Leveling Up Your Oral Health for Optimum Whole-Body Wellness
Do you know which oral condition increases your risk of a heart attack? Or what your teeth can tell you about the strength of your bones?
In this episode, I talk to Dr. Sanda Moldovan, a board-certified periodontist and nutritionist, about all things dentistry. She explains how symptoms like persistent fatigue, headaches, and blurred vision may be connected to your mouth, what a full-mouth detoxification is and how to get one, and the ingredients to use—and skip—in your oral-hygiene products.
If you’ve ever wondered what biological dentistry is all about, this episode is for you. But I have to warn you: you may never want to go back to a conventional dentist again.
Timestamps
00:03:10 – Explaining menopause mouth
00:04:55 – What else can you find out from an oral exam?
00:05:58 – Do hormones help dry mouth?
00:07:38 – What is a biological dentist?
00:09:35 – How do you find a biological dentist?
00:10:36 – What do we do about mercury fillings? Are they still in use?
00:13:09 – How do you know if this is a problem you’re having?
00:15:25 – Dr. Moldovan explains how she helps patients detoxify
00:16:34 – Can you see any indicators of osteoporosis in the mouth?
00:18:04 – The link between oral health and heart-disease risk
00:20:20 – What are jaw cavitations?
00:22:53 – Here’s everything Dr. Moldovan does during her exams
00:24:58 – Better home care for your teeth
00:29:45 – Probiotics and oral health
00:30:44 – What to avoid in tooth and mouth products
00:32:02 – Are there foods that improve your oral health?
00:35:30 – What Dr. Moldovan spoke about that got a huge audience reaction
Freebies From Today’s Episode
Get Dr. Sanda’s Detoxify Your Mouth FREE PDF and discover the real secret to health and longevity
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Subscribe to my podcast
Read my book, The Virgin Diet
Read my book, Sugar Impact Diet
Learn more about Dr. Sanda Moldovan
Watch Dr. Sanda’s talk at my event
Listen to Holistic Dentistry with Dr. Sanda
Read Heal Up! Seven Ways to Faster Healing and Optimum Health
Find a biological dentist through the International Association of Oral Medicine and Toxicology
Explore Dr. Moldovan’s store
Study: Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology: Dental “silver” tooth fillings: a source of mercury exposure revealed by whole-body image scan and tissue analysis
Order your own labs at YourLabWork
Designs for Health Periommune Oral Care Probiotic
Waterpik cordless water flosser
Reignite Wellness™ All-In-One Shakes
Weston Price’s research on nutrition and teeth
Get wild-caught fish and seafood from Vital Choice
ATHE_Transcript_Ep 627_Dr. Sanda Moldovan
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] I’m JJ Virgin, PhD dropout, sorry mom, turned four time New York Times best selling author. Yes, I’m a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe, but I’m driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can.
And that’s why I created the Well, beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we’ll talk about what’s working in the world of wellness from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness.
Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out. I still remember one of the [00:01:00] first signs that I was going into perimenopause. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know that this was a sign. I started getting these bleeding gums.
I went to my dentist. I go, what the heck is going on? Am I flossing too hard? He goes, no, your hormones are dropping. It’s like, what? I’ve now decided I’ve coined this term, And I actually have an expert in menopause mouth and an expert in mouth detoxification. I have the amazing Dr. Sanda Moldovan with me today and we are going to be talking about all things dentistry and signs and symptoms that you can see in your mouth that can be indicators for issues with Heart disease could be why you have chronic fatigue, can tell you early about osteoporosis, all sorts of stuff that you can find out.
Dr. Sanda is recognized internationally for her expertise in oral health, nutrition, and anti aging. She is board certified in two areas, both periodontics and [00:02:00] nutrition. I like have never heard of that. A Periodontist who is also thwarted in nutrition. How uncool is that? And because of that, she put those two together and she has this really cool approach to biological dentistry.
And you’re going to learn what biological dentistry is once you hear what it is. You will never want to go back to a conventional dentist. She’s the published author of Heal Up, Seven Ways to Faster Healing and Optimal Health. She’s a speaker. She’s been on all sorts of TV shows. And she is a fantastic speaker, by the way, I’ll see if I can get a cut from the talk she did at our event to link to because it was fantastic.
She showed some crazy pictures. She also has developed her own line of natural oral health care products called Orasana. I’m going to put all of the information, plus an ebook on how to detoxify your mouth at jjvirgin.com/mouthdetox. And I will be right back with Dr. Sanda Moldovan.
Prepare to have [00:03:00] your mind blown.
All right, Dr. Sanda Moldovan, welcome to the show.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: Thank you for having me, JJ.
JJ Virgin: I’m very excited to talk about this because I don’t think I’ve ever talked about what I’m going to call menopause now on the show. And I’ll just give you a little like entry into this. I still remember, this was probably 15 years ago, going over to my.
Dentist in Palm Desert and going, my gums are bleeding. What the heck? Like nothing’s changed. He goes, Oh yes, something’s changed.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: That’s right. Yeah. The hormones change. Hormones change. So, you know, we think about
JJ Virgin: like aging and we think about our body and our skin, but what goes on in the
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: mouth? Well, a lot of people don’t know is that we actually have estrogen receptors in the gums.
So for that reason, anytime, you know, as women, we experience hormonal changes, whether it’s menopause, pregnancy, puberty, anytime gums [00:04:00] will react because the mouth is the gateway to one’s health. So we see that. But in menopause, what actually happens, gums actually become more frail. And the top three things that menopause mouth causes is basically a dry mouth, increase in gum disease, and the third thing which is unusual is burning mouth syndrome, and women will experience this like sensations, like the gums are burning and it’s really related to hormonal changes, and about 15 percent of women actually experience this.
JJ Virgin: Wow. I just had the bleeding ones. I’m glad I did not have the burning ones.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: Yeah, it’s unpleasant. You feel like you have fire on your gums and there’s not much we can do about it from a topical perspective. I basically refer patients to get hormonal replacement therapy that helps them balance out the hormones.
JJ Virgin: That leads me to think then, like this was one of actually the first signs [00:05:00] that I was in perimenopause. was bleeding gums. And I just wonder what else, as you start to do an oral exam, can you find out from an oral exam, what other health conditions besides like your estrogens going down?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: What’s interesting is we can look at the salivary glands, which are on the side of the cheek and also underneath the tongue.
And we can actually express saliva. And what we see in about a third of the women experiencing menopause is that there’s not enough salivary production. We call it xerostomia or dry mouth. And that can be pretty uncomfortable. I have women unfortunately, that, that are talking in their lips, get stuck to their teeth because they don’t have enough lubrication.
It’s very uncomfortable.
JJ Virgin: Wow. And same thing. They go and get hormones replaced and then everything’s cool.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: I wish it was that easy with salivary glands, with saliva, it’s a little more difficult. So my recommendation is for people [00:06:00] that are suffering with dry mouth is to try to stimulate that gland.
It’s kind of like working out, right? We exercise the muscle in order to keep it active. Same with saliva. We want to exercise those salivary glands and those muscles that are pumping saliva. So how do we do that? Sugar free lozenges to stimulate that salivary flow. Sometimes even like a more sour taste, you get that saliva flow in the mouth.
Also, we can stimulate it via red light therapy, which is another neutral approach, you know, as a biological dentist, I always try to recommend natural things. The red light therapy seems to help, especially when placed on the side of the cheeks where the major salivary glands are present.
JJ Virgin: So with red light therapy, and I want to get into biological dentistry in a second here, but with red light therapy, do you just stand in front of the red light or do you have to open your mouth?
Like, how does it work? Do you have to go in your mouth with it or
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: what? Hey, the good news is you don’t have to go in the mouth. There’s actually these round heads of red light. You could just put it on the side of the cheek. It’s about the [00:07:00] size of your palm and you put it in contact with the skin and you just leave it there for about 20 minutes.
You can feel a little bit of warmth. I know some patients have said, oh, you know, I bought this light, but I don’t feel warmth. I’m not sure that that is strong enough. There’s so many red lights on the market. So find one that actually, you know, is a reputable company and it creates enough warmth because you want it to penetrate through the skin.
The salivary gland is literally from the outside of the skin is within like a centimeter. So you will get that red light therapy without having to go in the mouth. And it’s good for
your
JJ Virgin: skin too. Oh,
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: exactly. You get a bonus point.
JJ Virgin: So you kind of threw out there, I’m a biological dentist. I don’t think people know, know that there’s such a thing or what that is.
So can you like discuss what a biological dentist versus a conventional dentist is? I kind of liken it to functional medicine and allopathic medicine.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: That’s basically the big difference right there. [00:08:00] Traditional dentistry, a lot of people listening know, is basically drill and fill. Oh, you see a hole in the tooth, let’s fill it.
But in biological dentistry, we treat the hole, not the hole, I like to say. Ha ha ha.
So we, we, we want to look at the mouth as a potential source of infection because of things that are reintroduced in it. So we want to detoxify the mouth for a healthier body. Anything that happens in the mouth. Like infections or cavities. Why is it happening? We really go to the root cause. And then we also find solutions that are personalized to each individual based on their genetics by doing blood tests for different materials, dental materials, to make sure we, what we put in the mouth is not going to cause an immune reaction.
JJ Virgin: Shouldn’t that be like. Standard.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: I agree with you on that’s my mission to really make this biological [00:09:00] dentistry as a standard because it isn’t. And that’s
JJ Virgin: wild. Yeah. What would happen if someone put in. Some type of a filler for a crown or something. And it caused an immune reaction.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: What we see is itching at the gum line.
So people say, you know, this actually itches or, you know, what I’ve seen with veneers, especially people put these beautiful veneers on their teeth. But then the gum line is red and inflamed. And that actually could be an allergic reaction from the cement that was used. So
JJ Virgin: how would someone know, like, how do you find a biological dentist?
Are they listed as such? How would you
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: know to find one? The best way to find a biological dentist in your area is IAOMT, which is the International Association of Oral medicine and toxicology, aomt. org. And they have a directory of biological dentists that are trained as mercury [00:10:00] removal certified, and they’re certified in certain things to create the biological
JJ Virgin: experience.
Well, let’s dig into that since you mentioned mercury. And, you know, I just think back to when I was a kid going into the dentist and first of all, I had orthodontia. So I had all that horrible stuff all over my teeth, but then getting fillings, getting those silver fillings, which I then had removed, but the person who removed them did not do them correctly either.
So are those things still being used in conventional dentistry and what do we need to? That’s a big, long question. Like, what do we do about things like mercury fillings? And if you’re going to a conventional dentist, are they still using some of these toxic materials?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: Yes. Unfortunately, in United States, mercury fillings are still legal and they’re being placed, especially in children.
Wow. Yes. In a lot of the countries in Europe, they’ve been banned, [00:11:00] but in United States, it’s a political issue with the ADA because they don’t want to get sued now from everybody that’s become toxic. But studies have shown that we insert a mercury filling, which is basically anybody who’s looking in their mouth and they see silver fillings on their teeth, those can be up to 50 percent mercury.
And the reason why they were labeled silver filling, because silver sounds a lot better than mercury, but they’re not silver at all. They’re just a color, silver. We know that in sheep, studies that were done, you put mercury fillings, within a month, that mercury has ended up in the liver, in the kidneys, in the lungs, and in the brain of the sheep, and the same thing applies to humans.
I myself had a story just like you. I grew up in Romania. I had 16 large mercury fillings in my mouth growing up. And it made me very toxic. So what did that look
JJ Virgin: like? How did you know, and what did you do about it? I [00:12:00] remember
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: at the age of 14, when I immigrated to the United States with my family, you know, I was starting to not feel well.
And literally when you looked in the back of my mouth, my teeth were all black. And it wasn’t until I went to dental school that I’m like, Oh, maybe I should change these. But I didn’t know anything about biological dentistry at the time. So I had them removed unsafely, just like you. Then I started developing headaches because what happened during the process of removal as we’re cutting into the mercury fillings, the vapors are very toxic.
And as biological dentists, we protect patients when we remove these fillings. But in dental school, unfortunately, it is not taught. So when we cut into these mercury fillings, not only you as a patient get intoxicated, but the dentist, everybody gets intoxicated and the levels of mercury vapors coming off the fillings.
It’s 2, 000 times more than the EPA allows in the atmosphere, so it’s pretty toxic. [00:13:00]
JJ Virgin: And yeah, I was just thinking about like, okay, so you do this to a patient, but the dentist is exposed day after day after day as well. And how would someone know that this is a problem for them? What symptoms and what tests and then what do they
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: do?
What I was experiencing was headaches, chronic fatigue, really neurological issues. And I didn’t attribute it to, to the mercury removal until I actually found a naturopath who did a mercury test. And that’s what a lot of people experience, like chronic fatigue. Headaches, blurry vision even, associated with mercury toxicity.
Best way to test for mercury is really through a urine challenge test, because mercury doesn’t sit in the blood. People say, oh, I tested my blood and my mercury was fine. Yeah. Well, no, your body’s smart enough not to keep the mercury in the blood. To become toxic. So it stores it in the fatty tissues.
JJ Virgin: And when you set a challenge, [00:14:00] that means that you have to challenge it with some kind of chelating agent so that you can see how much is coming out because your body, again, bodies store things so that you’re protected.
Unfortunately, when it does that, it does a whole host of other things. I remember hearing that the data from the NHANES study was showing that. You know, everyone thinks that people who are obese have a higher risk of diabetes, but it wasn’t because of the fat. It was because of all the toxins stored in the fat that were causing the insulin issues.
That’s
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: right. And a lot of people that can’t lose weight readily. It’s because the body’s not ready to let go of all these toxins that are in the fatty tissues and they need
JJ Virgin: some support. Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because one of the things I’m putting together with my next book is that you should not be on a fat loss program unless your body’s able to detoxify well, because you’ll free up the toxins and if you don’t, then like this is why these juice cleanses make me crazy.
Because it’s an amino acid dependent step [00:15:00] to neutralize the toxins that you freed up. And so when you do juice cleanses, you just create a big problem for yourself.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: I can’t remember how sick I felt. I started doing some chelation. Afterwards, and the IV chelation, releasing the mercury in the bloodstream, wow, I had to really like, it made me dizzy, I had to lay down, it’s just not
JJ Virgin: pleasant.
So when you see this now with patients, because I know you work a lot with detoxification, what are you doing to help support them and what do you recommend for, because a lot of, I think a lot of people have gone through this. And I’ve been subjected to silver fillings, right? Silver
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: fillings. Silver fillings.
Very, very important to support in this detoxification process when we detoxify the mouth. Because as we mentioned, not everybody’s ready for detoxification. So number one, before we start removing mercury from the mouth, we want to know how toxic someone is. So I work with a [00:16:00] lot of integrative physicians and practitioners, naturopaths, to help support the patient from a.
Body perspective, and I like to use oral chelation, especially initially for patients right after mercury safe removal. And there’s tablets essentially that have chlorophyll in them and cracked chlorella that really helps to bind the mercury particles that may have been in the area to take them out through the GI tract elimination.
JJ Virgin: You know, when I think about other things going on with menopause. There’s two other things that I really think about that I, I know there’s a mouth connection. One, of course, is osteoporosis. Can you see anything happening in the mouth with that? What’s the connection between bone health and in the mouth?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: Great question. You know, I always look at the mouth as a window into one’s health. [00:17:00] As menopause sets in and dry mouth sets in, not only osteoporosis can join in that, but also the teeth become more brittle. Because teeth are bone, they’re the same kind of matter. So when we see teeth disintegrating We know bones are also disintegrating in the body.
And how do teeth disintegrate? Well, some of you might already have had this experience as listening, basically teeth chipping. You look at your front teeth and you start to see, Oh my God, I’m getting serration, you know, like little ledges. And I chipped the front tooth and now I’m, I chipped the tooth over here because saliva is there to mineralize teeth.
That’s why saliva is so important. When saliva is not present, the teeth become more brittle and they start to break down. Maybe more of those, we call them craze lines, but little like fracture lines that are vertical that show up on the teeth. And teeth become more sensitive. Sensitivity to temperature [00:18:00] is a sign that the teeth are getting more brittle.
JJ Virgin: The other one of those is heart health. And I remember reading something about Mouth bacteria and heart disease
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: risk. Yeah. Periodontitis, which actually goes up, or gum disease, as the mouth gets drier, there’s more plaque growing in the mouth. That bacteria, whenever gums bleed, and you mentioned, you know, you started experiencing bleeding gums, bacteria has a chance to catch a ride in the blood vessel and it starts to travel.
Our immune system, unfortunately, is not perfect. It can’t see every bacteria every time. Especially the ones that are, we call them stealth microorganisms that kind of encapsulate themselves and they almost become invisible to our immune system. And we know that certain bacteria that causes gum disease ends up lodged in heart valves.
And people with gum disease [00:19:00] have up to three times more risk of heart attacks because of that reason. Wow.
JJ Virgin: So how would someone know if this was an issue? You wouldn’t know if it’s an
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: issue if you actually look in the mirror and I highly recommend everyone listening to pay attention to the gums, look in the mouth, do a self exam, even though you think the mouth is not such a fun place to look at.
But I highly recommend you look at your gums, see if they’re swollen. Do your gums bleed when you’re brushing? Especially for those people that don’t like to floss, that’s when gum disease starts to set into place. So when you see the gums bleeding, that’s an opportunity to improve it. I think everyone listening can do this at home.
They can just brush, water floss, and use a chewable probiotic. Those are my recommendation for the three steps to optimum oral health at home to reduce the amount of bleeding. Because even if you go to the dentist and they do some deep cleaning or [00:20:00] treatment for you, if you don’t do the brush, floss, probiotic at home, it’s not going to hold and you’re going to continue to have Bleeding gums.
JJ Virgin: Okay, hold on. We’re going to like this three step process. We’re definitely going to hit it before we get to that, because I have some questions around mouthwash and fluoride and all of that, jaw cavitations. A lot of people
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: don’t know what those are.
JJ Virgin: No, I didn’t. I was just Googling right now going, what
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: is that?
Just as a cavities in a tooth, a cavitation is a hole in the jawbone. Well, how does a hole end up in the jawbone? When we have a tooth removed, for example, or maybe a root canal. There’s a chance for bacteria to go either straight into the bone, or in case of a rucanelle, through the tooth into the jawbone, and it starts to form a hole there.
And this hole becomes bigger as the bacteria releases acids [00:21:00] and it causes bone loss. And a lot of bacteria that cause jaw cavitations don’t need oxygen to survive. So they’ll continue to live there. And that’s something that I do as a biological dentist, identify cavitations. Why? Because it makes people sick.
It can cause inflammation in the body, brain fog, chronic fatigue. It puts a burden on the immune system. So my job is to remove all the microorganisms that live in the jawbone to allow the body to heal. How do you find them? A cone beam CT scan is what I use to find this. And I think this is a standard for us now in biological dentistry to have a cone beam CT scan.
What it is, is three dimensional x rays. Why? Because the two dimensional x rays, we really don’t see much. We see maybe from the studies that we have about 50 percent of the problems. And I have patients that are like, I’ve been to the [00:22:00] dentist, I have this pain, nobody can figure out what it is. And I’m their third or fourth consultation taking finally a three dimensional x ray so I can see what’s going on.
Wow.
JJ Virgin: So that’s not standard of care in most dentists.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: It’s not, I want to say maybe up to 20 percent of all dentists today have 3D x rays in their office, but it’s not yet, but I do expect it to be the standard of care for us. It is in our practice already, anybody coming in that’s either had teeth removed, such as wisdom teeth or root canals, will get a cone beam CT scan so we can see inside the bone.
I remember you
JJ Virgin: mentioning this because I then went started searching to find someone that did this in my area and could not. Because you had a different way of doing exams and cleanings. Now, I don’t remember what it was. I just remember I couldn’t find it in your office.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: Definitely. We call it like a full mouth detoxification because, you know, the mouth is the opening of the GI tract and they hold a lot of [00:23:00] bacteria.
Could be good or bad. If it’s, gums are bleeding, bad breath, we know it’s not so good. We do a saliva test as somebody enters our practice and see, okay, what kind of bacterial fingerprint is in the saliva? We identify the bad bacteria and then we do a full mouth detoxification where we cleaned not just the gums.
A lot of you maybe have had these gum bleeding. So I say, Oh, let’s do a deep cleaning. That’s what most dentists do. And they only scrape around the teeth that are a problem. But 60 percent of the bacteria on the mouth is on the tongue. So we actually clean the tongue using, it’s like a pressure washer with erythritol, which is a sh, a sweetener, and erythritol is antibacterial.
That’s why we use that. And it really wipes off the entire biofilm from the teeth, the gums, the cheeks, the tongue, underneath the tongue. So we can really start fresh. [00:24:00]
JJ Virgin: It’s just wild. Like none of this stuff I’ve ever heard. This is actually And I’ve been religiously going to the dentist forever. And you know
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: The company that offers this has a technology called Airflow and it’s Swiss.
It’s a Swiss technology. They’ve been around for over 20 years and unfortunately it’s not common in United States to use it. But I would say in Europe it’s more common, but still, I think we have to start looking at the mouth as a whole and the body as a whole, not just at. The teeth in the pockets. I,
JJ Virgin: you need to start open centers.
One in Tampa quickly, please. Yeah.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: I know last time I
JJ Virgin: talked to him, like, I’ve got to get over to your office. And literally I went and started to try to find someone. And I, I now have that iaomt. org, but still they’re not doing like what you’re doing is so cutting edge. It’s incredible. Now, someone comes into your office and they go through this and I love the, you know, the full mouth detox.
What are they doing at home then? Cause you [00:25:00] look at what normally happens at an office. First, they try to give you fluoride treatment. I’d love your opinion on that. And then they send you home with crest and a toothbrush. And some floss. Oh
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: my gosh. Yeah. You know, I just did a podcast on flossing, actually.
It turns out string floss is not as effective as a water flosser.
JJ Virgin: How do you use a water flosser without also getting a facial? Or is it just me? You know, and dousing the mirror. I’m like.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: I have two great tips for that.
JJ Virgin: One. Maybe you need to do a YouTube video on that.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: Yeah. If you use actually a washcloth as you’re using it, you know, using one hand, you hold the other washcloth like that, it’ll actually hold the water or just close your lips around it and let the water just trickle out of one corner of the mouth.
Okay. But very important. I think the recommendation is really. Brushing without fluoride. Okay. We don’t need fluoride, especially [00:26:00] there’s no studies that fluoride actually helps as adults at all. How did
JJ Virgin: fluoride get to be such a thing? Like every time they asked me, I’m like, no, I do not want that. But how did this happen?
Were there even putting it in the water?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: Fluoride was an agricultural by product and sadly they didn’t know what to do with it. And they said, Oh, well let’s dump it in the water at one parts per million because it might help with cavities. So that’s how fluoride ended up in the water. Wow. Exactly.
There’s a great documentary called Fluoride Gate, which I’d like for people to watch just to get educated. European countries have banned fluoride. A lot of them have. And there’s much better products out there. Our recommendation is calcium hydroxyapatite, which actually mineralizes teeth. It’s the same mineral that the teeth are made out of.
And we know that it gets absorbed in teeth. Especially in women that have dry mouth. [00:27:00] Calcium hydroxyapatite is so important to help with the tooth mineralization.
JJ Virgin: So is that something that you’re taking as a supplement or you’re using, using as a toothpaste? What
are
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: you doing with it? Yeah, as a topical.
There’s toothpaste and tooth powders out there with calcium hydroxyapatite. That’s what I recommend. Not fluoride. It really helps to maintain the enamel strong. Nice.
JJ Virgin: All right. So someone goes home now, what are they doing at home?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: What they’re doing at home is brushing manually with A
JJ Virgin: tooth powder. So not one of those sonar
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: things.
If you like a sonic hair by all means, or like an ultrasonic brush is fine, especially people that have poor dexterity, totally fine. You have to be careful. If you have thinning gums, you’re starting to experience gum recession. Do not use one of those Oral B rotary brushes because it will cause more recession.
So I like a fine bristle toothbrush, small circles. [00:28:00] Or some fine bristled sonic brush, that’s okay. But hydroxyapatite tooth powder, I developed my own formula for mineralizing tooth powder with probiotics. I’m a big fan of probiotics, especially topical because of the anti inflammatory effect.
JJ Virgin: We’ll definitely link to your store, which I’m going to go shop at right after this.
Okay. Fine toothbrush and hydroxyapatite tooth powder. And
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: then, and then step two, using a water flosser with a little fine bristles to actually help people guide along the gum.
JJ Virgin: Which water flosser do you
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: like? I have a design that I created myself. It’s a portable one because I’m on the road quite a bit.
So I wanted something portable. And it has three tips in it, three tips attachments, one for deeper areas in the back, one like little tufts, and another is a tongue scraper. It is important for people to [00:29:00] use a tongue scraper to clean the tongue, especially if you see that whitish coating on the tongue.
Because it does get accumulation of the dead cells. Do you
JJ Virgin: do that every time you brush or once a day? How often do you need to do that water flosser and the tongue scraper?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: The tongue scraper, I would say, depending on the diet, if somebody has a nice amount of fiber in their diet, a lot of fresh vegetables, then you can look at the tongue, the tongue will actually be cleaner.
Very important because fiber helps also to clean the mouth from plaque. If you look at the tongue and you see developing a coat, you can definitely scrape it every day. I only do it twice a week, but I have also have a good amount of fiber in my diet.
JJ Virgin: Okay. And the other thing you said were
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: probiotics.
Probiotics. So the studies today on chobal probiotics are pretty incredible as an adjunct to keeping our mouth healthy. They’re not going to work if you don’t brush and floss, but they work great. [00:30:00] You know, I get that question, can I just pop a pill and have it do the brushing for me? It doesn’t work. You know,
JJ Virgin: although someone did send me this thing that foams up in your mouth to act like toothpaste that you’re supposed to then use with a toothbrush, I think.
It’s not, you’re not just supposed to use it as a
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: pill. Did you like it? Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s actually a toothpaste tablet. And yeah, is that yours? It’s not mine, but I think it’s a good idea. And also some of them do have the calcium hydroxy in it. And
JJ Virgin: is there any reason to use a tooth powder versus a toothpaste?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: Toothpaste oftentimes have a lot of additives and I like my products as clean as possible for that reason. What
JJ Virgin: would be the scary additives that people want to avoid? And also along those lines, the issue with mouthwash from what I’ve heard in microbiome, those two questions. Yeah,
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: exactly. So glycerin, for example, it’s in a lot of the toothpaste.
There’s also you know, [00:31:00] sodium lauryl sulfate, which is the surfactant to create that foaming effect. Actually SLS can be an inflammatory agent for a lot of people. So I don’t recommend it. Gluten is one that’s used in toothpaste. What? Yes, to give it that thickening effect. You know, the polishing paste when you go to the dentist and the, that act also has gluten in it.
Whoa. So we don’t use that as well. You know, that little sand things. And you know, what’s interesting, if you actually asked your hygienist, what’s in this, they would have no idea.
JJ Virgin: People just get so used to doing things the way they’ve always done things, they don’t question it. That’s right. Versus it looks like you’ve questioned every single thing.
And it also seems like a huge unfair advantage to have the European connection and know what’s being done over there. And it’s, it’s obscene to me that they’ve stopped all of these things in Europe. And I mean, I know it’s the same with GMO foods, and yet here we are, this [00:32:00] stuff going on. And speaking of foods, so you mentioned fiber, anything else that are things that we’d want to look at for eating to have better teeth, better oral health?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: Anything with minerals, I think it’s great. So I like things like dark leafy greens. They have a good amount of mineral. Why? Because everything we eat comes out through saliva. I want to make that connection for people. Whatever you eat, the minerals in your diet will come out through saliva to mineralize it to you.
So if you’re not getting enough minerals. And you don’t necessarily have to do dairy to get minerals because a lot of people say, oh, I’m just going to drink more milk and that’s going to be good for my teeth. Well, right. Well, that’s not the case. You can actually do dark leafy greens. There’s a lot of minerals that you can find there.
You can do it in a powder, a protein shake, you can cook them. You can take supplementation, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus. These three ingredients I think are so [00:33:00] important to mineralize the teeth and the bones from within. The research by Weston Price back in the 1930s actually showed how important, you know, these, these nutrients are to the body and to nourish the teeth.
Yeah. I remember seeing
JJ Virgin: pictures from Weston Price Foundation of people on different diets and just how their teeth and their jaws and everything looked. And it was like crazy. Yes, crazy difference.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: For menopause mouth, highly recommend to increase the level of antioxidants, because as we get the gum inflammation that causes oxidative stress, it is important to increase antioxidant level, including omega 3 fatty acids.
There’s been an association between an increase in omega 3 fatty acids, so you can also eat that, like basically fish, you know, like salmon has nice. Fat level to help with omega 3 intake. And [00:34:00] would
JJ Virgin: you recommend people also supplement with fish oil and minerals? Or do you think they can get enough from their diet or do they need more?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: I do. I do recommend omega 3 supplementation, especially for people that gum disease. Like two grams a day. I think we cannot eat that much fish.
JJ Virgin: And I mean, then we have to make sure our fish is clean. So there’s that issue.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: There’s that issue now.
JJ Virgin: So it’s shop vital choice, but you know, you’re not eating fish every day.
I think we get it like three times a week. So yeah, we take our fish oil too. There’s so much here, and I know we’re going to link to, you have an ebook about, what’s the ebook that we’re going to link to? It’s I think detoxify.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: Detoxify your mouth. Yes. I call it the real secret to health and longevity because it is a secret.
You know,
JJ Virgin: it is a secret. All of this is a secret. Why is this a secret? You must get out more. Like you have to, you need to create, like we need you all over. Although I’m going to get my, my [00:35:00] mouth over to Beverly Hills. But this has to be out there. It’s amazing how much this information’s not out. It’s
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: crazy.
I’m making a mission to get it out there
JJ Virgin: for sure. I’m glad that you are. I’m going to help. So we’ll put your free ebook on that. Also a link to your store and. A link to your podcast and soon to be YouTube channel, which I’m super excited about. And one of the things for everyone listening, Dr. Sanda did a talk at our MindShare Summit and I was standing backstage and all I could hear was, ew, ah, you know, showing, showing some of the things that you can find when you are a biological dentist working in the jaw.
What did you like, what were the pictures you were showing?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: I had this young patient in her late twenties that had actually parasites in the jawbone. So when I opened it up, my camera is always right there. I’m like, Oh, we need to film this. She was chronically [00:36:00] fatigued, couldn’t hold a job for two years, and she did everything else right, ozone IVs.
And finally we addressed the mouth and basically she was able to heal. After we took out all this parasitic infection, I actually have that video on my YouTube channel.
JJ Virgin: So, I mean, I think this is really important, especially if you’ve been battling any of these things and gone to doctors and you haven’t addressed this.
And I also think just like we search out the functional medicine doctors and the holistic integrative, same with for your mouth, this is where you need to be. So we’ll also link up to how to find a biological dentist. And if you happen to be anywhere near Beverly Hills. Then seek out Dr. Sanda Moldovan.
And thank you so much. I’m going to put all of this at jjvirgin.com/mouthdetox. Right. I like it. Easy to remember because that’s what you’re going to be out teaching everyone about. And thank you so much for coming in and talking menopause mouth with me.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan: It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
JJ Virgin: [00:37:00] Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great. And more importantly, that you’re built to last and check me out on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. And my website, jjvirgin.com. And make sure to follow my podcast so you don’t miss a single episode at subscribetojj.com. See you next time.
Hide Transcript