Cancer Clues in Your Mouth with Dr. Nammy Patel

This week on the Less Stressed Life, we’re talking about what your mouth is really saying about your health. 🦷

Dr. Nammy Patel joins me to unpack how oral bacteria, inflammation, and even how you breathe reflect what’s happening in your body. We talk “leaky mouth,” nitric oxide, and simple habits—like nose breathing and saliva support—that help your body heal from the inside out.

If you’ve dealt with recurring issues or inflammation that won’t quit, this episode will change how you think about prevention.

📗Check out Nammy's book here: https://www.drnammypatel.com/book/

KEY TAKEAWAYS:
• Your mouth mirrors whole-body health
• “Leaky mouth” drives systemic inflammation
• Dry mouth throws off your microbiome
• Nose breathing boosts nitric oxide + repair
• Small habits create big shifts in healing

ABOUT GUEST:
Dr. Nammy Patel is a pioneering biological and holistic dentist, bestselling author, and founder of Green Dentistry in San Francisco—one of the first eco-friendly dental practices in the U.S. She blends cutting-edge technology with Ayurvedic and functional medicine principles to treat the whole body, not just the mouth. Known for her data-driven approach, Dr. Nammy uses advanced diagnostics, salivary testing, and oral microbiome analysis to detect early signs of systemic disease and promote prevention over treatment. Her mission: to transform dentistry into a proactive path toward whole-body vitality and long-term health.

WHERE TO FIND GUEST:
Website: https://www.drnammypatel.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drnammypatel/

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: ****https://www.christabiegler.com/links

NUTRITION PHILOSOPHY OF LESS STRESSED LIFE:
🍽️ Over restriction is dead
🥑 Whole food is soul food and fed is best
🔄 Sustainable, synergistic nutrition is in (the opposite of whack-a-mole supplementation & supplement graveyards)
🤝 You don’t have to figure it out alone
❤️ Do your best and leave the rest

SPONSOR:
Thank you to our friends at Jigsaw Health for being such an incredible sponsor and partner. 😎 If you’re listening during November 2025, use code LESSSTRESSED15 at JigsawHealth.com for 15% off every order. If you’re listening before or after November 2025, use LESSSTRESSED10 for 10% off anytime. Use the codes every time you order!

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Dr. Nammy Patel: you're swallowing five gallons of bacteria every day, five gallons. That's a lot. And especially if we look at inflammation, if that. Bacteria is going from the mouth to the stomach. Our bodies have to be able to kill 'em off. Especially if they're the bad ones.

If we've got good ones, we're in good shape. But if we've got bad ones, our body has to be able to fight them off and it's when we're not able to fight them off, right? That our bodies can go into an imbalance and cause disease.

[00:00:27] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On the show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

Today on the Less Stressed Life I have Dr. Nammy Patel, who is a trailblazing, biological, and holistic dentist, redefining modern dentistry through prevention and whole body health. She's the founder of Green Dentistry in San Francisco, where she combines cutting edge technology with Ayurvedic and functional medicine principles to treat not just the mouth but the entire body.

Her work's been featured in Forbes A-B-C-N-B-C-C-B-S, and Fox, and she's the bestselling author of. Age with style, your guide to a youthful smile and healthy living. Her mission is to move dentistry from drill and fill to data-driven prevention using tools like salivary testing, oral microbiome mapping, and 3D imaging to uncover early signs of systemic disease from inflammation to cancer.

So she's here today to talk about how your smile can reveal much more about your overall health than you might think, which is a topic I'm. Pretty interested in. I think dentists and dieticians are kindred spirits. I always think the mouth is the window to what's going on inside the body. So when your pitch came through from your agent, I was like, yes, let us discuss this topic.

So welcome to the show,

[00:02:19] Dr. Nammy Patel: Thank you so much. Thank you, Christa, for having me here. I really appreciate you and I'm so excited to talk about this because this is cutting edge information and just a great way to diagnose what's happening in the body. Get a pulse of what's going on. And it's done in such a non-invasive way.

It's super comfortable. All you have to do is swish saline around your mouth and be able to test, are there any bacteria that can cause heart attack, diabetes, cancer, or Alzheimer, arthritis? Even looking at how your immune system works, can we look at if you're at high risk for certain diseases for inflammation or low risk or whatnot?

So it's really exciting that science has come around such. After so long, all the things that were theories are now solidified and, data-driven information that we can utilize to be healthy, which is really our goal.

[00:03:18] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, and something that I think happens probably in the majority of our professions, we're all in these professions that are for lack of a better word, in a silo, right?

It's okay, you're a mouth specialist and yet you can't help but notice how that. Gives you information about the entire rest of the body. And if you're really trying to help your clients or your patients get better, you can't keep turning a blind eye to it. So I think all of us that get into a more holistic and functional space, we do that because we're going crazy in the silo to an extent.

And that's actually what I wanna start with a little bit, is your story overall, your dentistry story in general. And I know there's some. Painful parts of even some, maybe even a why with your brother's story as well. So just unwrap your story a little bit for us to start.

[00:04:05] Dr. Nammy Patel: I grew up in India, so I come from a natural Ayurvedic background.

And then I went to dental school because I fell in love with teeth and the nonprofit work. And it's really interesting because as I was, looking at starting my practice the most, biggest turning point in my life occurred, which was my brother who was 33 years old, died of a heart attack and no preconditions.

Some family history, but, he wasn't obese. He was super healthy, walked around. There wasn't really anything that really gave it away. As far as any. Reasons for him to get a heart attack. And so that really got me thinking about what is it that I can do better?

And the thing is, he had come to an oral surgeon a couple weeks before for an evaluation. And so I was like, there had to be a link if, how could he have been put under, gotten his wisdom teeth out and like literally six weeks later, he, is passing away. So I wanted to figure out exactly what's going on.

And I wanted to make sure that I can do some things that are better and different. And so that really got me really interested in the oral systemic connection. How is the mouth related to the rest of the body? What could I have done differently? How could I have contributed even more? And so as I delve in more, I learned more and more about the oral microbiome.

How we can look at specific bacteria that can cause heart attack, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer, arthritis, inflammatory, chronic conditions. Because we now know, that all of life is inflammation, right? We're designed that kind of sounds a little morbid, but we're designed to die. And but how do we stop that aging process or how do we stop that inflammation?

And the way we do that is by making sure that we have good bacteria that helps us live and decrease the negative ones. And as I discovered more and more into this microscopic world, I realized that the mouth is the most crucial thing that there is. For two reasons. One is specifically the microbiome as you and I are talking about, but the second thing is functional and breathing.

Air is the one thing we can't live without. We can live without food. We can live without water, but without having any sort if we don't have air, we've got eight minutes before we're dead, right? And and how, air is so important in also lowering inflammation, lowering stress and really making sure that our bodies are able to repair itself.

So it really got me. Thinking about what can I do differently, even though I'm just a dentist, I just thought, hey, I don't wanna just drill and fill all day long. I wanted to be able to connect the mouth and the rest of the body, and that's what I've done. I went back and studied functional medicine which is really exciting.

And really being able to understand inflammation and the disease process and the aging process, and combining that with the mouth and really being able to help patients. Prevent disease and also diagnose disease earlier, sooner rather than later. So that's been my journey o over the last 20 years and it's been really rewarding.

[00:07:12] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, that's fun. And I always like to think back to some of the early pioneers and the functional medicine space, and maybe not even functional, but integrative space. And there were dentists were on the forefront of that depending on what kind of rabbit holes you're going down. But I'd love to talk more about these differences in screenings and testing that you might run in practice.

So if someone comes in. They need to do a really comprehensive oral screening. Will you tell us a little bit about what that looks like compared to, 'cause we all have a bit of a stereotype on what we think happens at the dentist and you're reinventing what's maybe happening with the dentist in your practice.

And so I'd love to hear about what that screening process looks like and then what do we find as results on the other side? What are some of the examples of these warning signs that we sometimes see that get missed in other types of routine exams?

[00:08:06] Dr. Nammy Patel: Absolutely. So of course as a dentist, we're gonna do the basics, which is going to be an oral cancer screening with a vis light.

We're also going to do digital x-rays. We're also gonna be measuring your gum pockets. We're also gonna be look screening for cavities and gum disease. Those are given the basics, right? Beyond that especially as a holistic dentist. We know we use early cancer detection. Appliances or devices to be able to see tissue changes, which is really important.

And on top of that, what we're really doing is really looking at how the oral microbiome is like medical doctors tend to use your blood work, right? To be able to test what's going on. What I do is I test the oral microbiome. So when I'm testing the oral microbiome, and I'm sharing my screen here, for those of you who may be listening at home looking at examples of patients that we've treated and really looking at the oral microbiome, looking at the.

Specific bacteria that we cannot see. And so what we're doing is taking this sali out of the mouth, sending it to a lab, and they're testing it for, and screening for specific bacteria that cause heart attack, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer, arthritis. And so when we're looking at these bacteria, and here's an example.

There's low risk pathogen, there's moderate risk pathogens, and then there's these high risk pathogens. And these high risk pathogens are causative for disease. These guys are correlation. The green and the yellow. And the red ones are the ones that are causative for disease. And so when we're looking at these kind of bacteria, we really are able to figure out if somebody has something else going on.

For example, if somebody had a little. Increased, elevated levels of flub, nucleate, we would be concerned about some GI issues. We would be looking at if does this person have maybe acid reflux? Does this person have maybe tumors that may be benign but overgrowing? So we would be analyzing a lot of different information through salivary testing.

In addition to, we would also do a cone beam or a CT scan, which allows us to see if there's any foci of infections inside the bone. Also, is there airway open? Is there any black mold or any mold in the sinuses? So we're able to go really deep and really figure out what's going on and here's an example of a patient.

I've had. And so when we're looking at this, what we've done is you can see two tests here. The one is a previous result and one is a current result. So I always wanna do treatment and then I wanna test it to make sure my treatment actually worked, so that way there's data driven information and not this woo, I feel like it let me make things up.

But this data driven information. Just like your blood work tells you how you're doing. We're actually testing how you're doing through salivary testing, and so we can see that there's a 77% reduction in bacteria, which is really awesome to be able to see. There's cases we've seen, 86%, 72%. Percent.

And the reasons why all of these vary is because the patient's immune system is very different, and each patient is very specific. Just if you had a patient that you gave let's say for example, vitamin D. Not everyone absorbs a vitamin D as quickly, so we need to titrate the amount of vitamin D or any sort of nutraceutical that we're giving the patient or a pharmaceutical, and to make sure that we're giving the right dosage and also that it's actually working.

We wanna have decrease in symptoms of course, but we want to back it up through the testing to make sure, especially when we're dealing with bacteria that we either have presence of or absence of.

[00:11:47] Christa Biegler, RD: Do you ever get pushed? You may not because of the type of practice and the type of clients you are attracting, but I wonder if people are ever.

Surprised or you get pushback around what treatments you would do. Because I think about the mouth and I think that you might have to do systemic treatments in order to change what's going on in the oral microbiome because if there is something, if you've got certain pathogens going on in the upper GI tract, that's going to continue toe.

The oral microbiome and I love how you are looking up the sinuses because of course that's gonna make, and that is an under recognized. We've had a handful of people on about sinus stuff, but it's a really big. Area of opportunity, right? Where that's like draining through that entire passageway as well.

So you have really no choice but to go whole body. I would imagine when you're trying to impact what's going on, you might be testing the mouth but you're really probably treating whole body. Is

[00:12:41] Dr. Nammy Patel: that correct? Absolutely. And that's actually the biggest thing that we also wanna talk about, Christa, is that your mouth is connected to the rest of the body.

It's not like it's separate, people have always talked about, and I'm glad that you talked about the GI because we've always talked about the leaky gut. And then we talked about the leaky brain, right? 'cause Alzheimer's, but it starts from a leaky mouth.

[00:13:00] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah.

[00:13:00] Dr. Nammy Patel: And just that cold connection is super important.

And the reason I say that is because you're swallowing five gallons of bacteria every day, five gallons. That's a lot. And especially if we look at inflammation, if that. Bacteria is going from the mouth to the stomach. Our bodies have to be able to kill 'em off. Especially if they're the bad ones.

If we've got good ones, we're in good shape. But if we've got bad ones, our body has to be able to be able to fight them off and it's when we're not able to fight them off, right? That our bodies can go into an imbalance and cause disease.

[00:13:33] Christa Biegler, RD: And I wanna come back to this related to terrain theory and recurring pathogens, et cetera.

But first I wanna talk more about some of these other kind of like from, go from the top down, essentially talking about these other detection things. So you brought up looking for mold in the sinuses, and I'm curious your experience with that, if that is a, something that you're very commonly seeing if you are seeing people with congestion, if that's,

if you're very commonly seeing that, if you're doing some kind of swab, if you just can visually see it. I'm curious what that looks like from a dental perspective.

[00:14:03] Dr. Nammy Patel: Usually we see it through a CT scan, and so when I'm looking through a CT scan, I can actually see if there's mucositis in the sinuses. When there's mucositis in the sinus, is what we'll see is a sinus cavity.

The reason is a dentist I look at that is because, I'm just gonna say right on top of your. For teeth is your nose. They're connected. They're connected by a bone. And so when we are looking at CT scans, we're actually looking at all the way down from this way and really being able to look at a person in 3D because we wanna look at any foci of infection, any focal infection.

And believe it or not, a lot of patients who've gone through history of teeth extractions end up shrinking their sinuses because as they're growing. The mouth is constrained. So if this bone is constricted, the sinus cavity's not gonna grow. And then you hear a lot about, and those patients actually end up with sleep apnea in their forties and fifties and with a lot more disease.

That's something that we see. We see patients with retruded jaws because they're a windpipe, becomes super small, a higher risk of thyroid disease. So hypothyroidism is very common. So definitely see those things and then. As we're evaluating the entire head and neck structure, we really can see mucositis and from mucositis, we're able to go from there.

So we're looking for different kinds of toxins, like ochre toxin of course, and we work with functional medicine doctors to be able to figure out where that is. What we do is the dental component because with mold, it's not just. The mouth, it's gotta be the whole body as well. Using detoxifiers, being able to get the mold out is really important, but we find that the areas that mold loves is the sinuses.

The reason is moist, humid environments. And they're dark, right? So sinus cavities are, perfect brewing grounds for mucositis. And so it's really important when we find patients with that kind of stuff that we're working with ENTs to be able to get like balloon surgery. Pump all that mucositis out and be able to take things out.

Of course, we start with either the most conservative method first, which is through ozone and subluxation and nasal cranial releases to expand that sinuses and open that up first. But when that doesn't. Work. Then we go to the next stage, which is gonna be working with an ENT. We also expand the sinuses non-surgically which is another way of helping patients feel much better.

So we do that as well.

That's

[00:16:29] Christa Biegler, RD: cool. I think as the name is Dr. David Dennis. He's an ENT practicing ENT, who owns a company that sells products for. Mold stuff, and he claims that 90% of chronic sinusitis is related to mold inhalation overall. So I find this area interesting because it's a kind of a pain for people overall that you could get some quick wins in, but it points to some deeper work overall.

So I just think it's cool that you guys are working on that too.

[00:16:56] Dr. Nammy Patel: And it's true. I think that we do have a lot more exposure. People just forget about it. Honestly, I do think that and especially because the air quality isn't what it used to be, right? The air quality is definitely problematic.

Especially with, I'm in California, so we always have fires all around all the time. So I feel like there's a lot of different things that have an influence on our sinuses. Also, humid environments, right? I was just in Malaysia last week, but it's a hot, humid environment, not the most sterile.

There's mildew buildup, so easy to get. Mean a mold.

[00:17:29] Christa Biegler, RD: And this kind of comes back to terrain, I think these are the kind of questions we roll around after working with people for a long time that I'm sure you do too. It's okay, are we having recurrence? Did we just never see it before?

In the early in like the 2010 decade, everyone was talking about candida, and to me, mold looks very similar. It's just more aggressive, more toxic, et cetera, right? And so it's were we actually just talking about the same thing potentially? We have building material. Like our building materials are very mold loving.

And I think to me what I've settled on is it's this bit of a skill and we need to not stick our head in the sand. And unfortunately, Google has made it a little bit of a complicated topic and made it really scary. And sometimes we do need to take it seriously, but I think it's a bit of a skill in general to understand how to take care of our living environments where we are staying, right?

Because we never used to be in such enclosed energy efficient spaces that held onto moisture. And so it's an energy or moisture balance issue overall and things can happen at any time. So anyway, interesting that, that's coming up for you guys as well. I would love to hear some more about specifically, and I know we could talk about all kinds of conditions in fact.

You've already mentioned, you've already pointed to looking at sleep apnea. If you had. Issues early on with airway, how that will look. Even as you get older. You talked about thyroid issues, being able to point that back to a dental and oral microbiome situation. But speaking of cancer, which is just interesting to me because we're currently at one in two, I guess we crossed over the threshold of one and three.

I just interviewed a cancer expert a few weeks ago, and so she said we've crossed over to the one and two, and so I'm really interested in hearing about. Specifically the things, I know you've already touched on them a little bit, but tell me about what would be some of the warning signs that you would see if you wanted someone to get further workup for cancer if you were looking inside their mouth.

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[00:20:31] Dr. Nammy Patel: So the first thing I would see white patches, that's a visual check. That's the first thing that I would see. But honestly the most important test that I find is really that oral microbiome test. Because anytime we have elevated bacteria, it automatically tells me either that if there is a tumor that may be overgrowing, if there's something else that may be growing.

The other things that I. See in patients. And a lot of times menopausal women tend to think that night sweats are normal because it's hormonal, right? But we actually realize that night sweats are the, one of the cardinal signs of cancer, right? Weight loss is the second one, unexplained fever.

But a lot of times we'll find patients with night. Weight loss no fever, but elevated bacterial levels in their mouth. And lo and behold, you know what we're finding out once we're working with our functional medicine doctors that they've got some sort of cancer going on. We actually specialize in working with.

Chronically ill patients in cancer patients, we work with a lot of medical clinics around that actually help. What we do is when we take care of the mouth, we're finding that the chemo is working better. Is because we're decreasing that bacterial content we're getting their oral microbiome to be healthy so that the body is not number.

One, they're not getting any secondary infections, which is really common with chemo. And they're also getting better results. The chemo is reaching deeper, faster, more efficiently. And then also it's better for the patients because they're not getting as many side effects, not as much candida overgrowth like you were talking about, because, having the chemo is gonna kill off the salivary gland, so there's no saliva sitting in there. Those taste buds are much better nor recurrent infections or we decay. All of those things are actually minimized as well. So it's really wonderful to be able to give patients really great results.

Most, number one things that we find is the oral microbiome. Visually I can see white patches and actually in our oral cancer screening devices, we can also see changes in the tissue. So we can see that visually right off the back that we can refer and work with our physicians with.

But as soon as we see, certain things with medical history and then putting in the oral microbiomes. Together is when we really start delving deeper and being more, diagnostic would be the right word, from a dental perspective. 'cause, dentists aren't trained at to find cancer.

Dentists aren't trained to look at what's going on. Or maybe looking at an ovarian cyst that might be overgrowing or benign tumor that may be overgrowing. And I actually shared this I feel like a couple months ago on a different podcast, but, I had a new hire. Employee that was from the Midwest.

And she, I wanted her to come to the office and kind of experience how we're doing and things like that. So we did her oral microbiome test and believe it or not, I had told her like, I think something's going on. And when she got back home she'd gone to the doctor and they did find a tumor in her, and so it was really, scary of course, to find that there's something going on. But also it gave the confirmation that, hey, these satellite diagnostics are really true. They do make a difference. There is a huge correlation. And they're highly specific. Which is the most important thing when it comes to cancer is that, is it specific enough?

[00:23:36] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Super interesting. Okay. I'm gonna keep plugging into this or pressing into this. When you say white patches, do you mean all over on the inside of the mouth or just the tongue, or do you mean everywhere?

[00:23:47] Dr. Nammy Patel: It could be so many different areas. So a lot of times we can see cancer cells growing.

A lot of times it's at the base of the tongue, so if you stick your tongue out all the way in the back on the, inside is where we'll see it. A lot of times we'll see at the floor of the mouth depending on what type of cancer it is. Of course we can see a lot of things on the CT scan as well.

So those are also very diagnostic. But we can actually see when we use our light, 'cause we'll see tissue changes. We'll be able to see if there's blood flow to the area. 'cause one of the things with cancer is that the blood flow is stopped, right? 'cause you've got too much cellular growth. And so what we can actually do is.

Take a light and be able to do a visual inspection. And if we find any areas that look opaque or dark, we can actually put our fingers and run through it to see if there's blood flow or not. When there's no blood flow, we know automatically that we've got some cancerous cells that are starting to show up.

That's when we start biopsying it. And we like to do this early. I've sent people to the oral surgeon for some biopsies in their twenties and thirties.

[00:24:51] Christa Biegler, RD: And

[00:24:51] Dr. Nammy Patel: especially with vaping. So much. Cigarette smoking, of course, but the vaping is a really big one for sure to find and to be able to figure out what those cells look like and do it in their twenties.

So that way it's good data, good information. I wanna catchings when they're benign, I don't wanna wait for their malignant right. And I actually wanna check things before. For just, beginning stages of cellular changes because that data is so useful because we're able to really figure out what is the timeline looking like from a histological perspective when we can put it underneath the microscope and really take a look at it, so

[00:25:29] Christa Biegler, RD: and you can do quite a bit of that in-house, but you're sending out to do biopsies.

[00:25:33] Dr. Nammy Patel: Biopsy. The in-office, I can see if there's tissue changes, but the biopsy we actually send to a lab so we can get a report from an actual specialist. And it's really nice to have that data, like I was saying, is because it's so detailed and it's experts who are looking at this on a regular basis and we're able to classify what kind of tissues where is actually the changes, because it's a mucosal layer.

There's seven layers into it, right? So figuring out exactly where the problem is and where exactly are the changes. Yeah.

[00:26:06] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. So I was gonna ask about if you had to have a baseline to look at change in tissue, but you somewhat answered that with this light you're seeing the blood flow, et cetera, so it doesn't necessarily have to be a baseline.

[00:26:15] Dr. Nammy Patel: Yep.

[00:26:16] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay, cool. So what I wanna highlight or underline is that, not surprisingly, but I love to hear these K, this like overall anecdote, I guess anecdotal evidence for now, but I think it's really valuable is that when you're reducing the overgrowth of overall pathogens, bacteria, fungus, et cetera, in the mouth, and systemically people get better results in cancer.

They're not getting secondary infections that makes. So much sense as someone who you know is in this space for different niches. So I am wondering if you use a variety of tools to support people to correct pathogens, meaning herbs, homeopathy, if you ever use prescriptions, and what that looks like a little bit.

Yeah, absolutely. Especially how your Ayurveda history plays in there.

[00:27:00] Dr. Nammy Patel: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So one of my favorite tools, I prefer not to use antibiotics unless I absolutely have to. So my favorite things to use, my two favorite tools are ozone. I absolutely love that ozone. I use ozone gas.

I use ozone oil. I use ozone water. So I'm really into ozone. The second thing I really love to use is lasers. I like 'em because they're specific and I really like to, so this is my methodology on how I work with patients, because I wanna know if it's just oral or if it's systemic, right? So the only way for me to figure that out is to do a process of elimination.

So if I find somebody let's say, Christa, you came to me and we found these red light bacteria, right? Is what we're gonna call 'em. And so when I look at this, I would do like a deep cleaning with laser ozone. And I would do the deep cleaning on you. Like the first time I'd have you come back again.

We'd do it again. We'd do it again. We'd do it again over a six week period, and then we'd retest to see what the bacterial content looks like. Now, if we didn't see a reduction in bacteria, that tells me you've got stuff going on systemically. When that occurs, that's when we talk about antibiotic therapy.

But I don't just go to antibiotic therapy to begin with. I start with laser ozone, cleaning the mouth out first because I, that mouth is so pic and span. If you've still got bacteria in there, we know that it's coming from the sys from systemic, because saliva is a secretory fluid, just like any of our other bodily fluids.

So it really tells us that the bacteria is in the bloodstream. So that's how I would address that. There's also a lot of times where Chris are like, realistically, not everyone needs like this deep cleaning with laser and stuff like that. Especially when menopausal women, a lot of times we find that the dry mouth is a problem.

So what we do is we would look at the cadence may be that they're coming in more frequently for cleanings with ozone. They're coming in every three months instead of every six months. And we would put 'em on some adjuncts with like substitute saliva. To clean up the mouth to make sure that they're having that good microbiome support.

The one that I really like is Stella Life. It's a really easy one to pick up online or on Amazon. It's a dry mouth. One has coconut oil in it. And that's the other thing I love recommending is coconut oil. Just rub it on your gums. Antibacteria, antifungal, it's fantastic. I'm all. Big proponent of mouth taping.

Super great to keep them mouth really hydrated, especially as we're sleeping at night. So those are some things that I start with. The other things I absolutely love are nitric oxide. We talked about the sinuses, right? And the main reason for me as a dentist or a functional dentist, I love getting the sinuses really wide and open is because I want that nitric oxide.

We find that there's less recurrence of disease when our body is able to. Decrease the inflammatory response, right? Or kill off the pathogens on its own right. And the way, best way we do that is by getting patient's nose breathing. And especially we talked earlier about pe people who have sleep apnea, upper air resistance, had teeth extracted or had braces which shrinks their sinuses or their windpipe, we're actually able to non-surgically expand those.

And so when we do that we're able to get the patients to be, they're biohacked, their body is working really well. And their bodies are designed to work on their own, which is my absolute favorite. If I had to pick between, getting your own body to work on its own versus giving you like a pill.

I'm gonna want to do that, right? Because I don't wanna replace a pharmaceutical with a nutraceutical. What I'd really love is your body to work well on its own and form and function go together. If we. Put your body in the right place, it will function really well. And that's really my preference, slow and steady, but putting it into harmony so that it can work really well on its own is really my ultimate goal.

[00:30:36] Christa Biegler, RD: I think that is an answer to even terrain theory and recurrence of things. It's like there's just opportunities, right? Sometimes we go through some processes, we make some improvement, and we're like, we need a break on certain things. And then there's always. Sometimes no better do better.

And so there's always more opportunities often. Yeah. And I think as practitioners, that's sometimes it sends us on a bit of a circle at some points like, oh, I thought this was gonna be effective. And then you end up, arriving at what you've arrived at. Which is I'd much rather the body be able to do the thing than to try to give you some kind of replacement long term.

So completely aligned with that. I'm so glad you brought up nitric oxide and, nose taping. I wanna come back to nitric oxide and some kind of, some questions that have come up after we had a nitric oxide speaker on, but it will flow nicely after talking through something else and just some other parts of the oral microbiome.

I do not remember who this was recently, but I unfortunately forget this all too often. About how super serious. Dental infections are in the mouth, but people don't always realize they've got them going on. And I cannot remember who was telling me, she said I did have pain in my mouth for a while and it was a raging infection, and I need to put this more forefront because I work with people with skin issues.

And of course, all of the same things that we're talking about can affect them. And so every once in a while dental infection is part of the puzzle or part of the scenario because when you got an infection in your mouth and in your gums that's leaking into the rest of the bloodstream and you're just not gonna make progress.

So I'm curious about if you can give people any tips besides pain for screening, for infection, whether it's for themselves or maybe if you're a mom and you're watching your family, all of those things. As well. 'cause those are big deals, right? Like we look at the Egyptians and that's what we would find people die of tooth infection at a very young age.

So that's what I remember is fourth grade science about tooth infection. So tell us a little bit more about what someone can do there.

[00:32:36] Dr. Nammy Patel: So with tooth infections it's really tricky. Like you said, sometimes it can be non-painful and you may not know what's happening. But, a lot of times what I feel like is really the awareness piece, and I'm so glad you're bringing this up, is because sometimes there's a little bit of sensitivity and then we just like.

We're just gonna suck it up, for lack of a better word. We're like, oh, it's no big deal. It's gonna heal on his own. And sometimes some of these infections are silent and they continue to progress without us knowing about it until one day it completely blows up. We have a bad smell in the mouth, or we have pus coming out, or we have a loose tooth that may be happening, or we have pain.

Those are the things that we typically see. My honest answer to that Christa is. We gotta go in more frequently.

There is no way to just not know that it's occurring or not occurring. So the most important thing to do with dental infections is to be screened for them. And unfortunately at this time, there is no other way other than going.

You could take a salivary test actually that would be able to tell if there's MDK or anything out like that going on. Reality is we have to get screened. There needs to be a visual check. There needs to be a digital x-ray check to see if there is decay going on. But the first thing is also, we always like to say, your body's pretty in tuned.

We're really, our body is designed to work. It's designed to function, and our bodies are really in tune with themselves. So I always say we know when something's a little wrong, it's just that sometimes we're too busy. Or too overwhelmed to let it take forefront. So that awareness piece is really important.

For us to really take a look like, Hey, I do have a little bit of sensitivity. It's been three days. I probably should go get it checked out, not wait three months or six months, or right before you're gonna go vacation or on vacation.

[00:34:22] Christa Biegler, RD: I like when you bring up, and I think that's such a human thing, that when you slow down you're like, oh, maybe I should go get that checked out.

And I like that you gave those timelines, right? Because it's very easy to kick it down because usually. Inconvenient things don't show up at convenient times, typically. It's pretty rare. Do you think that mouth infections or oral infections get missed? Sometimes though, in a standard screening.

[00:34:47] Dr. Nammy Patel: Yeah, I do.

I do. I absolutely do. And it depends on the quality of clinician you're going to as well. There is a quality of clinician that you're going to. There's also a lot of people who tend to have a lot of dentists, and not all dentists are the same, right? There's some people who are like, ah, it's no big deal.

I've been in the industry for 40 years, 50 years, 60 years, no problem. Then there's people who are overzealous who will see every little thing and say, oh, you got a cavity, we gotta address this. And you can't have that. You gotta have somebody. Who's data driven and right in the middle and really looking at you personally.

It's gotta be personalized, customized, detailed attention for you because the way your immune system works is gonna be completely different than the way my immune system works, right? Like I always use my sister as an example. She's high in inter looking sick, so she know we could go to Costco, she'll get sick.

I'll go to Costco, I'll be fine. I could travel. Never got COVID Still, my immune system is super strong. Her immune system not as strong, right? Her vitamin D levels tend to be really low. My vitamin D levels are on point. It might B twelves on point. She we're just made wired genetically we're very different, right?

So the way that I would treat her would be very different than the way I would treat myself. If it was me, I'd probably let my self, I could be more patient with myself versus with her if I would definitely be, if I saw any signs of, decay, anything like that, I'd be like, Hey, you're gonna start on these supplements, or you're gonna start on the adjuncts.

Let's evaluate you. Let me see you in six weeks. Let me not wait. Three months or six months. So I would really, data drive and really personalize and customize all the care for the patients. So that they're really, just like we do in functional medicine, that's exactly what that is it's just personalizing and customizing and making it data driven.

[00:36:26] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay, so I wanna get back to a topic that'll meander its way back to nitric oxide. But really the overarching question that kind of supports anyone listening to this podcast is it's amazing that you are helping these people who have chronically ill and cancer patients, but if you were listening to this podcast, anyone listening might wanna say, how can I prevent.

Things from hitting the fan in my daily routine. And I bring up that I am not remembering his name right now, but a very popular, tourism dentist in Portland was on the show quite a while ago, maybe a year ago, and he was he left us with something pretty that I found impactful, right?

We all pick up different things from episodes, but he talked about what you are bathing your mouth in all day long is super valuable. And so I wanna. Start there as an important piece that I'm taking from him. But I wanna talk about these other prevention things that are popular, not popular, and I'll probe you for more, but if you were talking to someone about how do I prevent more disease in the oral cavity and make my oral microbiome as optimal as possible, what are some tangible things you recommend to people?

[00:37:35] Dr. Nammy Patel: Yeah, no, I think that's great. I think the simplest thing, obviously is flossers brush your teeth when you're flossing. I like coco floss 'cause there's coconut oil in it, if not a water pick.

With the water pick, you can add a, like a little teaspoon of peroxide in it. Hydrogen peroxide, it's extra oxygen, you can clean that off.

Electric toothbrush is a must scrape your tongue. This is where people forget your body detoxes through your tongue. So making sure you scrape your tongue is super important. And then hydrate the mouth. So coconut oil around the gum, just rub it in your mouth. And that would be amazing throughout the day.

I would say one of my favorite things to be able to have is zinc. I feel like one of the things I've discovered in patients is that. They're very deficient in zinc. So zinc lozenges are wonderful. Nitric oxide lozenges are wonderful throughout the day. A probiotic loss in something you suck on is really important.

The one that I really like the nitric oxide is Berkeley Life has an amazing gum that has a probiotic, a prebiotic, and nitric oxide in it. So you can chew that once a day, and that does a world of wonder at night. Flossers, brush your teeth, scrape your tongue, coconut oil and mouth tape. Would be the easiest things that I would recommend that is gonna have a massive impact on you.

And again, of course, get in for your cleanings, more frequently. Getting rid of that biofilm is the best thing you could do for yourself.

[00:38:55] Christa Biegler, RD: I love it. Okay, so a few more questions. There is a popular dentist influencer that talks about using xylitol a lot throughout the day. This seems to be a little bit contested depending on who you talk to.

What is your opinion?

[00:39:11] Dr. Nammy Patel: Xol is a five carbon sugar. So your, a bacteria in your mouth can't digest it, so that's fantastic. The gum is gonna help you stimulate your salivary gland. My preference is a nitric oxide gum versus a xylitol gum. And I prefer the nitric oxide because I'm giving the body the right nutrients that it needs in order to heal while and lower inflammation.

So that tends to be my go-to. The whole idea behind it is hydration of the mouth, stimulating the salivary glands and making sure there's no sugar in it. It's just my personal opinion is that the nitric oxide gum through Broley life is better. And. I find that if there's a better product app, why wouldn't I use it?

[00:39:48] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. So to clarify for us, non-dentist, dry mouth is bad because that can lead to more cavities. Is that what it is?

[00:39:55] Dr. Nammy Patel: Actually, dry mouth is what makes all the bacteria, the red light bacteria, overgrow, just like mold grows in hot, humid environments. In dry environments is where all these bacteria overgrow and the ones that cause disease.

[00:40:06] Christa Biegler, RD: Another reason of mouth too. Close your mouth when you're sleeping. Exactly. Okay. So a couple other very related questions related to nitric oxide. So I loved, I still do love certain toothpaste have antimicrobial benefits, but as I've interviewed more people, I separate that into different times.

But I find like it really cuts through anything that feels like a biofilm or plaque on the teeth. But we had a nitric oxide expert on. Talking about decreased endogenous production of nitric oxide if you used too much antimicrobial in the mouth or mouthwash. And there's a few of us that have that has left us like scratching our heads about that.

I don't know if you have any comment

[00:40:47] Dr. Nammy Patel: about that. No no. The whole purpose of having bacteria in the mouth is we want an antimicrobial product for sure. But the whole point of having, reducing the number of bacteria, our nitrogen fixation, right? That's the whole point. The reason how we get nitric oxide is because what it does with nitrogen fixations, we are getting nitric oxide through breathing through our nose.

That's number one. But number two, we've gotta break it down in food. So when we take that nitrate right into nitric, into nitrite, is what happens in the salivary glands is the bacteria actually help reduce it. And when they get into your stomach, it combines with the stomach, which helps. Nitric acid be absorbed in your duodenum.

So that whole process is really important. And so when you use an antimicrobial, again, we're only getting rid of the as far as with toothpaste is concerned. You're only getting rid of the bad bacteria. It's a biofilm, right? It's not like you're gonna completely remove everything.

You're the biofilm that the excess of. You have saliva, so you're always gonna have bacteria there. There's no way to get rid of all bacteria. It's impossible. The only way, even when we're dead, it's like we're decomposed. So even then there's bacteria there. What we wanna do is again, decrease the bad bacteria, increase the good ones, and we wanna make sure there's flow.

The salivary flow is really important because that's what helps us break down food.

[00:42:06] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, so fun. I think there's probably so much more we could talk about, but if people were listening to this and they were thinking, Ooh, she is the best, where can people find you online and what would you wanna leave people with to know about you?

Or not necessarily just know about you, but what would be a legacy statement you'd wanna leave the audience with?

[00:42:30] Dr. Nammy Patel: Wow. My purpose in life is to help people live longer. Ritual, joyful lives, right? Prevention of disease is really my passion and purpose, I would have to say.

And dentistry has been a great profession to be able to offer that. Without injecting people, just a preventative portion is just really exciting. I really like that. And if people are interested, you can check out dr nami patel.com. I actually have my courses so you can check out and learn more about what you can do on a daily basis.

We have courses for dentists, hygienists, also for patients who may be interested in learning about it. Also on our website, there's a lot of great information, a lot of blogs a lot of videos where you can learn really true information that can be applicable and pertinent and personalized, which is really great.

That it, you know, especially from a broad topic of dentistry that one can look at and make. Useful and then give us a call, we do virtual consults. We'd be happy to help you. Actually for your specific case, if there's ways that we can figure out how to be supportive. We're in San Francisco.

We have people flying from all over the world, so happy to see you here. If not, we're Zoom is great. We can really serve one another that way too. I'd be delighted to be of service. I

[00:43:46] Christa Biegler, RD: love that.

[00:43:47] Dr. Nammy Patel: I was

[00:43:47] Christa Biegler, RD: gonna ask you

[00:43:47] Dr. Nammy Patel: if you did virtual

[00:43:48] Christa Biegler, RD: consults, because that's always nice to have in this way.

And I would say thanks for being a model and the, we have a lot of dentists come on and we've done a lot of stuff about orofacial stuff and myofunctional therapy and different things, but this is a new interesting perspective. And you're doing what I. Think is really useful and helpful in the world.

So thank you for that. And yeah, I'm just delighted to know you to share your practice and I would love to is it a true statistic that dentists are like the most oppressed doctors in the world? Because if so, I feel like you're doing a great job. Role modeling in the opposite of that.

[00:44:23] Dr. Nammy Patel: I think some people are, but for me it's, like I said, it's my purpose. And my passion. I feel like for me it's exciting. I would do this even if people don't pay me. And I tell my patients that all the time. I love it. And for me, I don't feel like it's a burden.

I think some people may feel like that if it's not something they're really excited about, but for me it's a calling. And for those reasons, you I'm up to help anybody and I could talk this all day, every day.

[00:44:47] Christa Biegler, RD: Thank you so much for coming on today.

Dr. Nammy Patel: Oh, absolutely. Thank you, Christa.