Know Your Physio
Knowing your physiology, the very science that makes you who you are, is the best thing you can do to optimize your health, bolster your performance, look and feel your best, and enjoy a longer and more fulfilling lifespan. My dedication to this field derives from a selfish place born out of necessity before it became the bright, selfless passion I'm known for. It was through my health journey (mainly battling ADD and ten years of Adderall dependency plus related side effects) and love for the scientific method that I found my way. Eventually, with the right knowledge and mentorship, I stumbled upon an enhanced state of awareness between mind, body, and spirit where healthy intentions met actionable steps and lasting, positive lifestyle change. Today I call this "physiological intuition," and to me, it's a right that every human being deserves to thrive with, without having to battle themselves or pursue a degree to discover it. Every day I spend on this planet, I get to connect with world-leading experts on my podcast and learn more of the substance I wish I could have gotten my hands on earlier, for YOU to apply and enjoy total mind and body fitness, personal mastery, and self-actualization! The more you #KnowYourPhysio… Enjoy the show!
Know Your Physio
Dr. Dome Nischwitz: Mastering Oral Health – Beyond Brushing: Nutrients, Breathing, and Lifestyle Harmony
In this transformative episode, I have the privilege of hosting Dr. Dominik Nischwitz, a revolutionary figure in biological dentistry and holistic oral health. As Vice-president of the International Society for Metal Free Implantology (ISMI) and a renowned international speaker, Dr. Nischwitz, or Dr. Dome, advocates for a groundbreaking approach to dental care that prioritizes metal-free treatments. He is also the author of the bestselling book "It’s All In Your Mouth," and co-founder of the DNA Health and Aesthetics Center for Biological Dentistry in Tübingen, Germany.
Our discussion with Dr. Dome delves into the critical but often neglected aspect of oral health, challenging traditional dental practices and underscoring its importance in overall wellness. He integrates biological dentistry with functional medicine and holistic nutrition, offering innovative insights. Dr. Dome emphasizes the connection between dental health and systemic conditions, advocating nutrient-rich diets and holistic dental care to maintain robust oral health.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in a holistic approach to health, starting from oral care. Dr. Nischwitz's expertise provides invaluable insights into the relationship between oral health and overall well-being. His passion for educating both the public and professionals in the dental field shines through, as he discusses his mission to reshape the landscape of dental care globally. Join us in this enlightening conversation with Dr. Dome and learn how oral health is a gateway to your body's overall health.
Key Points From This Episode:
Why does tooth decay persist despite brushing and flossing? [00:00:00]
Ugly amalgam fillings and health [00:05:04]
What connects optimal health and dentistry? [00:04:23]
How does mouth structure indicate overall health? [00:12:40]
Why is body preparation crucial for dental procedures? [00:17:37]
Chronic inflammation and health [00:23:04]
Why isn't fluoride necessary for all in oral health? [00:29:19]
Evolution of human teeth [00:39:30]
How do nasal breathing and tongue posture impact oral health? [00:45:58]
Can mouth alignment enhance posture and athletic performance? [00:55:41]
What links mouth structure to body posture? [00:56:52]
Avoiding dental repair and drill [01:05:12]
Nutrients for teeth and bones [01:18:03]
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Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
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People
- Dr. Dominik Nischwitz (Dr. Dome)
Books and References
- It’s All In Your Mouth
Dr Dome Nischwitz: People think about when it comes to teeth is a toothbrush. Toothbrush is what we are buying into tooth brushing, flossing, and a chemical mouthwash. Do you think that makes sense when you know that 90% of all patients in the world have tooth decay? The introduction of processed foods made all the changes to our physiology. growing crooked, having no space for teeth, having tooth decay, gingivitis, periodontitis gum disease, mouth breathing. It's all an adaption of that epigenetic issue. So if you reverse that, you probably don't even need dental repair in the future. So I'm sure that my kids won't need that. I teach them and they know how to feed their bodies.
Andres Preschel: There is only one supplement that I think almost everyone on this planet should be taking and that's a full-spectrum and highly bioavailable magnesium supplement because, well, let's face it, ever since the industrial revolution, our soil has been depleted. of magnesium and therefore our food is depleted of magnesium and on top of that our modern environments which are inherently overstimulating and stressful are constantly depleting our body of magnesium and unlike other nutrients this is not something your body can produce on its own it literally needs to get it from the diet, and one individual kind of magnesium alone is not enough. You actually need seven different kinds to support over 300 biochemical reactions that help regulate your nervous system, red blood cell production, energy production, managing stress and emotions, etc. And so the folks at Bioptimizers have made it very easy and convenient to add back in what the modern world leaves out. They've created Magnesium Breakthrough. Now I've been taking this for the past two years and the biggest benefits that I've seen are related to my evening wind down sessions and my sleep. I tend to be pretty overactive in the evenings, just totally overthinking everything that I do. And this has helped me wind down and get more restorative, more efficient sleep. So I wake up feeling way more refreshed, more energized, more clear, more ready for the day. And the way that I see it, sleep is upstream of essentially every other health and wellness related habit and decision. Because if you're sleeping better, automatically you're going to have more regular cravings. You're going to have higher insulin sensitivity. You can derive more of all these inputs like fitness, right? You make more gains. You gain more muscle, you burn more calories, and you wake up feeling refreshed so that you can do it again and again and again. And then beyond the fitness, you have more energy to go for a walk, to do fun activities with friends. You are less stressed, so you can socialize anxiety-free. And you're also going to be retaining, refreshing, and refining your skills and information much, much better, so you won't forget any names. And, yeah, I mean, like I said, over 300 biochemical processes that you're supporting with magnesium. Then sleep, I mean, wow, better sleep is just a better life in general. So, I found that extremely helpful on a personal level and I'm sure that you guys will find it helpful too. Your mind and body and maybe even your spirit will thank you. So anyway, if you want to get a sweet little discount off of this amazing, amazing magnesium supplement from Bioptimizers, all you have to do is visit the show notes. So you scroll down right now, takes just a couple seconds and boom, you'll have access to all seven different kinds of magnesium that your body needs. All you have to do is hit the link and use code KYP for Know Your Physio. KYP. That's all. Enjoy 10 to 22% off depending on the package you choose, whether or not you subscribe. I'm obviously subscribed because I don't even want to think about whether or not I'm going to get this essential supplement in the mail. And yeah, hope you guys enjoy that awesome stuff. And that's all for now. I'll see you guys on the show. All right, you guys, we're back here on the NeuroPhysio podcast with Dr. Dome, world-leading biological dentist. We had him on the show a little while back, but we had some audio hiccups, but don't worry, it had nothing to do with our oral health. It was technology this time. Dr. Dome, welcome back to the show. Can't wait to dig into this amazing science with you.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Thank you so much for having me, Andres. It's my pleasure.
Andres Preschel: Awesome. And before we jump into all things anatomy, physiology of the mouth, how to improve your oral health, how everything starts, how your health and well-being starts in the mouth, can you take us through why you do what you do? Why have you taken this approach to dentistry? And by the way, for those who don't already know this, and just a reminder for you here, My mother is a dentist and I've spent my whole life thinking about the mouth a certain way, but you have been very swift in giving me a perspective that is quite unique here. So how did you inspire that perspective? How did you get into this field and why do you do what you do?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yeah, now I can say because I love it, but obviously this was a whole journey leading up to this moment. So I graduated from dentistry back in 2008 already. So it's quite a while ago. And I was always very good with the practical skills, with my hands, the mechanical side of things. And I loved it from the beginning. I wanted to become an oral surgeon right after university. And you have to do a, residency for about two years and i got lucky and had a really good job offer with a surgeon who taught me basically everything but he was also very old school when it came to just dental repair he would still place amalgam fillings American fillings are these silver blackish ones. And I personally couldn't stand the fact that I put something ugly in a face or in the mouth of my patients. I learned from university that it's a good material. It's subsidized by the insurance and it basically lasts forever. But I also knew from my dad, who was also a dentist like your mom, that it's somewhat unhealthy. Didn't learn it in university, but because I told my boss, no, I can't do it, I had to dig deeper. So this was one epiphany moment where the whole universe of functional medicine opened up for me because as soon as I looked into mercury fillings, I realized, oh wow, there's 50% mercury, there's detoxification, there's health optimization, there's biochemistry. And for me personally, I was already on the journey to optimize my own health for the whole dental school time, so about five years before, because I crashed early with my own health. And all the stuff I learned for me personally, bodybuilding, fitness, physio, supplements, nutrition, all these things finally made sense. So I got addicted to the concept of helping people getting really healthy, and at the same time, repairing them and making their teeth aesthetically pleasing. So this was the intro to all of it. But obviously, 15 years later, it's a full concept. It's called Optimal Health Starts in the Mouth, Biological Dentistry, the overlap of high-tech dentistry with functional medicine and health optimization slash biohacking. And our goal is obviously to help as many people as possible get to this information, and then help them reach optimal health by starting in the mouth.
Andres Preschel: Can you maybe put into perspective how that shift made sense to you and why it made so much sense to you? Because it seems like a lot of these doctors who want the best for their patients aren't open-minded enough to consider some of the things that you've considered in their health and well-being as a whole to support their oral health. So what made this shift for you? What made you realize, in fact, we have to be and take a more holistic perspective to support the well-being of overall health?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: First of all, I believe it was triggered by my own health issues or my own journey to optimal health that started at a very young age. And because of it, I had to find solutions on how to get me personally healthy. Because let's say 20 years ago, there was no Dr. Google, there was no YouTube, there was no functional medicine practitioner, there was just basic general medicine. And I basically crashed with depression, like hardcore one when I was 20 years old, in my early stages of university. And there was only two ways, like go downwards and don't make it or find a solution. So I did this parallel to university, just for me personally, digging into everything when it comes to nutrition, lifestyle, supplements, all these things. And I realized, oh, wow, I can help my body get healthy again. And especially when it comes to neuroscience and neurotransmitters, because this was where my snip was hanging. And obviously, I didn't connect it because conventional dentistry, what you learn in university, has not really something to do with health. It's just a repair business. It's all about drilling, filling, And building is what they always say. It's all about drill and fill. So it's about tooth decay, it's about bleeding gums, about periodontitis, how to repair a tooth decay, different materials that we can use in the mouth that work on a mechanical perspective. And maybe on top of that, aesthetic. So how can we make someone look good? Because teeth are obviously very much in the middle of your face. And you know, if you see someone missing a front tooth, you initially think, oh, there's something wrong with this guy. So there was a, it was a stretch, but actually For me, it started right after university when I realized, oh, wow, we're putting super toxic stuff in our patients. Because obviously that amalgam thing, the mercury filling, I told my boss I can't do it because it's not aesthetic. And I realized it's somewhat unhealthy. So I had to dig deeper. And I realized, oh, wow, as a dentist, we have to remove it from the mouth and then someone comes in and takes it away as highly toxic hazard material. And just logically thinking, I thought, how can I place something super toxic in the mouth of my patients, even though it may be subsidized by insurance and on top it's also ugly. So this got me thinking and obviously opened up more rabbit holes when it comes to neurological diseases. And I realized, oh, wow, The mouth is an extension of your brain. The teeth are tiny, teeny, tiny organs that are on that brain nerve number five. And whatever we do there to repair these teeth will affect not just the mouth, but your whole system. because the stuff is not lying on your tooth, it's actually in your body then. So if you have a mercury filling, it's not just mercury gas coming out, for example, or heavy metals, they also get transported through the big nerve and the dented tubules in the tooth, and then from there through the nerve and the lymph system and the blood into your whole body. And obviously I had to learn about the other health killers that might be lurking in your mouth, and I realized, oh wow, this repair business, doesn't really help patients get healthy. And you see it when you're there, you're like, Oh, wow, these people are really suffering. So I had that moral obligation by learning all the things to apply to find a new concept that would actually combine that fine skill that you need as a dentist and the aesthetics with optimal health, which is not a call, which is not correlated in university, but it's obviously for you or for anyone else, it should be logically that what you do in your mouth or in your body should be healthy, right? So I had to come up with a fully new system.
Andres Preschel: And so I have a two part question for you. How would you define optimal health and what is the experience like for the patients that you have in your office? you know, how does that compare to your average visit to the dentist in terms of, you know, let's say the healing in terms of what they're going to get, the benefits, you know, how they're going to feel. So how would you define optimal health and how do you cater to optimal health through your approach?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yes. So first of all, health is defined as absence of disease when it comes to general perspective of health. So on a scale from 1 to 10 in my scale, that's a zero. And optimal health means you move towards a 10 on that scale. That means all body functions work. Your cell doesn't really age, your metabolism works, your hormones work, you can sleep. You have good skin, you have lots of energy, you basically like a kid, no negative thoughts. Optimal health defines that your body is striving. That's the opposite of what most people out there do right now, but it's possible. And if you compare our clinic to a regular dental office, it's probably, you cannot compare it. It's so different. And it's more like, like I said before, when you come in, obviously we do the dental repair, but we only use biomaterial. And usually how it works is that patients need to apply to get a patient sending in their information. And we always plan the whole mouth This is not a one-by-one tooth repair system. We look at your panoramic x-ray and see, oh, there's a lot of dental repair been done. And we always ask three questions. And we can right away ask your audience here. First question is, had this patient metal in the mouth? Could be mercury-containing amalgam. Could be gold fillings. Could be a titanium implant. and this needs to go away. Second one is, yeah, stand up if you had a root canal and remain standing. If number three, have you ever had your wisdom teeth pulled? Because therefore I go with, we need no metals to get you healthy, no root canals to get you really healthy. And we address something that's called cavitations in the mouth. chronic silent inflammation that stem from previous extracted teeth. And the teeth that are most likely removed in the Western world are actually your wisdom teeth. Probably 80% of the audience had them removed. That's why when I ask these three questions on whatever stage, at the end, 90% of the audience will stand up. And even though they're already optimizing their health, the mouth is usually the most underrated or overlooked part of the body it's kind of like it's not the body yet but it's the entrance to the body so obviously we need to take care of the full picture and repair everything but in order to repair we prepare the patient We built them up so they really heal. Then when you hear we use all sorts of modalities when it comes to health optimization, like hyperbaric oxygen therapies, we run different IV protocols, even laser in your vein, infrared sauna, all the biohacking modalities and obviously extensive supplementation to make that body, yeah, anabolic and really put you in a healing state. So it's a total new concept and it's very charming because we do it all in one. It's basically a one week treatment, where we repair everything that you had previously done from a dentist, you go with All biomaterial and no more foreign stuff. You know what to do for the next three to six months. And this is why most patients actually fly in. There's not too many coming in from close by. They fly in from all over the world and because, yeah, I think it's because it's just a new idea and it's charming and it works. And it helps you to reach health, optimal health, super fast. Because, you know, most people have chronic health issues, sometimes see 29 different doctors and still can't figure it out, even though the lifestyle is on point, they sleep well, they have already everything, like on the Health Optimization Summit where we met each other. These people do everything, but they're still not superhuman. And this is when the mouse comes in.
Andres Preschel: The way that you're pushing this and the way that you see standard dentistry is that it's very invasive and they're creating a lot of damage in the mouth and as such a lot of damage in the body, a lot of damage in the brain. The way that you guide your customers, your clients, your patients is that you set the stage so that their body's prepared to handle this repair or procedure. But you do this in a way where they're in a parasympathetic state, their body is doing everything that it can to support that process. And I think if I'm recalling correctly from a previous conversation that we had, you were giving me the example of wisdom teeth removal, that you get people prepped with a certain diet, you know, with a certain lifestyle change. And by the time they get their wisdom teeth removed, I mean, the process to heal and recover and reduce that inflammation happens like over the course of a day rather than like a whole week. Right. So can you take us through what that what that looks like? Like when let's say I'm going in to get my wisdom teeth removed What am I doing to prepare for that? And how long does it take for me to recover from that?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yes, first of all, we will prepare you to make your body anabolic. So we have, we would probably ask you for a couple of blood work, mainly vitamin D3 blood work. So I need to have your vitamin D3 level above the norm. That means 60 nanograms or hundreds in nanograms per milliliter or above 175 for nanomole because vitamin D3 is just a crucial hormone. And then all my patients get access to my food design concept, Thinking Nutrients. They basically learn in a three-step process what to avoid. how to focus on the right nutrients so they're able to build, so they're not in hibernation mode, they're anabolic, not catabolic when they come in. And we can also individualize this by looking at their HRV and different modalities. So they do this for, depending where they're at right now, for you probably you could come in straight away because you're optimized. I could probably do a surgery for you next week." And that's the goal. But most people, let's say, average homo simpson needs four weeks preparation usually to come in or to get something surgery-wise done because otherwise he can't really heal. There's no turnover. So that's before. And then the surgery in itself is just one part of the healing process. We obviously doing everything as minimal invasive as possible. So for example, using not the old school drills, but working with piezo surgery, which is, it's an oscillating instrument that you cannot hurt any structure. Also the cuts in itself are very much important. You can, you really can do cuts without causing scar tissue. But obviously I'm an oral surgeon, so I learned how to do Traumatic surgery, huge cuts, as fast as possible because insurance only pays if it's fast. And therefore the tissue or the body never heals. So we use PRP, it's called PRF in dentistry, which we make out of your blood. It's intelligent biomaterial that we can place into the wounds. After the removal, we use a ton of ozone to disinfect and clean everything.
Andres Preschel: But I didn't place a platelet replacement.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: PRF stands for platelet-rich fibrin. We just draw blood and spin it and we can make membranes out of it. It's kind of like, I would say it's intelligent biomaterial that we put into, let's say, sockets around ceramic implants, in these cavitations after wisdom tooth extraction, because then the wound is already filled with a matrix that knows what to build there. And obviously the blood we take is already loaded because your body is anabolic, you're full of nutrients. Imagine a blood from someone who comes from the street not prepared versus the blood of you, which is like top notch. And my goal is obviously to have every single person always so healthy that you could do a emergency surgery on the next day and you're able to heal. That's the goal. Because there's a solid science how to build bone, how to build tissue. It's bodybuilding in itself, but it's also a couple of hormones, nutrients that you need. That's in the bone healing protocol that my patients all do. And then the surgery is minimal invasive. We run a couple of IVs before, after all the patients jump into the hyperbaric oxygen chamber as long as they're here, because that also boosts healing, builds angiogenesis, all the different modalities. And then the body is set for healing, but they also know what to do and how to eat and how to do their lifestyle for the next three to four months, because the bone growth is super slow. It takes at least four to six months to build solid bone. Obviously, the tissue is closed within a couple of days, but inside is when it really happens. And I don't want you to have a cavitation later on or something that didn't heal. So therefore, patients are at least in that phase of healing for six months, but we did a lot of research with our patients, and it seems like they stick to all the stuff they learn, even though their surgery is long gone. They still stay with it three years later, four years later, because they just realized, it's just good for me to optimize my health on a daily basis. In my opinion, that's the number one investment you should take. You only have one body. And the mouse shows you. If you have bad oral health, you have bad overall health. It's just as simple as that. You can see it at one glance.
Andres Preschel: Right, it's a very accessible way to reference what the rest of your health and lifestyle looks like. I have some more questions about that in a moment, but I just want to be clear about something. When you describe this anabolic effect, I think a lot of people tuning in are familiar with the word anabolic from a bodybuilding perspective. I think what you're trying to say here, just for the folks that may not have this clear, is that you are providing the best environment that's oriented for growth, that's suited for growth. You have all the nutrients. Your body's in a parasympathetic or in a relaxed state where it can orchestrate the process of growth and repair. Because if you're constantly and chronically stressed out, you're going to be actually highly catabolic. You're going to be breaking things down because the body feels like, well, it's under this stress, under this pressure. You know, a very common thing is like, you know, in physiology we speak about, you know, this gluconeogenesis. So you actually break down muscle and convert it to glucose when the body's stressed out and you're, you know, restricting carbohydrate. The point is, that's a tangent, but the point is anabolic, meaning oriented and suited for growth, repair and recovery.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Exactly. It's nothing to do with anabolic steroids. Anabolic just basically means your body can build tissue because it's in a healing mode. Relaxed. Perfect that you get the segue with the stress. All the oral triggers that are lurking in your mouth, metals, root canals, remove teeth. are a chronic silent inflammation, chronic infection, chronic stressor. And this is the bit that you cannot hack yourself around. It stresses you 24-7. You're used to it. Your body got used to it. Your body basically got… Lazy, when you will. Chronic stuff is lazy because it just turned down the volume. You probably don't even have any pain. That's the issue. It's not acute anymore. It's chronic and chronic inflammation is the foundation of chronic disease, which is the epidemic of the 21st century. That's what I mean. We all should become de-stressed. And this is by doing the lifestyle changes, the nutrition, the sleep optimization, the supplements, the sunlight, the grounding, all these things. And this is something you should start straight away. But then if you're still not superhuman, maybe these things in your mouth, hold you back. But on top of that, yes, we prepare the patients so that this repair phase is in a parasympathetic state or gets you there even faster and you will heal. Because usually if you go into a surgery, the concept is, we will perform the surgery, this is the medication you take, and this is the pain you have afterwards. That's it. Obviously, your body is in a shock and can't heal nothing because it's another stressor on top of it.
Andres Preschel: And this is an approach, just to make the point here, to get it clear, this is an approach that any and every doctor should take to support anything that they're gonna introduce to their patient's lives and health and well-being. I mean, anything a doctor does will be related, will affect your health and well-being, right? And if you can set the stage for your body to intelligently support you in that process of adopting the medicine or the intervention or the procedure, and then healing and recovering from that, you're going to have a better result. So like, yes, your niche is biological dentistry, but your approach is true to repair, recovery and healing in any modality. And it's true to anyone, whether they need a procedure or not. Just it's a real lifestyle change that allows your physiology to be its best, to be able to perform at its best.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yes. And this is the missing bit in whole medicine. I brought that into the dentistry part and in my niche in dentistry, so that people like now 10 years later, finally, even bigger companies start to implement vitamin D3 at least. So I needed the vitamin D3 approach with the bone healing protocol. to get heard on conventional dentistry congresses. Because at the beginning when I was talking about, hey, root canals could be dangerous and they're not healthy. There's better approaches. I would be attacked, like emotionally attacked. And I understand. I understand. It was too fast for them. I was too young, too early. And I understand that They needed to go, I needed to go slower. And luckily, in that field of surgery, I'm a ceramic, I'm one of the first ceramic implants specialists worldwide. And you have to see 99%, 99.7% of all dental implantologists only do titanium implants. And I'm one of the first to do ceramic implants. Implant is a tooth, a new tooth root if you have lost or extracted a whole tooth. Then usually you get a metal bit into your bone. I do ceramic for more than 10 years, having placed more than 5,000 to 6,000 pieces. And this is finally only this year being medically accepted. Now it's clear that a ceramic implant works because of all our studies. It's clear that it is a biomaterial. This is amazing for us because biomaterial means I'm implementing something in your body that is neutral to your body, whereas a titanium one is a foreign particle causing an ongoing chronic inflammation.
Andres Preschel: So now it's like, what is this? And it's creating an environment that's constantly trying to fight against the introduction of this foreign material.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: And especially in the world of EMF, it's insane to have metals in your body. But I'm just saying, this was what I needed to get hurt. And now 10 years later, General Dental Magazines asked me, can you write an article about nutrition for dentists and healing and what is the supplement protocol? Oh, that sounds interesting. So I can see there's a change coming, but it took 10 years. And luckily it's now changing because It's always, you know how it is, if you're a pioneer in something, you always have a couple of arrows in your back and you have to just go with it. But if you stay consistent, it changes. And I think that change is so necessary. And the thing is, for all the dentists that may be listening, You are at the forefront of helping people really optimize their health because you see it at a first glance. At a first glance, you can see everything in their teeth and their gums, what happens in the whole body. If you taught that way, you can still do your repair work, just more precise and more biomaterial wise. So it's just the next level. I'm not going against dentistry. It's just like, let's say, enhancing it or yeah, you know how it is. It's just evolution of everything.
Andres Preschel: Yeah, I was recently getting my teeth cleaned at my mom's place and I love my mom. My mom is an incredible dentist. She works with incredible professionals. Her patients absolutely love her. However, I was there and they were trying to get all this fluoride in my mouth and I was trying to tell them, I was like, look, I don't want the fluoride and I don't think I need the fluoride. And I've been using fluoride-free toothpaste for the past couple of years. And I was like, look, just before you try to push me to get the fluoride, why don't you look at my teeth first? They looked at my teeth, they were like, you have perfect teeth. They're clean, they're good, they're healthy. And then I was like, you see, I don't need to take fluoride. Why are you guys pushing fluoride? Can you take us through some of the evidence on fluoride? Is all fluoride made the same? Is the fluoride in our water and our tap water killing us? I mean, not that anyone should be drinking tap water to begin with, but a lot of the folks that are tuning in right now, they probably drink tap water. They probably have fluoride in their toothpaste. Why is this a problem?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: It's just another toxin that you put into your system that is not designed to be there. And let me tell you one thing, tooth decay is not a fluoride deficiency. It's mainly a depletion in your body. However, maybe I go twisted a little bit because why is everyone using fluoride? It's like you go to your mom and it's just general procedure to use fluoride. That's what we're taught in university. And I kind of get it because you have to see the average person is not you. You and me, we are in a super bubble. Like we are super healthy, we do everything for that. But most people drink their Coke, they eat their sugary stuff, they just live the normal Western lifestyle. So they're they're having tooth decay, they're having bleeding gums, they're having a lot of issues. So what a general dentist sees is this person. So the band-aid that was developed to help this fast is, okay, fluoride seems to work to make that teeth a little bit harder, that should be hard by nature, but they're not anymore. And flossing seems to work for interdental cavities. And mouthwash seems to help with bleeding gums. So it's a short, it's quick fix. Yeah, the mouthwash, there won't be a mouthwash too. Yeah, man, that's so bad. It's a quick fix. However, our goal should be, maybe you need a quick fix. But like you say, my teeth, your teeth, they're hard as stone. They're like granite. That's how nature has them designed. But obviously as the further we go away from nature and the more convenient we become, eating only soft foods, don't chewing anymore, eating the wrong stuff, the softer our teeth and our body get. And then we end up having a problem. So the thought process should be, okay, we need that maybe to disinfect real quick. maybe two weeks of an antibiotic mouthwash. I don't know if that's even necessary. I would never do that, but I get the point. But then at the same time, you should directly teach your patients how to live a lifestyle. Yeah. The only thing that your patients or your listeners, probably most people think about when it comes to teeth is a toothbrush. Yeah. Toothbrush is what we are buying into. Toothbrushing, flossing, and the chemical mouthwash will keep our teeth sound and safe for the rest of our life. Do you think that makes sense when you know that 90% of all patients in the world have tooth decay, even though we're getting better with professional cleaning and oral hygiene, so the oral hygiene theory doesn't add up? You can see that from Western price studies. that the introduction of processed foods made all the changes to our physiology, like growing crooked, having no space for teeth, having tooth decay, gingivitis, periodontitis, gum disease, mouth breathing, it's all an adaption of that epigenetic issue. So if we reverse that, we probably don't even need dental repair in the future. So I'm sure that my kids won't need that because they know how to, I teach them and they know how to feed their bodies. And then your teeth are hard as stone and everyone can reverse it. You can even reverse initial tooth decay. If it's super deep in a huge cavity, you probably can't, but at least if it's in the beginning, and this is how it should be approached. But there's a big industry, obviously, to change these things, it takes years. It's just normal that you do chemical mouthwash. Most people do that because they have a bad breath. There's this company with an L in the front. Everyone knows it. It's a blue bottle, L, I don't name the brand.
Andres Preschel: I'll say, does it rhyme with fisterine?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yes, exactly. And this stuff, look it up. It was initially designed to clean a floor in whatever, a hospital or whatever. So it's a floor cleaner. And why would you put a floor cleaner in your mouth? That's what it does. That's how it's designed. It wipes out all the bacteria. But your mouth is the entrance to your body, to your gut system. There's a huge ecosystem in there. It's called oral microbiome. You don't want to disinfect that on a daily basis. Even though you might need brushing and it's fine to brush your teeth, I don't say anything against it. I don't even floss. Like, I don't need it. I have perfect teeth. I have never had any tooth decay. My gums are solid. There's nothing sticking in between my teeth. So you see where they're coming from? And the shift needs to be, wow, I can take responsibility. I can change my lifestyle. And then I change the level of inflammation in my tissue, in my gums, in my teeth. There's even a study from Germany showing that only one month into a Paleolithic diet in comparison to the Western world diet, Germany and the US is the same when it comes to food, reduced a hundred percent the inflammation. So they even say, Oh, maybe nutrition is more important than oral hygiene. I think it's in the both. You need both, but definitely you don't need chemicals, not for the longterm.
Andres Preschel: Yeah, I mean, as you can imagine, I was a bit frustrated because I see these two really intelligent doctors in the office with me and they're taking me through a standard procedure and I'm questioning the standard procedure. I'm like, you know, who, like, they're like, oh no, but there's evidence that the fluoride works and that the mouthwash works. And I was like, okay, who are these studies being done on? the mass US population that eats crap all day. I don't do that. Why do you need to give me mouthwash or fluoride?" And they were kind of like, all right, we'll do it without mouthwash or fluoride. And it was fun and I'm not going to get frustrated at them. And I'm questioning them and I'm just asking these questions and I'm trying to probe at this idea that There should be a little more attention to the bio-individual. There should be a little more attention to the lifestyle. I think everyone or most people can benefit as a whole. Not to say that everyone has to be spending their hard-earned money on organic and grass-fed beef, but at least more whole foods, less processed foods, less sugar.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yes, anyway. So let me ask you this. Just one question. Ask me a question. If you or your kid, this is a question I get every single day. If you or your kid is suffering from tooth decay, you should do two things. Test your vitamin D3 level. and rule out gluten sensitivity. It's actually super simple. Usually it's one of each or both. And then you can see, oh wow, this kid has leaky gut because it's intolerant to grains and phytic acid and whatever, and it's all chelated out, all the minerals, and oh wow, the vitamin D3 is in a low range, therefore calcium and magnesium and all the minerals can't go into the tooth.
Andres Preschel: So that's why vitamin D3 is so important, because of the calcium-magnesium relationship.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: The science behind it is quite simple. So vitamin D3 is a hormone that we produce in direct sunlight. When we half naked on the equator, we get our vitamin D3 from the sun because we like two hours in the sun per day, you get about 20,000 IUs per day, even more. And therefore you're always in the optimal range. However, we decided to move away from the equator and we don't have, at least not where I live, we don't have sun all year round. And if you have vitamin D3 deficiency, What happens is that your body stores calcium or the calcium doesn't get really reabsorbed and it stays in the bloodstream. So vitamin D3 comes in with different enzymes to pull that calcium from the bloodstream and activates enzymes to bring it together with magnesium and vitamin K2 into the bone and into the teeth. So tooth decay is basically osteoporosis of the tooth. So osteoporosis is another thing that most patients in the Western world have. And the idea for osteoporosis in the medical world is to give you some sort of intravenous stuff to change the color on an x-ray. But bone building is possible until you die. It's just science. D3, K2, magnesium, minerals, protein, amino acids. It's the foundation of all healing. And D3 is critical because it activates it. It activates two enzymes, MGP and BGP osteocalcin. They do this. And there's a good study. For example, I broke my elbow twice within the last four years skateboarding. And the first time I went to the doctor, he was saying, ah, we need a surgery and you probably don't touch any weight for the next three months. And I told him, no. I know about bone healing science, I created a protocol. And for my patients, it will work, I tell you, I don't need a surgery. So within 10 days, he removed my cast and said, oh, wow, that's healing fast. And within six weeks, I was able to go back to fully normal training, because my body was just in that surplus and know how to heal and build. But the framing osteoporosis study shows, and it's only about protein, they broke, there's a huge cohort study with broken femur. And if the protein intake was below one gram per kilogram, so below 0.5 gram per pound per day, patients had sometimes a 30-day longer hospitalization because the turnover of the tissue was just not there. So just giving them one gram per kilogram, which is still very low on my side, which I find, push them over the edge. And I give my patients two gram per kilogram or one gram per pound ideal body weight to have the building blocks. You need amino acids, you need collagen, you need peptides, you need all these things to build. Without that, we don't even need to touch vitamin D3 because that's first. You need to be preparing and bodybuilders have that right.
Andres Preschel: Right. And just, you know, when you look at osteopenia and osteoporosis in the rest of the body, one of the approaches is obviously to start including more mechanical, to start loading up movements, you know, so mechanical loading, resistance training. And you can think about the mouth in a similar fashion in that, well, if you're eating foods that you actually have to chew, and you're going to build up the muscles, you're going to build up the bone. Is that the same? Does the theory work hand in hand with the rest of the body?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yes, that's 100% correct. You need mechanical load. And this is one thing why we degenerate. Our faces are way smaller and way more narrow than they were like 10,000 years ago. 10,000 years ago, We all had space for wisdom teeth and a lot of us had two wisdom teeth. So we had not 32, but 36 teeth. And because we chewed harder food, we probably just ripped it off of the bone, the steak and the meat and raw foods. And you see, you know it by yourself. If you eat raw foods or let's say a carrot, it naturally cleans off your teeth. Afterwards, there is no film on it. Whereas if you eat, let's say, cornflakes for breakfast, you will probably have a fur. Or if you drink sugary drinks, like a Coke. Is it fur? Yeah, like that. Yeah, you have that fur. The little film. And that's called the biofilm. And the biofilm is where all the bacteria will attach, eat, and then produce their houses on top. So, yes, nutrition is important. I don't have anything against carbohydrates. Don't get me wrong. I love carbs. And I'm a big fan of, let's say, level three of the food design concept is how to structure energy nutrients based on your autonomic nervous system. So with HIV, you know that there's three different types of bodies, usually like sympathetic person, parasympathetic person, and more like a balanced body type, more the mesomorph. And this is something I sometimes find a bit difficult when I listen to all the podcasts, that HRV seems to be correlated to a high HRV is super healthy for everyone. Not correct. You have to know your individual range and what you are naturally. So for me, for example, I'm a mesomorph, more like a balanced body type. That means my ideal HRV at nighttime, let's measure it with an aura or whoop ring, is around about 50. So if I go to 60, I'm still okay. If I go to 40, I'm still okay. If I drop to 20, I'm in the sympathetic state, I'm probably sick. If my parasympathetic kicks in and I go to an HRV of 90, I'm also not healthy.
Andres Preschel: That means my parasympathetic… So the subjectivity of HRV is linked to your body type?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yeah, yeah. You have a specific HRV rhythm individually. I don't know what yours is, but I see so many patients asking me, how can I get my HRV up? It's so low. And I don't say it's necessarily bad. So some people have an average HRV of 30. Super individual. If you're sympathetic dominant, you know body typing, like metamorph, ectomorph. Yes, you know that it's always a mixture. You're never a full meso, you're never a full endomorph. It's mostly a mix. A true one. The same is for the sympathetic and parasympathetic. It's more hypothesis of mine, but I've done that with thousands of patients. I'd say an ectomorph is more likely to be sympathetic dominant, whereas an endomorph is more tall, skinny, high metabolism, shredded, ripped, whatever. hard time, hard gainer often, hard time putting on muscle because of that high metabolism, where like in an adrenaline state, it's like, that's a warrior, that's a fighter. Whereas the parasympathetic dominant can drink water and eat one meal a day and still gain weight. You understand? They just have a different sympathetic, different parasympathetic. So. I understand now. I just wanted to say, if you're a parasympathetic dominant person, you maybe need to be careful with the carbohydrates, whereas a sympathetic dominant person needs a lot of carbohydrates because it's the yin for the yang. So you can choose energy nutrients in step three of my food design concept according to your individual autonomic nervous system type. Right. So if you're
Andres Preschel: parasympathetic dominant and you don't have the sympathetic influence that gets you to move your body and to use nutrients, then all of a sudden when you introduce food, it's gonna have a different influence when you compare it to someone that is sympathetic dominant, that's always moving around, using these nutrients and using them to survive and get by and do what they have to do. So, okay, I understand that now.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yes, for the parasympathetic, so my hypothesis is, it's just a hypothesis, but I believe that The hugest, the biggest pro bodybuilders are most likely parasympathetic dominant because they just need that little stimulus or like a heart stimulus. They eat all day, they can chill and relax and they just don't move too much all the time. And therefore they have the ability to just be more anabolic. Whereas me or like, I'm more like into, let's say I'm more ecto-meso than endo-meso for sure. I need to constantly fuel my body with carbs. I can go on a high-fat, low-carb diet, but it won't make me strive. It just makes me actually more adrenergic and more aggressive. And yeah, therefore I choose which one to use. Carbohydrates, there are good sources of carbohydrates and good sources of fats. That's in the food design concept. This is stuff that I teach my patient and I see that in a second. So it takes me five minutes to individualize everything. when they're on my chair because I want them to heal.
Andres Preschel: I've never heard of this concept in this link. It's very fascinating and I'd love to learn a little more, maybe help you derive more of these inferences based on HRV and body type. It's very, very interesting. And then as far as… The structure of the mouth, because we've spoken a lot about now of the oral hygiene and lifestyle and the association, but what about the actual structure of the mouth? What does that reveal about the way that we should live our lives? If you look at the anatomy and physiology of our mouth, what does it reveal about the way that we're designed to live?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: You mean in general, when you would have a perfect mouth?
Andres Preschel: So let me ask you, let me ask you a different way. So when you actually look at the structure of the mouth, when you look at facial features that are related to the mouth that tend to give, by the way, this impression of health and make us more attractive, what does that reveal about the way that we should be living our life?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yeah, I can just say that the mouth structure is changing. That's for sure. Yeah. So usually on a subconscious level, on a subconscious mind or level base, we will probably be attracted to wider jaws and because they are A wide jaw where we have space for all teeth, not crooked. This is how it was designed initially. So if you go to Africa, for example, where people still eat their ancestral diet, there is no crooked teeth. That's why obviously, subconsciously, everyone wants straight teeth and needs braces in the Western world. Why? Because we're designed to have straight teeth. We don't have spacing issues as a species. We have it now. It's normal. Like I would say 80% of all patients in the Western world have no space for their wisdom teeth. That's a degeneration. And the Western Prize showed it a hundred years ago by traveling to foreign aborigines or Swiss mountain people because they Yeah, they had that beautiful design. They had the perfect posture. There was no scoliosis. And that's the same. The face is getting more crooked. They're getting more narrow, crooked teeth, like spacing issues, and therefore more stuff. Like our teenagers nowadays still look the same as what Weston Price described 100 years ago, which was just an adaption to processed foods. So yes, I believe that we should be very, probably have wider faces. and definitely have straight teeth. And it shows in the aesthetic and in the vanity nowadays, but it is a sign of health. I think subconsciously that's why people are striving towards it. Because having crooked teeth, tooth decay, you cannot really clean the teeth anymore if they're like all over the place. is unhealthy, if that's what you mean.
Andres Preschel: Right. So if we're working backwards here, so then let's put it this way. If you have crooked teeth, then you're probably not eating the right foods. You're not breathing properly either. If you have bad breath, you're probably not living or eating properly either. You're probably, let's say, stressed out or maybe you're just not making the best decisions about what you should be eating and how you should be living. So, it's like if you look at the approach that most people take to oral health, they're attacking the surface level. They're not looking at a root cause. They're trying to appear to be healthy and spending thousands, tens of thousands of dollars sometimes to appear to be healthy, but in fact, you can pursue a healthy lifestyle that will naturally allow your body to intelligently orchestrate the functions that showcase optimal health. Like your body can do that under the right circumstances. So it's a combination of eating whole foods, it's a combination of breathing. So can we actually describe the breathing? What does optimal breathing look like? Because I know that that's one of the main reasons why people get bad breath and why they get these crooked teeth. So can you take us through the influence that nasal mouth breathing has on our oral anatomy and physiology?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yes. I just answered the one before real quick. My clinic is called DNA Health and Aesthetics because I believe that health comes first and aesthetics follows because that's how we are designed to be. So we can't go aesthetics and health. It's always coming. But to answer your question regarding, wait, the red line. So a lot of people are mouth breathers nowadays. We are designed to breathe through our noses. And we are learning this actually by getting breastfed. So when you're breastfed, you can only breathe through your nose. And while you're breastfeeding, you have to pull on the nipple and your whole jaw grows. It's an orthodontic treatment, so to speak. It grows your jawbone. And at the same time, breathing through your nose widens the upper jaw, the midface and the palate. So when people start or can breastfeed, I'm sorry about moms that can't do that, but if you can do that at least for 18 months, but afterwards is when the feeding comes in. So all the nutrients we're getting or not getting It's kind of like building a house. If you build a house and you're missing certain bricks, it will just collapse. And the same happens for your face. It just gets a little bit crooked. So if you're more narrow and then eating inflammatory foods, you also get inflammation in the tissue in your mouth, you get inflammation in your tonsils, you get inflammation in your nose. What happens? You naturally can't breathe well anymore because it's all swollen up. So what is your body doing? It adapts to mouth breathing. And then if you start mouth breathing, your tongue is at the right posture. It's not where it should be in the upper jaw, pushing. The tongue is basically another orthodontic instrument. It's usually pushing your upper jaw and making it wide. It goes to the lower jaw and the whole palate collapses because of the wrong tongue posture and that adaption to not being able to breathe through the nose. So if you want to retrain how to breathe, It's actually quite simple, but you have to do that on an ongoing basis. I can show that real quick.
Andres Preschel: It's not spending more time in foreplay, is it? It's not, no.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: You could, you could do that and use myobrase. Yeah, yeah, why not? Retrain your mouth. You have to train, you actually have to train your tongue to go up to that, there are these tiny ridges right behind your incisors, you know? If you touch your tongue to the palate, it's kind of like, yes, you feel that little ridges or like, what do you want to say, call it like little wrinkles little wrinkles yeah this is where your tongue is supposed to be so when you go to sleep at night what you do you just put your tongue there here and suck on it and then you and you have to you hear that sound the louder the better and then over time that tongue muscle gets strong again and doesn't flap around like this, because that happens if you start to become a mouth breather like this. It should be up there. So that's the training for it. At the beginning, it will really hurt down there. Do that 40 times before you go to bed. And then put that tongue here. close your mouth and breathe through your nose while pushing the tongue up there. Do that for a couple of days and trust me, your body will relearn it. It's possible.
Andres Preschel: It feels like, I'm not, I'm not even kidding here. I can tell just doing that exercise that it's similar to like sucking on a nipple, like as a baby.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yes, that's what it does.
Andres Preschel: Yeah. You know, it's like nasal breathing and like sucking back.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Exactly. And therefore, so your tongue is so strong. You cannot imagine if it's, if it pushes the wrong side, it changes everything.
Andres Preschel: So this is the number one per unit of like mass. Isn't it the strongest muscle in the body? If you actually look at this proportionally.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: I have, I have something like that in my mind too, that it's super strong, but one of the strongest muscle per size is definitely this one called the masseter. The masseter under stress, I can, I think if you like in a stress environment, I don't know when they did the studies, like in a torture environment, you can even bite a whole arm. Like I think you can go up to, I don't know in English, but it's the force you can produce with your jaw is insane in a stress environment. It's really insane. This joint, by the way, it's called TMJ, temporomandibular joint, is one of the most important joints in the whole body, also aligning your whole body posture. So this one is the first reflex you do when you come to Earth. You basically do this and rip up, open everything, activating your whole brain, because 50% of all nerves go into the brain from here. and also blood flow comes out of it so it's a huge detoxification area and also helping you bring blood and therefore neurotransmitters and everything into the brain so just the bite is so important in your body how you bite just a loss of one as it looks good just the loss of one millimeter bite height leads to 50 percent of less blood flow to the brain, making you age faster. So imagine all the people that had a lot of grinding done, lost a lot of feelings, their whole posture will be like this now. And they have all that tension here. And this is a vagal nerve point. So then they get shoulder neck, then they get impingement, but it's all in the mouth maybe. The tiny neck flexors, C1 to C4 are directly connected to all your teeth, your tonsils. So if any stressor in your mouth, you might be like this all day long and you don't even know why it's coming. It's from the mouth maybe.
Andres Preschel: So it's all connected. Want to get your take on this because you mentioned posture. I had a chance to meet a Dentist somewhere in the Keys in the Florida Keys. He was at a farmer's market actually and he was producing these like Like almost like a retainer but like you you bite on it and it fixes and aligns your mouth Eliza Yeah, it's like you put this on and all of a sudden your Your posture improves like how does that does it actually work?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yes, well, for you, because it's the Know Your Physio podcast, what you can do as a simple test for every single person that you work with, you just use two cotton balls, and you put it in between your, so what you do is you let that person stand up straight, eyes closed, and then you push him. Yeah, and then he will probably wobble around and fall. Then you put the cotton balls in between, and let him bite on the cotton balls. Wait for 30 seconds. Do it again. He will be super stable. Because this is the alignment for the whole body posture. There's so many nerves, you have to look it up. Look into posterology. It's insane how connected this muscle, the fascia, the eye, all that with you is up until your feet, like all the reflexes. And this is like a thermostat for your whole body posture. do that one or what you also can do like put the cotton balls and do a hip twist before like look how how much rotation you have in your hips Without that, just normal bite, then put the cotton balls, do it again. I guarantee you most people 20% more, because there's always some sort of stressor in the mouth.
Andres Preschel: I'm gonna run, I'm gonna get my best friends and I'm gonna run a double blind placebo controlled study. I'm not even kidding. I'll do one intervention first, the other intervention next. Try it, try it. I'll go totally randomized. That's very interesting. Uh, yeah, he was I was I was uh asking him, you know Typically, what are the people that can see the greatest benefits and he was telling me that athletes because they're so uh conscious of the way that their posture and their stance influences their sport, for example, he watched a lot of like ufc fighters And he told me that they've seen some tremendous benefits because the alignment that's Because he told me he's like if you don't get the alignment here correctly, then the whole body's gonna compensate You know, you get a small compensation in your neck and then a small compensation in your torso and then a small compensation in your hips and then in your feet. And like, if you're constantly compensating, you're going to have tightness here, you're going to have loosen there, you're going to have poor posture. And it made sense theoretically, I just don't know the overall efficacy of what it looks like.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: No, no, this is 100% true. So I think there is a, I wrote an article for Ben, our common friend, Ben Greenfield, at one point for his website. And there is this reflex, it's called the, the labyrinth reflex from your eyes. So your eyes are basically designed to look parallel to the floor to your horizon. And then this will be parallel, hips will be parallel and so on. But if there's a tiny shift just in your jaw, your eye will do a little bit like this, maybe this muscle is a little bit stressed, you understand? And therefore everything collapses and you have one centimeter longer leg or shorter leg. But the issue is not in the leg, it's in the tissue, but it's maybe in your mouth. So that's important. In sports dentistry, we use this. So you could design splints to make someone that has a bite issue more solid, stable. You will initially see it in the squat or in the whatever, rack pull or deadlift. They get just stronger because they're more stable, grounded. But you can also use that technique and design a splint that has a specific information that makes you more aggressive. Therefore, you get more sympathetic, better for the fight. It's possible. And they do that. It's insane. Yeah. It's possible. It's called a, in English, wait one second, let me translate. It's called a performance splint. If you implement performance ideas, you wouldn't want to wear that every day all day long. But for example, if you're in a contest or Let's say you go to Olympic discipline, you need to be in that mode. You need to be on adrenaline, on the edge. Like every single little bit will help. That's a performance splint. I just translated it. I don't know if it's the same word in English, but. Yeah, yeah, no, it makes sense. Yeah, and the usual splint is more for the alignment. So it's really great.
Andres Preschel: And so with that being said, is it stressful? How stressful is it to have our mouth clenched throughout the day?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: No, if you bite a solid and fine, it's fine. Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't, usually you shouldn't clench all day long because that seems to be like some sort of a compensatory mechanism, more like a stress. It's probably stress related. Because usually if you're on, if you're relaxed, you have your tongue up there and your low jaw is always hanging. It's never touching. So if you're in that mode.
Andres Preschel: That's how we should be at rest. Our teeth should be separated.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: When you rest, when you rest, it's what I told you before. It's like you have that tongue up there. And you close your lips, but your lower jaw never touches the upper jaw. It's hanging. It's in like the joint is in the middle of the capsule, so it has all the room. As soon as you clench, you get aggressive because you activate a sympathetic nervous system. That's what they use for performance. Clenching is aggression. It makes you, yeah, it makes adrenaline, produces adrenaline basically. If you do that all day long, it's really stressful for your adrenals. But on the other way, a lot of people clench or press or brooks or like grind because they're stressed. It's also a relief system. So you have to go both ways. You don't want to be in a parasympathetic state all day long. You don't want to be in a sympathetic. The balance, the key is in the balance. Your body needs to be able to flip from one second to the other, from sympathetic to parasympathetic, if needed. So if I'm doing surgery, I'm 100% sure I'm somewhat in a sympathetic state, even though I don't feel it. For me, I'm just focused. I'm in flow. I'm sure if you measure it, it's sympathetic. As soon as I'm out of that surgery, I'm relaxed. That's just normal. I think you need both. And you know what? If you're too parasympathetic, you get toxic vagal syndrome. You can't heal anymore. If you're too sympathetic, it's the same. Therefore, we need to balance it. So it's not correct to tell patients you need an HIV of 120. It's just not correct.
Andres Preschel: Right. Yeah, you have to have a good autonomic nervous system control and so you should be able to go from one to the other based on what you need to meet the needs of your environment or to relax or just to have a good quality of life and to be effective in any of your decision making.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yes, and if you bring it back to oral health, if you already had optimized everything the way it's supposed to be, but you're still in that clenching, you're still in that stress, you're still under adrenaline, yes, you might have a metal in your mouth, a root canal, cavitation. That's the information you need to know for now that you finally look into this bit, because I guarantee you most of your listeners have at least one of the three health killers and they don't even know about it. That's the issue. That's what we need to spread. Spread optimal health starts in the mouth.
Andres Preschel: And let me ask you a specific question to me. My girlfriend will often make fun of me for biting down very hard on food. She makes fun of me specifically when I'm eating bananas. She can actually hear me eating bananas. She apparently, she'll take her time. You can't hear anything happening in her mouth when she's eating a banana. But in my case, you can hear the You can hear that happening. Is that unhealthy? What's happening there?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Am I overdoing it? I think the strong bite is not unhealthy. I think it's a sign of good health in your oral jaw because it's a strong muscle. You're just chewing right. Even though the banana is a mushy thing, it's still important to chew your food. You actually should even chew your drink, you know? Like, chew your food will activate your digestion, it will activate these muscles, it will activate your nervous system, it activates your saliva production. So, that's a part of your digestion. It's maybe also because you're a man and just have more muscle there and a good… For what I can see, you have a solid bite. Maybe she doesn't have that good bite. It looks really solid.
Andres Preschel: Maybe I spent more time breastfeeding than she did.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Maybe. Ask your mom. So ideally… If you can, dear mom out there, 18 months is the minimum. We perfect. I know that some of you can, but I know there's also that misconception that you should stop breastfeeding with six months. Not correct. Make yourself healthy first, prepare yourself for pregnancy. During pregnancy, build your body. It's really important during that time. And then you're in a surplus and you can nurture everything. And usually then it works. If not, I'm sorry about that. But if you can, that's the best thing for your baby. And yourself produces a ton of oxytocin. So all my four babies or four kids. So my wife breastfed every single one. Luckily she was lucky. All my kids were lucky. I think she, the last one, she even breastfed for two and a half years or something. And then the fourth baby came. So. Wow.
Andres Preschel: Well, I'm very happy to hear that you have a help, a happy, healthy family and you guys all probably have the most amazing jawlines.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Let's see. At least, I don't know what happens because I had two sets of braces and it didn't work. My wife had braces, so we both are degenerated. So obviously, my wife was able to breastfeed, she had a nice pregnancy, we had supported her before even, optimized her health, and my sons are eating good food. And for now, They look, it looks like it works, but it could jump a generations. That's just our meaning. But I think it's in the compound effect. So if we build that better way for the kids now, at least their kids will have it. Don't need orthodontics because I'm sure you can reverse it within two generations.
Andres Preschel: Maybe even more. And do you think that the approach and the lifestyle that you stand for, it will eventually be so successful that people can ultimately like totally avoid going to the dentist unless it's an emergency?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yes.
Andres Preschel: Is that your dream? Is that what you want?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: My dream is, it's hard to say, but obviously right now we have to repair a lot because dental repair was bad the last years. It's like so much to repair. But in my, like, if I could make a wish, then that we don't need dental repair because it's not needed. It's just not needed. It is needed now, but in the real, in the natural life, Your body is designed to have perfect teeth. They are really designed perfectly. Hard as stone. All these things have space. They're in the center of your face. All is nice. But even in university, we learn the worst thing that you can do for a tooth is using the drill. So initially, it's called the dental career. You've started drilling, and that tooth is basically doomed for life. So if you can avoid the drilling, by any means possible, because you learned how to feed your kids before even pregnancy, then you're probably going to be solid. But it's 90% of all patients in this world having tooth decay. So that's more like billions of people we're talking right now. But yes, that would be the wish.
Andres Preschel: And you have a series of skateboards behind you. Is this a metaphor of some kind? Why is it that so many dentists love to do road cycling and all these activities where we know that the incidence of breaking teeth is pretty high?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: No, I just was as a teenager, I wanted to become a professional skater. And I don't know if you're familiar with skating, it's more, it was more like a lifestyle. And they say, once a skater, always a skater. So I'm still just interested in it. Still skateboard, not this year, but still love it. It's just in my, it's just in my genes. So and for me, this is just art pieces.
Andres Preschel: Nice, beautiful. And then let's maybe give our listeners some good action items as far as what they can start doing at home to start taking better care of their oral health. So let's say when it comes to toothpaste, what should they be looking for? What should they be avoiding when it comes to toothpaste and mouthwash?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yes, so I'll go through this real quick, but you can also on my Instagram go in the tab in the bio in the link. And there's a link where you can get the PDF of my Bulletproof oral hygiene regimen or oral health care regimen for free. Just go there. But There's on that document you will find what to avoid in toothpaste because I don't recommend any specific brand. I don't know them. So fluoride free, yes. and then work on your lifestyle to be covered. Then no trickless Zen, no SLS, no sodium lauryl sulfate, ideally not sucralose or any sugar in it. Why would you do that? And ideally you go as natural as possible, maybe on a coconut oil base. And instead of fluoride, you can use hydroxyl apatite, which is the natural form of tooth, not the fluoride, it's the apatite. And maybe that's it. You can even DIY your toothpaste. So that would be number one, go toxin-free toothpaste. Think, would I eat that stuff? Then yes, if not, don't do it. Number two, chemical mouthwashes. Avoid. They are designed to clean your floor. Maybe there are some medical ones that a dentist will prescribe because you have certain germs that are diagnosed and you need it as a short-term, two-week installment. Yes. But don't do the L1 and all the things for the next years because of bad breath. Use coconut oil pulling instead. That's an ancient Ayurvedic strategy. How does that work? What actually happens there? It couldn't be more simple. You just have to do it. You basically take a tablespoon, a big spoon or teaspoon, doesn't even matter, of extra virgin coconut oil, put it in your mouth and swish it around for five minutes at least to 15 minutes. And what it does, coconut oil in itself contains a few different fatty acids that are antibacterial and antiviral. So it kills off the bad bacteria, also binds toxins and it soothes your gums and helps with the saliva and also builds a nice film on your teeth. So it's just overall good. You cannot do anything wrong with it. And it helps with bad breath. And number three, is a tongue scraper. If you've never heard of this, it's also an ayurvedic strategy. Usually a tongue scraper is made of plastic, but I would recommend getting a copper tongue scraper because copper is antibacterial. And what you do is just basically scrape the tongue ground, like where it's coming out of your throat, And for the first couple of days when you do it, there's really a film coming off, like white stuff. But if you do it like myself on a daily basis, it takes about five to 10 seconds. You just have to do it consistently. Your tongue will be clean. There's nothing coming off. But overnight, there's food, there's bacteria, there's viruses, whatever lives in your mouth gets stuck there. So bad breath against good against bad breath and obviously cleaning, just a good strategy.
Andres Preschel: And what do you think about the immune system? What do you think about like mouth taping before bed just to sort of guarantee the nasal breathing? Because I know a lot of people are waking up with very bad breath, very dry mouths, and it's just evidence that they're mouth breathing because they're probably living their life in a chronically stressed state and compensating for it through this emergency response. So are you a fan of the mouth taping?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: The mouth taping can be, I think it can be initially helpful, just to get back to the habit of closing your mouth. But at the same time, do the trick I told you before. Put that tongue on that wrinkles and suck on it 30 times to really get that tension and breathe. Maybe do a box breathing while doing this for first four minutes and then you fall asleep. And if you then do mouth taping with it, perfect. It's a good one.
Andres Preschel: So it's a good exercise because it also will improve the neuromuscular engagement and recruitment of those muscle fibers. And you should train the tongue to naturally do this on its own through more engagement. Because as you described, a lot of these mouth breathers, they have a totally like loose and disengaged tongue. So it's like literally like training any other muscle in the body. Yeah.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: It's all in the reps.
Andres Preschel: That's incredible.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: And also everything, everything is in the, the key is always consistency. You just have to make a habit out of it, get consistent, and you will have lots of benefits. And everything I described for you right now is for free.
Andres Preschel: Yeah. All right, and let's say you had the chance to put a message, a phrase, a word on a billboard for two parts. One is for the dentists that are listening to the show right now. What do you have to say to every dentist? What would the billboard say and where would you put it? And then for the average person tuning in that is not a dentist but wants to get, you know, wants to improve their oral health, what would you say to them? What would you put on the billboard?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: So for the dentist, I would probably say, guys, it's time to go to the next level. We're doing the same thing for a hundred years and we don't get the results we want. We don't need dental repair, or if we do, we can do that more biocompatible. Optimal health starts in the mouth. Here's the concept. Here's where to call. And then you learn this. I don't know where I put it, like everywhere. because I'm not in the US, but somewhere where people can read it. On the moon. On the moon. And the other one for the patients, I would probably say optimal health starts in the mouth and this is the most underrated part or overlooked part in your body. Ask yourself three questions. Have you had metals in your mouth? Root canals? Did they remove your wisdom teeth? And if any of the answers is a yes, it's time to find a biological dentist that I've just trained to optimize you to go to the next level.
Andres Preschel: And where can people find you if they want to learn more, if they want to do a procedure with you or anything like that?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: The easiest is actually Instagram, because on Instagram you not just find my health journal, daily reels and ideas, but also there's a link, the tab bio, which leads you directly to my clinic, which is the DNA Health and Aesthetics Center for Biological Dentistry in Tübingen, Germany. It also leads you to my YouTube channel and tons of different podcasts and my book. So it's all in there at one place. It's super simple. And yeah. Make sure to share the content and like it because that's how we all help this mission. It's not for me a mission. I'm here to help you guys to change something big time.
Andres Preschel: You're a pioneer. Like I said earlier, you're paving the way for any and every doctor and health specialist to support their patients and their clients with the journey of healing by helping them uncover the lifestyle that gets them back to their roots, the lifestyle that we're designed to live to achieve our best aesthetic.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yes. That's just the aesthetics is just a side effect of it. Like you probably too. We do that lifestyle. I always have a six pack. You too. It's just normal. It's just in the habit. But it is an investment. It's like everything you do when it comes to investing, you want to have a dividend or And you don't want to lose money in the first place, so you don't want to lose health in the first place. So start with not losing health and then invest in little tiny increments and baby steps. Learn from this podcast, learn from other people. There is a solid strategy on how to optimize your health. It's all out there. And I'm just bringing in the niche of oral health, which is the same thing as all the other health experts talk about. I'm just putting this one more into perspective. But what we do is the same. We change the lifestyle. We don't eat the crab foods. We do the supplements. We do the grounding, the earthing. We optimize the sleep. We go as much as possible in nature. But you will know now that you have to address oral health at one point because it might be the trigger holding you back from optimal health.
Andres Preschel: If I can ask you one more question, what's one thing that you started doing recently that has given you some major health improvement? Whether it's oral or not, because I know that you're always trying new things.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: For me personally, health improvement recently.
Andres Preschel: Whether it's a peptide or a habit or a biohacker.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: The thing is, I'm doing so many things always because I'm always experimenting, trying new things. So peptides, definitely love them. There's a couple of them. I probably, I didn't try everything, but a lot of them. I find the beauty is in the simplicity. And whenever I'm on a specific diet that really feeds my needs, that's the biggest lever for me. If I just be prepared, if I have my food with me and stay consistent, even though it sounds super boring, but I think that's the 80%. And then obviously tiny little bits, like if I would start new, one big thing is always EMF, like at least put your phone in airplane mode and switch off that wifi when you're sleeping. What is this? And get something like this shows you.
Andres Preschel: I got a little EMF pendant. I'm standing on a grounding mat and I have all these like new stickers on my laptop that are, uh, by, um, by Vita chip that are helping with EMF.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: And you know guys that, yeah, of course, and you know, guys, I have a company for, for supplements for even longer than I have my own clinic. So obviously I'm a nerd when it comes to nutrients and nutrition. So this is something I'm always interested in. So I test new supplements on a daily basis. I get them sent. So there's always new compounds I'm fascinated with. And yeah. Is there a particular, my company?
Andres Preschel: Is there a particular supplement or a series of them that you found can help just about anybody improve their teeth, the whiteness of their teeth, the strength of their teeth?
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yes, actually, this is one thing that we should have touched on. We touched brushing, which is important, and what most people think about teeth, and we touched maybe the coconut oil pulling tongue scraper. What no one thinks about is nutrients when it comes to teeth, but your teeth are like plants. So, they need nurturing too. And we touched D3, K2, Magnesium, Boron would be one of them, crucial B vitamins. And I have designed a product years ago, I think 10 years ago by now almost, it's actually called Bone and Teeth. And this should be the one-stop-shop supplement that most of people can do just to supplement their teeth and bones to stay strong. on top of their ongoing optimal health. So it's actually called Bone & Teeth, company is Substnutrition, S-U-P-Z, if you're interested in it. So that would be a one-stop shop thing that works for hair and nail, teeth, recovery, testosterone, it's all the same. But just to spark your mind, teeth on oral hygiene is fine, but it's not what gets them healthy. It's coming from within. So putting a supplement in there is a good strategy.
Andres Preschel: Well, Dr. Dunn, it's been an honor.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Should I send you a bone and teeth for you?
Andres Preschel: Send me some. Yeah, definitely. I've been using a bamboo brush. Like you said, a combination. I have an electric toothbrush that really helps me polish things up and then I have a bamboo and I'll transition. I'll do one or the other. I'm going to start the oil pulling back up though. I definitely want to get more of that going.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yes, and the brush, ideally it's a soft brush. Don't use the hard brushes because they file off your enamel. Bamboo brushes are usually soft. Good one, good one. Yeah, coconut oil pulling, make it a habit. Tongue scraper, make it a habit. You just have to, when it comes to coconut oil pulling, you just have to find the net time in your day when you don't do anything and you just do it at the same time. I personally do it when I make breakfast. Because I don't do anything with it, so I can just coconut oil pull up. But I have clients that drive to work, do coconut oil pulling. 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes even, because they just love it. So just find the time when you would do it. It doesn't matter if it's in the evening, it doesn't matter if it's in the morning, just do it. It's so simple and it will help a lot. And especially in wintertime when all people are getting sick all the time, it helps so much just to… Yeah, if your throat is already sore and it's itching and you think, oh no, I'm coming down with a cold, do the coconut oil pulling, it helps for sure. Get rid of that bacteria, of the bad ones.
Andres Preschel: Amazing. Well, it's been an honor and a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us today, man.
Dr Dome Nischwitz: Yeah, thank you for having me. Yeah.
Andres Preschel: All right, we'll see you at the next one. So that's all for today's show. Thank you so much for tuning in today. For all of the show notes, including clickable links to anything and everything that we discussed today, everything from discount codes to videos, to research articles, books, tips, tricks, techniques, and of course, to learn more about the guest on today's episode, all you have to do is head to my website on dresspershell.com. That's A-N-D-R-S-H-E-L-L. E-S-P-R-E-S-C-H-E-L.com and go to podcasts. You can also leave your feedback, questions, and suggestions for future episodes, future guests, so on and so forth. Thanks again for tuning in and I'll see you on the next one. Have a lovely rest of your day.