Interview with Laura from the Life Upgrade Movement

Daniel Vinograd

 

life upgrade movementLaura from lifeupgrademovement.com interviews Dr. Vinograd (play for audio, or read transcription below) for her upcoming book about . She also published an interesting article on the oral health-body connection here.

 

TRANSCRIPTION:

Laura: Today I’m speaking with Dr. Daniel Vinograd. He has been a holistic dentist for over 30 years and is based in southern California. You can check out his website at drvinograd.com. Welcome, Dr. Vinograd. So I was hoping that maybe we could just start with you telling me a little bit more about why choose a . How are they different from regular dentists?

Daniel Vinograd: Well, [inaudible] matter of perspective. You know, traditional dentists basically are focused on the mouth and the teeth, the oral cavity, you know, and depending on their specialties, some might have a little broader perspective than others. And [I don’t know how it is] for all of the dentists that have a holistic [inaudible] [or not], but I know for me, it’s really about stepping back and seeing the whole picture. You know, as I say in my lectures, after the industrial revolution, we became really very specialized. We became actually specialists in the oral cavity, and any connection to the rest of the body was lost.

And so once you step back and you start realizing, hey, this is all connected, you know, you see very clearly sometimes that some of the pathogens you find in the gums are the exact same pathogens that you find in diseased organs in the body, and you have no alternative but to acknowledge the fact that, you know, the bloodstream is connecting everything in our body [including] the mouth. So, you know, we lose that kind of perspective when we start treating patients and we get lost in the details of preparing a crown or doing a surgery, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s mostly about that. Once you step back and you find that it’s all connected, then your decision making process changes, you know? You are beginning to be concerned about not only the physical attributes of what you [inaudible] in the mouth, but the biological connection as well. So I would say that would be the main difference. Obviously, there are a lot of differences in the way you practice once you’ve made that shift in your core values.

Laura: Right. Exactly. In holistic dentists, it’s still not very prominent in the field, is it? There’s probably only, what, a couple thousand in the country?

Daniel Vinograd: Yeah, you know, and the more I speak with the other dentists that are holistic, because it’s really not a regulated field or there’s really no university for holistic dentists, holistic dentists use practice so differently from one practitioner to the other. And even though there are lectures and there are certain associations where a lot of the dentists [inaudible], the way that people practice can be really quite different.

Laura: Yeah, I imagine. Yeah, definitely. Because you only know what you know, and so…

Daniel Vinograd: Yeah, and there are degrees of commitment to the holistic dentistry, and also, it really depends a lot on not only your perspective, but also in your view, your general view of how you should be practicing. There are no set parameters.

Laura: Right, right. I know one of the – something that I think all holistic dentists do do, though, are very conscious about how mercury is used, or it shouldn’t be used, because – so I know many people now know that it is very toxic, it’s one of the most toxic elements in the world, but what are the other toxic materials in dentistry? I know that there must be several that are commonly used in regular dentistry, anyways.

Daniel Vinograd: You have different situations where you have toxicity by just via the type of materials that are being used, and also the fact that [inaudible] some metals may just disturb the bio magnetic flow. You know, actually having a piece of metal in your body does make a difference in how – [in Chinese medicine] it’s called the [chi] flow. But there are electromagnetic currents in the body, and [it all gets disturbed by] different metals in the mouth. So you really have two different components here. One would be the actual toxicity, and the other would be the actual intrusiveness of the material into the flow of your life energy.

Laura: Right.

Daniel Vinograd: For example, some of the old metal that used to be used for crowns [inaudible] still used in some instances contain nickel, for example, which is considered to be toxic, and so you have a crown, for example, that could be both, toxic and could be intrusive in the biomagnetical point of view.

Laura: So what would a holistic dentist do there? How would you go about that with the patient in determining what you should do and what you should use?

Daniel Vinograd: Well, you know, over the many years, you evolve throughout your practice, and over the many years, I’ve learned, as they say in Buddhism, to walk the middle rows, and that is to try to make sense of what is in the best interest for the patient without getting carried away, because, you know, what has happened is we’ve become very polarized. Allopathic dentists or allopathic doctors think that alternative doctors or dentists are quacks. And alternative dentists and doctors feel that allopathic doctors and dentists are hardheaded, intransient, and unaware. And, you know, the truth is that we need more people that can actually bridge both ends so they can really serve patients better.

So it’s not really about – I often tell my patients, you know, if you get run over by a car, you want a hospital. You want a surgeon. You don’t want an herbologist. You know, if you have a long-term [inaudible] disease that allopathic medicine really struggles with, you don’t want allopathic medicine, you know? You want something that works, Chinese medicine, homeopathic. So I think the most important thing is for somebody to have some common sense, draw from their experience and knowledge, and be able to advise patients in a way that makes sense to them.

Case in point, I have, for example, I have a number of patients that come from outside of the area, and one patient called me and said, “Doc, I want to see a traditional dentist and I have nine root canals in my mouth, and he laughed me out of the office. He said ‘You’re crazy. Keep them. There’s nothing wrong with them.’ But I know that those root canals had impacted my health in a negative way. So I ended up in a holistic dentist’s office, and he said ‘You’ve got to pull all nine root canals out of your mouth.’” And she called me and said, “I’m very confused.”

So we talked a bit, and then we started thinking about getting a proper history, finding out when those root canals had been placed or performed, and then we tried to see how that affected her health and tried to get a chronicle of her health to see whether those root canals were related to some of her health issues, and then we actually connected each individual root canal to different organs, because there is a connection, specific connection, in Chinese medicine, between each tooth and particular organs.

And so we started seeing if there were any manifestations in her body, and then I asked [inaudible] root canals themselves. It was one root canal that was [inaudible] infected and it actually affected the patient’s thyroid, which was an issue, so I suggested that she remove that tooth and then that she wait and reassesses what her situation is, and then after that, you could actually – you know, she ended up coming to see me, but after a while we ended up reassessing which of those root canals were re-treatable, because there are ways to re-treat root canals in much more biocompatible ways, and at that point, we made a decision which teeth should come out, which teeth should be re-treated, and which should not, and you know, once we decided that, she ended up making really good decisions for herself. I can only see her taking out nine teeth and becoming a dental cripple, obviously, she would have been root canal free, but she would have also had a lot of new challenges in her quality of life.

So you see, what I’m saying is you really have to think things out. Also, you have to think about when you remove a tooth that has a root canal, what are you going to replace it with? Are you going to put an implant there? Is that implant going to be a new aggression or, you know, a new invasion on your body? Are you going to not replace it? What are the consequences of that? So this is really what my way of practicing is about, it’s really teaching patients and giving them enough really good quality information so that we can partner up and make good decisions.

Laura: So what happened with that patient? Did taking out the specific root canals, did she –

Daniel Vinograd: We [inaudible] in one tooth, and we replaced it with a non-metallic bridge, and then we ended up leaving one of the old root canals on observation for future treatment, and we re-treated all the others.

Laura: And has her health improved a lot?

Daniel Vinograd: Yes, health improved a lot. There was another patient that came, actually, from Singapore, and she actually, in her case, we actually removed three root canals and an implant from her mouth, but in her case, she was young and she had other very good teeth, and we could actually replace all her teeth without any implants by just placing non-metallic bridges, and she, also – I mean, she was a young woman in her 30s, and she said she actually hadn’t had a menstrual period in over six years, and the week after we removed all that and we replaced it with the bridges, she got her first menstrual period in six years.

Laura: Wow.

Daniel Vinograd: So that’s actually very, very profound changes. Another patient became – I mean, I’m giving you some interesting stories [inaudible].

Laura: No, yeah, I love the stories. The stories are fantastic.

Daniel Vinograd: But there was another patient that came in and said she had terrible gastric distress for years, and she went from one doctor to the other doctor, natural doctors, homeopathic doctors, traditional doctors, western doctors, allopathic doctors, and over 20 years, nobody had really found what her problem was. She finally went to see a doctor at one of the large hospitals, and it happened to be a doctor that had just been out of school for less than a year, and the doctor said, “I suspect that you probably have some kind of tumor in your liver.” And she laughed and said, “Oh, what does this young guy know? I’ve been seeing doctors for 20 years.” And, you know, she came to the practice and she actually had an infected root canal on tooth number 13, which is related to both thyroid and liver, and so concurrently, to come into the office, she was running a test, and she called me and said “They actually found a benign tumor on my liver.”

Laura: Wow.

Daniel Vinograd: And so everything was connected. They extracted that tooth that was connected to her liver, so we don’t know if that infection created the problem, or if the problem actually affected the tooth, you know, but it really doesn’t matter in a case like that where she had actually developed a tumor in her liver, and that infected root canal had no business being there, so we actually removed it. But the connection was actually clear, and she was stunned when she actually – so that was the only infected tooth and the only root canal she had in her mouth, and it was directly related to her liver.

Laura: Wow. Yeah. So can we talk a little bit about why root canals are so – I mean, I want to use the word toxic, I’m not sure if that’s the right word. You know, why do they tend to go bad? Because I know sometimes they can be, you know, you’ve got the root canal and it’s okay sometimes.

Daniel Vinograd: Let me preface this by saying that traditional dentists are not happy with me because I say the root canals, traditional root canals should not be done, and actually, holistic dentists are not very happy with me because I say that root canals can be re-treated, and you can actually have a healthy root canal in your mouth. So it’s a pretty lonely road to walk right now, which makes me feel very good, makes me feel that I’m [inaudible] the right path. If everybody’s angry at me, you know that you’re on to something.

Laura: Yeah.

Daniel Vinograd: So traditional root canals, basically the way root canals have been performed for years, [some have been changed] to some degree, but the bottom line is that traditional root canals use gutta percha, which is a rubber material, which doesn’t have any expansion or major contraction capabilities, so it’s a very, very neutral, inert material. It’s a rubber, it’s not something great to have in your body, and that, either one gutta percha point or multiple gutta percha points are placed inside your canal. At the same time, all those gutta percha, it appears that gutta percha are linked by a sealer, a root canal sealer. The biggest problem with this way of doing root canals is that because those traditional sealers are somewhat toxic and hydrophobic, they can’t contract. What happens when you try to fill a canal inside a root and the material contracts around the gutta percha and away from the tooth is that you’re creating quite a number of little voids in that area, which bacteria are more than happy to inhabit.

Laura: Right.

Daniel Vinograd: So traditional root canals, whether microscopically or [clinically], tend to become focal points of infection. Now, most of the information you’re going to find on the internet is based on traditional root canals, and this is where Dr. Weston Price did all his research on root canals. I know you’re familiar with it, but he extracted root canal teeth and embedded them subcutaneously in rabbits, and they all developed the same sicknesses that the actual people were presenting.

Laura: Right.

Daniel Vinograd: And so after that, some people extrapolated that root canals cause cancer, other people said no, what he said, but he said that root canals actually create some kind of pathology, and the same pathology that the patient had, the rabbit develops. So regardless, you know, root canals were not good for you, not healthy, and the reason they were not health is because they had become focal points of infection. They had become areas where bacteria were just having a party, and they were untouched. It’s virtually impossible to access those areas unless you open that area and clean it out again.

Laura: Right.

Daniel Vinograd: So for many years I stopped doing root canals because there was no alternative, but then I started thinking, well, really, the problem is not the root canal. The root canal inherently is not the villain here. It is really the actual spaces that are left behind around the root canal filling material. So we began to look at different materials, and then some researchers brought out something caught [MPI], which is used, you know, it’s a [inaudible] based material they use to repair fractures in the femurs and the knees and the hips of people. They started trying to use it to place in the root canal areas. Now, that material is not hydrophobic, so it doesn’t tend to contract, but it was a very, very difficult material to use. It was just hard to handle. So a new group of [inaudible] actually came up with another sealer, which is also [inaudible] and hydrophilic. I mean, we all have moisture in our bodies everywhere, right, so even in a canal you have some moisture, and they found that this material, rather than contracting, was expanding. So they started using, developing the methodology, and we started using this material with really good results. That still left a little bit of a problem because they still used a piece of gutta percha, just one, not multiple pieces like other techniques, but they used one piece of gutta percha to drive the sealer to the right length on that canal. And so even the material [inaudible] was expanding, the gutta percha in the middle was not, and so it still created small irregularities which were a fraction of what was there before, with traditional methods, but still, in all, it was a situation where you have two materials not expanding at the same rate. About a year ago, I started actually, I became part of a focal group that started bringing some points that had been used in Europe for a long time that were actually biocompatible, and they actually expand [inaudible] rate as the BC sealer, and so this is the way we’ve been doing root canals, you know, the last couple of years, with these materials called C points. Some combinations of C points and BC sealers, actually are creating now a situation where the materials are expanding and sealing those canals very, very nicely.

Laura: Oh, that’s cool. So is that what you mean by when you were saying re-treating? Is that the stuff that you use to re-treat?

Daniel Vinograd: Exactly. We take out all the old material, the toxic sealers, all the gutta percha, take all that out, and then we clean it and replace all that material with expanding calcium-based material. Now, is this an answer for everybody? No. You know, I would say we’ve only been using these for a couple of years, the C points, and probably about six or seven years with the BC sealers, and clinically, I’ve observed that the patients have not had any of the manifestations, and a lot of the manifestations were reversed by actually re-treating the root canals. But if, for example, you have a person who has breast cancer on the left side, and they have a root canal on tooth number 2 or 3, which are in the same line as the breast, I would not re-treat it, I would extract it. So again, you know, you really want to look at the patient and see what their systemic challenges are and then meet those, meet those patients where they need to be met, with a bigger context in mind.

Laura: Wow, that’s awesome. That’s fascinating.

Daniel Vinograd: Yeah. So people come to my office and said, “Doc, I want you to take this tooth out. You know, it’s a root canal tooth, I don’t want it, I read all the stuff,” I try to educate the patient, say, “Look, I understand how you feel, and I want to partner up with you in making this decision. I just want you to have good information, not dated information.” You know, a lot of this information – well, not necessarily just dated, because Weston Price, I believe it was about thirty years ago or more that this research was done, but you know, the fact is that 99 percent of the root canals today are traditional root canals, so it still applies, so I understand their point of view, but they don’t know that there are options. They don’t know that there are additional ways of doing it. Fortunately, there are a handful of us that are doing it in the States, with both the BC sealer and C points.

Laura: Yeah, I was just going to say that, because I know I’ve spoken with other dentists and nobody’s mentioned this before.

Daniel Vinograd: No, I think there’s probably maybe, you know, 10 or 12 of us that are doing this in all of the US. And it’s a shame, you know, because it’s a viable treatment, and you know, it’s a lot of times mutilating people that don’t need to be mutilated.

Laura: Right. Right. Very cool. Very cool. So I know – so say you, you know, one option for getting, you know, if you do take out a tooth that’s been root canaled or you don’t want a root canal and you take out your tooth instead, I know one option is implants, and like we were talking about that before, I know – so there’s basically the two types are titanium or zirconium, and I was wondering your opinion on what you would more typically use or, you know, depending on the patient, maybe.

Daniel Vinograd: Well, it’s not so much the difference between which material is the best. Really, there are a lot of variables. For example, you have very, very tiny implants that sometimes we use in the office. They’re about a third of the size of a traditional implant. So if a patient doesn’t have any issues with titanium, and very few people really do, then it really becomes a problem where you don’t want to be too invasive with the metal. You want as small a piece of metal as possible so you have the least amount of electromagnetic impact on the area. So if you’re going to choose a titanium implant, it’s also important to know what size of implant you’re going to place there. Now, titanium implants integrate very well, but again, they’re metal. Now, if I would have a choice, would I use titanium or would I use zirconia, I would definitely use zirconia, if everything else was equal. The problem that we’re having with zirconia implants is the way they are designed. Number one, they are very large, very invasive. Number two is that up to about a month ago, the titanium implants only came in one piece. Traditional – zirconia came in one piece. The titanium implants usually come in three pieces, so you have the piece that mimics the root of the tooth, the part that mimics the neck of the tooth, and the crown on top of it.

Laura: Right.

Daniel Vinograd: So if you will, the bone that [inaudible] is going to be placed [inaudible]. So when you place an implant and you have three pieces, you can actually put the implant, the root, in the [angulation] of the bone, because obviously if you don’t do it that way you could perforate the bone, right? So you have to go in line with the angle of the bone. Then when you actually bring the little neck piece of the implant, you can [change] the [angulation] of the crown to actually be in line with your other teeth. When you only have an implant that is one piece, you don’t have that choice, so if you have to place a nice, big implant in the angulation of the bone, you often [inaudible] stick out and it’s not going to be in line with the other teeth. I don’t know if that makes sense to you.

Laura: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Daniel Vinograd: So what you have to do is you have to start grinding the top of the implant to make it fit the other teeth, and also, when you do that, you create micro fractures on the implant, so that [causes it] to fail when you start grinding on it.

Laura: Oh, okay.

Daniel Vinograd: So the technology is just changing right now, and they just came out a month ago with a two piece zirconia implant, but they’re still having a lot of problems with those because they seem to be breaking a lot right on the junction between the root piece and the crown piece. So even though I love zirconia as an implant material and I use a lot of zirconia in my crowns, the technology is not at a point where that makes it a good implant for every case. Now, if you have a lot of bone and the bone is lined up just right, then you can place a zirconia implant, but the cases where you can do it properly [and effectively] and efficiently and safely are a small percentage.

Laura: Okay, yeah, so until the technology advances a little bit better.

Daniel Vinograd: Exactly. One the technology advances, I’m hoping that they will have zirconia implants that will be less invasive, and they’ll be more flexible.

Laura: Right. So, you mentioned a couple times, and I’ve heard this a lot, about the electromagnet kind of [inaudible] currents going on in the mouth when you have a lot of different metal. Can you kind of explain that a little bit better to me, you know, like what kind of impacts do you see from that?

Daniel Vinograd: You know, a lot of people don’t see it at all, not clinically. And some people do. Some people say oh, I get this little zap every so often, you know, I get a zinger right on my tooth or right on the metal. What happens is that the saliva actually conducts and it creates sort of like a battery effect where you have two different metals that are actually [inaudible] saliva are connecting to each other, and you’re creating a [galvanic] current. And now, when you’re having something like that, it’s obviously, even if it’s not in a clinical level where you’re actually feeling it, there’s actually disruption, because if you think about it, you know, what are we, you know? We’re cells, we’re atoms, but a lot of our connections are electrical connections, you know, the way we think, our neurons are connected electrically. So to have electric currents that have nothing to do with the proper functioning of our body, you’re going to have some kind of disturbance on the well-being of the homeostasis of your body.

Laura: Right. Right. Interesting.

Daniel Vinograd: Most of the time you’ll have some metal and then you’ll have a lot of silver fillings in your mouth, and that’s when, you know, 90 percent of the time the silver fillings are actually creating [galvanic] currents with gold or other kinds of metals in your mouth, and so obviously you want to really [inaudible] silver fillings for many reasons, not just biological, but they tend to swell with time and crack the teeth. I can’t tell you how many teeth every month we do, repair or replace because large amalgams swell over the decades and they start cracking the teeth.

Laura: Oh, wow, really?

Daniel Vinograd: Yeah. So a lot of the patients don’t feel so concerned about the mercury because they have been assured by their dentist that the mercury’s fine, initially, you know, we have a very powerful [translucent light], and we’re able to see through the tooth, and they can see those cracks from the amalgams just staring at them, you know? Most of the time some of those fracture lines are pretty evident.

Laura: Wow. Yeah, so do you see – I mean, what would you say that you see most often in your practice in terms of, like, when somebody comes in and is potentially, you know, sick from their dental work? Is it mercury, is it root canals? Both?

Daniel Vinograd: Both. Both. Yeah, I think that both the mercury fillings and the root canals are probably the two top culprits in the diminishing health of most of the patients I see.

Laura: But gum disease too –

Daniel Vinograd: And I would say the third, also, up there, would be also gum disease.

Laura: Yeah, I was just going to say. I would like to talk a little bit more about that. Like, when somebody comes in and they have gum disease, and so, what do you tell them to do? How do you reverse gum disease?

Daniel Vinograd: First we assess it. You know, gum disease has basically a couple of [inaudible], but one of them is the bleeding and the inflammation and the bacterial infection inside the gum pockets. The other one is the depth of the gum pockets, which is related to the first part of it.

Laura: Right.

Daniel Vinograd: Traditionally, when you have gum pockets that are one to three millimeters, that’s considered healthy. There’s always a space between the gum and the tooth, but those three millimeters you can actually easily access with your toothbrush. So if you brush your gums properly, you can clean the bottom of those pockets. The problem starts when you begin to have anywhere from 4, 5, 6 millimeter pockets, then you no longer physically can get to the bottom of those pockets with the toothbrush, so basically, you have bacteria there that is untouched, and they’re going at it, and most of the bacteria that caused the damage are anaerobic bacteria. A lot of the studies show that when you have gum disease or decay, the anaerobic bacteria become much more dominant in your mouth than the aerobic bacteria. And it makes sense because they’re hiding inside those pockets. They hate air, they hate oxygen, and so once they get – traditionally what dentists will do is they’ll actually go in and clean those pockets. By cleaning them they hope that those pockets will shrink because you reduce a little bit of inflammation. They’ll traditionally shrink one or two millimeters, so if you have a six, seven millimeter pocket, you’re not going to resolve the problem by just doing a deep cleaning.

Laura: Right.

Daniel Vinograd: And so what traditional dentists will do is they’ll stick, like, a little pellet of antibiotic in there to try to kill off some of the bacteria, which I find to be quite ridiculous because after a couple of weeks you’re back to square one, minus any possible resistance and toxicity that you’re creating by the antibiotics, or they’ll send them to the periodontist, and the periodontists will actually cut the gums and bring them down to one or two millimeters, but now you have a longer tooth and exposed root with a lot of sensitivity.

Laura: Sensitivity, yeah.

Daniel Vinograd: So it seems to me that all of the way that we’ve been treating gum disease is pretty barbaric.

Laura: Yeah. Sounds terrible.

Daniel Vinograd: So what I’ve devised is a combination of a water pick with an ozone machine. And so what we ask our patients to do is to learn how to use the water pick to access their deep pockets, and we also do the deep cleanings for them, and we also measure their pockets, and we have our hygienist [inaudible] values with me so we’re all [at the same pace], but rather than putting antibiotics in the pockets or sending them to get their pockets cut, we actually have them learn how to access the bottom of those pockets with a water pick. So once they learn out to do that and irrigate the bottom of the pockets, because with the water pick can [inaudible] five, six, seven, even eight millimeters, then we introduce an ozone generator, and we actually, instead of using regular water to irrigate them, we have ozone charged water, ozone infused water.

Laura: Oh, wow.

Daniel Vinograd: And what the ozone does, because it’s O3, it actually kills that bacteria on contact, on impact, because they’re anaerobics, remember? They hate [inaudible]. So when you have hyper-charged oxygen water, you’re [inaudible] that bacteria, and if you do that every day, you’re basically eliminating [disease].

Laura: Wow. That’s really cool.

Daniel Vinograd: [Inaudible] something that not a lot of dentists do or companies because there’s really no – it’s very hard to monetize it. So, you know, the patient buys these two pieces of equipment and keeps them at home and does their own dentistry at home. But, you know, it’s effective, even though it’s not commercial and it’s not benefitting dentists or other commercial interests. It’s a very effective therapy.

Laura: So does the ozone, does it kill the good bacteria as well, though? Is there good bacteria? There must be good bacteria in the mouth.

Daniel Vinograd: It does not, because what you have, when you have disease, your anaerobics, they hate oxygen, have increased and have overpowered the aerobic bacteria. The aerobic bacteria likes oxygen.

Laura: Okay.

Daniel Vinograd: So by irrigating this, you’re actually reducing the anaerobes, which are the ones that are causing the disease, and bringing the bacteria back into balance.

Laura: Wow, that’s really – okay, so that’s super awesome. And doing that and killing that bacteria, you don’t really see the pockets will lessen, and –

Daniel Vinograd: Well, the pockets will lessen. If you have a nine millimeter pocket, you’re not going to make it a two. But if you have a nine millimeter and you make it a seven and you’re cleaning it all the time, every day, then the original problem with the pocket, which is harboring the bacteria and creating a bacterial colony there that may be going into your bloodstream, into your heart, into every part of your body, is no longer there.

Laura: Right, right.

Daniel Vinograd: So we can get caught up on the fact that a patient still have seven millimeter pockets. If you talk to your dentist, they’ll say “Oh my gosh, that’s terrible. That’s a terrible thing.” This is the way we’re indoctrinated. But the pocket itself, it’s just like a root canal. It’s not the root canal, it’s what they’re filling it with, and it’s not the pocket itself, it’s the colony that is being harbored by the pocket.

Laura: I may be wrong about this, but I also feel like I imagine if you’re keeping the pockets clean and you change your diet and you’re taking care of your teeth, I think eventually, after long enough, I think the pockets would continue to decrease, maybe.

Daniel Vinograd: They will not.

Laura: No? They don’t?

Daniel Vinograd: They will only decrease – it can happen, actually, when you get recession, when the gums will shrink away from the – but most of the time when they’re there, they’ll only shrink because you take the inflammation away. When the inflammation is taken away, they usually will shrink a couple of millimeters. So if you have a five, you can make it a three. That’s great. If you have a four, you can make it a two. That’s great. You’re totally out of trouble there. But if you have seven, eight millimeter pockets, they will not decrease to two or three millimeters. Not in my experience, and most dentists would probably agree with me.

Laura: Okay, okay. I guess I was just hopeful thinking.

Daniel Vinograd: Look, even if you have a five or six millimeter pocket, you’re cleaning it every day, that stops being a problem.

Laura: Right, right, exactly, exactly.

Daniel Vinograd: I mean, it becomes a high-maintenance situation, and in time, you may [opt] to have your gums trimmed anyway, but now you have an alternative.

Laura: So what are your biggest recommendations for when to prevent that from ever, you know, your gums ever getting to that point where you have such large pockets?

Daniel Vinograd: It’s a matter of making sure that your dentist is measuring pockets every time you come in, and when they start going from two or three to four or five, that’s the easiest time to reverse it. And sometimes it requires deep cleaning, sometimes it requires changing the way you’re brushing, but even at those levels, even when you have healthy gums, to use the irrigation or water pick irrigation delivery with the ozone is still very helpful.

Laura: Oh, yeah. That sounds really cool. I’m like, I’m going to go get one of those. They’re probably not very cheap, are they?

Daniel Vinograd: The good ones run about two hundred and [forty] dollars.

Laura: That’s not bad.

Daniel Vinograd: I’ve had mine for about thirty years. They last forever.

Laura: That’s definitely worth the healthy teeth.

Daniel Vinograd: The water picks run about forty dollars, so it’s pretty, really, in the big picture, it’s really not a big investment.

Laura: Absolutely. Not in the big picture of keeping your health and your gums healthy.

Daniel Vinograd: Yeah. [Inaudible] see a periodontist and get the gum surgery or whatever, you’re talking thousands of dollars.

Laura: Yeah, absolutely. Let’s see. I think I’ve covered everything that I was hoping to cover with you. Thank you so much for your time.

Daniel Vinograd: No, not at all. If I can be of more help to you, I’ll be happy to. It sounds like you’re doing a very worthwhile project here.

Laura: I hope so. I hope people enjoy it. Again, thank you so much for your time. Have a good night.

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 10.0/10 (1 vote cast)
Interview with Laura from the Life Upgrade Movement, 10.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.




View Larger Map

Dr. Daniel Vinograd, DDS |
10450 Friars Rd, San Diego, CA 92120 |
Phone: 619-630-7174    •    Dr. Vinograd, DDS, is a Dentist in San Diego, CA, offering services as a periodontist, and providing teeth whitening, dental crowns, invisalign, implants, lumineers, dentures, root canals, holistic, family and cosmetic dentistry.


Promoted by: San Diego SEO & Dental Marketing
All Copyright © 2024 drvinograd.com or its affiliates.