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In this episode Holistic Dentist Dr. Marvin is joining you from San Diego, talking all about the connection between your mouth and your body. Specifically how you should be aware of the impacts certain dental procedures considered “safe” by most dentists can have on not only your dental health, but your overall health! So with that, lets get going on this week’s episode of Let’s Talk Dentistry!
— Transcript of Today’s Show —
Good morning, this is Dr. Marvin. Let’s talk dentistry. For the next half hour, let’s talk dentistry. Give me a call right now. 866KPRAISE.
I am Dr. Marvin Pantangco. I have a dental clinic here in San Diego where people come from all over the world to get the best in holistic, natural, biological dentistry. Dentistry that’s not good for your teeth, but good for you health. That’s important, because your mouth is connected to your body. Your head bone’s connected to your shoulder bone, to your neck bone, to your whole body. You sang that song as a child, but it makes complete sense.
Unfortunately, most dentists like to think that the mouth is completely separate from the body, and because it’s separate from the body it has nothing to do with the body. Most dentists are mechanics or they’re artists. They call themselves cosmetic dentists, and the only thing they do is repair teeth. They help you with your gum disease if you have bleeding gums, which a lot of people do. They’ll help with that, but they don’t know what I know. They don’t know that the mouth has a big connection with the rest of the body, so if you start putting toxic materials in the mouth, if you don’t start dealing with the cause of the problems instead of dealing with the symptoms, if you don’t understand the structure and how the teeth are related to the jaw which is related to the head, neck and to the whole body and how it all functions, then you are not understanding the holistic approach for dentistry.
The root cause of a lot of problems is found in the mouth. I have story after story. I have a few stories; check this out. I had a patient that came from Utah. She came from another practice and has cancer. She’s been through chemo therapy and is trying everything under the sun like any of us would do if we had cancer. She had breast cancer. She went out on a limb and said, “Let’s go ahead and take out those teeth that have infections. She came in and had infections. We removed the tooth, we removed the infection, and vuala: her cancer went away. Don’t ask me how or why. All I can tell you is what happened.
Then she went back to her oncologist, and her oncologist said, “Ooh, that cancer’s gone, but it has spread to another part of the body.” Because it had spread to the other part of the body, they said, “Let’s put you on chemo.”
She said, “I don’t think so.” She went back to our office. We took out two other teeth on the lower left side. We took those out, she postponed her PET scan and her chemo, and she called me two weeks after her teeth were taken out. Believe it or not, taking out teeth is a major surgery. We took out the teeth and took out the infection. She was smiling, and she was so happy, because she didn’t have to do chemotherapy again. I don’t know if you know what chemotherapy is, but it’s poison. It’s poison to the cancer cells, but it’s also poison to yourself.
She is so happy. Don’t ask me how this worked. God created our bodies, and if we remove the toxins from our body, which are created by a lot of things that dentists unknowingly do, then the body can start healing itself, and it’s miraculous for what they do. Time after time this happens in our office. This is what makes me excited about what we do.
Keep in mind that most– 99% of dentists do not understand this. Since they don’t understand this, you the patients don’t understand this. Since you don’t understand it, you’re going to get bad recommendations and bad health. They don’t look at it from the whole picture.
I am Dr. Marvin. If you have a question, please give us a call. Our phone lines are open. I have a caller right now. Hello, this is Dr. Marvin. How can I serve you?
Caller: Hi, I’m calling because I have a question about my seven year old and her crowded teeth. The dentist we saw recently wants to put in spacers, but I wonder what your recommendation would be, because I’m sure the spacers are metal. I don’t want her to have metal in her mouth.
Dr. Marvin: That’s very good. What’s your name, ma’am?
Caller: Bethany.
Dr. Marvin: Hi Bethany, thanks for calling in. I have very strong views with orthodontics and with children and dentistry– looking a the big picture not only now but also in the future. Granted, a lot of doctors do that. They want to fix things now to prevent future problems, and that’s exactly what I do. There are quite a few problems. Number one is the metal. You’re right. Not all patients are sensitive to metal, so we test the metals first. When they start putting metals in the mouth that can cause neurotoxins, so you don’t want to do it from the metal standpoint.
You also don’t want to do it, because you haven’t really addressed the true problem. Most dentists will say, “Your teeth are crowded and you need to put spacers in, or you need to expand the palate, so you can have enough room for the adult teeth that are going to be coming in. If you see the baby teeth that are crowded, the reason for that is because there is something else going on that your palate is not expanding naturally. Most dentists don’t understand that the tongue, the tongue, the tongue is the best expander out there.
We need to ask the question, ‘why is the tongue not expanding the palate?’ If it’s not expanding we have to figure out why. Is it because her tongue is tied to the floor of the mouth with the muscle? We can cut the muscle and then help the tongue. Are they breathing through their mouth? That’s the more common situation. If they’re breathing through their mouth because they’re not breathing through their nose, then the tongue is not resting at the roof of their mouth, specifically at night. The tongue could be weak, it could be tied down, or it could be in the incorrect position, because we’re breathing through our mouth instead of our nose.
The next question is, ‘why are they breathing through their mouth?’ Is their nose congested with mucus? Do they have an allergy so their nose is always congested, so they have to breathe through their mouth?
Figuring out the why is so much more important than figuring out the treatment, because most dentists just look as something and go, “Oh, this is what we were taught in dental school. This is what we should recommend, and therefore this is what we should do.”
Figure out why her palate is small, because at seven years old there are things that you can do. You still have a lot of time to help expand that palate. The best way to do it is naturally, as opposed to doing it artificially.
How do we do that? We do an exam and you get aware of what’s going on. We have a person that we refer to that’s kind of like physical therapy, speech therapy, or occupational therapy. It’s like any other therapy, and it’s in order to train the body to do what we want it to do. A lot of times it’s the more natural treatment, the natural way to do it. If the tongue is at the roof of the mouth, the lateral boarders are going to gently push the insides of your upper teeth out. When it pushes the inside of the upper teeth out, there’s a line. Actually, in the palate there are several bones. There’s a suture or a fissure right in the middle between those two bones. It will push the palate and make the arch wider. When it makes the arch wider, that makes the circumference of the arch bigger, which makes enough room for the adult teeth, which are bigger than the baby teeth, to come in.
It changes everything. The palate will come down. There won’t be a high arching palate. Their speech will be a lot better. Because the upper arch is bigger, the lower arch, which is tucked in under the upper arch, is going to be bigger. They’re not going to have this overbite. If they’re not going to have this overbite, they’re going to get alignment of their teeth. When they have alignment of their teeth, they’re going to have enough room for their wisdom teeth. Therefore you don’t have to remove the wisdom teeth. If you avoid all of this orthodontics while your body is developing and while you’re growing, then you won’t have problems in the future. You won’t have to extract teeth, your bite will be good, it’ll be nice and full. They’re not going to have to extract any teeth for orthodontics, which is a very bad scenario. Your teeth will be in alignment. You won’t have any cavities, you won’t have tartar build up. You won’t have gum disease.
All of it starts early on. I’m glad that you are recognizing this really early on, and I’m glad you called.
Caller: OK, thank you very much.
Dr. Marvin: Thanks for the call. Alright, great question; thanks for calling. If you have a question, give us a call. 866KPRAISE.
As a parent, you want to do what’s best for your children. You’ll go to great lengths to care for your children before they develop problems, maybe because you have problems now. One thing that you don’t want to do is do treatment that you’ll regret in the future. I regret a lot of things I did as a child or that doctors recommended to me and my parents, then we did it, because we believed in our doctors. Unfortunately, our doctors know what they know, and they don’t know what they don’t know. If you are concerned about your children’s health, then come see us. Come see Dr. Godes, she’s the one that sees our children. If you want that number, call our office. 760-536-1199.
You do have to pay for an exam, but what you pay for an exam is going to save you a lot in trouble later on. You can avoid other dentistry. You can avoid going to the dentist and paying for all of this treatment with orthodontics. Braces run anywhere from 4,000 – $8,000. You can avoid paying for this now and paying for it much later when your bite is off and you have a toothache, and dentists are recommending root canals. A lot of problems start because of actions that we do as parents for our kids.
If you want this whole body approach and if you want this overall, long term approach, because I see adults in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 80’s, and then it’s all stemming from their childhood dentistry. Dentistry that they thought was the right thing to do. Unfortunately it’s not. Please be aware that we are in tune with how the whole connection works, how the whole body now and in the future works. Thanks for that call.
I was talking about a patient from mine that came from Utah– had incredible results by removing infections in the mouth. She’s been to many, many dentists, and they said that everything was fine. She was going the oncology route, the traditional medicine route, and now she’s on the way back to health. She’s not going into chemotherapy, and it’s just great. I’ve got to tell you, it’s so good to feel this way.
There’s another patient that just came in and sat me down. We extracted three teeth on the upper right side. I talked to her and she said that she’s actually going to call in one of these days. She has a great story to tell. I don’t want to tell it all, but I just want you to know that she went to every doctor under the sun, every type of doctor you can think of. They couldn’t figure everything out. They said it was all in her head. She came in. She found us on our website, trynaturaldentistry.com. She came to see us and we extracted three teeth on the upper right side. They happened to have root canals in it, and they also had infections around it. A couple weeks later she’s sitting down with me. This past week she’s like, “Wow, you are not going to believe how much energy I have. My whole life has changed. My family has recognized it.” People at her church, people at work. They all recognized it and asked what she did. She told people, “Yeah, I had these teeth taken out. They were infected, and that’s what was causing it.”
Unfortunately a lot of people can’t believe that, but I’m telling you the source of the problem is found inside the mouth. You really need to go out of your way to go to a dentist that figures out the whole picture. Now she’s on her way. Yes, she has three less teeth, but she’s still eating the food that she wants to eat. She’s actually eating more. She’s livelier, she has so much more energy because of it.
I have another patient that came in this past week telling me exactly the same things. A couple other teeth that she had root canals on. She was leery of taking them out, but we took them out. She is just bent over backwards. She says her life has changed. She literally said, I quote, “This is life-changing. You’re not going to believe this, but this is life-changing.”
By getting to the root cause of the problem, you’re doing the right thing. You need to go to the dentist, so if you want to come see me or Dr. Godes for a lot of the approaches that we do, give us a call. 760-536-1199. I can’t help you if you can’t help yourself. I need you to make a phone call. I need you to do an exam and x-ray. This is a no-risk exam and x-ray. We’re not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. We’re going to give you our approach. Our approach is whatever I would do for myself, my wife, my sister, my brother, or my parents is what I would recommend for you.
I am holistic. I am looking for the future. I am trying to figure out what is going on in your body, what is going on in your mouth, and seeing if there’s a link. If there’s a link, I’ll figure it out. If there’s fillings, if you have mercury fillings, if you have silver fillings, if you have metal crowns, if you have root canals, if you have infections, if you have a bad bite or something like that, we’ll figure it out. You’ll get this information, we’ll tell you what we would do if it was our mouth, and we give you the opportunity to decide what you want to do.
I tell people they have three choices once you figure out what we tell you. You can not do it, which is fine. You’re not going to offend me. It’s your mouth, it’s your decision, it’s your responsibility. If you say no, that’s fine. You can say yes, which is fine too. We’ll be happy to help you, help guide you along and we’ll do it. The last thing you can do is say, “OK, maybe later.” Maybe you need to have more time to digest it. Maybe you have to think about it. Maybe you have to get a 2nd, 3rd or 4th opinion. Maybe you have to ask other people. Maybe you have to wait until other problems start to occur. Let’s say you have a tooth that has no problems that you know of, but you have health concerns. All of the sudden, your health concerns get worse. You have cancer now. That is more important. Now you want to go ahead and do it. That’s fine. That is absolutely fine. If you want to schedule an exam and x-ray with us, then you’ll know what’s going on. It’s this clarity.
A patient came in this past week. He’s a real health buff. He feels that there is something going on inside his mouth. He’s always read about it, he eats really healthy, he’s changed his life, he realized that he’s had a lot of bad dentistry in the past. He wants to turn it over. He has these metal, titanium implants. He has metal crowns, he has mercury fillings in his mouth. He goes, “Man, I need to get all of these mercury fillings taken out, because I know they’re gassing these vapors and it’s going into my body.” You know what? He came in, I checked him all out, that’s not a priority. His mercury fillings are not a priority, so I told him.
I said, “Your body is excreting or dealing with that toxin really well.” I gave him those choices. “You can have those mercury fillings taken out, or you can leave them in.”
What I’m trying to say is that every individual is unique. Every individual is different, and we’re able to hone in and figure out what the priorities are. We’re not going to automatically say, “You’ve got to do this $50,000 worth of dentistry in order to get healthy.” That’s not what we do. We say, “OK, for you this is a problem. You should do this first. This is a problem; you should do this second. This is a problem; you should do this third. This is exactly what I would do.” It is very unique. It is not driven by what you think, it is driven by what is. That’s what we do at the Center for Natural Dentistry.
If you have questions, give us a call at 760-536-1199. Let me give you our website address; it’s naturaldentistry.us or trynaturaldentistry.com. You can also find some stuff on facebook. facebook.com/naturaldentistry. You do want to like our page, because we put a lot of information, a lot of comments, and you can actually ask questions through our facebook.
I want to talk about sleep apnea. What is sleep apnea? We have a new treatment at the office. If you have health insurance (certain health insurance, not all health insurance), they do cover for sleep apnea. If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically that you’re not getting enough oxygen into your body. Oxygen is necessary for your cells; it’s necessary for your body. It gives you an opportunity to rejuvenate and recover at night. When you’re sleeping, if you’re not getting enough oxygen to your body, you can make your whole life miserable. Your organ systems– all the systems in your body will not work very well. We have some treatments for sleep apnea, and we actually figure out why you have sleep apnea.
I soon realized that dentistry, just like when the person called earlier about her child getting spacers, it all starts then. It really does. When you get the wrong dentistry done, and you’re making your arch smaller, your jaws don’t develop to their full potential. Your lower jaw is smaller. Your lower jaw will be forced back into your head, and most people don’t realize that the tongue is connected to the lower jaw. It’s at the base of the jaw. When your jaw is pushed back because of dentistry or for development reasons, your tongue can actually close your airway. Your jaw is back, your tongue closes your airway, and that could be one of the sources of your sleep apnea.
If it’s one of your sources of sleep apnea, you have to do something about it. One of the ways you can do it is you can have your jaw move forward, especially when you’re sleeping. That’s one of the treatments. You may have heard of a treatment called a CPAP. A CPAP is a machine that goes over your mouth and nose which forces air into your body. That’s treatment, but it does not address the cause. It does not move your jaw forward to get your airway bigger, it just basically forces air into your body. It’s a big, large, cumbersome device. Lots of people love them; a lot of people hate them. For the most part, it’s not addressing the root cause a lot of times.
If you want to get an evaluation, our sleep evaluations are with Dr. Irvin, who comes into our office. They’re actually free. You would have to come in. We would have you fill out this questionnaire that talks about your sleep. If you don’t sleep very well, if you don’t sleep very deep, if you wake up in the night, if you’ve been told that you snore– snoring is a big one. If you snore, there’s a good chance that you have some form of mild, moderate sleep apnea, and you really need to get that taken care of. If you have health insurance or medical insurance, we can take a look at it and see if it’s covered. The test may be covered, and also the treatment may be covered.
This is incredible stuff. This is life-changing. This is very holistic, meaning that it’s good for your overall health. If you have sleep apnea, even if you have a CPAP machine or if you’ve been diagnosed already, come in. We can evaluate it and figure out if this is best for you. It’s not only good for you, but it’s also good for the people around you, for the people that you sleep with, for your bed partners, your spouse. If you guys sleep in a different room, that’s not a good thing. It’s not good for your life, and it could be because of the dentistry.
I know it sounds far fetched. I know it sounds weird that dentistry is the cause of all of these problems, but it is. You really need to sit down with a professional and figure out these problems. I’ve been doing this for a while. I’m not a newbie. I know the dentistry that other dentists do. I went to the same dental school. I went to an American Dental Association accredited dental school, a really good school. I’ve done a residency program. I’ve spent hours and hours and hours learning more and more about dentistry, because I want to know what’s best.
That’s what I would want as a patient. If you want to know what’s best, you need to go to the people that have studied and sacrificed trying to learn. I’ve got to tell you, I’m a natural born trouble shooter. That’s right, I try to figure out the problems. A better trouble shooter or better detective will figure out the evidence and try to figure out the root cause of these problems. Not all dentists know how to do this. If you want to know what’s best for you, then you’ve got to come see us.
I’m Dr. Marvin. This is Let’s Talk Dentistry. I only have a couple more minutes. I appreciate the call today. I hope you enjoyed this show, because these shows are for you. They’re for you to hopefully spark an interest in your overall health, hopefully spark your interest in dentistry, knowing that the mouth is more important than you think it is. I’d love for dentists to realize that the mouth is more important than they think it is. Dentists have a unique and great opportunity to help people, but the problem is that their knowledge base actually hurts people.
If you want to schedule an appointment, I’m going to tell you, you need to schedule an appointment with a dentist like myself or Dr. Godes. Give us a call at 760-536-1199. It takes a little bit of money, but the information you’re going to get. It costs $399 for your fist visit with us. You spend two hours with us. We do a 3D x-ray and a comprehensive exam. We also test the materials that we use. We pull it all together, and by the time you leave you’re going to be inundated with information. This information is going to allow you to make better decisions. There’s no risk. There’s no obligation to do the work. Give us a call at 760-536-1199.
I love this. I hope you do too. Call other people to listen to this show. I’ll be here same time, same place next week. I’m Dr. Marvin. Have a great one. Bye bye.