David: Look, that’s a great question. I qualified in 1989 from King’s College London and went straight into a hospital house job where I did periodontics, which is basically dealing with a lot of compromised health patients in the hospital, and the importance of gum health was highlighted and protecting the patient when you treated them. And also oral surgery, which, again, there was a lot of… We used to work in a clinic where all of the patients who needed heart surgery, they would come and be assessed by us to make sure there were no dental infections present before the operation, or even as a new junior, I had the power to actually cancel a heart operation because if there was infection, it had to be dealt with.

So, that was in 1990, so that’s 33 years ago, and that was probably my first exposure to how the mouth health is linked to the whole-body health. But in those 33 years, it’s a very slow progression for the dental industry to understand and to accept the connection with oral health and whole-body health, and they’re both very much intertwined. So, I came over. I married an Australian, and I moved over to Australia in 1998. And I had just been working in a holistic practice in England who exposed me, again, to different concepts when we are dealing with protecting the patient when we’re doing treatment. So, I was able to get on the ACNEM Fellowship course. At the same time, I was actually setting up a brand-new dental practice in Brisbane, so I was very fortunate to do that fellowship with ACNEM.

And then I decided that I was going to incorporate all of the aspects of ACNEM and the integrative health into the style of dentistry that I was going to bring to Brisbane really. Now we were in the city for 10 years, and now we’ve been in The Gap under the brand Dental Wellness for 15 years. So, it’s been 25 years of integrating whole body health to the dental health and probably treated over 10,000 patients in that time. And we’ve achieved a lot of not only great oral health, great maintenance, great education but also a long list of healthy patients and feeling much better and happy with their smile since then.

Andrew: David, just to finish off on, forgive me, the exposure, sorry about the pun, to integrative medicine, you were working in a holistic practice in the UK. Normally when… Let’s say orthodox. When orthodox dentists are first exposed to the integrative model or the holistic model, there is certainly scepticism and sometimes derision. What was your feeling because you were actually working in the practice? What was your feeling of these practices that would’ve been so alien to you?

David: Look, it was interesting, and I actually had a bad back and I went to a chiropractor in the south of England. And he got a block of amalgam and he put it on my chest and told me that I had heavy metal toxicity and I couldn’t fix my back problem until you addressed it. And that was like, “Well, are you going to fix my back?” because he didn’t fix my back and I was a bit annoyed about it because I walked away with a sore back again. But that was just one of the incidences that fuelled my concept that we were in a profession where potentially we’re being exposed to heavy metals. And when I had my hair analysis done through ACMEN when I came to Australia, I was high in lead and I was high in mercury. So, again, it was moments like that.

And the dentist I was working with, he was touching on the fact of giving patients charcoal before treatment and different concepts that I was very open to. And, again, because of my foundational house officer job where the health link was very much a magnification, not like in a general practice, it just naturally flowed really. And then when I came to Australia… I mean, I worked in England for nine years before I moved to Australia, so I worked in private practices. And, again, just kept evolving my education. I was interested in implants, which I went to Harley Street and did a training course in implants. That was in ’95. And now I place ceramic implants. So, that’s been another 30-odd-year journey where I’ve now got to a position where I can comfortably place implants that I feel aren’t going to compromise their health and be successful really.

Andrew: We’ll talk further about implants later, but let’s, sort of, delve into your patient population. No doubt that’s evolved over your practice here in Australia. Take us through though what are the major conditions that you see—the beginning of their dental journey or further along where they’ve perhaps been frustrated by previous interventions.

David: Look, most of my patients are already very wellness-orientated. They’re concerned with what they put in their body. They’re concerned with what they put on their body. And they often are trying their hardest to get as optimally well as possible. And the one thing that they haven’t addressed is a potential issue in the mouth, and they have not been able to have a means of actually finding out if there’s a challenge. Some people are regretting having a root canal treatment, for example, that maybe they feel they’re not the same. Their energy levels are low because of that. But other people may be having issues with heavy metals or the risks. Are they grinding on these old silver fillings and is it affecting them? Are they sleeping well? And is their bite affecting that sleep pattern that they’re having? So, they’re waking up. Their adrenals are working all through the night. So, a lot of my patients are very proactive, very informed, and often wake tired even though they’re trying everything they can. So, that adrenal burnout is very, very common in a lot of my patients.

Andrew: Okay, you know, we have to go there with regards to root canals. Is it just that these are poorly done root canals, which of course need redoing, or is it root canals per se that is the issue? There’s a lot of controversy over this point.

David: Well, it’s really about infection, I think, and we’ll talk more about that later, but it’s really about infection. Is there an infection or not? Root canal treatment is the way dentistry allows the tooth to remain in the mouth. So, it’s, you know, often done by specialists. There’s a whole specialist group that basically focuses on keeping the tooth in the mouth. Can they guarantee when there’s a chronic infection beyond that tooth and they’re just dealing inside the tooth? Can they guarantee that that chronic infection is not going to just sit there?

There’s the introduction of laser dentistry now, which is an exciting factor where they’re able to annihilate all the bacteria, not only in the root but are beyond the tooth. But there’s not many of that equipment in Australia, but that’s really where some people can tolerate having something dead in the body and some people can’t. Some people find that their cortisol levels are raised, their system is stressed, and they feel like they need to do something about it.

Andrew: So, is the issue the identification or misidentification of a chronic infection around the root that has been perhaps missed?

David: Well, the only teeth that have been root-treated that haven’t had an infection are the ones from trauma. So, if you are in a football accident and you break your teeth in half and the nerve is exposed, then an emergency root canal treatment is the only option really, but that’s an environment where everything is non-chronic. It’s a very acute situation. So, that is probably the best chance for a root canal to work when there’s no chronic infection. But chronic infections, you don’t… Sometimes chronic infections don’t hurt, so they can just sit there and you need to identify them.

And that’s where we incorporate the 3D cone-beam CT so that we can actually get a really clear picture are there infections or not. Is the body reacting to a tooth, whether it’s been root-treated or whether it’s been left and hasn’t been root-treated? So, there’s a lot of teeth that people have…the tooth has stopped hurting, so they’ve assumed that it’s okay, but sometimes that’s often there’s a chronic infection still present. And in a way, they’re the cases that go back 30 years, if we found them, a heart operation would be cancelled. And really any operation should be cancelled because, you know, whether it be cosmetic or cancer surgery, the risk factors of having an infection in your mouth affecting the success of the operation are quite high.

Andrew: Never thought of that. Wow, never even thought of it. With cancer therapy, with the risk of developing neutropenia and an infection that would possibly go unchecked because people are on high-dose steroids to manage symptoms.

David: Yeah.

Andrew: That’s really interesting.

David: Well, I helped ACNEM. They’ve got a dental module in their programme, and I was one of the people who helped. And one of my lectures was really on how every doctor who’s prescribing surgery should really consider the patient getting a cone-beam CT just to rule out the risk of chronic infections or acute infections that aren’t hurting that could potentially compromise the health and success of the treatment.

Andrew: Let’s go further into how you identify chronic infections. So, we’ve got the imaging, which I’ve got to say it’s not widely accepted even though it’s accepted by the government as a valid tool. Why is there this resistance to new investigations, which give a much clearer picture of what’s happening in the patient? But also can we delve into what else do you use? Do you go further? Like for instance, looking at, you know, coronary artery calcium scores or something like that to look at distal effects of infections in the mouth.

David: Look, I think the calcium scores is something that a cardiologist would be involved in rather than dentistry but, I mean, you could say dentistry is at the forefront of preventive medicine as well, because we do have access to this technology where…I mean, in a surgery like mine, we have a CBCT, basically a cone-beam CT in the practice. Now there aren’t many countries who have those facilities in dental practices, so I think Australian dentistry does promote the best treatment. It’s the identification really. It’s a single X-ray that you take in the mouth, is only two-dimensional, and sometimes doesn’t show everything that’s there. It often gives us an indication and that will then be a good argument saying, “Well, now we need a 3D image.”

And that’s where the 3D image is taken where we can physically see the problems. We can see that there’s chronic infection. The pathology has a clear visual that a tooth is either healthy or it’s not healthy. The sinuses are either healthy or not healthy. The nasal passages are either healthy or not healthy. So, there’s no argument there as far as it’s there, and I think every dentist who looks at a cone-beam, and they might see a whole range of root canals, and they’re often seeing a lot of issues that aren’t causing any symptoms at the moment but are there. And then I suppose then we have to deal with them. We have to take responsibility and address them. And that may be where it may highlight too many things that then become too big to handle.

Andrew: Right. You mentioned pain before, and obviously we can’t go off pain because a dead nerve will relay no pain. So, what other symptoms do you look at, or even pathology tests like for instance blood. I don’t know if you do them. What other ways do you…?

David: Often an abscess or an infection is very painful, so there is a lot of pain. So, even though the tooth is dead, the nerve has been taken out. If you have an infection, it can be painful. If you’ve had a procedure like a root canal treatment, it can sometimes be painful for a while and then disappears and settles down, and some never settle down. The soft tissues around the dead teeth often look healthy, but if those soft tissues are looking angry and have a purple tinge to them, you know that there’s a chronic reaction going on that the body doesn’t like this in the body, so it’s reacting. When all the rest of the mouth is nice and healthy and then the gum around a certain tooth is purple, then that’s a sign that there’s a problem.

Also, sometimes there’s a little bubble in the gum just above the tooth, that’s a means of the infection draining out and then that tooth doesn’t hurt. It just flares up from time to time. And we often see patients who have had something like that for years and they just realise it’s there but haven’t really done anything about it. And that’s where getting a really clear view of the end of the roots of each of the teeth, something like that will always show a track from a chronic infection that’s worked its way out to that soft tissue swelling.

Andrew: And have you ever picked up maybe chronic infections in the dental area where… In the dental area. In the mouth where patients might have attributed, let’s say, you know, spiking temperatures at night, they might have attributed it to some other cause and looked over there, whereas they come in for a checkup with you and they go, “Hang on, there’s this going on. It’s not that, it’s your mouth.”

David: Look, I could list a few patients who have been through exactly that journey for over 20, 30 years of spiking temperatures.

Andrew: Wow.

David: And until they remember they traumatised their tooth when they were 15 and they didn’t think anything of it but then when we take the cone-beam, there’s a big infection there. And then when we remove that tooth, and we remove the infection, and we use some products from your own blood, which we’ll talk about later to improve healing and optimise healing. All of a sudden, the spiked temperatures have disappeared. So, a number of cases, but that’s just one case where the physical benefits of eliminating inflammation and infection, it can only be felt to really talk about it.

Andrew: Yeah. I don’t want to sort of harp on about root canals, so let’s move on to interventions in general. What can I ask might be your top five interventions or your most common ones?

David: When every patient comes to see us, we sort of go through a protocol. We call it the oral fitness where we look at the function of the jaw and is it functioning properly. If it’s not functioning properly, then often they’re getting TMJ issues or jaw joint problems. They’re getting headaches and they’re getting sensitivity and pain. So, we’ve got to look at that and try and optimise that. We’re looking for inflammation as far as in gum health. People think it’s okay for gums to bleed, but it’s not. If I were to shake your hand and your hand bled, you would think there was something wrong and you’d expect your hand to be very sore. Well, the surface area of a hand is about the same surface as all of the gum area around your mouth. So, if there’s bleeding there, then that’s going to have an effect on your health. So, we’ve got to get that addressed, and that’s where we have an oral health therapist hygienist who focuses on that.

And then infections, again, identifying them and eliminating infections with a safe protocol. The potential toxicity of metals in the mouth, one obviously being amalgam, which is 50% mercury, and then there’s tin, and some copper, and silver. So, there’s a combination of metals, and then dentistry used metals with gold and non-precious metals and titanium. So, there’s a number of different metals in the mouth that are all reacting because they’re all in an environment of saliva. Again, again, now EMS are all around us, so potentially antennas in the mouth as well reacting. So, we want to eliminate as far as possible any metals in the mouth. So, obviously, we have a smart protocol for that where it’s often my associate, Dr Ricky, he safely removes the mercury amalgam fillings with a certain protocol that protects the patient, it protects the dentist, it protects the nurse, and it protects the planet as well. So, that’s one of the things that we do.

And then really looking at breathing. Most of the patients have got problems with stress, and they’re waking up tired, their breathing apparatus, the importance of nasal breathing can’t be overestimated for good dental health. And often it’s the dental architecture, the jaw, the way it bites, it has an effect on your ability to breathe through your nose. So, we need to put the jaw in the right position so that you can breathe through your nose and get the benefits of deep sleep, the benefits of good vagal tone, and healing and detox even before we consider doing any safe removal of amalgams, etc.

And then sleep. Again, sleep is another factor. The breathing through the nose is important. The putting their jaw in position so that they can get to the deep sleep so that they can their ability to detox… Detox is important. So, we often use splints that hold the jaw in the right position, optimising breathing, optimising sleeping, then optimising your good detox and gut health.

And then the final thing that we focus on is aesthetic dentistry and making sure that you’re happy with your smile. And we can achieve that with modern dentistry that’s totally metal-free and a happy, healthy smile.

Andrew: So, we can delve into so many areas there. One of the big ones that comes across my mind is if you look at my schnoz, I’ve had two nasal operations. Obviously not aesthetic, more functional, but we’ve got so many patients that have got engorged turbinates, bent noses, inflamed tonsils and adenoids, da da da. Is this a chicken and the egg sort of thing that you have to sort of say, “Well, maybe if we do the splints, then the…” If I say the word allergies, that would be erroneous, but the inflammation in the nose can settle down. Like, how do you walk that road?

David: Yeah. Look, this comes back to the development of the jaw and the nutrition when you’re growing up as well and when you’re developing, because the Western Price society talks about how the communities that had the right diet, their jaws developed properly. They could breathe through their nose. Even though their teeth were dirty, their gums were healthy. They had no tooth decay, and they were living off a traditional diet, whether it be in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, or Eskimos, or South Pacific, they are all… And then as soon as they start having the Western diet, then they start getting deficient in vitamin A, and vitamin D, and vitamin K2, which Western Price didn’t really understand the K2 you call the Activator X.

So, that was one of the things that then obviously other foods like processed dairy were then making people react. Their tonsils and adenoids would be reacting. And then an inability to breathe through your nose, which then makes you a mouth breather. And then as your mouth is breathing, your jaw doesn’t develop as well. So, you get a narrow jaw and a longer face and then there’s no room for your teeth. So, dentistry comes along and takes some teeth out to make the space even smaller. So, now your tongue wanted to live in this nice big barn. It’s stuck in this little cathedral, and then the cathedral’s made into the small room in the back of the cathedral, and your tongue is pushed backwards, and then you’re having airway issues and breathing issues and it just goes.

Andrew: Can I add to that? Sorry to interrupt you, David. Can I add to that? This is something that really got my goat with my son, and that was he has a very small jaw or not a very small jaw but a smaller jaw. There were some issues with crowding. He had a tooth, you know, sort of, third tooth. Not a third tooth, a third tooth coming out his gum. And the treatment was not to take away the wisdom teeth that probably or have a good chance of causing an issue later on. No, no. That was “not their concern,” even though they’re teeth. What the programme was to take away a perfectly good other not an incisor but the one behind it. First molar, was it? And of course, so you’ve lost a perfectly good tooth to try and shift teeth around, so there’s a misalignment now and then, of course, sure as heck, the wisdom teeth became an issue later, which we’re going to be taken out anyway. So, it’s just this why. Why did they take out these front teeth, not…?

David: And how old was your son? How old was your son when that happened?

Andrew: Oh, he was teens at that stage.

David: Okay, okay. So, the ideal time to really intercept is around six years of age because you can see right if there’s some breathing issues. There’s a style of dentistry called myofunctional dentistry, which looks at the habits and the activity of the tongue, the swallowing pattern, the breathing pattern, the ability to breathe again and sleep well. So, they focus on that. And if you get the breathing correct and you wear these little appliances that encourage the strength of the muscles of the tongue and the cheeks to allow the teeth to expand into the right position, then when you get to 12, there’s a lot of room. Now, wisdom teeth still may cause problems down the track, but if there’s a trapped canine, then they have to come up with a way of ideally bringing that canine into the alignment.

So, you know, orthodontists working with a myofunctional practitioner is the best of both worlds really where they’re not just looking at the alignment of the teeth and move things around, take some food out, but actually, “Let’s get there early.” Get them breathing through their nose. Get their posture much better because as soon as you breathe through your nose instead of your mouth, your posture changes. Your whole structure changes, and your mind has opened up. So, your behaviour and your learning abilities improve. And then as you get older, then if there’s minor things orthodontists can do, then that’s great. But orthodontists, you know, they’ve had a challenging plus because the forces that are applied to the teeth that they’re trying to move to make patients happy are related to the airways and breathing forces and tongues and cheek swelling, which is not something that was traditionally in incorporated in the orthodontic assessment. And now it’s becoming more accepted that the mouth develops well when you’re breathing through your nose. And early on you eliminate certain foods that are causing inflammation in the back of the throat, in the tonsils, and adenoids. So, when you had your operations on your nose, did anyone teach you how to breathe through your nose? No, because you’ve been a math breather for years and years and years. If you don’t learn how to breathe through your nose after that, then you’re just going to get more changes and it’s just going to come back again. Maybe not as bad, but you will get there. A lot of congestion in your nose again, because at night, you’ll be mouth breathing again.

Andrew: If I can give one nod to somebody, it would be Mim Beim, naturopathic royalty who specialises in buteyko and functional breathing. Absolutely brilliant the things that she’s taught me. Absolutely wonderful. So, Mim, thank you so much.

David: And so simple. And so simple.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. And box breathing, which [inaudible 00:30:16] do as well to calm yourself. Really amazing stuff.

David: Yes, it’s often the patients who are nervous in the chair are often or who’ve had a lot of bad experiences are total mouth breathers. And then when they’re lying back with their mouth open, they can’t breathe properly. So, their nervous system turns on. If we do some box breathing with them and get them using their diaphragm to just carefully go four seconds in, hold for four, four seconds out, hold for four. You see physically them calming down and being able to cope with all these things that we have to do unfortunately to achieve what we need to do.

Andrew: Just the last thing about amalgams, I think it’s really interesting that… Like, it took major forces to change the mindset, if you like, certainly in the industry with regards to asbestos, lead. Trying to bring the lead level down. That took a whole force of, might I say, orthodox general practitioners to say, “This lead level is too high. We need to bring that down to what is considered an acceptable, not safe, but an acceptable level.”

But I think it’s really interesting with regards to amalgams that what I see is orthodox dentists saying, “Oh, we’ll take out that amalgam because you’ve got a crack in the tooth or something, and we’ll replace it with a resin not because of a health issue with regards to amalgam. No, no. It’s purely because of aesthetic reasons.” And I wonder I just wonder if there’s going to be this generation of, “Yeah, yeah. It’s just for aesthetics. It’s just because it looks nicer.” And then 30 years down the track when the people who had amalgams have died off, they’re going to go, “That stuff, the mercury, that stuff was toxic as heck.” And there’s going to be finally there’s admittance.

David: Well, look, the United Nations Environmental Protection about 14 years ago got about 130 countries together, and they said that they were going to try and strive to eliminate mercury from the environment. And there were five categories, and one of them was dentistry. So, just recently Australia has an America… I believe America but I know Australia has ratified that. So, the elimination or reduction of use of amalgam in dentistry, I’m assuming, will be a law that will come in that won’t be able to.

The concern I have is the health of the dentist, the health of the patient, and the health of the dental nurse, and the environment that we work in, because if we were to drill that case out and remove that single amalgam filling, first of all, we would put chlorella in the floor of the mouth and get them to sloosh it around, so there’s a cake of chlorella, which is a good heavy metal chelator. We would then use local anaesthetic, use a rubber dam, which is a non-latex sheet that isolates the tooth. It’s a bit like having a theatre gown for a tooth.

For a tooth? That’s just the way we’re working is all protected, so nothing goes down the back of your throat. The patient will be all gowned up in, like, a hazmat suit like we’re all used to now with COVID, with their eyes covered and they have a nose piece on their nose breathing oxygen and the whole area would be isolated and covered. So, all of their body is covered. My nurse and myself would also be covered, and we wear masks with mercury filters in them so that we’re actually…because we’re the closest to that environment when you cut an old amalgam filling, there is a stronger mercury vapour.

So, I want to protect myself and I want to protect my nerves, but then we have a filter that sucks away… It’s like a big funnel that has a suction that sucks away any potential mercury vapour from the working area down into a mercury filter. And any bits of scrap amalgam that go down the suction are then trapped in a mercury trap at the base of the building so that nothing goes down in the waterway. So, we’re protecting the environment as well. So, that’s what I hope will be the norm. The International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology introduced that a good 10 years ago. The protocol that we’re following, and it’s a great system that then the nurses know they’re being protected, the dentists know they’re being protected. And it makes sense. The patient knows that they’re being looked after as well.

Andrew: Yeah, but I love the way, David, that you’ve got this responsibility not just to you, your staff, your patient, but to the environment. It’s not just like, “Yeah, out of mind, out of sight.” Sorry, “out of sight, out of mind,” it’s trapped and then disposed of thoughtfully. Obviously, it’s an element, so it’s got to be recycled. You can’t just disintegrate mercury. But can I ask…

David: Well, we can’t throw it out. If we take him out and put it in the bin, we could go to jail because it’sit’s removed from the building is a toxic waste.

Andrew: Can I ask? You said chlorella to ask as a binder, as a chelator of mercury in the mouth. What about preparation of the patient just so that you make sure that their immune system, that any mercury might inadvertently get into the system or indeed be in the system prior? Do you look at things like NAC, garlic, any of the files to protect them in that instance?

David: Yeah, this is where we work. We work with a lot of natural health practitioners, and a main of our referrals are from natural health practitioners who are managing that side of things. So, I mean, there’s certain aspects of making sure that they’re getting enough protein and, you know, the balanced diet that a naturopath or a nutritional medicine doctor would teach you about and encourage would be what we would expect to manage that before and afterwards as well. There’s so working with other practitioners in a team is essential.

Andrew: What about probiotics for prevention of things like getting off mercury but even just dental health? Dental caries. There was a New Zealand brand.

David: BLIS.

Andrew: Now, what was it called? BLIS K21.

David: Prof. John Tagg, he had scarlet fever himself when he was a child. So, he had heart issues that he couldn’t exercise, but he was very smart, went to uni, did microbiology, I think, and then took over this research and looked at a hundred kids in Dunedin that I think between the age of 8 and 10, they’re all boys and only two of them didn’t get strep throat. And he looked at their saliva and, I think it was number 12 and number 18 on that hundred were the people… And they had a streptococcus salivarius, which seemed to produce almost warfare against streptococcus pyogenes, which causes strep throat. and it annihilates it. It also knocks out streptococcus mutans, which causes tooth decay.

So, there are products now that have this K-12 and M-18 in their product. So, we are putting streptococcus salivarius into the mouth, either in a powder form or a lozenge that you put in the inside of your cheek, so you’re inoculating your mouth against streptococcus pyogenes, which has been shown to have such an effect throughout the whole body. It’s not just the mouth, but you know an overgrowth of strep pyogenes can cause a lot of problems in every system. So, it’s a great product, that’s just one of the ones that we encourage people to use.

Andrew: I saw just recently another one. And forgive me, I’ve forgotten the strain. I think it started with a W, but it’s gone now. I had a tab open. I was actually going to send that to you. Just recently I saw it but I…

David: There’s a Lactobacillus reuteri. There’s a lot of research on that, and there’s a whole range of products with that in it as well for reducing the risk of gum disease, reducing the risk of tooth decay. And, you know, probiotics is an exciting environment where influencing not only the mouth which is the top of the gut but obviously having an effect on the gut microbiome as well.

Andrew: I have to ask this question just briefly. I’m not going to call it a fad because it does have merit, but we have a larger group of the population certainly in the wellness area looking at higher meat diets. Meat versus plants versus dental health. Can you comment, please?

David: Look, I align with the Western price system. So, it’s important that you’re getting the fat-soluble vitamins, the vitamin A, D, K, which is very hard to get in a totally vegetarian or vegan unless you’re an extremely good cook or you really know what you’re doing. So, that’s where I… I think there’s, what’s it called, the pegan diet. It sounds, sort of, a good balance because it incorporates certain animal products and small amounts of them as well as the benefits of the vegan diet. So, you’re getting those fat-soluble vitamins. So, you know, we have a lot of patients who take organ meat supplements and have bone broth, especially for their children, which has a great effect on not only the child’s health but their dental strengths.

Andrew: Now, you’ve also developed… As you said, you know, you’re working with this protocol, so you’ve developed these guidelines for holistic dental care with ACNEM. I know you’ve mentioned a little bit about that, but what’s your call out for orthodox dentists that might be sceptical but might have this wonder about what the heck is this holistic approach?

David: Well, one thing I think holistic dentists, the word is banded around quite a lot at the moment, and it’s all talking about removing your amalgams I suppose. When you’re looking at a patient, there’s a whole group of dentists who do functional dentistry and they focus on that. There’s a whole group of dentists who do sleep dentistry, and they focus on that. There’s a whole group that do myofunctional really and then there’s a whole natural health industry that looks at gut health and small bowel. And really all of these things come together in quite an extensive educational format that incorporates airways. It incorporates breathing, it incorporates function of the jaw, it incorporates the floor of the mouth and the biome, and then eliminating inflammation and infection and toxicity safely. And then having strong advanced dentistry ceramic implants, same day ceramic crowns, you know, everything, all ceramic and is now successful in really high-tech technology. And again, the radiology of this cone-beam CT and all of those other aspects that take into account.

So, I personally think one of the things that dentists have a problem with is their job is very stressful, and they are all working in a really stress mode. They’re constantly in the sympathetic because there’s a lot of grief, a lot of patients unhappy, a lot of distrust. There’s a whole range. Whereas the work I do, I work in the parasympathetic, and I wouldn’t do the job if I didn’t because it incorporates all the other aspects that, one, make my job interesting still after 30 years, and I’m still passionate about it, but really what’s not to like about this style of dentistry when you look at it in the holistic way, I suppose, comparative to a couple of issues that really have been the focus of the negativity towards it.

Andrew: Last quick question. I said last I think last time, but anyway, last quick question. You’ve mentioned a few supplements that you find of merit. Obviously, we don’t want to get on the supplement bandwagon, but, you know, you mentioned things like vitamin D, K2. In the olden days, there was some very old Japanese research that looked at Coenzyme Q10 for periodontitis. How does it fit in? Are we looking at mitochondrial health? Did they use a paste for local application? What’s its facility? What’s its merit?

David: They did some studies on people with heart problems and in Japan, before their heart operations, they gave them high doses of coenzyme Q10, and there’s been an analysis of tissues of patients with gum disease and it’s been shown to be a low level of coenzyme Q10. So, we suggest an activated B vitamin with coenzyme Q10 in it as a once-a-day preventive that really counteracts a lot of things. Obviously, there’s some medication that knock out your levels of CoQ10 as well, which they need to be supplemented because of that.

But the signs of optimising gum health and then if we’re dealing with extractions and obviously drawing blood and patient’s health and bone health, then vitamin D3 and K2 and magnesium and zinc and boron and a whole range of other things are important so that if you’re having a tooth removed, then you’re going to get good healing and you’re going to get good bony healing. So that then if we’re going to be placing a ceramic implant, then we need your vitamin D3 levels to be high, so that it’s more of a biological answer rather than saying you can put implants into anyone with titanium. The ceramic implant, you do really need to have a high level of D3, which then means you need to have a supplement with K2 as well, sometimes natto, the MK-7, which then just gives them the responsibility of looking after their bone health and their bone metabolism as well. And also their cholesterol needs to be low as well. So, a low inflammatory diet, and this comes back to the pegan, sort of, low inflammatory diet specifically for the patient, is a benefit as well, so that their blood tests are low inflammatory markers really.

So, inflammation in the bloods and low vitamin D are two things that will compromise the success of good boney healing and ceramic implant success as well.

Andrew: There’s so many areas which we need to delve into. I think we’re going to need to get you back for another podcast at another time to talk about bruxism and implants, David, certainly. David, it’s been an absolute pleasure to finally talk with you on a more formal forum and really, sort of, explore what you do to help. And I’ll say it again. It’s not just your patients and all your staff, it’s the environment that you’re caring for. I really applaud you for your work and for being a really lovely guy throughout the years that I’ve known you. You’ve always been an enchantment to come and see. There’s no airs and graces with you. You just want to share the joy of indeed what you do with holistic dentistry. Thank you.

David: Well, I’m from Liverpool, you see? So, you know, I’m down to Earth.

Andrew: Some people would say from Liverpool under the earth. But, David, I thank you once again for joining us on Wellness by Designs. It’s been absolutely wonderful and our pleasure.

David: Okay, it was a pleasure. Thank you.

Andrew: And thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Remember, you can catch up on the show notes for today’s podcast and all the other podcasts on the Designs for Health website. And remember also, if you’re a dentist and you might be interested in learning more, ACNEM, the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine, has a course in dentistry for you. I’m Andrew Whitfield-Cook, and this is Wellness by Designs.