Dr. Jason C. Campbell is the Founder/Clinical Director of the Advanced Prosthetics Institute – Center for Biofunctional Practice and Philosophy. It is “the” dental education center for enhancing clinical skills by demystifying the complexities of advanced dental care services, including dental surgery, implant training and treatment of Biofunctional Disorders. He is the pioneer of the “Biofunctional” philosophy taught at API and is a national implant and surgical prosthetics lecturer.
Dr. Campbell is also an Associate Partner with Dr. Mark Costes’ Dental Success Institute and has joined the growing Dental Success Network as a Faculty Member.
His fee for service general dental practice focuses on the treatment of complex care issues, including reconstruction of patients faced with dental demise", terminal Dentition", TMJD, Chronic Facial Pain and Headaches, and oral and systemic issues of acidity and inflammation.
Over the years, Dr. Campbell has completed extensive advanced training in surgical prosthetics through the USC School of Prosthodontics, Periodontics & Oral Surgery continuing education programs. He obtained his DDS Degree, Magna Cum Laude at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Upon graduation, he was the recipient of the Dentsply Caulk Award for Excellence in Prosthodontics.
https://www.advancedprostheticsinstitute.com/
VIDEO - DUwHF #967 - Jason Campbell
AUDIO - DUwHF #967 - Jason Campbell
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Howard: It's just a huge honor for me today to be podcast interviewing Jason Campbell, who lives right up the street from me about what, three hours?
Jason: Two.
Howard: Two hours to Prescott. So we're down here in the Phoenix desert, and what's so cool is Arizona, you drive north and, is Prescott right above the Mogollon Rim?
Jason: Just west and slightly south.
Howard: Of the Mogollon Rim? So what's the elevation up there?
Jason: We're about fifty-five.
Howard: What's Flagstaff?
Jason: They're about seven.
Howard: It's so cool because in the summer you know, you can drive over to Flagstaff and it's just gorgeous weather. I love it up there. Not to be rude. I don't know if I'd want to go back to shoveling snow. I grew up in Wichita, went to Creighton in Omaha and the thing about Creighton is three years without a car and then dental school, I lived eight blocks away and didn't have a car until senior year. So me and my roomies, we had to walk eight blocks to dental school and if we had a test, we had to get there early because our hands were so cold, you couldn't write fast on an essay test. So we'd get there ten minutes early and warm up our hands so that we could.
Jason: Obviously uphill both ways.
Howard: It will probably wouldn't be so bad to live in the snow if you had money, the garage, the car with the heater.
Jason: Interesting thing about Prescott is that we don't get a lot of snow. We have four seasons, but it'll snow and within a day or two it melts. So we're kind of in that perfect banana belt zone where we don't get the snow like Flagstaff does. We don't get the extreme heat that Phoenix gets. We're usually about ten degrees cooler than Phoenix and about ten degrees warmer than Flagstaff. It's just kind of like this beautiful. That's why it's such a popular place for people to retire to.
Howard: Now Ahwatukee just got four seasons this year.
Jason: For the first time?
Howard: They built a hotel right on the LA exit. I was so excited we finally get all four seasons. So basically Jason C Campbell, what's the C for?
Jason: Clay. I don't tell that to very many people.
Howard: Jason C., I figured it would've been Christopher, I don't know why. Jason Clay Campbell is a founder and Clinical Director of the Advanced Prosthetics Institute, Center for Biofunctional Practice and Philosophy. It is the dental education center for enhancing clinical skills by demystifying the complexities of advanced dental care services, including dental surgery, implant training, and treatment of biofunctional disorders. He's the pioneer of the biofunctional philosophy, taught at API, and is a national Implant in Surgical Prosthetics lecturer. Dr. Campbell is also an Associate Partner with Dr. Mark Hostas, who's been on the show with his Dental Success Institute and has joined the growing dental network as a faculty member. His fee for service general dentist practice focuses on the treatment and complex care issues, including the reconstruction of patients faced with dental demise, terminal dentition, TMJD, chronic facial pain and headaches, and all systemic issues of acidity and inflammation. Over the years, Dr Campbell has completed extensive advanced training in surgical prosthetics through the USC School of Prosthodontics, periodontics, and all surgery, continued education programs. He obtained his DDS degree Magna cum laude at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Upon graduation, he was the recipient of the Dentsply Caulk Award for excellence in prosthodontics. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Jason: Howard, it's awesome to be here. It’s a milestone for me to be able to sit here with you and be able to just visit.
Howard: Well the honor's all mine. So I know the first thing my homies are thinking is, they probably never even heard biofunctional.
Jason: It's the biggest challenge that I face because it's a principle that's uncommon in the world of dentistry, but it's a problem that faces just thousands and thousands of people, and in dentistry we're doing a great job at understanding the bio-mechanics side of things, but we're not really understanding the biology of some of these complex dental issues. And so, biofunction is a term that we use to describe human biology and the effects that it can have in the oral cavity and the functionality of the way the jaws, teeth and musculature interact and sometimes when there's crossover of these two events, it just creates devastating effects in people's mouths. If we can catch it earlier, intervene earlier, we can stop these patients that end up in late stage terminal dentition or dental demise that are requiring these full mouth rehabs or they're requiring surgical reconstruction of their entire dentition. It is just so problematic. What we've learned over time is it's a great target area for somebody who's looking to build their practice in really any type of dentistry. So really biofunction is biology of the system, but a functionality of the jaws and the problems that arise when there's overlapping conditions.
Howard: So [inaudible 05:11] because you've still got so many dentists that do new patient cleanings.
Jason: Yeah.
Howard: Where do you get a complete exam there? And then there's a whole other group where, a healthy functional animal has empathy and sympathy, they are not going to tell you that they have eleven cavities and they just pick the one that's, they do one tooth.
Jason: Right.
Howard: Then after maybe five or ten years they say, well, you know, if I'm going to be numbing up this whole area anyway, why don't we just do this whole quadrant? And so they eventually get to one quadrant dentistry. How do you get dentists to go to complete exams and complete dentistry?
Jason: Yeah.
Howard: I don't even know if you were doing that straight out of school. Where on your journey did you go from new patient cleanings and one tooth dentistry to complete dentistry?
Jason: I never, ever had that approach to new patient cleanings. My approach to care has always been from that standpoint. So my philosophy is actually, Howard, the big thing that we're faced with is that most of our education is gearing us towards finding problems so that we can support the practice and support ourselves. But what we're really, we're trained for is to become diagnosticians first and then delegate care to the appropriate people that should be involved in that care. So my philosophy from the onset of practice was patients always see the person who's going to diagnose the problems first, identify the problems, develop the care plan, educate the patient on what they are, and then delegate to the appropriate staff to implement the care plan.
Howard: So identify problem, plan.
Jason: So you're going to identify the problem, educate the patient, establish a care plan.
Howard: I like that. A care plan instead of a treatment plan.
Jason: And then delegate treatment to appropriate care providers.
Howard: Well, you know, if you wanted to be a lawyer instead of a dentist and they break the law when they do new patient cleaning. Because the hygienist sees them and they start taking x-rays. She can't make a diagnosis that they need x-rays.
Jason: Exactly.
Howard: And then she starts to do the cleaning. Well, she can't do a cleaning without a diagnosis. I was very upset last time. One of my boys thought he had a bump or something down there and it was hurting and it's been about three days. I said, well, let's just go to the emergency room and check it out. The lady took him back there and did a CAT scan. He's a boy, that's his genitalia down there, all that radiation. Boy the doctor came in and said, what the hell do you do that for? And she says, we take CAT scans on all areas of concern. He says, “you just radiated his gonads for a little fat lipid?” And then when you get the bill, guess how much that CAT scan cost? Guess?
Jason: Oh, a lot.
Howard: Sixty five hundred.
Jason: I've been through that process. In fact, I've been through it recently.
Howard: So, identify problem. We've got two dental schools in the area: Midwestern and A.T. Still, and they're so young. That's why I call them dental kindergarten. Trust me, you think you're all a bag of chips, but when you're fifty-five and you're in dental school, you look like you're in kindergarten. They are babies and they're so sweet and they're so nice to have so much empathy. They just have a hard time telling you that you have all these problems. How do you get over it? But I wouldn't want to go to the doctor and him thinking, “well, I can't tell him he's got prostate cancer and diabetes.” I'd want to know the whole picture. How do you get them over that hill?
Jason: So honestly, I've got to get to the point. When I interact with dentists and if I asked the dentist, “what is it that you're fighting as a dentist?” Most dentists can't tell me. They'll say, “well, I do root canals and I do orthodontics and I do this and I do that.” But if you could develop and just narrow it down to help our clinical care providers understand what we're really trying to fight. It's my opinion, and maybe it's just an opinion, if people feel otherwise I'd be happy to know, but essentially there's three things that are creating 99% of all dental problems. If we just spend our time treating those three things and helping people to avoid them, we can stop most dental issues. It's a controllable disease? The first is jaw biomechanic and forced distribution problems.
Howard: Say that again?
Jason: Jaw biomechanics issues and forced distribution problems. So your jaws, they generate a lot of energy and that energy has got to go somewhere. So if the biomechanics of jaw functions isn't in harmony, it creates wear and tear of teeth, wear and tear of joints, creates muscle deficiency and muscle injuries.
Howard: So you’re talking about occlusal disease?
Jason: Occlusal disease, yeah.
Howard: And the other two are what?
Jason: The other two are systemic and oral acidity. Acids. The only thing that causes tooth decay, and the sources of that acid come from a lot of different areas. The last is inflammation. You know, we talk about periodontal disease and if you ask a dentist what causes periodontal disease? Bacteria. People don't brush their teeth. The bottom line is, as periodontal disease is the end result of inflammation, bacteria may trigger it, but bacteria aren't the only trigger of inflammation in the periodontium or in the bone. Your Gingivitis is inflammation in your gum tissue, Periodontitis is the end result of inflammation in the bone. So if we really start to target those three areas, we can get to the sources that are initiating them. For example, acid. We're really good at telling people to brush their teeth. And what we're trying to do is eliminate sugars that are converted to acid by bacteria in the mouth. We have the diagnosis Mountain Dew carries, so we're good about telling people about acidic products that they may eat.
Howard: Did you watch that video on why Mountain Dew is so much more acidic?
Jason: I don't know if I know the one you're specifically talking about.
Howard: I never really got that until someone mailed that YouTube video, this guy explained why Mountain Dew is uniquely different. Can you find that video?
Jason: I would love to look at that.
Howard: That YouTube video just blew my mind. Of course I can't remember it because I'm senile.
Jason: After I leave here today, I'll look it up.
Howard: No I'll email it to you.
Jason: Oh, that'd be awesome.
Howard: But Mountain Dew is incredibly more acidic for a very exaggerated anyway.
Jason: You think about any of those coffee, tea, soda pop, citric fruits and juices, sports drinks, energy drinks have become a real problem for younger generations because they're so acidic, so sugary and that's a source of acid in the mouth.
Howard: And sugars are now a cause of inflammation.
Jason: Absolutely.
Howard: And just sugar alone causes inflammation.
Jason: Well, let's look at it like this, Howard. So we've targeted these oral sources of acid, but one of the areas that we just don't know enough about is what about the digestive system? People who have a tendency towards heartburn or acid reflux or gerd or irritable bowel syndrome or Crohn's disease, any of those things that disrupt digestion, increase oral acidity. So you have these phantom patients in your practice that come in. They're brushing their teeth fifty thousand times a day, they come and see it every three months for cleanings and their fluoride treatments. Yet every time they come, they have dental restorations that are failing. They have rampant tooth decay problems. They're getting cavities below the gum line or in odd areas that you wouldn't typically see. If we just make that link and we consider the source of the acid and we begin trying to treat the source of the acid, we can eliminate this problem for these people that have rampant tooth decay. You know you have medically induced [inaudible 13:29].
Howard: Everyone drinks coffee, tea, and soda in America. What percent of America that lives off one of those three?
Jason: 100% and I agree. But when it comes to acidity, it's a time exposure problem, right? Are exposed to an acidic environment. The acid eats the minerals out of the teeth, thins the enamel, weakens the enamel. Usually effects of acidity especially if it's coming from a systemic source like a digestive problem. It alters the metabolics of your body system. It can acidify your saliva. Your saliva now becomes an acidic byproduct and it's constantly just eating the minerals out of your teeth. So protocols to avoid that. I don't know why my grandparents knew about it, but it seems to be something that's been lost over time, which is just simply having your patients use a product with baking soda in it. Something that can help neutralize the oral environment could make a big difference, whether it be baking soda, toothpaste, baking soda rinses. So if we have a patient who has a high carries rate because they have multiple sources of acidity, my recommendations to them would be when you're drinking coffee, are you drinking a cup, are you drinking a pot? Are you getting a 44 ounce Mocha Java latte from Starbucks or are you brewing a small cup at home? My recommendation would be to them is if you can limit the time that it's taking you to do that, I would be happier if they injected it intravenously, if that's what they really needed, than to expose their teeth to that acid for a long period of time.
Howard: Does that also include using a straw?
Jason: A straw is still going to increase oral acidity, but it doesn't really matter. The fact that the acid is there isn't as big a deal is the timeframe that it's exposed to.
Howard: The trick for me and a couple of my friends drinking so much coffee is get rid of the creamer, because when you get rid of the creamer, coffee is not that good
Jason: It doesn't taste that good.
Howard: And after a cup, you started getting gut rot. But for some reason if you put in half and half milk or French milk. Oh so you found it. Put in your email and cell phone and I'll text you that Mountain Dew video. But it was a mind blowing video. I can't remember, I'll have to watch it afterwards. Yeah, we're dinosaurs. There's been seven new dental schools. The last seven dental schools were all DMD. There will never be another DDS dental school, but I think it's a bad idea because, I live down here in Phoenix and I always hear people say, "Well, you know, I used to go to a DO but my husband told me you need to go start seeing an MD. And then this last sentence he did this, whatever. He was a DMD and the guy in Iowa was a DDS, that's why I pick here." There's no difference to the consumer, between the DMD and a DDS. So it's confusing.
Jason: It is a little confusing.
Howard: I think dentists, if they either need to, just do a coin toss or at least give the dentist a permission to market DMD or DDS, because if you're an east coast DMD guy and you go to Kansas are Arizona, it confuses the market.
Jason: It really does kind of confuse it.
Howard: And if a DDS guy goes to New Jersey, they're like, what is a DDS?
Jason: You're thinking like a guy with an online presence though, where your message has an outreach.
Howard: You what's funny about that? So many people tell me they don't like it when I'm posting dentist articles whenever I call them Dr. Jason Campbell, DDS. They say, "If you have the DDS after the name, you don't put a doctorate before it." And I'm like, how mighty American of you.
Jason: Very political.
Howard: Do you know what a BDS is? Do you know what the dental degrees are all around the world? When you're in the Middle East. It's cultural to put whether you're a man or woman, Mr. Professor this, or Miss Professor this. So the bottom line is when you get direct mail from some real estate agents, who've got a bunch of alphabet soup behind their name, you don't know what that means. Well, you might know what that means in America because you're an American and you have the American dental degree. But when you go around the world, they want to know right up front, this is a doctor or not? And if you're in Brazil, it's a Dre, dre for a boy, Draw for a girl. But we put that up front just so their minds, their walnut brain knows immediately this is a dentist, and then the alphabet soup. I guarantee I can show you twenty countries dental initials after their name and you can't even tell me what they stand for. So it's different.
Jason: I don't think the community generally knows anyways. What they're looking for is legitimacy, credentialing, if you see a few letters behind the name that's got to mean something. I don't know what it is, but it must be important. So it flipped a switch on in their brain and they start thinking in those terms.
Howard: So you're in Prescott, fifty thousand people, what percent of them do you think drink coffee, tea, sports drinks, soda and are running too acid? And what do you do for those people?
Jason: Almost everybody does. But as part of our education program, I don't care that they're drinking it, but what concerns me.
Howard: Is time exposed.
Jason: If they have an elevated risk for tooth decay or premature failure of their dental work. All I want to do is mitigate the factors that are adding to it. So we're going to go through an analysis. I'm going to ask about their home care. What are we doing? Are we brushing and flossing? What products are you using? Something as simple as advising them how to use their toothpaste products could be hugely beneficial for somebody. Toothpaste is a great product, but 90% - 99% of the population are only getting the soap effect of the toothpaste. The second element of our toothpaste is it's a medicinal carrier. It's a fluoride distribution product. It's a baking soda distribution product or potassium nitrate or peroxide or whatever else we want on their teeth. But how many people come into your practice, if you ask them, do you brush immediately or do you rinse immediately after your brush ,or do you expectorate the excess and let it stand on your teeth for ten or fifteen minutes? So by simply advising our patients to do that, they're now going to get the clinical effect of the prescriptions that are in the toothpaste, as opposed to just getting the scrubbing and the soap effective the toothpaste. So that would be one thing that we advise our patients on.
Howard: One thing I want to interject on that, if you look at just the research for removing plaque, toothpaste is not effective. Dry brushing is. If you dry brush you need to dry brush for two minutes, twice a day. And nobody for removing plaque. Its straight soft bristles for two minutes. And the toothpaste has no help or hurt on removing the plaque. Who was hygienist who schooled me on that? She gave me a pdf this thick. The research on dry brushing. But when you said baking soda for lowering pH, do you mean like our grandmas did where they just had a box of Arm and Hammer and wet the toothpaste and stuck it in the box? What is it? You're talking Arm and Hammer toothpaste?
Jason: Well, either or. I don't love it when people are just using baking soda out of the box. It's definitely more abrasive. I think an oral rinse of baking soda is better than even brushing with it.
Howard: An oral rinse? Is that a teaspoon in water?
Jason: Put it in eight ounces of water and just keep it in the bottle.
Howard: To lower the pH.
Jason: I'll give you an example. If we have a patient that comes in, they've got a medication induced dry mouth, they're high carries risk, or they've been through cancer or radiation therapy and now their salivary glands aren't putting out the quality or the quantity of saliva that they need. In addition to advising them on how to use their toothpaste, so toothpaste is two things: it's the surfactant, it decreases surface tension so it does help scrub things off easier, but you're right, it's the toothbrush that does the job. And it's a medicinal carrier. We want the fluoride on the teeth because it targets the bacteria that's converting sugar to acid. If people don't really understand what that is, what fluoride does, it inhibits a bacteria's ability to metabolize sugar and so we can starve the population because we affect its inability to get their dietary source for nutrition. So that's really what fluoride does for us, and it puts mineral back in the surface areas of the teeth. That's all fluoride does. But if we're fighting acid fluoride is ineffective, it's not a pH neutralizer. So if you then take baking soda and you add it to the product. My favorite product line and I don't have any money invested with them or anything, but Arm and Hammer's brand is the easiest, most basic product line because every one of their toothpaste products has at least a thousand parts per million fluoride and every one of their products has baking soda. If people want to put other stuff in it after that, I don't care. If they want some potassium nitrate, get the sensitive one. If they want to whiten their teeth, get the one that's got peroxide in it. It’s a real simple product line. We keep a chart in our office that just shows them, here's an example of what you need to be buying and this is how you need to use it. So when you get back down now and you're talking about coffee, I'm not going to get in to talking to my patients about whether or not they should or shouldn't be drinking coffee. I advise them on the fact that it's better to drink it in five minutes than it is to drink it in an hour and five minutes.
Howard: So don't sip on it all day. They take it to their cubicle.
Jason: Our best friend in the industry of dentistry is Starbucks. Look at what they're doing to promote what we're doing in dentistry. If you've got a business mindset and not a diagnostic mindset, I would target every single person you see frequenting Starbucks because they're going to have an increased risk for tooth decay.
Howard: By the way, you kids, a lot of dentists think Arm and Hammer. Can you text me Arm and Hammer's autobiography, not his biography. I read his biography and autobiography. I've done this several times with a lot of people. So a lot of people’s autobiographies are very flattering of themselves, and a lot of biographies are very brutal. Arm and Hammer's is a classic. I always want to read the autobiography because the journalists sitting in the library giving me the Kim Kardashian view of his life, I don't give a shit. I want to know the genius business insight. And usually on those big autobiographies, there's only one or two. Arm and Hammer just thought it was so funny anywhere he goes, his whole life, he was a billionaire with occidental petroleum and everybody thought he invented baking soda. In fact one time he even called them and he said, "I think I'm just going to buy your damn company just so I can say, yeah, you know, I own Arm and Hammer. But the one takeaway lesson from that guy was just genius. He was a pharmacist in New York State. Did you ever read his book?
Jason: I haven't, but you are inspiring me to do it.
Howard: Well, you don't have to because there's only one lesson learned. He was a pharmacist in New York City and back in the day a hundred years ago, New York City had these very distinct neighborhoods that you didn't cross. This was the Italian neighborhood and this was the Irish and the Polaks and the Russians and the Jews and all these ethnicities where if you walk down the wrong street you gets [inaudible 25:00]. He was Russian ancestry, so he lived in a Russian neighborhood and he kept hearing all these people coming into the pharmacy saying that Russia had more oil and gas than anybody that knew of at the time, but nobody could get through their stupid agencies. And there were big national oil companies like Exxon and all that, which had been working four or five years and couldn't get anywhere. But he also heard other people, they're always talking about Stalin, they saying that Stalin only like two things about America: Hershey's chocolate bars and Marlboro Red cigarettes. So here's a pharmacist. So he saved up his money, gets a big case, half Hershey chocolate bars, half Marlboro and he goes to New York and he charters a jet and he lies to the pilot. The pilot says, "You can't fly over the Berlin wall and go to Moscow." He says, "No Stalin wants to see me." He just kept telling everyone Stalin wants to see him. And he made the pilot late, so the pilot says OK and put him on the airplane and they took off for Berlin, flew over the Berlin wall. Two Migs are on his ass right away and they say to the pilot, "What are you doing?" And he says, "I'm with Dr. Arm and Hammer, he's a pharmacist. I am with Dr Arm and Hammer and he has an appointment with Stalin." So the Mig guys say we're not going to shoot down Stalin's next meeting. So he landed, all those military people come and they take them all the way to Stalin. And Stalin say, "Who are you, I don't have a meeting with you?" And he says, "I brought you a gift." And he opened up this huge box and it was half Hershey chocolate bars, half Marlboro cigarettes. Stalin smiled and gave a big hug and he said, "Who are you?" And he says, I'm from the Russian part in New York and everybody wants to drill oil and gas but nobody can get through your Department of Interior." And Stalin took out a piece of paper and said, "If you say no to this man, I will kill you." And gave it back. So he became a billionaire of occidental petroleum, just because of one lesson. Go to the top. There's just people who, you know, they, they're trying to do something. They call up the receptionist and she says no and that's the end of the cell. And there's other telemarketers that can talk through that gateway keeper. They do it to me all the time. Now my staff, it's really easy for me because when they're bullshitting they always go, "Yeah I went to school with Dr Farran." And my staff say, "Huh." Because nobody can say Farran. It's just two words: Far and ran. It's Irish. But that was a bad ass lesson. He became a billionaire from one move that was pure balls and he could've spent the rest of his life in Siberia. He could have shot him on site for lying.
Jason: Let me ask you this. You take your front office people and how often do our front office people shield us from our patients? "Oh, the doctor doesn't want to be disturbed with this or that. What about people that are looking into your practice? There's no better purveyor of your practice philosophy than you are. In our recent marketing efforts in our practice, when somebody calls in, if we haven't captured them in our practice software to be able to reach out to them and convey our message to them, if they call and they don't act on it as a patient, you've lost the ability to share your influence with them. We're using automated systems now where people who call in to enquire, get a letter that says, hey, if we didn't answer your questions, here's my personal email. Talk to me. If you don't want to communicate that way, push this button and I will call you back after 5:00pm and I'm going to get you the information about us that you need to hear. We talk about trying to keep people out of our practice, but the people who need to hear who you are, we're not innovative enough to get our message out so that we can nurture them. That we can help them understand who we are, what we do, especially with valuable messages that have an ultimate ability to change people's lives. So we're talking about toothpaste, we're talking about how to use it and we're talking about bacteria. That's all stuff that we should have learned more clearly while we were in dental school. The message was never conveyed to us very clearly. Jaw biomechanics, acid and inflammation are what we are trying to help people avoid the effects of.
Howard: Jaw biomechanics, acid and inflammation.
Jason: So let's take for example, Howard, what about these thousands and thousands and thousands of Americans who have digestive issues? How many people in your practice do you come across that are suffering with heartburn or acid reflux?
Howard: I'm going to ask you two things about that. Nothing ruffles feathers more than closed minded dentists is when you say the word holistic or alternative medicine or this or that. But I'm always from this view that a thousand years from now, most of what we believe now it's going to look crazy. And I have had two patients in 30 years, both of them were engineers who had that regurgitation. Sometimes they'd wake up in the middle of the night and they couldn't even breathe. They put a red brick under both front legs of their bed because they wanted the esophagus in-pipe to the stomach to be higher than the esophagus exit to what is the duodenum? I can't say their names because it's a hippo violation and all that and Bernard Wells can sue me. He just lifted it up an inch, problem solved and I've had about ten patients tell me that when they get indigestion, they take a shot of apple cider vinegar. Have you heard of that?
Jason: Huge. That's absolutely part of our protocols in our practice.
Howard: And dentists say, well that's holistic, you need to take a prescription for pepsid. They always have to write a prescription. And then when someone on Pinterest or Facebook is saying, use apple cider vinegar or elevate your bed and now they're a wacko quacko. So tell me about how those two work?
Jason: You use the term holistic dentistry. In my philosophy, if people ask me, "So are you a holistic guy?" Well, I'm not, I don't really understand what that means. But I moved to primary care targeting the areas that are specifically causing issues in patient's mouths. So let's take this one thing. When you see a patient come in and they have abfraction, enamel crazy, and wear for sets, you know you're dealing with a jaw biomechanics problem, that's a wear and tear pattern. But what about if they have wear and the incisal edges of their teeth are cupped out. Their enamel is thinning or they have not deep tree-cut abfraction, but it's smooth and you're just seeing the roots of their teeth erode away. That's an acid problem and there's a source that it's coming from and when it comes from the stomach, the acid's so intense, it eats minerals out of the teeth faster than tooth decay can develop. So tooth decay is just where minerals have been lost and it's the nasty collagen and elastin that's left behind; the soft stuff. So we go in there and dig that out and put our prosthetic materials back into the tooth. But when you're dealing with a stomach acid problem, the rate of mineral loss occurs at a much faster rate, so you can know that somewhere they're getting an acid source that's very, very intense and usually it's a digestive acid. People who suffer with inflammatory bowel disease or Crohn's or they have digestive problems. So let’s look at this right now. You mentioned apple cider vinegar and you're asking me why does that work.
Howard: Do you think it works?
Jason: 100% and I am a patient that has struggled with all of these issues and it's taken me years to sort out what my problems were to try to get to the bottom. And that's where a lot of our protocols came from. But here's why it works. Most people think that digestive issues, we're not even looking at the term digestive problem, it's actually an indigestive problem. So for most people that are suffering with that, it's not because they're over producing stomach acid; the hydrochloric digestive acid that our stomach needs. That acid is crucial because there are receptors in your body that recognize that type of acid. Your pancreas doesn't turn on until the pH of your stomach drops below three. Your gallbladder never gets the signal to do its job until the pH of your stomach drops below three. So most people who suffer with these problems, it's not that they're over producing acid. That doesn't even make sense. What part of your body, Howard, has gotten better at what it does as you've gotten older? I can't think of any and I'm forty-six, and I can't think of any.
Howard: Listen, I can't see, I can't hear, I can't remember shit. Hot [inaudible 33:55] but that doesn't even phase me, who cares; that looks exhausting. Nothing.
Jason: We're looking at the cells that produce acid in the stomach.
Howard: Oh I do have one thing.
Jason: What is it?
Howard: The hair in my ears is growing so much better than I was Ryan's age. I can grow ear hair.
Jason: Ear hair and nose hair. But that's a cancer type hair.
Howard: Women love that ear hair. But anyway, so then the apple cider vinegar. Go ahead.
Jason: So what happens is in most instances the vast majority of people suffering with it. It's not because they're over producing acid, they've under produced acid. So instead of food being readily broken down and digested and moved through the tract the way it should, it sits in the stomach and it ferments, and it's the fermentable acids that people are feeling in heartburn and acid reflux and gerd. So pyruvic acid, sulfuric acids, these are all type of acid. Their pH is different, their chemistries different. Our body doesn't recognize it and our tissues don't tolerate it as well. So the key then, is the reason that apple cider vinegar works is you're increasing the acid content of the stomach to help in the digestion of food. The acid that works the best though is hydrochloric acid. So when your body's pH drops below three, when your stomach's digestive tract does, it gets all the organs ready for digestion. For example, a lot of people have a hard time with greasy foods. Well, if the gallbladder or your biliary system never gets chemically activated to turn on, you don't produce the bile salts that are there to emulsify fat. So any fat soluble nutrients never get absorbed. Your A, your D, your E, your K, your C and your B vitamins. Well, the downside to that is those are the vitamins that help you in tissue repair. You know, vitamin D and calcium are what help you reacclimate mineral into your bone, your E, your B, those energy vitamins, and they also help in tissue repair. So it's really common for people with these digestive problems to end up with absorption deficiencies as well. They're all vitamin D deficient. They're generally low in B6, B12, folic vitamins. So what happens is it creates this cascade of events. It increases systemic inflammation which causes muscle achiness, joint pain. So many people think that they've been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and what they're really dealing with is an indigestion problem that's increasing systemic acidities, and it's in systemic inflammations. So it creates these myriad of problems. The end result of that is chronic fatigue. As your body's trying to fight those metabolics, you can end up with sleep disorders. You know your cortisol levels increase, sleep disorders increase. When you're tired, you compensate that with caffeine. Caffeine triggers the adrenal glands, the response to adrenaline is cortisol, so you start putting on mid belly fat, you start losing the ability to stay asleep after you have gone to sleep. So there's this myriad of problems that people start to experience and they're easy to identify in your practice if you just understand what's happening. Now, here's the downside. Our medical industry wants to treat the problem by putting people on medicines that stop those acid cells from producing acid.
Howard: Pepsid or what its name is.
Jason: So, any Omeprazole, any proton pump inhibitors.
Howard: What are some of the brand names?
Jason: Prevacid, Loratadine, most of the prescription ones are Omeprazole based, they are proton pump inhibitors.
Howard: Now some of them are over the counter now aren't they?
Jason: Yeah, some of them have been so clinically effective they're available over the counter.
Howard: What are some of their brand names?
Jason: So Prevacid is one of the popular ones. You can just get generic Omeprazole over the counter. It's a lower dose concentration than you can get in prescription form, but they are available and they do work. There's a hundred different types.
Howard: What do you think of using that long-term?
Jason: The biggest issue with using those is, one, you're making that problem worse, so you're going to increase the amount of fermentable acids in your body if you decrease the amount of hydrochloric acid that you need for digestion, so all complications get worse. The second thing is, is that, once you've changed the chemistry of the stomach and you're no longer absorbing what you need, vitamin D becomes deficient and osteoporosis, osteopenia can become a long-term problem because if you're not getting. None of us get enough vitamin D from sunlight conversion. We have to have some kind of dietary absorption portions of vitamin D. So when you're deficient in vitamin D, you no longer have the chemical signal. Vitamin D takes the signals and turns them on that puts calcium back in your bone, and what we end up with is if we have a highly acidic systems or highly inflammatory systems, basically what's happening is that acid environment or the need for calcium in other areas like musculature, your body's constantly taking calcium out of the bones and it's putting it elsewhere. And so osteopenia sets in, osteoporosis sets in. Let's take the pancreas. If digestion isn't occurring properly and acidity levels increase, inflammation will increase. Inflammation of the pancreas which produces insulin to redistribute sugars throughout the body where they need to be. It affects the pancreas and increases your risk for type two diabetes. If you have systemic inflammation, your risks for cardiovascular disease go up. Have you ever read Bale Doneen?
Howard: Yeah, it's been on the shelf?
Jason: Isn't that remarkable? I did a podcast interview in conjunction with him where we're talking about the effects of acidity and inflammation in the human body. But as dentists, we're not looking at it and saying, ok, I've got a patient with a real high Carries risk and I'm going to tell them to brush their teeth and I'm going to tell them to watch these acidic products that they're drinking, but we're never talking to them about these digestive problems. One of the things that commonly occurs with people that have digestive issues, malabsorption of fat soluble vitamins, is that it affects the physiology of musculature. You need calcium and you need potassium for muscle contraction and muscle relaxation. Well, muscle also needs glycogen. So if you get a patient who's prone to bruxism, and by the way one of the contributing factors to bruxism is inflammation and acidity in musculature. It's a trigger. If you go to the gym and you have a tough workout, you're really sore two days later, any good trainer is going to tell you to work through it because as you exercise those muscles, you can push the lactic acid out. Well, the same is true. We have this event, this parafunction that's triggered when acidity is too high in our facial musculature that induces clenching and grinding to try to work that muscle to get the acid out and it's a subconscious event and that's why people do it at night while they sleep. Well, if a muscle is predisposed to acidity and inflammatory issues, and you couple that with the parafunctional habits of bruxism, it fatigues the muscle, it depletes us resources. So people with digestive problems commonly are also bruxers, and they also are commonly experiencing chronic issues of TMD pain, chronic facial pain, and chronic headaches. Because everything has this heightened issue of tissue injury. So when it comes down to a biofunctional philosophy, people ask me, the stuff seems so complicated, why would you get involved in this? And here's why. I am in a dental marketing space where there's zero competition because I'd never met a dentist that understands the connection that these people are having. So when I'm marketing to my patients, I'm not on Facebook, I'm not on these places. I'm finding patients with these acid disorders and here's where I find them. They're at your gastroenterologist office, they’re in your ear, nose and throat specialist office, they're inhabiting pain management clinics, and they are in neurology offices. They have these facial pains, these headaches, these digestive disorders and essentially what happens is most of these people have become like dental and medical refugees because they go from office to office to office. They never get it figured out why they're having this facial pain. We're doing a good job in dentistry to understand how to treat biomechanical problems. You know, you have fathers in that area, you've got Pinky Man Schuler, you've got Spirit who's out there doing this, you have places like LVI that are teaching us how to manage the biomechanics of occlusal disease. But where are we learning how to counter act the effects of acid and inflammation that's also triggering these chronic dental problems and it just doesn't exist out there. And that's where the advanced prosthetics comes in.
Howard: When your actions don't match your words, you know, there's something going on there. And all the dentists on dentaltown, they cringe at holistic alternative medicine. A lot of them don't even believe in oral systemic health. But their actions, when they're on dentaltown and they're saying that they got older and they went to the doctor and they said, "Oh, you need to get high blood pressure medication and your cholesterol is high. You need to take your statin, and you need to get on two, three, four prescriptions." They go, "No way." So they changed their diet and their lifestyle and all that. And then I'm like, "Oh, are you holistic now? What are you, a hippie? Did you move to Oregon for a retreat or something?" And when people talk about, I don't believe news, they say if you call it fake news, you're a conspiracy guy, but two hundred thousand Americans die each year in the hospital system not caused by their initial disease. It’s iatrogenic. They talk a lot about polyphagia. By the time you're on five prescriptions, your mortality goes off the charts. And CNN and Fox News never cover any of these stories because every other commercial is a prescription pill and so they want to talk about politics or they'll go after any industry that doesn't advertise. Well that's fake news. I have been a dentist out here for 30 years and when so many people retired to Arizona and they're like, "Oh, I finally got here," and when they're sixty-five, they're coming in and they're already on five prescriptions. They're not alive ten years later. And all my patients that are ninety to a hundred and three are not on any prescriptions. And what's funny is healthcare is in this weird state right now where the doctor exam is ten minutes. "Well, how are you doing?" "Well, I can't sleep well." "Well, here take a sleeping pill." "I've got high cholesterol." "Oh, here, take a cholesterol pill." "I've got high blood pressure." "Well take a high blood pressure pill." Then the doctor goes home and he uses alternative medicine and changes his diet and exercise. And do you know what the first prescription pill was? Do you know what the first cure for disease was? It was a lime. A British physician. Everytime the British navy… The British navy ruled the world, their empire was about sixty-five countries, including the United States, Canada, India, Hong Kong, Australia, and every time they came back about a quarter of the crew had died from scurvy. And one time the ships came back and on one ship, no one had died. And that physician, you know, luck and being aware, and he freaked out and he told everybody, we have to study this. There's something on the ship. So they quarantined all the boats. They took down all the items and they couldn't figure it out. And they looked at the list and the only thing different was those guys left with a barrel of limes. So he said there's some vitamin, vitamin C for citrus.
Jason: Lime. I was thinking l, y, m, e. But you're talking about limes.
Howard: Yes, so they still call the British, the U.K. navy 'limeys'. It was a lime and it had something in there, they called it vitamin C for citrus. The C was for citrus, and then the greatest president we've ever had for healthcare, in my opinion, was Truman because he kept asking what's all this goiter, how can we cure it? And they said, “well, we don't know how to cure it, but its from a lack of iodine. How can we get these farm kids in Kansas? And they said, “well, iodine is a salt.” Goiter is gone. All these millennials listening have never even seen a person with a goiter. Vitamin D you keep talking about. That was to cure rickets. And then Truman passed a law that all bread had to be fortified with B6, B12 and riboflavin. What was that to prevent?
Jason: So again, the B-vitamins are fat soluble vitamins. So when we're talking about digestion, right? How many people do you know that suffer with gallbladder problems? I mean, so many of my patients have had their gallbladder removed. If somebody had just recognized early on that they had a digestion problem and that organ wasn't getting turned on, before that organ became deficient, it probably instead of producing bile, it was producing bile sludges and then it just kind of stopped working altogether because the chemistry wasn't activating the organ to make it do its job, which is helping us with digesting and absorbing fat, oils, those things that we've got to get through our system and absorb what we need, but we do need to get rid of it because we don't need everything in it. So we've got food intake, we've got food breakdown, we've got digestion, we've got absorption, and then we have excretion. And when we miss something in that chain, the body's an amazing thing.
Howard: But what was that disease that over the disease Truman was targeting? B6. All bread is still fortified.
Jason: Folate is a B vitamin. It was creating a lot of problem in birth defects. And I don't know if that's the reason. I don't know the report that you're talking about.
Howard: Ok. Vitamin C was scurvy, D was rickets. Iodized salt was goiter. Damn, what was the other one, Ryan? Why did Truman put B6, B12, and riboflavin in all the bread products? It was one specific disease. But anyway, he extinct all those diseases and then we got to our disease: Fluoride in the water. That was the only one that had push back. They didn't care if salt was iodized, they wouldn't say anything about vitamin D, these millennials have never seen an American with rickets, and they’ve never seen a goiter. But when it went to fluoride in the water, all hell broke loose, and do you know why? Because Stalin fluoridated Moscow. And so they knew that he was such an evil man that there could be no good reason that he did that. So a lot of Americans, about a quarter, believe that when you drink fluoridated water, it made you more susceptible to communist ideology.
Jason: Interesting.
Howard: And so Truman said, "Well we're going to leave that one to the local state issue." And from that day forward, only 70% - 75% of towns, of 19,000 towns fluoridate on any given year. And when you add it to a couple towns and some rednecks take it out of another town. And during the Obama, the affordable healthcare act, I was writing so many letters saying, dentistry is 5% of the budget, you want to do one damn thing for dentistry? Make that water fluoridation a federal law like you do with iodized salt, vitamin D in milk, B6, B12, riboflavin, damn it, what was that disease? B6, B12, riboflavin.
Jason: I know those vitamins are part of our energy resources. They're also help in tissue repair. So I'm going to guess whatever the illness was that they were trying to help, it either had probably something to do with birth defects or something to do with tissue regeneration.
Howard: I also read the other day about vitamin D from sun exposure and milk, that the average American, when you go have lunch outside for a picnic, just having your head, and your hands and your forearms exposed, the whole hour lunch wouldn't be enough. But if you laid out there completely nude in your backyard for just five minutes on either side, you get enough. But I was leading all that back because this is what I wanted to come back with, on your digesting all that stuff. You and I knew when we were little out of school that if you touch your saliva, and you can pull a string that would touch to your fingernails, and thick and tacky, that they're off the chart decay rate, but if you couldn't pull up their saliva, they had a low decay rate. But we keep having these pediatric deaths from anesthesia and we just had another one in Yuma right before Christmas. And that guy, God dang it, that guy is a rocking hot, Board Certified pediatric deal. You'd send your kid there tomorrow. I got two grandkids walking, and two in the oven, I'd send them all four there. Of course the press, all they want to talk about is, "Doctor, your patient died." But I want to know, why does a two year old need eight pulpotomies [inaudible 52:07]. And by the way, media, they took that kid to general dentists. Me and Jason, we're not going to touch a screaming and yelling child. In the old days they used to strap it down to a papoose board and just do it. But then the psychologists got all mad and said that's abusive. And then when you put someone under IV sedation, pretty much everyone who dies from IV sedation, is under twelve years and over sixty-five. In fact the only three publicly traded dental companies, two in Australia: one Three Hundred Smiles and Pacific Smiles, and then Q and M in Singapore, they don't let the oral surgeons do IV sedation. Nobody can put anyone under, under twelve years, over sixty-five, because now you just got rid of all your one in a million chances that. I mean, very famous people die. Who was that? Joan Rivers. She had a little IV in her and had an angiospasm. But my problem is, I've been doing this for thirty years, but there's something going on, because that two year old. I mean, why does a two year old need eight pulpotomies and a [inaudible 52:07], and the media is never going to say, "Hey, what kind of parent are you? Jason, how did you raise the two year old that needed eight root canals?" We always say, "Well, it's got to be the Mountain Dew." But for me, there's one more variable that I think is in there, and I've seen it for thirty years: the mom's got rotten teeth, the dad's got rotten teeth. This baby gets rotten teeth out of the gate. And I think it's because they're all kissing them, and they take a spoon and blow on it, and they blow on it and there's a hundred thousand [inaudible 53:47]. And then grandparents babysitting. I mean, these grandparents have an upper and lower partial perio disease, and they're babysitting their grand baby all day and then they're kissing it fifteen times a day. So my question is this, from what you know, where you focus on occlusal disease, systemic acidity, inflammation, what needs to change at home, so a two year old doesn't need to be IV sedated for eight pulpotomies?
Jason: So we've got to get out of the mindset of just proposing care to people. We've got to quit being dental mechanics and we really need to become diagnosticians first, which means opening our minds.
Howard: Sorry to interrupt. One thing I'm going to ask? The worst thing about a pulpotomy and [inaudible 54:34], is it only has a two year survival rate. So your mechanic job was a band aid for two years. You didn't change anything causing all this stuff. And pulpotmies and [inaudible 54:41] are rotten again in twenty-four months.
Jason: Let's take that. Let's just go back to the acid problem. Bacteria that converts sugar to acid, dietary sources of acid. If we could just start there, and this is kind of what you're talking about, that's a good start, but we cannot miss this whole other element. So let's look at a baby's digestive tract. What's happened in the world over time when it comes to women in the workforce, most of them have converted from breastfeeding their children to formula. Most formulas are a milk based product with a lot of preservatives in it and whatever other nutrients need to be supplemented in to there. It's a foreign object to our digestive tract. Now we do it because it's food sources, but think about the American diet. How many preservatives are in the food that we eat? How many food intolerances and food allergies have increased over the last twenty years? The nutrient of our diets has decreased, the preservatives in our diet have increased and artificial supplementation has increased. So when we convert this back to kids. I don't know what your kids eat, macaroni and cheese, if it can be microwaved, if it's preserved, that's really what these kids are living on. And so the challenging.
Howard: Packaging and ease and convenience
Jason: Convenience because it's the American way, we've got to get things done quickly. But if you just take formula, for example, it's a lactose base. It's a milk based product which, underdeveloped digestive tracts can't process that much lactose, it can create issues that way. The processed foods. One of the things that I struggle with personally is there are certain preservatives that increase inflammation in my body to the point where my joints hurt, my muscles hurt. I get these incredible knots, it brings on job pain. I'll get these back spasms that just come on instantaneously, so I have to avoid milk altogether because I have a casein protein intolerance and allergy, and it’s now developed into lactose intolerance, so it's created a digestive problem. And so with a lot of these kids, we think they're young and they're healthy, but we're not really looking at the way the digestive tract is being affected by dietary thing. So a lot of these kids, when you see them, if mom, dad are doing a good job with home care and they're proactive with that and they're not giving babies bottles when they go to bed, juices and things like that that are just coating their teeth and sugar that's converting to acid. If those things are in line and we're still seeing that, we've got to quit blaming mom and dad, thinking that they're not doing right for their kids, we have to start looking at something else which is the other source, a very predominant source of acid that could be affecting these issues and that can be a digestive problem. So you originally asked me why apple cider vinegar works. We have to be conscientious of doing two things, oral acidity neutralization and systemic alkalization. We have to get the digestive tract working again. Now I know that's kind of outside of our realm, but there some simple protocols we can help people with, right off the bat. So we have a protocol that we use in our practice. The liver plays an important role in producing, it's in the biliary system for producing bile, detoxifying the kidney. Raw apple juice is a great detoxifier of the kidneys. So we put our patients on a protocol, as long as there's not a diabetic problem, six to eight ounces of raw apple juice. Not the crap that you get at Walmart, but the stuff you get at the health food store, it can be a great kidney detoxifier to get it working and free it up.
Howard: The number one mineral the brain uses is calcium and number two is lithium. Which food has the highest amount of lithium?
Jason: Apples.
Howard: Apples. And what was the first drug for insane people?
Jason: Bipolar diseases. Lithium really makes a big difference in that. So that would be the first step. They wait fifteen minutes and then we have them put together a concoction of four things. Lemon juice, which is a great systemic alkalizer also increases stomach acidity, Brags olive oil; unfiltered olive oil. And then apple cider vinegar. And when you use the apple cider vinegar, you want to be using the stuff that's got the 'mother', an unfiltered apple cider vinegar.
Howard: Will you get our apple cider vinegar and see if we got the right one. So which apple cider vinegar do you recommend?
Jason: We typically recommend Brags because it's easy to get. Brags brand.
Howard: Are you bragging about Brags again?
Jason: Yes. It'll say the mother. You'll see the stuff in the bottom of it. That's the apple cider vinegar that you want to be using. You don't want to be using a Heinz filter, that's a lot of sugar. Most of the nutrient value's gone. But what that does. Yeah, that's right stuff.
Howard: Is that it? Where does it say the mother?
Jason: Can you see this stuff down here?
Howard: What is that?
Jason: With the mother.
Howard: I never even noticed that on the bottle. Pure, unfiltered raw, organic apple cider vinegar. Ha. That is amazing.
Jason: So yeah, if you have, are you suffering with some acid as well?
Howard: I'm just going to say it's one of my four boys and he's had this issue on and off and the only thing that works for him is that.
Jason: We have a protocol.
Howard: Do you just take a shot?
Jason: So what we typically recommend is you take a teaspoon and a half of lemon juice, purely squeezed lemon juice. One lemon will give you about three dosages.
Howard: Which out here, I don't mean to brag, but everybody's got a lemon tree in the backyard. In fact, when my lemons aren't blooming, see that, see my neighbors orange and lemon? So all my neighbors, they have lemons and oranges hanging over my fence. So you just go get a real lemon.
Jason: I just get a bag of lemons. Keep them at home. I'll take one lemon and cut it in a third. I'll squeeze that into a small glass. I'll take a teaspoon and a half of apple cider vinegar and a teaspoon and a half of a pure virgin olive oil. Brags unfiltered olive oil.
Howard: So the same company. So Ryan, the same company, Brags, makes a pure unfiltered olive oil.
Jason: They do.
Howard: Is it real thick? Can we buy that somewhere at the store?
Jason: So Howard, when you get the digestive thing going, now we've got to talk about, another element down there that helps indigestion. There's a bacteria in your stomach that has enzymatic activity that helps break down food. But when the pH of our body, when the acid content of our system changes, that bacteria has a hard time thriving. So we recommend a very good probiotic, like an FDA approved company who's producing a probiotic where they've proven efficacy and they're showing you what's in there. Ok. I use a product called Biotics Research. It's a great product line. You can get it on Amazon.
Howard: Biotic research, you can buy it at the store?
Jason: You know, Amazon has become so easy. We actually supply it in our office for things that we use it for so we can get our patients started.
Howard: So it's called what?
Jason: Biotics Research.
Howard: Biotics Research. Can you send me that link right on Amazon? Can you send me that link, Ryan? You can buy it on Amazon. And by the way, when I tell you that she won't believe it. So I'll just tell you, Jeff Bezos was saying that more people now have Amazon Prime in American households than cable TV.
Jason: Crazy.
Howard: And you know why I believe it? Because the millennials all have Amazon Prime and they don't have cable TV. Then you look at the cable TV data, pretty much the only market they have left is over fifty. And the 3thirty and under is off the cabled grid.
Jason: A hundred percent. In my house, I pay for cable every month, but I can't remember the last time I turn my TV on to watch something off of cable. Unless it was DVR'ed or something.
Howard: Do you take this like once a day?
Jason: So it depends. If we have somebody that we're just starting to work with and we know there's a huge digestive issue, we'll start them on a protocol of a probiotic once in the morning and once in the evening because as we start to get the acid digestion working, we can reintroduce this enzymatic bacteria back into the stomach by changing the environment of the stomach into a condition that it can thrive in. So you want to be adding this to your protocol by coming up with a probiotic that's adding digestive help. Those enzymes help in absorption, they help in the breakdown of food. There's just so many things that.
Howard: Robotics Research, their Twitter, they're out of Rosenberg, Texas. I wonder where that is. Rosenberg, Texas. I got to tell you one other thing about where this is going, to kind of give you an open mind if you're in dental school or you're under thirty, some little history inaudible . So the great Americans, in the greatest country in the world, with the greatest healthcare system, they were cutting out all the ulcers when I was your age. I was in dental school, you had ulcers and they cut them out. It was a female physician in Texas saying, "It looks like something's going on here, bacteria. It looks like the ulcers, were, some war was taking place. It's not something that needs to be excised." So what was the antibiotic?
Jason: Cipro?
Howard: What was the antibiotic for ulcers?
Jason: You're probably treating h pylori.
Howard: H pylori bacteria. Now another woman physician, it was about ten years ago, she realized when these kids are on chemo, that it destroys their whole gut biome. So the average human looks in the mirror, and what you think of as you, from mom and dad, is one trillion cells. And animal cells are huge, think of the shea stadium. But from your mouth to your anus, your rectum is ten trillion cells. So you're one trillion huge animal cells. These are ten trillion small viruses, microorganisms, fungus, bacteria, and this little kid was laying there and he's done with his treatment and he's all weak and lifeless and every time he pooped, he cried. His skin was shutting down his anus. And she looked at that and looked at his mother and said you've got to take a number two. Do it in this pan. She put it in a blender of water, gave him a fecal matter enema, which is now the number one transplant in the world on any given year is fecal transplants. The kid snapped back to life. And a lot of these kids past chemo, they also get depression. So, they put them on antidepressants and all this stuff. And now they're finding out the ten trillion gut microbiota even affects the brain, the mood, and the whole nine yards. There's another study where they take skinny mice and give fecal matter transplant to the obese mice. And the obese mice start losing weight and the only negative against fecal matter transplants, is if you keep eating a diet that's 60% process foods, you start feeding the wrong bacteria. So you'd almost have to have a fecal matter transplant every day. And when you change your diet, within ninety days, you changed the lives in your [inaudible 01:06:33]. So when you look at the species, not only is it ten trillion bacteria, but the San Diego zoo is the biggest zoo in America, and has forty-two hundred species. So it's two San Diego Zoo's full of species, it's over eight thousand, some people have ten thousand species of life, not from your mom and dad, from your mouth to your rectum, and that, someday that holds the clue to periodontal disease and decay, There's something, for instance, I have a hygienist who cries. I mean she's a registered hygienist, she does everything right and she's over thirty years and she's still losing molars. She can't [inaudible 01:07:10] her gum disease. She's the absolute crying proof that brushing and flossing alone isn't this disease. There's more, it's multifactorial. And I think someday that we're going to find out why you have diarrhea out the back end, or be constipated and why you have this mouth bacteria out of whack at this end. A lot of that has to do with what's in the middle, your digestive system.
Jason: So look at it like this. So you talk about this acid production problem. If the pH of the chemistry of your stomach never triggers the reaction of your pancreas, the pancreas' job is to neutralize the bolus of food before it passes from the stomach to the lower digestive tract. If it never gets turned on or you are lacking in bi carbonate, the food passes from your stomach into your lower intestine, which is going to create an acidic environment, it burns that tissue, and it doesn't know what to do with it which increases inflammation. So we see this rise in Crohn's disease, irritable bowel syndrome, and if we can just get the chemistry right of the stomach for digestion to take place, if we can get the organs turned on that are going to help the rest of the digestive tract. So people who have low acid problems also commonly struggle with either constipation or diarrhea and usually it's a combination.
Howard: Why're you looking at me? He keeps looking at me.
Jason: Let me just look at the audience.
Howard: How does he know that?
Jason: But a lot of it could just be a dietary source or a digestive problem that now isn't letting the organs work that should be, and it's just creating irritability, irritation. It's an acid chemistry that your tissue's cells don't know what to do with and so it creates.
Howard: We're on so far, over time, our brands an hour, we're coming up on an hour and a half.
Jason: Oh.
Howard: You're amazing. What am I going to find at Advanced Prosthetics Institute?
Jason: So Howard, its API, dental marketing and education systems. Our systems are designed to demystify complex care issues. So when they work with us, what we're going to do is we're going to help them attract a patient base that can really increase practice success.
Howard: I know how my homies think, they email, I've been on dentaltown four or five hour a day for since '98 and I answer about three emails a day. I know what you're thinking, "That's not going to work in my town. Dude, he's in a town of fifty thousand. You're doing this full time in a town of fifty thousand.
Jason: Yup.
Howard: Because I know you're thinking, if you live in Key Biscayne, or Beverly Hills or Manhattan, there'd be enough of these types of patients. No, dude, he's in Prescott.
Jason: Well here's the thing. You take a practice that's got.
Howard: Which I would say is very just straight middle-class. I don't think of it as rich or poor.
Jason: It's not. It's just somewhere in between.
Howard: Middle-class.
Jason: So we have a tri-city area. We're dealing with.
Howard: What are the tri-cities?
Jason: Prescott Valley and Chino Valley. They're very blue-collar farming communities, then we have Prescott which is kind of a retirement community. So like you said, middle-class, maybe above middle-class in Prescott, blue collar farming communities. The thing that's interesting about this is there's no boundaries for it. People who are suffering with jaw bone mechanics issues, or issues of acidity or inflammation. If you have a patient base of two thousand people, I guarantee you 35% - 40% of these people are already having this issue. We're not intervening, we're filling gum line abfraction with dental composites. Why are we doing that? We're not even treating the thing that's causing it.
Howard: It's because there's an insurance code.
Jason: Exactly. But there are insurance codes for everything that we do and it works in every practice from above.
Howard: Do they come to your place, do lectures and online videos, how do you educate them?
Jason: We're working on are online curriculum so we can get. Howard, this is huge for me that we're here and you're hearing this stuff and I can see you're relating to a lot of the stuff we're doing. Simply getting the message out that there's a disease out there that's called a biofunctional disorder, biology and jaw function problems that are overlapping. These people are coming in with severe wear, generalized acid erosion, abfraction, enamel crazing. These are people that we're seeing every day that are also coming with TMJ, chronic facial pain, and all we're doing is saying, here's the contributors, here's how you target each of these categories, this is the care you offer to treat the biomechanics issues. Here's the treatment that you offer to treat the acidity problems. Here's the treatment that you offer to control the inflammatory reactions. We're doing that in dentistry. This protocol is the glue to every dental procedure that we do. I'm telling you, everything that we do can be tied back to these three items. And this particular philosophy can be used. It's ready to be used here. Here's our beta test.
Howard: But wait, how do my homies learn this? Do they fly to Prescott?
Jason: Yes. Our next course is in March. It's being hosted in Prescott. We have a new facility in Scottsdale through the Dental Success Network.
Howard: Mark Costes?
Jason: Mark Costes' group.
Howard: I love Mark is, he's an idle mind. I'm a big Mark fan. I've had him on here. Tell him it's been three years since he's been on our show, come back.
Jason: I'll tell him.
Howard: And if there's anybody else, tell them to come back. One thing that, I'm just going to get down on my hands and knees and beg, you and Costes do, is do this. People who have a long career, [inaudible 01:13:10], they have five, one week curriculum. So what they do, they made an online CE course, on dentaltown, one hour, which was their greatest hits album of their first week. Best marketing move they made. So you have this biomechanics still, biofunctional, you should do an online CE course, and then do an article on dentaltown, that would drive a lot of people, that once they saw the online CE course on a podcast and they meet you, they like you, they connect with you. Then they would jump on an airplane and fly from Texas to you. When you start looking to that monkey, it's one thing that's interesting, but getting him to go to the airport and fly thousands of miles.
Jason: With you 1000%.
Howard: Deconstruct the salesforce. The house is a very expensive investment that people have. So when grandma wants to buy a reverse annuity, you don't to do a thirty second commercial and she's going to sign the paper. So the first commercial, if you just call, no salesmen call you, but we have to know where your house is to tell you how much. So the whole commercial is to get you to call, and then when you call, then they send the DVD and all that. So I think the podcast will help get your message out, an online CE course, an article, because it's going to take one, two, three before I'm actually going to get on an airplane and fly to Scottsdale.
Jason: Here has been the challenge. And Howard, this, this day for me is really big because, this is a self-pioneered practice philosophy, but the diagnosis has to be in place before we can start to talk about it. And if I use the word biofunctional disorder, there's not a dentist on the planet that even knows what that means. So your influence and allowing me to be here today gives me the opportunity to put this word in dentists' mouth. There's something that we're missing, we're calling it a biofunctional disorder. Here's the parameters of the disease. Now we can talk about it. Now we can treat it, we can preventively interact on behalf of these patients and stop it. And so we're kind of early on in this phase, and so building our message, having an audience to even hear what it is, and now we're working on our resources to do exactly what you're saying. This has to get out. I can't be the only dentist in the world that can help people linking these problems for their community, for their patient base. So this is really, really.
Howard: Do you know Tom Giacobbi?
Jason: I know the name, but.
Howard: He's a dentist in Chandler. He's the magazine editorial director since 2000, so I have nothing to do with the magazine. And then Howard Goldstein, he's in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He actually thinks that's where Jesus was born, but I keep telling him that's a different Bethlehem, he's in charge of the online CE. So send me an email, send those too. But can I give you, we're in triple double overtime.
Jason: Absolutely.
Howard: I see there's two issues because I know my homies. I always say send me an email, howard@dentaltown.com. Tell me your name, where you're from, what country and all that stuff. 25% or so are in dental school and the rest almost all under thirty. I get about one email a week now, some guy saying, hey dude, I'm as old as you. But it's mostly kids that do podcasts. Have you ever even listed to a podcast?
Jason: I listened to your podcasts a lot. In fact, your dental MBA is really what made me decide I needed to look at the business of dentistry.
Howard: By the way, that's a [inaudible 01:16:50] podcast, dentistry uncensored is one, but on iTunes I also have the 30 day dental MBA and the Virtues wellbeing dentistry on YouTube too.
Jason: The Virtues one I loved.
Howard: When you go back to Prescott people your age, do they listen to podcasts?
Jason: It's huge.
Howard: Of our age? You're forty-seven?
Jason: In the dental industry I think is becoming a great resource. As far as the commercial people, not as much. It's s it's growing, but you know, the people in my area.
Howard: It's the millennials too.
Jason: They're coming from business backgrounds and so a lot of them are in the podcasting world.
Howard: But they're mostly millennials.
Jason: A lot of them.
Howard: They're mostly millennials, and especially on this show. So my millennials, our generation makes it very confusing to them, because you keep talking about occlusal disease and they're walking down there and they distinctly see two groups. There's this Peter, Skylar, Dawson, Kois, Spear, Nash, CR.
Jason: Yup.
Howard: And then there's this LVI, neuromuscular this, and now you're calling it biofunctional. So they're wondering, is biofunctional? Is that Dawson, Pankey, Skylar, Kois, Spear? Or is that neuro muscular? And then you got to agree with me on this, is it true or false? If I got all the endodontists in the world together, they don't really argue about anything. Pediatric dentists, the only thing they argue about is one issue. Silver diamine fluoride. Man, you bring the occlusal people in. It's like twenty world religions. So how is a thirty old female that graduated from A. T. Still four years ago, and she wants to learn more about occlusion. Does she need to pick neuromuscular before CR? How does she wrap her brain around going to LVI or Spear, which is both up the street from us? And what is your biofunctional occlusion? Do you agree that it's confusing?
Jason: I think at that level, that's absolutely confusing for people. And I think it's still confusing because we're missing an element of it. Howard, I love what those guys teach in CR. I also appreciate what they're teaching in neuromuscular because we're dealing with two things. We're dealing with hard tissue determinants, but we're also talking about soft tissue determinants and you have to find, my end result of the combination of the two is you have to create pathways and resources for muscles to work in efficient zones. So centric relation. The muscle was developing at the time that jaw was. There’s something about this hard determinant, you have to have a building point in reconstruction. When it comes to the muscles though finding zones makes a big difference, but it's hard to get a muscle to function out of efficient zone if it's an unhealthy muscle and so what a biofunction does, is its taking these hard determinants of occlusion and the issues that we're facing with the soft tissue of musculature, and we're getting rid of anything that's a contributor to the problem, to this inefficient, unhealthy working of this entire system. So it really is a different approach, but we are incorporating, we're not reinventing the wheel. The guys that are doing CR, they really understand occlusion. They understand the importance of the joint and the way the joint works. The guys that are doing the musculature stuff, they're trained to find zones where the muscle's happy, but we're missing so many components which are the contributors that are causing the problem in the first place. So this takes those elements and kind of ties them together with an understanding. So if I treat somebody for an occlusal disorder, how come it's not a 100% effective? Why does 30% of the people continue on with pain? What have you done to treat the muscular issue? Where's the deficiency, is there a deficiency? Where's the injury? If it is, where's it from? Is it an acid problem or is it an inflammation problem or is it a trauma problem? And if we can start to tie these three things together, our core series is demystifying complex [inaudible 01:20:55] to take these complicated things and give the diagnostic tools, these critical thinking skills.
Howard: Are you using technology in the diagnosis, like Techscan or anything?
Jason: We do 100%.
Howard: You use a Techscan?
Jason: We use a phenomenal product.
Howard: How much is a Techscan now?
Jason: I think their base system is about eleven thousand if you just try to buy it cold turkey, there's stuff out there online people are picking up for less, you know, older systems. Through our institute, we have a relationship with Techscan. I am not paid by them, but we work together because we utilize their products so much and so they're willing to offer discounts to people who attend our course so they can onboard that technology without the tremendous expense of getting it rolling. So I don't take kickbacks from them. We just work together because that piece of equipment has a higher ROI than any other piece of equipment that I have in my practice. And I'm a high technology guy. I have all of the CAD/CAM stuff. We do digital surgeries.
Howard: Which CAD/CAM do you have?
Jason: I have the PlanScan now. It used to be E4D.
Howard: PlanScan. Are you cad/camming or just scanning?
Jason: We use that in conjunction with our CT scans. So we do digital implant planning and design.
Howard: So Planmach out of Helsinki, Finland bought E4D out of Dallas. So now it's called PlanScan and you like that?
Jason: I'm kind of up in the air on that technology right now. There's a lot of advances being made. When I invested, E4D was kind of ahead of the game over CEREC. CEREC has bounced back with some really incredible technology and products, now E4D, now you're starting to get these other companies coming out with these really incredible cameras. So I would say just find a system that integrates, if you've got a scanner and a milling system, find a CT scan that it integrates with, so that you can find platforms for getting your digital design stuff done.
Howard: I've got a CEREC machine. I've got all that stuff and now 3M is trying to sell me a $17,000. What is your scanner called?
Jason: It's the, I..., I know the one you're talking about.
Howard: Not the Itera.
Ryan: Trios?
Howard: No, Trios is out of Three Shape is out of Denmark...
Jason: Oh, Three Shape is the one that I was thinking of.
Howard: Copenhagen, Denmark.
Ryan: True Definition.
Howard: Yeah, True Definition. 3M wants me to buy a $17,000 True Definition scanner, but you know what I've come back to? A $17 3M Impregum and send it to my lab man up the street that makes a zirconia crown for $99.
Jason: There are these moments in time, Howard, I feel the same where I want to jump out of that work because it’s really, really expensive.
Howard: And the other thing is she, listen to this right now: she's 29, she's got $350,000 in student loans.
Jason: Crazy.
Howard: So why does she need a $150,000 CAD/CAM? Two more questions. We were talking about this two year old needing to be put asleep and every quarter on Facebook, some little kid's put to sleep and they die. The other thing about switching the baby formula is, you know, the oldest hominid fossil human ever found is right at ASU, Lucy. Have you talked to those anthropologists down there?
Jason: No I haven't.
Howard: They are turning dentistry upside down. They say, how come there's no malocclusions three hundred years to one point seven million years ago? How come nobody needed ortho and Invisalign, and now all you talk about is when we put this two year old to sleep because it has eight cavities and then we have eleven thousand full time orthodontists in the United States. I know, I mail a magazine Orthotown to them every week, we have a website for them and nobody's talking about why does this kid need ortho? Because when you're breastfeeding for two or three years, it's a fight. It's a tenacious fight. That breast is pushing the kids face or tugging on it. And as soon as the kid has any difficulty breastfeeding, moms like, “well, I'll fix this; I'll switch to a bottle and a sippy cup and just drowned you in milk. How do you think we were eating the last two million years? You'd think they were eating pureed sauce out of a jar or do you think they'd throw them a hind leg of an elk? And the baby just chewed on it. Nuts. So all those forces were played into spreading the jaw, spreading all this. But there's about ten different anthropological teams that I've posted on Facebook in the last four or five years that, independent of any dentists are starting to realize, wow, why is this a new thing? Because when I was in school, they called it miscegenation. You remember that? That was totally wrong. They were saying it was a mix of breeding. There's no such thing as a breed of humans. There are breeds of dogs and breeds of dogs have a larger genetic variance. The variance between the two most very human beings is so narrow. You can't even say that was a breed. And they're saying well, the dad was six foot tall and he was German and the mom was a little five foot tall Portuguese woman. And that's what happened. The German met a Spaniard and all this stuff. And no, that's not true. It's diet. They had a tenacious, killer diet. And I also think it's a weird culture where women are so embarrassed. They come to my offices, and they ask, "Is there some place private I can go to nurse?" It's like, dude, you go to a PG13 movie and Rambo jumps out with an AK47 mow down a hundred people, but you pull out a mammary gland and everybody runs to the back door. Why is everybody afraid of a mammary gland when all mammals give birth to live young and nurse, but no one's afraid of an AK47? And you really got to give the kid a diet that has forced (what is force? Something over area, but anyway) but that kid needs to use muscles and he needs to chew and he doesn't need a bottle, a sippy cup.
Jason: But look at it like this. You're talking about diet. Early diet, there wasn't a high concentration of sugar or preservatives or these things that our digestive systems didn't know what to do with. So inflammatory issues were lower. Systemic acidity issues were probably lower because, you talk about blood alleles, those developed during stages of human development. And the oldest allele is the old type, when people were hunters and gatherers; it was meat and nuts. Grains didn't even exist. Later, alleles developed as we moved more from hunter-gatherer to farmers, those people developed alleles. Their immune systems tolerated grains and farming type foods, so depending on blood type, you may have digestive health aids based on what allele you have. There's so many things involved in this process, but then sugar is high, high, high on generating inflammation. There's just no way around it. And fermentable acids. Sugar, carbohydrates.
Howard: One final question. Because we're so over time.
Jason: I'm starting to feel bad, Howard, hopefully people will hang in there.
Howard: The four thousand pound elephant in the room that no one ever talks about, who is shoved away in the closet is, 4.5% of Americans are shipped off to a nursing home where they die. And when they enter the nursing home, the average American gets one root surface decay per month. Arizona is a big hot bed. Maybe she's got grandma in the nursing home, but the bottom line is when you go in there, I've gone in to about a dozen different nursing homes and followed the shift. I don't know why, but their staff with mostly little Filipino or Latino women and they had this whole hallway that they've got to do everything for: bathe, feed, everything. You know what the brushing looks like? She takes her brush, she puts a little deal. She goes like this five times and then says spit in a dixie cup. I mean, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and spit. No training, and she couldn't brush them all for two minutes, twice a day and floss their teeth. And you know what? Almost every shift, not almost every shift, but do you know what their number one emergency call is? 911 to the fire department. Because they're little CPA's, they are. When I go to a nursing home, I feel like I'm a big dude. When grandpa falls down the shower, three of them can't get him back in bed. So they got to call the fire department and have six big men come in and, you know hunting and stuff, picking up dead weight of a two hundred and twenty pound fat grandpa. You can't do that by yourself, you'd need a lot of people. But anyway. S is there anything we can do from that runaway root surface decay in nursing homes?
Jason: The bottom line is acid is going to be the culprit. So maybe they're not doing a great job at getting rid of the bacteria. But what if there was a protocol enacted where they just instructed their residents to get a bottle of baking soda water and rinse ten times throughout the day? It needs to be gone by the end of the day. What if we just kept their mouth neutral throughout the day? Would the effect of the bacteria be as big as a problem?
Howard: So this is 16 ounces of water. How much soda would you put in there?
Jason: Teaspoon per eight ounces.
Howard: A teaspoon per eight ounces.
Jason: It tastes horrible, but this is what I tell people: it tastes a lot better than my dental materials and my dental drill. So keep it in your purse. If you go to the movie and you're drinking a soda pop for the two hours of the movie, you know what? Neutralize your mouth, periodically, take a break, take a swish and spit it out. Get a cup. Do something. The areas that are going to be problematic in an aging institution, if there's a lot of bacteria accumulation, baking soda is not going to get underneath the surface. So we definitely have to have hygienic help, but if they're not doing a great job, simply neutralizing the acid that those bacteria are creating will stop generalized broad decay. The bigger problems for those people in those institutions is that they're on medications that inhibit salivary production; they no longer have the ability to buffer the acids. So again, baking soda can be a helpful tool. They might have autoimmune illnesses that have affected their salivary glands. They may be going through chemotherapy that the chemistry has affected their salivary glands and now they have dry mouth. Again, it's going to be an acid buffering problems. So just initiating some protocols to neutralize the mouth.
Howard: Do you know why you and I don't have to worry about that?
Jason: Why?
Howard: The nursing homes, they're all women. In each one of those nursing homes, there's only like one man and his name was Lucky. And I swear to God they ought to call them women's homes. The average woman in America lives almost five years longer than a man. It's like men are seventy-four, and women are like eighty-nine and a half. And for the first time in any advanced nation, men's life expectancy has been ticking down the last two or three years because of the opioid crisis. On that note, I hope you make an online CE course.
Jason: Let me do one thing, Howard. If people want to find us, they can find us at www.advancedprostheticsinstitute.com. We have a great video library. It's growing. We have a great community there where people can find us, they can find our courses and we can get them out.
Howard: advancedprostheticsinstitute.com.
Jason: Yup. advancedprostheticsinstitute.com. It's the best way to find us. We're going to be working to develop some of our social media platforms and our output. Certainly be watching for us in dentaltown. I appreciate your invitation to come in there and start sharing some of these protocols. I hope they help our general community. I hope it gives doctors the tools that they need to really help these people.
Howard: Give Mark Hostas my love.
Jason: I will do that.
Howard: And a lot of you guys think Mark Hostas is a really happening, hot looking guy. Do you know he wears a wig? Start spreading that rumor.
Jason: I'll definitely do that.
Howard: I'm just kidding. Ryan thanks for working on a Saturday buddy.