Jonathan Levine: The Oral‑Health Habits Adding Years to Your Life
Your gums might be tanking your longevity
I just sat down with Dr Jonathan Levine.
He’s a NYC cosmetic dentist with 40+ years, 24 patents, and Smile House founder.
In this episode you’ll learn
A 4‑step morning ritual that slashes gum bleeding in two weeks
• The exact peroxide schedule that whitens without sensitivity
• How pH tweaks beat sugar restriction for cavity prevention
We dive into the details later in the conversation.
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
02:21 Myth‑busting oral hygiene foundations
06:53 Floss vs brushing: what decades of data say
13:33 Safe whitening: temperature, timing, tools
21:28 Sugar, acids, and pH—root cause of decay
30:41 Oil pulling and alternative cleansers
37:34 Fluoride: dose makes the difference
48:11 Toothpaste tier list (17 brands ranked)
56:25 Kindness, stress, and nervous‑system health
1:03 Closing thoughts & future of Smile House
Listen
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Here’s the full transcript:
Speaker 1 (00:00.526)
you
you
Jonathan Levine. Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you, Adam. Great to be here.
Thank you for coming on. So today I want to debunk a bunch of the top myths in oral care. But before we start, think there’s something really interesting I’d like to pick your brain on that I think a lot of people would be interested in is what are the top tips for me to have whiter teeth and improve my smile? Like if you were to just go, this is exactly how you do it. This is a playbook. Do this and you’ll look like Hugh Jackman. How would I do it?
Speaker 1 (00:34.63)
There’s two things. Think about your smile. Think your smile in the context that the mouth is part of the body, right? So things have to be healthy. The gums, pink zone, has to be pink tight, healthy, can’t be red inflamed and swollen, right? So that pink zone and the teeth themselves, so let’s call it the white zone, has to have a good balance, right? So we know people, they smile and maybe there’s too much pink or it does look swollen. So that’s on aesthetic. And then you have people who don’t...
clean well and the stains sticking on the teeth and the teeth having that discoloration, okay, that’s anesthetic. But the truth of the matter is that all of those things are preventable, right? So how well we clean is gonna keep the tissue healthy and it’s also gonna help prevent the stain. A lot of people genetically are born with, could be a yellower teeth or darker teeth and there are great teeth whitening techniques in the dental practice, in the office.
that does a great job removing the extrinsic stain, but also getting inside the tooth. But you really want a professional to be able to do this, to make sure that the people don’t get over-saturated with hydrogen peroxides and the whitening gels, and don’t follow the regimen. So you should have the oversight. But the key is being in a good dental office with the rock star of the dental practice. Now who’s the rock star of the dental practice?
not Lenny Gravitz, but the rock star of the dental practice is the hygienist. They’re the best communicators. They are on the patients, on their cleaning, on their hygiene, their flossing, how well they’re brushing. A lot of hygienists also have an excellent understanding of nutrition and all these other component pieces that are so important for our oral health in that we deeply believe that our oral health leads to overall health.
Is there a good playbook you can use for somebody at home that maybe doesn’t have the money to see a dentist as regularly as possible?
Speaker 1 (02:30.988)
Yeah, so it’s all about back to the environment that we put our body in and our mouth in. So no sugary drinks, no acid in the mouth.
So what do you think about all the shots of apple cider vinegar?
Yeah, there’s some decent studies on apple cider vinegar, you know, it’s acidic. So you got to rinse your mouth, you know, with water after that. There’s also apple cider vinegar capsules that, you know, get a concentrate that you can also say. Anything acidic, low pH is going to have a demineralizing effect. the saliva, which is designed to protect us, will neutralize a lot of it. So the key is how often do you use it?
It is.
Speaker 2 (02:57.816)
affect your taste.
Speaker 1 (03:12.972)
You know, how often are you drinking it? Or let’s say, let’s say not apple cider vinegar, but let’s talk about things that are really negative from a standpoint of acid, but also sugar. Cause that’s the combination that will demineralize teeth and cause decay because the sugar is acted on by these pathogenic bugs, the bugs that cause decay, not inflammation. So it’s a different group of bugs. They live above the gum. So here’s a microbiology 101 lesson above the gum. The bacteria live in air, aerobic.
Below the gum, the ones that cause inflammation are anaerobic and they’re a different type of microbes. But basically those two types of bacteria love a low pH environment. So whatever causes acid in the mouth, in other words, low pH, you can have inflammation in the mouth and demineralizing, in other words, decay in the teeth. So what do you do? Let’s create an environment of health. How do we do that?
We get a good balancing act of the microbiome of the mouth. How do we do that? Eat well. Don’t drink the stuff that’s going to cause acid erosion and put sugar in your mouth. Very low on alcohol because alcohol dries out the mouth and have great oral hygiene game. Morning, night, make sure you’re cleaning that plaque on the teeth and between the teeth. And if you want to have fresh breath, make sure you’re using those tongue scrapers.
And you know, there’s an order by which that people should be using these things that makes sense. And we have an oral hygiene guide and please we’ll get it over to you and share it with everybody listening.
What’s the ideal way to approach it? Because when I wake up, you mentioned tongue scrape last, but when I wake up I tongue scrape first.
Speaker 1 (04:59.95)
I really don’t have much of a problem with anybody wants to change the order. I’m just good at everybody doing kind of all four things
Yeah, because my logic was tongue scrape first because if I’m brushing my teeth, I’m brushing just all this bacteria around my mouth. But if I get it off, then I’ve got like less.
Yeah. And so I always have this argument, you know, my sons and I were all in business together now. Now they’re not dentists. One son is really a branding marketing, excellent at it. Cody and my older son, Julian is more of a kind of the ops finance and also very good at operational marketing. So the two of them are with me on this new project, which is called Smile House, but has a very strong connection of what we call DMI dental medical integration.
using oral health and the diagnosis that we do now because of our technology as a tip of the spear to prevent these chronic inflammatory diseases. And we’re very excited about it. And so Cody and I always disagreeing about the order by which this guide should have. And so I’m really at a point, you know what, just do the four things. I do like to do electric brush and a flosser in between after. So use the electric brush for the outside and inside of the tooth and the flossers between the teeth where.
usually inflammation resides between the teeth.
Speaker 2 (06:18.264)
Gotcha. So diet coke or regular coke, which one’s worse for your teeth?
regular coke because it’s loaded with sugar. Both acidic.
So both acidic, are there any further concerns around like artificial sweeteners and that impacting the mouth microbiome, but not as bad as just a straight sugar hit to the teeth?
Exactly. Gotcha. Right. Exactly right.
So let’s jump into some of the myths, because I also want to talk about the toothpaste side of things around charcoal, but we’ll do that later. One of the myths, if I brush well, I don’t need to floss. And I want to load this. I want to lead into this by saying there was a study by the Associated Press in 2016 that publicized a report questioning the evidence of flossing benefiting people and that it might be overrated. What do you say to patients who ask if they really need to floss? And why would you say flossing?
Speaker 2 (07:13.716)
Otherwise, cleaning between your teeth is so important.
Okay, we got decades and decades of research on this. So this is not an opinion. This is a fact-based answer. And I try to make most of my answers fact-based. I’m kind of a scientist background. Where periodontal disease lives, chronic inflammation is hard to reach areas. So if you understand the pathogenesis, how inflammation occurs in the mouth, after day one, day two, day three, what happens is the bacteria in the mouth that doesn’t get cleaned up creates like a canopy.
around the gum line. What does that mean? There’s no oxygen. When there’s no oxygen, what happens to these bugs that live without oxygen? They have a field day, they have a party. These, they’re called gram-negative anaerobes. And guess what happens? The pathogens start outnumbering the good guys. The good guys are called commensals. So all you gotta do is don’t floss, just brush. Brush for as long as you want. You’re not gonna get between the teeth and you’re gonna have gum inflammation and you’re gonna have periodontal disease.
So I’m sorry to say, but you know, they unfortunately didn’t have some good scientific. it’s critically important. You really need to get between the teeth morning and night, because when you go to sleep and you’re sleeping for six, seven hours in this live, it’s called a muco polysaccharide layer. it’s where the bacteria stick on the tooth is biofilm. The biofilms are all over nature and in the mouth. That’s what this plaque of is a sticky substance.
Hahaha
Speaker 1 (08:42.924)
that gets on the tooth and that’s it. The bacteria will have a field day if you don’t clean it off. So clean it off.
Whenever I am, I’m getting a little bit better at flossing. But I swear to God, whenever I’ve gone to the dentist, I always feel so ashamed.
But you know what, what I’m a big believer is not to be judgmental, but to give people the tools and the education. And there are some great tools that just make it so much easier.
Yeah, let’s talk about that because that was something I was going to ask you. So what if someone just can’t just for whatever reason just can’t floss, just can’t add it to the add it to the the daily habit. What are some alternatives that maybe 80 % of the way there, but it’s better than nothing.
Exactly, exactly right. The best tool that now they’re all over the place. You can go on Amazon, you can go on the internet, there’s tons of them. Oral-B makes a great one. It’s called these water flossers. And why they’re so good is that they’ll shoot, and you really want about 60 PSI. You want some pretty good power to get between the teeth, food, plaque, everything goes. And so it’s a mechanical removal.
Speaker 1 (09:59.158)
And all you gotta do is take the little nozzle, put a little water in the tank, and go between every tooth of the goblet.
get a hot assistant to help with this.
Well, I mean, whatever you can pull off. Forget it. your accent, I think everything goes. So, you you get around the mouth and that becomes part of the regiment. Electric brush, water flosser, tongue scraper, you know, a good rinse that doesn’t have alcohol in it and away you go. You mean, you’re really covering your bases. But that’s only one part of the story, right? Because it’s also the environment we put our mouth in. So what do we eat? What do we drink? All of those things. And also,
You
Speaker 1 (10:37.486)
how we deal with our stress, because two things break down the mouth. Plaque, the bacteria that we’re talking about, also force, how teeth come together. You have people that are under stress, that clench and grinding teeth, people have sleep disorders, people who have sleep disorders, many times will clench and grind their teeth. So being in a good dental professional office that gets to these early signs and gets people on the right road without being judgmental.
is so good. And again, it’s that rock star hygienist that motivates us in a nice way, you know, not waving a stick, but a nice way to just kind of change our habit, make it a ritual and develop that discipline.
What do think of the, do you know much about the mastic gum trend that’s starting to happen where it’s chewing really hard gum to get stronger jaw line? I’ve been looking into this recently.
You got me on a new one. I can talk about gum endlessly. mean, we like, as an oral health expert, we like gum because it gets the flow of saliva increasing and saliva protects us. It’s got all of these great antibodies and proteins and buffering agents and it gets our mouth neutralized. It’s such an amazing, just body fluid that
people don’t even understand what’s it all about and it’s critical. We just can’t mess with it. And what happens when you see when people have decreased saliva, which is when you age, if you’re on any certain cancer drugs, it’s pharmacological agents that decrease the amount of saliva. We see it in the dental professional office where people get older, the gum recedes, the roots of the teeth are exposed and they are very, very prone to decay.
Speaker 1 (12:28.59)
So you gotta raise that pH back and there’s all these products that kind of give some artificial saliva. So you realize how important saliva is to our
I’m a big fan of, I’m bit of a hippie, I would say. I’m a big fan of natural as much as possible, as close to possible. So what are some natural and simple ways to raise the pH level in your mouth?
The greatest one is sodium bicarbonate.
yeah. that’s everywhere. Drink it or
Sodium bicarb is great. I mean, we built toothpaste for 20 years with sodium bicarb. First of all, it’s got a very low abrasivity index. So of seven, and remember 70 is where you want your toothpaste to be at. Very, very low. It also is a deodorizing agent. It absorbs odor and absorbs molecules. So it’s very good at taking stain off teeth. It’s in toothpaste. It’s in rinses. It’s in...
Speaker 1 (13:25.966)
the really good rinses. And then you can also look at home brew. You want a home brew? Here’s a good secret. You take low level, so you take about 1.5 % hydrogen peroxide. You mix it in with a couple of teaspoons of sodium bicarb. And you put that on your toothpaste. Or you can rinse with it, swish it, brush with it, and that does a great job. Or you can buy products that have that.
that don’t have any of the negative ingredients that you don’t want. But that’s a great combination of hydrogen peroxide and sodium bicarbonate.
Nice. I’ve been taking some biocarb here and there, but I feel like it’s becoming more more useful as time goes on.
Yeah, look, they’ve known it for a long time, but you know how it gets out into the public and out with social media and everybody can be talking about it. It’s definitely a good trend.
Yeah, nice. We did touch on the second myth I want to look at was sugar is the only thing that causes cavities. Now, we did touch on this quite a bit. We spoke about the diet sodas and how sugar is really bad. So I want to kind of skip that basic part of it. But I also wanted to touch on potentially more appropriate ways to get that sugar craving resolved.
Speaker 2 (14:49.474)
that are also healthy and teeth and gum friendly.
Yeah. You’re talking to a guy who’s got a sweet tooth. So I have become an expert. I call it my personal sugar hacks. The truth of matter is we all love a little sweet every now and then. Now let’s break it down. There are, you look on an ingredient list, there are so many labels that these food companies hide what the sugar is. And they have all kinds of crazy names for sugar. At the end of the day,
It all comes down to sugar. But you do have products that are both gluten-free and no added sugar. You have natural sugar. Now, what’s the difference between these natural sugars that are in a piece of fruit versus something that’s added? It has to do with how that sugar is metabolized. When you have sugar that’s part of a piece of fruit, there’s cellulose in that fruit. There’s an absorption.
process and those sugars are important of course for energy, know, that’s glucose and that’s how our cells work and I’m sure you know, you’ve looked at, know, if everybody knows about how the power houses of our cells or mitochondria those run on glucose, you gotta have that sugar. But when you take too much of it, right, we have these spikes and then you get into these metabolic disease problems with insulin. So what do we do for our sugar hacks when we want something?
you know, after a lunch, after dinner. So there are these great type of hacks. There’s companies that’ll have a whipped cream. I mean, I can mention name. It’s a company called So Delicious, and it is so delicious, and it’s made from coconuts. And it’s amazing, because you think you’re eating cool whip. And then you could have, you know, something gluten free. And then you can have blueberries.
Speaker 1 (16:46.894)
And what I do is I make myself almost like a little dessert parfait of some fruit, of a little bit of watermelon. And I try to stay really healthy with that stuff. So the pastries and all the stuff with this added sugar, you just gotta really minimize it. And if you’re gonna have it, take a walk after dinner, go walk for 10, 15 minutes, burn it off.
And a lot of people, a lot of these high performance athletes now are wearing CGMs, these continuous glucose monitors. They’re amazing, They’re fascinating what we learn, the order by which we eat our foods, the activities we take. And you learn a lot. And those are the kind of future trackers that I think we’re all gonna be looking at to allow us to change behavior to the better for our health.
on a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 2 (17:36.638)
I’ve been having a nice little smoothie every morning, it’s put in a bowl, put some nuts on the top. And I found a really nice sugar substitute hack that has a little bit of sugar in it, but not it’s vanilla extract. It’s just a tiny bit of that just blows up the taste with next to no sugar. So they’re onto something there.
There is something there and you know, we go on YouTube and you know, we listen to Instagram and you get all these cool sugar hacks and they’re great. They’re really great as long as it’s scientifically based with all due respect to it.
We’ll get into that later. I got a few curve balls for you. I like curve balls. Let’s go on to Myth 3. So, teeth whitening will destroy your enamel. Just let you go. Let you cook.
Yeah.
Well, you know what they say.
Speaker 2 (18:22.446)
What did I say?
Well, science research, just the facts, ma’am. know, like Sergeant Friday was on an old show called Dragnet. Here’s the facts. Here’s the facts. And I have 24 patents in medical device delivery systems all around teeth whitening. So what does that mean? Whitening your teeth will work, but when the regimen is followed closely, it’s safe. does that mean? Now here’s what it means. What that means is that there are
Okay.
Speaker 1 (18:54.84)
teeth whitening devices that put too much heat to the tooth. And so you’ll get pain. There’s a heat component. let’s break it down. There’s teeth whitening products you can use at home. There’s teeth whitening products that you can have done in the office. The early days of teeth whitening, there was these lamps that sit outside the mouth where the hygienist or the dentist will put gels on the teeth. Those lamps got very hot.
so there’s a heat component?
Speaker 1 (19:24.082)
When they got very hot, they caused the pressure in the tooth to increase. It’s called intrapopal pressure. And what does that mean? You get these zingers. So anybody had those kind of pains, you get these kind of high intensity shocks. to take some anti-inflammation to calm them down. Some of the breakthroughs that I personally realized and the products that we created launched a billion dollar industry in these whitening devices was where you can control the temperature. By controlling the temperature, you could still
close a system that keeps the peroxide on the teeth without generating the heat from those lights. Because there was a fascination with these blue lights that it helped activate the hydrogen peroxide. Is that true? No. What it really is, the warming heat, but you couldn’t get it too hot, actually dissociates a compound of hydrogen peroxide. that dissociation are these whitening oxygens, which are free radical oxygens, by the way. Yeah. That hits the hard tissue, the tooth.
That’s an oxygen with a negative charge. It’s very highly reactive. It gets on the surface of the tooth that removes external stain, but it gets inside the tooth that takes off the color below the enamel in what’s called the chromophore layer, the dentin, and that vaporizes this carbon, double bond carbon, and I’m getting a little technical, but it’s basically vaporizes the color pigment under the enamel. What does that do? That whitens the tooth. So.
There are certain systems you just got to realize that the teeth don’t get too hot and that you’re not using it all the time. See, whitening is a system where you want to use it. You want to use it not at a hot level, not for too long. And then you have to allow the mouth and the teeth to rehydrate. And then when you use it again, you’re at a safe place. So it’s a couple of weeks later, maybe you’re using a whitening pen once or twice a month. Following a professional... What’s a whitening
A whitening pen is another way of delivering a hydrogen peroxide gel. yeah, and so it’s a very good maintenance tool. People get carried away with too much whitening because you can oversaturate the enamel. So if you have a controlled system, a professional oversight and watch you, that’s one path you’re going to be great. If you’re on your own, you’re putting gel in a tray, you’re overusing the gel, you’re using to gel every week.
Speaker 1 (21:43.724)
your teeth are white, and then what’s gonna happen? Not only are gonna get white, they’re gonna get very blue at the edge, very translucent. That means the underlying tooth structure below the enamel is vaporizing. I was telling about those chromophores in color, and then the teeth get brittle. So the answer is, much like other things, is overdoing it, or too high a concentration, will cause issues. So when the regimen is followed with professional oversight, you’re gonna be protected.
Okay, makes sense. I mean, I again, going back to the natural side of things, I hear chemicals and I sometimes think neurotoxicity and concerns around just creating overall systemic health problems and a lot of recommendations from naturopaths and that approach is to go as natural as possible. what concerns are there around like potential neurotoxicity or
other health concerns with hydrogen peroxide that should be considered.
Yeah, yeah, I mean look the body creates hydrogen peroxide It’s it’s a great breakdown. It’s in our it’s in in our mouths We have the enzymes that will hydro hydrogen peroxidase that breaks down hydrogen peroxide the body also produces hydrogen peroxide But it all speaks to the quantities and how much people are using, you know hydrogen peroxide
how it’s positioned on the teeth, where does it go? Is it sitting on the soft tissue? Is it causing irritation? Are you swallowing it? How often are you using it? you know, I don’t have, my fingertips, I’ve never done specifically the studies for this, but this is a product that has been used as an antiseptic for 60, 70 years, but it has to do with the level of it.
Speaker 1 (23:38.798)
So as soon as hydrogen peroxide, 1.7 % hits the air, it’s down to one third efficacy. When it hits the mouth, and let’s say you have a cold sore and using hydrogen peroxide, because it’s an oxidizing agent. So it’s an antiseptic, it cleans out wounds, right? It started before World War II, that was the number one way to clean out a wound. It’s now doing its antiseptic effect. You take up to seven, eight, nine percent hydrogen peroxide, you’re gonna burn the soft tissue. So here you are, an effect of
improving and cleansing a wound and here you can cause soft tissue damage and irritation. This makes the poison. Gotcha. Well said.
Yeah, the dose makes the poison.
Gotcha. Yeah, I mean, I’ve gone down some crazy rabbit holes with some stuff that have you ever heard of chlorine dioxide? Have you heard about how people are putting it in their water and drinking it? You know about this? Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been, I tried it a few times. It’s really weird. It’s weird. It just throws me off because, because just for my, for some context on my health.
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (24:45.888)
longevity and wellness exploration, I came into the more esoteric views of health off the back of dealing with doctors that couldn’t explain to me while I was constantly exhausted, while I had all these problems. There was no answers that I got that were useful. But so then I took it upon myself and I started just doing things like cold showers and taking vitamins and researching and trying things. then the next thing you know, I’m feeling better, feeling great.
and the doctors are still saying the same shit. So I’ve kind of gotten to a point in my life now where I’m like, you know what, you do you, I’ll come to you when I need a specific script, but otherwise I’m gonna figure it out myself. And this is one of the rabbit holes, chlorine dioxide was one of the rabbit holes. So have you ever used it before?
I had a friend of mine who was turning me on to it. mean, you know, there’s a whole thesis behind it.
Yeah, and it’s powerful oxidizing agent. Yes, it is. And yeah, I had it every morning for like a few weeks, just like drops into water, a liter of water, and I drunk it over. It made me feel a little sick because I think I was drinking it too fast because I wanted to get into my day because you can’t have anything, you can’t have any antioxidants with it because it’s
drinking a ten-
Speaker 2 (26:02.158)
negate oxidizing. So I’d want my coffee and I want my blueberries. like, all right, hustle, hustle this up. But I noticed my brain cleared up a fair bit. My focus improved. I noticed that I haven’t had a cold sore in a long time. Just some weird stuff, some stuff that I can’t put. It’s a weird, unexplainable thing.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:31.148)
So I’m open to it. And I’ve just been trying it like, got an hour. I’ll put this on and see what it does.
Yeah, I look, I don’t, I don’t think you can get into trouble with it. And then it’s figuring out that those response curve, you know, figuring out how much of it has an impact. Look, oxygenating the body, you know, why we do breath work and, know, why do we take deep breaths and long exhalations to get into parasympathetic mode? You know, it all makes sense. So if you have something that oxygenates, you know, I think people just have to figure out specifically for them what works best.
Yeah, see, this is where I get into the rabbit hole of something like chlorine dioxide is communicated by the health central bodies to be not for human consumption and not safe at any levels. What do you do with that when there’s like thousands of anecdotes of people saying that it is helpful and then my own personal experience of it being helpful? So.
There’s a fine line I’m trying to find between the reconciliation of the science and the studies and then what’s actually paid for by companies that have vested interests in it. And then what’s actually just flat out wrong. The studies are just done poorly. Like there’s a study on, there was one of the foundational studies on SSRIs that pretty much kicked off the whole industry. That’s now there’s information coming around that the study was trash. It blows my mind.
And who do you believe? And look, that’s why I think in every field the experts will emerge because it’s either someone who studies what the experts say and report it. you have people, functional medicine people like Mark Hyman and Victor Luongo and Peter Attia and Andrew Huberman and these people are doing a great service for the United States because we are changing the direction of medicine.
Speaker 1 (28:28.118)
So places like Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic and these places that have divisions of innovation, you know, they’ve had a chief innovation officer at Mayo Clinic for about 20 years. And so there’s a reason that these centers are really a center of excellence. And Western medicine has to catch up with this integrative medical approach, which is happening, happening today.
Yeah, mean, the two sides of the same coin, the Instagram influencers that maybe lead people in the wrong direction sometimes do get it right and get it right in a way. And that’s five years before it’s caught up with from general medicine. So it’s a fine line, isn’t it?
It is a fine line. You say to yourself, who am I gonna believe? But look, I think we err on caution. And you do your homework. And you try to really find who are the experts. Look, Western medicine of course works. Things that we need, Western medicine doctors, and personally, I will tell you that I have a fantastic Western medicine doctor. One of the best, he’s a doctor doctor. But if you look.
On his bookshelf, they’re the same books that he’s had for 35 years. So at the same time, I have my integrative medicine longevity folks. And I throttle between the two. I feel very fortunate to do that. And I myself have studied this for the last kind of 10, 15 years.
Just happens naturally if you’re a curious person.
Speaker 1 (29:54.946)
You gotta be curious and when I started, I wrote a book on oral health for the consumer about 20 years ago and then I wrote, I’ve written dental textbooks to the specialist. But my most recent one forced me to do research of what’s the highest level of research when you’re looking at longevity because we believe oral health is another pillar of longevity that you and I were chatting about earlier. And when you say that, you gotta...
you gotta really understand why that’s possible. And then it takes you down that road of the integrative medicine approach that is superbly wonderful because people are gonna get healthier when they listen to it.
My opinion of this is you’ve got the Western medicine approach, which is very specific to problem set solution. It’s like problem interaction solution, which is great in very, very narrow domains. Like I’m not going to go to my naturopath if I’ve like lost my arm straight to the hospital.
That’s an acute problem.
problem. that’s that’s the acute versus systemic. I think that’s a real important distinction that should be outlined between when somebody’s looking for approaches to dealing with the health. Is it a clear acute problem? Is there a clear acute solution? Great doctor can help you. Is there something more systemic like you’re saying, inflammation, gum does it like these can be affected by 10 different things. And if you hit one domino,
Speaker 2 (31:29.266)
the other four start to become a little easier. And sometimes it doesn’t make any sense. But it just, it works through viewing the system as a whole and viewing the environment around the system, like your home, all of these things as an integrated component of your health. I think that’s so important to caveat.
That’s it.
And I think that word integrative is very much spot on. mean, somebody getting cancer, you need a cancer specialist, you need an oncologist, you need the best diagnostician, but at same time, really want to understand what are the functional integrative medicine people say, and what are some of these other things that I can be doing to make sure that my immune response is running at the highest level possible.
that my energy is strong, that I’m making all the right moves as I’m going through my treatment. And so here you have two systems kind of wonderfully merging together to positively reinforce each other. So I think the thinking has to be not one or the other, but how do we create a system where it complements each other.
Yeah, I mean, this is a rabbit hole we can go down for a long time. So maybe on round two, we can talk about it. go going down the Eastern philosophy side of things for a second. Yeah. Oil pulling. Let’s talk about this. I will. We spoke briefly on the rapid fire and you had you had a view on it that you said it was. Potentially not as useful of a tool as.
Speaker 1 (32:44.589)
Wow.
Speaker 2 (33:00.406)
a better system of just general health. I’ll give you my personal experience of this and a friend of mine’s personal experience. And I want to, want you to kind of roast it, debunk it, maybe agree with it. I don’t know. We’ll talk about it. But, cause I brushed my teeth twice, twice a day in my whole life. I’d flossing, could have used some work, but a friend of mine, she’s also come on the podcast. She’s a Ayurvedic doctor. it’s her whole thing. She’s very, very far on the
Okay, let me hear.
Speaker 2 (33:30.126)
on the Eastern medicine side of things so far. She said to me one day, I’m like, I hate flossing. She’s like, have you ever tried oil pulling? I was like, no. get some coconut oil, do it. I started doing it and I noted, and I would have bleeding gums, I had bleeding gums for years. I started doing these daily. would tongue scrape, brush my teeth. No, I would tongue scrape, oil pull, 15 minutes.
I’m totally there.
Speaker 2 (33:58.86)
roll around, whatever morning things, spit it out, brush my teeth. And I found that my teeth whitened and my gum disease, like my, my gums don’t bleed anymore. And they haven’t. It’s happened a couple of years ago and I’ve been good.
So you gotta say to yourself, what am I doing when I’m oil pulling?
What happened? What happened?
Where’s the oil? Where’s it going? It’s going in your mouth, but you’re pulling oil between your teeth. You’re getting to the interproximal areas of your teeth. That means the proximals, between the teeth. That’s where these gram-negative anaerobes live.
In your mouth.
Speaker 1 (34:36.555)
So what I said was you could do it in one fifth of time or you could go oil book. There’s nothing wrong with it. There’s nothing wrong with it. And there’s very good science that it works. It’s just that for maybe a busier person, they might want, but if it works for you, God bless, do it. And then make sure you’re at a good hygienist and dental office where the periodontal probing and really looking at the health of the mouth.
more of a sophisticated way than just us looking at our gums in the mirror, you can validate that. And the good offices do what we do. We pH test them out and we microbiome test them out. And so that’s a standard of care. And as a standard of care, have... Well, you’ll come to Smile House, you’ll come to JBL. But we’re looking...
Let’s grab that.
Speaker 2 (35:20.95)
I’ve never had that with the dentists before.
Speaker 1 (35:26.636)
What I’m really looking to do, because you where I am in the industry is impact in industry and raise the game of the industry where the dental professionals, the medical dental medical professionals are working closely together and each one understands the context of what’s possible with by joining forces.
Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. All right. Great. And the, and the same person again, very esoteric, take it with a grain of salt. She said that she went to her dentist, had a cavity and the process of regular oil pulling reversed the cavity. Okay. Have you ever heard of anything like that before? What could be the science behind
Yes, so the science behind today is what we have is we have these peptides that are remineralizing these very early lesions and cypion lesions. So what we can see on an x-ray, and there’s an interesting company that has a color change on a little device that’s a bit of a breakthrough new company, but what we can see on an x-ray, and we have AI reading our x-rays now, so certain offices will have this AI, you see these early stage lesions. You don’t really want to drill the teeth because they’re only an enamel.
you wanna arrest the decay, in other words, you wanna stop it. So there’s a very good product called Cura products that is a remineralizing agent. There’s a couple of them out on the market today. And there’s very good science of remineralizing the tooth. Now, if that bacteria that the pH got raised by oil pulling, and if they test that pH and it neutralized, that will help.
prevented decay process, you will get remineralizing the teeth because in our saliva, we have all these remineralization agents. Remember, our saliva either helps us remin, remineralize, or demineralize. The remin is full of calcium and calcium phosphates, that’s natural. In a lot of these toothpastes, there are these products that now help also remineralization, right?
Speaker 1 (37:27.094)
And so if oil pulling is raising that pH, that absolutely can be.
Interesting. I’m just looking if I wonder if there’s any actual remineralizing agents in coconut oil itself. Doesn’t does not contain remineralization agents like calcium or phosphate.
All it would need is to rate is to neutralize because if you neutralize the pH, you have those calcium phosphates in ourselves.
Okay.
Speaker 2 (37:53.494)
So it just happens naturally. So the process is it’s antibacterial, antifungal, anti-inflammatory. It’s getting antibacterial, antifungal, and anti-inflammatory liquid through the teeth, which is helpful. And then the body naturally just like remilitarizes.
the team.
Speaker 1 (38:10.254)
You’re preventing colonizing of the bad bugs between the teeth. So that’s why it’s working. I could also do that, you know, the other way. It’s just more efficient. But you know, if you like doing it, why not? And if you see the results.
Well, I found it. I mean, I’ve been told I should be flossing my whole life, but I just found that this was a very easy way to approach it. Cool. Like it might take longer, but I can do 10 other things. Like I’m not using my hands. I’m just sitting there.
How doing?
If you go to the dental professional and they say, your gums look great, you have no inflammation, no bleeding on probing, here’s your exam, here’s your pH test, it looks great. And then you do a microbiome test and that’s when you really know what are the bugs. Is it a diverse microbiome or do you have a propensity of these bad bugs? Well, no, for sure. And I got a feeling that you’re onto something with it. Just the point is that if you’re water flossing and brushing and pH raising and all the few things that we talked about that takes...
a lot faster. It’s just a more efficient way of doing it.
Speaker 2 (39:17.942)
Interesting. Well, maybe we can do like, I can come in, we can get everything tested and then I can spend a month trying.
We could do that. Right. could do double bleep with your mouth.
different things. Blind studies. Make a video out of it put on the YouTube. There it is. I’m down. I’m down. And my last my last myth for you and you again you touched on this earlier this one’s really interesting and it’s a big point of contention especially now and I’m sure you know where I’m going with this fluoride. Positive or poison?
That would be fun.
Speaker 1 (39:48.888)
Laura!
Speaker 2 (39:53.054)
RFK has called it toxic and it should be avoided in toothpaste and the water system and he’s really pushing in America specifically to remove it.
Speaker 1 (40:13.765)
There’s easy answers.
Why, like why, why the major health bodies still call it a natural cavity fighter when I don’t know. I haven’t read personally read the studies, but this guy seems pretty smart to me. Who’s a cook or not? It depends on your view of the world, but.
I don’t know if I would define him as really smart. I that’s an overstatement, but let’s put it this way. And I don’t want to talk about this administration either. I love what Casey means who’s joined his team, is doing with the food and nutrition in this country. But let’s talk about fluoride. Fluoride is dose specific. Fluoride has been tested for decades and decades in this country and many other countries.
fluoride was the greatest public health win that this country has ever seen. That’s just a fact.
That’s such a fat, big call. I mean, I don’t know the details.
Speaker 1 (41:13.806)
Well, it’s the data in 1960. Fluoride was not pervasive in the 60s. So when they figured out that fluoride had about 1,000 parts per million ppm in toothpaste or in rinse or in water at these very low levels, and you had an uptake and they understood what exactly is happening with the tooth, the molecule of the tooth, these hydroxyapatite molecules of enamel, which is the hottest surface in the mouth.
was more resistant to low pH and decay. So 67 % decrease in decay. Now what does that mean? Young children, people out of work, people who don’t have access to care, you know you die from a cavity. Really? That’s right. How does that happen? Well, let me tell you how it happens. You get decay, you don’t have access to care, the decay goes into the nerve, you now have inflammation, now the inflammation shuts off an airway.
or turns into brain encephalitis. Who? Diamante Driver. He’s one of the kids who got Washington to start supporting public health issues for children for oral health. But, and you can look up Diamante Driver on Google, it’s an interesting story about that young boy who died from a cavity. So you got children who don’t have that level of decay, and it was a great public health win.
Now fast forward 40 years. Now you got fluoride in water, in toothpaste, and so the impact on decreasing decay when you put into water has a much lower impact. They say about 23 to 24%. That’s still demonstrative. So what does that mean? People have to make an individual choice. It’s totally dose specific. At the low level, 1,000 parts per million in toothpaste.
when used judiciously, a pea size, you’re not swallowing it, it’s using it topically, you’re spitting it out, small amount might, there is no evidence of neurotoxicity. But what happens when you increase the amount of fluoride? Yes, then you get into problem. Fluoride that naturally occurs in drinking water in Africa turns into brittle bones. So you can extract that. The neurotoxicity of higher levels, 100%.
Speaker 2 (43:27.443)
So there are some scenarios.
Speaker 1 (43:33.848)
but you can’t categorize it for all dosages because as we know, you can have something that has a great positive effect and we can also at higher doses has a negative effect.
So I think you touched on a really, really good point here, which was that the personal choice of the individual, whether they want it or don’t want it. And I think that’s where I find I get stuck on the idea of having it in the drinking water because it’s no longer the personal choice. Someone has made a choice based on, and you’re also trusting that they’re doing the right amount of dosages, that there’s already not, you know, they’re testing properly, that there’s not already natural fluoride in the water. So
I think I see your point and I like it, but I think the public health expectation of it being forced on you and you have to unwind it if you don’t want it is probably the wrong take. What are your thoughts?
The only push, I like your thinking on this, but the only pushback I would give you is this, is the people who do not have access to care. We have a foundation and we see what happens when people don’t have access to care right in front of our nose. And we’ve been doing this in a Lutheran, the Bahamas for the last 10 years where we have a freestanding clinic. But when people don’t have access to care and you take fluoride out of the water, and that means that they don’t really own a toothbrush or they don’t really own a toothpaste with fluoride or they don’t have access
to a fluoride treatment or fluoride varnish on teeth, it’s a much different world. Because now you have decay that’s gonna just run and be a public health disaster with decay, pain, loss of tooth, and also possible life threatening type diseases.
Speaker 2 (45:14.734)
How many people in America don’t brush their teeth? Is there a large amount?
Well, that’s an interesting question. So you have 70 % of Americans that have some form of gingivitis. So you’re dealing with a propensity of fluoride. Yeah, yeah, because you still have to mechanically remove the plaque. The fluoride helps with making the surface smoother and more impervious for decay. That’s the external. And then when you are
in the water?
Speaker 1 (45:42.124)
developing in a young child in those permanent teeth, fluoride gets incorporated in the tooth structure, it becomes stronger. That’s the big take, it becomes this fluoropatite molecule. So, you know, if you look at statistics with gingivitis, periodontal disease and decay, you realize that people don’t do a great job at being preventative of cleaning the plaque off their teeth. Now, with fluoride,
difficult though. So like, you know, I brush my teeth every day, but again, I don’t have an electric toothbrush and
But you can do a good job with mechanical. I’m just making a point to every, you know, people who have access to care and are willing to, you know, spend the bucks today. You can buy a pretty decent one for under, you know, 30, 40 bucks. You kind of have to do it, but you know, I look with the fluoride situation is you have experts that are raising their hands and say, listen, fluoride in water. If a community doesn’t want to have it, don’t put it in it. You got to, they have access to care.
No.
Speaker 1 (46:40.574)
I believe that Floyd should be in drinking water. And if you’re a person, you don’t want to have it filter it. I filter my water anyway for health. I double filter my water anyway. don’t, don’t ask me those questions. I, know, I have to, I have to lean on my wife for those things. So, know, we, have, mean, I have the classic, you know, filtered water and then I’ll have a classic, what’s the new one. It’s I’ll either have, no, I’ll have like, you know, a breeder filter, but then there’s a new version.
or filtration.
Speaker 2 (47:03.886)
that SOSmosis is?
Speaker 2 (47:09.944)
Filters aren’t great. Bacteria grows in the filter. You’re all over that one, know that?
They’re not great,
Yeah. I know. This is why I love you. So yeah, I got to to young folks because you guys are
Reverse osmosis is really solid. You can buy these nice like reverse osmosis things. You can put them in your, you can get them built into your tap. That’s a really good way to go. But the problem with reverse osmosis is that you have to remineralize the water because it completely strips everything of it. is what I do. And then I put a little bit of salt, maybe some lemon and Bob’s your uncle.
Yeah, yes, Bob’s your uncle. I use that expression and I always say it’s from my Aussie friends. Totally. Bob’s your uncle is absolutely Australian. Are you joking?
Speaker 2 (47:51.54)
Is that Australian?
Speaker 2 (47:57.366)
I don’t know. I just say things and people look at me strangely. They’re shit, I think that’s some slang. Yeah. Nice. Okay. This is great. I had one little thing I wanted to touch on and I don’t know if, I mean, it’s a very complex question and you’re probably not going to have an answer, but I do think about it a lot. And it’s, have you ever seen those, the graphs of the increases in cancers, brain disease,
Heart attacks, all of these have gone up and to the right since about the 60s when fluoride started being used more. It might not be a cause, but could it be a contributor across a wide swath of problematic things that have happened in systemic health that maybe have led to like higher rates of autism?
neurotoxicity in the brain. Like that’s where my head goes. again, I don’t have the answer because it’s, it’s ha ha.
We gotta go to the science, but I would say this about that. What has happened over the last three, four, five decades is environmental toxins. So if you wanna call Florida environmental toxin, and it’s part of that category, fine, no problem. Exactly, at high concentrations of neurotoxin and also causes brittle bones and all of that stuff. There are so much environmental toxins out there in the system. It’s in the water we drink, it’s in the fish we eat.
Doses of poison.
Speaker 1 (49:28.838)
It’s in the meat and the pesticides. It’s in the foods that we eat that are over-formulated and with all of the additives of ultra highly saturated foods, ultra processed foods. And we think of all these sugar substitutes that are causing. So there’s so much that we all have to be so aware of to be healthy.
And then think about the pollution and the air and living in the cities. So if you want to look at a graph that shows an increase in cancer and all these diseases that are based on environmental issues, if you want to fly, throw fluoride under the bus, go for it.
Just quickly though, I love doing this podcast. If it’s positively impacted you in some way and you would like to support us, please subscribe. By subscribing, it allows us to build a much bigger base of listeners, which results in better guests, better production and a better show overall. Alternatively, please take a look at the affiliate links of the products that I use and love in the comments below and consider purchasing using those links.
They’ll give you a discount and they’ll also provide the podcast a small kickback. These are two very easy ways for you to support us as we continue to grow the podcast that we absolutely love doing. Thank you for your support and I’m back to the episode. Wrapping up, I want to play a little game with you. So I’ve got 17 brands of toothpaste and I want to rank them with you from S tier to D tier. S is like the goat. Amazing.
Let’s hit it.
Speaker 1 (51:11.136)
This good ass
S A B C D. okay. And I’m going to do this. S is the best. A B C D or never used, don’t know. Okay. Let me let me get started on it. This is this is an idea from one of my editors to do this. So we’ll see if it works out. I’m ready. Aquafresh. I call it Why B?
Pass it
Speaker 1 (51:29.472)
Aquafresh. Yeah. call it a B. Yeah, it’s got sodium lauryl sulfate. It’s got fluoride in it, which I like. But it’s got, you know, it’s one of those toothpaste that is a good generic toothpaste. I’ll give it a B. Love Arm and Hammer. I give it, probably put it up there like an S. I love it. It’s fantastic. First developed by Church and Dwight. It’s got sodium bicarbon there. It’s a great product. It’s got some sodium lauryl sulfate, but I’m going to put it way up.
Amen Hema.
Speaker 1 (51:59.15)
And the beauty is that it’s got a low abrasive index. It won’t scratch the enamel.
Because we learned that because the, what did you just say before? What was the main ingredient in it? brain just Yeah, sodium bicarbonate has a low abrasive index. We’re learning, we’re learning. Close up. Also, by the way, I have no idea on half of these brands. This is America.
started by Carl.
Speaker 1 (52:19.159)
close
Speaker 1 (52:24.12)
I’m not even sure that they still make close-ups, so I would have to look there.
I’m to D. Give that a D.
Yeah, I put it down there because I don’t remember. I’m sorry. be told. Colgate. So Colgate has about, no, at least 60, 70 SKUs. Look, Colgate’s a great company. I know their head of research, Maria Ryan. They have products and ingredients that they are studying right now that will have a huge impact. One of them is called Arginine. So I think it’s a great company.
Colgate.
Speaker 1 (52:58.478)
their toothpaste are going to range from different ingredients in it that will have different functional effect. But I would give their products, you know, somewhere between, I would say some of them in the A category and some a little bit. You know, they used to have for years an ingredient called triclosan and triclosan is basically a detergent. It’s in household detergent and it’s cytotoxic.
Like a B plus.
Speaker 1 (53:27.806)
It’s actually cytotoxic, it kills human cells. It did a great job at stopping inflammation in the mouth, but you had a problem, you know, kind of long term with it. And then only recently it’s been eliminated from their products. But you know, these are these large companies, they’re multinationals, it’s not easy to change and to pivot. But I think as a company that is so large and research-oriented, I give high marks and some of their products absolutely in A.
Have you ever heard of Yuca, the phone app? You know about this? So I’ve got it. There’s an app that I use and you scan barcodes and it gives you all of the and then the health ratings of those ingredients. It’s so good. It’s so good. I use it every day. Crest.
I’m gonna use that.
Speaker 1 (54:13.482)
I’m a big lover of Oral-B. I really am. I love it. think they’re also kind of like a Colgate. I know they’re the same. know, Procter & Gamble, Oral-B is the professional side, Crest is a product of Procter & Gamble P &G. These companies, Colgate, Crest,
Crest are they different? Crest and R will be different?
Speaker 1 (54:37.622)
They have research, they have research and development, they have scientists. Where they started is not where they are today. They have great products. And I put them right there with Colgate. maybe even a little bit higher. Truth be told, I was their oral health expert for a year, so I am biased. I am biased. I am biased. I love their oral B brush. I love their audio. No, it’s not anymore. I’m just saying.
Hey, partners.
Speaker 2 (55:02.242)
Get the bag.
But I like, I really like both companies, both Colgate and Oralp. Don’t know it.
Got it. Al Max. Don’t know it. Youth. Youth Mall. Why? E U T H Y O L. No. McLean’s.
McLean’s, okay. McLean’s, I think that was 40 years ago and they don’t make it anymore. I don’t really know it. I have to go back my memory banks. Marvis, Marvis I know a lot about. Marvis is a great toothpaste. know, they touched on something that we thought was very important also with one of our companies. And that was the response a person has to brushing. So the hedonics, the smell, the flavor, the taste. And they’ve done a great job with that.
Marvis?
Speaker 1 (55:51.918)
And so I give them an A.
Greg and A. Nice. What’s this one? Mezwhack. Pep. See, the problem is I don’t really know how. I’ve never said these words out loud and turn this moment because I’m just going straight for the organic, you know. Yeah. Well, I.
Don’t know it.
Speaker 1 (56:04.13)
Pepsodent. Pepsodent.
Speaker 1 (56:17.002)
I think that’s a good move. But I do think you should have certain actives in there. But I do think the organics are going to have more of a natural bent and you’re going to have sugar substitutes that are healthy. know, and so there’s nothing wrong with that. You buy your toothpaste, but be careful about that fluoride conversation. The pepsidend is an old school toothpaste and it’s got all of the ingredients, some of them that cause the irritation. So I’ll give that a B.
Yes, a Pepsi.
Speaker 2 (56:46.232)
be okay. Since the dying
Sensodyne, now that’s the other company, GSK. So you got Colgate, P &G, and you got GSK. GSK is fabulous company, by the way. And I put all those three, I’m not gonna rate one higher than the other. Again, great research, but Sensodyne of all of the toothpaste, other than my son’s Twice toothpaste, that I am completely biased, because they’re similar to Sensodyne, but don’t have sodium lauryl sulfate, the Twice.
But GSKs, Sensodyne, and they have Sensodyne F, and they are the first company that figured out, hey, let’s take 5 % potassium nitrate, let’s have it in the toothpaste, it’s safe by all of the ADA standards. So all of these claims you can make in toothpaste that you wanna make, you can make them because of potassium nitrate and fluoride. Great.
So you give that an A. yeah. Tom’s.
Tom’s of Maine, amazing story. Tom Chappell who started that company, Colgate bought their company. Tom’s of Maine is natural. It’s as organic as it comes. It’s got a fluoride toothpaste and a non-fluoride toothpaste like my sons have with twice, which is very smart. People, I don’t want fluoride, here’s my toothpaste. But the natural ingredients, they were absolutely pioneers in that whole world 25 years ago. So I give them high kudos and at least an A.
Speaker 2 (58:16.27)
Ultra bright.
This is an old one. Sorry about it. You’ve got the DABUR.
So old, I can’t remember.
Speaker 1 (58:30.274)
toothpaste there. Yeah, I can’t help you there.
And the last one was Zendium. Yeah.
Zandium I think is a European brand. I’d have to look it up. You’d have to say it’s got this ingredient, got this ingredient. I’m not familiar.
Don’t even worry about it. think we got a good number of them. So I like that. Thank you. Wrapping up, I’ve got a couple of just general live questions I’d love to ask you. And I ask these to all of my guests because I find it quite interesting to hear what people think from very different views of the world. So what’s an example of a kind gesture somebody did for you that had a big impact on you? A small, kind gesture.
I live in this world where I’m go, go, go all the time and I’m very scheduled. I gotta go from here to here to here to here. So there are moments when I can get overwhelmed. And a kind gesture for me is when one of my team takes the time and says something or does something that just lowers the temperature. And for me, that’s a great thing. I’m very lucky I’m married to a woman.
Speaker 1 (59:37.006)
who are married over 40 years.
What’s the secret?
That’s a whole, that’s another podcast. But I will tell you one secret that I got very lucky is that this woman, when she wakes up, she’s got the biggest smile on her face. And that’s her personality. She gives off, she illuminates everything around her. And so for me, you know, she’s loaded with kind gestures. And so.
between my family that I’m deeply close with, and my wife is the glue of that, and people I work with, I appreciate those little kind gestures when I’m feeling like, okay, I need a moment.
Got it. Got it. And how do you show up better in the world from those small kind gestures?
Speaker 1 (01:00:23.512)
Yeah. You know, we can get physiological and talk about that parasympathetic, but that’s what it does. I think it allows us to reset. It allows us to just let the, you know, kind of all of these cortisol moments are starting to decrease, lung exhalation, breath work, oxygen, and the body starts to change and then your mental game changes. It’s so easy for us to get overwhelmed. There’s so much.
especially in New York.
sensory input that happens and the brain doesn’t work like that. You know, we all think that we could multitask. You can’t multitask. The brain doesn’t work like that. You talk to the neuroscientists. We have to do one thing at a time. But what we do is it’s a split second when we start multitasking and the brain starts getting overwhelmed. And what happens by the end of the day? You know, our mental energy and our physical energy, you add it all up at the end of the day, you can be pretty exhausted.
So you really gotta take these moments. And I think we surround ourselves with kind people, empathic people, who we understand them. They understand us. We are here to serve each other. Life is a lot.
I like it. like it. What’s the most beautiful thing you’ve created?
Speaker 1 (01:01:35.63)
That’s easy. Alright, that’s easy, mate, that’s easy. You know, 40 years of marriage, two boys, Julie and Cody, that’s by far the greatest thing I’ve done. I have an amazing family. Two sons are amazing. A wife that’s amazing, I feel completely blessed for a knucklehead like me to be so lucky to have this family. So that’s it, that’s at the top of my list.
That’s great. If you could only gift one book for the rest of your life, what would it be?
There’s a number of books that I like, in this category of books that will impact your life, probably The Untethered Soul.
Interesting, yeah, I’ve heard that before.
And it’s these books that really cause you to stop, think, and grow, and learn about ourselves, about our emotions, and how we feel, and how we modulate that feeling. So I would say that’s a big one.
Speaker 2 (01:02:31.768)
Nice. Okay, cool. I like it. So wrapping up, what’s the lesson you’d like everyone to take from this conversation?
I think the biggest lesson, and especially as it comes to our health, whether it’s longevity, whether it’s I want to understand so many things about where we are today with our science and how much knowledge I can gain. I think the most important thing is that people have to be wary of some of the noise that’s out there because of the impact of social media. And always try to get to
the expert opinion and keep digging and keep unpacking till you get to I think answers that really do make sense. Not to be over reactive. So I think science based as much as possible from the experts who it becomes clear who is the experts and who maybe is doing some fear mongering out there and pushing a product or pushing a service. I think people need a balanced approach.
Yeah, great. I like it. So is there anything you’re excited about at the moment that you’d like to let the listeners in on? The number one thing
Well, the that I’ve taken on is this project, I call it. It’s a new company. I’ve started three companies before, and I’ve done it with my wife, and this is the first one I’m doing with my sons. And so this is full family. My wife’s involved in that. She does the interiors, but my two sons are doing it with me. It’s called Smile House. It’s built on three pillars of what we call, well,
Speaker 1 (01:04:05.998)
Thank you, Will Godara, unreasonable hospitality. We call it house fatality, could just smile, house. It’s an integrative approach to specialists and it’s dental medical integration. Those are our three legs of the stool. And when we put that together in an amazing environment that we’ve built, we believe we’re onto something where I want to personally elevate the profession. This is what the future of dentistry looks like, that dental experiences could be things that you look forward to.
People go on the reviews. I looked at the first hundred reviews that we got in the last two months and they’re pretty amazing. We just opened. We’re two and a months open. I’m working harder than I’ve ever had in my life. I’m working like a 35 year old, because you know, I’ve always balanced my clinical work with my other stuff. But I’m having a great time. We have a team of about 12 doctors now between the two offices. And I think it’s fairly groundbreaking. It’s super exciting for me. I’m more juice now than I’ve ever been. So here I am.
Just open.
Speaker 1 (01:05:01.602)
going after it and loving the people I’m doing it with, both my team and my uptown, we call that practice JBL New York City. So my JBL team, my Smile House team, working together to do something special.
Great. And where can people find you if they’re interested in learning more about you?
Yeah, so the new project’s called smilehouse.co. I’m Dr. John, J-O-N, Levine, at Dr. John Levine. That’s my Instagram. My practice up town is JBL New York City, and I have JonathanBLevine.com is my personal website where I do some speaking engagements and stuff like that. So you can find me.
Just Google me. I’m around. I like it. I like it. And my last question for you is what do you think the meaning of life is?
well, I that question. Thank you for that question. The meaning of life for me and you we’re in our 20s, 30s, 40s, you we’re in our kind of go-go years. You know, start getting into those 50s, 60s and more and you start getting, I think, more hit the pause button, think about things in a way very different, right?
Speaker 2 (01:05:50.67)
Just a little singer.
Speaker 1 (01:06:15.734)
And so, you know, for me, legacy and doing things to understand why you’re doing it. So, you know, not to sound too much like Simon Sinek, but I’m a very big fan of him. Is when we do with and figure that out. And so when we start with why and we purpose and when I’ve started companies, you learn that if you don’t build culture, you don’t build a high performance team that things get, they don’t get to where you want them to get to. And so for me, purpose in life is to
to inspire. You know, one of the greatest moments I have is at our foundation where it’s a big room. We’re all under one big room. We have 14 chairs. have docs that I’ve trained over the years, docs that have worked with me, and we have medical and dental professionals. And I got Lenny Kravitz with a camera taking pictures. He’s my foundation partner. He dragged me down there. And now we’re looking to do bigger things. And so that
drives our why because we know why we went into this profession, why we want to help people. And when you do that, you you realize it’s not for an almighty dollar that we have this healthcare profession. You’re really helping people. And you could do things, of course, that you’d be successful for, but you’re really at the end of the day, we’re here to serve. And so knowing your why, knowing why we do things for me, you know, finding that purpose, I think that’s a message for everybody to take yourself there in your mindset and think about those things.
Grant? Grant? Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your energy. Thank you for coming on.
Thank you, Adam. Great to be here with
Speaker 2 (01:07:46.434)
Yeah, yeah. And wrapping up, if you enjoyed this episode, please go to YouTube, search that one time without a Metwally, click subscribe, like the video and leave us a comment. Cool.
So much fun.
