What's the Link Between Dental Hygiene and Your Fertility? With Heather the Hygienist

“If you have a permanent gum disease, you have a disease in your body.”

Topics Discussed:

🦩  How to advocate for your dental health.

🦩  Natural cleaning ingredients for cavity-prone people.

🦩  How to prepare your mouth for pregnancy.

Are you having issues with your teeth, or have had issues with your teeth in the past? If you’re preparing for pregnancy, your teeth issues are one component that you need checked and addressed.

Download your FREE Guide: Top 3 Steps to Maximise Your Fertility That Your Doctor Isn't Talking About

In this episode of the Finding Fertility podcast, Monica speaks with Heather the Hygienist, a hygienist and the founder of Simply Silver. She created the Simply Silver Mouthwash and continues to educate everyone on the meaning of true health – a disease in your mouth is a disease in your body.

Listen in to learn how to get to the root causes of your dental issues to understand what natural products to use to remineralize your teeth. You will also learn the importance of making small changes in your dental hygiene to keep your mouth clean when pregnant.

“Either you’re a plaque producer, and you don’t tend to get cavities, or you tend to get a lot of cavities, but you don’t get a lot of plaque.”

Episode Highlights:

• [1:22] Heather on how she developed a passion for dental hygiene and care.
• [3:23] Why we should get to the root cause of mouth diseases as we do the rest of our bodies.
• [5:04] Why she wrote her book to teach people how to be their own advocates for better dental health.
• [11:51] The right steps to take to have control of your dental hygiene.
• [17:37] Understanding the two categories of plaque producers and cavities.
• [20:52] Natural things you can do to remineralize your teeth without drugs or toxic chemicals.
• [24:39] Have your teeth checked and issues addressed when preparing for pregnancy.
• [29:15] Some non-expensive ways to keep your mouth clean when pregnant.

Listen here: What's the Link Between Dental Hygiene and  Your Fertility? With Heather the Hygienist

🌺 Download your FREE Guide: Top 3 Steps to Maximise Your Fertility That Your Doctor Isn't Talking About

🦩 Get Steps Closer to Getting & Staying Pregnant with EIGHT FREE DAYS within the Fertility Formula

Full Transcript: 

0:01
Hello beautiful and welcome to finding fertility. I'm your host, Monica Cox from finding fertility.co And I created this podcast to help get you to start thinking outside of the box and realise that your infertility might have nothing to do with your lady bits rooted in functional medicine and personal experience. Finding fertility is all about looking at the whole body and finding the root cause of your infertility. Finding fertility does not diagnose, prescribe or treat any issues of infertility. But what we do is take a holistic approach and improve your diet and your lifestyle to get you steps closer to creating your dream family. Just by being here with me listening to this podcast, you're already going down the right path to making your dreams come true. Let's do this together.

0:59
Happy Friday. Oh, welcome back to another episode of finding fertility. I'm here with Heather, the hygiene nurse. I'm super excited to have her on and talk all things about teeth. So welcome to the podcast. Heather.

1:12
Thank you so much for having me, Monica. I really appreciate it.

1:15
Yeah. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into what you're doing.

1:22
Ah, well, it has been quite a journey. But um, you know, my parents, they were hippies, I was raised pretty much with trying to do things natural. But it wasn't until I actually got pregnant with my twins. And then they were premature. And one of my daughters had some really severe food allergies that are I really had to start looking at labels like what was in the food that I was giving her because she was allergic to like 25 different things. So really diving into understanding what the ingredients were kind of led me into, well, how come I haven't looked at the ingredients and oral care products? And then when I started seeing like, oh my gosh, why are they allowed to put these pesticides in to our oral care products, and found out that the reason being is because they're cosmetics. So you are allowed to put all kinds of horrible things into cosmetics. And you know, a lot of times people just don't realise that your mouth is the most vascular part of your whole body. So, you know, when patients would ask me what mouthwash or what toothpaste I recommend, and I wasn't able to suggest anything because even when I went to the health food store, there were still ingredients in there that were like not good for you. So, you know, honestly, through divine intervention, I just got kind of opened up the door. And now I have a line of toothpaste, mouthwash breast spray completely all natural, no chemicals. And I really just have a passion for teaching people the correlation between their mouth and their systemic health.

2:56
Yeah, and once again, it's just something that no one connects, you know, we're so disconnected from knowing that our body is one. And that if like something is off somewhere, it can cascade, whether that be a very slow cascade or a very, like sudden one is the question and up to your genetics. But um, yeah, it's really fascinating.

3:22
Well, people tend to think that there's some sort of a magic fence or something, you know, if you've got disease in your mouth, you have systemic disease, I don't care how good you eat, I don't care how much you exercise, what supplements do you take, if you have a form of gum disease, you have disease in your body? And you know, your gut has a microbiome? Well, so does your mouth and your teeth are alive their organs, they're linked to other organs. So, you know, getting to the root cause, you know, as your story, I read your story. And it was really refreshing to see how I think people are becoming more of aware of functional medicine and not just you know, what the medical profession offers, but kind of delving deeper into the root cause as to why things aren't working in our bodies.

4:13
Yeah, exactly. And we've just been led to believe that your teeth can't heal themselves, right? Like they're this hard, some substance. And I'm kind of like, well, bones heal themselves. Like we know that right? Like you break a bone you I mean, obviously it needs to support to heal better, you know, like shrink, like crooked. But yeah, we've been told that you can't change your teeth. And I've actually just recently been in a dentist where I had I did need some really cosmetic structure surgery on one of my back teeth that it was a long process of it getting really really bad. But he he said, Oh, you have a cavity here and I was like, Look, I can't sit through another cavity. He just had this surgery, we've just paid this money. I'll get it next time, right? And I didn't even like I wasn't even being like the hippie in the chair. I just really just didn't want to sit in his chair again. And when I went back six months later for my checkup, I'm like, here we go. He's gonna tell me I have a cavity. And he's like, yep, look, all good, all fine. And I'm like, oh, like, did it just, you know, did you not see it? Or did it heal itself, wasn't it? It wasn't that big of a deal. And I've actually had a guest on the podcast, just talking about her own journey. But she was a dental hygienist. And she said, that they used to write on the whiteboard. This is how much money we need to make today. Yeah. Yeah, can you tell us a little bit about that?

5:50
You know, it's funny, you say that I actually wrote a book called dentistry for Dummies, because I see so much bad dentistry. And I have temped for places. I mean, I've been doing this for 27 years, I've seen it all. But as a new hygienist I needed to get experience. So I would tell for certain, you know, dental offices that needed a hygienist or whatever. And one of the places was like a chain. And I can't diagnose, but I can tell you, you know, you got two large holes in your teeth there. So I had been working on this patient, and I couldn't believe that there were two giant holes in our teeth. So it's oh my gosh, let me go get the dentist. And do you know, he yelled at me. He said, We have been waiting for those teeth to turn into root canals because we don't make any money in fillings. And he just ruined it for us. And I was so shocked because this woman came every three months to get her teeth cleaned. And they were waiting for her to end up with abscesses. So they can perform a root canal and then do the crown. And I was like, this is unethical. I mean, how on earth can this be? And I mean, that's just one story. When we were living in Georgia, I temped again for place that took children like for Medicaid. And again, I found a suspicious area on a young teenager and I asked the dentist to come in and please check it, it was getting pretty, pretty bad. He would not pick up the mirror and explore and check the tooth. You know what he did? He told the young man, open up your mouth. You look good. See you next time. And here I am like trying to hold the mirror and explore like cure, please take it please check us tooth and you wouldn't do it. Because again, he's waiting for that poor young boy to have an abscess tooth because the government doesn't pay anything on fillings. I mean, you're talking five $10 that they might pay whereas their money is in your larger procedures. So yes, I see it all the time. So I created a book a handbook, so I could teach people what good dentistry is, and what bad dentistry is what it looks like, what a good actually looks like, what a good crown and a filling look like because it's terrible. I mean, it's just, I am mortified when when I see patients come in, and I'm looking at their mouth, and I'm going oh, my gosh, you know, how old is this crown? Oh, well, I just got it done last year. Well, the dentist didn't remove all the decay. And now they need to have more tooth removed another crown done. And it's just like, people just have no idea. So really wanted to teach people to how to be their own advocate.

8:26
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing like you don't you have no clue, no clue what's going on in your mouth. And I would even say to the very, very basics, right? Like, how to properly brush your teeth or floss your teeth or? Yeah,

8:42
so the whole YouTube channel on that I literally get into teeth numbers. I even talked about codes. I mean, I'm really trying to get to, honestly to my own detriment, because I was even fired from a place because of the fluoride controversy. So you know, it's just like, This is not looked upon in my field, as you know, I'm I'm really being a trader, educating people so that they can be informed. You know, it's, it's tragic, I wish more people would wake up to the fact because you know, you're never going to feel a cavity until it gets into the nerve of the tooth because then Yama has no feeling. And with gum disease, you're not going to feel that either because you're bound has no feelings. So there's no nerves there. And until your teeth are loose, and you know, you've been having bleeding gums for years, your teeth are ready to fall out. That's when you know you have a problem. So just don't wait, you know, and that's what I'm trying to teach people is prevention is key, you know, understanding how true health starts with your mouth. And, you know, just really getting that message out there.

9:47
Yeah, exactly. It's, it's a really extremely important message because a lot of times, you know, people go bankrupt, right? They really just can't financially afford especially in the United States. Do the procedures that they might truly actually need now, because they didn't take care of their their oral health. When I was dealing with my fertility struggle, I obviously went down every single rabbit hole I could, because it took me a long time to get my diagnosis. And where I don't believe that a diagnosis is set in stone, it just is something that you can really focus on and you know, tackle either way, right medical assistance, or holistic wise. And so yeah, looking at teeth and oral health was one of the rabbit holes, I went down. And it was definitely before I found out I had high natural killer cells, but I was looking for a holistic dentist to go and connect with and get their opinion on the feelings that I had. I never had a root canal on this back tooth, but see what you know, they they thought about that? I never one, I struggled to find a dentist like that. Right? That was my first hurtle, I probably would have gone to see one if it was more convenient. Or if there was I was actually living in the United Kingdom at the time. So I was doing my research over here in California, but still, it was like almost impossible to find someone like that. And at the time on Google, you know, not much came up. And I'm sure there are definitely people were talking about it. But for people who might want to go down this rabbit hole or or know, know that they have not the healthiest mouse? What are kind of the first steps that they can do?

11:51
That is a great question. I think for me, finding out the bacteria that they have in their mouth is essential, because there's 11 microbes that actually cause disease and, you know, looking at people's mouth, I can determine that probably they have a bacterial infection that's underlying. But we can actually with technology now swab like five areas in the mouth, or even do a simple saliva test, where we send it to the lab, and then the lab sends us back a report saying, okay, out of the 11 bugs, this person has one this person has to this person has all 11. And of course, they're gonna recommend antibiotics. And to be honest with you one of the antibiotics, it's like an anti parasite medication. Well, if you're a mammal, you're gonna have parasites. So that is such a huge problem that I see it's a lot of parasite related issues. The understanding, like you said, the diagnosis, what is the bacteria that's causing the problem in the mouth isn't out of balance. And this whole wearing of a mask thing caused mouth mouth, which people that used to be healthy, having to wear that mask caused mask mouth, which is breathing in recycled air, and it disrupts your oral microbiome, making those anaerobic bugs kind of take over the good. So now you've got this imbalance. And, you know, understanding what what bacteria is present is so important. If someone cannot afford to go to the dentist, I would highly encourage you to go to find a dental hygiene clinic near you. Because you'll get the best cleaning of your life. It might take, you know, a very, very long time because it's a learning facility. But it'll cost you what maybe $30 To get your teeth cleaned. But that bacteria test, I offer it on my website, I am a provider for it. Because, you know, I want it. I want to offer it to people, people need to know what's going on. Because like you said it's difficult to find a holistic dentist, there are hardly any. I would work for one if one was an hour away from me, you know, but that is the closest one is like about an hour and 10 minutes from my house. Well, that's just not conducive to do. But my husband when we needed to have a root canal removed. We did drive over to Clearwater, we hadn't done the right way. And honestly, the infection in his phone was so bad they sent him right away to get an IV to flush out his body is so important. You know, we just don't think about the correlation between our mouth and the rest of us. But, you know, at least get your teeth cleaned by a hygienist that's learning there are certain dental schools that they're learning to but you know, get my handbook because, you know, there I give you the pros and cons and it's kind of like, How much money do you want to spend because if Do you spend, say, you know, $300 Less going to a chain place, but they didn't remove all the decay? Did you really save $300 You didn't, because they didn't do a very good job, they didn't remove the decay, you're going to be worse off in another year or so. So sometimes, you know, you really do need to make that investment. You know, if you get a leak in your roof, and you patch it with something that's not very long term, you know, I mean, you can damage your entire roof, and that's going to need to be replaced. So it's tough because I understand we've been in that boat as far as finances are concerned, but at least make an informed decision and try and and figure out you know, what works best for you and your finances?

15:46
Yeah, I mean, that's the whole issue with this healing process. And even just trying to get the diagnosis or the root cause sometimes is so expensive, because you are just throwing darts in the dark, or darts in the dark a lot of the time. What are kind of go ahead?

16:08
Well, just about that, you know, you're talking about diagnosis and stuff like that. The cool thing about the mouth is we can determine within 20 minutes, like what kind of disease you have, whereas when you go to a doctor, they got to run a battery test, they got into you know, all this bloodwork, everything we can look inside your mouth. And with a very few you know, according to your X rays, Periodontal probing what your tissue looks like, determine, oh my gosh, you know, you have advanced periodontal disease, that's huge. So that's one of the nice things about your mouth is that it doesn't need a whole, necessarily barrage of testing. Yeah, I would definitely recommend the bacteria test. But as far as anything else, we can pretty much determine what's going on right then and there.

16:52
Yeah, no, that's awesome. With the fluoride bait. Now I've seen in my family between me and my husband, and actually my eldest son and my youngest son, that when my husband doesn't use fluoride in toothpaste, the bacteria in his mouth really, like rubs up where I don't need fluoride I can have I can brush my teeth without fluoride for long periods of time and have a healthy mouth. And I've seen that in my kids to where my youngest really gets that buildup on the back of his teeth. If fluoride isn't using his toothpaste, where my youngest, it doesn't happen. Do you have any like thoughts on that?

17:37
It's actually yeah, fluoride does not do anything as far as plaque. Okay, good. All right. The whole thing with Florida is it's supposed to make your tea strong. And if you actually go and you look at the original patent of fluoride, the original patent is a pesticide, okay, it's a mutagen. It's a halogen. It is a cancer causing agent, especially with bone cancer. So there are natural alternatives. With something someone that is more cavity prone, I would definitely recommend the Nano hydroxy apatite because your teeth are made out of Hydroxyapatite crystals. So like my I have a toothpaste and a mouthwash that has nano hydroxy apatite in it. It's bio identical to enamel is completely non toxic. I have coconut oil in there, which coconut oil is wonderful antibacterial, helps naturally make your teeth white. I've got baking soda in there, Himalayan salt, all of the things that are natural, that are going to help remove plaque and Colloidal Silver has been proven to help reduce plaque buildup. So plaque buildup and cavities are you usually tend to fall in one of two categories, either your plaque producer, and you don't really tend to get cavities, or you tend to get a lot of cavities, but you don't get a lot of plaque. So those are typically the categories people fall in is you know, there are a few that fall into bowls. But usually that's a diet thing like they're consuming soda or maybe drugs or just complete neglect. So typically people fall in one of those two categories. Now, I've never had a cavity, but I can build plaque like nobody's business. So for me, I'm always you know, I make sure that I have my Waterpik I brush several times today I want to pick a couple times a day and I use my products and I definitely have noticed a reduced amount of tartar buildup on my teeth for sure. So

19:37
that's just like a genetic thing, right? You're just genetically

19:41
some people just tend to struggle more like I would think genes have a lot to do with it. You know my sister and her sisters she I don't know what Gene she got. But that girl doesn't build anything on her teeth and she's never had a cavity so it's kind of unfair. Here I am the hi Janice and I have to feel like so meticulous with my homecare and surely even flossing their teeth. It makes me so mad. Yeah, I would say jeans have definitely a lot to do with it. But you know, like anything else. I mean, it's the heart disease runs in your family, if you eat right, if you exercise if you take the right supplements, your chances of developing it are a lot less than that still an underlying factor for sure. Yeah,

20:23
exactly. Yeah, in Hawaii, they don't actually put fluoride in the water, which is great. But every time we go to the doctor, which is literally once a year to get my kids like mandatory health checks. She's like,

20:38
so would you want

20:40
the tablets to for the floor? Right? And I'm just looking at her like, what? What planet are you on? Why would I purposely put fluoride in my body?

20:52
actually look at the back of the toothpaste thing. Okay, because, honestly, in hygiene school, we were taught, we were taught that anyone that goes against fluoride is a conspiracy theorists do not. But if you look at the back of your toothpaste tube, what does it say? It says drug because fluoride is classified as a drug, harmful have swallowed. It has never been proven as safe to take internally, the only reason that it is still allowed is because it was grandfathered in when the FDA came into existence in 1938. Okay, it's never been approved as safe and effective, is why when you're pregnant, it says don't have fluoride, when you're breastfeeding, don't have fluoride. But here you're telling me now it's okay. To give this drug to your child, which, you know, in places that do Florida, I mean, a lot of our food comes out of California, right? Well think about all the Florida's in the water there, all of that ground system wastes all that glyphosate, everything gets into our food supply, teas have fluoride in it. Medications, Prozac, Prozac has fluoride in it, what is it doing to your mind is so it's not if you're getting cavities, don't tell me it's a lack of fluoride, we're being inundated with fluoride, there's something else going on in your body, there's a root cause that's not being addressed, that's creating this problem, you're lacking vitamin D, you're you know, so unless you give your body what it needs, it will take it from another source. So you're probably in vitamin D deficient, you know, take cod liver oil, I would recommend the grass fed butter because it's loaded with lots of minerals from grass fed cows, bone broth, obviously, from organic meats, you want to have bone broth. So there's things that you can do naturally to remineralize your teeth, you don't need drugs to do it. You don't need toxic chemicals to do it. It's getting to the root cause and finding what natural prod products work for you.

22:53
Yeah, exactly. I had, or I have a friend and I, she's a very highly qualified nurse, a super smart woman. But she wasn't necessarily she ate very well, she cooked beautiful foods, but she didn't have she didn't believe in this information, right. And so on her second pregnancy, she has to go have major dental work, because she wasn't getting the nutrients that she need. And that baby just sucked the life out of her and, and took from, like you say those places. So yeah, it's sometimes not even about just like the disease you have or the the fertility issues you're having. If you use drugs to help you get to your ultimate goal, which is not a bad thing. What I'm trying to tell people is there's a consequence, if you're not trying to support yourself as best as you can, during that pregnancy, because I whatever, for whatever reason, society's like pregnancy is easy. You don't have to change anything. It's like you're literally growing another human being. If your body isn't getting enough of what it needs to just survive itself, and you start trying to grow another human being where do you think that energy is coming from? Exactly. And that's why we see so many thyroid issues or teeth issues or like even bone issues after several pregnancies, because that woman's body is taxed? Absolutely. Like I always say pregnancy isn't a sign of health. Right? Like why do we have in our head like, well, I can get pregnant, I'm healthy. It's like

24:38
no, no, you should actually in fact, if people are considering pregnancy, I would say prepare your body for two years beforehand. You know, make sure you're getting the the B vitamins and the phosphorus and everything that your body needs preparing for pregnancy, have your root canals removed. And again, I was mentioning or earlier that your teeth are linked to Oregon's well, like your bottom front teeth, specifically, I think is tooth number 28 is linked to your ovaries and your uterus. So say you had a root canal and tooth number 28 That could be impairing your fertility, you know? So getting to that root cause, did you have trauma, and now you have a dead tooth, say a number 2425, which is when your bottom front incisors or maybe your top two front teeth, maybe they have a root canal? Well, that also affects your ovary and uterus. So getting to those, you know, the root causes first look at the mouth, I mean, that you can't put your mouth in a separate compartment. Yeah, so I would be removing the mercury because, you know, I don't understand how someone can say, well, Mercury falls into one of the five most toxic substances known to man on this planet. But you know, when you put it in your mouth somehow it's okay. Yeah, I again, follow the logic on that if back in the day, you know, in hospitals, when they have those thermometers that had, you know, you had to shake it up, it was mercury in there. And if it broke on the hospital floor, they had to shut down the floor and send in the hazmat unit. But it's okay to be in your mouth. I mean, it doesn't even make sense. So having the mercury fillings properly removed, because as that dentist rolls it out, it's being vaporised so you don't have the right equipment to get it out, you are really giving yourself a heavy metal load. But in my book, I do talk about, you know, look, if you just can't afford to go to a biological dentist to have them removed properly, here's some things that you can do naturally, to try and help pull out those heavy metals. But definitely be preparing your body as much as you can. I mean, of course, things happen. I got pregnant and two different types of birth control, don't even ask me how those totally a God thing. And then I didn't know I was having twins till 18 weeks. So you know, things happen. If you if you're purposely planning on it, you know, get your mouth looked at how these issues dress, because so many things disrupt our endocrine system, and our endocrine system is under attack from everything in our environment. So, you know, we can only do so much, but at least we can try and fix the things that we have control over.

27:20
Yeah, I mean, that's the key. And the thing is here, if, if you're listening to this and going, oh my god, I gotta run out and get all my teeth checked. That's not the point of this episode is really just to be aware that if you are, if you are having issues with your teeth, or if you've had issues with your teeth in the past that this could be one really key component for you to address, fix what you can and move on from there, and the people who are listening to this and like I don't have any teeth problems, you can if you haven't changed out your toothpaste yet, we have a great resource for you now.

27:58
Absolutely. And it's making those small changes, because it can be overwhelming. Oh my gosh, no, I gotta do this. And now I got to do that. But making one small change at a time, and simply changing out your crust or Colgate or whatever, for a natural alternative. I mean, you know, anybody can do that. Understanding the importance of flossing because you know, only floss the teeth you want to keep That's how important it is that bacteria can also cause preterm low birth weight babies. So that's why you want to be removing that bacteria out of your mouth while you're pregnant. pregnancy gingivitis, that's another big thing. So keeping your mouth clean while you're pregnant, you know, so that bacteria isn't affecting your baby. You know, there's so many things that that you can do that don't cost a lot of money. Like I said the brushing, the flossing, getting a Waterpik none of these things have to be very expensive, and going to get your teeth cleaned at a at a facility if you need to because of costs. So you do have, you know, different avenues that you can go down but at least start investigating and seeing, you know, like you said, here's one more thing that that you can look at.

29:12
Yeah, exactly. Well, I find this conversation so fascinating. And if you would have told me that 10 years ago, I would have laughed but it's thank you so much for all that you are doing in help educating people on this. Let our listeners know where they can find you.

29:30
They can go to my website, it's www dot simply Silva mouthwash.com and they can either if they want to book a dental consult with me. I'm always happy to like look at their X rays. Give them my opinion. If they want to get a bacteria task, we can order that they can see all of my products online and I'm always happy to to be able to answer anyone's questions.

29:56
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us here on the podcast. And I hope that people connect with you and really utilise your resources.

30:05
Absolutely. Well, thanks so much, Monica. Thank you.

30:09
Thank you once again for tuning in to the finding fertility podcast. If you're loving this podcast please leave us a rating and review and let us know how this podcast is supporting you to get steps closer to creating your dream family. I hope you have a beautiful weekend and we will see you next Friday for another episode of the finding fertility podcast.

Let's Do This Together 💚

Monica

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Anything written or said about health and diet are my opinions, that I have formed over the years, through trial and error, study, reading, listening and observing. What worked for me may not work for you. I am not a doctor, nutritionist or dietician and all medical advice should be gotten from a qualified professional. Product recommendations are based on what I used during my infertility journey or wish I had.