I have a special episode of the podcast this week. I’m sharing an interview I did on holistic dentistry inside the Hormone Healing Membership* with Dr. Kelly Blodgett. 

Dr. Blodgett is a native Oregonian who attended grade school through high school in Southwest Portland. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Oregon and completed his pre-doctoral sciences at Portland State University. Dr. Blodgett attended the OHSU School of Dentistry and graduated in June of 1999 where he earned the “Going the Extra Mile” award from his own classmates. Throughout his career, he’s become a recognized leader in minimally-invasive dentistry, dental lasers, computerized dental technology, and holistic care. He has been featured in numerous dental journals, on television, and in magazines for the innovative care he provides. He is truly a modern pioneer in progressive dental care. Dr. Blodgett and his wife, Julie, have been married since 1994 and have two beautiful daughters: Sara, born in 2002, and Megan, born in 2005. They reside in Southwest Portland, just up the hill from his high school alma mater, Wilson High School. 

The reason Dr. Blodgett’s work is so appealing to me is because of how he truly takes the word holistic to heart. He wants to know everything he can about a patient and take the whole person, their mental/emotional/physical health history, and how they feel into consideration when advising. Advising is the keyword here. He wants his patients to decide what is best and fully respects each and every decision. That’s not easy to find, even in functional medicine. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did!

Links/Resources:
• Free Training: Optimizing Hormone Health with Mineral Balance
• Mineral Imbalance Quiz
• Follow Dr. Kelly Blodgett on Instagram  
• Check out Dr. Kelly Blodgett’s website
• Dr. Kelly Blodgett’s blog on fluoride
• Dr. Kelly Blodgett’s blog on mouthwash
•  Look at your Meridian Connections on Dr. Blodgett’s website
• Dr. Kelly Blodgett’s blog on gum disease

Transcript:
Amanda Montalvo 0:00
Hey, this is Amanda Women’s Health dietitian. And I’m Emily nutritional therapy practitioner. And this is the RU menstrual podcast where we help you navigate the confusing world of women’s hormones in teach you how to have healthy periods. Each week we will be diving into a different topic on women’s health and sharing our perspective using nutrition, female physiology and metabolic health. Our goal is to help you wade through conflicting health information and empower you on your healing journey. We hope you enjoy it

I have a special episode of the podcast this week. I’m actually sharing an interview I did back in February for my membership with Dr. Kelly Blodgett, he is a holistic dentist, and it was so good that I was like, I really want to make this into a podcast episode. And he was so gracious with his time and he just really wants to get this message out. So I was like, I’m gonna put this into a podcast episode. If you do not follow him. He’s at Blodgett dental care on Instagram, I can’t recommend it enough. I’ve learned so much even just from his Instagram, when I had him on, I was asking him a ton of questions that women in my membership had submitted. So it’s a it’s a long interview, but I promise you that it is worth it. And you’re going to gain a ton of knowledge, we start off with talking about things like cavities and understanding decay, and all that kind of stuff. And then we move into things like teeth grinding, getting to the root cause of that lots of like common issues that we have women struggle with inside our group. And then of course, we do touch on root canals. Since that is what he is known for. I’m gonna let you dive into the episode but really quick because I don’t go through his background with him since everyone on my membership already knew who he was Dr. Blodgett, he’s from Oregon, he still lives in Portland, where he went to high school, to this day with his wife and two daughters. And he has a cool background. So he originally went to school, he got a bachelor’s in psychology, which I just think if Imagine if more doctors did that, I feel like that impacts his work a lot. And you’ll hear him talking kind of get what I mean, when he went to dental school, he got voted for going the extra mile award from his classmates. And again, like as soon as you hear him talk and explain things and like the care that he takes, when he talks about his patients, and just people in general, you’ll understand why he got that award. He’s very well known. He’s super successful. He’s become a recognized leader in minimally invasive dentistry, dental lasers, computerized dental technology and holistic care. He has been featured in a bunch of different dental journals, he’s been on TV, he’s been in magazines, all based around like how he practices. I think we turn we throw around the words like holistic dentist or biological dentist a lot, but they’re not all the same. So that’s something to keep in mind. And we talked about that then this episode where we talk about, like how you can find someone like him, he truly is a pioneer in progressive dental care. And he’s just like someone that I look up to as a practitioner, as well, just like the care he takes his patients, I appreciate that really individualized approach that he takes, and just how much care he puts in there. So I’m excited for you guys. Listen this episode really quickly, because I know I’m gonna get questions about it. I talked about how I had with my membership. So I don’t talk about my membership a lot. It’s mainly because you can only join if you’re in my course. So if you’ve gone through the master minerals course, and you need more support, that’s what I made the membership for. So it’s a monthly membership, you can cancel at any time. And it’s really based around this community we have inside an app called circle. It’s like Facebook, but it’s not. So it’s amazing. And it’s easier to organize and all this stuff. So we’ve got this circle community, I do office hours, twice a month, we have a guest expert like Dr. Kelly Blodgett come in six times a year, so we try to do every other month but with my maternity leave coming up, we’ve really crammed a lot of them in there, I do a meal plan every single month, we have lessons that expand on different topics that people are asking questions about throughout each month. So there’s a lot of content and support. Mostly it’s answering people’s questions. Honestly, that’s where I spend the most of my time is inside the membership. So if you’re like I did the master minerals course, and I do want more support and you didn’t know that it existed if you go inside the welcome section of the master minerals course and click that the last lesson is like looking for more support, and there’s a link in there. It is also linked many times throughout the course but I know things like that are easy to miss. So that’s what the membership is for those that are wondering, you do have to be inside the course to join the goals that everyone has like a baseline of knowledge and the huge library of videos I’ve created inside the course to refer to but yeah, that’s a membership. So I truly hope you guys enjoy this conversation with Dr. Raja as much as I did. Make sure you follow him on Instagram at Blodgett dental care so that you can help him share this very important message.

I have a ton of questions for you. But I already posted like a little bio in the membership people know who you are your website, your Instagram. Is there anything you want to share with everyone? Before we kick it off and get right into the questions? Golly, where would I start? So Mondays are our new patient days, all we do is meet new people, you know, who travel from around the world, really, it’s it’s very interesting, but my brain energy is just coming down. You know, I just finished meeting six new people and hearing their stories. But interestingly enough, every new patient I met today was a woman, and three of whom had had trauma to their anterior teeth, and either had developed dead teeth and or root canals in those teeth, and subsequently had all sorts of women’s health issues, which was just like, Hmm, you know, go figure. And it’s so great, because not that it’s great that people have trauma, obviously, right. But the

experience, like hearing crazy stuff, like well, you know, take these pills or do that, and they do their own work, come to appreciate that. It’s a rewarding experience to help people resolve those issues, so that they can then get back to living a normal, healthy life. I feel like that’s one of the big things that separates the type of dentistry that you practice to like your typical kind of conventional medicine. dentist is like you’re really looking at people as a whole. I love how you talk about, like systems versus symptoms a lot. I think that’s great, and a great way to kind of put it in, it’s a good reminder. And a lot of the women in here, they are familiar with, like holistic dentistry, biological dentistry in this space, and a lot of the people that they follow along with me, it’s like, we’re kind of talking about that sort of thing. We know that it’s like, if you have oral health issues like we can, we can’t ignore it, right? It’s just, it’s something that eventually you’re going to have to address. That’s what a lot of the questions are geared around. And I know a lot of these are going to be it depends situation. And that is totally fine.

I’m like writing these out. I’m like, Oh, my gosh, this is like, it depends. For every single one. One of the big questions I want to start with is, can you reverse cavities and just more of your kind of like holistic approach with looking at a cavity? We had a lot of people that are either struggling with them currently, or have struggled with them in the past and want like a better way to approach it in the future? Well, it depends not kidding.

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 7:38
No, it actually, it doesn’t really depend.

So the decay process is a continuum, right? It’s not a magic thing, where one day you don’t have a cavity, and the next day, you do have a cavity, it’s the result of health imbalance, both usually due to nutritional factors, as well as, like internal wellness factors. It’s kind of a it’s a loop really, you know, it’s like, what are we putting in our body? How well is it absorbed? How well is that able to get to all the areas of our body, including the interior portions of our teeth, where we have an immune function? And how can our body deal with that, like acidic onslaught? So what I would say is that, if it is, if we appreciate that there is risk early, such that we use a some, like an obvious scenario, like, you know, we would probably all think of a high risk person for decay being someone who like sits on a Coca Cola all day, right? That would be very obviously directed towards decay creation. What isn’t so obvious, at least in my experiences, people hear things on health podcasts, like, you’ve got to do lemon water and apple cider vinegar in the morning, and you know, and so they go to it or sip on Comm Bucha, or, you know, something like that. And they go do it. And they’ll do it to the extreme, right, where they they are guzzling down lemon water and apple cider vinegar, and wonder why within six months or so, let’s say their teeth become sensitive. And then the next time they see their dentist in a year or two or three, if we’re keeping it real, because that’s how it goes for a lot of folks. And they’re like, what happened here? We, you know, did anything shift and of course, the traditional approach would be, they update the X rays, they see dark areas within teeth, and then just immediately start rattling off by hell. Okay, Josie, it looks like we’re gonna have to do an emo filling here to do filling there. And you know what I mean, or a crown. They’re all there. This one looks like she needs a root canal. And nobody’s asking what happened in your diet did anything change? You know, let’s try to understand the system that created or allowed this to happen. So I guess the short answer is you can absolutely reverse the risk for decay. You can even have a frank cavity and in a tooth that you can get to go biologically dormant. Now, I’m not advising that people don’t appropriately manage their decay, if you know, whatever that means for them, but it is possible to reverse the risk that that acidic Onslaught is causing, and the damage to the tooth, you can make it go dormant through your nutrition through your diet, sometimes, you know, through using ozone, I personally am not a user of silver diamine fluoride, but it’s also an option, you know, if somebody’s at a high risk, I’d rather them use something like that than just are taking teeth out. Because the risk of losing your teeth, particularly at a young age is significant. Our ability to chew food is, you know, obviously very important. So it is possible to make those changes. But you have to be supported by a team with, you know, hopefully a biological dentist or doesn’t even have to be biological, like I don’t want to overuse terms like, here’s me a dentist that cares enough to know about nutrition. But usually you have to have a team that that can acknowledge that something must have shifted, something must be in play here, that if we can change this, and of course, that requires the past that human being being on board enough to change living habits, which you know, that’s always easy, of course, right? I’m being sarcastic. But you know, if the desire is strong enough, I find that most people, when we frame it in the context of the health goals that they have, that I find that most people willingly will make those changes, we spent a lot of time conversing with people and not telling, we don’t tell anybody what they need. And we don’t tell anybody what they should do. So we dropped those words from our vocabulary. In my practice, it’s actually like a, when people come to work for me, it’s the first thing they learn is like, we don’t say need, we don’t say shit. So how do you converse them about health goals, without saying those things like we were trained to do in school. So it’s, it’s very thoughtful.

Amanda Montalvo 12:22
I love that I love that you’re, you’re opening up the conversation and really making them part of it and having them make the decision. Because that mean, that’s what it’s all about, and like working with your patients versus you know, just telling them what to do. I think that’s what most people are looking for. They just they’re not used to that type of experience when they go see a doctor or a dentist. I’m curious, have you mentioned ozone, which I would definitely we’ll talk about, how do

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 12:46
you feel about oil pulling? It’s awesome.

Amanda Montalvo 12:50
Is that something that you feel like can help with cavities?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 12:54
Yeah, I mean, again, so here? Yes, it’s another one of those It depends. So let’s say you’ve got Jane, who’s sipping on her kombucha four hours a day. And then she picks up oil pulling the 10 minutes if she if she’s willing to do oil pulling for that long, most people aren’t right. Let’s say that she was doing 10 minutes a day, that 10 minutes a day of rinsing soap, I mean, that’s what you’re creating. When you’re salivary minerals mixed with the oil, you’re creating soap in your mouth, what you expect are eight, and you know, toss it down the garbage that will not overcome the chronic acidic exposure. I have found people who, and of course, I’m sure this makes sense. Most of the people who find us they’ve already made a lot of positive health choices in their life. They’re, you know, for lack of a better term, they’re probably on a green diet. You know, they’re eating pasture raised grass fed beef, and you know, following a Western price mindset of nutrition and that sort of thing. So when they asked about like, Could this be helpful, you bet. You know, if you’re willing to spend the time to do that, I have seen some people take that on as a practice. And we see amazing results. Some people don’t want to actively swish and use their oral muscles like that. And we might recommend for them something like perio protect trays where you make a customized set of trays that delivers hydrogen peroxide under the gums, there’s different ways of going about it. Some people like might really find a Waterpik to be effective or any mixture of those things. Ultimately, I see that people find what works for them, and what’s comfortable for them and what what creates good results for them. And as a great when we see them in the office and things are looking healthy. It’s like I don’t care what you’re doing. Just keep doing it because it’s awesome. You know, you look healthy, you look vibrant, your teeth are in good health, your gums are in good health, you’re not inflamed, like that’s awesome stuff. So,

Amanda Montalvo 14:56
so step one is like removing whatever is acidic and then step To is just finding like whichever therapy is going to work best for

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 15:04
you. It’s also important to look at is the person who’s dealing with whether it’s gum health issues or decay risk. What else do we understand about their health overall? Are they taking medications? And one of the first things we as dentists have to know is, are you taking any medications that might shut off your saliva? Because you know, your teeth have to be bathed in saliva constantly, or the biofilm that inhabits our mouth, which of course, is the start to the whole GI tract. The the oral microflora starts at all. So if you have no saliva there, it’s going to be out of balance for sure. So that’s massive, like we’re looking at people’s tongues at the quality of their gums, not just do they bleed when we jab at them, you know? So that’s a huge part of it, as well as looking at the whole health picture. are they experiencing systemic health issues? You know? And are they you know, are they related to the teeth and how so? So it’s, you know, we kind of see this thing in a constantly moving system. Everything’s connected to everything. And what happened in their history, I was just talking with a young woman, while she was young, a lot younger than me. So she seems young to me, but she was sharing 30 years ago, she was getting out of her mom’s car when she was five years old, tripped and landed on her face. To subsequently died, you know, and she, she was sharing how, as she became a teenager starting to menstruate how things were very different from what her friends were experiencing. And of course, this is like, you know, on the ovarian and uterine minute meridian, and it’s like, gosh, I would have helped to know when she was five, right, so they could have prepared, or at least had some methods available to help support her in that energetically could have been some acupuncture, right. So But anyways, it’s all looped together. And here, she’s suffered for 30 years. Interesting to hear her story, too, about how long it took for her to get pregnant and the hoops she had to jump through to battle, the energy that her body was missing, because she has a dead tooth.

Amanda Montalvo 17:28
That is so interesting. So can you explain the meridians a little bit?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 17:32
Sure, sure. And what I what I would also offer to anybody who’s listening, there is a book, I forget the guy’s name. He’s a MD physician out of England, who then got a second doctoral degree in Chinese medicine. And he wrote a book called The spark in the machine, he explains how and why the concepts of acupuncture even work, you know, and teeth, which stem from the same tissues that our central nervous system stem from when we’re in the embryo logical state, your teeth are connected to all that energetically. So when something happens to a tooth, and something could be decay in the tooth, it doesn’t even have to be dead, it’s creating an inflammatory state or an inflamed state, that could raise the energetic flow of every organ that is connected along that meridian, you can go to my website, there’s a heading that says connections. And when you go on to that heading there, one of the buttons you can press is, it’s like an interactive Meridian chart. And it’s so cool, you can go on and click on stomach, or you can click on lungs, or you know, some sort of Oregon like that. Or you can click on a tooth that you maybe just had a root canal on and see what’s what’s connected to that. So energy flows through our teeth, just like it flows through every other part of our body. And when the tooth is either inflamed or in a de flamed or dormant state when it’s dead or had a root canal, that equally has an impact, just in the opposite direction. Now you’re reducing flow of energy through not only the tooth, but the organs that are connected to it.

Amanda Montalvo 19:25
That is so interesting. So I found it on your website. I’m going to put it in the notes for awesome this class. So you guys can all nerd out. And I put the book title, so I’ll find the author and everything. But that’s so I actually haven’t heard of any of that. So that’s really, really cool and something I can nerd out on. Now.

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 19:42
There’s another book that I would encourage you to read first, if somebody really wants to get into this is called the Body Electric. It’s written by an orthopedic surgeon who in the 1950s 60s and 70s was stuck Seeing, like the why behind regeneration? Like, how is it that, say a salamander or whatever, you can get a tail cut off, and it will regenerate or that children before a certain point could cut off at the tip of a finger, and you could regrow it, you know, within a certain age range. But then beyond that certain age range, usually it will not regenerate. And ultimately, what he proved was that the amounts of energy necessary to create that level of regeneration are ridiculously small, but yet they exist. And when he was first testing, it was like, the levels were way too high that he was tested, you know, of course, because we’re like, Well, gosh, and we don’t feel a shock, you know, how’s it not having an effect. But of course, you know, everything in our body is so subtle, like we don’t, we don’t feel the beat in our heart, we don’t feel the energetic charge that is required for our heart to keep beating yet it exists. It’s just also fascinating. But those those books helped me. I mean, again, I’m no expert in Chinese medicine. I’m not an acupuncturist. What I am is an oral health care provider who has seen live over the years now the benefits of rebalancing energy, and removing toxic chronic sources of infection for people and truthfully, just listening to what they share, because there’s so much power when somebody says, you know, Doc, I just feel like, and then it’s like, Okay, it’s time to shut up and listen, because they’re about to share their truth. And it’s just a powerful tool that our team members have picked up over time to, to acknowledge their truth, to address it, to honor it. And lo and behold, when we do people start getting healthy again, which is really cool.

Amanda Montalvo 21:49
I feel like people know intuitively to like, they might not know exactly what’s going on. But when you do let them talk things out and like, share their what they’ve kind of seen on their own journey. Because everyone’s I mean, by the time someone gets to you, I’m sure they’ve done a ton of research, right? They’re, they’re like almost an expert on their own health and their own bodies. They are an expert in their own health and own bodies. So I’ve that’s I always find them like, what do you think? Like how, like, how do you feel about what I’m recommending? For you? You know, because they so I think it’s great that you guys do that? I’m curious about this one, like kind of piggybacking off the cavity question. Someone asked about tooth powders with clay and can they re mineralize teeth and reverse cavities?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 22:33
Yeah, that’s a good question. I think it aids in the potential for that. And of course, it depends on again, like, what’s its the whole solute and solvent concept? Like how are you? How are you playing chemistry in your mouth? Do you have the the one thing that you’re so let’s let’s think about it in this context, in this context, the one thing that your teeth are constantly exposed to assuming you’re not, you know, literally having a straw, your mouth sucking on Gatorade all day is saliva. So in order to have healthy saliva, you have to have healthy blood, your saliva is a distillate of your blood, that’s where it comes from. So if your blood pH is imbalanced, which can happen for any number of reasons, that’s going to be a problem. So again, we have to look at gut health. I was just in a class this weekend, actually, where one of the founders of Functional Medicine Dr. Lowe dog out of New Mexico, was there speaking to us, you know, we’re talking about things like just what an atrocity is that people are taking, what are the the, like proton pump inhibitors, you know, to shut down acid production so that they can, you know, treat their GERD. And it’s like that, that acid is there for a reason. Right? If you’re not breaking down, if you don’t have acid, you’re not going to break down your proteins. And if you don’t have your proteins, the whole list just goes it’s like, yet all we care about is like I don’t have acid. It’s such a mess. So anyways, I know that’s kind of a Securitas way to get to the toothpowder question, but it’s like, I don’t care what toothpaste you use, what tooth powder you use, most people are going to have it in their mouth for less than two minutes. If you brush your teeth, and you you know, whether you’re using crest or you’re using Tom’s of Maine or or revitalizing or you know, you know there’s a million you know, somebody brands out there Yeah. Like it’s your saliva that the teeth are exposed to constantly. So the healthier your saliva, the healthier your teeth and of course that requires optimal gut functioning. It requires that you have great exposure to all minerals that you eat a diverse diet ideally that you would be eating a whole foods diet that you know you’re not eating like Squeezy cheese and you should You know, to ketosis or whatever. I mean, it’s, it sounds ridiculous, but like this is that’s that’s the, the standard American diet. So if people want healthy mouths, they’ve got to think about their entire body, you know, there won’t be a miracle powder that just suddenly makes it like, hey, everything’s fine. Now, you know. And the sooner Of course, the sooner people can think of that. And hopefully, it starts with parents, who understand that for the sake of their children who are born and have the opportunity to breastfeed, and, you know, it’s this whole concept of nature the way it was supposed to be experienced, you know, life the way it was intended to be experienced. We’ve just grown up in a weird time where you can get everything at a quickie Mart and, you know, feed a baby out of a bottle. And, you know, that’s a whole different topic of conversation, right, which is like, underdeveloped jaws and things like that for these children that then, of course, need braces at age 10. And it’s like, Where’d all that stuff start? Right?

Amanda Montalvo 26:10
Yeah, my dental health question for kids, too. So that’s,

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 26:14
which I will clarify. I’m not a pediatric dentist. I’ll give you the name of the dentist. You want to interview for that. But okay. I do have an adult only practice, but I, you know, I have children. Yeah, I’ve watched them grow. And I appreciate. I’ve read Stephen Lin’s book, the dental diet, which he covers Child Development incredibly well.

Amanda Montalvo 26:34
So do you have toothpaste that you recommend to your patients?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 26:38
We have lots, okay. And I get samples of all sorts of things. Again, I don’t care. It’s like what soap is best for washing your car. I don’t care. I know what I like, which is a relatively non toxic toothpaste that reminds me of the flavor and clean field experience I had as a kid, right, I still love and always have, thank God, that feeling of a clean mouth. You know, fortunately, I’ve never had oral health itch issues. So I mean, that’s how and why I choose. I try so many of the natural versions of toothpaste, which leaves my mouth feeling off. Now do I think I could get used to it probably, you know, it’s kind of like, is a silly analogy. You know, this has happened many times in my career, where it’s like, I get the perfect fitting glove, because I got to wear them all day long, right? And same thing with mass, and then they discontinue them. It’s like, oh, no, what am I gonna do you know, and now we got to find the next best fitting, you’ll have you know, it’s like, Why do I like it? Well, it’s because what it’s what reminds me of what feels comfortable, you know. And I feel the same way about toothpastes and products. That being said, y’all are probably familiar with the Healthy Living app that the Environmental Working Group puts out, that’s a great app that you can go to the store, and click on the barcodes of products, and it’ll give you a relative toxicity score. So one being the lowest 10 being the highest. And I love that stuff. You know, my, my wife got introduced to the beauty counter company years ago, was probably like, eight years ago now. And that’s what stimulated me thinking about what’s in the products we use. I was like, gosh, I never really thought about that. And such a blessing because it has, you know, majorly impacted not only the products and materials we use, but the degree to which we are sensitive to the fact that not all products are compatible with all people. We actually had a new patient come in today, who had pre sent to us what’s called a bio comp analysis. So she had a blood test done where they can analyze, do you have any immune responses to any of the products that are on this list? Now, the limitation is that your results are only limited to the products on the list. But that being said, there’s a ton of products on the list, you know, so it’s a healthy thing if anybody finds or is interested in investigating that for themselves. Bio comp is a pretty cool company. I’ve worked with them a number of times. They’re also related to if anybody follows my instagram handle and they, which is at Blodgett dental care you know, shameless plug that the D N A connections report that we send out when I extract teeth and I send the roots in for DNA analysis for pathogens. They’re really it’s the same cup parent company that owns bio comp, and DNA connections, just wonderful people, like I know the owners and they’re, they’ve really got their heart in the right place for health care, which is

Amanda Montalvo 29:49
cool. So that gives you insights into like if you would be reacting to certain products that are out there or, or ingredients in those products so that you can find the best ones for you.

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 29:59
Particularly you Like for dental products? Yeah. So let’s, let’s say, let’s say, you went in and you saw your dentist and you had three mercury fillings in your mouth. And you’re like, you know, I know this stuff. It’s constantly exposing me to Mercury, and I want to have Mt. And so your dentist is like, great. And but you also know that you’re you tend to be sensitive to, you know, whatever. Whether it be you’re sensitive to certain earrings, or you’re sensitive to certain foods or what have you. Like, it might be helpful to know, in that process of putting bonding agents, composite resins, potentially ceramics, or any of those things, like are there any brands that tend to be better for you than than not? What we do here in our practice is, you know, when 99% of people test healthfully for these certain brands, that’s just what we keep around. It’s rare, I don’t even know if I have ever seen somebody who is sensitive for the products that we keep around, they’re way more expensive. And they work, you know. So it’s like, that’s, that’s the level of care we want to offer to our guests. So

Amanda Montalvo 31:09
that’s so interesting, someone actually had a really good question about either like treatments or products to avoid when you’re at your conventional dentist, and I feel like that’s kind of how you would get that answer is to figure out which ones you react to?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 31:25
Sure, I will say we’re keeping in mind, you’re talking to a dentist who might be inside of a fraternity of less than 100 people internationally. Right. And we’re all geeky. And I know most of these people that are on this, this plane, you know, but when we think about the local DSO Dental Group, you know, whether it’s Heartland or whatever, where you’re going in, and let’s say you had two teeth that were experiencing decay that had gone into the dentin, you generally have to clean that out. Otherwise, your tooth will suffer long term consequences. Half of the dental practices in America are still putting mercury fillings in those teeth. And and they’re still this is insane. Right, but they’re still telling the patient? Well, you know, there’s no science to say that it’s not healthy. And you know, they’re the strongest fillings. And, you know, it’s it’s crazy talk in manufacturing. And I’m guessing none of you all follow the Journal of the American Dental Association, you know, two months after COVID hit, and I swear to you this, I absolutely believe this was done out of opportunism, that the American Dental Association released a press release saying We do acknowledge that mercury vapor is released from all mercury fillings constantly, as long as they’re in your mouth. However, you know, we still believe that unless you’re a child under six, or a pregnant woman, it’s still safe, you know. So it’s kind of interesting, when the whole world was looking elsewhere, they snuck in this thing that nobody paid attention to. So even the American Dental Association has acknowledged like it is a constant exposure issue. Now, if you happen to be a fast detox Er, well, maybe that’s no big work for you. And you know, you don’t have to worry about it. But when we know it is the most toxic neurodegenerative substance you can get exposed to who would want that in their mouth? You know, and the same thing, sorry, I’m just gonna have this as well. Yeah, manda that said, similarly, how often have you gone to the dentist and they’re like, just out of routine for no other reason, like, Okay, we’re gonna get out your fluoride varnish or your fluoride trays. Now think about this for a minute. And you know, I’m 50. So I can remember in the 1970s going into the dentist, they’d fill up the foam trays and stick them in your mouth for 10 minutes. You tell me is that fluoride sitting only on my teeth? Heck no. I mean, it’s all over my buccal and lingual mucosa it’s like, where do we put drugs when we want them to absorb instantly you put them in the oral mucosa. Right? So it’s, it’s dangerous stuff. People are getting exposed to toxic toxic loads of substances we know are neuro degenerative, they break down your brain and other nerve fibers. And we wonder why that’s like, huh, it’s odd, you know, I guess you just have multiple sclerosis or whatever. You know, it’s like, think about the dental contribution to that, especially for those people who have been brushing with a fluoridated toothpaste for 40 years. You

Amanda Montalvo 34:42
know, I I’m sure I think we’ve talked about this in another class that we did, but I used to when I was in elementary school, they would do the fluoride swishes like they bring in the trays of fluoride. I mean, we did that all the time. You know? It’s, it’s it’s pretty it’s crazy. Like when you think about Yeah, like right on your gums, right? If you want to absorb it sublingually super fast. So

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 35:05
you think about like oral and nasal mucosa I mean, why? Why do people put nitroglycerin tabs under the tongue when they’re having heart issues? Or why do people you know, is sniff things through? They’re like drugs through the nose. And it literally, I mean, you absorb it instantly. It’s so powerful. Yeah, you know, if it if it has to do with doing dental care, like no, no, doesn’t exist at all, you know, it’s all we’re gonna keep the argument all your teeth. And it’s crazy. You know, it’s interesting

Amanda Montalvo 35:34
that they came out and said, how, like, if you’re not under a certain age, or if you’re pregnant, but it’s like, what about all those women that get those mercury fillings and then they get pregnant? Yep. That’s a huge concern.

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 35:47
It’s massive. That’s so crazy.

Amanda Montalvo 35:51
Gum question. So we have a few people in the membership that specifically I’ve been dealing with receding gums like for a while. They’re wondering what causes receding gums? And is there any way to reverse it? That isn’t a gum graft?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 36:07
Yeah, that’s a great question. And I think, I think part of along with that, I will add, like, when, you know, does it always? Does it always necessitate treatment? You know, can you have recession and just leave it? You know, I mean, so that’s something to consider. So, you know, the short and sweet version of why we see gum recession is that understanding, in order for gums to be at any place in the mouth, it requires that you have bone underneath it to support the gums, so the gums will follow the bone. Okay, so imagine, I’ll give you one one version of how this might happen. Somebody you know, at 25 years of age has crooked lower teeth, and they go to their dentist or orthodontist and say, Hey, I would you know, straighten my teeth out. Okay, great. So they take these teeth that are all tight and everything and straighten them out. Meanwhile, you’re reorienting roots, so that the widest point is now facing, you know, cheek direction to tongue direction. But your bony ridge isn’t that wide. So what’s going to happen, the bone will go away, the gums will follow it, now you’ve got sensitive roots that are exposed. Now, whether that’s a problem or not, is a very individualized issue. Some people they may have gum recession and their gums are in perfectly good health, and their teeth aren’t sensitive, and it’s not a aesthetic concern. And they like who cares, right. Whereas somebody else could have a half a millimeter of exposure of the root, then they get like debilitating for them when they breathe in air when they drink cold water or eat ice cream or anything. And it’s just like, Oh, now the other thing that is massively, that massively contributes to that can be the relationship of how teeth come together when you bite. So we see it. For a lot of people who had orthodontia as children, or you know, like, early teen years, mid teen years, you’re literally forcing teeth into positions that they were never, they never had a genetic map to say go here, we’re forcing that to happen. And then expecting for everything to be hunky dory after that, you know, it’s like, they might look perfect. You know, we might love them aesthetically, but nothing fits properly. Or they’re fitting in ways now that have unbalanced force distribution, which will have either bone loss consequences for enamel loss consequences with some people just grind the living daylights out of them, or the top of the tooth. So it’s interesting like to visualize the top of the tooth as enamel, you know, which is super, super hard. Everything underneath it, the dentin is flexible. So if the tooth keeps getting knocked in one direction, you’re going to start losing to structure down at the gum line where the tooth can flex. And we see this all the time where somebody is imbalanced by the symptoms of that imbalanced by is a sensitive route that has recession. So there’s so many factors to consider. In our practice, we want to look at like go backwards. Start from the start, you know, when you were born where you breastfed, you know how did your arch form the way that it did? Did you have orthodontic intervention? If so at what point in time and you start looking at the the roadmap of their life from an oral health standpoint, and looking at how did it get this you know to where it is No. And those are all really helpful things I think, to consider prior to engaging in the what you could call epigenetic forces of braces. Right, your genes didn’t determine that you were gonna force teeth and those positions. And so wild.

Amanda Montalvo 40:17
Vine was weird now.

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 40:20
Yeah, well, I was talking with a woman today where we were looking at her art form. So what we take a series of photographs of people’s smiles and their teeth and all this so that they can see what we see. Okay. So one of those series of photographs is your upper arch, and it looks like a upside down U. And then the same thing with the lower arch. And when you look at the two next to each other, you almost always can see how they fit. Okay. And in her case, I was like, well, when did you did you get your braces put on sometime before you were 12? Oh, yeah, I was like, you know, 10 and a half, or 11. And you can tell, right, and the reason I asked her, it’s like, no, like, I was guessing, you can see that the art form is perfectly symmetrical only to her first molars. But her second molars, which come in around ages, 12 to 13, were much wider. So the orthodontist forced her into a shape, you know, is directing traffic, so to speak, so that it would be a certain shape, and then the lower ones follow that. But when the second molars came in the tongue was the influencing factor. That said, Now, you know, we’re going to push out here, because the tongue wants to be so big. So it’s so incredible to look at how all those things play apart. Airway, right? If you keep the, the, the size of the garage, so to speak, imagine your tongue is the car and your arch forms are the garage. If you make a smaller garage, and there’s no braces for a tongue, you can’t tell the teeth that you know, the Arch has to be smaller, but then the tongue is the same size. It’s going to it’s going to create issues, whether it’s airway issues, whether it’s your tongue pushing on your teeth, such that you can’t adequately retain those forms, which who would want to retain those forms Anyways, if they’re not functional? So there’s a lot to think about in each of those. Do I want to do orthodontic treatment? Then, of course, you know, what kid gets that choice? Anyways,

Amanda Montalvo 42:22
I was gonna say, I don’t think you really choose whether or not you’re going to do that. But so that’s so interesting. So something for those people that were asking about receding gums to keep in mind, I wonder if that like plays a role, we had a lot of teeth grinding, and jaw ventures in the group as a topic that comes up often, and now I’m like, Oh, my gosh, should these people have braces?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 42:45
It’s a question to ask. And, you know, and admittedly, I’m, I’m keeping this discussion more around people of our age generation fewer to say, Well, why might we see gum recession in somebody’s age 70 and older? Well, that might be a different issue entirely, pretty much all the bones hit our body, you know, experience some level of change, which would be relative to your exposure to vitamins, you know, D 3k, to your overall gi absorption, so on and so forth. And, frankly, also that level, or that expression of oral health and periodontal health has a lot to do with genetics. You know, some people are more more prone to inflammation systemically than others, you know. So it’s, it’s helpful. As matter of fact, it’s very helpful that we can understand not only these days DNA information about people’s oral microbiomes, but also their genetic inflammatory risk. You know, these are things that we use every day to help better understand our risk profile for somebody. If they have concerns about that, or they’re already experiencing expression of disease. We have a few

Amanda Montalvo 44:05
people commenting in the chat saying that they did not have braces, but one still has gum recession and grinding. So the grinding can be a contributor for the gum recession, correct?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 44:18
Well, for sure. So, you know, think about it this way. Again, in order to have recession, you must have bone loss. Okay. So we’ll start with that. If we look at why, why do braces work in order to move teeth? Well, if you’ve if you apply a constant force on bone, it will change its shape and form. Now, force applied to teeth could look like a person who is chronically clenching and or grinding. So those if those are occurring in a pathological fashion, the constant connection of teeth may result So in bone leaving, as I mentioned before, if you’re going to, you know, grinding and clenching, which could happen for a number of reasons, you’re either going to have loss of enamel, loss of root structure, or loss of bone, which will yield, recession, or it could be a combination of those things. So that is dependent on the bio individuality of each person that we meet, everybody’s different,

Amanda Montalvo 45:26
but those are definitely it sounds like if, say, like, you are seeing a, whether it’s a holistic dentist or conventional dentist, keeping those things in mind like, Okay, well, if I am so grinding my teeth, and I’m getting this gum graft, like I should probably address the grinding so that I’m not going to continuously get gum grafts the rest of my life.

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 45:46
Yeah, and I will say this too, that, you know, gum grow, there are instances where it’s like, okay, this is just the best solution that we like the traditional gum graft, which I haven’t done in 15 years, because we have better ways of addressing most areas of recession, honestly. But the traditional approach of let’s cut into the roof of your mouth, cut out a section of connective tissue out of the roof of your mouth, and then tie it in somewhere else down here is it’s, it can work certainly, by I’ve done it for folks and seen good results in certain cases. And in a lot of cases, it doesn’t work very well. And the potential downside, in my opinion, it’s wise to consider what those downsides could be, you know, namely that it might just fail, you might end up in a worse situation than you started with. For certain situations, in case something you know, your the listeners here haven’t been exposed to it. This is about eight or nine years ago, I was one of the first 20 dentists in the world to get trained in a technique called pinhole gum rejuvenation. To me it is it’s akin to gum grafting. ACL surgery is these days where it’s all arthroscopic compared to the old days when they would cut your old knee open. So it’s a it’s a method of being able to move your gum tissue back up over the roots. And it’s not, it’s not appropriate for everybody. But if you still have substantial enough scaffolding of bone, for a lot of people, we can regain coverage of roots, but you have to address whatever cause created that recession issue in the first place. Yeah, so a bite adjustment is almost always going to happen. Because especially when it’s localized recession, as opposed to just sustained, you know, complete arch recession. If it’s localized recession, you can almost be guaranteed there’s a bike factor related to that. So you got to address that before you get to covering the roots.

Amanda Montalvo 47:55
So interesting. Hey, Amanda, here, just giving you a quick break, hopefully a break for your brain in the middle of this podcast episode, to remind you that if you haven’t gone through our free training, optimizing hormone health or mineral balance, we really do recommend starting there. And the main reason for that is because you’re going to hear us say things like mineral foundation, having a solid foundation, are you putting the foundations in place, especially what as we get deeper and deeper into different hormonal topics and specific imbalances in the body of the the mineral foundation, it’s always going to be so essential. So if you haven’t watched the free training, you can find it in our show notes. Or you can go to hormone healing rd.com. And it’s going to be right on that front page there. But we really recommend starting there so you can understand how is your current mineral status? How do you assess this, and how to get started with all that just so you can get as much as you possibly can out of the rest of the podcast episodes. But that’s it. I hope you enjoy the rest of this is Episode Four the teeth grinding and jaw clenching. I feel like they kind of go hand in hand because they can both probably lead to issues with enamel and like bone and stuff. What do you find are the different root causes for this for people?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 49:11
For a lot of people, disrupted sleep and airway issues. Okay. Yeah. Which starts you know, that starts at birth. There is a pediatric dentist, I believe is in Chicago named Dr. Boyd who is an incredible guy, he spent a lot of his professional life trying to help people see Well number one, if we could form arches by breastfeeding children from birth, that would be really helpful. But for those who don’t experience that, how can you help them hopefully before age five, to get on track for expanding arches because if your your arches of your jaws expand appropriately, you will generally see the nasal airway also expand appropriately. But again, you think about how many kids are in braces or, you know, a second from a bottle from birth. And, and there’s a lot of challenge with that in terms of, you know, the form follows the function. So if you have a bottle that really drops milk out of it passively, and they’re sucking on a long artificial nipple, their art form will follow that, guaranteed. So then how do you, let’s say they’re 15 years old, that’s their arch form, it’s like now, that’s really hard to overcome at that point, and it may have lifelong consequences. The issue as we know of sleep apnea, you know, sleep, disrupted breathing and all that. It’s real, and it’s huge. The challenge is there aren’t really any awesome solutions. People don’t want to wear see paps. mandibular advancement devices that a lot of dentists recommend, will if you wear it, screw up your jaw, usually, you know, you you, when you put a tensile load on pulling somebody’s jaw out over, you know, over years, you will lengthen these bones, and you’ll create a situation where their jaws are permanently open, which is not exactly what people want when they want good health. Right. So a lot of that to your question, though, it’s like that. I think sleep disrupted breathing is a big part of it. I think also, I can just speak from my own self, like, I you know, express stress by clenching my teeth. You know, it’s part of like, when I’m finding myself thinking, and my team members come by, and they’re like, Oh, Dr. Balaji, must be deep in thought, you know, like, oh, yeah, it looks I’m grinding the heck out of my teeth. In that’s parafunctional behavior. Many of us do that. So it’s helpful to become aware of it, I think. But it’s also helpful to appreciate for most of us, we’re going to experience grinding our teeth throughout our life where there’s only so much enamel, and it does not regrow, unfortunately, you know, you can read mineralize de mineralized areas, but frictionally You know, if you’ve worn it down due to friction is gone. So,

Amanda Montalvo 51:58
it’s I found I’m definitely like a teeth grinder. And I, at one point, they my dentist tried to give me a mouthguard. And I was like, I can’t I literally can’t there’s like no way I can sleep but this thing in and then I tried mouth taping and it I quickly stopped clenching and like grinding my teeth at night. And so I think I was I was definitely breathing through my mouth or like, at least for part of the night, maybe not all the night, but a lot of people in the membership had commented about that, like, try mouth taping if you’re like grinding your teeth and stuff at night.

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 52:29
Yeah, I’ve heard that from many folks. Absolutely.

Amanda Montalvo 52:34
Do you use ozone therapy for that as well? In what way? For the teeth grinders and jaw clinchers?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 52:42
How would you envision using I’m just trying to understand what someone had

Amanda Montalvo 52:45
commented about using that for teeth grinders and jaw clinchers. For something with like energetic charge, I believe,

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 52:52
I guess the short answer is no. I mean, we we use ozone every day, I’ll give you a great example. Actually, in this instance, the the woman who had fallen out of her car actually had had this dead front tooth, who has been experiencing systemic issues for 30 years. She says I constantly have, you know, headaches, jaw tension, on my right side, it’s always there. So I was like, well, we could try what’s called neurotherapy, where you inject some procaine anesthetic and just compounded you have to you have to use procaine, that it has no preservatives in it, and then follow it with some ozone. Within two minutes, her headache was gone. And she’s like, I’m going to start crying. You know, like she was acknowledging that she had never experienced this before. I’m like, well, that, you know, that’s probably your body giving you some information, we do a fair amount of that neural therapy as a almost as a not only as a healing modality, but also as a therapeutic tool. So let’s say you know, somebody’s primary symptoms are they have chronic diarrhea, let’s just use that right. And we go in and we inject those molars and pre molars that are connected to the large intestine. And for the next five days, they have the only normal poops they’ve had in years. And they call us up and tell us that and we’re like, okay, that’s, that’s your body giving us information about your root canal teeth. You know, imagine if that energetic and infectious burden no longer existed within your jaw. And when people experience that level of energetic shift, usually they’re fairly motivated to get that manifest. But in terms of like grinding, I have not used injected ozone for that. TMJ injuries. Yes. Lymphatic Drainage, you know, like, we will oftentimes for somebody who’s having a tooth room To do a series of ozone injections along the lymphatic drainage pathways of the head neck, because your body you know, once we shake things up by getting a tooth out, it has to be able to the lymph system has to be able to drain it. And of course that’s, you know, contingent upon the health and function of your lymphatics and your body’s ability to detox itself, which gets back to gi health. Right? So it

Amanda Montalvo 55:27
just loop I know, and your liver and your gallbladder and all that. Absolutely. So what for those that aren’t aware of what ozone therapy is, because I know that’s like something that you utilize a lot in your practice. What is it?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 55:40
Yeah, so ozone? That’s a great question. Thank you. So I get that not everybody here is the science major. I wasn’t either, right. My degrees in psychology. So cool. Yeah, I care about how people feel about ozone, right. So we’re all familiar with it oxygen, we hear the term otoo. So oxygen, is you know, two oxygen atoms combined to form the oxygen molecule that we breathe in. So if, and here’s an example we can all relate to when lightning strikes. And we smell that scent that’s in the air, from the moisture from the rain and all that and it has that very particular smell, which is that comes from Ozone. When the energy drives through the atmosphere, some of the oxygen, the otoo, molecules get split, and you end up instead of being combined, you end up with free oxygen atoms, some of those will combine with an O two to make it oh three, which is energetically very unstable. Okay, but it’s biologically compatible, except in your lungs and in your eyes. So if, if we want to have energetic shifts, whether it be in your sinuses, you can inject ozone gas, which will spread out three dimensionally throughout your nasal compartment and sinuses. And if you have sinus infections, you can treat that non invasively using ozone gas. That’s it generally takes numerous you know, you have to come back to three times a week, just keep at it, keep at it, keep getting it. And we have seen people clear their sinus infections by using nothing but ozone gas, you know, something we generally want to help people do some do it at home, you know, they get home unit do it. It’s not hard to do it just take the right equipment. But that’s ozone. It’s oh three and it wants to break down very quickly. The instant that you inject it into oral tissue or any other place in the body, it is absorbed. Now some people might be thinking like I don’t I didn’t think you could absorb, you know, absorb gas or air, let’s say it in the under the tissue. And in fact you of course you can’t. But that’s 80% nitrogen. So in this case, we’re using only oxygen which is absorbed instantaneously. I don’t know a human being that’s allergic to oxygen. So when we’re looking for some sort of modality, which is antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, anti parasitic, completely, none of those things have any part of their cellular structure that can combat ozone. And it’s completely biologically safe. Again, as long as you don’t breathe it in. It’s such a wonderful tool. So whether Dr. Nisha and I are doing fillings on a tooth, you know, we will ozonated over the dentin, which is where the nerves of the tooth are, we ozonated that to make sure that it’s free of any microbes. Before we seal it up, or when we’re taking a tooth out, we’re treating that extraction site with ozonated water and ozone gas. And it just the impact results in people who heal well who have very little to zero discomfort post surgically that who regenerate appropriately. That’s awesome.

Amanda Montalvo 59:18
That’s really cool. It’s so you can use the water or you can like actually inject it.

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 59:24
Yeah, so in our lab, we have a whole section on there’s a poster that I probably reposted three times on my Instagram because it’s it’s it always gets good response people love it like that what oxygen ozone what but it’s we are constantly all day long, bubbling ozone gas and oxygen into this gallon sized Erlenmeyer flask and we’re using it for oral rinses like you know pre cleaning oral rinse where it’s the only liquid that we put into our dental units. So instead of having like prior to ozone in our off This, this is really gross. And every dentist is doing this, you’re throwing in tabs of drugs that kill off the biofilm, you know, which then you get the joy of, you know, getting into your mouth when they use the syringe. When you’re using those unaided water, the only two things in there oxygen and water, distilled water and oxygen. So it nobody’s sensitive to that. And it’s so effective at cleaning those lines, without any farm or chemicals. It’s a wonderful way to go. But yeah, we use it for all sorts of things. It’s, it’s what I bought the first one, I think four and a half years ago, we now have four units throughout the practice, because we’re constantly with an opposer.

Amanda Montalvo 1:00:42
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s really cool. You guys do it yourselves. One. One other question about the teeth grinding at night, someone just asked like, what do you do for that with people? Is it just depend on what their root causes?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:00:54
That you’re, you hit the nail on the head? Absolutely. You know, I mean, for some people, it could be psycho emotional issues. You know, for some, it could be they got out of braces two years ago, and their bite is just not quite right. One of the things that we observe in people’s, the way that their bites can act, is if something is even the slightest bit off. Something, we’ll pay the price for that, you’ll either grind it away, which most people do, or many people do, I should say. Some people express symptoms more in chronic jaw, head, posterior head and neck and shoulder pain. Like got them always tight, you know, as like, oh, well look at that, you know, like, you’re this one CUSP on one to this hitting before anything else, it’s like walking around with a rock in your shoe for two years. In your in, you’ve been accommodating that imbalance slight as it is, but still present. You’ve been accommodating for that by trying to posture differently, and it’s exhausting. So yeah, but to your point could be is as unique as the person who presents you know,

Amanda Montalvo 1:02:15
and just kind of like milk working backwards and looking at your health history. And like, you know, what lines up with you and trying different things. So I know that you’re not a pediatric dentist, but for because now everyone’s like, I think everyone’s kind of like what the heck with the braces stuff. Gone away by that? Right? Do you think it’s better to just leave the teeth and like have like as they are?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:02:39
Well, and I don’t think there’s a better or worse, I think it’s a you have to assess the health of the child and their history. So if, you know, there are a lot of kids where, you know, from birth, maybe they were bottle fed, and they end up with a small high arch or a narrow let me refer to a narrow and high arch. If you could do something to help reinforce that art form added is at an early as early an age as possible. I think that that type of intervention might have lost lifelong health benefits. I think that in most middle class and up neighborhoods, what you see is, you know, it’s it’s a social thing, you know, it’s fifth grade, every one of your friends has gone to see the orthodontist. Some people are starting to get, you know, braces on their teeth, and or Invisalign, or whatever, it literally becomes an issue of social acceptance, which I don’t think is a great reason to choose to put your teeth in positions that God didn’t intend them to be in. But by the same token, could the, you know, the could the influence of bottle feeding? And I’m just going to pick on that because it’s easy? Could that epigenetic influence equally, have created an off balance issue? Absolutely. Right. Which is why when we get off of what nature intended, we start to see more and more issues. So the again, the short answer is it depends. You know, each each kid is a unique individual I can share with you for my daughter’s, you know, the the interesting, my older daughter will be 20 in a month. And I remember when she was in that, you know, pre teen state, and of course, I was not quite on this path yet. And she had braces put on and I took a class of epigenetic orthodontics, right as she got into braces. And within two months, I’m like, Oh crap, like, what are we doing? You know, and honestly, God, we she and I talked about it and my wife, you know, we all talked about it, but we decided to take them off. You know, it’s not worth it. Long term. It’s not worth it. And if she wants to make changes you Know, she can do that in the future. Of course, now she’s almost 20. Her arches are well aligned, you know, now for my younger daughter, we found out when she was, I don’t know, relatively young, like seven or eight, she had a lower canine that was lying down on the floor of her lower jaw. So we had to, you know, talk about, you know, what do we think would be safe to do? What does she want to do? And we gave her the choice, you know, and she’s a strong willed, bright young lady. So she, I told her, if you choose to keep it, it’ll probably be your favorite tooth. But sure enough, we rigged up a system because she wanted to keep it were through some laser surgery and some very creative orthodontics by our orthodontist, he was able to safely bring that tooth into an appropriate position. And, you know, now that was before she was those before she was 11. You know, so we had to get that to that was supposed to come in around 11. Anyways, into position by that time, so that everything else could keep keep tracking. And it’s worked out, moreover, really well for her. And thank God, I mean, the tooth is working, and it’s functional. And it’s an incredible tool that is kind of our favorite tooth now.

Amanda Montalvo 1:06:16
It’s so funny. So do you, are you not that Invisalign is very popular, I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve had that kind of go through that process. Do you kind of look at that similar to braces, like you’re forcing things? Or can it be different once you’re an adult and your teeth already formed?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:06:31
Well, IT pros and cons, right? I mean, there’s advantages and disadvantages to both the orthodontist I refer to more frequently than anybody else, has been shifting over time to using more and more of aligner therapy, and it has to do with it is more predictable, you can control the outcomes to a point significantly better than you can with traditional braces. Now, that also depends on the experience and comfort zone of the practitioner, too. Because if you’ve been doing wire bending for 35 years, you can probably do amazing things with traditional braces. But then again, if we slow down, and we think about biocompatibility, you know, how many of those people who are getting a nickel titanium wires put into their mouth have sensitivities to metals, if their gums blow up? That’s information that granted it’s hard to brush your teeth braces on but that could be your gum saying like, you know, I’m not so cool with the nickel in here. By the way, you know, I can’t wear a nickel containing earrings, what are you doing, putting that my mouth where I’m gonna absorb it through my gums and oral mucosa. In that case, using some aligners might be much more appropriate. If you want to move teeth, they can both be good options. It just depends on what you’re trying to accomplish and why.

Amanda Montalvo 1:07:50
And someone asks about recommendations for where to find people like you, I found you at a great Instagram posts on this. So guys, I’m going to put that in the notes because I’m not going to make him repeat that right now. I have one last question if you have time. Oh, I guess much time he’s like, okay, because there was a lot of root canal questions. But you have so many blogs and your website about those that I’m like, do we want to spend time on root canal and you talk about that a lot on your Instagram?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:08:16
It’s my thing. I It’s my Slow Jam.

Amanda Montalvo 1:08:19
Oh my gosh, it’s like you have some really great blogs on it have a really interesting question around like, what do what’s what do our teeth need on a daily basis? Like what care because this is also like I was listening to another podcast with a biological dentist and he his kind of take is very minimal care for your teeth. So I’m curious if like, what do you think daily maintenance as far as caring for our teeth looks like?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:08:43
That’s a great question. I get asked that a lot in a different, the questions often form slightly differently. But I think it still applies that this will be different than probably what you’ve heard. Your teeth require you to love them first and foremost. And by that I mean like create a space for having downtime and honoring the requirements of your body to experience parasympathetic state. When we’re in fight or flight constantly looking at our phones running from one thing to the next. And we don’t have good salivary flow, and we’re snack snack snacking all the time. We’re creating an environment and an experience. So that’s like, that’s where I would start. Find that thing that helps you decompress and honor the physiologic requirements of your body to be healthy. Second, would be coming to understand for you, whatever that might mean the needs of your GI health. Some people that might it’s going to differ from one person to another, which includes incorporating enough fiber are soluble and insoluble to carry out as you pointed out so beautifully, you know your liver and gallbladder that are trying to get rid of all the garbage in your system that will be reabsorbed and recirculated, which includes going to your teeth, if you don’t carry it out through the poop with some soluble fiber, that’s going to be problematic. So because again, if we want healthy blood, we’ve got to detox the junk out because the blood is what makes your saliva and the saliva base the teeth. So it’s this loop. Now in terms of the home care stuff, in my opinion, and maybe this is my own social norm. You know, I couldn’t imagine not brushing my teeth in the morning. And before I go to bed, that’s the, that is a social norm I have grown to expect of myself. And it’s what feels comfortable to me, we do have some patients who brush once a day, we have some patients of breast three and four times a day, that may or may not be problematic. It depends on the person, what I do find is that those who take it to the extreme, and for whatever reason, reason choose and I know this will sound a little interesting, but those who choose literally never to brush their teeth, we do often see dysbiosis particularly when the the foods of choice are of the processed variety. You know, if we sit around crunching on celery and apples and hikma, you know, foods that are not only healthy for our gut and offering prebiotics and all that, but also the crunchiness cleans the teeth. Like that’s pretty awesome. You know your English cucumber with your hummus. Now, isn’t that funny, my teeth feel pretty clean when I’m done eating that. If I go, you know, like a nougat bar, which I don’t remember the last time I did that. Hopefully I’ve planted a seed for myself tonight. You know, like, you know, it’s like within an hour yawn, huh? That’s weird. I got sweaters growing on my teeth, you know. That’s your, that’s your biofilm speaking to you. We do find people who floss more tend to have healthier gums. We find that people who hate flossing, if you’re able to incorporate water picking, they tend to do well. You know, again, if they’re practicing good techniques, those who can stand out or those that like to do oil pulling that can be really helpful. So again, it just depends on what works for you. But I think a basic level of clean at least once a day is really helpful at keeping the lawn mowed, so to speak. We don’t want weeds cropping up here there the mountain love

Amanda Montalvo 1:12:43
oil pulling and I feel like that makes me mouthfeel I still I’m like the same way where I have to brush my teeth. I can’t ever imagine not doing that or flossing. My mom worked at a dental office for 20 years. So it was like drilled into my head. It’s a habit. So even though I EUPOL I still obviously brush and floss but it’s interesting listening to other takes on it and how like, you know, if you’re not flossing correctly, can it create more inflammation, you can get more bacteria into the gums. Like that’s always a concern. There’s a lot of different takes, but I well, I love that answer of like getting into that relaxed state, and just not forgetting that there are so many other things that are going to impact that. And I think that’s a huge takeaway from this interview that you reiterated really well throughout that. Yes, like using a quality toothpaste is helpful. Eating well obviously is really helpful but it’s also just like looking at like how you’re living, your health history. All those things are, you know, where you breastfed? Were you not? Are you nutrient deficient, all those things are going to impact your oral health to

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:13:43
one of the things that we’ve done in the past year that has been such a massive shift for the experience of patients as they leave we invested in a nova Thor bed. And partly it’s like it’s a it’s a full body red light and infrared light bed from a red light and infrared light exposure standpoint, that’s super helpful for yourselves. Obviously, what we have observed from a social, emotional, psycho emotional standpoint, is that it directs people into parasympathetic immediately after surgery. And it’s just so powerful. When they come back. i Wow. And I felt great. And because what we want them to do is go home and rest. And if we can help them get into that state of, you know, bringing down like a lower state of energetic resonance. It’s like wow, this is awesome. I’m in a nice cool idle right now. It’s so cool. Yeah. Thanks, Christy. Like love it. Yeah, it’s pretty epic.

Amanda Montalvo 1:14:46
Like the red light. Do you have red light that you use actually, that goes inside your mouth?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:14:51
Not inside we have and I’ve done this for almost four years now as part of our protocol, so a lot of But I do and I know you didn’t want to go too deep into the root canals. But I will talk all night about,

Amanda Montalvo 1:15:03
listen, if you want to talk about root canals and you have time, you’re so much more than welcome.

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:15:08
It’s my favorite only because I see more than anything, people experiencing them because they’re told they need them. First and foremost, it’s a horrible language, you need a root canal, why I just came in to get my mercury fillings taken out, and you put in this new filling, and it hurts like hell, well, because you need a root canal. It’s like, okay, we’ve missed the boat already. But so they go in, they get it done, because they’re told they need it. And then all of a sudden, you know, they start experiencing health issues in its other areas of their bodies, not for everybody. Yeah, but for many, we had to develop a protocol that would predictably regenerate the tissues around these teeth. So as part of that protocol, I mean, that includes, you know, the utilization of laser technology, the utilization of ozone, I had to get team members here license to be phlebotomist, because we’re drawing blood on people and using your own clotting factors and immune cells and concentrating the back in your extraction side. And utilizing the benefits of lymphatic drainage remedies, homeopathics, and red light therapy. So I found this red light therapy unit called a Medlite 630. So it’s 630 nanometer red light. And we’re able to buy them for reasonably inexpensive about $150, which we don’t, you know, we don’t upcharge them, we just sell them to the patient, say like, we want you to use this, and then just keep it around the house. Because guaranteed, you’ll bonk your elbow, or the kid will, you know hit their forehead, and using red light to help cellular regeneration is awesome. So we just have people hold it, you know, it’s about so big, and the look probably, you know, area so big. When you just put it over the area of surgery. So some people might find like, Oh, my TMJ is put the redline on it, you know, I literally have the same unit at my house underneath the coffee table. Because when things are achy, which they can be from time to time, you just pull out the red light. So yeah, we use light therapy. We’ve been using light therapy, using lasers and such for 20 years in our practice. And it works. That’s why we keep doing it.

Amanda Montalvo 1:17:24
I have a huge red light in my bedroom that I use every single night before I go to bed, and one of my dogs got attacked, and he had to have like surgery and stitches and all this stuff. And like every night I’d put him in front of the red light. I mean, they like it anyway, because they’re animals, so they’re attracted to it. But it like the our vet could not believe how quickly he healed. Like, they’re like, we’ve never seen anything like this. I was like, I think it’s the red light. We use it literally every night for like 20 minutes.

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:17:49
So beneficial, so beneficial. That’s really as you as you can tell, like, from a root canal perspective, you can tell him coming back to it. Like I believe every person deserves the right to understand all of their options. So, you know, I do tell people if they come here, and they had a crown put on their teeth and their tooth hurts like hell, and well, you know, one option you could consider is you could take out the nerve and the blood supply, and you could mummify your tooth, and you can keep chewing on it for a number of years, especially if you just spent one or $2,000 on a crown. Some people are like, well, you know, I know this might be adding insult to injury, but I just spent two grand on this crown, I’d like to keep using my tooth for another five to 10 years. And if they go into that understanding the potential risks that come alongside root canals, then I’m all for it. I won’t do it. Because I don’t do root canals. I did for 15 years. And you can only imagine how I learned how toxic they are. It’s firsthand experience, you know, and I, you know, there are many situations that I feel badly now looking back, and I’m like, well intended, but that was not I was not helping somebody in that in that fashion. So, you know, we do refer out to endodontist if they want it, as you might imagine, I mean 99% of the people that come to see us is because they want their dead teeth out. And they’re telling their dentist, whether they’re, you know, in Salem, Oregon or Salem, Massachusetts, they’ve been telling their dentists This isn’t right. It doesn’t feel right. I you know, I’ve noticed a shift in my health ever since I’ve had it done. And they’re just hearing not can’t be your tooth. Because they don’t have an understanding or an appreciation of what could be going on. And because we’ve honored people’s truth, regardless of how we felt about it. That’s how we have learned more than anything is observing firsthand like when somebody comes in here feeling like they’re about to die, literally. And then they come in two weeks later, bouncing up and down and they’re just full of energy. It’s like, whoa, like, Okay, how many other human beings have I missed the mark on because I do No, my eyes open, and my ears and my heart. You know, when we think we have all the answers, and we’re going to tell you what we need, we’ve already missed the mark. Which is why the I started with, when somebody comes to work, it was a dental care, the first thing that they learned is we stopped saying need and should. You know, it’s a mindset and a lifestyle working here more than anything. Which is a massive benefit not only to our patients, but the human beings that are employed here.

Amanda Montalvo 1:20:30
It sounds like amazing places to work. Yeah,

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:20:33
it is. And it’s shared, you know, we we lift each other up, and hold each other accountable to continuing to work on being our best human being. So it’s, it’s pretty cool. So

Amanda Montalvo 1:20:46
root canal piece, like, obviously, if people if they want to keep their tooth, and it’s like, then that could potentially be the route that you have to take. So if you’re gonna if say they have their have that dead tooth, you would remove that, are you what, how do you feel about implants?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:21:02
I’ll answer that in a second, I want to I want to share an interesting story, just because it kind of pertains to what we’re getting out here. One of the new patients I met today, she had driven over from band, which is three hours away, right? That’s, it’s a track. And interestingly enough for chief complaint was my lower left second molar had some bad pain. It has since resolved. So maybe it’s okay. But I want to check that out and see. And here’s what’s interesting honor, we have people fill out a lot of information, so we can go deep. One of the things I have to know is what are your goals? You know, what are your goals for your total health. And her stated goal was complete oral health, like, okay, you know, we are sorry, optimum, optimal oral health wasn’t complete optimal oral health. So we looked at her 3d Cone Beam scan, and sure enough, the tooth that had heard had abscessed, because the nerve died because she had a big crown put on the tooth. And that type of an insult will cause you know, frequently will kill the nerve of the tooth. So it died. Interestingly, she had four other teeth in her mouth, different locations, all of which had already had root canals, and all four of which were severely abscesses. And she was aware that pus was draining out constantly. It’s like, well, I just rub it, you know? So it’s like, yeah, I mean, this is the my life. Oh, my gosh. And it’s like, we had to have it was, oh, my gosh, man, it was such an interesting talk. Because what all she was very resistant to hearing about it, you know? And I’m like, So tell me more about what it is. It’s that fear, you know, where’s that emotion coming from? Again, you can tell I spent some time in psychology, right. And, interestingly, what it went back to this woman’s 67 years old, we went back 60 years in her emotional life, to a traumatic experience where she tripped and fell, hit her two front teeth on a bar, broke them off in half. And, you know, ultimately had to get root canals in order to keep the teeth. But she still to this day, emotionally scarred by the way her mother looked at her and was concerned about the way she was going to look. Oh, and it was like we, you know, my hygienist, Claire, and I just sat there with her, you know, handlers of tissues and just said, just, you know, like, let it sink in. Because, you know, we’re now we’re now acknowledging that’s at the root of this thing, right? And you’re saying you want optimum oral health, but your behavior is saying, I don’t want to know about my disease issues. And it’s like, we want to help you work through that stuff. So there’s always some emotions, usually tied in with that stuff, whether it was the experience at the dental office, and they were disrespected, or feelings of a family member and how they dealt with, you know what I mean? So there’s stuff there, and there’s emotions, and we have to process it all to get through to a healthier state. Anyway. I apologize for that tangent, but I wanted to share it because it’s so it’s so powerful to watch people work through that stuff, and you have to go, you have to go through it. You know, you have to process the trauma. Because it’s it is it’s absolutely linked to the physiologic event. So anyway, sorry, remind me of a question about the root canals.

Amanda Montalvo 1:24:36
I think it was more just figuring out you know, what is a lot of the questions that we’ve gotten are kind of like, what’s the best decision for me right, because there are different options. But like you said, you do have to think about where like going that far back to that woman’s like childhood and having that experience like that was giving her resistance with the right decision for her now, which is pretty wild. Some people have asked about dental implants because with so if you’re going to remove that dead to its then do you feel like you should replace it? Or does that depend?

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:25:08
Well, it’s, as you can imagine, I wouldn’t say should about anything, but it’s an option. So, you know, arguably a person can have a dead tooth removed, we can help their body regenerate itself very effectively and very predictably. And they could theoretically leave that space open, understanding the teeth could shift and you know, those are, those are generally not life threatening issues, you can remove teeth and just not replace them. And some people do and sometimes we’ll replace them with removable like a single tooth removable piece or full arch removable partial denture. I mean, that’s the way you could go so that you don’t have to go through surgery again. A lot of the folks that I see and Dr. Nish my partner here we we will help people take out teeth. And when we can, and if they want implants replacing them, we will use ceramic implants that are energetically neutral for Jeez Louise 20 years I was placing and restoring titanium implants. The last one that I put in was maybe a year ago. And you know, I think it was last year Dr. Nice and I looked at each other like I just think we’re done with titanium, it might be the unique case that I would put one in if it was a right set of circumstances, there are certain titanium implants which are just so different from zirconia or ceramics that there aren’t any ceramic options that are quite like that. But that’s like the 1%. So the vast majority of implants we placed in ours are ceramic. They, you know your bone will attach to it not only your bone, interestingly enough, but your gums will attach to zirconia. It’s so weird, it is white in color, which is very odd to so you’ve got this tooth that comes out of the gum tissue that looks like a tooth, you can grind it and shape it just like a tooth, which is also very interesting. I have found it’s the way I would prefer to go if it were in my mouth. As matter of fact, I’ve in the last two years had to replace four of my mom’s teeth that were all root canal, two of which were abscesses, and two of which fractured off because once you root canal tooth, and it loses its blood supply, it now loses its source of moisture and it becomes much more brittle. So that’s a problem when you put pressure because you like to chew of course, right? Who would it was interesting, as a matter of fact is once I replaced her lower two teeth that had abscess was there, Kony implants, you know, when your bone attaches to an implant, whether it’s titanium or zirconia, there’s no forgiveness of that connection. Versus your tooth is attached by a ligament which has a little bounce to it maybe by a 10th of a millimeter, but still a little bit of forgiveness, implants rock solid. So as soon as we had her implants restored and then she started chewing on the teeth above them, which were root canal. Now it’s the doesn’t move. You know, those brittle teeth having a different source of force now broke off. Okay, well, you know, round two, here we go. Even happens to dentists, biological dentists, parents, right.

Amanda Montalvo 1:28:23
Oh, as you say your mom’s lucky that she had you as a resource for all that.

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:28:27
She’s fortunate. So it was my dad, but it’s, they have a good resource for sure.

Amanda Montalvo 1:28:33
What was the name of that pediatric dentist that you mentioned the beginning? Yeah.

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:28:36
Dr. Stacy with N I S. J. s. T ACI Whitman,

Amanda Montalvo 1:28:43
because there is definitely some stuff for kids. But I feel like I’ll try to like reach out. And because I think a lot of people are either pregnant, they have children. Some are young children. Some are much older children in the membership. So there’s definitely like a range there. But I’m like, even just hearing the braces thing. Like there are some things to really consider when it comes to kids. And I feel like there’s probably not like a ton of information out there about that.

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:29:10
For sure her. Her handle on Instagram is at the word, Dr. D OC to to our underscore, Stacy.

Amanda Montalvo 1:29:22
Okay, last question. How often should we be seeing a dentist

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:29:25
that would depend on your goals? Your risks, quite frankly, there are a number of people that I see where I tell him like we could see you every year or two. Like they just maintain that level of oral health. This kind of gets into my philosophy of of health care if your lifestyle practices are such that you’re generally in good health. Why would you be seeing a physician every six months, like Well, hold on Doc, you know, I want you to check my bloodwork. Again, make sure I’m still healthy, you know, it’s like I’m 35 and I eat you know, kale every day. And my grass fed beef and like, dude, every time we see you, you’re perfectly healthy and you jog and you do your red light bed like you got it all. You know, it’s kind of like the same thing with dentistry. If you look at the the remuneration model of dental care in America and how not only insurance companies, but dental service organizations are starting to take over. And dentists are getting compensated. They set up these businesses where people come in for worthless cleanings. For a lot of people, meaning they literally run a polishing cup over the teeth, don’t address anything under the gums and tell them they’re healthy. It’s a waste of time and money, in my opinion. But at the same time, there are people who literally are perfectly orally healthy. And I was like, well, welcome back. Like there’s literally nothing to clean off your teeth. Yeah, what are you gonna do for him, it’s like, I feel bad taking your money, that’s not kosher. And frankly, I want to spend my time helping people that actually could use it, you know, not. So for some people, we might want to see them every two to four weeks. If we’re let’s say we’re doing some ozone tray therapies, and we’re trying to arrest a biofilm process that has been giving them grief for 10 or 15 years or five years or whatever, you know, we’re gonna want to see those people with high frequency or we’re doing some nasal ozone therapy to knock down some sinus infection, something like that. But for other people, where every time we see them, they’re healthy, come in once a year come in once every two years, whatever. If they look great, still a year out, go 18 months, keep doing what you’re doing. That’s my, you know, my, my My take is, if you’re in good health, the things you’re doing are making sense. And they’re working, like just keep doing that

Amanda Montalvo 1:31:48
shouldn’t necessarily need to come in every six months. Yeah, I think that’s because that’s kind of the confusing piece. And it is like you didn’t really do anything. Like if you’re on the other than the cleaning, which is not helping

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:31:59
people that are also different. All vie the same thing. It’s crazy. Yeah. Like there’s no respect or thought for bio individuality at all, you know, because we’re not asking, tell me about your diet. We’re not asking, you know, tell me about your your family history of oral health issues and systemic health issues. You might fill it out on a health form. How often do they ask you, they actually asked you about it? You know, for each one of our new patients that come in, it’s at least a two hour visit? Two hours for each person? Well, I mean, that’s like when I say all we did today was see new patients, that’s all we do. We’re not doing any dental work, we stop the presses, so to speak, so that we can be present for human beings. And the power of that is just incredible. But you also get to the base of what’s actually affecting people’s oral health, and what’s the appropriate trajectory for your health plan.

Amanda Montalvo 1:32:53
I love that. And I think it’s a good thing to keep in mind. So I’m gonna list guys here, there’s four specific academies or associations that I know you recommended in that Instagram post. And then you have great instructions on exactly how to find the right person for you. So that’s all going to be in there. I’m going to be looking at this I had a bad experience with a holistic dentist recently, so I’m gonna find somewhere else to go. But yeah, so this was amazing. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time, thoughtful with your answers. I just love your approach and how you just you don’t, nothing is disconnected, like the mind body. Is there, the emotional aspect is there. The physical aspect is there and all the systems so I can’t thank you enough for sharing your perspective.

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:33:39
Well, thank you. And I do want to add, because I think you just brought up something really? Oh my gosh, it’s so important. So you know how, I mean, I’ve been in dentistry long enough now that I have seen the terms does your come and go? So you know, 20 years ago, it was, you know, the term micro dentistry or minimally invasive dentistry was like this term. It was like a thing. You know, people would say, or I’m a cosmetic dentist, right? 20 years ago, that was people say we’re doing family and cosmetic dentists. Well, I would sure hope you’re doing cosmetic dentistry, if you’re fixing people’s teeth, right? But these days, the terms does your our biological, functional, holistic. And just because you read it on somebody’s Instagram page or website doesn’t mean anything. I hate to say it, but like, you still have to do the due diligence. So the question I get every day, and I’m sure you can imagine, I get DMS like you wouldn’t imagine on my my Instagram feed, I do my best to answer it. It’s like, Hey, who do you know, in Houston and who do you know, in Poughkeepsie? And I’m like, well, first of all, if what you’re reading here resonates with you, then that has to do with the energetic connection between you and me. Because everything that’s on there is from me, I don’t and I don’t go I don’t have ghost writers. This is my life right? I’m spending time expressing it. Just because and I appreciate you mentioning my post because there’s good information there for sure. But just because somebody is a member of the IoT or the Holistic Dental Association, doesn’t mean that you won’t walk in the doors, and it’s going to be the same as what you’ve experienced everywhere else. You have to find out what how are they engaging with other human beings? That’s where the rubber meets the road? Do they respect my autonomy? Do they respect my individuality? Those are what I find like, and I know some, and I have a few dentists around the United States and outside a handful where I’m a gift. I know, if you go to this person, you will be honored and respected. And I know you’re going to have a good experience, because I will not send you to like, well, I don’t know. I mean, remember this? Yeah, give it a whirl, you know, because I don’t want somebody to potentially have a negative experience. You always try it, of course, but just do the due diligence, read reviews. If you’re concerned at all, like find out who from that practice, that’s a patient that maybe had some teeth extracted, maybe had some ceramic implants, who could you talk to? So that you I mean, person to person, even though I know we’re in a digital world, right? Find out who you can talk to real life and just see like, who can I connect with and see what their experience was like? Because there’s a lot of power in that. Yes. Or talk to Christy send her a message. God bless you, Christy.

Amanda Montalvo 1:36:25
So pregnant, I’d be I’d be out in Portland, I had a terrible experience. I might, I might, I’m probably going to have to end up waiting until after I have the baby. So we’ll see. But, uh, yeah, I It’s like, you can read reviews. Not everyone has an Instagram, like you do like a great thing, which is great. But yeah, so it’s not difficult. I feel like it’s it takes time to find the right person. But if you do enough research, and everyone in here is so nerdy and willing to do all that. So I’ll make sure I post all that in the notes for this guest expert interview in Kajabi. And then I’ll put that because I’m going to put some of this on the podcast too. And so that will be in the show notes as well. But yeah, thank you so much. This was amazing. I really appreciate you sharing your expertise and all your time. And anything else, either your website, your Instagram, that’ll all be everywhere. Anything you want people to specifically do follow you on Instagram, Blodgett dental care,

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:37:28
I would ask a favor, my goal is to reach literally millions of people, because I want for the, you know, the human population of this planet to understand that they have options. And sadly, I absolutely know that in most people’s experience, they will not be given all their options. So what I would ask is that, if you could send out my Instagram, and or whether you watch Facebook, or Instagram, to every single human being, you know, and just create, it will at least create pathways of awareness for probably some people who aren’t yet aware. And that, I mean, you never know. And I don’t say this, with any joking at all, you don’t know whose life you might save through that. Right, somebody could be at the edge of a cardiovascular event and death, or they could be at a state of being chronically, you know, in so much discomfort from oral pain, that they’re ready to end their life, you don’t know whose life you might say by sharing that. So I would really appreciate if you would send it out to the hundreds and 1000s and 10s of 1000s of people that you know, so that we can create awareness together and improve the experience around oral health because it can be an insanely positive and wonderful experience. But most people as we know, that’s not that’s not their experience. I mean, we have to literally change the entire industry. Which only way in my opinion that’s going to happen is when the public becomes aware and demands better, then it will have a change much as we’ve seen in our food industry and that sort of thing, right? We’re seeing more choice or in cosmetic injury. There’s more awareness there are more choices now. We’re barely at the cusp of that for oral health so together we can do that.

Amanda Montalvo 1:39:17
I think people just aren’t educated and so when you don’t have that like you said you don’t know your options you don’t know what to ask for. So awesome. Well everyone share legit dental care’s Instagram this will be in my podcast, my newsletter all over my Instagram. Yeah, maybe we’ll do a live together eventually in hit all the different audiences. But yeah, thank you so much for being here. And I hope that you get to go relax and unwind your brain after all those new patients today and then doing this interview.

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:39:48
Well, you know, you know what time it is time to go finish toxic Tuesday for tomorrow. Gotta set it up. It’s gonna be a goodie. What is it gonna be about? We’ll be talking about that. Even even getting small fillings can have massive negatory effects on teeth. When we look at when you disrupt the structural integrity of a tooth by drilling into it, no matter how small, the structural integrity is now gone, and the risk of that tooth splitting partially or completely in your lifetime goes through the roof. And I’ve got a lovely tooth with a big crack all the way through it, you know, to show everybody it’s gonna be awesome.

Amanda Montalvo 1:40:32
Oh, that’s that’s like literally what I was trying to do that holistic that dysphoric feeling. So I will definitely be watching that one. And I’ll share it on my Instagram. It’s just such a somehow it’s like my regular dentist is like, Nope, you need this feeling. And I’m like, are we sure this is the best option. And again, become empowered. Share this information. Awesome. Thank you so much. I hope you have a great rest of your night.

Dr. Kelly Blodgett 1:40:56
Yes, thanks to everybody. I appreciate it.

Amanda Montalvo 1:41:02
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