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Matters of the Mouth: How Dental Infections Drive Chronic Diseases – Dr Thomas Lokensgard
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:01] Hi, Dr. Ron here, and I want to invite you to join our Unstress Health Community. Now, like this podcast, it’s independent of industry and focuses on taking a holistic approach to human health and to the health of the planet. The two are inseparable. There are so many resources available with membership, including regular live Q&As on specific topics with special guests, including many with our amazing Unstress Health Advisory Panel. Now we’ve done hundreds of podcasts all worth listening to, with some amazing experts on a wide range of topics. Many are world leaders, but with membership, we have our Unstress Lab podcast series, where we take the best of several guests and carefully curate specific topics for episodes, which are jam-packed full of valuable insights. So join the Unstress Health community. If you are watching this on our YouTube channel click on the link below or just visit unstresshealth.com to see what’s on offer and join now. I look forward to connecting with you. Hello and welcome to Unstress Health, my name is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Well, today we explore oral health and my guest is Dr Thomas Lokensgaard. Now, Dr Tom is a biological dentist and he is a holistic biological dentist, a naturopathic physician, anti-ageing health professional. He’s a member of many organisations around oral medicine, toxicology, biological dentistry. Anti-ageing and he has written a wonderful book called Matters of the Mouth. Look, this is a subject obviously that I’ve been passionate about all my professional life and it really is the missing link in so many people’s health journey. It’s always astounded me how often I’ve seen patients with complex medical conditions, often late stages in cancer who have come into the practise and have never had. A thorough, comprehensive oral exam. And if you stay tuned, I’ll just repeat what that involves at the end of the episode. But it is more than just a 10 minute checkup with your dentist or that you’re not in any dental pain. This is a really big and important issue. It is the missing link in healthcare and that’s why I was looking forward to speaking to my guest. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had. With Dr. Thomas Lokensgard. Welcome to the show, Tom.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:02:48] Well, thanks for having me. Thanks for having you, Dr. Ron.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:02:51] Tom, you’ve written this wonderful book, Matters of the Mouth. And it is absolutely music to my ears. We just we share a common interest there in oral health. And I think because of our more holistic approach, we we share an interest in general health as well. And some big changes are occurring or will will be occurring. By the time this episode comes out, are occurring in the US. And one of those movements has been championed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Make America Healthy Again And I think it’s so interesting to see the mainstream press narrative dismiss him as an anti-vaxxer, a woman abuser, or someone that drives around with dead animals on it. You know, I mean, it’s just absurd. And yet he’s the only one that I think have been speaking. With any degree of clarity on the issues, particularly on health. What’s your view of his initiative, Make America Healthy Again?
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:03:55] Well, I met R.F.K. Junior at the Truth About Cancer conferences, and I met him, I talked to him, he’s a great guy, and my initial hope was, is that I would see a Trump, Kennedy, vice-VP, and presidential campaign, but I knew that they were both strong-willed, strong-minded people and I didn’t know how far to the left Robert Kennedy Jr. Still is or was. And as it turns out, he abandoned his party. Although what he said was, my party didn’t, I didn’t abandon the Democrats, they abandoned me. But his whole career, his whole life career has been Make America Healthy Again. And he’s just brilliant in that field. So we’re gonna be carrying some of our products and our books in the Make America healthy again arena.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:04:51] Right. So I mean, I mean there’s a lot going on there. I know he’s targeted a lot of things, really. The the organisations like the CDC, Centre for Disease Control, the NIH, the FDA. Oh, my God. The FDA and the USDA.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:05:11] The Food and Death Administration
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:05:13] the Food and Death Administration and the US Department of Agriculture all need a good broom swept through them, there’s no question about it.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:05:20] This is good.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:05:21] But your focus and my focus professionally has been on the role of oral health in overall health. And I think we both would agree that it’s the missing link in health care, the black hole, if you like, of health care. How does functional dentistry and integrated medicine, how are they related? How do you see that?
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:05:43] Well, they look at the whole body and they look at disease, disease starts in the mouth. And that has been, I don’t think it’s been recognised as a tenant until just really lately. And so, you know, I got frustrated in dentistry just by doing drill fill and bill dentistry where I was just plugging amalgams and doing root canals. And I just, I didn’t believe in it. And then I saw a lot of complications from it. Particularly with the root canals. So, but it occurred to me that dentists don’t work together like they should, and physicians don’t work together like they shouldn’t. But, you know, one patient of mine said to me, she goes, you now Tom, when we were in medical school, we were taught that everybody’s different. We all have different, you no, genetics, et cetera, different effects. And she said, they want to get out of school. Everybody treats everybody the same, pharmaceutical. So, you know, and I learned from another friend of mine, you cannot pharmacologically intoxicate someone into health, which makes a lot of sense, because then they have to recover twice.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:06:59] Well, I have heard the statistic that the third biggest killer in America is actually medication taken as prescribed. Yes, yes. Behind heart disease and cancer. That shocks a lot of people and I think and I think a lot physicians are oblivious to it. But that is the statistic, isn’t it?
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:07:21] Well, the biggest three infections or complications in situations in medicine start in the mouth. One is dental decay, the second is gingivitis. Dental decay is a remineralization issue. And gingivitus is a, it’s like, and the way I describe to people is that your tooth has, around the tooth is a little collar, like a sweater, right, like the, you know, collar on a sweater. And then the bacteria get in and turn the gum tissue red. That’s the second biggest disease, gingivitis. But that’s reversible, as you well know. And we can talk about that later, how you can reverse gingivitus. And then, the next one is periodontitis. And that’s an actual infection where the disease goes into the systemic circulation with a bunch of microbiomes, from the microbiome into the blood vessels and into the organs, especially in the brain. Where you have infected root canals. So that interested me is that the top three disease states in the world are all dental. They’re all oral. And that’s been dismissed for years.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:08:37] I mean, to me, I think it’s interesting to see how health practitioners who are assessing their patient’s health. Trivialise or completely ignore the oral health component. I mean…
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:08:53] But they don’t understand it.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:08:55] They don’t understand it. I think they relate it to pain. I think one of the, if you don’t have pain to many health practitioners, if don’t pain, then you don’t have a dental disease. It’s just, if we diagnose cancer like that, that would be really interesting way of going, wouldn’t it?
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:09:12] That’s true, that’s true. So yeah, oral microbiome and the oral health component is very, it’s the major important issue in my opinion. Now, that is not to diminish or belittle any of the other symptoms and disease states, but basically what happens, I think, in all diseases, and I get this from Nathan Bryan, who’s a nitric oxide specialist, is that the first thing that happens In any disease state, in any disease where an organ becomes a disease, the blood flow is diminished. That diminishes the oxygen potential, and that diminishes voltage, and then the immune system comes in and tries to take over. Every major disease state acts that way.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:10:07] And how does dental decay, put dental decay into that model?
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:10:14] Remineralization. Well, that’s a really, like I said before, that would be more of a gingivitis or periodontal. The microbiome has a lot to do with dental decay and the acidity in the mouth has a lot to with dental. If you’re below 5.4 pH and you know if you’re your listeners know about the pH scales 7 to 0, 14, 7 being neutral. If you’re low 5.6 or 5. 4 then you’re going to probably remineralize well, but there’s another little-known system. Least a little known to the dentist and I’m sure you probably understand this, but there’s this Steinemann and Lenora are two doctors who capitalise on the dental fluid transport system. So there’s an actual system that pushes micronutrients and minerals toward the surface of the tooth, but the pH has to be in the alkaline range or at least past 6.7. So you get this back and forth, and the body is always trying to, in the blood, trying to equalise the equilibrium in the body to keep the pH in between 7.35 and 7.45 in the
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:11:37] Yeah, this is this is the workout of Loma Linda, isn’t it? And they’ve been doing that for many, many years. And it basically for my for our listener, you know, inside the tooth is this blood vessel, the pulp of the tooth. And there’s a fluid movement out of the like almost.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:11:54] Dr. Ron, there’s three miles of dental tubules inside the pulp tissue or inside the tube. So what do you think happens when you do a root canal and you block those, you know, you block the dental tubule and then the blood vessel can’t, the blood can’t get in there, the nitric oxide wanes, and the voltage drops, and when the voltage drops, if you’re familiar with Jerry Tennant’s work, when the Bugs wake up. And they’re hungry and they start having you for lunch or whatever, you know, your tooth or your brain tissue or whatever else it is.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:12:32] Yes, so that’s interesting, isn’t it, that the fluid movement is out of the tooth, kind of keeping it, stopping the bugs from getting in and the acid from getting.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:12:43] Moving the mineral out to the outside of the tooth to prevent decay. Now, we have a product called, it’s called Silidon or silica drops. And what I’ve seen is we had to take people with just incipient decay in the enamel and we take it, we film it, and there’s really no other problems, but these are like children or some young adults. And we give them these silica-drops, and within six to eight months, You’re being mineralized. Because it reverses the flow of the dentinol fluid transfer system, which has to do with carboxymil. Well, it’s the term is carboxymyl.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:13:25] Well, don’t don’t go into too technical an area, that’s fine. Yeah. Well, you’ve got to get the book. Right. OK. You’ve mentioned gum disease, too. And tell us about that in the nitric oxide model there. You know, you say that’s more applicable to gum disease. Talk to us about.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:13:46] Well, it’s the same principle. When your gum tissue becomes in your period, let’s say you have periodontitis. If you have a periodontitus, you have bonafide infection in the tissue with an inordinate amount of bad bacteria that are causing the situation and the problem. So what we do then is we do a genetic test. Called, and I can’t remember the name of it right now. It’s an 11 point dental biome test.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:14:26] To identify the mac, to identify the microbes.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:14:29] You know, to identify the chlamydia, bacteria, and all those kinds of things. So, but it’s the same thing, the blood flow, basically the nitric oxide is lessened, especially if you’re a mouth breather, because when you begin, that’s a huge problem there too, not to divert, but I guess I will.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:14:53] No, no, that’s good, because if you’re talking about nitric oxide, then nasal breathing is an important part of nitric oxide production, isn’t it?
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:15:04] Right, right. So nasal, well, that’s because your, your nitric oxide is made primarily in your mouth and in your paranasal sinuses. So if you’re doing the mouth breathing and part of my, my dental practise was in expansion orthodontics, we do a lot of orthodotics. So, but where were we?
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:15:27] Nitric oxide, production, mouth breathing.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:15:30] So if you are a mouth breather, then your microbes are going in your stomach and your oxygen levels aren’t going through the nose through the sinuses, the paranasal sinuses where the nitric oxide is made. And then it goes and then it gets dumped into the stomach and then it goes off into the other arterials. They say there’s 60,000 miles of blood vessels in our I don’t know who’s mapped that out.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:15:59] But I think the important thing about nitric oxide though is, I mean not only is it a really important regulator, but it’s also antimicrobial, isn’t it? And if you’re a mouth breather, you’re missing out on a lot of the benefit of that, aren’t you?
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:16:19] That’s exactly right. And nitric oxide is probably the most important element, you know, to the human body. Because without oxygen, you die. It’s just that simple. And that’s the carrier. The nitric, well, the nitric dioxide is made in the endothelium, as you all know. And then it heads into the arterioles and into the organ systems. And it brings, its function is to bring oxygen into the organs.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:16:51] So with periodontal disease, you made the point that the gum should be like this collar around the tooth. And if that collar becomes loose, or there’s a pocket down the side of a tooth, you end up with bacteria in this pocket that starts to produce problems. And we talk about toxins. Do you think that deep periodontally pockets, you should extract the tooth?
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:17:16] No, you should try to fix the periodontal pockets first. It’s a do the DNA test, test for the microbiome in the mouth, and then go to a dentist who is a holistic dentist. What we did, Ron, is we treated it with ozone. Ozone was like oxygen on steroids. And so you clean and scale and root plane the teeth, or you can use LAN app surgery, which is a pretty good way to go. And then you apply ozone, and then you, you know, we also apply, have people take, get microbiome, different, different microbiome and different. So, so basically ozone is like oxygen on steroids, and ozone will fix and will remedy, or you could, if you have to extract the tooth, you could do a PRP procedure. You can do an extraction. Clean out all the fibrous tissue in the socket, and then take a blood draw from the patient, spin it down, get the PRF protein-rich fibrin, put it back in the sockets with ozone, and then let it heal. So the answer to your question is no, you don’t have to extract the tooth necessarily. If you’ve got a cavitation, which is another problem, cavitations can sit and, you know… Asymptomatic for years and from extracted teeth where the roots weren’t cleaned out and they became infected due to the change in voltage.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:19:05] This is an important point too, isn’t it? That people think, I’ll just pull a tooth out. It’s, you know, I mean, it’s pain. If you’ve got good anaesthesia, it shouldn’t be painful. Just pulling a tooth up, very basic. But actually there’s much more to it than that, isn’t it? It needs to be, you’ve mentioned thoroughly curetting out. You’ve mentioned the application of ozone. You’ve mention, people may have missed that Tom PRP because it’s a really important, it a really nice. Thing that dentistry now uses, just explain, say that again slowly because you said it very quickly.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:19:40] Okay, when you extract a tooth, because it’s full of microbiome, it’s full of the micro-anatomy and the microorganisms, I should say, that cause infection. So if you don’t clean them out, they live there and they, because there’s no voltage in there, in the tooth socket, they’ll remain and they’ll keep producing pus and et cetera, and it’s like a slow burning fire that you don t know about. So then. Then you have to clean it all out, ozonate it, clean the socket, and then take a blood draw from the patient, which is the PRP, called protein-rich plasma, or PRF, protein- rich fibrin, which are the stem cells, the stem cell of your blood that when they spin them down, that’s the blood, it’s like a blood clot, and you stick it back in the tooth, ozonated, sew it back up, so you’re preventing any kind of further Infective Press.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:20:42] And that is for those that may not have quite heard it then, you take a blood sample from the patient themselves, put it into a test tube, spin it in a centrifuge for a couple of minutes and you end up with this like a natural bandaid from your own body with immune cells in it. I mean, it’s just a wonderful, yeah. You’ve mentioned electrical potential a few times there and I love that because let’s face it, we are walking electricity. Every cell in our body, every nerve, every cell, it’s all about electricity, which takes us.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:21:20] I was going to say, we know that God has created a biochemical and a bioelectrical. The human body is bioelectical and biochemical. Yes. I think most physicians don’t understand that. And I think hardly any dentists understand that, except for a whole list of trained ones.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:21:38] Yeah, and let’s face it, the biochemistry, we couldn’t wait to get rid of once we passed that in undergraduate medicine, dentistry or medicine, you know, that was in first or second year and thank God I finished with biochemistry. I don’t have to worry about it anymore. In fact, that’s that’s how the human body happens to work.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:21:57] I majored in biochemistry. Oh really? Wow, interesting. And then in my first year of dental school at the University of Minnesota, I remember this biochemist saying, you know, in America we’ll never have micro or macronutrient deficiencies because in America we have vitamin-enriched bread like Wonder Bread. Seriously, you know, I’m paying all this money for a digital dental education. I’m thinking, okay, that makes sense.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:22:23] Well, well, Tom, I think you do you degree that and this is probably true of the American Dietitians Association. It’s true of the Australian one that they see it very much in macronutrient terms and the carbohydrate is a carbohydrate. A fat is a fat. A protein is a protein. As long as you’re getting enough macronutrients, vitamin or nutritional deficiencies really are. There are only trace elements, there are only little stuff that doesn’t make much difference.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:22:54] Exactly right. 7
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:22:56] Yeah, go on.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:22:57] The main part the body is both biochemical yes and bioelectrical there’s there’s connected tissue meridians as you well know in in the in the body connecting and connecting each tooth to an organ system so there’s a very famous study done by University of Switzerland Thomas Rau? Have you heard of this one?
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:23:22] But remind our listener.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:23:23] Okay, this is a very important study because I was involved in the Truth About Cancer conference. And he did, it was a very small study, but he was a physician, an MD in Switzerland, called the Paracelsus Clinic, and he was dealing with women who had breast cancer. And on the ipsilateral side, same side, they had a meridian problem, and they had an infected second molar. 98% of them. It’s because there’s a voltage channel that runs from the second molar down to the breast. And if you look at, and so 90% of those women that Thomas Rao looked at and evaluated had breast cancer.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:24:08] And this is coming back to what we started the conversation about, that when people attend cancer clinics, when people are looking at complex health problems, the mouth is often completely ignored.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:24:25] Well, again, like I said, it’s because they don’t understand it. But like I said before, the nephrologist doesn’t know what the cardiologist is doing, doesn’t what the dentist is doing. It doesn’t with the oral surgeon is doing or has done. And now we see that it’s a time constraint issue, I think. And and possibly they just don’t understand the connection, you know, we tend to compartmentalise the human body, and that’s not the way God made it.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:24:54] But this bioelectrical issue, which is largely ignored completely, yeah, but it kind of brings us.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:25:05] Except for traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:25:09] Yes, that’s right.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:25:11] Go ahead. I’m sorry, I didn’t…
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:25:13] Which has actually stood the test of time over thousands of years. But that’s by the by. But dentistry throws up some interesting challenges to the bioelectrical system, doesn’t it? Because of its use of dissimilar metals in the mouth.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:25:30] Yeah, early on, I just thought, well, you know, what am I doing here? I mean, doing root canals, you just feel like I was, I felt what I was doing was unimportant, but then I found out it was dangerous. You know, and back in the day, you mentioned mercury and fluoride and things like that in dental school. They the instructors would tell the hygienist to polish the mercury fillings to make them look nice and shiny.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:25:56] It’s
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:25:56] because they didn’t figure that once they were intact into the tooth, there would be no destruction, no damage. But we all know that if you broke a thermometer and spilled it, you’d have to get a hazmat team out to clean up the toxic mercury. So I quit using mercury years ago and then I got into thinking, well, how is that affecting me? Because if I take out the mercury filling, which I started to do. I had to get training, and I got training at the Holistic Dental Association, and here’s something that your listeners need to know. If you’re looking for a biological dentist, they need to go to the AMA, they needed to go away from the AM A, and away from E E A, away from American Academy of Endodontics. They could go to I A B D M, and the H D A, this is all in the book too, the Holistice Association, the IABDM, and the IAOMT. Those are the organisations. And then the AFRM, because I was boarded in the American Academy of Anti-Ageing Medicine, which for me, brought it all together.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:27:05] Yeah. Now, the IAOMT, the what is that? The International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:27:13] Yeah.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:27:14] They talk and this is actually really an important point because removing this toxic material, mercury, has implications not just for the patient but considering the dentist is doing this all the time. It even has greater and staff has even greater implications for the staff. And I know the IAOMT has SMART protocols, safe mercury amalgam technique. What are some of the the Patients should be checking their dentists or what some of the things dentists should be doing
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:27:49] They need to look and see how many mercury fillings they have, first of all. And some people will have mercury fillers underneath their root canals. So you have to go to an IAOMT-trained dentist, and the SMART protocol is just kind of a catch-your-up type procedure that gets them caught up, but you need much further training. So you need to use vacuum pumps and specialty suctions and rubber dams, nasal hoods. Things I had, you know, facial masks, which is the only logical place to use a facial mask, otherwise they’re pretty lame. But the IAOMT has a good fundamental programme, like you said. The Holistic Dental Association has a lot of training, and the IABDM, which I was certified board and certified in, has also some good protocols. But you need to, I mean, the sin. We work in a… Dr. Ron, you know that we work in the most toxic profession on…
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:28:55] I do know that it’s sobering.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:28:57] And so if any young dentist out there or any patient who has a dentist who is going to be drilling out your mercury filling, think twice. Make sure you’re working with somebody who has been trained properly to do it.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:29:12] Hi, Dr. Ron here, and I want to invite you to join our Unstress Health community. Now like this podcast, it’s independent of industry and focuses on taking a holistic approach to human health and to the health of the planet. The two are inseparable. There are so many resources available with membership, including regular live Q and A’s on specific topics with special guests, including many with our amazing Unstress Health advisory panel. Now we’ve done hundreds of podcasts all worth listening to with some amazing experts on a wide range of topics. Many are world leaders, but with membership, we have our Unstress Lab podcast series where we take the best of several guests and carefully curate specific topics for episodes which are jam packed full of valuable insights. So join the Unstress Health community. If you’re watching this on our YouTube channel click on the link below or just visit unstresshealth.com to see what’s on offer and join now. I look forward to connecting with you. I saw, Tom, there was an article came out a few years ago. I’m sure you’ve seen it, too. And people can Google it. It’s called If You Look at the 47 Worst Jobs for Your Health. Did you see that study? It came in Business Insider 2020. But just Google it, 47 Worest Jobs for your Health. And it’s the US Department of Labour looking at 970 jobs in America. So you can imagine they cover quite a few jobs. And guess which come out and they use six criteria exposure to contaminants, microbes, radiation, being seated and these they don’t even factor in stress and dentistry dentistry of 974 jobs comes up in the one and two, one and two. Worst jobs for your health and that doesn’t even factor in mental stress.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:31:22] Which we both know is enormous.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:24] Enormous, enormous.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:31:25] I had a day where I had on my schedule, we had nine chairs and I have a day. I said, wait a minute, this is going to kill me. And I said instead of counting the patients, there was 83 patients.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:39] Oh my god.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:31:40] And I had a great staff. I mean, I had great staff, but it was just drill, fill, and bill. Throw a patient in a 10-minute slot when you’ve got eight other patients. And I went up to Melanie and I said, Melanie, if you don’t take some of these patients off the, you’re talking about stress. If you don t take some these patients out by schedule, I think I’m going to be done tomorrow. And she’s, oh, okay. And so she promptly removed some of the lesser patients. Not that they were unimportant, but just how much Damage can you take stress wise?
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:32:12] Well, you know, that’s such an interest. You and I are an exact contrast there, Tom, because from very early on in my career, I recognised that three and a half, four days was the max that I could do and long appointments was the only way I could it. So I would rarely see more than 12 patients a day. If I saw more than 15, that was just, that was terrible because it meant short appointments and I needed time to recover. To be focused, so that is a nightmare. Nine chairs, 83 patients, I mean, the fact that you’re still sitting here talking to me at this stage of your lifetime is the test. You changed your, but you changed from that. You didn’t continue to do that.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:33:00] And again, that was toward the end of my career, but I mean, imagine doing that for 30 to 40 years. And plus being exposed to all the toxic elements.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:33:10] Right, right, right. So, so let me get this straight. You, you up and you painted that picture of nine, nine chairs and all these patients. When did you stop doing that? I mean, you’ve been in practise, say, for 40 years.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:33:26] January, January, 2023.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:33:30] Now, isn’t that interesting, Tom, because we both retired from clinical practise at the same time. But up until then, you were running a practise with nine chairs and all those patients.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:33:43] And some days we had two doctors, but like you said, I’d work Monday through Thursday, and I took Friday off. But still, some days I’d come in on Friday to do some cleanup work and whatever else.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:33:56] Gee, Tom, that’s that’s mind-boggling to me. I now focus on dental practitioners and health practitioners, mental health, mental fitness training, I call it. Well, it’s a huge problem. I mean, we just saw a report in Australia from the Medical Association, which said between 65 and 75 percent of medical practitioners and medical students are facing burnout, which is characterised by disengagement, feeling ineffective and exhausted. So mental health of health practitioners is a major issue. But we digress, Tom, we digress. Let’s get back to, another thing that’s interesting to me is fluoride. And I know Robert F. Kennedy has put that on the agenda. And I think you would agree that if you went into a standard, into the dental associations meeting and said, I’m against fluoride, A dentist would look at you and think you were totally insane. This guy must be a complete nut. Fluoride is the best thing that’s ever happened. But I don’t agree with that. What do you think?
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:35:06] First of all, fluoride doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t really make the enamel, it makes the ename a little more brittle. But the same guy who was talking about the Wonder Bread, the biochemist, because I majored in biochemistry in college, I worked with him in my first year of dental school. And we did an experiment whereby we were, he retook this compound called durafat from England. It was a paint on fluoride. He painted it on, and this is back in the days school was on a quarterly basis, not a semester basis. So we were, and the quarter was nine weeks. And so we painted the fluoride with durafat on the tooth, measured it in the lab, and then measured the ion migration flow across the enamel matrix. And in nine weeks, how much fluoride, do you think, migrated into the tube?
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:36:00] Go on, tell me. Zero, holding up a zero there.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:36:04] Zero percent. So even if it did work and did anything besides cause modelling of enamel, it doesn’t do anything. But it’s very toxic because it isn’t just fluoride that they’re putting in the water, it’s hydrofluorosilicic acid. And it’s a toxic compound from the fertiliser industry in Florida. And so these government regulatory agencies are trying to put all of this garbage, and they sell it to get rid of it, and then it gets dumped in the water. Because why? Oh, because it helps your teeth get harder, and it doesn’t. It causes all kinds of, it messes, it screws up your stomach acid, for one thing, and it works on the pineal gland, it calcifies the pinea gland, it lowers intelligence, these have all been proven. Lowers intelligence, and it causes. mottling of enamel, which is a discoloration of enamels.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:37:03] I’d add one thing to that, Tom, because I did an interview with a professor of endocrinology in the School of Medicine here in Sydney, Professor Cresswell Eastman, many years ago, and he’s very focused on iodine deficiency and the effect of that on thyroid. And I posed the question to him because iodine and fluoride are in the same. Family of chemicals, elements, I said, does fluoride displace iodine from the thyroid gland? And he replied, yes, it does.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:37:46] It replaces the T4 and the T3 conversion in thyroid. So T4 has to be converted and iodine has to knocked off. There’s four iodines on a thyroid molecule and there’s three fluoride molecules on an active thyroid molecule. And the fluoride interferes with that. It takes the place of the iodine. On the molecule. So you’re absolutely right, it decreases thyroid, gland.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:38:20] And thyroid cancer has gone up, you know, several hundred percent in the last 20 or 30 years. Thankfully, it’s not generally a killer, but it has gone
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:38:31] Are you familiar with Life Extension magazine? No. You should be. All of your listeners should get on the bandwagon and get a copy of Life Extension Magazine. Life Extension is a very, very credible source. And what they’ve done is they did some studies on iodine, selenium, and vitamin D3. And if you’re low on vitamin D 3, selenium, or iodine. You have a much greater chance of getting cancer, cancer systemically, anywhere systemically. So, and most people’s iodine levels are just in the basement.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:39:11] I mean, Cresswell Eastman made made the point that it’s the biggest deficiency in the world. And I would and I would think only second to vitamin D. So you picked out some big ones there.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:39:23] Yeah, vitamin D is another issue.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:39:27] Um
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:39:28] Do you know who has the lowest percentage of vitamin D in the world? Iranian women.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:39:35] Yes, not surprisingly, not surprising.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:39:39] And they’re covered up all the time.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:39:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Incredible, incredible. Now, when we you mentioned root canals a few times, and and I think this is a very interesting topic. I mean, how does one because pain isn’t always associated with problems. How do you assess whether a tooth needs a root canal in inverted? I’m putting the needs in into averted commas.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:40:05] That’s a great question. CVCT scan x-ray.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:40:12] CBCT means 3D x-rays. 3D, yeah.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:40:18] But you can’t always visibly see them in a film. So you have to… Most people that I’ve worked on that have had osteocavitations or root canals or failed teeth, they know it somehow. They go, this is cracked or it’s pusy or something. So I think there’s very few teeth that I have in the past that I looked at. They couldn’t tell that they’re yeah, I think there’s something wrong or if there’s something wrong, then we refer them out for a CBCT scan and or probably, you know, people would have, they’ll have the option. I’m not saying you can’t ever do a root canal, but I wouldn’t personally. You can, but you need to, if you’re going to do a root can now, let’s say you have an anterior tooth here and you want to save it. You don’t want to, you don’t wanna take it out. What I do then is do an ozone procedure. Ozone ate the tooth because then you’re killing the bacteria. You’re killing the bugs and the viruses. So I would do that, you know, we had a series of, we had a panel of a series, of seven ozone treatments that we use where we just had an ozone generator and so it was metaphor grade ozone. We take it up in a syringe and then just inject it into the tooth.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:41:39] Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:41:42] But basically, it’s determined via X-ray. And I think I got pretty good at reading X-rays after and then doing so many of them.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:41:52] I mean, I think we, well, we clearly have contemporaries in our ages, more or less. And I think the use of 3D, this is a really important point for people listening to.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:42:06] Yes.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:42:07] The 3D X-rays have totally revolutionised our ability to diagnose disease in the mouth. Would you agree with that?
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:42:16] Yeah, because it’s three dimensional. Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. They take a while. You got to go to here. Here’s the thing. If you’re going to, you know, with your health to you need to work with functional doctors, functional physicians, functional dentists who are and get a team of, you know, physicians and doctors and nurse practitioners, et cetera, together. Because there’s a whole bunch more outside of dentistry, oral decay, et cetera. There’s hormone imbalances, and there’s stress, like you said. But basically, I would remove a tooth if it were infected.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:43:01] Well, yeah, I mean, addressing infection. I mean if you think the common denominator in all diseases, all diseases physical and mental is chronic inflammation and compromised immune function. I mean it’s a no brainer really, isn’t it?
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:43:17] Which produces a compound called nuclear factor kappa beta, NFKB, which blows up all of the inflammatory mediators. But no, I think you’re right. I think the 3D film gives you a whole new perspective. You can see, you know, you can take slices of the area and you can see if there’s something going on.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:43:40] Because I’m sure this has happened to you, Tom, that, you know, we grew up looking at 2D X-rays, you know the familiar X-Rays that we always looked at. And we might have looked at something and thought, gee, it’s not really very clear. I think we might just keep our eye on that. And then we along came 3D X rays. And suddenly, after 20 or 30 years of practise, we’re going, oh, my God, have I been ignoring that? That is shocking. Has that been your experience?
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:44:12] Yeah, but whenever we had something, you know, if somebody was suspicious about a tooth, we would just say, well, we can ozonate it. We can just run you through a series of ozones, and that kills all the viruses, kills the bugs, kills the bacteria, kills parasites, kills, you know, everything that’s bad. So then we re-etrate again, but then comes along 3D and you got to hone them.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:44:38] We’ve talked, we’ve talked a lot about infections and tooth decay and gum disease. And there was a WHO report, I might put the plug in here, a WHO report on oral health status globally and reported that three and a half billion people in the world suffer from oral diseases, which billion, billion, which which dwarfs all other diseases combined. And I actually think. I actually think three and a half billion is an underestimation, but shocking enough. Another aspect of
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:45:13] the world, half the population of the world.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:45:16] Yeah, yeah. And I think that has got to be more than that. It’s got to mean more than because half the population don’t go to the dentists. So that’s only 3.5 of half the population.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:45:28] And then as it goes, those people that go, go once every six months. Do you know how that came about? Six months on dental appointments? Gone. Back in the 1950s, there was this toothpaste company called Ipanna, Ipana Toothpaste. And Ipannatoothpaste had a mascot called Bucky Beaver. And Bucky Bieber said, brush your teeth after every meal, which is right. And visit your dentist twice a year. And that became the industry standard. So it’s based on nothing but Bucky Beaver. And the truth of it is, some people need to go every month. Some people need go once every five years. And I was trying to figure out, you know, how come the people that have great, you now, care and are looking forward to everything, looking at everything they can do to keep their mouth healthy, etc. And they’re total body healthy. And they still get dental decay. You have some guy comes in, he smokes, he drinks, he’s, you know, and he has nothing. That that always kind of that that sort of was a catapult catalyst to get me into into oral and oral holistic biological dentistry.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:46:47] Now you mentioned some should come every month and before we leave the infections for a moment, the people that should be coming more regularly is when they have periodontal pockets. Would you agree with that?
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:46:59] When you’re watching something, or if they’re coming in for ozone treatments, or coming in for PRP treatments, where they’re having major construction on the mandible or on the maxilla, which we saw a lot of patients. So like I said before, a lot what we did, my practise was orthodontics. We did early intervention orthodontics, functional orthodontics, which, we saw some Amazing results, Dr. Ron.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:47:28] What were some of the big, what were some of those changes that you saw by creating more space?
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:47:35] Facial changes. The mandible would come down the centre underneath the maxilla, tongue placement. Now they could place their tongue up in the maxila where it should be, in the palate area. Breathing improved, and decay issues improved, and facial issues improved and they felt better. They lifted up their spirits.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:48:03] I mean, sleep is another area that we’ve become very involved with in the last 15, 20 years.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:48:11] Say that again.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:48:13] I say sleep is the flow on, a better night’s sleep is the flow-on effect from breathing better. What’s your view of bruxism, clenching or grinding of teeth? What’s the problem there and what are some of the things we can do about it?
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:48:28] TMD stress and muscular issues. The best thing you can do is do functional orthodontics. By functional orthodox, I mean, you know, most people that did orthodonics would wait until, well, let’s wait until he’s done growing and then let’s fix his teeth and let’s extract four bicuspids. In fact, you what I’m saying is let’s just shove the mouth even further back and make it worse than it was. So let’s Why didn’t you do that? Whenever your orthopedist knows that you can, by pushing on bone, you can make it move. And so what we, but you can’t, in orthodontics today, some orthodotists are still saying, they’re still using the extraction of what I call four on the floor technique for poor body cuts for the extractions. And that just makes everything worse, crowds everything down. So you want to expand out the arch so you can get the tongue to fit up in the maxilla. So they can swallow better. So they can breathe better. And what was the other part of the question?
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:49:31] Bruxism.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:49:34] Bruxism is When your teeth don’t line up, I think that there’s muscular spasms that go on at night. And plus, like you said, added with stress, stress and then the depletion of hormones or the melatonin hormone in the pineal gland because they’re doing fluoride. All that stuff is working together to cause bruxism. But it’s usually a misplaced condyle, the condylar head. Which is in the side of your face. You know, the temporal mandibular joint is a very interesting joint. You know it’s the most complicated joint in your body because imagine if your knees were locked together and they moved both at the same time and they move down forward and back and upwards. That’s what the TM joint does. And so stress is a big cause of TMJ issues. And I think airway, lack of airway space. But the natural remedy, in my opinion, is to go to somebody who does, who’s been trained by the IAO, the International Association of Orthodontics, which I went through their programme twice. I was never board certified, but I went to their programme, twice. And I saw so many great positive results from children getting better and just having the self-confidence because they look better. So the TMD is related to all those things.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:51:10] I mean, I, I agree with you. I always would say that the reason for doing expand orthodontics that expanded your space, people mainly did it for the aesthetics, but I would argue the very, the main reason by a long way is airway.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:51:28] Yeah, right. And there’s lots of ways you can do it. You can start with small little appliances for kids. The time to do it is when they’re still growing. So from four, or say five-ish to 18. That’s when they’re in the male. You’re still growing. Well, you can go you have up to 21 for females. But I’ve even done it with with adult patients and it works phenomenally well and it doesn’t relapse if you do it slow enough and then you have to retain it.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:52:06] It’s interesting, Tom, I often would say that the best orthodontic appliance known to man, woman or child for retention is the tongue.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:52:17] Yeah, but you’re getting into place first, right?
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:52:20] Yeah, you’ve got to get tongue function right. Yeah. Now listen, you have thrown up so many things and we’ll, of course, have links to your book, Matters of the Mouth, but if you wanted to leave our listener with a couple of, you know, they’re thinking, wow, you know this oral health thing really is something I need to take a lot more seriously. What would be a couple of hints you would have for people to ensure that their oral health was optimal?
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:52:46] Well, I would say I’ve got a list in the book. It’s 10 ways to get rid of your dental issues. And the first thing is check, make sure you have no gingivitis. Get your teeth checked for periodontitis. Get the 3D scan, like you said. Get rid of you mercury fillings, but only with a dentist who does biological removal of dental. Silver fillings. And then look at your teeth, make sure that they’re straight. Even if you’re an adult, you can still fix them. But you have to retain it. You have to go into some kind of retention, which is not a big deal. And make sure you have no infections. Check your microbiome. Make sure that your pH is basic and instead of acidic. And there’s a list of to-do things in the book about list of 21 things to do, how to clean your teeth, use a side care, use our products, OxyMyst and Silicin, and use our toothpaste because our toothpaste boosts nitric oxide. There’s five ingredients in our toothpaste that boost nitric oxide, synthase. And that’s on PeriOralHealth.com.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:53:56] Well, Tom, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your knowledge and wisdom. Thank you.
Dr Thomas Lokensgard [00:54:01] Thank you Dr Ron
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:54:04] Well, it’s always interesting to connect with a contemporary, somebody who has been in practise for as long as I have been. We both have been in holistic dentistry for over 40 years. Clearly, our approach to it was very different. I mean, nine chairs, 80 patients a day. I mean that is just head spinning stuff for me. It’s not the way I ran my practise, but hey, this is the way Tom ran his. But the points that he makes are so important. And alerting you, a dear listener, to this important point. This will be, as I often say, of interest to anybody with a mouth who is interested in their health and has never fully connected the two because the connections are truly surprising and quite profound. Not just is dental decay and periodontal disease the two most common… Diseases in the world globally. I mean, you think mental health’s a big problem. Well, a billion people suffer from mental health problems. This is according to the WHO recent report in 2022. Cardiovascular disease, the biggest killer, 500 million people globally suffer from cardiovascular disease. Cancers not dissimilar, diabetes also very high there but three and a half billion people suffer from oral diseases of tooth decay and gum disease. And I would say, and it’s worth saying, that those diseases are connected to every one of the others. Cardiovascular disease, cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, and even mental health. Yes, even mental help. Because the common denominator. Chronic inflammation and a compromised immune function. And if you’ve got a chronic infection that you don’t know about, it is causing chronic inflammation in a compromised function. That requires a comprehensive oral exam, which, in my experience, always took when I initially saw a patient and when my practise, which I’m no longer associated with the Sydney Holistic Dental Centre’s new patient exam, would always take an hour. To do a comprehensive oral exam. And if there was a complex history, if you’ve had a lot of fillings or crowns or root canals done, then a 3D X-ray scan to assess the infections and the health of the bone and the teeth and the sinuses is all part of what a comprehensive oral exam is all about. And I thought it was also interesting that Tom said, some people need to come once every five years and some people needs to come every month. And if you have periodontal disease, meaning pockets, that you can’t get to the bottom of to clean on a daily basis, then seeing your hygienist or dentist every three or four months is absolutely vital because the research shows that after 12 to 16 weeks, the microbiome at the bottom of that pocket that you can’t to starts to become more pathogenic, meaning causing more diseases. Not just around the tooth, losing bone, but affecting all the other parts of the body. So the body is connected. It’s a big breakthrough in medicine. It’s happening, folks. Holistic is not some new age philosophy, just happens to be the way the body works, happens to the way that the planet works, and they are all connected. I hope this finds you well. Until next time, this is Dr. Ron Erlich. Be well. Feeling stressed, overwhelmed? It’s time to unstress your life. Join the unstressed health community and transform stress into strength. Build mental fitness from self-sabotage to self-mastery. And together, let’s not just survive, but thrive. Expert-led courses, curated podcasts, like-minded community and support and much more. Visit unstressedhealth.com. Podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences and conclusions.
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