Meliors Simms (The Tooth Fairy): Transforming Dental Anxiety into Empowered Healing

Discover the secrets to a healthy smile with Meliors Simms, the Holistic Tooth Fairy, as she shares her revolutionary approach to dental care that merges physical and metaphysical healing.
This episode promises to reveal how your body has the innate power to remineralise enamel, regrow bone, and regenerate tissue, all while exploring the emotional and energetic underpinnings that influence oral health. Meliors' insights shed light on overcoming dental anxiety and trauma, offering a fresh perspective on maintaining dental well-being naturally.

Our conversation takes you on an inspiring journey from conventional dentistry to a holistic, metaphysical approach to oral health. Through compelling examples, we uncover how periods of emotional instability can lead to dental issues, such as root canals, and offer a new understanding of the psychological and ancestral factors involved. Meliors' personal story and expertise as a coach guide listeners in identifying and addressing the root causes of their dental problems, making this episode invaluable for those seeking alternative dental solutions.

Dive into the fascinating world of tooth archetypes and the oral microbiome and learn how they reflect deeper emotional states and overall health. Through the lens of traditional Chinese medicine and European dental practices, we unravel the connections between specific teeth, emotional well-being, and body organs.

Additionally, we discuss how stress can influence tooth decay, the impact of mouth breathing on gum health, and the importance of maintaining a balanced oral microbiome. Tune in for a holistic understanding that goes beyond brushing and flossing, offering a comprehensive view of oral health and its profound links to emotional and physical well-being.

You can find Meliors through her website The Holistic Tooth Fairy

Buy The Secret Lives of Teeth now!

And stay tuned for her soon-to-be- released second book, Calm & Confident In The Dental Chair

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello, it's Nadine here, and I'm here with this week's episode of Life, health and the Universe, and today I'm joined by Melior Sims. Melior, melior, is that?

Speaker 2: 0:15

French. Is it French? It's French, but it's medieval French. So you say the X on the.

Speaker 1: 0:22

E. Oh, very good, my name's French also, so Meilleurs, welcome, welcome. It was a bit of a rough start because we had some tech issues when we went to hit record last week, couldn't hear each other, but you're here now and I'm super grateful for you putting aside the time to to join me today. So let me do a quick intro so without giving too much away. Melior's is uh also known as the holistic tooth fairy. Um, and you're you have a holistic approach to healing, uh, helping your clients heal their bodies naturally, their teeth specifically. Um, naturally. Let me read from my notes you have an holistic approach that supports your body to express its natural capacity to remineralize enamel, regrow bone and regenerate tissue, and that you, basically you're here for anyone who is curious. I love that and, yeah, who kind of knows intuitively that there's more to oral health than just brushing your teeth and not eating sugar, right? So I'm really excited about this conversation. Um, you are like are you the only person who does this? I think so yeah, yeah, yeah so like, what a cool job.

Speaker 1: 1:58

Um, so let me hand over to you Millie Orr. Thank you so much for joining us. Tell us more like mine was all a little bit garbled. I'm sure you'll have a much clearer intro.

Speaker 2: 2:09

Thank you, nadine. It's a great honor to get to speak with you and your audience today. So I'm Meliorz Sims and I'm a natural oral health coach and I work with clients all over the world because I do all my coaching on Zoom calls and I help people avoid unnecessary dental procedures with a combination of physical approaches to oral health, holistic nutrition, oral hygiene practices and working a lot with the jaw, relaxing and activating the jaw and aligning the bite and so on. And then the other side of what I do is the metaphysical, which is what we're going to be talking about today, but in practice it's really always a blend of the two, and I also, you know, people do still end up needing the dentist, and so I help people have a better experience at the dentist as well and overcome dental anxiety and dental trauma and make complicated dental decisions and all of that side of it as part of my work as well.

Speaker 1: 3:17

Great, thank you for joining us. It's going to be such a great conversation. So I came across you and I think, well, how lucky is this? It was an ad, so you can you can bet your bottom dollar that ads are working, because it was your book that came up. I can't remember exactly where, but your book came up as a recommended book for me um, either online or on my kindle, and and your book is the Secret Lives of Teeth Understanding Emotional Influences on Oral Health, and I was like, oh, that sounds interesting. So I bought it on Kindle.

Speaker 1: 3:55

I have in the past loved actually, probably my first experience of that kind of metaphysical healing was through Louise Hay, who I came across when I was in my mid-20s and so, having something that was specific to teeth, I was like, well, this is cool. And I've had my own experiences with my teeth when I was without going. You know, this being a personal therapy session, I'll just give you some background. I had when I was a kid. My two front milk teeth were kind of rotten when they came through or looked brown. I don't know what that is, but I thought that was kind of interesting, and so as a kid I had a bit of an obsession with keeping my teeth really clean. When I was nine, I was standing behind a girl in the playground and she kicked up into a handstand and kicked me in the mouth and chipped one of my front teeth off and I had them filed down.

Speaker 1: 4:55

But I've had some stuff with gums in the past and you know gum issues, and so I was like, oh, you know, know, I wanted to dig into all these things. But my, my little boy, I thought this was like, huh, what's going on here? He's nine. But when he was eight, which was almost exactly the same age that I was, when I broke my tooth he broke his, and I thought, oh, this is so, so cool. Like I just was like there's something going on with the tea, yeah, yeah. So that's kind of like my background and that's why I got hold of your book and I and, um, I've read through it and I I have to admit I haven't delved super deep like, but I've. But I definitely see that there are correlations in emotional stuff that was going on in childhood, and probably in adulthood as well, that have corresponded with those experiences in my mouth. There you go.

Speaker 2: 6:02

Yeah, it's always fascinating, isn't?

Speaker 1: 6:03

it what?

Speaker 2: 6:03

yeah, it's always fascinating, isn't it, when the child and the parent kind of mirror each other's oral health experiences and, even though the the context might be different, it's like that pattern plays out through the, the teeth.

Speaker 1: 6:21

Yeah, yeah, amazing. Before we go any further and like into the metaphysical and how that all works, can you? I've got two questions. The first one is like why are we so scared of the dentist? Like every story seems everyone's story seems to be of a fear of the dentist. So, um, and then I'd love to hear, like how you actually got into this work, like what was going on for you when the penny dropped for you and you were like there's something going on.

Speaker 2: 6:59

Sure, like an inherent, uh, baked in kind of mammal back brain response to being belly up, prone, belly up with someone in an authority position of authority with sharp tools leaning over your body, and I think the part of us that was, you know once a lizard or whatever is going. Whoa, I'm a prey animal and this is really scary, yeah, and so it's a very um, unconscious, uh, sort of nervous system response to the actual physical position.

Speaker 2: 7:36

And then that I think um is exacerbated and made worse when people have painful or unpleasant or traumatic dental experiences, particularly because there is unfortunately quite a tendency of dentists to over-diagnose and over-treat. And there's been quite a bit of mainstream research into this and it's surprise economic. You know the capitalist system strikes again, but what it does is it lays in these patterns of fear and so even when you've got a really lovely, gentle, conservative dentist, then you can still have that kind of autonomic response, that nervous system response of all this is Right.

Speaker 1: 8:26

That makes sense. I just read your email. I think it came through. I came through in the last couple of days, maybe even this morning, about the dental profession and how that there is um more awareness around um dentists, over diagnosing, and I've certainly experienced that before, like I've had no problems with my wisdom teeth at all. They're there, that's it, or we have nearly every dentist I go and see, not that I see a lot, but in you know, over the past 20 years, or you should get rid of them, I'm like I'm actually quite happy with my, my wisdom teeth very much, oh, but you don't need them. It's like well, but then I've seen other people who've had that experience and they've talked. You know their dentist has told them that they need to remove their wisdom teeth and they have had. I remember one lady in particular and she was like totally overwhelmed by the experience. She said she felt so different, like her facial structure changed. She was really impacted negatively, emotionally from the experience. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty.

Speaker 2: 9:45

Yeah, yeah I mean some people do need to have you know, do have problems with the wisdom teeth that having them out makes it easier to resolve those problems. It's the easiest way to resolve those problems. But it's kind of preventative approach of whip them out is is definitely over applied.

Speaker 1: 10:05

Yeah yeah, we, um, we actually went to the dentist with our kids a couple months ago and there's a new thing for kids, uh, apparently, where they're putting some kind of cover over on the top of the tooth, on top of the molars, and so we got the. Your kids have got great teeth, but we recommend you putting this stuff on. And I'm like, but you've just said that they've got great teeth, and they were like, oh well, it's free.

Speaker 2: 10:30

Yeah, the research into those sealants is that when they fall off or when they come off, 90% of previously healthy teeth that have had sealants developed decay or cavity. They might have done anyway, but they might not have.

Speaker 1: 10:49

Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, so I'm trying to resist that temptation. Yes, and I'm not here to neither of us are here to bag out dentists, but we want to. But it's like it's about bringing awareness to us about our own innate ability to heal right.

Speaker 2: 11:10

Yeah, and our inner authority and integrity to make our own decisions about what dental treatment is needed and appropriate, and not just to get kind of bulldozed Because we're in that passive prey position and the dentist says, well, you have to have this, this and this.

Speaker 2: 11:24

Just to get kind of bulldozed because we're in that that passive prey position and the dentist says, well, you have to have this, this and this done to you. It's very hard to kind of think clearly and stand up for your rights or even take time to like think about it for a few days when you're in that powerless kind of pose. So my new book that's coming out very shortly is called calm and confident in the dental chair and it's really um, it's a workbook for adults to overcome dental anxiety but also to make wise dental decisions, to be able to communicate powerfully and empathically with dentists and to handle all of the kind of sensory overload and uncomfortable sensations and feelings we have about the dentist. Because I do, you know, I do believe that we need dentists. Just we need them to like rein themselves in a little.

Speaker 1: 12:16

Yeah, that's right. It's like we also you know we need healthcare professionals, but like, yeah, we also need to take some responsibility for ourselves and also feel empowered to understand ourselves right and to make choices based on that, not just on like feeling. Yeah, like you say in that position with your mouth open and then they say well, we're gonna pull it out. Um, what's your?

Speaker 2: 12:44

so you've been doing this for eight years, ten years yeah, nearly eight years of coaching, um, but my um, my sort of journey with holistic oral health began about 12 or 13 years ago actually, when I was in the dental chair and I woke up from general anesthetic because I had such terrible teeth, I had such problems with my teeth and and I'd had so much dental treatment, some of which hadn't been necessary, and I'd been really traumatized and so I was having panic attacks at the dentist and so when they needed to do what turned out to be my last root canal, thank God I went under general anesthetic for the first time for that, and then I had a panic attack under general, which I didn't know was possible, but it is, yeah. So I woke up from that and the dentist who was a very nice dentist told me really I had to get my act together before they could finish the procedure. So that was really the point where I started taking responsibility and not just doing whatever the dentist told me to do, following that mainstream advice. So I was very vigilant with my oral hygiene. You know, I tried to be really healthy with my diet.

Speaker 2: 14:07

I was also very kind of conscious of holistic health approaches with my whole body health, so I was used to working with metaphysical healing and herbs and homeopathics and you know all of the kind of alternative approaches with the rest of my body, but I hadn't put it together with the issues I was having in my mouth. And so when I started looking into alternative approaches to oral health, it was so amazingly effective and eye-opening that I was just become a very enthusiastic researcher and experimenter on myself. And yeah, after a while people around me just started asking me for advice all the time and I thought there seems to be a bit of a gap here. There certainly wasn't anyone I could go to and ask for advice. So maybe I could put my shingle out and offer myself as a coach, and within three months of starting that as a side gig I was able to quit my day job.

Speaker 1: 15:18

So I've been doing it ever since. Yeah, it's amazing. Um so, going back to your own experiences, like you shared your story in the book, you've had how many root canals? Six, and in hindsight, do you think that you needed any of them?

Speaker 2: 15:38

I probably. Yeah, I needed some of them, I didn't need all of them. Yeah, there was the root canal where I went in with a really bad toothache and he drilled the wrong tooth so the toothache was just there when the anesthetic woke up. So I had to go back and he drilled and and root canaled the adjacent tooth and then both of those root canals failed. I had them both redone and then finally I said just take them out, and so that's when I lost two molars.

Speaker 1: 16:08

So, uh, unnecessary root canal yeah, wow, and root canal is not something you would go into lightly anyway, is it really?

Speaker 2: 16:18

it's like no, it's really. You'd be pretty desperate to do a root canal. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:23

Yeah, okay, so you kind of started. Can you talk us through what it means?

Speaker 2: 16:37

that metaphysical? What does metaphysics mean? So metaphysical means beyond the physical body, yeah, so where metaphysical influences on your teeth are emotional, energetic, psychological, environmental, ancestral, all of those non-physical influences that can maybe make you more vulnerable to the physical influences, like a dysbiosis or unbalanced bacteria in your oral microbiome or, you know, not eating the right kind of nutrients or being able to absorb the right kind of nutrients, even if you're eating them, so that your teeth and gums get the building blocks they need to repair and remineralize and regenerate, um, you're likely to be more vulnerable to those physical risks if you're already kind of vulnerable on that metaphysical level. So it's when people go looking for the root cause. I really go to the metaphysical for the root cause yeah, sure.

Speaker 1: 17:42

So an example of that? Um, could you give us just an example for one of your root canals, what that might yeah so well.

Speaker 2: 17:51

All of my root canals were either, uh, during a period of, um, some form of homelessness or immediately afterwards. So either I was like couch surfing or I was like backpacking long travel or immigrating from one country to another. But there always is kind of very destabilized, not having my roots in a place, not feeling settled and at home, and so the roots in my teeth kind of became a physical embodiment of that, um, lack of groundedness, that lack of being rooted in place wow, that's like, and I guess that you kind of go well, that makes sense, right, it's like yeah yeah you know, I don't think if I hadn't had six root canals I might not have made that connection.

Speaker 2: 18:42

I really had to have enough to kind of yeah, be you know, not just coincidence.

Speaker 1: 18:49

Yes but I guess, having that experience and putting that those dots together, you can put the dots together more easily for other people so they don't have to do that. Yeah, um, I've worked with yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2: 19:03

I've worked with hundreds, maybe thousands of people now and you know it does get a lot easier for me to make those connections and figure out. You know, is it some childhood trauma? Is it a family pattern that's been passed down through the generations? Is it your kind of current experience to do with work or family or relationships or identity? Or yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:35

So when you were, you said that you had kind of when you were you were sorry before you kind of got stuck into what was going on in your mouth, that you had quite a connection and you used sort of alternative remedies and therapies and the metaphysical you were aware of that kind of stuff for the rest of your body and that you sort of got stuck into finding out as much as you could about the mouth. But how did? Like you you've also expressed that like you're the only person who does what you do.

Speaker 2: 20:16

So how did you find the information? Well, I I kind of was finding little. I mean, I was obviously doing lots of googling so I was reading everything find online and there there are some conversations, certainly, about the meridian system of traditional chinese medicine and its connection with the mouth, and so each um part of the mouth is associated with a particular meridian channel, energy channel and um, and so that kind of gives you some clues. So that's where I started then. Um, you know other people who sort of explore this and they kind of um, what's the word? Um, it's not, it's not the main thing they do. But you know, there's a blog post here and a blog post there, kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 21:07

Um, and then I discovered there's a couple of dentists in Europe who do not publish in English, so I had to use Google Translate to read these books. Wow, that was challenging, um, who do actually work in this area and did have quite a lot to say, and and so that was very helpful. But I'd already really figured out a lot just from working with my clients. It was really out of the practice of lots of long, deep, sustained conversations with people about their history, their circumstances and their symptoms, like leading people, through guided meditations, to connect with the energy of their, the particular symptom of their body, of you know, and and figuring it out just in practice. And so when I did discover that Dr Kiffin and Dr Bayer from well, they're both French their frameworks kind of fitted in on top of what I had figured out already.

Speaker 1: 22:20

Rather, than being the foundation, yeah, Do people generally, if they're going to have um, a physical response to something like a? Is it a metaphysical response or is it a? What do you call it? If they have a physical, physical response, something that happens in their, in their body. Um, like that represents something that's happened emotionally. That represents something that's happened emotionally. Do they get anything in their body as well, or does it generally just come up in the mouth? Do you see those correlations?

Speaker 2: 22:59

yeah, yeah, so people will. Will I mean, not everyone has their emotional or metaphysical responses as mouth symptoms. So a lot of people will you know, you'll get the gut problems, you'll get the skin problems. You'll, you know, you'll get the back problems. It plays out the whole body's all a big emotional field, essentially energetic field.

Speaker 2: 23:24

But what I have observed is that the people who do tend to get the significant and particularly chronic issues with oral health, that the underlying metaphysical influence will be something to do with silences, secrets or suppressed emotions, the three s's. And it's because, well, my theory is because you know, we would, in a healthy circumstance, we would express ourselves through our mouth, through speech, right, and when we don't, the energy gets stuck in our mouth, it's like it builds up behind a dam of our lips not being open when we don't use our voice or speak our authentic truth or express our anger or grief or whatever it is. And then, for those of us who have the teeth problems, that's what I look for and it's almost inevitable it'll be a secret, a silence or a suppressed emotion or some combination of it.

Speaker 1: 24:29

Yeah, wow, um, what was I gonna say? Oh, so many things. Ah, so, when you've, so you've got this amazing, these amazing charts that you've uh designed and that, uh, people can download off of your website, which we'll put all the links with that, and so I've got one of them open at the moment and it's like your emotional associations and you've created archetypes around those, right, the representations of these archetypes. So was this all you've talked about? The meridians? That's what I was going to ask. Like, the meridians are attached to the body as well, right? Then they go right through that. It's quite complex. But so we've got the meridians, so they kind of correlate with body parts, organs and that sort of thing, don't they? And then the archetypes are kind of like that theme that they could be affecting. Is that right?

Speaker 2: 25:39

well, not really yeah, that's sort of the the aspect of your life.

Speaker 1: 25:44

So so for example I wrote down. Actually I looked at the top teeth because the top teeth were the two teeth that when I was a little kid came out brown my milk teeth and also that's one that I got broken. And top teeth, fear and helplessness, deep exhaustion, but also associated with the kidney and the bladder.

Speaker 2: 26:16

Yeah, so those. In traditional Chinese medicine each meridian has emotional associations with that energy channel and they're named for particular organs, but when it's important to not be too tied to them, being a physical connection with the, the physical, anatomical organ like you would find in a if you went under surgery it's more of an energetic um, yeah, uh idea represented by the organ. So the kidney and bladder are associated with this kind of grief and shyness and helplessness and so on. So those those are meridian associations, the tooth archetypes for those two top front teeth. On the left it's the nurturer and that can very much represent your relationship with your mother, particularly when you were very small and infant, your relationship with your mother, particularly when you were very small and infant, up to about toddler years. And on the right it's the leader and that can represent your relationship with your father when you're very small, in those infant years.

Speaker 2: 27:19

But I find that it's actually in real life. It's not necessarily that literal like when you as, as the symptoms that you had were when you were an infant, it probably was quite literal for you we can talk about that in a second but for you know, if you have problems with those front teeth when you're an adult. It may be, um, not so much to do with your relationship with your actual birth parents or caregiver parents. It could be to do with your relationship with your actual birth parents or caregiver parents. It could be to do with your relationship with someone who's a leadership figure, or your own experience of being a leader or being ambivalent about taking on leadership, your own experience of being a nurturer or not, and so it's helpful to be as broad as possible.

Speaker 1: 28:13

Yeah, I get that, and and obviously, uh, what resonates for me might not resonate for you, and vice versa. So, like I could maybe say, if it was in my adult front teeth, um, it could be about nurturing yourself as well. Right, exactly, and yeah, and yeah, yeah, if you're not taking care of yourself, then that could be a physical manifestation of something there. Yeah, right, interesting. I can't remember what my question was. Oh, we were talking about the meridians, so can you, would you be able to? Like? I don't want to. Let me have a look at my notes. Okay, can you talk us through some of the archetypes? Is that too much?

Speaker 2: 28:59

of a thing. Yeah, sure, so well, a general overview first is that these front teeth, the incisors, both central and lateral incisors, upper and lower, so the bottom four and the top four they they do tend to represent, like your infancy, your childhood, the early years of your life and the family environment that you grew up and what you were learning from that environment or from that family culture about how to be, about gender and how to grow up, how to be a girl or a boy and how to grow up and be a man or a woman. And obviously that's not always a very straightforward thing for lots of people. So that can play out in those front teeth, as well as the particular family dynamics and your own experiences. Like you know, for me my family immigrated from Canada to New Zealand when I was three years old, so it was a huge impact on my whole life and played out in my mouth as well. Excuse me, played out in my mouth as well, uh, excuse me. Um, then, uh, the further back we go in the mouth, kind of the older, uh, the the part of your life that's represented in.

Speaker 2: 30:19

But first of all, we, we have a little sidestep for the canines, which are the um, the eye teeth or the my, cuspids, cuspids, and those are about power dynamics. Then the premolars are about sort of your teenage years and establishing your identity and your preferences and all of those kind of developmental tasks of adolescence sort of are associated with those two teeth in each quadrant. And then the molars I call them the adulting teeth. So they'll often represent or embody challenges and responsibilities around home and work and yourself as a parent, yourself as a partner. And then the wisdom teeth are sort of outliers, again in the way that the canines are. The wisdom teeth are about collective energies and ancestral, like deep ancestral energies often will play out in those wisdom teeth.

Speaker 1: 31:32

So that's the overview.

Speaker 2: 31:35

And then each individual tooth has its archetype. So we talked about the, the nurturer and the leader up here on the front. Well, the, the bottom two um opposing them are the uh dull tooth on the left and the beast tooth on the right, and those teeth kind of have quite a toddler kind of energy, like the doll tooth of that toddler who's kind of shyly holding onto their mother's leg and peeking around, and it's got a real kind of people-pleasing, very good girl kind of energy to it, very much wanting to keep yourself safe by being compliant and obedient. Those are dull energies, whereas the beast is that kind of rambunctious, tantruming um uncivilized kind of uh, boisterous, two or three year old energy. And we both contain both of those, they're both in our mouth, they're both qualities, that.

Speaker 2: 32:34

But you will have a more or less straightforward or not relationship with those energies when you were that age when those teeth, the baby teeth, were there and uh, and those um life experiences and those emotional patterns that you learned when you were little continue to play out through your life and so they can play out in relation to these teeth, though actually for most adults it tends not to be these teeth or these bottom teeth that get the um, they're not teeth that are particularly prone to decay so much as gum recession.

Speaker 2: 33:12

That's me, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is like the most common place to get gum recession, and gum recession metaphysically can represent feeling a lack of support. And so then we put those, the, the interpretation of the tooth archetypes for that part of the mouth, together with the interpretation of lacking support and you can start to tell a little story about what that means, what it might mean for understanding your past, and also what it might mean for understanding your life, and also what it might mean for understanding your life now and how you. You know, if you are, for example, a people pleaser who puts your own wants and needs so far in the background that you barely even know what you want and need and so you don't um ask for or even accept, let alone receive support, then that that can be an area that's vulnerable. That recession is like the embodiment of that emotional pattern. Wow, does it make sense?

Speaker 1: 34:18

yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah. How interesting. And you have, you've created this hot, these archetypes for every single tooth through your experiences, through your studies.

Speaker 2: 34:32

Wow. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool, um, so that's the hat of this of my book.

Speaker 1: 34:37

Yeah, and I would recommend it to anyone. Like, even if you don't know if it's something that you believe in or not, like it's definitely it's so easy to read. And it's definitely it's so easy to read and it's like if you've and if you've had tooth issues, right, like just go.

Speaker 1: 34:54

Oh, I wonder what you know the top tooth number 16 represents, and you can kind of read and you can and you can make those connections um once you have. So you've kind of talked around some of those archetypes, identifying how these things might be playing out in your life or in the past and therefore playing out in your mouth. What do you then do to help people understand?

Speaker 2: 35:30

heal. Well, it's, you know it's different for everyone. So, um, I like I say it's always a combination of the physical support. So they're looking at nutrition and oral hygiene and bite and so on. Oral posture, um, but on the metaphysical front, it might be working with the inner child, or it might be working with your ancestors, or it might be working with the inner child, or it might be working with your ancestors or it might be working with sound healing. That's really a key part of my gum regeneration protocols, because it is possible to stabilize and regrow receding gums and even regrow from bone loss, and sound healing is a big part of that. Um, yeah, but you know it's kind of a storytelling approach and so that's the um. The theme that I wove through the book is trying to explain how, and demonstrate how to use healing stories as a, as a um, a container for for healing your yourself, your teeth and gums from this metaphysical approach. But it needs to be within, you know, you need to address the physical needs of your teeth and gums as well.

Speaker 1: 36:46

Yeah, yeah, um. So what are some of the? What are some of the two? The most popular, popular, common uh, tooth and gum symptoms that you, um support people with?

Speaker 2: 37:01

um, well, I do a lot of work with people with receding gums, um, particularly if it's extended to bone loss, periodontitis and uh, all of that. So I, yeah, I always get a little bit excited when someone comes to me because they're really in trouble. They've got their teeth, their gums have receded to the point that their teeth are loose. They're really at risk of losing their teeth, because it's so thrilling when the protocols work and you can stabilize those teeth and save them. That's the best feeling in the world.

Speaker 2: 37:36

Um, uh, you know, I see a lot of people with tooth decay and cavities, uh, people who are told that they need to either have a root canal or an extraction, and that's kind of the wake-up call. They're like, no, I don't want to lose this tooth. There must be another way to resolve this problem without such an irreversible intervention. And it's not always possible because by the time it's reached that point, the physical structure of the tooth is often very compromised, but not always Like. Sometimes it is possible to save a tooth from a prescribed root canal or extraction.

Speaker 1: 38:18

So, yeah, wow, okay and okay. So you've talked about the like um, tooth hygiene and that sort of thing. What's your? I'm just uh, what's your experience with um? I think I feel like I've read, either in your book or on your website somewhere, about people being able to remineralize, or I may have heard it being talked about somewhere else being able to kind of remineralize and yes, you do have it here your teeth and the enamel to like. You know that you might go to the dentist and they say you need to have a filling. We can actually, can we reverse that?

Speaker 2: 39:10

okay, sometimes yeah, particularly with smaller fillings. Yeah, with shallow fillings I mean cavities um where it hasn't been filled yet. Uh it, those small shallow cavities um will often reverse themselves with only a little bit of help, sometimes no help at all. Our teeth kind of um uh create um cavities and then close them up on this small shallow level quite rapidly quite a lot of the time, and often it's tied to stress levels, to be honest, because of the, the way the stress hormones cortisol and so on actually affect the remineralization processes that are ongoing all the time. In a healthy system, those get interrupted by stress.

Speaker 1: 40:02

So I think, uh, probably we're not really educated very well on the actual structure of our tooth and what it does. Right, because we have the root, we know like we it's almost like we're disconnected from them. They're these, this really important thing, that can you know? Change the way we look and how we feel. Um, but we've got blood flow going to our teeth, don't we?

Speaker 2: 40:28

yes, yes and there's this whole chain of the teeth. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 40:33

It's like this well, the marrow, I guess it's pulp.

Speaker 2: 40:38

So the inside the center of the tooth is pulp, which is a mixture of blood and nerves and tubes carrying fluids into the tooth and um, vitamins and so on get carried, so they're coming up. The root of the tooth extends down into the jaw and connects with um, the tubules that run along the, the jaw, inside the bone, and they they will suck up essentially the um, the fluids that the tooth needs to be healthy. So that's all in the soft, very alive kind of heart of the tooth, which is called the pulp, and when, when a root canal is done, that's what they're removing, they clean it out making that clean.

Speaker 2: 41:25

They try and clean it out. Um, then on the outside of the the root, but on the inside of the of the root, outside of the pulp, on the inside of the enamel is a layer called dentin which is a bit softer than enamel, it's more like bones, so it's a bit kind of chalky and that also has lots of tubules running through it. And then on the top layer, or the outside layer, is the enamel, which is the hardest substance in the body, the very, very dense and um, and in a healthy body it's constantly renewing itself. It's very resilient. The dentinal flow, those fluids going into the tooth, are pushing out minerals that are like really restoring the surface of the tooth as it's eroded through the day with eating food and particularly sugar and acidic food, carbohydrates and things, or just the bacteria in your mouth. If you've got a lot of unhealthy kind of oral microbiome that erodes the enamel, Well, if you've got good dental flow, that'll rebuild the enamel just as fast.

Speaker 1: 42:42

Wow, that's pretty amazing, isn't it? Because I think that when we, you know well, our general education is that it's all about what we put in and it's about brushing and stuff, but in fact it's they heal from the inside out, from the sounds of things yeah which is kind of reassuring.

Speaker 2: 43:02

Yes, yeah yeah um what?

Speaker 1: 43:08

about the um like oral health in general, like you talked about oral microbiome, and I'll tell you the dentist, um, who I used to go to we moved so I'd gone to him for quite a long time and I do have, uh, receding gums at the bottom and he said, look, it's just something, you just need to come and have your oral hygiene. And I was like, what is it like? Because I never have any fillings like, and there's never any problems but my gums. And he's like, oh, you, you, basically it's either one or the other. People either have, um, weak gums or they have weak teeth generally don't have both and he said it's just from breathing, which I'm damned. Then, because I breathe, yeah, yeah, I have, since, um, focused on closing my mouth more because, um, because there's an effect of, like, the exposure of you know more?

Speaker 2: 44:20

tell us. Tell us what I'm trying to say. The oral microbiome is everyone's got about 50 or so different kinds of bacteria living in our mouths, billions of them in total, but about 50 different strains, and there'll be a slightly different combination of strains. So it's really it's unique, almost like a fingerprint, in terms of what's the makeup of your oral microbiome. It's established almost entirely at birth and then will adjust, particularly in the first three or so years of life, depending on the food and water that you're exposed to. And you know, if anyone's kissing you on the mouth when you're a little baby, then possibly you get exposed to their oral microbiome through that. Then we're much less likely to take on any new permanent residents of our microbiome through later childhood and adulthood, though we might.

Speaker 2: 45:24

Now what can happen is that of those 50 or so types of bacteria there might be, there's eight strands in total in the world that are like the problem children of the oral microbiome, and most of us will only have like one or two of those problem uh children in our oral microbiome, and most of the time they're very quiet and well behaved because they're just one of 50. They're not dominant. But if you're a mouth breather. If you uh, eat a lot of sugar or um acidic foods or you uh, you know, are very stressed out or one of the other possible reasons that you can get out of balance, then one of those problem children type of oral bacteria can become dominant. And so if that is the type of oral bacteria that causes gum disease, then that will be your downfall. If it's the kind that causes decay, then that will be your downfall. Luckily, most people don't have both right dominating at the same time, but some people do. Unfortunately you can have it is possible to have both teeth and gum problems.

Speaker 1: 46:44

Hooray and so if our microbiome in our mouth I think you said we have it from birth and it pretty much doesn't change and it's causing gum problems, is it? Is it that, is it the microbiome, or is it the deep emotional trauma?

Speaker 2: 47:10

well it's. It's a multiple factors. Yeah, so they accumulate and particularly the older you get, the more factors will be at play. Yeah, so you'll have, you know, your life history of of emotional patterns, of of family inheritance, of stress and trauma and whatever else is your and your story that's unique to you. You'll have your particular oral microbiome and how responsive it is to your lifestyle factors. So if you, you know, are a mouth breather and and eat sugar all the time, then that affects the, the um, the balance of the particular oral microbiome that you got at birth and that might change through your life as your lifestyle changes.

Speaker 2: 47:59

Then you're, like, you're brushing habits, so like your gums can be really in your teeth to a lesser extent, really sensitive or vulnerable to, like, brushing too hard with too hard a bristle brush, or using an electric toothbrush incorrectly, or using a really abrasive toothpaste, or you know, any number of things we can put in our mouth. Um, we, we get sick and our bodies stop being able to absorb, uh, the nutrients we need. Or we change our diet and we're not getting the nutrients we need. We, um, we clench our jaws, you know, we grind our teeth, we get orthodontic work and drag those teeth out of position. We have, uh, our wisdom teeth extracted or another tooth extracted, you know, for orthodontic reasons or because it's unhealthy and that upsets the whole environment and and there's another factor, and so these accumulate over time and particularly as you get older.

Speaker 2: 49:06

There's just more and more factors and eventually the just system kind of tips over but to my mind, is always the energetic, emotional, metaphysical underlying whatever physical factors well, yeah, I think also from a from a lifestyle behavior point of view.

Speaker 1: 49:28

Often the choices we make in our lifestyle, like mouth, breathing, stress, related right um, and eating bad or unfavorable food let's not call it bad food eating unfavorable foods can often be associated with an emotional response to something or like not taking care of yourself. So it kind of makes sense that that has a deeper um connection with what's going on in your mouth as well. And I guess, um, just like, we all have equilibrium equilibrium in our bodies, in our lives but if you tip the balance one way or the other because of different behaviors or circumstances, then that can be the thing that can upset what's going on. We're getting close to the end of our hour. There's a couple of other things, if you're okay to answer. You mentioned that you. It sounds kind of cruel, but not that you love it when people come to you with really bad things.

Speaker 2: 50:46

Because you know you can hit them.

Speaker 1: 50:49

And the remineralizing. I don't feel like I've said that word right once remineralizing enamel, regrowing bone and regenerating tissue and you don't promise to do those things, but you do offer those things as a possibility, that you have seen those things happen. Are there any particular stories that stand out for you that you would be those things happen? Are there any particular stories that stand out for you that you would be able to share with us?

Speaker 2: 51:19

um well, this one I wrote about in um my book in the book, yeah, which is actually, that's not really a remineralization story.

Speaker 2: 51:42

I've seen a client come in with bone loss, you know, showing in it. They just had a CT scan and it showed, you know, severe bone loss putting the stability of this particular tooth at risk. And we, you know, did the energetic work on and understanding the sort of emotional origin story of this tooth and did the work with the sound healing, worked on nutrition, worked on um oral hygiene practices and, you know, layered in all of that support. And then a few months later she went back and she um saw the periodontist again and got another ct scan and the scan showed that the bone density had increased and that was one of the most tangible kind of proofs of this work.

Speaker 2: 52:40

Yeah, it was very exciting. And then that tooth was, you know, really stable and and she was able to keep it. You know, it wasn't it. It was always going to be an area of vulnerability, but she wasn't in that acute situation anymore yeah, great.

Speaker 1: 52:57

I think that that's one thing that I would really love our listeners to to understand. Is that the the possibilities of there? It's not as cut and dry as you go to the dentist. If there's something wrong, you get your tooth pulled out or you go through these. You know specific procedures wisdom tooth extractions. You know uh, gum um what do they call? Yeah, gun grafts. It's a whole uh catalog of horrific things they do again. Yes, no wonder people are scared.

Speaker 1: 53:33

But it doesn't have to be that way, and in fact, our bodies are quite incredible and our teeth aren't. Well, our teeth are part of that, and just like we can choose preferable foods and our body responds in kind, so does our mouth Not. Just don't think about just what you see on the surface, but like what's going on in the inside. I think it's just phenomenal, um, and so cool that you're doing this. Um, now, I saw that you have, and I'd I think it would be um great to share this with the listeners if they're interested. You have have some kind of call, don't you that you do? Do you have like a?

Speaker 2: 54:19

free, yeah, every week on Insight Timer, which is a meditation app that you can download onto your phone for free. Okay, and so I do these live calls. It's Tuesday morning, new Zealand time that I do them, which is Monday evening for a lot of the world, and I call them messages from your mouth and I'll essentially do like a brief reading for anyone who comes up on the call and asks where you know you describe your symptom and I check the tooth archetypes, I might talk about meridians, I tune into my intuition and uh, and we have a chat about what the underlying story that that symptom with that tooth or gum area might be telling. So, yeah, anyone's welcome.

Speaker 1: 55:07

Yeah, cool we'll put the. We'll put the link I think is that the is the link for that on your website.

Speaker 1: 55:12

We can, we can include yes, yeah, yeah great, perfect and obviously the book, which is a really it's got some. It has got some stories. It's got your own story, it's got some stories of um clients that you've worked with, but also a really great reference book that you can kind of go to if you've got a toothache or you've had something in the past and you're like I wonder if that had anything to do with anything. Um, you can kind of go in and have a look and, um, yeah, do some digging around. It's fascinating stuff and and um, yeah, brilliant. I'm so glad that we got this uh conversation um together. Thank you so much for joining me. Is there anything that you would like to add as we head towards the end of our session?

Speaker 2: 55:59

Well, thank you so much for having me on this. It's been a wonderful, fun conversation to have and just also I've got my second book coming out, probably by the time this interview goes live.

Speaker 1: 56:10

Oh great.

Speaker 2: 56:11

Yeah, it's called Calm and confident in the dental chair, an adult workbook to relieve dental anxiety.

Speaker 1: 56:18

Brilliant, so okay, we'll put all of our info in the notes as well, um, and I believe we are celebrating the one year anniversary of your first book yes, it came out a year ago, last week, and it's done really well.

Speaker 2: 56:33

Yeah, I do advertise it on Amazon, and so it's been a really good way to sort of get in front of people that might not stumble across my website. I don't do any social media to speak of, so there's Insight Timer and there's the book. That's the ways to find this there's a lot of free resources on my website so anyone who's holistictoothfairycom you can go. There's like 60 or 70 different articles and and things you can download and classes. You can listen to meditations and all sorts so brilliant check it out.

Speaker 1: 57:07

Thank you so much. It's been really great to meet you. I really appreciate your time um keep doing what you're doing I'm gonna get the next book. Yeah, I will. Okay, bye.