In this episode, Dr. Nammy Patel explains why oral health is often ignored in chronic illness and why that’s a mistake. She says issues like imbalanced mouth bacteria, failed root canals, small airways, and old mercury fillings can stress the immune system and lead to long-term problems such as heart disease, diabetes, fatigue, and brain fog. Her holistic approach includes 3D imaging, sleep and airway testing, microbiome and mercury testing, and safe mercury removal with protective protocols and detox support. She works with patients to find the root cause, lower inflammation, improve recovery, and help the body return to balance.
Oral Health Strategies for Chronically Ill Patients (Podcast)
John Maher: Hi, I am John Maher and I’m here today with Dr. Nammy Patel, founder of Green Dentistry in San Francisco, California, helping patients recognize the vital connection between dental, health and whole-body health. And author of the bestselling books, Age with Style Guide to a Youthful Smile, and Healthy Living and Total Wellness: Understanding the Link Between Your Teeth and Your Health. Today, our topic is Oral Health Strategies for Chronically Ill Patients. Welcome Dr. Nammy.
Dr. Nammy Patel: Thank you for having me, John. I’m excited to be here.
Why is Oral Health Overlooked in Treating Chronic Illnesses?
John: Absolutely. Thank you. Dr. Nammy, why is oral health often overlooked, especially in chronic illness management?
Dr. Nammy: One of the biggest things that happens in chronic illness is to figure out the root cause. What is a reason why there is chronic illness? Because for somebody to have chronic illness, they’ve had it for a very long time. They’ve been through different avenues, and it’s something that’s difficult to diagnose, difficult to understand, and difficult to connect the dots.
And so, when we look at the population, a hundred percent of the population, 80% of the patients are going to respond just fine. Their routine care where you can pinpoint their information, it’s super easy. But then there’s that 20% of the patients that have chronic illness and it’s happened because of genetic, is it happened because we can’t figure it out or it’s multifactorial. And there’s one thing that’s been missing throughout the entire chronic illness journey that hasn’t been evaluated, and dentistry has been a stepchild of medicine for a very long time.
Medical doctors don’t really recognize dentistry as an integral part of their treatment plan or diagnoses, and it’s something that is really vital to somebody who’s going through chronic illness because again, our immune system is supposed to work. It’s designed to function. The only way it’s not going to function if there’s something that happens, sometimes it’s genetics, it’s just so maybe there’s a disease or something along those lines, which is diagnosable and usually they’re able to work with it. Routine care.
There are things that are, again, I said genetics is one. Number two, multifactorial, and it has a component that is dentistry related. Believe it or not, having small mouths in small sinus cavities and small airways is the number one reason for chronic illnesses. Deformed jaws is the number one reason for chronic illnesses, and the reason for that is we are structured or designed to be a specific way.
But because Western influences come in children, they are not breastfed for as long as two years, which is really important. They’re not eating real foods. They’re eating baby food, which has been ground down and a lot of preservatives in it. On top of that, number three, adding braces into children at the age of 8 or 10 or 12, when they’re still growing, it actually disrupts their growth pattern.
And when that has happened to somebody, what we discover is in their thirties, forties, fifties and sixties, we find disease and those diseases look like heart attack, diabetes, cancer, arthritis. We find numerous diseases associated with chronic illness and some of the chronic illness that actually a patient sometimes just complains about is, I’m just tired all the time. I can’t figure out what it is. I’m exhausted. I have foggy brain. I can’t function. I have these chronic problems that have existed for a long period of time and there’s been no resolution, or I’ve tried everything and nothing seems to work. Those other common things I hear from patients who have chronic illness,
How Are Chronic Diseases Linked To Gum Disease or Oral Microbiome?
John: How do conditions like heart disease and diabetes, how are those connected to gum disease and your oral microbiome?
Dr. Nammy: Well, number one, what I do want to say is heart disease and diabetes is a chronic condition. It doesn’t happen over time. It takes 10 years, 20 years to develop these. And so the first thing we always find in patients who have these problems is their microbiome is off. Their bacteria in the body are not well.
The bacteria in the body are imbalanced, and it starts with the mouth. What we discover is that they have red light bacteria or these bacteria that should not be in the mouth, and they’re the ones associated with disease. That’s the first thing we discover. We also discover that chronic illness patients sometimes have failed root canals, root canals that are in the mouth that have been done poorly, and they have a small foci of infection that’s happening. What it does is it makes your body focus on fighting the infection so that it doesn’t have the reserves to heal, regenerate and be well.
A lot of times we find metal, mercury fillings, metal mercury fillings tend to have a mercury ion, and every time you chew, every time you eat or have hot cup of coffee or hot water, what that mercury ion is doing is it’s being released into your body. Your body absorbs it, and when it absorbs it, it has a high affinity for it, especially when it comes to the brain.
So, brain fog is very common. It is very attached to the kidney and the liver cells. So the liver is important in detoxifying, so it can’t help when mercury is binding, when other ion should be mercury is replacing maybe a calcium or a magnesium ion. It actually clogs your body up and it doesn’t allow the body to get rid of toxins the way it’s supposed to. In fact, it starts accumulating toxins highly. Now, let’s talk about this a little bit deeper.
So, what happens with mercury? Mercury is being released from your mouth, and then it does again, your body has certain cells, right? So it has brain cells, his liver cells, kidney cells, skin cells, and so that mercury is attracted to those cells. What happens is that your body is also made of amino acids, and there’s certain amino acids that our body uses, and it’s a fundamental basis of everything that’s inside our body. It’s a combination, our DNA, right? And it tells our body, “Hey, you know what, John should have whiter skin. Dr. Nammy should have darker skin.” And it really tells our body to transcribe and become something.
Mercury, what it does, it binds to glutathione, which is an amino acid, so it actually binds at a cellular level. So when it goes into your DNA and replaces that glutathione for cysteine, what it’s doing is your body should be making an apple and it tells your body to make an orange. So you can imagine how difficult that would be for your body to function, and that manifests in different ways, and it manifests in chronic illness, it manifests, sometimes it’s bipolar, sometimes it manifests as gut issues, chronic illnesses, it just manifests in different forms.
How is Holistic Dentistry Different For Those with Compromised Immunity?
John: Do you approach your dental practice and dental care differently for patients that have compromised immunity?
Dr. Nammy: Absolutely, absolutely. For patients who have compromised immunity, in fact, those are the patients who see me most because remember earlier said 88% of the population is doing okay, and there’s a 20% of the population. And also the thing with chronic illnesses, sometimes it starts later in life, right? It started like 10 years ago, but the symptoms, you don’t really feel ’em. You ignore them until it’s really obvious and in our face.
So, one of the things that I do for patients, number one, is testing to really see where the problem is. I use a 3D scan to see if there’s cavitation failed root canals, mercury fillings. We also can do mercury testing so we can see how much mercury is inside the blood. We can also test a specific bacteria that’s inside the mouth. We can also test sleep to make sure that their bodies are getting good rest so they can regenerate and actually stop chronic illness.
So, we’re actually doing a lot of different things that works really well to diagnose chronic illness and also maintain that the patients stay in health and stay in health. We also do stress management. We also, I have functional medicine training. So what I like to do is get to the root cause because a lot of these chronic illnesses also started during a stressful time. So there were things that occurred that neurology is really important. So there were things that occurred at a certain point in life, death disease disaster is what I’d like to say. Those three things happen, and our bodies are able to cope with stress for 18 months, but after that, it’s going to manifest. So, we have to clean the body, not just systemically, but emotionally, and mentally, and physically, and spiritually is what I say. So, we can bring it back into balance and make sure that it stays there.
How to Remove Mercury Fillings
John: You mentioned mercury fillings before. Tell me a little bit about how you go about removing those mercury fillings and what you do to make sure that the mercury doesn’t end up in the patient’s body.
Dr. Nammy: Absolutely. So one of the first things that we do, we’re actually certified by the SMART protocol through the IABEDM. We’re also certified by the IAOMT, and these organizations have put together protocols in order to remove mercury properly. The way we do it is through a rubber dam. We have an external suction. We chunk the mercury, the patients get a binder, a binder that’s any sort of mercury that may be released and binds it and pulls it out.
So, we use a great binding agent to pull the mercury out that may be even getting near their mouth or around their mouth, and also anything they might have absorbed, we actually pull that out. Then we recommend and do chelation therapy, which actually starts pulling all the stored mercury out of their bodies.
John: So anything that was leaking into their bodies from their mercury fillings previously, you’re able to get that out.
Dr. Nammy: Yes, I’m able to get those out safely, and I’m also able to help remove the stuff that’s stored in the organs, because a lot of that mercury has been in the mouth for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. So over that time, the mercury has deposited in brain cells, it’s deposited in liver cells, kidney cells, so we can pull all of that out so that the person can be healthy again.
John: Alright, well that’s really great information, Dr. Nammy. Thanks again for speaking with me today.
Dr. Nammy: Absolutely.
John: And for more information about green dentistry, you can visit the website at sfgreendentist.com or call 415-433-0119.
