Dr. Ben Pospisil 0:03

Given everything we need on this earth, it's just we need to know how to use it and how not to abuse it. In my mind, the most important thing, is it brushing five times a day is it flossing nine times a week? After every single meal is living the way we were designed to live and the closer we can live to that standard, the less likely we are to suffer from diseases that are easily avoidable.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 0:30

Welcome to the longevity blueprint podcast, I'm your host, Dr. Stephanie gray. My number one goal with the show is to help you discover your personalized plan to build your dream health and live a longer, happier, truly healthier life.

You're about to hear from a biologic dentist. Yes, you heard me right. This is different than a regular dentist. I found him along my journey to health as I decided to have my amalgam fillings removed from my mouth. I knew I needed to find someone well trained in a safe removal so that I wasn't exposed to more heavy metals in the process today.

You get to hear from the guy who removed my fillings. We're going to discuss the importance of oral or mouth health for overall body health. Talk about the importance of proper facial growth and airway development. And lastly, we're going to get into the safe mercury amalgam removal technique, which is the smart protocol that was used on me and even we'll talk a little bit about fluoride needed or not. Let's get started.

Welcome to another episode of the longevity blueprint podcast today I have on the show Dr. Ben hospice. So as a guest, he grew up in Mount Vernon, Iowa. He attended University of Northern Iowa as an undergraduate and completed dental school at the University of Iowa in 2004. He has been in private practice for 14 years in his hometown, Dr. Russell transitioned his practice to a biologic holistic dentistry practice in 2010. And he has since become a member of the International Academy of oral medicine and toxicology has taken training and ortho tropics facial growth guidance, and is a graduate of the Schuster Center for Professional Development and as an ambassador for the Dawson Academy of complete dentistry. That's a mouthful.

So welcome to the show. Dr. plastisol. Hi, Stephanie. How are you? I'm good. Thank you for being here today. I feel so blessed to have met you and have you as my personal dentist. So let's start with you sharing your story how you kind of got into biologic dentistry and really what that is.

Dr. Ben Pospisil 2:27

Well went way back in 2010. I think you You said I was attending a basically a dental professionals business school so that we could figure out how to run our practices because in dental school, they don't teach us how to do anything regarding business regarding employees regarding anything other than how to draw on T on that.

So I was at this Business College was called the Schuster Center for Professional Development and a bunch ellagic dentists who had graduated from that school, was speaking to us about his experiences regarding his dental career and how, in his mid 30s, he was already feeling wanting to quit tired after just an eight hour day, like you want to collapse on the couch at the end of the day, and I used to do scraping on houses, I used to bale hay hours and hours on it. I used to do tons of stuff as a kid and I was starting to at age 28. At that time, I was starting to feel the same way already. And so what he was saying to me was really absorbing and to me, and he was talking about how he transitioned his practice to a to be mindful of the materials we're using not just doing it because that's what they taught us in dental school, but really be thinking about what it is we're putting in people's mouths, and the impact that it has on our own personal health as dentists and practitioners and hygienists and assistants.

Basically, he was listing off a bunch of symptoms that he had shaky hands, couldn't concentrate, brain fog, things like that. And I was already beginning to see those types of things at their early stages happening in me. And so it really scared me, to be honest, I thought, well, I'm 28 years old, I have to try to do this, to what I'm 55 or 60. That's a long time to be sitting there, exposing myself to something that I'm not sure what the ramifications are sure, because it's odorless, tasteless and visible, the gas and the fumes that come off of drilling on those fillings is imperceivable until it's accumulated to the point where I'm starting to have issues related to it. So it's just it can be difficult to associate. Something that had started 20 years ago is happening slowly over time to now I'm having symptoms.

And so it's rarely blamed for very many things. Because it is a slow, accumulative process. So I just I just decided, you know, today's a day, would there have been better materials out for 30 years, I'm going to stop doing it. I'm going to start treating it for what it is. And that's when I began my journey into the beginnings of biologic dentistry, which that was the mercury amalgam filling removal was just the beginning of things. It wasn't the only thing but it kind of opened up a door to a whole world of dentistry I've never known. Awesome, awesome. I want to get into that we won't get to mercury just yet. But so in essence, you were kind of evaluating Well, I don't want to develop these symptoms. I don't know what I could be exposing myself and my staff do so let's let's change the way we do things for us, but then also for our patients and it sounds like you've learned a lot along the way. So let's start with I know when patients come to see you, you essentially ask them if they want to keep their teeth. I mean you ask them how committed they're going to be which I love. I in it in a different way I asked that of my patients to so tell me how you would tell me about that questionnaire, I guess, how you drill your patients when they first come to see you?

Well, a big part of what the Schuster center taught me was that in order for me to have a practice that's outside of what everybody else is doing, I had to have a new patient experience that was quite different from what everybody else was doing, which is basically what most people are doing basically, the first time they meet you, they're late, you're laying back in a compromised position. They say hi, list off a bunch of stuff they think you need, and the patient just has either say yes or no, and they don't even know the doctor. So first thing is that we do is just really concentrate on a new patient experience. And part of that is a pre clinical interview where we discuss with the patient what their history has been. It's a spectrum so it's not like you're either one, two three or four.

But I do show pictures of people with level one mouse, which are people who don't care about their teeth. They never been taught to have high regard for their mouths, and they largely disregard their problems until they're so bad that they're unrecoverable. And those people end up with dentures earliest in life, and they end up with my own personal experience also living the shortest lives. And then a then the level two people are people who have seen level two dentists their entire lives. And so, level two dentistry doesn't mean that the technical dentistry is bad. But what the problem is, is that the patient's never taught to understand why they acquired their problem or how to get past their problem. The dentist is largely a technical dentist and they fixed teeth all the time. So I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way or any of your patients have but dentists don't save teeth. It is drill on teeth.

If you need dentists to drill on your teeth all the time, you're going to end up with no teeth. So, what I try to do is help the patients understand that, you know, most of them are coming here as level two patients because that's the only thing I've ever been exposed to. They've never been taught how to be level three. But level three and above people keep their teeth for a lifetime. People below level three, level one and two, lose their teeth. No matter how much money they spend on them, they still lose them. 85% of people who go to a dentist regularly regularly in this country lose multiple or all their teeth. Yeah, well, if we're talking about whether or not dentists safety dentists don't save teeth, the patient has to so dentistry is done and done well. The patient then is taught to take care of their teeth like 95% of other patients don't or are unwilling to. And so when we get to level three, it's a predictable future doesn't mean you have a perfect mouth. It just means that you have a mouth is under your control on whether or not you keep it.

And then level four people are basically what the system looks like when it's working correctly. And they're very rare. I rarely see them, but I take pictures of them when I do, because it's like the rays from heaven or shining down in their mouth when I see them is basically no need for dentistry. So that's the difference with the office is that I really don't think that everybody should be put in a cookie cutter situation where everybody gets x rays every year for the rest of their life, no matter what their risk is. That's basically that's basically an insurance based philosophy where the other one would be need based philosophy, you know, disease care versus healthcare. So, once we get to level three and level four patients rarely need me and they are longer recalls between appointments with me and their health care goes down costs go down over time, which is really what healthcare should be is the ability to absolve yourself of a need for a doctor. But the problem is, is that people don't rarely get there or when they do, they end up being yours and my best referrals because they're healthy, you talk about it. Mm hmm.

You're you're probably a good example of a level four patient Hmm. And because you've told me, You haven't had to have your teeth cleaned in like three years because you take such good care of your teeth. Yeah, I'm almost four. Yeah, that's awesome. That's wonderful. So let's talk about how reflective oral health is of overall body health. So I was taught this through my fellowship program. I don't know that all nurse practitioners or doctors are taught this but even Mayo Clinic will state that gum disease or I can ever say it, period is associated with increased risk of developing heart disease. So poor dental health can increase the risk of bacterial infection, literally in the bloodstream, which can infect our whole heart valves, which is also why oral health can be important if you have artificial heart valves. But oral hygiene is important for everyone.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 11:00

So, can you talk more to that? How reflective our oral health is of overall body health? Yeah, um, well, just getting back to the periodontal disease issue is that 70% of Americans, whether they see a dentist or not have some form of gum disease, so it's probably even actually higher than that. So gum disease is just inflammation of the gums as a reaction, your body's immune systems reaction to having plaque on the teeth. And eventually that plaque causes such an inflammatory condition that it creates an opening between the the mouth and the stent and your systemic blood flow. And so what we're finding is that almost everybody who has a heart attack, when you take the plaque that clogged the artery, you're finding things like calcium, bacteria from the mouth, and fat and so on.

Dr. Ben Pospisil 12:00

When I talk to my patients about about gum disease, it's the same plaque that's on their teeth is actually the same plaque that's clogging their arteries. And why that is, is because when we have when we have a, an ongoing infection, your body is most likely running in acidic state. And, and when I see people with these, with these conditions, they largely are, they're acidic in their saliva, and if they're sitting in their saliva, they're acidic in their blood. And the body's pH is very tightly regulated, as you know. And when it gets into a, a pH stress situation, it will Leach calcium phosphate from your bones to balance that acidity. And I'm telling you that it gets into your serum, and that what do you think's on the artery clog? Right, and so, and then you're talking about fat as well and and the bacteria themselves.

They are the same bacteria in the clog as they're on the teeth. So if we try to compartmentalize our bodies into I work on t, this guy works on hearts, this guy works on kidneys, this gal works on, you know, GI tract, then we totally miss the and that's, that's on us to because we're not communicating and overlapping all these systems that are so very important. So yeah, that's just the beginning, but then we could get into dead teeth and dying teeth and cavities and abscesses and how that affects the downstream rest of your body. I'll tell you that if you don't have a healthy mouth, you can't have a healthy body for sure. And that goes right along with your longevity blueprint, which is simply that you know, all the systems are, are designed to work perfectly. It's that we've devolved into making our lives easy and with our foods with our work everything is is set up so that we can make life easy for us.

But when we don't challenge ourselves, it's just like when you don't lift weights or you don't ever work out, you see atrophy. And the atrophy can occur the same way in the mouth it can occur the same way in the strength and the formation of our face and our jobs. And it happens in our bones and then our muscles so the mouth is just I just found that it's really the the body in the mouth is just like the rest of the body. It's connected. And all the same ways that the systems of the body that we think we go to workout in the gym, and we go to do all these things that are so healthy, but then we disregard our mouth. That seems like insanity to me. But what you said elicited a few questions so I'm gonna go back to gum disease for a second so how would a listener know if they have gum disease? Am I correct in saying if I'm flossing and I'm bleeding and there's inflammation there is that is that telling me I have gum disease? There's no reason for anybody you to be bleeding anywhere in their body when it's touched. Okay, well it is expensive.

It's red for a reason I believe in our brains, I believe are also evolved to understand that red is danger. That's why we have it on stop signs and everything else. We should not be disregarding bleeding in our mouth anymore than we'd be disregarding if we touched our eye and it started bleeding. So if we're flossing gently, that skin of the gums is keratinized, just like the tip of your finger. And it should be as strong as the skin of your tip of your finger. So if your finger wouldn't bleed when you scratch it like that, neither should your gums. If they are then that's the that's a problem, Houston. And we need to fix it because that's the inflammation that's your body sending the troops and in the inflammatory system to an area to try to kill bacteria. And it's no different than a bacterial infection anywhere else in your body. You wouldn't want to keep it. Good, good, good point. I want also want to restate something you said just to make sure the listeners get this message. So you're saying if your body is in a more acidic state, your your body

He will literally Leach calcium from your bones or your teeth to neutralize that acidic state because it wants to be more alkaline. So this also comes back to why it's so important to eat green leafy vegetables eat foods to promote that alkalinity. Would you agree with that? Or maybe speak to how diet influences our teeth are oral health? Um, well, that's something I talked about in my pre clinical interviews all the time is people are chronically acidic, because we have, we have moved away from eating the foods we were designed to eat. We're only chronically acidic because we have access to sugar anytime all day long every day. And when you think about our ancestors, they really only had access to to sugary things seasonally when a fruit came into ripe to being right. And so they didn't have a little snack here and a little snack there at the office. They didn't have the constant

So what makes a vegetable kind of bitter or whatever is that is the alkalinize to it. So these different greens like kale, spinach, all those things all have their own alkaloid that they produce in order to actually protect themselves from being over grazed. And so, you know, if you're a cow and you're sitting there and a patch of spinach, if you eat too much spinach, it will cause a belly ache. So if they then move to a different type of green, then the small amounts of different types of greens don't cause that reaction. So you know, some people come in here and they're like, Oh, yeah, you tons of greens and all I ever eat is but I eat a ton of spinach and all they eat is fish and they talk to me about their, their stomach aches or whatever. Well, I just encouraged them to transition to different types of greens because those alkaloids were made for the protection

That plan but they're also alkaloids which alkalize our body so we need those things, way higher numbers than what we need fruit all the time. You know, you know fruit is a great thing and it has lots of vitamins but it's not something we need to eat, you know, seven fruits a day eight fruits a day in order to say that I don't eat sugar because the what makes fruit sweet sweet is sugar. You know, and I want to encourage people the fruits but just be understanding that, you know, the forest floor wasn't wasn't covered in nine different types of fruit. You know, it was covered in 20 20,000 different types of green plants that were grazed by the handful when they walked by, you know, and it was done quickly and it did. We didn't need 10 pounds of dressing to eat it either. You know, we literally would take a handful seven and our mouths chew it up. It challenged our jaws it promoted facial development, full arch development by chewing those hard

Foods, and then we moved on to something else. So, I mean, that's the way I kind of think about the way I eat in my way that drives my wife kind of crazy. But yeah, I'll just take a handful of that the organic box of greens that she has and stuff it and walk on and keep doing stuff, you know, and you can do that.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 19:17

Yeah, I love raw kale, I must be craving or maybe I'm deficient in something that is provided in the greens. My husband laughs at me, but I love eating raw kale, especially fresh out of the garden. So good. Let's go back to flossing for a minute here. I fully admit like many Americans that I had previously never had a strong commitment to flossing but I do now I've been messing a lot more. Can you tell us what you tell your patients how a lot of the surface area of their teeth is missed? If they're not flossing, so can you can you speak to that? Yeah, you know, I can use this little model here. Actually, we have a little model of teeth here. And if I take it to fell, you can see that that's the side that you brush. There's just as much surface area

Dr. Ben Pospisil 20:00

When you turn to the other side, so if you look at a tooth and you see that it's square, basically, if all you're brushing is the tongue side and outside, then circumferentially, you'd only be cleaning 50% of the surface area of your mouth, and bacteria. You know, people take a lot of onus in trying to kill bacteria in their mouth. That never works Listerine and things like that. Those are to make you feel good that you think your breath is okay. But really, the bacteria comes back twice as strong because it also kills good bacteria. And that's not the point of how to absolve disease in your mouth. Bacteria colonies can't make be of disease causing potential until they're mature enough. So if you never let the colony get mature and build a castle on your on your teeth, then it can't ever cause disease. So basically, flossing seems like it's worthless, like what's it really doing? They don't know killing those bacteria.

No, all you're doing is taking a little bacterial colony that's growing, and it wants to grow into a pink and purple brown and orange Cheeto colored colony is taking that and swiping the castle foundation down every day. And if you do that, they can never get to maturity enough to burn holes in your teeth or elicit a inflammatory reaction from your body. They just can't you just knocked down the colony all the time, and they also can't form cadaverine and sulphonamides from eating your tissue. So when you when you think you have bad breath, bad breath occurs normally on the tongue or from gum disease. And it's always happening because the bacteria that are in on the teeth when they eat your tissue, whether it's to structure or gum tissue, and the byproduct that they create is cadaverine and sulphonamides and

That's why your breath stinks. It smells like a cadaver. So, if your smell your breath is smelly when you wake up in the morning, those types of things, we need to clean the tongue really well and we need to clean between the teeth. Those are the main causative factors. There are some acid reflux and stomach factors that can those are fairly rare relative to me, I'd say 90% of halitosis and stuff like that is caused from bacteria in the mouth.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 22:27

I get asked all the time, what's one product that I just can't live without when it comes to maintaining my own health and longevity? And my answer is something you've actually heard me mentioned on several episodes. It's called mitochondrial complex and it's pretty much the Cadillac of multivitamins, and it's packed with antioxidants, including three key players acetyl, l carnitine, alpha lipoic acid and an acetal cysteine. Think of a steam engine that requires coal to be continually shoveled into the furnace to power the train forward. acetyl l carnitine. Does that for your body by shoveling short chain fatty acids into your cells to provide your body with energy

This is an absolutely essential task to keeping you running. However, what's a byproduct of fire? You guessed it smoke. Unfortunately, in this analogy, smoke crumb fire equals free radicals. To combat those free radicals, other antioxidants are needed and that's where alpha lipoic acid and acetylcysteine come in. Together, they scavenge free radicals and help boost and recharge beautify on the most potent antioxidant in the body. To top it off mitochondrial complex also contains a little bit of green tea extract, broccoli seed extract with sulforaphane and even resveratrol. Research has shown that when athletes and individuals that are under stress begin taking this product they are less likely to get sick as they're giving their body what it needs to conquer those stressors. Who doesn't need protection from stress and cellular damage at this time? I certainly do. I take this product every day. If you're interested in learning more about how mitochondrial complex can help support you living a longer healthier life, check out my blog post on why antioxidants are important found out your longevity blueprint.com forward slash y dash antioxidants dash are important, or in chapter four of my book, Your longevity blueprint to get 10% off our mitochondrial complex just use code energy when checking out at your longevity blueprint.com. Now, let's get back to the show.

Well, let's next transition to talking about the importance of the facial growth and airway development, which I had really never thought about until you mentioned this to me in my son's appointment. Mentioning you encourage that we not let his jaw hang open that we encourage that he close his mouth. So I never thought of the importance of him developing his jaw muscles and not really just eating mushy food, but actually being able to chomp on some broccoli chop on some food as well. So speak to the importance of that because I have a feeling that a lot of the listeners have never heard of that importance.

Dr. Ben Pospisil 24:48

Yeah, that's a good point because I as a dentist after I mean, it was 40 I've actually been in practice for almost 16 years. I think it may be my bio said 14 but it was is at year like 13 and a half that I heard anything about it. So if you're wondering if your dentist knows anything about it, there's a pretty decent likelihood he or she has never heard of it as well. So, basically, the thought is that there's two ways to look at under development of jobs. One is that, you know, you are given your mom and dad's jeans and your mom and dad's jeans might go for big teeth and small jaws. And so that's why everybody's crowded, right? Um, that, in my mind isn't the truth. That's just an easy way to say you have crowded teeth. You need braces, right? That's basically the only reason is it's like an excuse not to know why something happened, you know? So, there's a, there's a area of dentistry called ortho tropics where a guy named dr. john mew m ew. He's 92 years old now. He was seeing that, you know, almost every case that he saw was that the maxilla the upper jaw had grown down and back. Now our ancestors never had crowded teeth.

You can't find a you can't find an ancestral skull prior to the agricultural revolution that there were ever crowded teeth and rarely do you find cavities or gum disease as well. So were crooked teeth, right? You've told me what are crooked teeth? They all had stroke of teeth. No, no the teeth. If you ever find a wild animal skull, you'll never find crooked teeth ever. bite you 80% of young kids need to have braces in the United States. And the reasoning that I have come up with in the world that I have been exposed to is that we are not having correct oral posture and we don't eat the foods we're designed to eat. So oral posture would mean you know what, how are we supposed to hold our mind You know, does this look good? Or does this look better? Right? So the question would be, is this the correct job posture for rest, with the teeth in gentle contact the tongue to the roof of the mouth and the lips closed, breathing through our nose, or is hanging in the mouth open and mouth breathing all the time the way we're supposed to be? Well, I would tell you that the only way that we create nitric oxide, which is a very valuable vascular proliferation molecule, is to breathe through our nose by breathing through our nose, it goes through turbinates several times is filtered and our nose is in any way determine it's in our nose can help create can help create nitric oxide. And we cannot get that from breathing through our mouths at all. Plus, the ear is unfiltered and we're wondering why so many kids have inflamed tonsils, and all of this stuff.

If you get if they get sick when they're little kids, and they develop a mouth breathing posture, then the likelihood is that's going to keep going and getting worse and worse and worse, unless we clear that and encourage a closed mouth posture and nose breathing, because once you start trying to start breathing through your mouth becomes a lot easier. But where's that unfiltered air with all the toxins that we have in the United States and in Iowa and everywhere else? Where's that air going? Basically, the closed mouth posture, nose breathing, challenging our jaws with foods and not and transitioning from breastfeeding, straight into food with handles is is going to give us the proper john tongue or development that we need to breathe in so that all of us are ending up with sleep apnea and all these other things later in life. So speak to that last point you said so there is which I didn't know then a relationship. Am I saying this right between a smaller job now and sleep apnea.

When there's less, think about the development of your upper arch, the upper arch of teeth, forms the floor of the nasal sinus. Okay? So if our tongue is never up in that palate, and it's the strongest muscle on our body, it has tons of potential for spreading out the teeth, right? If it's never up there, your maxilla is soft bone, your mandible is hard bone. And the maxilla is just trying to grow to wherever the pressures are pushing it to grow. If there's never any pressure to grow up and out, it will always just start to do this. So that's why we need the closed mouth posture, your tongue tongue up to the roof of the mouth like when you're saying the word or the letter N and, and then close the teeth and close the lips and nose brief. And anyway the Yeah, so if the jaw grows down and backwards, are these lower tea supposed to go?

And then you see profiles of kids and I challenge your your viewers and listeners to look at teenagers these days whether they've gone through orthodontics or not of them have good strong jaws lower jaws, or has their face just melted into their chin. Yeah, their teeth might be straight But have we ruined their face in abled in accomplishing straight teeth.

So the onus has to be on the doctors to try to encourage the arts to form as it was designed to so that the lower jaw can grow for me, I'm playing room for all the teeth that God gave us. So if you are a mouth breather, do you encourage like taping the mouth shut as an adult or what what are your recommendations as an adult that i would i do recommend that we do want to make sure that we don't have obstructive sleep apnea already developed. So if we're if we're talking about encouraging a patient to do that, it's important that we at least evaluate Mel potty score which is the how close the back drape was a soft palate is and and see But yeah, I mean I mouth tapes periodically if I start getting sick I'll mouth eight because that helps me clear the sinuses. Sure and concentrate on keeping my mouth closed, you know drooling on the pillow, night sweats getting up to pee several times a night. All these things are signs of sleep disordered breathing.

And so sometimes people just say no, I don't snore. Well, snoring is not the only sign of sleep disordered breathing and so many people so many adults have it, but we could have caught it long ago. And that's the thing is, there are great treatments for adults and expanding the arches and adults though there are some being developed at this time. And I just need to continue to educate myself regarding those but really what the biggest thing is, is to catch the kids before they become underdeveloped because most orthodontic treatment is initiated after nine percent of the facial growth has already occurred. So as as children, so I watch my son develop, if he's hanging his mouth shot, the best thing I can do is just close. Yeah, close games used to do that they used to walk around a campfire and just tap the chins of the kids that are holding their mouths open. Because they didn't know much about Java development. But they knew that the kids on their mouths open all the time are sick all the time.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 32:25

So great tips. I want to get into mercury and fluoride next. So let's talk about mercury. I know in your practice, you have learned safe protocol. That's called smarts for removing Mercury, and that's what you use it on me. So before we get to that, I just want to ask your opinion on on mercury. And if you feel like it's dangerous, I personally chose to have mercury removed from my mouth. And I think we as you alluded to before, we both live in Iowa, we're exposed to all kinds of toxins like herbicides and pesticides. We all have a different level of toxic burden that we've accumulated throughout our life.

Dr. Ben Pospisil 33:00

So I think for some people, maybe Mercury is their only toxin. But for others, it's one of hundreds, thousands, right? So, for me, that was a decision I made to have it removed because I didn't want that adding to my burden. And that was a personal choice. And I'm happy that I found you to remove it safely. But what are your thoughts on mercury? Do you put mercury fillings in your patience or not? What What's your opinion on that? Well, the first thing I would say to you, in addition to what you just said, was that everybody has a different toxic burden. And everybody has a different capacity for ridding themselves of these toxins. So you know, by mthfr, and a PO e jeans and things like that and their expressions, historically, whether they were expressed or not expressed as mthfr, positive or negative. Prior to our agricultural revolution, didn't used to be deleterious manifestations, whether they were positive or negative. It's in the current age that they

Their expression has led some people to be sick and other people not to. So when I see people come into the office, some of them had a walk in and they say, I have mthfr. I have, you know, my dad had Alzheimer's at 50, and all this stuff.

Those people, there's a lot of medical doctors who are not even familiar with those and what they should do regarding those. And now we're talking about patients that are almost more educated than doctors sometimes regarding the expression of these genes. And they are at higher risk because their body can't produce Bluetooth ion, which is a transport molecule for toxins to the level that other people can. So you could have somebody with a mouthful of mercury for 50 years, as Dennis put in in the 1960s and they could have no symptoms. Conversely, you can have one person with one small little mercury filling feel like they've been hit by a truck every morning. And you take it out and they're this, like the weight of the world is lifted off their shoulders. So don't think that the person who's saying these things, they may look completely normal. Sure, and they may be struggling horribly on the inside. And so, you know, when we get to the mercury fillings and stuff, no, I don't place mercury fillings. I think that there have been better materials out for more than 30 years. So I see no need to place a an antiquated material that was developed in the 1820s in our teeth in 2020. And that's 200 years ago. The mercury fillings were developed. We don't use do any procedure in medicine that's 200 years old anymore. I don't I can't name one can you? And so when you think about it, why are we still doing that in dentistry? You know, the ADA patented mercury fillings in the 18 hundred's and so there's a link between their usage and

They're the reasoning behind continuing doing them still to this day. So I would just kind of explore that and think about whether or not there's any safe amount of neurotoxin to have in your body. I, I just seem to think it's insanity to to perpetuate the thought that well, just a little bit of Mercury's Okay. Great. I don't think that's true. You wouldn't allow yourself to just play with a little bit of mercury from from a thermometer. Right, right. versus what about people who have every tooth from front to back filled front side, top side backside with these mercury fillings? Is that just a little bit or what qualifies a little bit? Right, right. So, to me, there's no safe amount of it. I'm not trying to say that any what anybody else is doing is wrong. I'm just saying for my practice. It doesn't make sense. And it's not even a reasonable thing and my patients don't want it anyway. So no, I don't I don't place mercury.

When I remove them, I take the same precautions as I would if I were to do it on myself or on my staff or my mother or my sister or my father, anybody I, I use the same precautions with everybody. And there really isn't a choice to use the precautions or not to, because then it would kind of make it. Like, I don't really believe in it, I'm just doing it because that's what you say you want. I really believe that it's not a good thing. So if you want me to not use those precautions, and you just have to go somewhere else.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 37:27

So expand on those. So that's what you use on me. So expand on how this is so different in your office from me driving up the road to a dentist and then just popping out my amalgam filling. So yeah, not to mention, like, as you were talking about the mercury, if your mouth is full of mercury with every chew, you could be releasing mercury vapors, right every day eating you could be releasing mercury vapors into your mouth. So obviously when you would be removing the mercury also drilling on that that's going to release more mercury vapors, right.

Dr. Ben Pospisil 37:55

Tons of mercury. Yes, lots and lots and lots of mercury. So mercury gas is detectable in the mouth at or is detectable period coming off of mercury fillings at 78 degrees. So, Mercury being one of the most, one of the most reactive chemicals on the periodic table to all things, um, is highly susceptible to temperature as you would know. Right. And so it expands and contracts with differing temperatures, and that's how the thermometer works. And so just because it's mixed with powder of copper, tin and silver, or some others and sometimes zinc or whatever, but the just because it's mixed with those powders doesn't take away its reactivity. And so, does everybody you know, have a temperature that's above 78 degrees? Uh huh. Yeah. So, if you have a Mercury filling in your mouth, regardless of whether you're chewing or drinking hot coffee or whatever, it's always smoking a detectable amount of mercury fumes off of and there's Different damaging potential for different types of mercury out there. So mercury gas would be the second most damaging mercury form. The first would be methylated Mercury, and most damaging is methylated mercury from like fish. Mm hmm. And I'm gonna,

Dr. Stephanie Gray 39:19

I'm gonna interrupt you real quick because for listeners, if they're wondering, okay, do I have high levels of mercury, we actually run a test at our clinic where we can separate. So if someone has a high mercury on their nutritional evaluation screening that we find in our practice, that doesn't tell me where that Mercury is coming from, right? So it could be coming from fish. And if the patient tells me they're eating tuna five times a week, it's probably coming from tuna not from a feeling in their mouth, especially if they only have one but if we're not sure if they have several, several metal fillings and they eat a lot of fish, we can run a Mercury try test, which is actually looking at if they have higher methyl mercury versus inorganic Mercury, which would be coming more from the fillings in their mouth. So I love about that.

Dr. Ben Pospisil 39:59

Yes. You run is it like hair fecal? What is it?

Dr. Stephanie Gray 40:03

It's all its blood, hair and urine.

Dr. Ben Pospisil 40:05

It's all three days do you do a challenge test like where you're trying to get it out of the cell so that it's perceptible or so that some of these people with mthfr are what I call hoarders, they're not released or so they would they because they don't have the capacity to read their body of it. When they are exposed to it. They, they hoard it in their cells, their fat cells and things like that. That's one of the first places where mercury goes as fat cells. And I believe that so many people have autoimmune issues related to this because a lot of autoimmune disorders are related to nerve issues, and what's lining all of our nerves fat cells, so we have mercury on top of mthfr on top of hoarding it on our axons of our nerves, and now we have we could potentially have autoimmune disorders that really aren't truly autoimmune disorders where they're actually related. If you Go up the line two things that we've been exposed to toxins. If you're if you try to push it out of the cells or if you try to,

Dr. Stephanie Gray 41:08

Yeah, so I'll comment on a couple things that are I want to go back to mthfr genetic variants, because we also test for those at our clinic. But mthfr is one of several genetic variants. You alluded to Bluetooth if we can test for multiple Bluetooth ion snips right, so that the danger that comes into play here is when patients have lots of impairment with several detoxification snips right, then we know oh, this patient probably doesn't have the enzymes needed to to clear out toxins well, so mthfr is one variant that many people are our gene that patients are becoming more familiar with, and they get nervous if they have a few variants there, but what I look at with my patients is even more than that we we run a 60 page genetic analysis and I look at Okay, what is the burden of these these variants? Because some patients with mthfr are okay, that's the only not the only but one of the few variants they have versus others have lots, but to answer that question, this specific test is usually not done challenged, because the company believes certain types of mercury are going to be better excluded in hair versus urine versus whatnot.

However, that's, that's for this mercury differentiation test. If I'm looking at other metals, that test is only Mercury, I do run another test or doctors data, which is looking at lots of different heavy metals and that one we do unprovoked and and provoke so we have patients urinate, so we see just what they're spilling on a daily basis and their urine, then we we give them a collation agent orally, they take that based on their weight, then we collect metals that they're excluding, so upon provocation, like you're alluding to, if then they're dumping metals, we know they do have metals in storage because sometimes just a basic urine test we don't find anything because metals are hiding in fat, but if we provoke them, and then they don't metals, we know we have a bigger problem here. They are storing they are storing those metals in in fat.

Dr. Ben Pospisil 42:54

Yes, are you finding like cadmium and I will and stuff like that and people's blood actually can be

Dr. Stephanie Gray 43:00

Yeah, I mean, ketamine is probably the I would even say just based on smokers. So I can almost guarantee every single one of my smoking patients is going to have high cadmium levels. Yesterday, just on a basic unprovoked nutritional evaluation test, I had a smoker whose ketamine level was high. And I got to say to her, Well, hopefully this will motivate you to quit smoking, because you can see without provocation at all, I mean, obviously, your Academy level was high. So I see that I do see that a lot. Yeah. So let's go into the smart protocol. So what precautions are you taking I mean, you are addressing in full gear in your office, tell us the few steps you take to safely remove metal from your patient's mouth.

Dr. Ben Pospisil 43:40

So the first one is that I have them swish with a charcoal or chlorella, Mercury binding material of some kind, because they're always off gassing. So there's a little bit of gas in your mouth right now. So let's go ahead and bind that up. Then we administer oxygen to the nose and We also use a rubber dam, which is the most important part. When I was in dental school, we used to take mercury fillings out of people. And we just stuck with patent all by the side of their tongue. And I drill a filling out, and I'd pull the cotton roll out and it would be like sparkles on a unicorn or something. Yeah, it was just filled with mercury filings. So then they had their mouth was shining in the back, I could see sparkles. And then the patient feel like it's the patient's feel like it's just saliva, so they go and then they swallow all the little filings. So the absolute most important part of the whole protocol is the rubber dam it forms a gasket around your tooth. So the whatever water and filings come off are pooled in the in the rubber dam and we can vacuum those out. Additional to that their face is covered. We have a high volume evacuation mercury filtration thing called Snuffy that sits by their chin while removing it. So that the ambi in the office isn't as highly toxic following the removal, it's creating an aerosol. So we're talking or in the age of COVID talking about aerosols.

Our office has actually been more prepared for this COVID thing than any other office around that I know of because we already had the filtration systems you being utilized for mercury safe mercury removal. So anyway, I'm dressing and like you said, a full down that's disposable and I wear a Mercury safe face shield with filtration, Mercury filtration, because here's the impetus behind me doing this was to protect me, actually. And I thought if I'm going to protect me, why wouldn't I protect this girl sitting next to me doing my assisting who's pregnant? Okay, that only makes sense that I would protect her. And then not Lastly, but it was down on the radar screen at first, why wouldn't I protect this patient who feels sick, right? So it only makes sense that we do the whole thing or Nothing, you know. So at the end of it, we take the mercury filling out ID robe everybody robes. We have a full time mercury filter running in the office just read recirculating air every hour. And then you swish again with the mercury or with the swish. And then we're done. And it really only takes about 30 seconds to take one out. It's the preparation. It's like painting. It's like the preparation is what takes all the time painting doesn't take much time, you know?

Dr. Stephanie Gray 46:30

So then you give your patient a mug that says I'm mercury free, right?

Dr. Ben Pospisil 46:34

Well, I find myself without a little bit because systemically there they may not be working.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 46:43

So that's why I send them to you

Dr. Ben Pospisil 46:46

out of their mouth and they get the need to get out the rest of their body. Yeah.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 46:52

That's so good. I hope I think listeners will not realize it. It's just not as simple as going to a regular dentist to have these removed because in fact, if Do expose yourself to more vapors, you could be putting yourself at more harm through the removal process and you could end up sicker than you were intending to be without wanting them removed. So I think finding a biological dentist like you is just crucial to to regaining one's health if they have metal in your mouth. I want to briefly talk about fluoride. And your opinion on that as well. Is that something that you use in your office or No,

Dr. Ben Pospisil 47:23

I do not use fluoride I we haven't we haven't had a fluoride treatment. In probably eight years done in our office. I just think about fluoride as being a medicine, the dental world in the medical world have treated fluoride like it's an essential nutrient. The human body was not designed to need fluoride. We have acquired the need for fluoride, because of our behavior. So do we really need it or do we need to change the behavior So that would be kind of coincident with almost all medications that are meant to treat chronic disease. I don't like medication. So I don't want to say that I need medication, right, because of my behavior in one way or the other. So, I'm not gonna talk heavily about, you know, my deep, dark beliefs about for AI. But what I will tell you is that when you absolve yourself of the habit, the need for the medicine goes away. Mm hmm.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 48:33

So I will tell you, I personally, I have the same boat. I just I feel like there could there be a time and place for it? Sure. But does everyone need it? Does it need to be in our water? No, I think many of my patients come to me with hormone imbalances. And so they're doing everything they can to get their hormones back in check. And so one thing that many of them have read about is the importance of iodine. And so when we're exposed to, you know, chlorine and that well fluoride and the bromide in our In our breads, what not, we those are all halides that can compete for binding sites within the thyroid, they can displace iodine. So when we have low iodine, we're at a greater risk of having conditions like low thyroid. So I think, again, it's just another almost toxin in a way that can add to our burden that can leave us well, hormonally on sound can cause other problems. So, but I like what you're saying, there shouldn't be a need for if we can take care of our mouth. We have the right diet, and we shouldn't need the fluoride.

Dr. Ben Pospisil 49:27

Well, there's no animal in the wild that gets fluoride and I never have seen a cavity on an animal because I'm a hunter, you know? Yeah. And when I when I went to you look at the schools of animals, they never have cavities ever. There's no cavities in the animal kingdom in general. And so if there aren't then why are we it's because of our habit, not because we need fluoride.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 49:49

Exactly. That's great. Um, what other tips do you have for oral health? What would be your your top tip for for oral health?

Dr. Ben Pospisil 49:58

Well, generally, I just tell people To try to eat a native diet as close to a native diet as you can, we were given everything we need on this on this earth. It's just we need to know how to use it, and how not to abuse it. So, in my mind, the most important thing isn't brushing five times a day isn't flossing nine times a week, bit after every single meal. It is living the way we were designed to live. And the closer we can live to that, to that standard, the less likely we are to suffer from diseases that are easily avoidable.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 50:34

Love that I've heard you say before that God didn't design our bodies to fail. Right? We have the right. We have the right tools. We have the right food we just need to be eating.

Dr. Ben Pospisil 50:43

Well, I love to have that conversation. And one of the biggest ones I always ask the patient is do you think your parents gave you bad teeth? Because so many people, their parents and their grandparents and they have familial denture wears and I have to dispel the thought in their head, that they were designed to fail teeth are the one of the most commonly perfectly formed organs in the human body. Hmm, for a reason, if we can't eat, we can't live. And so if we, if we can get out of our thought process that we are weak or crippled in any way by our genetics, then we if we can't get past that we will never ever get healthy. You have to have a mental transition to I'm designed to win. And yes, I'm gonna win.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 51:31

Yes. And you basically said we have to eat to live and that's another reason why oral health is tied to longevity, right? If we can keep our teeth, which again is what you ask your patients if they want to do and we can eat food and live longer. Thank you so much for coming on today. This is so enlightening and very entertaining. And I think this is going to help the audience to really reflect back on how important it is to take care of their oral health. They have to think about what's life going to look like years down the road. If I'm not taking care of my teeth, and I'm not on a healthy diet, so I know you have inspired me to truly see my family's oral health as a representation of their whole body health. So thank you for giving us the tools we need. We need to take care of that house.

Dr. Ben Pospisil 52:11

You know, Stephanie, I want to ask you one question. How old are you? 36? How many years do you have left to live?

Dr. Stephanie Gray 52:20

Well, I hope I live into my 90s. I can't do math very well, but a long time.

Dr. Ben Pospisil 52:25

Yeah. So potentially 40 or 5050? Some 60 years?

Dr. Stephanie Gray 52:29

Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Ben Pospisil 52:31

Yeah. Do you think teeth are designed to last 100 years or more?

Dr. Stephanie Gray 52:34

Yes,

Dr. Ben Pospisil 52:35

yes. It's the only thing that lasts in the in the fossil record or teeth, basically. So if we can't keep them for a measly hundred years, it's something we're doing. We haven't. It's not something that we're crippled genetically from right. So just keep it in mind when you're thinking about it. Don't think about today being the only day about whether or not I have teeth or not think about what the way you want to see yourself and be in function when you're selling 7080 years old because when you're when you're retired, those are supposed to be your best years, not your not your years with the least amount of dignity, and enjoy because eating is one of the most joyful things we can do. And if you can't do it, you lose out on a lot of life. So

Dr. Stephanie Gray 53:19

well thank you for being on a mission to help us keep our teeth thank you for doing what you're doing and offering Iowa your services

Dr. Ben Pospisil 53:26

70 Okay, it was a pleasure. Thank you.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 53:30

That was definitely one of the more interesting interviews I've done certainly makes me want to floss my teeth disrupting that plaque from building a home in my mouth and just in general take better care of my teeth, so that they will last me a lifetime as they were designed to be sure to check out my book your longevity blueprint. And if you aren't much of a reader, you're in luck. You can now take my course online where I walk you through each chapter in the book. Plus for a limited time, not only is the course 50% off, but you also get your first consult with me for free. Check this offer out at your longevity blueprint calm and click the course tab. One of the biggest things you can do to support the show and help us reach more listeners is to subscribe to the show and leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. I read all the reviews and would truly love to hear your suggestions for show topics, guests, or how you're applying what you've learned on the show to create your own longevity blueprint. The podcast is produced by the team at counterweight creative. As always, thanks so much for listening and remember, wellness is waiting.

The information provided in this podcast is educational. No information provided should be considered to be or used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your personal medical authority.