How to Improve Oral Health & Its Critical Role in Brain & Body Health
Date: 2024-02-12 | Duration: 02:00:27
Transcript
0:00 Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I’m Andrew Huberman, and I’m a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we are discussing oral health. Now, when most people hear “oral health,” they immediately think tooth health and appearance, and presumably fresh breath or lack of bad breath as well. And while, of course, tooth and breath
0:30 freshness, whiteness, and health is a critical component of oral health, today you will learn that oral health—including the oral microbiome, the health of your palate, your tonsils, indeed the entire oral cavity—is an extremely important component of general bodily health. So much so that today we are going to add a seventh pillar to the so-called six pillars of mental health, physical health, and performance. This is not a trivial step to add a seventh
1:00 pillar to these six pillars. If some of you have been listeners of this podcast for a while, you may recall that the six pillars of mental health, physical health, and performance—that is, the six things that everyone needs to invest specific protocols into each day—are, in no particular order: sleep; sunlight and light exposure generally (which by extension also includes dark exposure); nutrition; exercise (which we could also
1:30 call movement, both cardiovascular exercise and resistance training); stress management; and relationships and social engagement, including relationship to self. And today, we are going to add oral health and microbiome health. I suppose we could generally call this oral and gut health because, if you think about it, your mouth, your oral cavity, and your gut are contiguous with one another. We are going to add oral and gut health as the seventh
2:00 pillar of mental health, physical health, and performance because, as you will learn today, there are so many aspects of oral health and daily protocols for oral health that extend to cardiovascular health, to metabolic health, and indeed to brain health and to staving off diseases in all of those bodily compartments. I cannot overemphasize enough how much oral health influences your general bodily health. So today, you will learn about oral biology and health. We won’t
2:30 go too deep into the biology, but we will go deep enough into the biology that you will learn some incredible things, such as your teeth have the ability to literally fill back in cavities that have formed, provided those cavities haven’t gone too deep into the teeth layers yet. You will learn that saliva, while most people think of it as just spit, is an incredible substance, a fluid that contains all sorts of interesting and important things that allow you to rebuild the strength of
3:00 your teeth and indeed to support the health of your oral cavity and gut microbiome and body generally. So saliva is super interesting and important, and today you’re going to learn many, many protocols, including zero-cost protocols, protocols that will actually save you money, as well as some low-cost protocols to both restore, improve, and maintain oral health, and in doing so, maintain and improve your overall bodily health. Before we begin, I’d like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my
3:30 teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I’d like to thank the sponsors of today’s podcast. Our first sponsor is Mateina. Mateina makes loose-leaf and ready-to-drink yerba mate. I often discuss yerba mate’s benefits, such as regulating blood sugar, its high antioxidant content, the ways that it can improve digestion, and possible neuroprotective effects. I also drink yerba mate
4:00 because I love the taste. While there are a lot of different choices of yerba mate drinks out there, I love Mateina because, again, they have the no-sugar variety as well as the fact that both their loose-leaf and their canned varieties are of the absolute best quality—so much so that I decided to become a partial owner in the company. Although I must say, even if they hadn’t allowed me to do that, I would be drinking Mateina as the cleanest-tasting and best yerba mate you can find.
4:30 I love the taste of brewed loose-leaf Mateina yerba mate, and I particularly love the taste of Mateina’s new canned cold-brew zero-sugar yerba mate, which I personally helped them develop. If you’d like to try Mateina, go to drinkmateina.com/huberman. Right now, Mateina is offering a free one-pound bag of loose-leaf yerba mate tea and free shipping with the purchase of two cases of their cold-brew yerba mate. Again, that’s drinkmateina.com/huberman to get the free bag of yerba mate
5:00 loose-leaf tea and free shipping. Today’s episode is also brought to us by ROKA. ROKA makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are of the absolute highest quality. I’ve spent a lifetime working on the biology of the visual system, and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of challenges in order for you to be able to see clearly under different conditions. ROKA understands this and designed all of their eyeglasses and sunglasses with the biology of the visual system in mind. Now, ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses were initially developed for use in sport, and as
5:30 a consequence, you can wear them without them slipping off your face while running or cycling, and they’re extremely lightweight. ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses are also designed with a new technology called FloatFit, which I really like because it makes their eyeglasses and sunglasses fit perfectly, and they don’t move around even when I’m active. So if I’m running and I’m wearing my glasses, they stay on my face. Most of the time, I don’t even remember they’re on my face because they’re so lightweight. You can also use them while cycling or for other activities. So if you’d like to try ROKA glasses, go to ROKA—that’s R-O-K-A.com—and enter the code
6:00 huberman to save 20% off your first order. Again, that’s roka.com and enter the code huberman at checkout. Today’s episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are of the absolute highest quality. I’ve spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. One of the key things to getting a great night’s sleep is to make sure that your mattress matches your sleep requirements. The Helix website has a brief two-minute
6:30 quiz that, if you go to it, will ask you questions such as: Do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the middle of the night? As well as some other questions that allow you to determine the optimal mattress for you. When I took the quiz, I personally matched to their Dusk mattress, which has allowed me to significantly improve my sleep. So if you’re interested in significantly improving your sleep, go to helixsleep.com/huberman, take their brief two-minute quiz, and they’ll match you to a customized mattress,
7:00 and you’ll get up to 350 off and two free pillows. Okay, let’s talk about oral health, this absolutely critical aspect of not just having fresh, bright teeth and no cavities and fresh breath—or at least lack of bad breath, one would hope—but also total body health. As I mentioned a little bit earlier, oral health is inextricably linked to all
7:30 aspects of brain and bodily health, both in the short term and in the long term, and it is perhaps the most overlooked aspect of mental health and physical health. So today, I’d like to start off with a quiz. I’m going to ask you which of the following three categories you believe you best fall into. Okay, the first category is those of you out there who brush and floss every day, probably twice a day, and who make some effort to
8:00 try and keep your teeth clean, who like the feeling of your teeth being clean, and who pay a fair amount of attention to whether or not your teeth are getting whiter or not getting whiter, maybe whether or not your breath is fresh or not fresh. Maybe—okay, these aren’t requirements for being in this category—but maybe you’re somebody who also uses a mouthwash or uses mints or gums in order to try and keep your mouth smelling and looking fresh and your mouth clean. Okay, so this first category does not require that you do all of
8:30 those things, but let’s just make a basic requirement of participation in this category that you routinely brush at least twice a day and that you floss at least once a day. Okay, if you fall into that category, you are in Category 1. And by the way, if you’re in Category 1 and you do those things and you do a bunch of other things like tooth whitening, and maybe you go to the dentist especially often, more than the recommended twice per year, that still puts you in Category 1. Okay, the second category are those of you out there who
9:00 are, let’s say, a bit more blasé about your oral and tooth care. Those of you that perhaps just brush your teeth in the morning so that your breath is fresh, you clean out that kind of sticky feeling in your mouth that’s accumulated overnight, that sometimes brush and maybe floss at night, but a lot of times you fall asleep without doing that or you don’t feel like doing it, or perhaps that don’t really floss at all. Okay, that perhaps go to the dentist once every six months, maybe a little less, maybe
9:30 once a year, once every couple years. So while there’s a bunch of different things that could put you into Category 2, let’s make a basic requirement for belonging to Category 2 that you brush your teeth once a day but not twice a day on a regular basis, or that you brush twice a day but that you rarely floss. Okay, that would put you into what I’m calling Category 2. And then, of course, there’s the third category that maybe some of you out there fall into, and this is the category of people who are
10:00 extremely diligent not just about tooth care but also about oral health generally—about maintaining the microbiome of your mouth, about making sure that your gums are very healthy, about making sure that your soft palate and hard palate are very healthy, about making sure that, yes, your teeth are clean, that they’re devoid of as much bacterial buildup and other stuff in there that can cause cavities, but also that you’re paying careful attention to your oral microbiome and the overall
10:30 milieu of your health in the mouth and the fact that your mouth is linked to all these different aspects of brain and cardiac and metabolic health. Okay, if you fall into that third category, great. But let’s be honest, most people—I would argue 95%, maybe even 98% of people or more—fall into either Category 1 or Category 2. So as you’re hearing this, you’re probably thinking, “Okay, well, if I’m in Category 1, I’m good, right? I go to the dentist twice a year, I