As a follow up to our recent article discussing the critical importance to our health and essentiality of our oral microbiome (the oralome), Rob Verkerk PhD, talks to longtime holistic and biological dentist, Dr Elmar Jung. Trust us, this is the deep dive into the fascinating world of holistic dentistry you've been waiting for.

We invite you to watch or listen to their conversation which will bust a myriad of myths about modern dentistry, including the 'need' for fluoride to promote good oral health and prevent decay — as well as the much overlooked role of our oral health and teeth in our overall health and wellbeing.

>>> Find out more about the importance of good oral health - The oralome: your secret to good health

Join the conversation between Rob Verkerk PhD and Dr Elmar Jung

 

Connect with Dr Jung: https://www.dr-elmar-jung.com/
Listen to Elmar's Tooth Talk: https://www.dr-elmar-jung.com/elmars-tooth-talk/
Buy Elmar's book 'Shut Your Mouth and Open Wide

Listen to the podcast version

 

Video Transcript

Rob Verkerk PhD

Elmar, it is fantastic to have you on speaking. Naturally, we have met before. Of course, we've both been involved in this area of integrative and holistic health for many years, and I think we were just talking about having been at an event together probably over 10 years ago. But I also know loads of patients, including some that are very close to me and work in my team, who've been seeing you as a holistic dentist and pleased that they're seeing you and not a conventional dentist. Today, Elmar, we're going to be having a conversation about lots of stuff that is important to people, particularly in relation to this extraordinarily important connection between our mouths, our buccal cavity and the rest of our health. And we're going to be touching on a subject that a lot of people are not thinking a lot about, which is the oral microbiome. Everyone is very familiar with the microbiome in the human gut and we know we need to look after it by having lots of fibre and polyphenols. But we still see a lot of people thinking they're doing the right thing, often because they're told by their dentist that they should be using fluoride toothpaste. They should be using a fluoride based mouthwash. And of course, this is putting a toxin into the mouth, and it's pretty much like taking antibiotics every day for the gut microbiome. Not a good thing. So we'll be looking at all of that so. To kick us off. Elmar, please introduce yourself to our audience.

Dr Elmar Jung

It's an absolute pleasure, Rob, to be here and meet you again. I was really looking forward to our chat today. I started in dentistry about 40 years ago and even during university when it came to working on the patient and we got these materials that we needed to use, which obviously was amalgam, I was a bit confused. Because only two years previously in high school, we learned that mercury is the most toxic, non-radiating material poison on planet Earth, and so all of a sudden we are allowed to use poison and put that into people's mouth. Bit of a strange thing. However, being at university you don't question things and even if you would question you would do it in a in a way so that you will still get your certificate rather than annoy the professor and then drop out of school. You just keep going with that. However, when it came then to opening my own practice, I never ever used amalgam.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Wow. Right, from the beginning. So just = give us, give us a year. Elmar, what year are we talking about? When you first opened your dental practice?

Dr Elmar Jung

My first practice I opened in 1991.

Rob Verkerk PhD

So what was around and how many other dentists realised that there was a problem with amalgams and mercury?

Dr Elmar Jung

I don't think there were too many at that time because it was the material of choice. We got taught that is good and once it's in your mouth, it doesn't really cause any trouble because it's solidified and that is how it stays. And we all know that couldn't be further from the truth.

Rob Verkerk PhD

What? What about all those videos they hadn't hit YouTube, YouTube wasn't invented.

Dr Elmar Jung

No, no, there was no Internet or anything like that or only just in infancy. So there wasn't really much and being on that course from the beginning, you'd be called all sorts of things. I have been a scientologist because I use these funny methods, not using what the conventional dentists do. So it took quite a while until people got it. But when you talked with the patient, they were absolutely happy because they knew why would I want a poison in my mouth? And so we eveloped a private practice straight from the beginning and people loved the way we dealt with them because they knew it's not just about drill, fill and pill, it's more about really looking at the overall picture of their overall health. Rather than just the teeth.

Rob Verkerk PhD

In your view, with your 40 years behind you, what is the relationship between the health of our mouth, of our buccal cavity, and our whole health. How is it linked?

Dr Elmar Jung

Well, that's a really great question because still in this present time, dentistry is kind of an extra part of medicine, but not really made it and from my point of view, dentistry, with all the disciplines involved, is central to our overall health. I would even say that, at least 60% of ailments and diseases stem from the mouth, whether that's your body, your feelings. That's the treatment. That's how you buy. That's what you put into your mouth. What you feed yourself. What you drink. It's so, so big. And we know that teeth are connected to the organs. The Chinese knew that thousands of years ago. So it makes me kind of laugh that this hasn't really gone into modern dentistry. Modern medicine. But then we all know the reasons behind that, and so it's important to educate people so that they become knowledgeable, that they can ask the right questions and which is I find the most important thing, take responsibility.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Exactly. We don't see a lot of general practitioners. Really doing a tongue reading in the way that we see in traditional Chinese medicine, but they are looking for generally infections, particularly around the tonsils. Obviously, people are also increasingly aware that that even dental decay is linked to a bacteria, Streptococcus mutans. They may not know the name, but they know that this is a bad guy. Hence poison, poison, poison. So just in terms of this relationship with health for a second, let's just take infections out of the equation. If we're not looking at the bugs and protecting potential pathogens, what about structure and how that relates to overall health?

Dr Elmar Jung

That’s a biggie and we do that in our initial consultation. We lie the patient flat in the chair and we have the mouth open. Then we check the leg length. And then we let them bite together, get out of the chair, move down the corridor and back, lie them back down with their mouth closed, and we check them. And very, very often, we see a change in leg length.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Tell me how that works.

Dr Elmar Jung

The reason why that is because we are interconnected. So the muscle they're not just here and stop there. They're connected with the shoulders, they're connected with the hips. And so with the legs and it's a really fantastic working together and what we often also see is that when people have insoles, that the insoles was just in a way, manifest the wrong bite. Rather than let the guys who do the insoles have a look further up the chain to see that there is something not quite right and they wouldn't really necessarily needed to be involved in the whole treatment if the dentist would do the job. So that the teeth align properly.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Absolutely. We see more and more adults. Obviously loads of kids with rail tracks and some of them are using more invisible aligners like Invisalign for example. But what I'm noticing is that there's a lot more adults later in life who now suddenly got, railroad tracks. For Invisalign, is this part of preventative dentistry because over years the bite cannot just be corrected by, you know, shaving little bits of teeth, but actually requires a repositioning of the teeth. And from an evolutionary point of view, that's interesting in itself. Is it because we're living so long that we need that? What what's your view on adult realignment.

Dr Elmar Jung

I think it's a mixture. I would say that the overall picture is that most people do it for aesthetic purposes. And it's also a side effect or a consequence of what has happened previously in their life, because when we go back to kids, when they need orthodontic treatment parents normally are told well, yeah, it looks a little bit crowded, but let's just wait. Wait until they're 12/13 years old and have another look. So you go back with your child when they are 12/13 years old. And yeah, it's really, really crowded so what can we do now? We need to take full, healthy teeth out. Because we need to create space, then this creating space, if you look at it correctly, it's a dream because you do not create any space, you make it even smaller because you need to pull it together so that they stand in a nice way. And they look beautiful. You look at the top. They look beautiful. When you look at the bottom and then you close the mouth and it's chaos because the teeth don't come together nicely and because once they have these railroad tracks, teeth are pulled and pushed in positions that they would naturally go. So you need to have retainers lifelong, which means you either wear something out of plastic that you have to wear at night, or they put metal bars behind the teeth to stabilise the situation. The ideal way of dealing with that if I just go into children's teeth would be OK we now see you're four or five years old, Bobby. Now we need to start here. We need to look at what kind of habits does Bobby have? What kind of misalignments are there? And then with tiny little bits and pieces, motivating the parents and the child to do myofunctional work, to do a little bit of exercises where they can munch onto solid things but start very, very early and so it's team work where parents actually have the main part. This is where we're going back to taking responsible. Reality. They need to motivate their child to do the exercises, do the exercise with them, that they wear the appliances and the dentists becomes the facilitator, checks that is going in the right direction and when they are then 12/13 years old, they have corrected the jaw bones and the teeth have all the space they need.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Amazing. So do you think there's a relationship between the increased consumption of ultra processed food and the fact that that kids are not chewing on stuff that's hard enough? And might there even be a relationship as we get society pushed more and more towards vegan diets and consuming less meats, for example? That tend to be tougher to chew. Could that have an impact on alignment of children's teeth?

Dr Elmar Jung

It not only has an impact on the alignment of teeth, it also has an impact on the size of the jawbone because as you rightly say, we don't chew properly, we don't chew long enough, we eat too fast, we swallow too quickly and so the system, whatever it is, got the evolution. We don't need as many teeth anymore. That's often the case when all these wisdom teeth are impacted. They don't have the space to come through and it starts with breastfeeding. So if you don't breastfeed your child, then there is not enough information for the system to really expand. Because we all know when kids are on the breast and they're finished, they're exhausted. They're ohh, gosh, and fall asleep. And why is that? Because they really, really have to suck out the milk out of the nipple. It's not just going there open the tap and here it runs. This is what happens when they get the bottle. They drown almost. But what they have to do is they have to put the nipple on the top of the palette. Push the tongue against the nipple and really, really suck the milk out. And this is what puts the nipple to the palette and this gives the system the information. OK, over time I need to widen. I need to widen and. Doing breastfeeding for at least six months is the best thing that can really happen to kids done properly, because we see also that kids who are breast fed are far less likely to develop food allergies, asthma, gut issues. They know how to swallow properly. They know how to breathe properly and so starting at the very, very early age is the best foundation to stay healthy long term.

Rob Verkerk PhD

From the breastfeeding and then when we see the introduction of solids as I guess in order to trigger the impaction of the teeth, we want to see kids not having just soft pap all the time, but really chewing on things.

Dr Elmar Jung

They need to chew on steaks, I would say.

Rob Verkerk PhD

It is amazing. As I've travelled much of my life in in different parts of the tropics and you see indigenous people in Africa, so often the kid is chewing on something that's really tough. We don't see that. If anything, you see kids with dummies in their mouth, for example. OK, so some enormous lessons that that everyone can benefit from, but that started from a very young age. Let's move to this idea of infection so. Nasty bugs that can create tooth decay are well understood. What about the relationship with other bugs and more general infections in the body? And then if you can weave in how there might be a relationship between infections and the presence of toxins. I think, for many people if they hear about the fact that they're full of amalgam or they're thinking, well, there may be some benefit because it's going to reduce the presence of these nasty bugs, but so often you see people who have lots of amalgams, having more and more drillings and more and more fillings. So clearly it's not having an anti-infective action in any way. How does that all work, and does it go beyond the buccal cavity? Is it stuff that relates to our whole systemic infection?

Dr Elmar Jung

From a holistic point of view everything affects everything in our body. We can't say oh well, you got something in your eye and that has nothing to do with anything else because we're so interconnected and this is compartmentalising. I think this is a big, big crux nowadays because when we, when we look back, I remember when I was young and my GP, he even came to our home when we were sick and he looked at the whole picture and he could then say, OK, well, you need to go to that specialist or that specialist for this or that. And nowadays you only go to specialists and your GP doesn't even have time, let alone having the overview of what's actually going on. So that's one thing. And the other thing is, when we look back to Pasteur/Pouchet, for example, Pasteur was always saying, well, it's the bug, that's the problem. It's the bug that's the problem. And we're sure saying no, it's the environment. And so we really need to get this into people's head that yes, there are bugs that are dangerous that cause problems, but bugs can only thrive when they get the environment to do so, they're opportunistic critters. So, we need to create an environment for them that they can't exist in, that they can't thrive and go overboard, so that the good bacteria keep them in check. We wrote that a long time ago, that man has billions of bacteria, so without bacteria we wouldn't even be here. But it's this balance, whether that's with our bite, whether that's with the bacteria with the food we eat, it's all about balance. And so yeah, if you have metals in your mouth, obviously that makes a disbalance and dysbiosis in your mouth, and if you have a dysbiosis in your mouth, obviously you will have dysbiosis in your gut. And then you have a dysbiosis in your brain. Because we know that this all is interconnected, the vagus nerve, the nervous trigeminus from the jawbone. Everywhere there, the bacteria can travel. They travel through the bloodstream, they cross the blood brain barrier. So we really need to find a way to make sure we are balanced and teeth is a big issue here because people who don't brush their teeth, for example, they have a, I think it's about 65% higher chance, of getting brain problems, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, even MS. and just by not cleaning your oral cavity. And then if we look at cleaning the oral cavity. What does that mean?

Rob Verkerk PhD

What I was gonna ask you that that exact question. Tell us what it does mean. Tell us how to do it properly.

Dr Elmar Jung

How much space do teeth take in your mouth? It's about 10 max 20% and then you have the cheek. We have the gum and we have this big, big organ called the tongue and so cleaning your oral cavity means absolutely brush your teeth. And you can't do that in 30 seconds. Jokingly I'll say you only need to clean the ones you want to keep. So for some people that might reduce the amount they need to brush, but normally I need at least three and a half 4 minutes for all the teeth. So yes, I have a lot still left, luckily.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Just on the on the point you made, are you suggesting tongue scraping or tongue brushing, cheek brushing as well, as teeth brushing?

Dr Elmar Jung

I would just come to that, absolutely.

Rob Verkerk PhD

And are we not disrupting all the good bugs that we need when we do that or if we use a non-fluoridated toothpaste? Is that all? OK, just take us through the process.

Dr Elmar Jung

The tongue scraping is definitely important because it's not just bacteria that we get off there, it's a lot of tiny food particles that sit in these villi. And so cleaning the tongue gives you a much fresher breath and it's absolutely essential. It's essentially as doing the flossing.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Right. OK, so tongue scraping, flossing, brushing 3 or 4 minutes. What about the cheeks?

Dr Elmar Jung

Cheeks yeah, absolutely. Also, with your toothbrush, go into the cheeks, clean the cheeks all the way round so that they are clean and you can make your own toothbrush. You can make your own mouthwash. Saliva, actually, it's the best mouthwash if it's a good one. If you're balanced or you make your own, you have hydrogen peroxide. 3% is a is a great one. CDS works very well when you dilute it a little bit down. That works brilliantly, and as you say, absolutely no fluoride. I mean fluoride has its advantages if you want to say so, especially when you put it in the water makes people docile and there's all sorts of funny things. So. It all depends on what you want to use it for.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Crystallizes the pineal gland rather well as well.

Dr Elmar Jung

Exactly. Yeah, it's. It's calcifying all the glands. So if someone doesn't want us to have the connection to our higher self absolutely put more fluoride in the water.

Rob Verkerk PhD

I mean that that is we've worked on fluoridation for many years and it is astounding that it can be so generally accepted that mass medication via the water supply. You know, when you look at the sort of toxicology of it, it's particularly interesting because the amount of drinking water that people consume, either as water in beverages or in cooking varies dramatically from person to person, and it if you look at an athlete, for example, that may be perspiring heavily, particularly an endurance athlete. You might be consuming 4 litres of water a day versus someone else who might have, less than one litre. So it's a very approximate way. And when the threshold of safety is so close to the intake and that's even the mainstream view on safety and obviously we've spent many years seeing the mainstream trying to conceal the suggested evidence, not just of impacts of high fluoride in terms of disruption of of bone health and skeletal health, but also and obviously fluorosis, but also carcinogenic effects. So it is a very, very strange situation, but we seem to live in a world in which mass medication is becoming more common, not less.

Dr Elmar Jung

Yeah. And there's a very interesting thing happening or happened in Switzerland because Basel they did, for example, fluoridation for more than 40 years and then they gather their data and they were really surprised because they weren't any better in tooth decay or preventing tooth decay, so they recommended to stop the water fluoridation. And they said you can't do that. There's actually a lack of evidence of the water fluoridation is more effective than other measures. And yeah, tooth decay actually gre in Basel despite having the water fluoridation. So I on't really get it. Why in the UK now there's such a big emphasis from all the professional bodies to get the water fluoridated again, and it actually violating medical ethics. I would say if we look at the Nuremberg code, it is clear that whatever goes into your body, you need to have or need to at least give the consent or need to know what's going in the body and what it’s doing for your body.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Well, you know, in a in a world in which we've had a mass vaccination programme with experimental mRNA vaccines, that is right. And I think a lot of it is dogma and it is down to dogma. You know, we were very involved in the Southampton fluoridation experiment to try and prevent fluoridation there and I was working with dentist Anthony Lees. If you knew Anthony, he's sadly passed now. But it was extraordinary to see how health officials. Public health officials really have just bought the line that fluoride is the most effective toxin to deal with tooth decay. They are aware of the relationship with fluorosis, but they say the levels would be beneath that. But you can show them very easily that for a proportion of the society that isn't the case, and they've just bought the dogma and they're not prepared to look at all of the available evidence.

Dr Elmar Jung

Absolutely they’re just parroting what they say, but they don't go to the source where they get the real facts.

Rob Verkerk PhD

One of the difficulties with any of these public health policies, unless you look at all the options equally in terms of evaluating their risk benefit and you just say, well, there's one prime one you kind of don't see the forest for the trees and we've seen this with covid. We certainly see it with dentistry and obviously the relationship between diets. I appreciate the Labour Party at the moment is very keen to get young kids into preschools and primary schools and teach them all about teeth brushing, and that again is symptomatic of the fact that there is this ever increasing deterioration in oral health amongst children, but how much is that really related to the kinds of foods they consume? How much of that is related to the absolutely lack of supervision that used to occur around dinner tables, for example, with more and more people no longer eating around the dinner table? And of course this is why we're all at risk of increasingly being subject to nanny states because of the lack of sense of personal responsibility.

Dr Elmar Jung

One more, with the fluoridation that that if you fluoridate water, I mean how much water is actually drunk, I think it's 10% and the rest of the 90% they go in the environment. So we really have an environmental issue here.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Absolutely. And of course, the hydrofluorosilicic acid that is used in fluoridation aint the same as the small amounts of sodium or potassium fluoride or fluoride ions that you'll find naturally in in river waters that I remember many years ago that would be always the argument that we would find that fluoride occurs naturally. If you look at the European Food Supplements Directive, you'll see that fluoride is listed in Annex 1 as a nutrient, as a micronutrient, and again, that's part of the dogma that it's been sitting there for so long in public health circles as being this magical nutrient that facilitates all health and reduces dental caries and of course that whole mechanism is a pharmaceutical mechanism. As you know, only too well it disturbs the whole carbohydrate cycling and the ability for Streptococcus mutans to create plaques and then create decay. But it is working as a drug and therefore it is a mass medication strategy. On the fluoride question for people I know in the UK, for example a little over. 15% of the water supply is fluoridated. In Ireland, of course we also have the north-south Survey in Ireland, but again a fantastic piece of work that you know should have immediately stopped fluoridation. 75% of the water in the Republic of Ireland is fluoridated, in the United States and. Australia it it's a lot more than that. And what do you advise for people to ensure that they're not consuming fluoridated water when they live in an area where the municipal water is fluoridated?

Dr Elmar Jung

You have a couple of options. Either you buy water where you know that it's not fluoridated, or you have a filter system in your house or on your tap or near the tap where you can put the water in to filter the water.

Rob Verkerk PhD

OK, so the filter systems you would support - reverse osmosis or distillation, but which obviously will remove it and also remove xenoestrogens. One of one of the difficulties is that they create very empty water that has this capacity to then pull trace minerals or ultra-trace trace minerals out of the body. Are you in support of systems that then will look, at if you like reconditioning that water with additional minerals, and perhaps even restructuring it. Have you got into the whole field of structured waters, and how they may benefit health?

Dr Elmar Jung

Well structured water is absolutely beneficial and that's what we do at home. We have the filters or the mirrors from our treatments. Ee use them to make the water really energized, and we also add, when we distill water, but also when we drink non distillated water only the restructured water, we use fulvic minerals.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Yeah. Fantastic.

Dr Elmar Jung

And I mean, you come in our kitchen. You wouldn't think it's a kitchen. It's more like a pharmacy with all this stuff. It's probably like yours.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Run similar. Yeah. So we have RO systems in our homes. We have them here at work. Upstairs, downstairs we remineralise and we re-energise. I think that is the quality of water that that comes through municipal water system, that may have been multiple times through a human body, even in the day that you consume is so degraded. And I found one of the fascinating things about structured waters is you can you can feel the difference almost more than you can taste the difference that rounded quality that you get in terms of the mouth feel, is amazing. And the more we understand, you know the work of people like Gerry Pollock at Washington University, Eaz water, the fourth phase of water. Yeah, the more we understand how vital that is to biological systems.

Dr Elmar Jung

It's also when you look at the work from Masaru Emoto, here is a difference and you can actually show how the crystals look in different ways, from tap water to energised water, or just the words we speak. And if we then relate that to our body, which is at least 75% water, then we need to really be aware of what we talk, how we speak and what we think.

Rob Verkerk PhD

We're going to get on to emotions and intention and all of that in a minute, but I want to just draw a link between what we were talking about, about bugs, we were talking about bad bugs and fluoride and but we'll also need to understand that within the buccal cavity are going to be a whole range of bacterial and probably non-bacterial microbial communities that have a role in creating stability and are going to manage the populations of less friendly bacteria. So the microbiome, how do we protect it? What do we understand about it? How do we nurture it? We know that if we want to nurture the gut microbiome, we need to eat the right kind of foods, particularly foods that have soluble fibre, that provide a substrate for the microbial communities, and we also need to feed them with polyphenols that come from, for example, coloured vegetables and fruits. What do we do to nurture the oralome that doesn't involve, obviously poisoning them with lots of fluoride?

Dr Elmar Jung

I think a foundation to do the right thing is become metal free in your mouth.

Rob Verkerk PhD

OK.

Dr Elmar Jung

Because that has a huge effect. Amalgam that's still in in a lot of people's mouth and it's leaching out. So that has a detrimental effect on the oralbBiome. And if you then have other metals in your mouth that gives the battery effect, and so that's not a healthy environment for the good bugs.

Rob Verkerk PhD

What you call the battery effect, the electrochemical world of metals in the mouth, how that might work because we're effectively you're saying that having metal in your mouth is like smoking to systemic health. It is the kind of number one thing that everyone will agree. Apart from the few dentists that still believe it's the right way to go. But nearly everyone recognises the science points to a pretty negative effect. So talk us through the battery. The fact, as distinct from the toxicity effect.

Dr Elmar Jung

Well, we know that amalgam fillings release mercury 24/7 and if you have dissimilar metals in a solution then there's always an exchange of electrons, so the electrons from the less precious metal go towards the more precious metals, and you have a great solution which is your saliva, and that is also why a lot of patients who have amalgam fillings and other metals, they have this kind of metallic taste in their mouth. There's nothing else but they taste. Then this electron flow that comes from the amalgam to the crowns. And therefore when you say OK, I'll get rid of my amalgam feelings, you should actually also get rid of your gold crowns because they are now contaminated with the mercury and sometimes we see this. The dark blue blackish spots on the gum around these metal grounds. There's nothing else than a deposition of mercury in the gum. So it's an intoxication off the gum in that area because it was pulled into this area due to the difference in preciousness.

Rob Verkerk PhD

So having metals is a bit like having an electrolysis apparatus within the mouth, but it's something that people are not told. And they have all that metal put in now. Some people are wary about having the metal removed because they're often told that's going to increase your exposure. So take us through how that all works. Are there ways of doing it that are safer? Can any dentist do it, or should it be only those who specifically trained in safely removing metals from the mouth.

Dr Elmar Jung

I completely agree with people saying when you get amalgams removed, this is more toxic than anything else and you rather keep your amalgam feelings. However, is this exactly as you say? There is a protocol to protect not only the patient, because the patient, they get it once, but the staff and the dentist, they get it 24/7 all the way round. So you need to have a protocol and there's a protocol called Smartsafe Mercury Amalgam removal technique and that means that the patient is completely protected from top to toe, eyes protected. As usual, they get oxygen insufflation through the nose. And so it's only the mouth that is open. The mouth is covered with what we call a rubber dam and special suctions that surround the tooth. And there's an external suction. We also give our patients vitamin C infusions to really support the detox. And then it's also important how you drill the amalgam filling. Now, we don't really drill them out. We more. like to cut them. So we go at the margin between the amalgam filling and the tooth and then cut around there and then flick the amalgam out in big pieces so we don't even create that massive amount of vapor that you would normally create if you just go in and kind of drill it out so. That is very, very important. And the other thing is, if you don't do it that way, as a dentist, as staff you inhale the most, so that's the reason why staff and dentists they wear masks. So when you come into to the surgery, when we do that it looks like in a sci-fi movie because we're totally with these masks and it's important, it's so, so important. So patient also rinses with activated charcoal. We put charcoal in the tooth. Once the amalgam is removed, leave it there for a while because the charcoal actually holds the mercury even more out of the tooth. And when a dental practice doesn't do that, the mercury floats around and then sits on the floor. And you don't get rid of it.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Is there any occupational health data that shows that dentists have higher deposits of mercury to?

Dr Elmar Jung

What I know is that there is research from dentist brains and that is 100 times higher in mercury levels than the average person. We also know that the suicide rate with dentist is higher than the average rate, and so is alcoholism.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Amazing. Amazing. So this removal process and obviously do, do you use dams as well?

Dr Elmar Jung

Yeah, absolutely.

Rob Verkerk PhD

How does someone find out whether a dentist is going to be equipped? Do they say do you use the smart protocol? And if they don't know what you're talking about, you shouldn't bother with them. And then secondly, what does the British Dental Association for example think about the smart protocol. Are they not recommending?

Dr Elmar Jung

OK, so the smart protocol was introduced by the International Academy of Medical and Oral Toxicology (IAOMT) in the states. And you can get certified there. So you can put that on your website as we have, smart certified dentist. That's the first thing. And you can check on their website and ask us to say are you smart certified? And there's definitely loads of dentists who are not smart certified but use a similar protocol. So if they are approachable, if they talk about it, what they do, how they do it, then you definitely have a good dentist rather than say oh, I'll do it my way and it has always worked kind of. It's arrogance that we know from the people in white coats and that might be an idea to. Ask a few more questions than if you're not satisfied with the question, just ask someone else.

Rob Verkerk PhD

So you gotta be either smart or double smart. Being smart to ask in the 1st place. Use some of the smart protocol or it's a little bit like the situation we now face with organic farming and certified organic foods and Regen AG. There's a lot of farmers who are saying, look, we're doing regenerative agriculture. We're looking after the soil and we're not putting pesticides and synthetic fertilisers in it, but we're not certified organic. And guess what? Our prices are lower. We're not charging the premium. So it's similar kind of relation all for the benefit of holism. So there's quite a lot of trust that builds there.

Dr Elmar Jung

Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. And in terms of the BDA well, their stance is it does what I would say, is that it doesn't really matter, because they were up in arms when they heard of the new ban that comes up in January next year. This will destroy the NHS and it's the most common material and for permanent fillings and it has been used for 150 years and has been good and its safety is established, and I mean, it's all that nonsense.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Especially when you see the whole problem being that dental carries rates are rising, not going down or health is deteriorating, not improving incredible.

Dr Elmar Jung

The challenge here. Is that, as we said at the beginning, it's we look at one thing we look at the symptom, but we never look at the whole. As you previously said, what do they eat? How do they eat because it's not about the brushing. It's about what do we give our bodies so that they can create a real harmony in itself rather than pushing poisons or whatever on it to fit. And then thinking we could help it with that. So this is a very logical approach.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Absolutely. So we we've covered two things that help ensure we have a healthy oralome and one is to get the metal out safely using a smart protocol or a protocol equivalent to that. Another one is not using routinely, fluoride products, toothpaste and mouthwashes, etcetera, even flosses in many cases are typically covered in fluoride. I choose ones that arenot.

Dr Elmar Jung

It's also important with the with the floss, and I think there's research coming out now that there are these, these microplastics that they release from the floss and they then go into your gums. So I would actually recommend if someone buys their new floss, go for a silk, there's no plastic in at all.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Yeah, I use some silk or cotton. Yeah, one or the other. Fantastic. So I now want to go to the subject of emotions. We've talked about physical health, what we do, how we eat when we eat. We've talked about protocols that can give us a healthier buccal cavity. But you, I know that you're very interested in the relationship between our emotions and our oral health and because oral health is so integral to total health, how does that work?

Dr Elmar Jung

Well, again with the teeth and the rest of the body they're interconnected, so every single tooth is connected to an organ. For example, the front 4 teeth, upper and lower, they're connected to your kidneys, to your bladder, to your genital system.

Rob Verkerk PhD

When when you say connection, are you talking about an? Energetic connection or a neurological connection or any other type of connection well.

Dr Elmar Jung

It is an energetic connection, however it was proven that these acupuncture points are actually existing. So we're talking about the medicine that the Chinese did for thousands of years with acupuncture and through these acupuncture pathways, energy pathways, teeth are connected with those according organs. So if for example you have a dead tooth in your mouth, then this can prevent the energy from flowing properly and this then also can trigger issues in the correlated areas of prostate, kidneys, bladder, urogenital system, when that is a tooth that is under in the front of your upper or lower jaw. And so you can connect all those different teeth with organs and then with the organs you can connect. And we have all these sayings when you can't digest something or you can't let go of things so can't let go. That's for example the large intestine. And what we found when we did surgery. We had quite a few patients that had to come back for surgery. It was OK for three months, six months and then the symptoms came back. And we did a second surgery. Sometimes we did a third or fourth surgery. I was wondering why do people heal properly and maintain and others don't, and then we introduced a system where we look into these underlying issues. These, I would say blocked emotions, and they're there most of the times. They're not aware. They're subconscious and Sam Cooper who does the treatment in our clinic. She has the capacity to really bring those blocked emotions into the open and release them. And since we do that, the healing is so much better and it is consistent. If people really do the homework. So it's not just that you come and yeah, just do it. For me. It's important that they follow the homework that we give the supplementation protocol, for example. And it's a combination of light, kinesiology of the emotion code from Doctor Bradley Nelson and Gastrique, Harmon's German new Medicine, and Sam's intuition. And she's absolutely brilliant. And people now come to her from all over the world because it can be done remotely, which is brilliant and just to help them do other things not related to teeth. And we know when we release these blocked emotions. I mean, this can be life changing for people and so up to about 3-4 years, I would say a root canal is a root cause. However I would now say it's a consequence of a root cause, which is the blocked emotion, and this is what we find or Sam finds out all the time she traces it into the brain.

Rob Verkerk PhD

That way around. That's very interesting so.

Dr Elmar Jung

So it's then released. All over the body. It's an absolute fascinating way of looking at things. And if you think of it, again, it makes so much sense.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Absolutely and of course, we've done an interview with Sam, who you know pretty well, don't you?

Dr Elmar Jung

I do, yes, absolutely. She's my wife.

Rob Verkerk PhD

So someone who has a root canal, is it sufficient just to do the emotional work or is that root canal? I mean we're aware obviously that many people have a problem with the root canal because there might be some residual infection in there that creates, persistent, inflammatory and immune problems. But from an energetic point of view, can you overcome the presence of that root canal? Just leave it be or should it come because we hear more and more people saying, if you've got a tooth that's decayed right to the root, don't have a root canal have the thing taken out and perhaps an implant. Are all the solutions able to be dealt with emotionally by someone of Sam's ability. Or do we need to get to the physical as well and change? Whatever, root canal filling has been done.

Dr Elmar Jung

It really, really depends on the patient. There are people who have a high compensation level and they can deal with all sorts of things in their mouth. They get to their 90s, hundreds with root canals with amalgam fillings. Now when these people started out their life, they hadn't had that many toxins. When they grew up, and so nowadays people have far more things to deal with on the toxic level that it's difficult for most to compensate. It really is the compensation. If you look at babies when they drop out the womb, they already have 200 toxins in their blood. So we know that there's a lot of load there. And it's a bit like when you treat root canals with laser or with ozone the laser, the ozone might be able to really go through all the four or five miles of tiny little channels in one single tooth to clear that. However, when you stop the treatment. And you can't fill these tiny little channels, you can only fill the main channel with the root canal treatment this is where the specialist endodontists do their perfect job, but they can't get into these other areas. And so the bugs they migrate in again and nothing gets them because they sit there without anything really getting to them. So it would be in a way a constant semine for them to stay in that way. So we haven't yet found a way of dealing with that, and therefore my suggestion is that, well, I can only ever speak for myself. I would never wonder who cannot really choose in my mouth. And funnily enough. If you look at all the disciplines in medicine, dentistry is the only one where it's said that if a dead organ is there it’s a good thing, it doesn't really matter everywhere else if you have a gangrenous toe, it's cut off to not poison the rest of the body. Obviously you don't drop dead when you have a root canal. However it's the summation of all these things. And therefore I would never want a root canal in my mouth.

Rob Verkerk PhD

I think some of that comes from the fact that if you have a much more holistic and long-term view of health, you see health in a completely different way. And I think the difficulty is that the mainstream medical system and also the. You've made that fantastic point about the disconnection between dentistry. I mean, why on Earth has dentistry not been incorporated within holistically within the whole medical profession that's been pushed to the side and people tend to see teeth as non-living because they just see the enamel on the outside and they don't see all the living parts on the inside. So when looking at that energetic connection which is obviously well understood through the Meridian system in traditional Chinese medicine for example. And I know that there are many modern day energetic frequency type devices that can also verify that that can show direct relationships bio-resonance machines, for example. And we've been working with a machine made by a company called Vitatech that that has a specific program that looks at the relationship between the teeth and the rest of the body, but is the energetic connection there only when a live tooth is in place? If that living tooth has disappeared, either been removed or has been killed? Does that connection still exist energetically or does it disappear mean essentially? If it did disappear, that organ would have lost its connection to something that from an evolutionary point of view it was meant to have. And does that have an untoward effect in any way?

Dr Elmar Jung

No, the energy pathway is always there. It's just blocked in the area where the root canal treated teeth or the dead tooth is and once the dead tooth comes out, the blockage is gone and the energy on that pathway flows again.

Rob Verkerk PhD

OK, OK. So that would be a strong reason why you would be saying, I wouldn't have a root canal because you're just leaving that that dead tooth in place. No, that that's a fantastic insight.

Dr Elmar Jung

When, you have a dead tooth, we look at the bacteria or the excretes from the bacteria, they can then combine when the tooth really disintegrates, they combine with the mercury, when you have mercury in your teeth and build even worse combinations that then have areally bad effect when that goes down into your gut.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Elmar. It's been amazing talking with you. What I'd love you to finish on is two things. One is, what are the most important tips you can give to people who are not yet your patients, general recommendations for healthy oral health systemic health. And then if you can also just provide a little bit of detail of any information that people can get from your website, your, details that would be fantastic. So over to you for the closing remarks.

Dr Elmar Jung

We're a very bespoke small clinic. And because we have a lot of people who ask us questions, I've created a podcast Elmar’s Tooth Talk. So the main thing I think for people is to educate themselves so that they know what's actually going on in their mouths when they go to the dentist. What options do they have? Ask the right questions. I cover the entire dentistry with my podcast. It's free, available. It's about 100 episodes and people can really look into that when it comes to root canal treatment. Just listen to the podcasts that I did for that. The episodes. I think this is very, very important. I also wrote a little book that's easy to read, ‘Shut Your Mouth and Open Wide’. Got it here. That's how it looks. And so yeah. Really take responsibility. This is always what I say in my talks with the patients and when we give a talk in the public. Because people we trust those doctors and dentists, and we need to start questioning. And if we get the right answers, brilliant. Then you're with a with a, a really good person. A good dentist, a good doctor. It's the same with solicitors. I mean, it goes everywhere. We need to have this due diligence in a way and be more smart and also in a positive way, aggressive because it's our health that we want to really maintain and the health of our family, of our kids. And so there are no silly questions. Therefore, ask whatever you don't understand. Nowadays, with the Internet brilliant, you have so many options to look at. Although the Internet can be quite a funny thing to get information from. But yeah, have a look what other holistic dentists say and also feel into your body, what makes sense to you, what does what we were talking about. How does that feel to you? And if you say God, that's bollocks Well, fine. That's your opinion. And that's fine. You were at that stage in your life. Then you are where you are, and it’s sometimes important for us that we then step towards our patients and pick them up where they are and lead them on the way that they want to go, but not yet know that this is the best for them. And if someone wants to look into the podcast is www.dr-elmar-jung.com. [NB: this is about the pronunciation of Elmar's surname) That was quite funny. Couple of weeks ago we had a new patient coming in and because a lot of people, say Jung, and he came in and said, Oh my God you're not Chinese.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Oh my God. And they clearly haven't read any Carl Jung. That was the comment I was gonna make any. Any relative, Carl or any relative. Hence the link with Sam and emotions but clearly not.

Rob Verkerk PhD

The amazing thing about oral health is that most people have a direct relationship at least twice a day with this part of the body. They don't necessarily have that same two times a day relationship with their liver or their kidneys or their lungs or any other organ. You may be aware of the work of the Stanford behavioural scientist BJ Fogg, who's written this fantastic book called Tiny Habits that helps people to get into healthier lifestyles and what he's often looking for is - think about something that you do every day and then use it as a trigger to do another healthy habit. And the fantastic thing with the teeth is that we can start to think about how we change our approach to health by using the teeth brushing that that now may become the tongue scraping and the cheek brushing that that may not involve the fluoride toothpaste and fluoride mouthwashes, but immediately that we finish we may do something else, dare I say some sit-ups and pull up some things to trigger mitochondria. That we all need to maintain health. So it is a fantastic kind of ramp into taking responsibility for our health, something that, sadly, more and more people think that they should, pass, cede that responsibility to, a doctor, an institution, a nation, a supra-nation, et cetera.

Dr Elmar Jung

There was one thing, sorry to interrupt. There was one point we haven't actually got into, which is very, very important. And that's the breathing.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Oh well, look, please, before we finish, tell us about breathing. Breathing obviously is critical to health and now we want to know how it's critical to oral health in particular.

Dr Elmar Jung

A lot of our patients when we ask them and we do certain tests, they breathe through their mouth. So when you breathe through the mouth during the night, this will dry out your mouth. And the saliva is the one liquid that you need in your mouth to swamp away the bacteria. We are also breathing through the nose filters, the way the air goes into your lungs. That's not happening in that degree when you breathe through your mouth. Now the question is, why do you breathe through your mouth rather than your nose? Well, you could either have a deviation in your septum in your nose. Your nose is blocked, your sinuses are blocked through all sorts of environmental things or smoking, for example, or your tongue is not positioned in the right way and that is what we find most of the time the case. The tongue doesn't sit where it should sit. Where should it sit? Behind the top teeth but not touching the teeth but the palate. If the tongue is not sitting there at night. It's further back and therefore when it's further back, it's constricting the airways. And so you don't get as much air in through your nose. Then you start breathing through your mouth and you start snoring you. You start snoring and with snoring when it gets worse you have what we call sleep apnea and you have seconds where you don't breathe at all. So if you don't breathe properly, you're not rejuvenated properly in the day. And that is when we see these second symptoms where people all of a sudden close their eyes, especially dangerous in traffic and people are just not relaxed anymore because they are in bed for seven or eight hours, but they haven't got the sleep they need to regenerate their systems. And so this goes on and on. And then they have not only problems with concentration. But this goes on to the cardiovascular system, so it's a big, big, big, big issue and we have included that in our initial consultation to make sure that people at least become aware. And most people are aware because they always get the nudge at night.

Rob Verkerk PhD

And they can use devices. Do you support the use of devices that will help position the tongue more correctly to ensure that the tongue doesn't drop back?

Dr Elmar Jung

Yeah. We do that, we promote mouth taping, so we have a whole range of devices and exercises for people to help them become nose breathers again.

Rob Verkerk PhD

Fantastic. Look that is really important advice Elmar. It's been an amazing pleasure talking to there. There's so many good points that have been made throughout this that could be transformational for people. People can obviously go to Doctor Elmer's podcast Tooth Talk. Find out more. You can read his book. People who are in the United Kingdom can visit his clinic, and they can also benefit from Sam's consultation wherever they are on the planet, perhaps even off planet. But it has been such a pleasure, Elmar, to talk to you, and we hope to talk to you again soon.

 

 

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