How Mercury Fillings, Fluoride, and Cavitations Affect Your Health
with Dr. Sanda Moldovan
Dr. Wendy Myers
Welcome to the Myers Detox Podcast. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. On this show, we talk about everything related to heavy metal and chemical toxicity, the health issues caused by toxins, and more advanced topics than you’ll hear on other shows. We talk about bioenergetics, anti-aging, and all kinds of things. Today, we’re gonna be talking about how to detoxify your mouth. We’re gonna talk about mercury fillings and fluoride, the pitfalls of those, and why you don’t want those anywhere near your mouth or your body. We’ll talk about cavitations, what those are, and how they can cause chronic fatigue and mystery illness, how you can address those, and how you can discover those with cone beam scans.
We’ll also talk about root canals, implants, and all the 411 around that. So if you’re interested in dentistry or suspect you have some dental issues, or you wanna learn more about biological holistic dentistry, just tune in. Our guest today is Dr. Sanda Moldovan. She is a dentist. She’s a DDS, MS, and CNS. She’s an award-winning periodontist, certified nutritionist, and thought leader in biological and integrative dentistry. She’s a frequent speaker at dental and health conferences worldwide. She’s passionate about bridging the gap between oral health and whole body wellness.
As the founder of Beverly Hills Dental Health and the creator of the Oral Microbiome Reset Method, Dr. Sanda empowers patients to achieve optimal health by addressing root causes from mercury toxicity to oral infections. She’s also the founder of Orasana, which is a natural oral care product line. She’s a published author, recognized for her innovative, holistic approach to dentistry and wellness. You can learn more about her work at orasana.com. Dr. Sanda, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
Thank you for having me.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
How I started this is through my own experience. Like a lot of us, and at the young age of 14, living in Romania, I had 16 large mercury fillings in my mouth. Fast forward, I went to dental school through residency at UCLA, and I said, you know what? Let me get these out. I don’t like the look of them. I knew nothing about biological dentistry at the time. Unfortunately, I had ’em removed unsafely, and I got really sick. I couldn’t think properly. I couldn’t exercise well.
I had chronic fatigue until I found a naturopath who tested my heavy metals. She said, wow, your mercury’s through the roof. I was shocked because no one in dental school told me, even remotely, that I could have toxicity from this. As a dental school, we actually drill on teeth. We inhale these vapors with absolutely no protection, and no one has ever mentioned it.
So I got really upset, and I said, okay, there’s gotta be a better way. So I found IAOMT, I found the Institute for Functional Medicine, and my practice has completely changed since. We focus a lot on whole body health. We’re very conscious of what we put in people’s mouths, which all of us should be as dentists.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Well, what is that discrepancy where in a lab where you’re handling mercury, people are taking all these different precautions, and if you spill, it’s an emergency and a cleanup crew has to come in, but when it’s in your mouth, it’s perfectly safe and has no side effects. What is that disconnect there?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
There’s a huge disconnect. There’s just no sense why in dental school, we’re given this amalgam material, and we have these little mannequins that we work on, and nobody even tells us, oh, make sure you handle this properly. We’re drilling into mercury. So we know when we actually drill into a mercury filling, otherwise called an amalgam, a lot of mercury vapor comes off that filling. It’s odorless, it’s tasteless, and we don’t even see it with the naked eye. As a matter of fact, there’s actually a piece of equipment that can measure the amount of mercury vapor in the atmosphere. It’s 2000 times what the EPA even allows in the atmosphere, yet there are absolutely no regulations around it.
Dr. Wendy Myers
And is that still the case in dental school today?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
Unfortunately, it is still the case in dental school today. The young dentists are not informed that toxicity is starting to happen as they’re drilling into these fillings. There’s no warning at all.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, and in other countries, they’ve outlawed mercury fillings. They’re not doing them in many countries in Europe. Other people have gotten the memo.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
So good news is starting January 1st. Europe banned all forms of mercury fillings. But why are we always behind? I really don’t know. We’re working on it. I know our association, IAOMT, is constantly working to get this band, but it’s like baby steps. Just like with fluoride, we are finally starting to get fluoride out of the water. Utah and Florida are the first two states this year that have said no more fluoride in the water. So, it is super exciting.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Let’s talk about mercury. Why is Mercury such a problem? Just for anyone out there that has mercury fillings in their mouth or is going to the dentist and their dentist is suggesting mercury fillings, what are those doing to our health?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
That’s a great question and of course, you can answer this just as well, but for those of you listening, mercury is a neurotoxin neuro. This neurotoxin involves your nervous system, your brain, your level of thinking, cognitive decline, and it gets absorbed into fatty tissue. So oftentimes my patient comes and says, oh, I had a mercury test, and it was normal. Was it in your blood? Yeah, it was a blood test. Well, mercury doesn’t stick around in the blood unless you had fish the night before or something. With Mercury, the body actually puts it away because it’s so toxic. It just doesn’t want it circulating in your bloodstream. So, I think there’s a misconception on testing. There’s under-education on what it can do for our body as well.
Ads 06:54
And now a word from one of our sponsors. One day I was researching an article for toxins in protein powders, and I was so shocked what one research study found about the levels of heavy metals in protein powders. Most people don’t realize that over two thirds of protein powders tested by consumer reports had lead above California’s Prop 65 limits, some of them 10 times over the limit. And in another study, 47% of top-selling US protein powders exceeded the limits as well. 21% had more than double. It is just alarming what’s in some of these products.
That’s why I switched to Puori, grass-fed whey. It’s an amazing tasting protein powder, and every batch is third party tested for 200 plus contaminants. Puori is the only supplement brand that publishes results online. So you can even scan a freak QR code on every bag and see what’s in your batch. Each serving delivers 21 grams of whey protein from grass-fed cows. They also have six grams of branch chain amino acids, and it’s made with totally clean ingredients. It’s totally free of hormones, GMOs, and pesticides. They have amazing flavors. They have bourbon, vanilla made with real vanilla seeds from bourbon vanilla from Madagascar, which is the best in the world.
They also have dark chocolate with dark chocolate from organic cacao powder. Honestly, it just feels really good knowing exactly what you’re getting, clean protein tested for safety and total transparency. You wanna use the code Wendy at puori.com. If you use the coupon code, you get 32% off the Puori grass-fed whey protein. And when you start a subscription, in addition, you get a free shaker worth $25 on your first subscription order, which brings a total savings to $49. So go to puori.com/wendy and use the code, Wendy, at checkout for this exclusive offer.
Dr. Wendy Myers
It definitely contributes to dementia, many hormonal issues and so many problems. We’ll put a link below this video to an article on Mercury and the hundreds of health issues that can be caused by Mercury. It’s really staggering, but people have these in their mouth and are biting down on them every single day, and so they’re not inert. They do every bite they release into those vapors released directly into your brain through your mucus membranes. They get into your body without question.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
There’s actually a great video, I don’t know if you’ve seen it. It’s called a smoking tooth video by Dr. Kennedy, and it’s on YouTube. We love him. He’s been against Mercury for many, many years. He took an extracted tooth with a mercury filling on it, and he put it behind a screen, which actually shows vapors of mercury that come off the tooth. So he took an eraser, rubbed the mercury filling. You could actually see an increase of those vapors coming off the tooth. He took a toothbrush, rubbed it on the filling, mercury vapors came off it, and he put hot water on it. Mercury vapors come off the tooth. So anything we do at home, for example, drinking, brushing the teeth, mercury, vapors, come off that tooth and what they go in our body.
Now in the dental office, when you get a dental cleaning, if you have mercury fillings, please don’t polish them. The hygienists sometimes wanna go in there with a little prophy cup, let me polish your mercury fillings. Oh, that’s the worst thing you could do, ’cause when you actually do that, there’s a lot of mercury that is being released off that filling. So for that reason, we recommend removal safely. Why ingest something in microdose? A toxin in micro dosage is still a toxin. So, we recommend always removing these.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Mercury is used as an antimicrobial in hundreds of products. And when you’re swallowing that all the time, guess what? You’re killing your gut microbiome. It is an absolute antimicrobial. I had the same experience you had. I had about five mercury, maybe six mercury fillings in my mouth when I was 21. I thought, oh, these are so ugly, I just wanna get ’em removed. I did the same thing. I just had them drilled outta my head and following that had years of depression, years of fatigue, and just had no idea why. The best years of my life just went downhill. I didn’t have any major health issues, but certainly there’s repercussions I may not even be aware of from that.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
For me too, it took me years to get it out of my body. So, I’m so glad that you’re bringing out the awareness for everyone how to remove it safely, and we can certainly talk about that. There’s a whole process that’s been certified by IAOMT if you have mercury fillings in your mouth and how would you know, basically you look in the mirror, look at the back, if you have a dark gray or like a polished gray filling that contains up to 50% mercury.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Obviously you’re recommending that people remove these. How should they go about removing them?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
That’s a great question. I always say, definitely interview the dentist that’s going to remove these, because a lot of people say, oh yeah, I can protect you. I’ll put a rubber dam. What is a rubber dam? It’s one of these rubber barriers that goes and hugs the tooth in question very tight and it kind of prevents particles from going down and getting swallowed.
But as I was saying earlier, with mercury, the problem is the vapor. So you have to be protected from the vapor that comes off the fat tooth during the drilling. So that involves having an actual nose piece that blocks the patient from inhaling the vapors. Actually our dentist and assistant are wearing gas masks, literally gas masks to protect themselves from the toxic vapor that’s in the room. We have a big suction. It’s about the size of my head that actually gets placed on top of our normal sucs in front of the patient just for the vapor that comes off the tooth to get suctioned into there. ’cause in that vapor, there’s a lot of microparticles of mercury and we need to capture that in a container.
Actually, we have a company that picks it up regularly for the amalgam separator. So that is the proper way. Of course, binders are super important and you can talk more about how to bind particles. But it’s super important to have all these precautions. So not just to protect from particles going down the throat, but also most importantly the vapor that comes off the filling.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I know because biological dentistry is becoming popular, people are asking about it. There’s lots of dentists that are saying they’re mercury free and they’re biological, but there’s some that are not taking the precautions, but they’re charging more money for removal, but they’re not actually really taking the true precautions. So buyer beware.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
If there’s any dentists listening, IAOMT is a great certification. All of our dentists at our office are smart, certified and it’s a very detailed process on how to properly even cut into the filling to make sure the least amount of vapor is getting released.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Let’s talk about cavitations. This is something that a lot of people are not aware of. There’s a lot of people dealing with mystery illness, chronic fatigue and all kinds of different health issues that may not connect that to the cavitations that they have. Can you talk about what those are exactly?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
I still remember the first time I heard about cavitation, it was at IFM, Institute of Functional Medicine. I was listening to one of the MDs talking about cavitations. He was like, it wasn’t until we removed the cavitation that this person actually started to heal, that we started making progress. And here I am, finishing my surgical residency at UCLA. I’m like, I’ve never heard of cavitation. He was showing these things. I’m like, what? How come I never learned about this? So I have to go to Switzerland to actually learn properly how to treat a cavitation. Cavitations are holes in the jawbone from bacteria.
These holes can form either around a root canal, which is a dead tooth. Or they can form where a tooth was already taken out, but microbes still persist inside the jawbone. So it is a chronically infected site inside the bone. Sometimes these cavitation can go into the sinus. I’ve had patients that have had, let’s say a root canal up in the upper posterior areas in contact with the maxillary sinus, and they come in with symptoms like, you know what, I have a little bit of a runny nose on the right side, but nobody could figure out why.
Recently I actually had somebody that came in. She went to the emergency room ’cause she had a lot of pain and they told her it was chronic sinusitis. So, if you have symptoms like that, it might be related to an actual dead tooth or a cavitation in that area. On the bottom, it can also extend and cause these neurological symptoms that shoot symptoms through the jaw. It can manifest itself like a shooting pain in the jaw, or tightness in the jaw. Some people have absolutely no symptoms at all, but they have brain fog, increased inflammatory markers on their test results. Then nobody could figure out why. Normally, when we treat the cavitations, those inflammatory markers go down.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Are you saying the people that may have been diagnosed with TMJ or rather like trigeminal neuralgia might have shooting pains that could actually be from a cavitation?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
You’re absolutely right. Also people have Bell’s Palsy. They come in, they have Bell’s Palsy. We always look, is there a root canal? Is there a cavitation that’s causing this nerve to behave this way?
Dr. Wendy Myers
Cavitation can be caused when you get your wisdom teeth removed, which many people do, and at least, especially if they’re large teeth. You can leave a really big hole. Can you talk about that?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
I still remember when I was a student, passing by oral surgery rooms, and they were just like, oh, how fast can we get these root canals out? Well, it’s not about speed, it’s about cleaning them out properly. And unfortunately, we didn’t know enough then, 20 years ago, I think we know more now. There’s more and more papers on cavitations, and taking out wisdom teeth. We have a position paper on the website of IAOMT, if anybody’s listening to looking at that. When we take out wisdom teeth, what happens is there’s a hole left behind. Oftentimes there’s gauze, here’s some gauze. Put pressure and see you later.
Usually who gets their wisdom teeth out? It is teenagers. Teenagers are not exactly careful with their foods, even though it says soft foods. There’s food getting in there, microbes that get inside. So that’s how cavitations get formed. So it’s super important if we remove wisdom teeth, definitely we must remove the periodontal ligament and be actually developmental sac we call it, which is a cyst that surrounds the wisdom tooth itself. Using plugs such as PRF or platelet rich fibrin will improve the healing and fill up that socket so it’s not a big hole left behind. And then super important to close the gum with stitches. We need to close it a hundred percent if possible, or if not, actually put a little shield around there to make sure there’s no food or bacteria from the mouth that actually enters, that site where the wisdom tooth was removed in the first two, three weeks of the healing process.
Ads 19:31
I wanna take a minute to give a shout out to one of our sponsors, Tru Energy Skincare. They have an amazing serum that I am cuckoo about. I’ve been using their facial serum here for well over a year for a reason. This is just by far one of my favorite products. It’s very, very light. It’s just a serum you’ll put on under your moisturizer. And the reason I use it is because it’s a frequency-based skincare. They have frequencies imprinted on this serum that improve collagen, improve elastin. Collagen is that support matrix in your skin that makes it look firm and juicy and we lose that as we age. That accelerates rapidly after we hit menopause. You lose 30% of your collagen within two years after menopause. I’m using everything I can get to improve collagen. This has over 2000 frequencies imprinted on it for skin nutrition, to help the appearance of your skin, the fine lines, the age spots, and it will smooth out the texture of your skin as well.
This has been my secret weapon that I’ve been using to improve my skin, look and feel healthy, like I said, for well over a year. And so, I’m not promoting this because they’re a podcast sponsor. I’m promoting this because this is one of my secret weapons. I love this product and I use it every single night under my moisturizer. This has no toxic ingredients in it whatsoever. It has lots of nutritive ingredients as well. It’s got fruit, enzyme extracts. It’s got oat kernel extract. It’s got oat beta glucans. It’s got beach bud extract and it’s got algae and chlorella in it as well. It has lots of great nutrition in this as well as the frequency-enhancing aspects of it. Any old product can moisturize your skin. That doesn’t impress me, but the results you get from this are bar none, and that is why I highly recommend it. They have a very good offer for my listeners. Go to trytruenergy.com/wendy and get a very special deal for my listeners.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense too close a wound after you remove a gigantic horse tooth
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
Let’s say we did a surgery on an arm, right? Nobody would leave an open wound like that without at least putting a bandaid well in the mouth. We cannot exactly put a bandaid on it. We would take care of it completely differently, but for some reason the mouth is one of those things it’s like, okay, yeah, it’s open, but go ahead, go home.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I had two wisdom teeth removed. They were actually just small little seeds when I had them removed. I only had them on the uppers when I went to a biological dentist. Later they did a cone beam scan and the bacteria testing and found that I had cavitations full of bacteria. And then I had the cavitation surgery myself as well. I can’t sayI wasn’t really having any major health issues, so I didn’t notice a huge difference personally, but I take really good care of myself. I think for a lot of people that’s the missing link for them in trying to figure out what their mystery illnesses are, why they can’t get better no matter what they do. So I think for many people, those cavitations are that missing link that they need to address.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
How was the procedure for you? Do you remember? Was it an easy recovery?
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, it was a very easy recovery. They did the PRF and the whole thing.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
I’m glad to hear it. That’s normally the case. People say, oh, wow, easier than I thought. It’s not as bad as taking a tooth out for sure.
Dr. Wendy Myers
No, it was an easy recovery. It is not a big deal at all.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
Unfortunately, most people don’t know how to diagnose cavitations. I had a patient the other day.It was like I went to two other oral surgeons. Nobody said this. We need to know what we’re looking for. I learned to diagnose cavitations from going to Switzerland and actually looking at CT scans. We need a cone beam CT scan to diagnose. A lot of oral surgeons look at it. I don’t see anything. It’s just a little bit of a hollowness, no big deal. That’s usually how it’s seen. So, it is super important for those of you that wanna diagnose cavitation, make sure you ask before you go, is your doctor treating cavitation? If not, they don’t know what they’re looking for.
Dr. Wendy Myers
And you have to do a cone beam scan. So you need to go to a dentist that’s doing cone beam scans or refer you to a clinic that’s doing those so they can see what’s going on inside your mouth. You can’t just do the regular dental x-rays. They don’t see it.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Let’s talk about root canals. What is your take on root canals? Are you for doing those or against doing them in a correct way?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
That’s a great question and I would love to tell you that there is a correct way of doing them. Unfortunately, the studies don’t support that at all. It’s a hit or miss. I had a root canal myself, actually at the age of 14. I no longer have it. I started to get heart palpitations in my late twenties. I’m like, what is going on? I didn’t relate it to my root canal tooth at all. And as I started to learn about biological dentistry, I started paying attention to all my root canal. I looked at a CT scan. There was no sign that it had a cavitation around it, but the tooth itself was turning black.
Like, why is it turning black? Whenever I would floss around it, I would get a smell. I’m like, this is not good. I’m not getting this. My gums were bleeding a little. So I decided, I’m done with this tooth. Let’s get it out. My digestion improved. I had no more heart palpitations and I felt better. It was the best thing I did. I am not a fan of root canals. As a matter of fact, I had a second tooth that died in my mouth. I’m like, just take it out. I do not need another root canal. So my recommendation is against them because it only causes problems in the long run. It’s a high maintenance tooth. It’s dead, it’s only going to leak bacteria. I know there’s people out there that have multiple root canal teeth, and it’s hard to hear, but I believe if somebody has, is suffering from multiple chronic issues, fatigue, autoimmune issues in order to feel better, I only see patients getting better who have removed their root canal teeth. I don’t know. What is your opinion on this?
Dr. Wendy Myers
I agree. I think that root canals need to come out for sure. I’m not an expert on that but I’ve heard from so many different dentists that I’ve interviewed and so many people that have had root canals taken out have a lot of improvement in their health and also heard from many health practitioners that the more root canals people have, the more health issues they have, the more cancers. And because all your teeth are on a meridian. So every tooth is attached to a different meridian. And when you look at the tooth where you have the root canal and all the different organ systems on that meridian, you can make a correlation to the issue that you have.
Say it’s your thyroid or it’s your gallbladder or your small intestine or whatever’s going on. You will have chronic issues on those organs that are on that meridian and it’s related to the tooth. So, there’s just a lot of synergies to be had there. I think people need to pay attention to this and, and go to dentists that are qualified, that know what they’re doing, looking at the body as a whole system versus just, oh, let’s just patch that up. Usually the root canals are packed full of mercury also because they want that anti-microbial component there. So those things are not just not healthy. That’s my opinion.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
You’re so right. I’m glad you brought up the meridian tooth chart because I do see a correlation and I ask patients about it, like, yeah, I actually have a problem with my lungs or a problem with my digestion whenever a root canal tooth is, I’m not meridian.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Let’s talk about how the body is a system and why you need to look at dentistry and what you do with the teeth systemically.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
It’s super important. I look at the mouth as a window into one’s health and what is really going on. So, for example, taking something like bleeding gums. If I run into somebody that has gum disease or periodontitis, bleeding gums, receding gums, that bacteria, that inflammation is not just in the mouth, that is systemic. Why? Because anytime gums bleed, there is an opportunity for the microbes in the mouth that are causing that inflammation to migrate elsewhere, and we know that this happens. How do we know this? We found a periodontal causing bacteria lodged on heart valves.
We found that in patients’ joints, we know one particular microbe called PGs, which is actually linked to Alzheimer’s and dementia. We always say leaky gums, leaky gut. It is related. It is the opening of the GI tract. So we treat it as such. And then of course, from there it is like if you have a cyst, let’s say around a root canal or a cavitation that’s there, that’s a systemic inflammation. That’ll raise the awareness of your immune system. It’ll raise the markers of that inflammation systemically. It doesn’t just stay in the mouth.
That’s why I feel it’d be great if so many more practitioners like you actually are aware about this correlation so you can guide your patients to healing.
Ads 29:53
Let me ask you something a little bit personal. How do you get yourself out of a bad mood? It can be hard, really, really hard, and it only gets harder the longer that you’re in that space. That’s why I’m a big fan of today’s podcast sponsor Organifi. They made an amazing product called Happy Drops, and they’re little gummies that are super tasty and they can help make your bad moods better and your good moods great. I’m sure I’m not telling you anything new when I say the world is really stressed out right now. You can see it everywhere. Stress and mood related visits to the doctor’s office are skyrocketing along with various prescriptions to match. And so if you are anything like me, you’re looking for a safe, natural approach to rebalancing your happiness and your stress chemicals without worrying about the side effects.
Well, Organifi has given us exactly that. They’re called Happy Drops, and they’re my favorite new supplement. These yummy little lemon gummies are made with ginger, with gouda cola, and passion flour, all of which are shown to have positive effects on mood and emotional wellbeing. Plus, they have a real powerhouse ingredient, which is saffron. So why is that so cool? The compounds in saffron are shown to help your brain modulate its levels of serotonin. Serotonin’s one of your happy chemicals and saffron helps your brain enjoy it longer. Saffron also relaxes you. There’s many cultures around the world that drink saffron tea before they go to bed ’cause it helps relax them and helps ’em go to sleep. Saffron also contains antioxidant properties, which can help you protect your brain from oxidative stress. That’s great for detox. Best of all, there aren’t any nasty side effects. There aren’t any bad ingredients and it’s safe to use every single day.
Saffron’s traditionally very challenging to find in the supplement world. It’s difficult to plant and to farm. It’s even harder to harvest, and it’s one of the most expensive ingredients on the planet. But now thanks to the super food geniuses at Organifi, we can all enjoy a real dose of real mood lifting organic saffron for less than a dollar a day. I’m excited for you to try them. I think that everyone should. I love their happy drops. Just go to organifi.com/myersdetox and get your happy drops today. When you use my discount code Myers Detox at checkout, you’re gonna save an extra 20% off. Again, that’s organifi.com/myersdetox.
I want you to go out and try Happy Drops today. Like I said, I love them. I’ve been taking them on a regular basis to help me to go to sleep at night, to help me kind of relax and get in the mood. You’ve got nothing to lose but your frown.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Let’s talk about your oral microbiome reset method. Can you talk a little about that? ’cause I love how you have this whole systemic approach. You have a lot of information about that, but let’s talk about your reset method.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
One of the first things we do for our patients that come in with bleeding or receding gums is do an oral bacterial test. Very simple. We have ’em swish spit in a test tube, and it gives us a chart of the gum disease causing organisms. We usually look at 11 of ’em. We also actually look at the inflammatory marker IL six to see what this represents. Most of our patients have inflammatory bacteria in the red range. What does that mean? Those are the aggressive type pathogens. There’s four of them that we actually look for that are very well documented in our scientific papers that we know cause systemic problems. So through the oral microbiome reset technique, what we’re doing is actually wiping off the entire oral microbiome of the mouth.
And that’s not just deep cleaning around the teeth. I think this is the big thing that I want to change in dentistry, thinking just about, oh, you have gum disease. Let me do a deep cleaning. How that’s done. We’re just scraping around the teeth, but that’s only maybe less than 10% of the microbiome of the mouth. This bacteria live everywhere. So we actually use a Swiss technology called airflow together with ozone and lasers to kinda wipe off all the microbiome, including from the tongue, from the roof of the mouth, and the cheeks, and grow it back in a healthy manner. Because we need healthy bacteria. We can’t just wipe everything and expect the good ones to just grow back on their own.
It doesn’t happen that way. So, once we get the gums to a healthy level, good microbiome, then we move from there to do cavity control, to do cavitations and other things. But I would never, let’s say, do surgery on somebody that has gingivalis, for example, as part of their microbes. Why? Because I’m gonna push it right back up into the tissues and actually create more harm.
Dr. Wendy Myers
That doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve seen people do deep cleanings, or recommended to people, friends that had really bad breath that like, Hey, there’s something going on there. You need to go get a deep cleaning. And then they still had bad breath afterwards because they’re just pushing that bacteria or they’re scraping it or whatever, and it’s not really solving the problem. They cleaned below the gum line, but it didn’t really solve the root cause problem.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
When somebody comes with bad breath, that’s a great indication that they will need an oral microbiome reset. We also look at the tonsils. Lately I’ve been finding a lot of tonsils with plaque into the crypts, not necessarily infected. And that plaque that gets calcified into the tonsor crypts can cause bad breath. So it’s something that actually we usually pick up on the CT scan. I’ve been seeing more and more patients. So I highly recommend for those of you that feel like you have bad breath, don’t forget to gargle and definitely don’t forget to check your throat or your tonsils. It might be a sign that there’s some bacteria stuck in there.
Dr. Wendy Myers
The plaque on the tonsils, is that referred to as tonsil stones?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
Yes, exactly right. Tonsil stones. And sometimes we take those out in our practice if we need to.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Obviously when people are using mouthwash, whether it’s alcohol based or it’s Listerine or it’s even a natural mouthwash, you’re killing good bacteria in your mouth. Are you a fan of doing oral probiotics or do you have oral probiotics in your line?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
That’s a great question because I’m not a big fan of mouthwashes. Let’s say you have severely bleeding gums, definitely use it. Or maybe you just like to use it for flavor, but it doesn’t really do much past that. I have three steps for Optimum Oral health, and it doesn’t include a mouthwash because if we clean properly and maintain an oral microbiome that’s healthy, my recommendation is step one. Brush using calcium hydroxyapatite, and we can go more into that. Step two is floss or water floss. For those of you that don’t like to floss, which is pretty much most everyone.
And then step three is popping a chewable probiotic. We have so many studies on chewable probiotics. And full disclosure, I have my own line called Ora sana where you can find these products. We did a two week study, a small pilot study on the three step system that we have. We intentionally took people with bleeding gums, pocket depths of six millimeters and two weeks using our system. There was no more bleeding for all five patients that we tested and healthy charting on their pockets. So super excited about that.
Dr. Wendy Myers
With the flossing, talk about the water flosser. Do you do either flossing or water flossing? You have an Ora sana water jet, like a water pick type thing? We’ve evolved past the water pick. You can get better products out there. And as I like the handheld ones also, like the one that you have. So do you recommend you do that instead of flossing?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
Yes, I find most people don’t floss correctly anyway. Like nobody sits there to wrap it around like a C, you have to put it in, you have to wrap it around like a C, you have to move it up and down. Then you gotta wrap it around like a C behind the other two. So it’s very technique sensitive flossing. People that just floss in and out, you’re not really doing it right.
So you might as well use a water flosser. And the water flosser from Ora Sana actually has four tufts because another problem that I was seeing is people were water flossing, but in the traditional, if you look at the water pick, you don’t know where to point it because you have to hold it away from the teeth. And people didn’t know, how far away am I holding this? There was a lot of confusion. So the four tufts ensure that people know, like, exactly it’s the same distance from the gum and it’s kind of shooting up into the gum. That’s the goal of it. The initial studies were done with the water pick in terms of the pressure.
So we know the pressure and the pulsating pressure is important in the water to make sure that it disrupts the biofilm. So it doesn’t only clean food, but it actually disrupts the biofilm that surrounds the teeth and not just in between but all the way around the tooth and the outer part, the inner part.
It also has a tongue scraper attachment, which is super, super important. I believe tongue scraping is one of those things that everyone should do in order to clean that layer of dead skin that is on the tongue.
Dr. Wendy Myers
And this is such an easy three step system that I’ve been doing that is really, really important to prevent a lot of cavities and prevent health issues, because when you look at all the bacteria that’s in our mouth, I mean, some people even have to have heart surgery because of the bacteria that goes from their mouth down into their heart and can affect their heart valves. Our oral microbiome has a huge effect on our entire health, not even just an extreme example like that, but I even even met someone that had a heart surgery because of the bacteria from their mouth, a young person in their twenties at the time. If you wanna be healthy, you’ve got to pay attention to your oral microbiome and do this three step system that you talk about.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
It’s super important. We know that certain microbes that cause gum disease, that cause bleeding, gums basically have been implicated in the plaque, in the arteries. It causes this inflammation and it lodges in the arterial walls and then it creates these blood clots. We know people with gum disease are two to three times more likely to have heart attacks and strokes.
So, don’t ignore bleeding gums. That’s the message. And the good news is it is something easy we could do at home. Something like just using a water flosser chewable probiotic. Interesting about chewable probiotics, I used all scientific based strains in that formula. There was actually a study even showing that people that have more lary in their salivary test actually have better bone density. It was a study from the Mayo Clinic. I thought that was interesting. We have no idea why it’s correlated that way. We still are learning a lot, but the biofilm and a healthy level of microbes is beneficial to our health.
Ads 42:14
Are you taking collagen supplements? Well, check this out. Our friends at Organifi have sourced the best collagen on the planet, and you can get it with 20% off savings today, too. So, what is collagen? It’s the most abundant protein in our body. It’s everywhere. It’s in your muscles, joints, hair, skin, fingernails, everywhere. It’s one of the fundamental building blocks of life. Your body uses collagen constantly to keep itself refreshed and repaired. But as you get older, especially as women who are going into menopause, you can lose 30% of your collagen within the first five years of menopause, and that starts in perimenopause as well. Your body just stops making as much of it, and you start losing it, especially as your estrogen levels come down. That’s why consuming collagen is such a great idea every single day. It gives your body a fresh supply to keep working at its best.
It’s not only good for your hair, skin, and nails, but it helps to support your gut and metabolic health, immune system, cardiovascular strength, and all of your muscles and moving parts too. Collagen is nothing new. It’s one of the oldest supplements out there. Collagen supplements have been around for quite a while now. But what makes Organifi so special is it’s all about the quality.The non-organic collagen scare 16 me. They’re really problematic because they can be full of glyphosate, pesticides and other chemicals that you do not wanna be taking on a daily basis. Not all collagens are the same. It can come from many different sources and the source can drastically impact its potency and effectiveness as well.
Some manufacturers just go with the cheapest stuff that they can find and then add fillers and artificial flavors and they still charge you a lot of money for that. Organifi always goes the extra mile to ensure their quality is the best. They blend five collagen types from four different sources, and they taste and test until it’s perfect. And then they go even further to test for things like glyphosate residue and other sneaky toxins that can get into the mix. After passing through all of these goalposts, it finally gets the Organifi seal of approval so you can rest assured it’s the highest quality and non-toxic. I love that this company is a company that I can trust that their products will be safe and effective exactly as they say they will be.
In the supplement world these days, that kind of honesty and transparency is getting harder to come by. So, if you’ve never tried collagen, now is a great time to start. And if you’re already taking it, now is a great time to switch to a better brand. Upgrade what you’re doing right now so you and your entire body is gonna love Organifi Collagen. It is something that I take on a daily basis. It’s been a part of my supplement routine for the past five years, since I went into menopause, and so I can’t recommend it highly enough. Now let’s talk about saving you some cash as well. Here’s what you do. Go to organifi.com/myersdetox and put in coupon code Myers detox to get 20% off. You’ll save an extra 20% off by putting in my special coupon code Myers detox. So, like I said, collagen’s one of those things that I take every single day. It’s one of the most important parts of my anti-aging protocol, the things I’m doing to fight off the clock. So for me, taking clean collagen is really important. It’s hard to find, so I highly, highly recommend Organifi collagen.
Dr. Wendy Myers
And also taking an oral probiotic, like the one you’re talking about helps prevent cavities. I give one to my daughter. I have her taking it so she’s not being tortured on the dentist chair with cavities and all these fillings and the harming of the enamel and the tooth structure and all these consequences you can have, even though they’re necessary, you can have consequences and degradation of the tooth from having fillings.
I have every single tooth filled and I have to constantly redo them and they break and it is just unbelievable the amount of money I’ve put into my mouth.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
Same here. All my back teeth are so I feel your pain. But yes, you’re absolutely right for those with kids that are listening, chewable probiotics, we know a lot. You’re absolutely right. It prevents cavities and people who take chewable probiotics, the rate of cavities significantly decreased.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Where do we get these products that you developed?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
Oh, orasana.com. I actually have a lot of resources for people who are interested in reading more about the news on probiotics. We have a whole resource page there.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Okay, great. Talk about the hydroxy appetite tooth paste. What are the benefits of that?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
I love toothpaste with benefits. I don’t wanna just brush for flavor, although some people are like that. Um. And interesting about toothpaste. Toothpaste in general is filled with glycerin or glycerol. Where does that usually come from? It’s a petroleum based product, so that’s why I wanted to have a tooth powder that’s just fully effective that is not filled with 70%. A lot of the toothpaste tubes have 70% glycerol and only 30% of a little bit of whatever fluoride and other chemicals that you can’t even pronounce.
So the tooth powder that I designed for Ora Sana number one, cleans a lot better. If I’m away and I forget my tooth powder and I have to use a toothpaste, I automatically get a film on my teeth ’cause that’s what glycerol is designed to do. So tooth powder generally cleans better. It has calcium hydroxy appetite that actually fills in the nanopores in the enamel.
The enamel is the outer layer of the tooth, and this is just calcified. It’s strong and when we eat lemons, when we bite into an apple, for example, drink wine, drink coffee, these are all acidic things, the enamel gets these micropores. It gets demineralized, and typically our saliva bathes the teeth and they become mineralized again. However, our diet is not as full of nutrients as they used to be because the soils are not as nutritious as they used to be. So the fruits and vegetables we’re eating are not as nutritious. We’re also finding that most people anyway have acidic saliva.
How do we check for this? Very easy. You take a little litmus paper, pH paper, you put a little saliva on it, and we check to see if it’s under seven. It’s acidic. And most people today are acidic. That causes an acidity in the mouth, which wears down the teeth faster. So how do we prevent this? By using calcium hydroxy appetite in nano format that can help to keep the teeth strong. It’s a treatment for teeth.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Okay, fantastic. It’s interesting when you talk about the glycerol coating your teeth. You have these porous teeth that are an exchange. It’s a porous exchange. And when you fill your teeth with glycerol, you’re filling in all those pores with this film. Can you talk about how that’s a problem?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
Because now that we’re filling it up with oil, which is an oil-based product, basically, now how is the mineral gonna reach the tooth surface? It’s not, as a matter of fact, I found one paper of this PhD scientist who said it took him 35 washes to get the glycerol film off the teeth after brushing with the glycerol toothpaste. 35 washes is a lot. So now we’re almost doomed if we’re using toothpaste ’cause it’s hard to mineralize the teeth if we need that mineralization to happen.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Even if you’re taking minerals, a lot of people are taking minerals or putting minerals in their water and things like that. And you’re gonna be blocked from that absorption into your teeth if you’re using regular toothpaste.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
A lot of people don’t realize that teeth are organs and organs can nourish themselves. They can absorb minerals from the saliva. They can also absorb, of course, they get their own nutrient supply inside the tooth. They can also absorb what we’re taking as supplements or food. But, it’s super important not to block that passage.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Let’s talk about the fluoride that’s in the toothpaste as well. Every time I used to go to a regular dentist, they’re always pushing a fluoride wash on you or a fluoride toothpaste or whatever they’re doing. What is the problem with the fluoride?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
Fluoride is a pesticide. It’s also used in the fields to kill pests. There’s a great documentary called Fluoride Gait, that goes over the history of how it ended up in our water, in terms of products with fluoride. Interestingly, the FDA’s pulling a lot of the fluoride products off the shelf, especially for children because of the recent and not so recent, but they would come to the surface that fluoride actually lowers the IQ in kids.
We had a study done kids, fifth through eighth grade with higher fluoride in their water, had lower IQs than kids that didn’t have fluoride in the water. So, we know it has effects. What’s worse is that if there’s too much fluoride, we get these stains on the teeth that are permanent and it actually weakens the tooth. It has the opposite effect. We’re not fans. We don’t use fluoride at all. Any biological dentist out there should not be using fluoride. So, one of the questions if you’re interviewing for biological dentists, always ask, how are you using fluoride in your office? Because calcium hydroxyapatite works just as well, it bio mimics nature.
Calcium hydroxyapatite is actually found inside the tooth structure. Fluoride is not needed at high levels to correct cavities or diet, right? That’s really a microbiome and of course nutrients for the tooth. And then we see a shift If we give the right environment in the mouth. If we create the right environment with the right nutrients, the body heals.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Fluoride also displaces iodine. If you look at the periodic table, there’s fluoride, bromine, and there’s iodine. So if you’re taking in con fluoride every day, you’re also blocking thyroid function. ’cause your thyroid’s gonna take that in and displace iodine, which is what iodine is, what your thyroid hormones are made of. That’s something to think about as well.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
And I’m noticing in my medical history, most everybody nowadays has hypothyroidism. I wonder why.
Dr. Wendy Myers
When we were talking before about root canals, if you have a tooth that the dentist needs a root canal. Your recommendation is to pull that tooth out and then you’re gonna need an implant. I forgot to talk about that. So what are your recommendations for implants? There’s ceramic, there’s titanium. What do you recommend?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
One of my expertise is dental implants, and I actually teach dental implants internationally to other dentists. And there’s two types, like you mentioned, titanium and ceramic. What do we know scientifically speaking, is that titanium leeches titanium particles, they’ve been found. This is in our Journal of Periodontology. These are major journal publications. Titanium particles are found in the surrounding tissues and inside the lymph nodes. How does this happen? Because there’s corrosion of titanium, particles travel.
Is everyone affected by this corrosion? No, not everyone. I think it depends on our burden of toxins that we’re already experiencing. We know it also has a genetic component. Certain patients will actually have a foreign body reaction to these titanium particles that are migrating off the implant surface. There was a study that came out. Titanium implants will exacerbate autoimmune issues. So people that have autoimmune issues, I absolutely recommend against getting titanium implants. Ceramic implants have been around for a long time. We have a 30 year history with ceramic implants. They’re not at all new. In the last 15 years, there’s been a lot of improvements to the strength of the ceramic or zirconia implants.
In the past we had problems with them breaking, but no longer. Looking at like 15,000 implants comparing titanium and ceramic, we see the same rate of survival when it comes to ceramic implants. So I’m seeing healthier tissues with ceramic implants, less inflammation. Just better color at the gum line in general. We think this also has to do with the fact that titanium gives this electromagnetic field. It conducts electricity, ceramic doesn’t. So it’s more inert and bacteria likes things that conduct electricity. It is because they don’t have a nervous system. They don’t have this ability. So we feel like they’re using that or as a way to communicate between themselves.
Ads 56:16
For anyone listening who really wants to detox their body, go to heavymetalsquiz.com. I created a quiz for you. It only takes a couple of seconds and it’s based on some lifestyle questions. You can get your toxicity score and get a free video series that answers all of your frequently asked questions about how to detox your body. Check it out at heavymetalsquiz.com
Dr. Wendy Myers
What about zirconium? ’cause that’s an option also that’s given to people.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
Zirconium is a metal. Zirconia is ceramic. So zirconia implants are basically used as a ceramic implant. It’s the same thing.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Okay, great. Well I guess that’s all the questions that I had. Is there anything that you wanna add that we haven’t touched on?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
I think we covered so many things, but one of the things I wanna go back to is just the root canal you were saying. I had somebody that came here and they said, oh, my dentist said preventatively, they wanted to do a root canal. It’s such a big no-no. And it’s unfortunately done in this country and probably all over the world, oh, you know what? You have a big cavity, but in order to prevent you from having pain, let’s just kill the tooth. That actually happens. So for those of you that I hope you’re listening. If you say, Hey, my dentist wants to do a root canal preventatively. No, absolutely not.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I’ve never even heard of that before. It’s just so stupid.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
But there’s this disconnect in dentistry. A lot of dentists are disconnected from the fact that when we do a root canal, we actually kill a tooth. They think a root canal is just another procedure that helps the patient. I think that’s the disconnect that we need to repair
Dr. Wendy Myers
Get a second opinion. If your instinct is like, I don’t think I have eight cavities and need two root canals. It’s a business. Some doctors are like, oh, you need all this stuff and I get a second opinion. It’s something that just doesn’t sound right to you or you just feel like the recommendations don’t make sense to you.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
A hundred percent. Seek biological dentistry.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Well, Dr. Sanda, thank you so much for coming on the show. It is so informative and I definitely recommend everyone go get the ora sana, the water pick and the other products that you have. I’ve been using the Ora Sana. I absolutely love it. I don’t know why that has just escaped me. I have just used a water philosopher before and I’ve always been really good at flossing. My mom has been pressing me to use one ’cause she’s been using this one since the seventies, and I just never have. So I’m really happy that I’m using it now. I absolutely love it. I highly recommend it to everyone to check out orasana.com That’s the website, right?
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
That’s it. That’s correct.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Okay, great.
Dr. Sanda Moldovan
Thank you so much.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Well, thanks for coming on. Everyone, thank you so much for tuning in to the Myers Detox podcast. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers, and I just love doing shows like this to help you give those distinctions, help you to make better decisions with your health ’cause dentistry is definitely one of those areas where there are a lot of pitfalls. People are getting a lot of wrong information, spending a lot of money to do things, and doing the wrong kind of treatments on their teeth that can really have a big, dramatic impact on their health long term. This is something you really gotta pay attention to. So thanks for tuning in. I’ll see you guys next week.
Disclaimer
The Myers Detox Podcast is created and hosted by Wendy Myers. This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast, including Wendy Myers and the producers, disclaims responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. The opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.
