Gerson Institute Day 3 Lecture: Dr. Vinograd, Holistic Dental Health

We have both in our mouth. We have oxygen-loving bacteria and we have oxygen-hating bacteria, bacteria that actually proliferates without oxygen. When we start having gum disease or rampant decay, the anaerobic bacteria proliferates.

So this part right on the bottom of the pocket is pretty much shielded from oxygen and so the pathogenic bacteria really start proliferating in that area. So what is interesting is that the same bacteria that starts proliferating when you start having pathological either periodontal or decay-related disease were found – the exact same bacteria were found in diseased hearts, diseased pancreas. Those studies that I mentioned to you before, the pancreas contained the exact same anaerobic bacteria.

So I don’t know. You can claim that it’s not related but it seems pretty suspicious to me. Here are some of those bacteria that seem to – we seem to have in common.

And it’s quite logical. You know how quick bacteria can get from the mouth into your heart? This quick. All they need to do is get into the bloodstream.

So for us to start thinking that the mouth is separate from everything else is just a fantasy. It’s not true.

Now this is when it gets interesting. So you say, “All right. So what can I do?” Most dentists will say, “Well come see me every three months or every six months, or whatever, every year, and I will clean those pockets out for you. Then you come back again in six months and I will clean those pockets out for you.” But if you really think about it, how much can I do for you once every six months when those bacteria are having a party in there?

Of course it’s a good idea to come in and get professional cleaning but traditional hygiene, important. When your pocket depths are smaller than three millimeters, this is quite successful. You use that and you use the floss, fairly traditional, and what I think I can bring to you today are some less traditional ways of actually dealing with your oral hygiene.

How many people here are familiar with ozone therapy? OK. So ozone, O3, oxygen ozonated can actually be infused in water. It can also be used by itself and we find that when we inject ozone into an area full of anaerobic, pathological bacteria – what do you think happens?

Yeah, right. They hate oxygen, right? We do have aerobic bacteria that like oxygen in our mouths but those are not the ones that are actually prolific in disease.

So for us to actually bring oxygen into our hygiene program, concentrated oxygen is a slam dunk in my opinion. Some of those ozonators or ozone-infusing machines used to run a couple of thousand dollars, probably 15, 20 years ago. But nowadays, you could probably pick up a fairly good machine for less than $100.

When you combine that with a Waterpik, you have one of the most efficient – and don’t tell all your dentists about this because they’re not going to like it but you’re going to be your own dentist basically and you’re going to be your own dentist everyday. You’re actually going to be cleaning those – infusing your mouth with oxygen basically everyday.

So what you do is you purchase a Waterpik and you will infuse the water with the ozone for 20 to 30 minutes and if you would like to you may when I can give you some of the specs of what you need on that ozone machine. Basically you irrigate your teeth and your gums everyday.

So we found that obviously you don’t want to have pockets larger than three, four millimeters and obviously you want to go to the dentist and make sure they’re cleaning. They’re removing all the tartar and so forth.

But this therapy has been quite successful in my practice. We’ve actually placed the – I just recently had a patient who came to me and said, “Doc, I haven’t been to the dentist in 20 years and this is what I have.” And I looked in there. She had maybe seven or eight teeth with nine or ten millimeter pockets full of pus and I said, “You really, really need to remove these teeth. These are really hurting your health.”

There’s no way that you can have that much pus, that much inflammation. You have bacteria fest in there and it’s going to affect your heart. It’s going to affect the rest of your body. She said, “Doc, I can’t. I just can’t go there.”

I said, “Well, all right. I mean it’s your mouth. I can’t force you to do it but I would highly recommend that you get that taken care of.”

We actually placed her on a regimen of ozone with the Waterpik twice a day. I actually had her back three months later. There was – the inflammation had been reduced probably 90 percent. There was no pus, whatsoever. She still had large pockets. The nine millimeters became sevens which is still not OK but it’s a tremendous tool for you to use at home.

And obviously you still want to have pocket management by your dentist. You really should insist that you dentist always checks the pocket depths if they’re not already doing. A lot of dentists are very good about doing this and I hope your dentist is doing this for you.

Anything that is over three millimeters, you should identify. You should talk with your dentist about showing you which areas are over three millimeters and they should be actively pursuing, cleaning, cleansing that area on your own.