tea tree, you know, instead of obviously alcohol, what are your thoughts on

Katie: Yeah. Yeah. I, I love neem oil. I actually use neem oil in my hair all over my face, like all the stuff. I think anything that you can do to be more natural is [00:33:00] totally fine. I think the key is, is that patients need to make sure that they are healthy first. A lot of times I'll have people come in and they'll be like, you know, I haven't gone to the dentist in 10 years because I oil pull or I, you know, I use essential oils or rinse with coconut every day, but their mouth is a mess, right?

Katie: And they've inflammation everywhere and calculus everywhere and cavities. And so I always tell people is go to the dentist. Get a clean bill of health or if you're not healthy at least have them You know clean you up and get you healthy and then use those tools to maintain yourself over time You know when patients don't floss their teeth they get little clicks Or little nodules of calculus that build up in between their teeth under their gum line.

Katie: There's nothing but mechanical debridement that will remove that. And there's no amount of oil pooling in the world that will treat that. And that's what's going to cause gum infection and gum disease. So, you know, if people want to use neem rinses and tea tree and things like that, great. Tea tree is also good for pain.

Katie: You know, if someone has a little [00:34:00] ulcer in their mouth, it's great for that. Very antibacterial, neem is great for that, antifungal, all those things. But get clean first, get a clean bill of health, and then use those tools in your toolbox to maintain that bill of health.

Michelle: Yeah, definitely. No doubt. I'm every six months we get our teeth cleaned. It's, it's important to actually get it because you feel it. You feel all the calcification and I even have my own little scraper. Sometimes I'll just get in between, in between times. Cause I'm like, I can't wait until the next six months.

Michelle: Cause it does, it builds up. And then if you have tea and all kinds of different things, like it just, it's there.

Katie: Yeah, so when we have plaque, plaque starts forming on our teeth just a couple hours after we're done brushing. So that's why ideally, if someone can brush three times a day, that's great. At least twice, you know, you'll be okay. But what happens is, once that plaque sits there, it starts to really mature.

Katie: And it gets really, it gets harder to remove because the, the extracellular matrices of the bacteria really start to connect and, and strengthen its attachment to the teeth. Then we mix it with the minerals in our [00:35:00] saliva, and then it hardens and it calcifies into calculus or what people know as tartar.

Katie: Once it's hardened, you cannot get that off unless you remove it with a scaler or something like that. And so it is important to go in and get it removed. Because, you know, even with a scaler, I do it to scale my teeth all the time. There's places you can't obviously reach, you know, like underneath the gum tissue in between that have to be removed.

Katie: And so I actually recommend for people to go in to see their dentist about every three to four months, even if they are healthy. Because we know that bacteria repopulate about every 90 days. , and so in my opinion, six months is too long. Someone like you who's super healthy, you know, probably doesn't need to go in.

Katie: But for the vast majority of Americans especially, they should be staying every three to four months for sure. , to prevent disease. You know, we, It's crazy. Cause the six month timeframe came about because of insurance. It,

Michelle: No, that's exactly why we do six months. Cause our insurance pays for that.

Katie: yes. It was never a medically, , [00:36:00] science based driven

Michelle: Isn't that amazing how the

Katie: Yeah, it was, it was dictated by insurance and it's only after. You get an irreversible diagnosis of gum disease, which is irreversible Once you have that once you have gum disease, we know you have that bacteria in your heart We know it's in your brain We know it's all over the body But it's only until you get that irreversible diagnosis of gum disease that now your insurance will allow you to go in every every three Months, that's crazy In my mind, why not go every three to four months and prevent an irreversible disease?

Michelle: totally, but you know common sense common sense Doesn't always translate into the system

Katie: wish we used our brains more. In

Michelle: Yeah, that's crazy. So another question I have lastly like this is another thing My mom sent me this video on Facebook of a dentist showing how to properly Brush the teeth. So we typically will just keep going back and forth, but he said, all you have to do is [00:37:00] kind of go from the gums up, gums up to remove the food, because when you're going back and forth, all you're doing is just mixing the bacteria in the same space.

Michelle: You're not moving it up. So just wanted to ask you what you thought about that.

Katie: Oh, yeah, I mean, you can, you can do that. Sure, it's fine. The, the point of brushing the teeth, you know, what I always tell people is, the saying is brush your teeth, but what we're really saying is brush the gum line. And so, plaques sits on our, two places. One is it sits on our gum line. That's where it starts to accumulate.

Katie: Then it also sits on top of the teeth in the little grooves. So to prevent cavities, you want to brush the tops of the teeth to get everything, get all the food out of the grooves of the teeth. But the most important thing, especially to prevent gum inflammation is to brush along the gum line of the teeth.

Katie: And the goal of that is to disrupt the biofilm. So sure, if you're brushing up like that's great, you're brushing it away from the gums. But what you really want to do is just do whatever you can to disrupt that biofilm because you're going to spit it out. Once you get the plaque [00:38:00] biofilm disrupted, it's loose.

Katie: You're going to spit it out in the sink. You know, I can't even get people to brush twice a day for two minutes, let alone having them do something as technique sensitive as that. So I just tell people angle your toothbrush at 45 degrees. Right at the gum line. Use an electric toothbrush because it'll be gentle.

Katie: Don't get a hard, hard or medium bristled toothbrush. Very light pressure. Plaque is so soft. You don't have to use any pressure. You just want to disrupt that biofilm along the gum line. Spit it out. Rinsing afterwards is great. Luff, you know, obviously everyone needs to floss every day. , and then tongue scraping is really important.

Michelle: Awesome. This was great information. I'm so happy that I had you on today. So this is just such great information. So for people who want to learn more about you and read your book, how can they find you?

Katie: Yeah. So, , they can follow me on Instagram. I'm pretty good at, at, , responding to the DMS on Instagram. , so [00:39:00] katyleedds on Instagram. My website is also katyleedds. I do Salivary testing for fertility patients. And so if someone wants to check their microbiome and see if they have the bacteria that impact, , Fertility, we do saliva tests for them remotely.

Katie: , and then my book is called Saved by the Mouth. They can get it off my website or on Amazon.

Michelle: Well, Dr. Lee, it was such a pleasure talking to you. I really enjoy your mind and picking your brain I just love how well balanced your information is and, and also just, it's priceless. It's so important.

Katie: Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity