How to Improve Your Teeth & Oral Microbiome for Brain & Body Health | Dr. Staci Whitman

Why Listerine is bad for your heart: strong mouthwashes kill nitric oxide-producing bacteria

Alcohol-based mouthwashes carpet-bomb the oral microbiome, destroying nitrate-reducing bacteria on the tongue that produce nitric oxide — essential for cardiovascular health. Studies show chronic use can increase blood pressure.

"So this isn't about a product per se, but if I force myself to nasal breathe during cardio workouts, especially kind of zone two, zone three stuff, translates to less mouth breathing and snoring and sleep. So the question is, do the sinuses actually dilate? Or if you have a deviated septum, do you need it surgically or somehow otherwise repaired? It depends on your age. So most facial development is done around the age of 10. So the issue I would say with traditional orthodontics, which is when you wait for all the baby teeth to fall out and then you put braces on, you can't control the modeling of the face, the mid-face, the jaws, which is why we now are starting with functional therapies as young as three or four years old with retainers. So in the middle of our palate is a suture filled with cartilage. And so with kids, it's really easy to manipulate and change facial development. If you make the jaws wider, not only is it improving airway, but the teeth will come in straight. Now they have room. The reason they come in crooked is there's not enough room for them to come in. It's important to know the floor of the mouth, the roof, sorry, the roof of the mouth is the floor of the nose. So if you expand the palate, the sinuses will get wider. The septum is going to upright. Everything's connected. Now, as an adult, it's really hard to manipulate bone structure just through posturing and habit. There are myofunctional therapists, which they're the best, and they're really important in this conversation. Think of them like physical therapists for breathing, teaching you to keep your lips closed, your tongue up. All of this musculature is really important. Toning it. If you don't use it, you lose it. So if you're a mouth breather, your tongue will lay low. Your tongue's a muscle. It will get weak. It will get flaccid. So we want to strengthen these muscles to help with lip seal and nasal breathing. But as an adult, if you do have a skeletal discrepancy, usually you need some sort of intervention. You're not going to just be changing it through lip taping or how you're training or myofunctional therapy. And there are more conservative ways now besides true jaw surgery. There's an appliance called the homeoblock, which I know is what James Nestor used. You can read about it in his book that will actually start to change facial structure. There's less invasive treatments. There's an MSC appliance. It's a maxillary skeletal expansion device. It does put these little mini screws in your palate, but it will pop the suture. And adults, you really would have to want this because you're struggling so much. And people who aren't breathing well, they're struggling. I think it's the most important thing for health is how you're breathing and how you're sleeping. And with children, if they're not breathing appropriately and they're waking up a lot, which is why it would be interesting to get some sort of product on you. I'm just curious. Do you get into deep sleep? Do you get into REM sleep? I do. Great. Yeah. I'm measuring deep sleep and REM sleep through the eight sleep or whoop or both. My deep sleep is great, provided I get to sleep by about 10, 1030, because that's when you capture the deep, when I capture the deep sleep window. If I go to sleep around 11 or midnight, I lose out on some deep sleep, even if I sleep longer. And my REM sleep's really solid these days. I'm struck by how convincing the data are about nasal breathing improving brain function. There were a couple studies that showed that if people either mouth breathe or nasal breathe in a laboratory study, the nasal breathers have better memory recall. But those were of odors. So everyone said, well, okay, of course, it's of odors and you're breathing through your nose and so you can remember those odors. So they've now run these studies with other types of memory and brain function. And it's just very clear that you oxygenate your brain better and you think better. Your cognition is better. Your memory's better for everything, not just odors. So you get 20% more oxygen when you nasal breathe. And this is really important for children in these formative years of brain development. And this is why we're seeing studies showing that children who mouth breathe have sleep disorder breathing. they have behavioral issues and many are getting diagnosed with ADHD and arguably potentially put on medications when really if we'd screened them for airway issues, potentially we could have avoided some of this. And it also has to do, we're not getting into deep sleep. The glymphatic system's not kicking in, hormone function's not kicking in. So a lot of these children, growth hormone is impaired. Antidiuretic hormone is impaired if they're not getting into deep restorative sleep. So that's why we see bedwetting. Some signs to look for in your partner or your children is tossing and turning, clenching, grinding, snoring, or noisy breathing, sleeping in really odd positions like craning the neck because they're trying to open their airway, spinning around the bed, you know, the child's legs are in and the body's like out of the bed, the bedsheets are everywhere, and then certainly waking up unrested and then noticing behavioral issues too. Well, all you have to do to convince the male half of the audience to focus more on nasal breathing is to tell them, and to not use mouthwashes, is to tell them that being a mouth breather will give them sexual dysfunction or will predispose them to sexual dysfunction, and they'll start working on their nasal breathing. Because of nitric oxide. So the paranasal sinuses is what will help produce nitric oxide too. So if you're breathing through your mouth, not your nose, you're not getting enough nitric oxide, which is very important in sexual health. But also we know men who have gum disease are 2.85 times more likely to have erectile dysfunction as well. Wow. So no bleeding gums. We do not want inflamed bleeding gums. Flossing is something we haven't touched upon yet, but it's incredibly important, not only for cavity prevention, but gum health. Pink in the sink, any amount of bleeding is a sign of inflammation, and it doesn't just stay in the body. It can impact the entire system. So please take your gum health seriously, if for for nothing else and for your sexual health. Great message. So to shift over to nasal breathing, if somebody's really struggling with this, are you a fan of mouth taping? Yeah, you want to make sure you can do so safely. So with kids, I always suggest they get screened by an airway-focused dentist or potentially an otolaryngologist or an ENT. For adults, there is a test that you can do. It's the three-minute test. Can you breathe through your nose without panicking or feeling sympathetically challenged for three minutes? So you can either put water in your mouth, put a piece of paper, tape your lips, and literally time yourself. And if you can breathe through your nose successfully, then you, in theory, can safely lip tape. There are different tapes that you can do that are open in the middle, so you can still off gas or it feels less invasive. And what I suggest if people are interested in it is just start five minutes while you're chopping vegetables for dinner and then move up to 30 minutes while you're watching a show and then watch a whole movie for two hours. And then if you've been able to tape that long, you can do so at night as well. I will tell you, it is one of the top things that I have done to improve my health. And I do see it with my wearables and my sleep data. Recently, I had the privilege of giving a talk at Stanford with Renee Fleming. It's like one of the world's greatest opera singers alive today. And I said, well, what are some things that you do for your breathing? Because I ended up talking a lot for the podcast. And she gave me some lung and diaphragm strengthening exercises. But then the one that she suggested for emphasizing nasal breathing, because there's a lot of nasal breathing that's done quickly and subtly in order to maintain air pressure in the lungs and for her craft, which I know very little about, but is instead of like doing weight training for the neck, it's kind of a fun one. It doesn't make the neck big. So people will, who don't want a larger neck will appreciate that. But to exercise the internal muscles of the neck and the way you do this is something called kiss the sky. The boxers will actually know this, the old school boxers. It looks ridiculous, but I'll do it because I look ridiculous on this podcast all the time intentionally. So you look up at the sky and you pucker like you were a puffer fish for 15 seconds per side."

P. gingivalis found in nearly 100% of Alzheimer's brain plaques — test your oral microbiome

Harvard research found P. gingivalis in nearly 100% of Alzheimer's patients' brain plaques. F. nucleatum from the mouth is linked to pancreatic, breast, and colorectal cancer. Simple spit tests can detect these pathogens.

"P. gingivalis is being linked to Alzheimer's and dementia. These bacteria cross the blood-brain barrier and create amyloid plaques and inflammation in the brain."

Pregnancy gingivitis affects 50-70% of women — and menopause brings burning mouth and dry mouth

Hormonal shifts during puberty, pregnancy, and menopause dramatically affect oral health. Pregnancy gingivitis hits 50-70% of women. Perimenopause brings dry mouth, burning mouth syndrome, and collagen loss in gums.

"Pregnancy gingivitis affects 50 to 70% of women. Perimenopause brings gum inflammation, dry mouth, burning mouth syndrome, more bad breath, taste changes."