In this episode, Dr. Nammy Patel explains how cancer treatment like chemo and radiation can damage the mouth, causing dry mouth, sores, infections, and taste changes. She describes how working with a holistic dentist before and during treatment can lower pain, reduce infections, and even help patients heal faster. Her approach includes cleaning harmful bacteria, using lasers to tighten oral tissues, avoiding toxic materials, checking for hidden infections, and giving custom probiotics and home-care plans. She also recommends nutrient-rich green smoothies to support gut health and nitric oxide production. The goal is comfort, recovery, and long-term strength.
Supporting Cancer Patients Through Holistic Dentistry (Podcast)
John Maher: Hi, I am John Maher. 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 supporting cancer patients through holistic dentistry. Welcome Dr. Nammy.
Dr. Nammy: Thank you for having me, John.
Challenges with Oral Care in Cancer Patients
John: Sure. Dr. Nammy, what are some of the unique oral challenges that cancer patients face, especially while they’re undergoing treatment?
Dr. Nammy: The biggest thing that we find in cancer patients, especially as they’re going through treatment and chemo or radiations or a combination, or a number of other things when it comes to the oral microbiome, it is really, really, really, how can I say this word? It would be a very, “challenged” is the right word I would use.
What happens during chemo or radiation or anything like that is it kills actively dividing cells and your mouth regenerates pretty quickly, so if you ever get a sorting mouth, it probably heals pretty quickly. And so what happens during chemo is that it kills the cells inside the mouth so the mouth becomes super dry. Also, the salivary glands are an actively dividing cell. The salivary gland won’t output as much saliva as it normally did. It creates a mouth to be really dry, which creates an environment for bacteria to overgrow viruses to overgrow.
And so, a lot of times in patients’ mouths when they’re going through chemo or radiation or any sort of cancer treatment, what we discover is that there are a lot of candida like thrush because there overgrowth, we will see ulcerations in the mouth, there’ll be painful sores, it’ll be hard to eat, sometimes even open the mouth. And the taste is just horrible because the taste buds are all gone because they’re also an actively dividing cell.
So, it creates a perfect storm. Chemo and radiation creates a perfect storm for bacteria to over go. Not to mention when a patient who has cancer is going through chemo or radiation, their immune system is weakened because it’s killing off not just one cell but all cells. So, that predisposes them to other active infections. One of the ones I mentioned is thrush or candida, which is a fungal infection, but also shingles and a lot of different things.
So, the mouth becomes a very important part of the cancer treatment cycle. Now, I always ask patients because cancer is already difficult to deal with, and what we have discovered in our last 20 years of practice is that, and also when we work with medical clinics that specifically treat cancer patients and have fantastic outcomes, what we’ve discovered is when the patients come into the dentist first, so what we do is get rid of bacteria that can be really problematic.
We make sure that the cells of the mouth are tightened through a laser therapy, and what that does is gives a higher success rate, number one of no pain in the mouth and easier chemo resolution. But the most important thing that we’ve discovered, and all the doctors have told me is, “hey, Dr. Nammy, since we’ve started working with you, we have seen our patients get better faster and they stay cancer free for a longer. So what are you doing?”
And so that’s when I shared with them. What I have done is I look at test their own microbiome. I clean out the bad bacteria that’s in the oral microbiome, and I help them create a system that actually helps support them at home care that supports the patient throughout the cancer journey, or the cancer recovery journey is what I really want to say, through chemo or radiation or any other avenues.
What can Be Done to Help with Dry Mouth and Sores
John: So, tell me a little bit more about that and what it is that you do to help ease these effects of the dry mouth and the sores in the mouth and the infections and really help that mouth to heal as these treatments are happening.
Dr. Nammy: So, what I do is I remove the bacteria that can be opportunistic. So earlier I mentioned that the immune system is weakened, all cells are weakened because chemo treatment and cancer treatment is not specific. It kills all actively dividing cells, and those cells tend to be your immune system cells because they always need to be on. It also kills cells in the mouth. So, when we look at the mouth, we know there’s going to be bad bacteria in there because it’s a harboring ground.
And believe it or not, actually one of the things I want to mention, John, is that we are actually able to do early detection of cancers and benign tumors because of the oral microbiome testing that we do. We can actually discover cancer at beginning stages versus when it’s too late because the oral microbiome really tells us so, and you’re probably wondering why, how is my spit doing that?
The reason is your saliva is a secret, truly fluid. So it is like your blood, right? And so, what it does is when we do the salivary testing, we’re actually testing what bacteria is inside your blood. So if we can figure out what bacteria is inside your blood and we now know the cancer-causing ones, we can diagnose them just so an oral salivary testing, you basically spit into a cup and we’re able to discover this earlier. So, I always like to, number one, gold standard is prevention. Prevention is better than the cure. So that’s number one. And let’s say if you did get cancer already and you’re in treatment in your starting treatment, the first thing I would say is give us a call. Let’s make sure you’re cleaned up. Let’s make sure we get that bacteria out of your mouth so you have a better balance.
Let’s also use a laser and tighten your skin cells inside your mouth and on your tongue so that everything has a nice tight junction. The way our skin is put together, all of our cells are put together, they’re linked together really tightly. So, if we get rid of the bacteria and we use laser like to tighten those collagen fibers and make sure that everything is nice and tight, so we create a bigger barrier so bacteria can enter in and create those sores are so painful. And when we have a good healthy oral microbiome, what it does is it doesn’t allow opportunistic viruses or fungus to overgrow, which we call thrush or candida, which is very common when the immune system is compromised.
What are Non-Toxic Dental Materials
John: Are there some non-toxic dental materials that you tend to use or treatments that you use that are especially important for cancer patients?
Dr. Nammy: Absolutely. So, we are very specific to avoid cancer causing agents. In our practice, the way our practice is designed is even the air you breathe is super clean. We are making sure we’re using composites that are bisphenol free cancer-causing agents, and we’re also making sure there’s a copious amount of suction. So, even in the dental setting, there’s volatile compounds.
So, we’re sucking everything out of the air so that if we’re ever replacing a filling, we’re ever doing a ground. We’re obviously doing safe protocol for mercury removal. We’re also making sure that the root canals are safe. There are no residual infections inside the root canal. If they are, we remove them. We’re also looking at cavitations, cavitations, or foci infection in the bone. They’re really well-documented to be one of the biggest causes for cancer or chronic disease.
So, we see that quite often. So, we remove those. We are really taking lots of measures to make sure that we can get rid of cancer, of course, detect it early. We’re also checking your sleep. That’s another predisposition for cancer. Oral microbiome, we’re testing the sleep. We’re making sure that you have the ingredients your body needs to prevent cancer, which is a molecule called nitric oxide. We also customize and personalize your home care with supplements that will help you prevent cancer and also a home care regime that’s very comfortable for you.
What Home Care Regime Can Cancer Patients Follow?
John: Tell me a little bit more about that home care regime and what patients can do on their own to help build resilience in their oral microbiome.
Dr. Nammy: So, the number one thing that we do is once we get the testing back of the oral microbiome, we have specific probiotics that we can recommend for our patients. Those probiotics are really crucial because they really help the patient know exactly what they needed to do. And also it’s actually a way to optimize them to make sure they are specific strains of bacteria that we can put back inside the mouth that the patient may be lacking.
And it actually helps, it’s like taking a vitamin you may be deficient on. It really helps maintain the microbiome. It beats your defenses, it helps your gut lining because you’re swallowing five gallons of bacteria every single day. So, what it’s doing is preventing the leaky guts. That also is a real big concern in cancer patients because again, the gut cells are actively dividing and those get damaged during chemotherapy as well. So, we’re really making sure that we’re specific and we’re doing data-driven care to help someone who’s going through cancer and something so highly detailed and highly personalized to each patient.
Nutrition and Oral Health
John: Tell me a little bit more about what the role of nutrition is in maintaining oral health during cancer care, and what specific foods are you recommending that cancer patients take in?
Dr. Nammy: Absolutely. So, one of the hardest things during cancer therapy is to eat because of taste buds. Everything is not tasty. And so one of the things, of course, everything needs to be organic and whole foods. My favorite things to add are really leafy greens. So, green smoothies are really great. Sometimes there’s sores in the mouth and it’s hard to chew and really enjoy food or things don’t taste as good.
But green smoothies are fantastic because the smoothies actually create a lot of nitric oxide, and it creates a lot of healthy bacteria that the gut actually needs in order to replenish itself because again, the gut cells are dying. What we can do with the green smoothies is get the cells to develop faster so that the rate of destruction and the rate of creation, actually the rate of creation is actually higher than the rate of destruction through chemo.
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
