Micronutrients are the smaller building blocks, such as minerals and vitamins, we need to sustain life and have optimal function. Micronutrient deficiencies (MNDs) are quite common worldwide. Iron, iodine, folate, vitamin A, and zinc deficiencies are the most common MNDs. They are responsible for perinatal complications, poor growth in children, and increased mortality and morbidity. 1 They can be just as devastating to adults. This post will describe the deficiencies, their symptoms, and how to correct them.
Read MoreAll animals, including humans, evolved to contact the Earth. We mostly walked barefoot or with footwear made of animal skins and slept on the ground or skins. Humans routinely do not touch the Earth anymore due to shoes with synthetic soles, modern homes, and beds. Insulating ourselves from contact with the Earth has had negative health consequences that few are aware of, including health care providers. Have you ever noticed that you feel better after a barefoot day at the pool or beach? It isn't just the sun and fresh air that is responsible. The contact with the Earth is too. This post will cover the numerous health benefits of routinely contacting the Earth's surface, a practice called Earthing or grounding.
Read MoreIt may surprise you, but I would not wish a denture on my worst enemy. This may seem hyperbolic, but it is accurate-I wish good health over less-than-perfect treatment for everyone. I make them, but I warn patients that as much as they can replace teeth and improve appearances and chewing, they have many pitfalls. I warn patients that they may appreciate appearing as if they have all of their teeth, but there will be a host of problems with them. In short, the best dentures in the world will still have numerous problems; they may marginally function as natural teeth. This post covers the good, bad, and ugly of dentures.
Read MoreWelcome to part five. The use of toothpicks is uniquely human. The famous dental anthropologist Peter Unger discovered tiny striations in teeth that could not be caused by chewing. He concluded that the marks could only have been caused by the overuse of toothpicks made of hard materials like bone. He also drew a parallel between tool use and the introduction of meat to humans' diets. Ungar said toothpick use is one of the first lines of evidence from the hominid fossil record that shows our genus consuming significant amounts of meat in the ancient past. Tooth picking likely served to remove food, especially meat, but it caused visible damage. To quote him, "Teeth are not well designed for eating meat, so our early ancestors had to use toothpicks." This post will cover the evidence and discuss the proper use of toothpicks.
Read MoreMy father had been hospitalized several times recently and lost significant leg strength. Lately, he was put on hospice due to heart failure, and his legs ceased to be of any use after about two weeks. After living a great life, he sadly passed on March first, 2023, at 93, three days before his 94th birthday. He had a massive heart attack when he was about 52. His heart was so damaged they gave him poor odds of survival. They told him he would die young, even if he survived the next few weeks. They told him not to exert himself. He complied initially but then started lifting weights and walking. He regained his youthful vitality, which kept him alive for the next 42 years. One of his last lessons was about being confined to bed and its many downsides, even if it is sometimes unavoidable. This post is dedicated to him.
Read MoreAs part of patient care, I have conversations about the introduction of processed grains to our diets about 10,000 years ago and all the detrimental effects that came with it; tooth decay, gum disease, stunted growth, etc. I also discuss the introduction of industrially processed seed oils like corn, canola, and soy and their connection to heart disease, diabetes, obesity, inflammation, and more. A frequent response I hear is the phrase, "everything in moderation." I am unsure what they mean, and I wonder if they do either. I believe seeking moderation has risks. I suggest optimizing as a better approach to health. This post will cover the difference between the two and seven things we should optimize for health.
Read MoreMy father is almost 94. When he was in his early 50s, he had a massive heart attack and has had heart problems since that time, including heart failure. Sadly, he followed all of the advice to avoid heart attacks but still had a few. I will explain some of the reasons in this post.
Read MoreThis post contains the slides for my presentation at The Southwestern Society of Pediatric Dentistry. It is intended for the attendees, but all are welcome to view it and share it. Enjoy.
Read MoreYou may have heard that a piece on the TV program called 60 Minutes recently sparked some controversy. A doctor stated that obesity is a brain disease, and the largest contributor to obesity is genetics. To quote her, "That means if you were born to parents that have obesity, you have a 50-85% likelihood of having the disease yourself even with optimal diet, exercise, sleep management, [and] stress management..." She tells us that lifestyle won't make a difference for genetically flawed people.
The 60 Minutes Program then segues into the new weight-reducing medications, stressing how effective they are, potentially leaving the audience with four takeaways: 1) Obesity is a brain disease. 2) Obesity is genetic 3) Lifestyle changes won't work for the genetically flawed. and 4) Drugs are better than lifestyle changes, especially for the genetically flawed. This post will address these issues and more.
Read MoreEvolution takes place because we successfully adapt to changes in our environments over vast amounts of time, leading to the false belief that evolution occurs only when the environmental change is stable over time so that the adaptive changes can take hold and the species can flourish. After all, if the adaptative pressure goes in one direction and then reverses course, the adaptive changes might never happen or become maladaptive and cause extinction. But the climatic record during human evolution has been extremely variable, especially in the recent past, so it does not support the idea that environmental stability produced our adaptation. This post will discuss the accepted definition of ice ages, glaciations, interglacials, and their effect on human evolution.
Read MoreThe Cleveland Clinic studied over 51,000 employees to see how effective the bivalent Covid-19 vaccines have been up until the close of the study on December 12, 2022. The start date was September 12, 2022. They specifically looked at reinfection incidence with covid-19 after one, two, three, and three-plus vaccines. The results are neatly presented in a line graph which we will look at later in this post. Two things really stand out. The first is that the more vaccinations the employees received, the more Covid-19 they got. The second thing is how the research paper described the vaccines as effective. I can't tell if this is a joke, as the paper is in pre-print and under peer review. In this post, we will look at the study with the results, then review their uncanny conclusions and discussion.
Read MoreThis week, I needed more time researching and writing a new post. I never found it because I was mentoring a prospective dental student, which I thoroughly enjoyed doing. Additionally, my family and I stayed in New York City, Skated at Bryant park, saw the tree, and ate at the famous Pete's Tavern. Pete's does a great job of decking their halls for the holidays because it is where O. Henry wrote the beloved Christmas tale, The Gift of the Magi. In the story, the husband sells his watch to buy his wife expensive combs for her exquisite hair, which, sadly, she had cut and sold to buy a watch chain. Although useless, the gifts are a sacrificial gesture of love, similar to the gifts the three wise men gave to Jesus. Rather than skip this week, I decided to do a non-health-related post. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you enjoy the holidays.
Read MorePoor sleep is often caused by poor breathing, which, in turn, is often caused by poor jaw development. In 2016, the American Heart Association released a "scientific statement" on the connection between poor sleep and heart disease; you can find it here. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine states that severe sleep apnea doubles one's chance of dying from heart disease. I have spoken at length about the connection between facial development and obstructive sleep apnea before. In my post today, I am going to focus on the pressure changes to the body that sleep apnea causes and their consequences.
Read MorePeople with properly developed faces will always have straight teeth, room for wisdom teeth, and superior beauty. Sadly, most of us have some level of crowding and lack of jaw space for wisdom teeth today, meaning almost all of us to have deficient jaws. Since most of us have underdeveloped faces, this epidemic has gone primarily unnoticed by us, including most physicians and dentists. This needs to change because it is one of the major contributing factors to many, if not most, of our modern health problems; most of which originate in poor breathing from small airways.
I am writing this post as I fly back home from an amazing conference called Airway Palooza. I want to share some pearls of wisdom that can help you recognize if you have an airway problem and ways it can be addressed.
Read MoreI found a recent Italian study that is in preprint. The paper uses Italian statistics on the infection rate, hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths from the different strains of the SARS-CoV-2 Virus. The authors used what appears to be reliable, high-quality data and analyses. The authors noted that hospitalization, admission to intensive care, and death from infection with the Omicron variant phase are at least 20 to 40 times less than the initial acute phase. I will break down the major details of the study in today’s post.
Read MoreIn 1990, Bruce Ames, Margie Profet, and Lois Swirsky Gold found that Americans consume an average of 1.5 grams of natural pesticides produced by plants themselves daily. They noted that 52 of them had been analyzed in animal cancer tests, in which rodents are fed exorbitantly high doses to see if they developed tumors. 27 were found to be carcinogens! To repeat, I am speaking exclusively about the natural chemicals plants produce to avoid being eaten, not sprayed-on synthetic pesticides. Should we be concerned?
Read MoreA few weeks ago, I was interviewed on The Carnivore Cast, which is a podcast focused on the carnivore diet and lifestyle with practical advice from successful carnivores, citizen scientists, and top researchers answering your burning questions and meaty topics. The episode is now out. On it, we talk about my previous health problems, how I got into Paleo, functional medicine and dentistry, and finally, the carnivore diet. I also talk about why we don’t really need toothpaste and why we all have crooked teeth.
The site is the brainchild of Scott Myslinski, a really cool guy promoting optimal health through proper movement and, of course, the carnivore diet. He has tons of really good podcast guests, so check them out. Enjoy!
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On August 19th, I was fortunate to participate in an expert panel discussing how the modern world is distorting our faces, breathing, and metabolism. The panel was moderated by the incomparable author and speaker James Nestor who wrote the New York Times best seller Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. We were allowed a few minutes to present our area of expertise. First up was Siobhán Cooke, followed by Kevin Boyd, me, Robert Lustig, then Mike Mew. We discussed some of the causes, then discussed some fixes. Here is the presentation. Please like and share it so we can help stop our faces from distorting and improve our breathing and metabolism.
Read MoreI spend lots of time trying to relieve patients from painful teeth. Of course, there are numerous causes of tooth pain, but today, I want to focus on a prevalent and typically easy-to-treat one that has to do with the forces we place on our teeth called hyperocclusion. Hyperocclusion is when we generate forces that exceed the ability of our teeth and supporting structures. As I always say, teeth should glide together, not collide together. This post will discuss how it happens and what your dentist can do about it.
Read MoreI enjoyed talking to Cavin Balaster on his Adventures In Brain Injury Podcast. Cavin is a survivor of a terrible traumatic brain injury who has a book called How to Feed a Brain: Nutrition for Optimal Brain Function and Repair and a podcast about all things health related, especially how to have a healthy brain. We met in Austin at a charity for the Farm To Consumer Legal Defense Fund and immediately hit it off. When He asked me to do it, I was skeptical that I could contribute much to the subject of brain injury, but after speaking with Cavin for a few minutes, I was convinced I had something to offer. Cavin and I understand that good health has more to do with things like breathing, nutrients, sunshine, and connecting with one another, not pharmaceuticals and surgeries. Although the latter two items have their place, they should be rare, whereas lifestyle practices should be constant. We had a blast and could have spent all day talking about health.
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