SHAWN STEVENSON: Today we're going to cover some shocking facts about cavities, root canals, tooth fillings, toothpaste, flossing, and the connection between our teeth and our brain. This interview absolutely blew my mind. And this is something that I'm telling you right now is going to have a deep impact on your life and the life of the people that you care about. Most people simply do not know this information that you're going to learn today and how much our teeth, how much what's going on in our mouth is affecting our health overall. Again, this is incredibly important information for you to know. So make sure that you are listening intently. And the most important thing, obviously, again, it's not just the knowledge itself, it's the knowledge applied, taking action on some of these things so that you can improve your health and wellness overall, because I'm telling you right now, once you find out how much your teeth and what's going on in your mouth are impacting your health. You're definitely going to want to apply some of this information. 

Now, before we get to our special guests, one of the most interesting connections between our teeth that a lot of people are not aware of is how our teeth can impact our sleep quality. This can range from mechanical dysfunction to inflammation affecting our breathing passages. There's a lot going on here with this connection with our dental health and our overall health. But again, sleep is one of those things, people might think about things like teeth grinding and this growing label of being quote, a mouth breather, right? So doing some different things and really focusing on improving what's going on with our mouth while we're sleeping can actually improve our health overall and definitely improve our sleep quality. Now, when our special guest was here, we gave him a wonderful tea that he really enjoyed. And if I'm thinking about a proven science backed, proven tea that can support improving our sleep quality, there's nothing more remarkable than Reishi.

A study published in the journal pharmacology, biochemistry, and behavior found that the medicinal mushroom Reishi was able to significantly decrease sleep latency. You fall asleep faster. increase overall sleeping time and increase non REM deep sleep time and light sleep as well. In a recent study published in the journal BMC Microbiology sought to uncover why Reishi medicinal mushroom appears to improve sleep quality even for individuals with insomnia. The study titled “Exploration of the anti insomnia mechanism of Reishi” looked at how Reishi impacts changes at the genetic level to bring about improved sleep quality. After their analysis, the researcher stated, “Rishi mainly affects target genes in the pineal body, amygdala, nucleus, prefrontal cortex, cerebellum, and other regions which regulate rhythm related physiological processes”.

This incredible storied utilized for thousands of years. Medicinal mushroom is one of those things that has its resonance with the human brain and nervous system helping to improve sleep quality. So this is great to have not just for improving sleep quality. But if you want to do that for that purpose having a nice cup of reishi tea specifically. But there's some caveats here making sure that it's dual extracted Organic about 30 minutes before bed 30 minutes and even an hour 90 minutes before bed just to help to Encourage that parasympathetic nervous system activity that's a great protocol, but just for being more in flow, for supporting immune system, for really helping to down regulate and help the body to relax.

Reishi is incredible and there's only one source where it's dual extracted organic Reishi. Go to foursigmatic.com/model. That's F O U R S I G M A T I C.com/model. And you're going to get 10 percent off their phenomenal reishi elixir. They also have a great organic reishi hot cacao drink as well. If you'd like a little chocolate with your reishi. So definitely head over there. Check them out. That's Four Sigmatic. Those amazing folks at Four Sigmatic, foursigmatic.com/model. And now let's get to the Apple podcast review of the week. Okay.

ITUNES REVIEW: Another five star review titled “University Semester in an Hour” by MS65. Awesome episode with Dr. Kate. So much info packed into a short amount of time. Thank you. I've listened to it twice already. Taking notes and learning so much. Keep up the awesome work. Congrats on 800 episodes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thank you so much and thank you for those very special shout outs on episode 800. And listen, if we were speaking about a university education. This episode definitely fits the bill. Let's dive in this conversation with our special guest and our topic of the day. 

Dr. Dominic Nischwitz, AKA Dr. Dom is known as the world's leading biological dentist, and he's the vice president of the International Society for Metal Free Implantology, and he's on a mission to help as many people as possible to experience optimal oral health without the use of yesteryear metal based treatments. Dominic Dr. Dom has also been featured all over major media and he's the author of the best selling book “It's all in your mouth”. Let's dive this conversation with the amazing. Dr. Dom.  All right, we've got an incredible guest here in the house. Dr. Dom. So good to see you. 

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Thank you for having me. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I want to know if you could share what does it mean to this term biological dentistry. What does that mean?

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Okay. So biological dentistry, there's not really a name for it. Everyone can call themselves one, but the way I define it as bio dentistry 3. 0 is basically the next level of conventional dentistry, which focuses on repair and drill, fill, and bill. So it's the overlap of the high tech dentistry, the craftsmanship with functional medicine and health optimization. Some call it biohacking. With the goal to help patient's overall health by starting in the mouth.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And with that being said, how does our teeth influence the rest of our health? Specifically, this connection with the teeth and the brain, I don't think a lot of people know about.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah, so if you look at an anatomy chart, and you can see that the teeth are like an extension of your brain. The trigeminal nerve is a brain nerve that starts in the brain stem, and it has three branches, one here, one here, and one here. And at the end of it are your teeth. So your teeth are basically tiny organs connected directly to your brain and your nervous system. Kind of like your nose or your eyes. The problem is that we usually, as a dentist, see them only as hard biting instruments where you can bite on, where you can do a filling, where there maybe is some pain, but it's not connected to anything else in the body, but it's obviously intrinsically connected if you see just the anatomy.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I think we only related maybe to the pain connection, right? Because the brain itself doesn't have receptors where you feel pain in the brain, if the brain is damaged, but it tells you about pain throughout the rest of your body, in particular with your teeth. And so that feedback, I don't think we think about it as an extension of our brain.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah, it's like an external hard drive of your brain. There's a lot of stuff getting stored in there. And Yeah, anyone who had tooth pain knows it's insane because it's directly in your brain. It's like neuralgia pain is one of the most heaviest. So that's why most people probably also don't like to go see the dentist because it's always related to pain and maybe fear of drilling and anything. So that needs to change.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, absolutely. And so I would imagine that this is a bi directional feedback, with our teeth and with our brain. And with this being said. Looking at our teeth as extensions of our nervous system and you just said it too. We generally look at our teeth as just biting instruments and we don't want anything funky to be going on. But we're not really educated on how to care for our teeth. Ironically because in our culture like we toothpaste is huge flossing all these different things. But yet we still have these epidemic rates of different tooth disorders

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah, it's funny because Tooth decay is number one chronic disease with an incidence over 90 percent and around about 50.3 percent in the Western world, which is higher than in Africa or Asia. Even though, let's say Germany or the U.S., we have way more, we have all the stuff available. We can go see the dentist, we go to oral hygienist, we can have all the toothpaste, the flosses, the Listerines, all that stuff. But it doesn't seem to be the trick because there's something else before that which is obviously your lifestyle and the epigenetics of it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's what we're gonna be talking about today and Listen just thinking about how our teeth are Directly connected as an extension of our brain. This got me thinking about mental health, and how our mental health might be influenced by the health of our teeth. Is that, is there a connection there?

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yes, there is a connection there. For example, root canals, there's even studies showing that if you had root canals, a dead tooth and you're sticking in your jawbone. That the toxins from there, like the lipopolysaccharides, the bacterial by-products, they can cause even depression, severe depression, anxiety, mental health issues, because it's not local to the jaw. It's the tooth is connected, so anything on or in the tooth gets transferred through that nerve into your brain. It's within 24 hours, it's in your ganglia, it's in your hypothalamus, it's in your pituitary, but also there's a lymph system in the blood supply, so It's connected to everything. It's like popping a pill. You will feel it all over your body. Same as from your teeth. It's basically just basics, but no one sees it that way. That's the problem.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Oh my gosh. We don't think about the alterations in our lifestyle if our teeth are unhealthy. And I would imagine if we are already, and again, this is probably bi directional too. If we have poor mental health, if we're experiencing depression, anxiety, we might not be caring for our teeth as well.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah. Completely correct. Oftentimes people that are a little bit more depressed, they tend to let the body go down downwards. Like on every level they don't brush anymore. They just, yeah, it's just a sign of unhealthiness. And then obviously the teeth get unhealthy too. It's completely bi directional. 100%. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. So what if we're aspiring to have healthy teeth, what does that look like? What are healthy teeth? What are some of those principles?

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Basically, nature has it right. Our teeth are naturally hard as stone, hard as granite. But They are not anymore. So they're getting weaker and softer because of our lifestyles. So ideally, obviously we would live perfectly according to nature, with the nature, eat the right foods that supply us with the right nutrients. And then everything is fine. We would have no spacing issues, perfect bites, like space for all wisdom teeth, no tooth decay, no gingivitis, which is bleeding gums, no periodontitis. It's just not existing. A healthy body is immune against all this. But unfortunately we changed our environments. It's a hundred percent in comparison to a hundred years ago, like you're probably familiar with Weston Price's work. So he was one of the first biologic dentists also interested in nutrition and the book nutrition and physical degeneration shows it perfectly that he connected back in the day.

He went to see the, he went to see Africa, he went to see Switzerland, like he, he was trying to find a connection between all these degenerative processes that he was seeing in the Western world with processed foods. So he visited people that ate more ancestrally and you realized they were growing beautifully, like no problems at all, not even postural issues, very straight, never mouth breathing, nothing. But their children that had contact with processed foods, which started back then, like processed flour, sugar, bad oils, all these things, they looked like little monsters. No space, crowded teeth, tooth decay, gingivitis, periodontitis, mouth breathing. Basically, the way our teenagers look in the Western world today still. And this is crazy, because it's all man made. We can completely reverse that.

SHAWN STEVENSON: There aren't tigers out there whose teeth aren't coming in correctly. If you think about that, this is a human, this is an exclusively human issue. Of course, except the animals that we domesticate.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: I just wanted to add that, yeah. If you feed a cat, like, all the grains all the time, they will have tooth decay. For example, same for the tiger, but in nature, no, there is no tooth decay. We might have lost the tooth by biting on something super hard, but that's it. We also had space like 10, 000 years ago. We also had space for two sets of wisdom teeth. Nowadays, 80 percent of all the people in the Western world get them taken out because they have no more space because we're growing too narrow, which is just, again, a sign of like lack of nutrients while growing up, starting with breastfeeding or not breastfeeding. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Wow, that's crazy, man. Two sets of wisdom teeth?

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah, we had nine teeth per side. And still to this day, a few of us still have the dental butt for wisdom tooth number two. Dental butt is basically the seed of a tooth, which is at the beginning, a tooth is just tissue in your jawbone, and then it grows out to be a tooth. So I have seen a couple of patients still having a real number nine, like a real second wisdom tooth is rare. But dental bud is oftentimes still there, leading to an inflammation oftentimes, unfortunately.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So are teeth again, Weston Price really affirming that people who are living more, closer to their more indigenous diet. They didn't have these issues and also their teeth came in, there was room for their teeth to come in. Yeah, so we're changing as a species. Our bodies are changing and this is largely due to what we're making our tissues out of and the recipe that's making us up as humans. And so this is leading me to ask you about tooth decay. What is it really? What is a cavity?

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: So cavity basically… So you have the tooth is made of different areas. The outside part is called the enamel. That's the hard part and In our mouth we have the saliva and we have basically the ecosystem changes all the time when we eat something acidic or drink a coffee acidic. So the saliva has to buffer a lot of things to keep that mineral, which is like a stone, always in a good pH balance. So it's roundabout, let's say seven for women is a little bit different. And if something gets out of balance, let's say from eating too much sugar or processed foods or having too many insulin spikes a day and lack of minerals like magnesium, zinc, boron, because of eating depleted stuff. What happens is we switch to having more acidic environments and also feeding the wrong bacteria in our mouth.

So if we eat the standard Western diet, which most of us do, unfortunately, that feeds a few bugs. They love just the sugar and all these things and then create acidity with their byproducts. So the stuff that they digest and then the tooth, the hard part gets de mineralized. And over time, if it's more de mineralization than re mineralization, it just basically gets a little bit brittle. It's like osteoporosis of your tooth. And then openings happen and then bacteria can jump in and then dig their holes and eat it a little bit more. And then more acidity comes in and the tooth decay gets bigger. So that's why As a biodentist, we would look at tooth decay a little bit different and do not just start drilling. As long as that tooth decay is still in the outer part, in the heart enamel, we will change the diet, the lifestyle, the nutrition so that your body goes in towards remineralization and gets rebuilt. Because as soon as you start the dental career with that drill, you basically screw it because then you open up for more problems. We call it a dental career.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So you're saying that certain types of cavities, if it's not extreme, they can actually be reversed. 

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah, it's type one to two cavities when they're still in the outside part in the hard part. Yeah, a hundred percent reversible, but you need to have the right dentist to tell you this. And this is something that is usually not taught. Because it has to do with nutrients, for example, vitamin D3, vitamin K2, magnesium, all the bone healing and tooth healing sciences are not taught in university. That's what I teach dentists, for example. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thank goodness. Thank goodness. So now if everybody just to have a summation of this, so it's not just about say sugar, right? Sugar is probably the thing that gets blamed the most that's sitting on the tooth. It's not just about it having access and sitting on the tooth because if you're, let's just say somebody's drinking Mountain Dew every day and they're brushing their teeth three times a day and they're not having sugar sit on their tooth. Their teeth can still decay.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yes, because sugar is also feeding the wrong microbiome. It's also highly acidic over time and The problem is it's also like stealing nutrients. It's an anti nutrient that you, for example, to process sugar throughout the body. You need more magnesium, but you would have needed magnesium to keep your teeth hard. For example stuff like this. So it's basically, we have to see the mouse as a tiny ecosystem in this huge ecosystem. And this needs to be in balance from the microbes that live in there, to the nutrients, to the saliva. And then, if you eat a little bit of sugar, it's not even a problem.

Yeah, but it needs to be in balance. Obviously, if you drink three liters of Mountain Dew a day, 300 grams of sugar is probably not so good and ideal and the brushing only helps with that biofilm Which is basically bacteria that like attaching themselves to it, but not necessarily with the other part So it's all about balancing it and maybe you can go an 80 20 approach and have 20 percent sugar in your diet Why not but 80 percent in favor of real whole foods and nutrients so that the microbiome becomes It's all about balance, not about nuking anything, but dental, let's say dental oral care is usually about killing stuff off, like everything. We want to disinfect everything. And this is not the straightforward idea that I have.

SHAWN STEVENSON: This makes so much sense. So if we're not giving our body and our teeth specifically the raw nutrients that helps to build our teeth, they're not going to be able to do the job nor protect themselves.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Exactly. And then on top of that, we are kind of like at least in the Western world very convenient. We can order in our food. We don't even have to chew it anymore. It's very soft. We drink smoothies all along. I don't have anything against smoothies. But let's say 10, 000 years ago when we were still more hunting. We would eat raw food or harder food meats on the bone and this by itself trains The jawbone it trains the muscle. It also helps the teeth. There's just more nutrient rich stuff. So Basically, we got a bit soft. If you can say so because of being convenient. And our body shows it to become soft like the teeth just get very soft. Sometimes even mushy.

SHAWN STEVENSON: This reminds me of my wife growing up in Kenya. She shared with me and when I first heard this I was like what? Chewing on sugarcane like you're literally chewing on something that sugar comes from And it's making your teeth more resilient and no cavities and none of that stuff.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah, I had a nurse from kenya. She ate her perfect diets. I asked her straight away when she came in. She, that was so cool because she never had seen a dentist. She just came in for an internship. She was like, what is this? What is with these teeth? Why are they broken? I've never seen that before. She had, like I said, she had the beautiful teeth, all wisdom teeth, space, perfect. And I told her, just eat what you ate the last 24 years. It was basically sweet potatoes, fish, meats, what they just had. And don't start to eat the way we do. She unfortunately did, and then she got acne, she lost teeth, like within a year, because they had obviously no tolerance for it. But then she realized it by her own mistake and then reversed it, but still it's fast, like the decay of the overall body happens very fast.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, especially if you're not weathered, right? So that's the thing here in the United States in particular, and this is happening all over the world. We're becoming more conditioned. Yes. And the human body is resilient. And we become calloused over time. Versus people that are just initially exposed to all this stuff. And it's because our bodies are giving us feedback, it's giving us instantaneous, very quick feedback that something is awry here, I'm getting exposed to things that's damaging me.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah. From someone who just comes in, they see it quite fast, like bad skin, for example, or suddenly a tooth decay that they never had before. But you're completely right. Here, it's more gradually. And we don't even feel it because we're in that game from early childhood on like I'm a kid of the 80s. So I was eating a lot of processed foods. Drinking three liters of Mountain Dew a day was more like peach iced tea, but still like lots of sugar.

SHAWN STEVENSON: For me, Hawaiian punch. Hawaiian punch. Yeah, that was my jam man. So now another big issue today and something that you see a lot of patients about is the residual damage. Yeah. that happens with root canals.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So can you share a little bit about what a root canal is and your perspective on root canals?

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah. So a root canal is a classical conventional dentistry treatment and you need it as an acute pain treatment. So the tooth has in the middle of the tooth, there's the life part, which is called the pulp. There’s blood supply, lymph supply. There's an autonomic nervous system. And if you had a tooth decay that goes till that nerve You have the massive pain. It's neuralgia pain because it's directly into your brain. So we have to help you then as a dentist and that's by doing a root canal. Basically, what it does is taking out the vital parts of the tooth, filling it up and keeping the tooth as a dead shell for biting. Which works. It's not a question about it. You can bite on that tooth for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years even. But, it's a dead organ now. And, I say, it's never been a good idea to leave something dead in your body, or dead tissue in your body. And no other medical department would ever allow it. If you had a gangrenous foot, being a diabetic, they'll cut it off.

If you have anything, That is decomposing. You know that it spreads throughout the body within a minute, and it can be septic. So as a biodentist, we see it a bit more critical because our focus is not just biting on the tooth. But how can we help patients' overall health? And this is and root canals are one of the three health killers that I'm always talking about because they be oftentimes become a chronic silent information. And maybe you know that Chronic inflammation is stressor number one is trigger for all the chronic health issues and we're living in a pandemic of chronic health issues. So in this case, we just look at it a little bit more open minded and see okay maybe you're already optimizing everything like especially in our realm where we're talking about we have the nutrition on point. We have our sleep is tracked.

We go out in nature. We do everything but we're still not feeling superhuman. Maybe, this is the splinter holding you back because it's an ongoing stressor in your autonomic nervous system causing chronic inflammation. And therefore we see it differently. But this is still the one, like the one thing that you get attacked most from your dental colleagues, because that's not what you taught in university. For biting, it works. No doubt about it. It's a fine out for dentists out there. But maybe your patient's suffering from it and you don't even know because it doesn't hurt here. Usually. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah Wow, oh my gosh. So obviously this is something that is incredibly common, you know having this procedure done. And what I'm hearing is this is more or less a kind of a band aid treatment for it's like an acute thing. Somebody wants to get out of pain. They're dealing with whatever fill in the blank, but we're not really addressing the root Pun intended, the root issue here. And just jumping right to that, without proper lifestyle change, without proper preparation, without proper post recovery, I would imagine it's going to lead to a lot of damage.

And here's the thing I want to share with you. Sitting right in this chair, we had somebody who's arguably the leading expert in the world in the treatment for dementia and Alzheimer's. And he has several now published peer review trials, major scientific journals. On reversing patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's and dementia. And he shared of these really primary risk factors, one of them was issues with their teeth. Dentition and inflammation coming from the mouth, contributing to brain dysfunction.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah, completely correct. Who is it? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Dr. Dale Bredesen. 

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah, of course, I think, yeah, Dr. Dale Bredesen, I actually read his book.Yeah, so the real good integrative medical doctors, they understand that oral health is a huge contributor, especially the dental repair. Root canals, also the metals in the mouth, can become a huge problem, and these so called cavitations, which is chronic silent inflammation in the jawbone, is all connected. We are working in your brain. This is really an extension. If you have an inflammation on your arm, you see it, but your arm is not so important for your body. It's just a limp. But this is the central nervous system. So whatever happens there, it's usually the problem is chronic, therefore you have no pain.

Because the root canal brings you out of pain. And this is where the cascade starts and yeah, it can lead to all, to various sorts of symptoms. You could tell me any symptom. Anything, any symptom, there's always going to be a connection, not definitely a 100 percent causation, no, but correlation always. So you have to have this as foundational work in a optimal health journey, definitely.  At the start, you have to know how to diagnose someone's mouth. Not just by the normal dental stuff, which is tooth decay, the bleeding gums and the periodontitis. But you have to look into dental repair from metals, root canals, and these removed teeth. Those are actually the three questions that I usually ask on any keynote that I'm giving, especially for example on Health Optimization Summit when I think these people already like optimizing everything.

I ask specifically any metals in the mouth, stand up, remain standing, and then I ask the root canal question, still stand, and then have you had your wisdom teeth removed? And if I ask this question, 90 percent of the audience stands like also when I gave this speech to dentists, it doesn't even matter. They all stand. So I know instantly there's something to optimize to make it even more superhuman back to health, because that's the part you cannot biohack. This is so unnatural. It has been done by a dentist to help you in the first place, but That's not how you came out of your mom, right?

SHAWN STEVENSON: We weren't deficient in a silver filling, so now with this being said, those three things and asking everybody to stand up and seeing about 90%, I would imagine 90 percent plus in many instances, people stand up. It's the residual cost of those things. And why is that? Let's talk a little bit about how you approach a patient doing something that's a little bit more invasive procedure. Most people just come into the dentist's office and they just do the root canal and there's no attention to the whole person and the recovery and making sure that their body is a good place just to have the procedure in the first place.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah, that's a little bit of a problem of how we study dentistry, because it's really just about the repair. We are actually medical doctors. We study the same thing, but it's not connected. In the morning, we have physics or sciences, and we learn that we shouldn't place different materials, different metals right next to each other. But then in the afternoon, when we work on a patient, which we do in university, we do it. So it's really schizophrenic, and the problem is, most people don't challenge the system or ask questions. I only realized it in retrospect that I was always asking questions. Wait a second, what am I learning here? Who designed this? That doesn't make any sense. Because I was already on my health journey and thinking a little bit more forward.

So I realized in university, I want to, there's something missing. So the missing part, besides that dental stuff that is fulfilling or let's say an achievement thing was how can I help patients overall? And this is just a complete new update for all dentistry is not even contrary. It's just the next level. I call it the dental evolution because then we're not the dentist anymore. As maybe Hangover and all his movies is just a dentist. You don't even know it. Don't be fancy about that. You're not a doctor. So we can become a real doctor and help patients. And that's what we do in a clinic. When we, when patients apply for appointments, we always plan the whole case on how to reverse everything and make it clean, let's say, as biological as possible as to within a timeframe with the overall health aspect and patients come in with various different issues from all over the world.

And then they will tell you, Oh, I'm not depressed anymore. Oh, it's 90 percent gone. My anxiety is gone. My chronic knee pain is gone. My skin eczema is gone. My acne is gone. Everything's gone like days after. And by the way, they also put nice teeth, health and anesthetics. And this is what I think is just. It's just an upgrade and it's much needed because I think most dentists will love it when their patients come in and become more like a fan and love it. They're like, wow, we can meet you versus usually then the patients that go to dentists. They don't want to go there. It's Oh, I have to see the dentist. So it's a complete different mindset also for the dentist. They appreciated more the patients. It's really a good feeling. Just helping patients is fulfilling still to this day. I'm doing this for half my life already, but that's the best part, right? If they tell you this. Then I get goosebumps, always.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Ah, I love that. Got a quick break coming up. We'll be right back. 

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So if you have a patient, for example, that has to have a wisdom tooth removed or multiple wisdom teeth removed. How would you approach working with this patient?

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: So how we approach it is always… We will have them send in a couple of blood work, mainly vitamin D3 and the cholesterol levels, the blood fats, fatty profile, just to see the level of inflammation and the level of nutrient depletion. So vitamin D3 is just a one marker to see if it's low. I know there's much more needed. So they send this in and then we always plan the full case, meaning we look for the panoramic x-ray, which is a two dimensional overview, not three dimensional. And we see metals, root canals, and the cavitation. And we planned a complete case and tell our patients, when you come see us for the health optimization week, you need to change the lifestyle to this way, like this is the nutrition approach, then those are the right nutrients, the bone healing protocol. 

And then when they come in, they are boosted versus what we do. So how I was trained was just like, okay, you need your wisdom teeth removed. I'll see you on Monday. And we just jump right in. The only thing you need to sign for is you will have massive swelling. You will have massive pain. You need ibuprofen and painkillers and cool and take a week off. That's it. That's a complete different approach. Why would you do a surgery for someone who is in hibernation mode, who cannot really heal? It obviously doesn't work. So therefore, a lot of patients, for example, that rings a bell probably. They develop something called dry sockets. Meaning, you take out a wisdom tooth and the next day they have massive pain, the day after too. And then they come in back to the clinic and there's no blood clot in the, in where there was a remove, where they had removed the tooth.

Because the body is in a shock state, it wasn't prepared. And then it takes a long time to recover that. And you end up having chronic inflammation there over the long run. So it's really important that you don't just jump in, but really see the patient as an overall human being. Yeah. Absolutely. And this is just the entrance to the system. Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So there's a prehab plan? And what about post procedure?

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yes. Definitely. Yeah. So prehab is. Just basically remotely, they know what to eat, how to eat, and what to supplement. Then when they come in, we do a lot on site and post. I'll sit down or one of my doctors sit down after surgery when I know them specifically. I can see their body. We measure their body composition with an in body scan. We have various different scans in the clinic to see where you're at. And then I can fine tune the nutrition to the dot, so I know you will be healing perfectly. And they will not leave our office with the perfect strategy for the next four months, because they need to be in an anabolic healing mode to let's say grow back the bone or help also integrate ceramic implants or create new tissue.

So they know exactly how to leave, but it's again, mostly their lifestyle and their nutrition. But the good part is because of that, let's say more invasive dental approach, like that I have to repair something. It's a little bit of a leverage for the patient because then they have to change their lifestyle anyways, they invest a bit of money, they invest a bit of time. So then they follow my lead a hundred percent, which also means. During that three, four months, as I can heal their complete gut system because they do 100 percent there's no gluten, no dairy, no nothing that could inflame them because they know this will help my teeth to heal or my implants to also integrate. And then they tell you, Oh, I also lost 20 kilograms of body fat in the last three months. Again, this is the approach helping them on their journey to optimal health by starting in the mouth.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Now, part of this is seeing is believing, right? And so I got to see firsthand a good friend of mine who, and I didn't share this with you. I've known Jim Quick for, I'm going to say 12, 13 years. All right. I love him. He's the most frequent guest also on my show. And. He had wisdom teeth removed, among other procedures, with you specifically, and then days after he did an interview with you, alright, and he, his jawline looks super, it looks actually better than it did before, like he just looks less inflamed, and he's talking normally. He's not in pain, this was just days after having the procedures done. That's totally unheard of, where people again, gotta take a week off, they're on all this medication, and it's just like, how on earth is this real?

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah, and this is a little bit of an art form over time and also needs to, this is one of my focuses is I want to help you heal. So I'm not the healer. I'm helping your body to heal. So obviously the surgery needs to be very minimal invasive. You have to know which cuts you can do without causing scar tissue, which you can to avoid it. I would do the same thing for my wife, for my, I did actually, for my mom, my dad, all the surgeries. And then you learn how to mitigate all the stresses. Obviously, on site, Jim was in the hyperbaric every day for 90 minutes. He got a lot of different IVs. But he really, he literally had nothing, like no pain at all, which is, you cannot guarantee it. So it's also a little bit depending on your adrenal status or how big the surgery is. He had more than four wisdom teeth. And usually, we talked about it already, four wisdom teeth, you look like this, if you go to a normal dentist. And this is not necessary. You can literally do that without swelling. If you know how.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And by the way, when you said look like this, you're holding your hands out like two feet. 

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: That's how I looked when I had it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Same. There's a lot of great content out there on the, on social media of people getting the procedures done and they're taking the, laughing gas or whatever, talking crazy. It's great content, but the residual suffering doesn't have to be there. And that's really what I'm hearing.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Exactly. And the problem also, the swelling is an acute thing. It's not actually too bad if your body swells a little bit. It's just the normal thing for trauma. Problem is more like, in the next few months, when your body should build bone. It is not doing it because there's no nutrients available. See you have a new construction site, but there's no workers, there's no building material there. So what the body does is just basically does the minimum amount, meaning gum will be closed over the bone, maybe the cortical part, which is the hard part around the bone, but inside of the bone is, it's called a spongous bone, a bone in your face. It's not like the one when you eat like a, what's that? The bone marrow? There's no bone marrow in your jawbone. It's the sponges bone, but the sponges part doesn't develop if you have a lack of nutrients. And this is why I asked the question with the wisdom teeth. So have you had your wisdom teeth removed? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Me? 

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I had one removed. 

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Only one? They're all, the other ones are in there?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. 

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Grown out?

SHAWN STEVENSON: No.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: They're in, like they're sticking inside? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. 

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Okay. So I think. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I feel naked right now, man. You should be showing my mouth. 

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: I always ask the question. So because there might be something that you could optimize because of it, because it leaves off. I was going

SHAWN STEVENSON: I was going to talk to you about this stuff myself, of course, and the thing is like a lot of people, even just growing up, everybody, which I didn't sometimes because it's you don't really think about it, but I was just like, all my teeth really came in straight everywhere, but, and then suddenly because, and I didn't know, I didn't know about this wisdom tooth the whole scenario and I was training somebody I was working at the university. And all of a sudden I started my jaw started locking up and I had no idea It was from this particular wisdom tooth. And so again, it was like emergency situation, I just want to do whatever it takes get out of this and it shut me down for several days trying to deal with that. And you know again, I didn't know that there was a more optimal way to go  about it.  

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Problem is no one knows that there is an optimal way about it. So I would say 99 percent of all the dentists that are now listening or that you see, they won't even know and they will probably say what he's talking about is complete nonsense. Yeah, because it's just not taught yet. It's only just the next level. Yeah, but it's coming. I'm very happy that I'm able to create your own tribe that I talked about, like the real bio dentists, the real bees that finally learn not just the high tech dentistry part, which is very, that's actually the easiest for dentists to learn how to not use metals, how to remove them safely.

Maybe if you're already a surgeon, how to use a ceramic implant instead of a titanium implant, how to remove wisdom teeth, that's quite simple because it's only a trick, it's technique. But understanding the intricacies of functional medicine, of nutrition, of let's say detoxification, all these things, or mental health issues, neurotransmitters. This is level two and three and then you become a real bio dentist that can help overall. That's the goal. And finally the online course is there and I'm very happy about it because I teach for more than a decade, but it was only like offline, not online and only like locally. So finally since this year is ready and I'm happy about it. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. And I would imagine there's a lot more growing attention for this subject because right now the microbiome is really having a moment and a lot of revelation is taking place. There's so much scientific research that's being done right now with the microbiome, but we're generally talking about the gut microbiome and we have different microbiome kind of environments in our bodies. We have a skin microbiome. We have a lung microbiome. Let's talk about the oral microbiome.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah. The oral microbiome is actually the, it's the second largest to the gut. and the most diversified. By that I mean there's the most different variants of species ever found. They found up to 700 different ones. It's very highly individual, obviously. But you have to understand because of us, because of the mouse being a part of your gut system, it's the tube that starts here and ends there. It's a part of your digestion. So you swallow roughly 140 billion bucks a day, which makes up of 50 percent of your gut microbiome. So this is completely connected. So it doesn't make sense to start here. You have to start at the entrance. And if the entrance isn't good, how should be the rest goods? It's like a hotel lobby.

The hotel lobby is already. not nice, the rest of the hotel won't be too. So if you have a bad oral health or bad shape of your oral microbiome, you have, let's say bad breath, for example, or tooth decay, you know that the decay is completely in your whole body. So I can see at one glance, seeing your panoramic x-ray, where your connections are, because everything, single tooth is also directly connected to a specific organ from Chinese medicine meridian system, which is obviously in medical words, bubu, but in Chinese medical words, not bubu. So I'm obviously using it. Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: With this, the thing that's really jumping out for me in talking about the oral microbiome is the approach of conventional dentistry, which is every, destroy all the bacteria, right? Bacteria is the problem. And so we've had the advent of these really harsh mouthwashes. I grew up with Listerine, obviously scope was another one. And in particular, and I don't know why, but The older folks in my family would get the brown Listerine. The brown Listerine? Oh man, that's I don't know man. It looks like toilet water from Johnny on the spot. I don't know, I'm sorry, sorry I'm saying that. But it looks gross and it tastes grosser. But we would do that because my mom just told me that's what we're supposed to do. Yeah. And it was painful. It was actually painful putting that stuff in our mouth. And let's talk about the approach here should we be more conscientious and I already know the answer to this about these chemical mouthwashes.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yes, I think we should be very conscious about it. This is still, today, I visit every single supermarket I have to see the oral care line. From here to South Africa, to Germany, it's a direct copy and paste system. You have the Colgate's, you have the Listerine. The blue, the brown, the green, all these things. Listerine, if you look it up in history, is designed to clean a floor. Which is good for us. It's highly acidic, and it's ethanol based, and actually, it nukes your complete oral microbiome. Again, it's this disinfecting approach. But we are, as we know, with the overall microbiome, we're around about 90 percent bugs, and only 10 percent human cells at the end of our lives. So why would we kill in like an ecosystem on a daily basis?

You don't, if you go in your garden, you just don't throw anything in fire down, right? You garden it and you balance it out. That should be the approach. So Listerine, use it to clean your floor. Never put it in your mouth because actually maybe it gives you fresh breath at the beginning, but because it nukes your microbiome, you will have worse breath in the long run. So ditch it straight away. It's not a good idea to do this. There are very much better alternatives. that we use in bio dentistry would be a more Ayurvedic approach. You probably know oil pulling ideally use coconut oil, if you like it, extra virgin one, that most of us at least have in the pantry anyways, right?

To cook our foods because of the coconut oil specifically, because it contains lauric acid. Which is antibacterial and antiviral and just putting a teaspoon of it in your mouth and switch it around for five to fifty minutes Doesn't destroy anything. It is balancing out the microbiome. It's detoxing. It's soothing for your gums So it's just a better alternative without chemicals. Why would you use any chemicals? It's never chemical deficiency.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Can you talk a little bit more about the protocol for? Oil pulling for coconut oil pulling specifically .What would somebody do? 

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah, it's, this is something you could actually start tomorrow. Just buy yourself a jar of extra virgin coconut oil and use a teaspoon of it and just put into your mouth and switch it around for at least five minutes, just gently switch it around. If you have more time, 10, 15 minutes is even better. Because it takes extra time, I'll do this, for example, while I cook my breakfast, because it's no extra time needed. And then you need to just spit it out. Don't swallow it. Spit it out, spit it in the bin, not in the sink, because it can clog it up. That's it. So simple, it costs pennies. It doesn't ruin anything, but it actually balances your microbiome. It's all about balancing. I'm not a fan of killing. We don't want to kill anything.

We just want to have your immune system, these days, We have an immune system that is designed to basically attack invaders. These days our immune system is not just doing this. It has to deal with the EMS. It has to deal with pesticides. It has to deal with like too many things. What happens, it becomes aggressive and let's say, causing more havoc because it's imbalanced. Yeah, and dysbiosis leads to this. So what we need to do is balance it and then our immune system, we don't want to nuke and kill everything. We want to modulate the immune system so that it's more like a gardener, or let's say like the police should be, and takes care of like here maybe a few, let's say, of the more extreme guys.

Here are some more nice guys. But balance it out. That's the main goal. We don't want to have compartmentalization of, let's say, more viruses or more fungi or dysbiosis, which happens in the mouth a lot because of dental repair, for example. Then we get dysbiosis. Candida overgrowth starts in the mouth.

Mold issues is big in the U. S. And mold residues oftentimes in root canals or in these cavitations in your jawbone. And then people come in from, they fly in from Kansas to Germany for me to take out these cavitations and there's mold in there and that's really, but they can't heal because they already don't live in their house anymore because it's full of mold. They live in their car. But it's still in their mouth, so we, or in their jawbone, and so we have to get rid of it. And because dentists don't even know about cavitations in the jawbone, they would never diagnose it. So it's really hard also for patients to find that problem. So we have to have the knowledge about it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Wow. So folks that are experiencing, again, downstream issues, maybe with, again, their gut microbiome, not understanding that it's something that's upstream that is largely contributing to this and really thinking about our mouth as the initial point of our digestive system and if there's disruption here this is where your food starts to digest and get broken down. It's like the first point of contact for you know Your immune system to be on guard for certain things and you're just coming in and scoping it literally it's called scope You know using a scope rifle and blowing you know blowing your mouth out and Listerine and all these different things. Oh my gosh. This is starting to make sense for me in this conversation. Why all of these things are so popular? Like more people are brushing their teeth than ever versus, cultures that again with Weston price. When it, and analyze these cultures, a lot of these cultures, not necessarily brushing their teeth. No, not at all. And also the amount of decay that we have today, when more people are brushing, using mouthwash and flossing than ever, and yet we have the highest rates of degeneration in our mouth.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Especially here where we have access to all of it. It's the worst. So I personally. My nutrition and yours is probably quite similar and very whole food based. I actually wouldn't need to brush my teeth at all. I don't ever have fur on my teeth. If I would eat or drink a Coke, obviously I get biofilm too, but the stuff I'm eating is cleaning my teeth. It's like real food, let's say I eat a raw carrot. You don't have biofilm afterwards, but if you eat a wheat bread, you might have it. So you, if you understand this, there was no toothbrush store a couple of years ago. 200 years ago, there was nothing, or let's say 10, 000 years ago. And if you go see hunter gatherers that are still alive, that live a little bit more ancestry in Africa, they don't brush. They don't need to.

They have nothing. There is no tooth decay. It's just not existing because the human body is immune against tooth decay if it's supportive in its lifestyle and it's all just epigenetics. 

Maybe you have a little bit of a genetic incline to having a bit more weaker teeth, for example. 2SDK is strongly connected to celiac disease, which has a lot to do with consumption of gluten and grains. So that might be a little bit genetic, but as genes is only that much, and this is epigenetics. It's if you have, if you're a pro athlete, or if you're a sports guy, and you have the genes to become the best sprinter, but you don't train. Never happens. So the genes is maybe the gun, but you have to pull the trigger, and this is what you do.And this is our lifestyle in the West world. And this is the same in Germany and the U.S., completely the same diet. It's mainly based on processed foods and processed foods is nutrient depleted, depletes your body, makes you weak. And you see it in the mouth first, at one glance. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. So again, this is giving this, give me thinking about, you don't ever see a tiger brushing their teeth.You don't see a bunny rabbit brushing their teeth, but yet what I'm hearing really is that All, this is a multi billion dollar industry with treatments for our mouth, right? So toothpaste, toothbrushes, all the dental care. It's a lot of profiting off of our dysfunctional lifestyle that's causing the issue. So our dysfunctional lifestyle is causing the issue, and then we have all these products to try to band aid it.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Exactly. It's a band aid. I just want to say, it's a band aid. And it's maybe necessary at the beginning. We need band aids. If I cut myself, I need a band aid too. Yeah. But, it should be the goal to see it as a band aid, let's say, maybe we need an antimicrobial or, let's say, an antiseptic mouthwash containing something more harsh, just to get rid of the dysbiosis, but that should be prescribed from a dentist, maybe, according to the dysbiosis that you can measure on an oral microbiome, but it's not. People use that 10 years, 15 years, 30 years, 100 years, because it's just a running system. Why would the big companies change anything? It's just working. They probably could change it easily, their formulations, if they have someone like advising them, but why? Why worry? And therefore the goal should be getting a patient towards realizing, Oh wow, I can change everything.

How about you never need to see a dentist in your whole life for tooth decay again? I would think anyone would sign it. It's yes, let's do it. Obviously, maybe you have to have some repair done, but then my goal for all the patients I see, I don't want to see them any time again with their teeth. They can come in for health optimization, but I don't want to have any tooth decay anymore.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Never. Wow, that is very different from a lot of, just recently I had a family member go into a dentist and they're trying to have a package, like there's all these different things to keep them coming back for more stuff, or their teeth, specifically.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah, but the problem is, again, the conventional dentistry is about fixing smiles and bites. That's why they always say it's a drill, fill, and build business. That's really bad, because Of course, I understand that dentists need to make their ends meet, but if they just look a little bit outside, they could just stop that and then teach nutrition, teach complete overall health. We are real doctors. And actually, if you understand it, we can diagnose the complete body and then work with various integrative medical doctors together and help patients heal overall. And they will never see the dentist again. So in my opinion, This is obviously not happening probably within the next 30 years because we need that repair right now.

But the goal should be to never see, to never need a dentist for repair in the whole life. For my kids, I try to be responsible and teach them from the early beginning. I started teaching them nutrition and how to think in nutrients. What is good? What is not so good? Why is that not good? So I'm explaining all of it. And I don't say that my kids are not allowed to eat sugar, no, but they know 80 percent is what builds their body. And I feel, I think, I'm quite sure, I cannot tell yet, but they're too young, that they don't even need orthodontics. Because they got breastfed, which is the first initial orthodontic treatment.

Luckily my wife was able to breastfeed them, all of them, for 18 plus months. 18 months would be ideal at least, because what breastfeeding does, you need a lot of strength to pull on the, to suck on the nipple, that pulls the lower jaw forward, and at the same time you need to breathe through your nose, which makes the mid face bigger. So it's an orthodontic treatment, and if you then know how to feed your kids afterwards, with the right nutrients in that building phase, then they should just grow normal because your body knows how to. But if there's a lack going on for the next 15 years, then obviously they have to take out the wisdom teeth.

You have no space for them, you have tooth decay. Again, this is unnecessary. Then they start mouth breathing because they're inflamed of eating, let's say they're maybe just allergic to conventional dairy. Then they have swollen tonsils all the time, and then they start breathing through their mouth then this collapses your whole jawline again. You need orthodontics because of it. So it's actually, if you understand it, it's quite simple, but you have to know a lot to make it simple. But this is a complete concept that I'm trying to build and shoot and teach. Quick question.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So with the oil pulling, just to circle back for that really quickly, Could somebody potentially, for example, just for a minty feeling, maybe put a drop of peppermint essential oil with their oil?

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Or what you could also do if you do your beekeeper stuff, they probably have propolis. Put a little bit of propolis in that coconut oil, a little bit of peppermint, a little bit of clove. You have to be a bit careful with the essential oils, that it's not too much because they're quite harsh. They're also quite antimicrobial. So tiny.

SHAWN STEVENSON: little bits.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Definitely then you can make it even taste more good.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Okay, that would be the upgraded version. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Awesome. Awesome. All right, so I want to ask you about In particular you mentioned briefly some of the nutrients that our teeth really likes those primary nutrients.You mentioned vitamin D you mentioned K2. Can you talk a little bit more about what are these specific nutrients in order for us to regenerate our teeth, to build strong teeth? As you said, teeth hard as stone. Yes. What are those key nutrients we need to target?

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah. So yeah, teeth are naturally harder as stone. If they get mushy or soft, it's lack of nutrients. It's not a lack of fluoride or any chemicals. So number one. And I don't think there is a particular order, but let's say vitamin D3 would be number one. It's actually not really a vitamin, as it's a hormone that gets spilled if we go to the sun.

Unfortunately, at least where I come from, six months of the year, there is no sun in Germany. Here, I think you could go to the sun, but I see a lot of pale people around here, even though it's sun, I don't even get it. So I would go and get an hour of sun every single day because then what happens is the sun produces from cholesterol , actually vitamin D3 and this vitamin D3 will bring calcium, it reabsorbs it from the large intestine and the kidneys into the bloodstream. So then it's lying around in the bloodstream. Let's imagine calcium bricks on that road. So we don't want to have your arteries calcified. We want to bring these calcium. Particles, or the bricks, towards your bones, against osteoporosis, and towards your teeth, which is the same. Tooth decay is like osteoporosis of your teeth.

In order for that, the vitamin D3 also activates two specific enzymes. Let's say those are trucks on that street. MGP, BGP, doesn't really matter. And to activate those, or let's say to drive them, you need vitamin K2. And as a co driver, you need magnesium. And then you bring these calcium bricks over there. You also need zinc, boron, molybdenum, and a couple of activated B vitamins. Methylation is important there. And then you just have solid bone healing science. You also need the macros. You need a lot of protein to just be able to build tissue at all like gum and teeth. Collagen is big also, obviously.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Again, what we've been taught is that And just this really rudimentary look at our teeth, calcium, right? But calcium can't do its job without all these other cofactors.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: And I think calcium is, we have a lot of calcium in our diets, but it's not at the right spot. We need the right nutrients to bring it where it should be. Otherwise you calcify your arteries and your tissues, but not really the bones. Osteoporosis is another big issue we're seeing with females and males after that 60 years old. And that is also, osteoporosis again is not a deficiency of any medication that then later shows you a nice bone on an x-ray, which is completely bad. It's just a lack of nutrients. And again, it's solid science, but we need the right nutrients. For example, they asked great studies in the medical world, for example, the Framingham osteoporosis study.

What they saw was just bone fractures, I think from the femur, and they just correlated it with protein intake. So if someone in the hospital had a protein intake below one gram per kilogram, which is half gram per pound. They had a 30 day longer hospitalization and someone who had one gram like which is a half gram and we design a Gram per pound ideal body weight oddly or two grams per kilogram ideal body weight like a bodybuilder does. That's necessary to build bones. It is, this is a fixed number protein is a fixed number. It's nothing with the percentage of your macronutrients. I'll give the same amount to a 80 year old Grandma, probably actually even more because she has no hormones to support it anymore So that's really important but it's Again, it's biochemistry basics, but you have to understand it, obviously.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And obviously, we can supplement with some of these nutrients, but we want to get this through food. And this would trigger the other aspect of building the teeth, which is using our teeth. The mechanical work of chewing the food that has those nutrients, and we get all of that in one. 

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Exactly, and chewing food also, especially when you're growing up, is also a progressive overload of that muscle that pull your jawbone wider. You get stronger teeth. Exactly. We know from studies that the best thing to do for bone health is loading it with heavy weights, like heavyweight training builds bones. Same here. There is this trend. I've seen it here in the U S on TikTok that especially men wants to want to have chiseled jawline, meaning a little bit more of a square look, because I think that's how we looked more than 10, 000 years ago.

And they will use these super hard chewing gums to train. And yes, that makes perfect sense. You could also just do it by eating normal food, but If you need the chewing of it, why not? Because this hard chewing, when you eat a very hard, chewy steak, it is exhausting a little bit, and you might get sore in these muscles. This is the muscle called masseter, and if the muscle here hypertrophies, like your bicep, then obviously you have a little bit more of a square shape, and makes sense. So I think it's probably a subconscious thing that we have that we want to look more. Square and stronger because that's how we're designed to be in nature. If we do that with chewing gum or real food doesn't matter, but it's good. It's good. It's progressive overload of your jawbone. It's the same training as if you do bench presses, you need to get stronger.

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. I'm going to ask you about something that again, a lot of people have right now. And on the track that many people are on, they're going to be faced with this in the future. And that is fillings. Yeah. All right. So I want to ask you about fillings. You mentioned no metals in the mouth. Let's talk a little bit about that.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Metals are used in conventional dentistry. That's completely normal for the, let's say for the last hundred years. Various different metals. And none of these metals that we're using are part of the human body. They're just completely foreign. Could be nickel, could be mercury filling. The silver black, if you have a silver black filling in your mouth, It was marketed as a silver filling 400 years. That is called a mercury amalgam filling. It contains 50 percent mercury. And we know that mercury is the most toxic, non radioactive element known to men.

And this Made me think right at the start, I cannot place this in the mouth of patients, not possible. But you still have it because it's subsidized by the insurance. It is, to be fair, it is a simple to use, very cheap working material. So you just basically put it in and it lasts forever, but it also comes with a lot of side effects. But then also other people have gold crowns and maybe in the 90s gold crowns were not a problem because your immune systems weren't as stressed out. As these days with all the EMS, we also use titanium for the, if you have lost a tooth and you need an implant, we use the gold standard. It's still titanium implants, even though personally I'm a specialist in ceramic implants for more than a decade, still not there yet.

So various different things. And then even palladium, nickel, like anything like that's usually alloys. And we don't want to have anything that disrupts the immune system. So all these metals come with three challenges. The mercury one is just super toxic. So toxicity is one challenge. It just puts your body in, let's say your liver or your detoxification system has a higher burden for it on a daily basis.

Then there's the immune system. Your immune system can basically become allergic to every single metal in your body because it's just a foreign body part. And then number three is, and this is in the medical world, is still a little bit woo, unfortunately. Any metal in your mouth will become an antenna in this loaded world. We're living in 3G, 4G, 5G. It's loaded. We don't have a chance without. If you have now metals in your mouth, they will interfere with your cell phones and anything. And this can cause electro hypersensitivity, can cause again Myriad of problems or putting you out in fight and flight mode all day long. And you cannot get out of it. Some people can even hear radio stations and fine tune in because of these metals. There. So it's really not woo, even though it's not what you learned in university. So that's the three challenges, immune system, detoxification, and antenna.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Oh my gosh. I'm glad that you're out here teaching other dentists and people have more access to biological dentistry, what would you do if, for example, somebody does, what is the case where someone would need a filling? When is that appropriate?

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: So oftentimes you need fillings. If you have tooth decay that goes way above, like your enamel into the dentin, that's the part below the enamel, you need a filling usually. Just to stop that tooth decay and fill it back up so that there's not food all the time in there. You just need it, but I graduated from dental school in 2008. This is almost 20 years ago. And already then we were taught how to use composites. I was still taught how to use amalgam fillings, but just from an aesthetic point of view, I would never do it.

And then I realized quite soon it's unhealthy. So composite filling is basically just a mix out of, let's say, plastics with ceramics, which is in comparison to a metal filling. way less toxic. Obviously we have materials that we tested various different people and see where there's no BPA in it. And which is like the least problematic, but you still need it. And if the, let's say if the decay or the defect gets bigger and bigger, then you need maybe like an inlay or a partial crown or full crown. As soon as you need inlays, partial crowns or full crowns, you can go with ceramic parts and then only use a tiny. for the to to use it adhesively so that it's connected, then you only have a tiny bit of plastics. And again, it's mainly then ceramics. So bigger, less plastic, smaller, a bit more composite, but it's fine. To get you out of a problem, but then obviously deal with the root cause and never get too sticky again. That's the goal. This is what they learn. And when they see us, that's really important.

Never see you again as a dental patient. Happy to see you as a normal patient

SHAWN STEVENSON: for World Health Optimization. So, we've covered a lot of ground already, but I'd love to get some tips for everybody about toothpaste and about flossing.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: So flossing is a little bit, flossing is another bandaid. So obviously if you had a lot of dental repair done, which most of us had, let's say fillings that not perfectly fit together and food gets stuck, you might need to floss. Or if you have a lot of gum bleeding because of chronic inflammation, wrong foods, you maybe also need to floss. For me personally, I don't need to floss. I don't have any tooth decay. I have perfect gums. My diet is on point. No flossing needed unless maybe something gets stuck, but that's very rarely.So it's again a band aid. But you can use it ideally and it's not really necessary. Easily to obtain is getting a floss that is without microplastics. I'm working on it, but it's would be ideal. You could also use instead a water pick, which is more like. just a machine that uses water in between is less invasive. Because if you, this is one critique I have about flossing for healthy individuals like me, if I go with the floss in between, because my teeth are quite close together, I'll snap through and maybe the floss then cuts up, open my gum. And then I get leaky gum from unnecessary flossing. So you see, it's, you need to know when to use it and how to use it.

It's not necessarily in hygiene, a hygiene thing to do. And when it comes to toothpaste. This again, the conventional toothpaste you find in every store you should not use. A bio dentist will always be team no fluoride. So fluoride is one thing. Fluoride is really something you get heavily I wouldn't say brainwashed, but this is something you get taught a lot in dental school, that this is the main thing we need fluoride.

This is all the studies they present to you. So you come out of university by thinking fluoride, that's the goal. Actually the sodium fluoride that we're using is not the fluoride that is from nature, that would be calcium fluoride. Sodium fluoride is a complete chemical that is completely soluble and it has a couple of health challenges with it. So I would personally avoid it and therefore instead use another active ingredient that is more natural to the body called hydroxyapatite. Maybe you heard of it. So if you find a toothpaste that is containing hydroxyl epithet, that would be the best. Because I want, so natural toothpaste also should have some active ingredients.

But basically learn to read the ingredients. No fluoride would be ideal, no triclosan, no carrageenan, no sodium lauryl sulfate. That is a detergent. Why would you put that in your mouth? Just to foam it. And then there's usually sucralose or saccharin or ASK in these toothpastes. Why? Because they taste so chemical it makes it taste a little bit more sweet then. Maybe you remember as a kid when you had to, I hated it. I had to brush my teeth in the morning, but my dad is a dentist too. And anything I wanted to eat afterwards would just taste bad. Like I wanted to drink an orange juice. You couldn't drink it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That combination is terrible.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: It doesn't work, right? Maybe bread would work, but I hated it. So my idea of a toothpaste and I, this is the number one question I get asked on all the socialists. But what toothpaste do you recommend, Dr. Dome. So it's hard. So therefore, I was working on a formulation for the last five years that basically goes without all of these things, like hydroxyapatite as an active ingredient. Instead of normal sugar, I would use xylitol in it. So if you find a toothpaste with xylitol, xylitol is another, it's more like a natural sugar, but it's an antimicrobial. If you use it in tiny amounts, it the bad bugs that usually eat your sugar called streptococcus mutans or porphyronis gingivitis, they eat then the xylitol and they die from it. So tiny amounts are good. Lots, let's say milligram amounts. But if you eat too much of it, let's say gram amounts, it might kill off your gut microbiome because it's antimicrobial. So you have to be a little bit in balance again, but it's good stuff. Then I would use a coconut oil base usually to, or MCT oil that is clean, and various other nutrients. So then it becomes a supplement that I can use twice a day because it will get absorbed through your gums instead of the toxic chemicals. It's the good nutrients that you need, and it will just help clean your teeth with maybe organic silica, and yeah, it's just an overall great health improving treatment, and it doesn't nuke your oral microbiome.

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is phenomenal. Thank you so much, man. This is really a masterclass on this subject. And I think people are going to feel more empowered and be able to make some smarter choices to ask different questions, to seek out different counsel and coaching on this subject. And also your work is spreading like wildfire right now and all the dentists that you're training. And if you could, can you share where people can get more information about you? Where they can get more information about education if they're a dentist. 

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And also just any other resources that you want to share.

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Yes. Thank you. So basically, one more thing to add. I'm not here to fear monger anyone. It's just information. So with the mercury filling, it's important that I add this onto the show. Don't just go to a conventional dentist and drill it out because you now think it's unhealthy because of the mercury vapor. Find a dentist that knows how to remove that safely. And there are dentists in the US already, not the ones I trained, but they're called SMART certified, S M A R T, which stands for safe mercury amalgam removal technique.

They will know how to. They might not know about the ceramic implants or root canals, but that's a good way. Don't just drill it out. Work on a strategy first and then we can optimize your health. And to find me and get all the information just go to Instagram It's Dr. Dome1, D O M E and the number one.

There's basically anything you need. For the dentists it's the Institute of Biological Dentistry for the Biodentistry 3.0 certification to become a real bee, the real biodentist and Yeah, I think this is where you can find anything and I'm trying to spread the message as far as possible to help as many people as possible.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Awesome. And of course, we'll put all those in the show notes. What was that Instagram again?

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: DrDome1. D O M E with the one. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Perfect, man. Again, this has been awesome. I'm so grateful that obviously you're traveling here right now. You got your family and just having the time to come and share your wisdom with us is really amazing. Thank you. Really. This has been awesome. 

DR. DOMINIK NISCHWITZ: Thank you for having me. That is awesome. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Dr. Dom, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. This is one. To file away in your mental Rolodex keep this information on hand when you're making your decisions about your dental health because it deeply impacts So many aspects of your health overall and keep this in mind for the rest of our family members And doing our best.

I just highly encourage you to stay connected with. Dr Dom and just Paying attention to some of the data that he's putting out and looking for references for people that might be in your area Dentists that follow his protocols for example And also, just keep in mind we have to be empowered in these situations, whether it's seeing a general practitioner or seeing our dentist coming in armed with education and understanding this is our body, that is your mouth, that is your mouth. And you should be in on the decisions that is happening with your oral care. All right. So again, I hope that you got a lot of value out of this.

If you did, please share this out, get this information out there, share this out on social media. Of course, you can take a screenshot, share it on Instagram, tag me, tag Dr. Dom as well. And of course you can share this directly from the podcast app that you are listening on. We've got some epic masterclasses and world class guests coming your way very soon.

So make sure to stay tuned, take care, have an amazing day. And I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to TheModelHealthShow. com. That's where you can find all of the show notes. You can find transcriptions, videos for each episode. And if you got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome. And I appreciate that so much. And take care. I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.