Ep.53: Healthy Mouth, Healthy Life with Dr. Michelle Jorgensen

Robyn:                                      Hello my friends. It’s Robyn Openshaw, and welcome back to “Your High Vibrations Life.” So glad to be with you, and today I’m inviting someone who’s become a personal friend, but she’s also my biological dentist. Biological dentists are a group of dentists who really step outside of standard of care and adopt a lot of different practices that are less toxic or non-toxic. And they try to help their patients with some of the rather compromising treatments and modalities that regular dentistry uses. The more we’re learning the more we’re finding out how destructive having mercury in our mouths, bleeding into our brains through tiny cracks that shrink inside the tooth, how many problems this is causing for us. The problems with root canals. Doctor Michelle Jorgensen has a way of sharing information that’s really simple, so that a layperson can understand it, and she’s also really on the cutting edge, really pushing the boundaries and the frontiers of what is possible and what is available within the world of biological medicine. She has a deep curiosity about the relation between the health of your mouth and the health of your whole person. So I’m very excited to welcome Dr. Michelle Jorgensen from Total Care Dental in American Fork, Utah.

Dr. Jorgensen:                      Thank you. I’m excited to be here Robyn.

Robyn:                                      Well, you have a really fascinating journey, and I think you’re very honest about the way that you talk about it. You spent a lot of money on dental school, and you were out in practice. Tell us what happened that led you to make a major shift in the way you now practice dentistry.

Dr. Jorgensen:                      You know, I was practicing the way that I’d always known dentistry should be practiced. My father was a dentist. I have lots of dentistry in my family. And I was just doing what they had always done. I was always on the front edge of my profession, learning what I could learn, but it had nothing to do with health or anything else. It was dentistry and it was good dentistry, but I started getting sick and I didn’t know why I was getting sick, and that’s how I actually found you, because I was on my own health journey to try and figure out how I could get feeling better myself. And despite doing everything that I knew to do, including everything that you recommended, I still wasn’t well. I was at the point of nearly selling my dental practice, and a colleague told me I needed to look into mercury toxicity, and I was surprised about that because I don’t have any mercury fillings. I’ve never actually even had a cavity. So, I said, “I don’t have mercury fillings. Why would I have mercury toxicity?” And he said, “It’s not the fillings you have. It’s the fillings you drill out every day without protection.”

And I had never even considered that as a possibility or as a test to my health. So I got tested and sure enough, mercury toxicity off the charts, and I started a lengthy journey to detox myself so that I could regain my health. And as part of that, I couldn’t continue putting mercury back in me, so I had to figure out how to take those mercury fillings out on my patients safely. How to take it out without me getting more mercury, and that just started the wheels rolling for me because I thought what else am I doing that’s harming myself, that’s harming my patients, that harming my team? What else in dentistry isn’t necessarily building health? And boy, has that ever started me on a journey. So that’s how I got started on all of this.

Robyn:                                      So back up for a minute to, you were sick. Tell us what kinds of symptoms you were having and how those match up with what you now know to be mercury toxicity, which a lot of us have.

Dr. Jorgensen:                      So I had a lot of digestive issues. That was the reason I started finding you to begin with is to try and help with diet and those kinds of things. I had memory problems, and you always think you’re just getting old. I’m just getting older, but I wasn’t that old, so really I was in my mid to late 30s, so I wasn’t that old. But I thought I’m just losing my memory a little bit. But the one that was really career ending was I was having a lot of numbness in my hand, my right hand particularly. And it’s really hard to do dentistry when you can’t hold on to anything. So that is the one that I really had to find an answer for, or I wasn’t going to be able to continue practicing. So now that I know about mercury, mercury is neurotoxic, meaning it’s going to affect nerves. So of course I was having numbness, of course I was having memory issues, digestive issues. We all know the gut is our second brain basically, so those heavy metal toxicities definitely affect your gut. All those things line up exactly with mercury. I just didn’t even know to look for it.

Robyn:                                      So, you go to dental school. You hang out with dentists professionally. You’re reading the literature, and just nothing was out there saying, “Hey we’ve got some major problems here.” Cause you know, when I was in my 20s, I encountered research that the sickest profession in America was the dental profession. Had you run across anything like that? Were you having conversations with your colleagues? Nothing like that?

Dr. Jorgensen:                      Never. Never, never. So the only thing that I learned about in dental school, and this is the same today cause I’ve talked to recent graduates, the only thing they teach you in dental school is first of all, mercury fillings are completely safe. There’s no problem with them for you to place them, for you to remove them, or for you to place them in a patient. That’s the teaching today, and it was 20 years ago when I was learning as well. They told us about some maverick kind of dentists who were talking about the problems with mercury, and they told us that those dentists had lost their license and were no longer practicing because of these beliefs. So pretty much told us, “If you do any of those kinds of things you will lose your license as well. You don’t even want to go there. It’s not a worry anyway, so you don’t have to bother with that.” So that is all I was ever taught, and that’s all I ever really had encountered in any professional interaction with anyone.

Robyn:                                      Well you and I have recently put together a short video course. I believe there are 10 videos in it, and you go through all the things that you feel like a good biological dentist should provide. And meantime, while you and I were developing that content and filming it, you do 90% of the talking in the 10 modules and we’re getting such good feedback by the way, so it’s really inexpensive. We really want to get this information to as many people’s hand as possible. And you’re not buying this course with the 10 videos with demos and explanations of what you need to avoid and how to find a good biological dentist. You’re not getting it and having access to it for a week or two, it’s yours for life.

But meantime, while you and I were developing this, here at Green Smoothie Girl, we were calling over … Calling, emailing, and contacting in every way possible over 800 biological dentists all over the country, and we used the information that you gave us about the 10 diagnostics and treatments that you think any really good biological dentist should have. And we called them and emailed them, and then we even snail mailed them. If they hadn’t answered, we wrote them a letter and we sent it in the U.S. Mail because we wanted as many of them represented as possible. And so we have a freebie that we’re super, super proud of where we did all this research to over 800 people. Not all of the 800 dentists responded to us, but last I heard about half of them did, so we have hundreds of dentists in this asset and it’s free. We will put it in the show notes at greensmoothiegirl.com/podcast, and you want to take a look at who is close to you.

Of course if you are here local. In Utah, I know most of the biological dentists. There aren’t a lot of them, but there are a handful of them. Used to go to one of them. I’ve interviewed three others that Michelle knows who they are and I know who they are. But I chose Michelle partly because of the journey I saw her going on, and we became friends and I went into her office and I trained some of her employees to eat healthier because there’s quite a few health problems in your practice. You have an extreme athlete in her 40s. You have lots of people who look really good, but they were all suffering or their kids were suffering or their husband was suffering or they had high blood pressure. So I went in there and I taught some 12 Steps to Whole Foods classes at Michelle’s request.

I want to have you tell a little bit about your journey to a more holistic or as we call it, just because these renegade dentists who are kind of going a little bit outside, or a lot outside of standard of care dental practice, are sort of organizing themselves as biological dentistry. It’s sort of I think has European roots, but as you’re going into more and more practices and diagnostics that are less toxic or non-toxic, less invasive, and still evidence based, I want you to tell us some of the things you started to bring into your practice. I know … Actually you told me about one. We were texting weekend before last, and you’d just invested, what, $90,000 in something that’s really exciting. Why don’t you start with that really cutting edge thing and then back up to some of the more basic things that most biological dentists are doing.

Dr. Jorgensen:                      Yeah, you can spend millions probably on equipment if you really want to. My big focus has always been on patient first, and then if they’re things that I really feel like are beneficial for the patient, then I will invest in those as far as technology goes. And the latest acquisition is one of those things. It’s a laser that can treat dental problems very conservatively. So I could actually do all kinds of fillings, anything on a tooth, anything on gums with, typically 80% of the time not even having to get people numb, which is phenomenal. That’s just the beginning part of what this can do, but two really amazing things it can do is one, is it does what’s called bio stimulation, which the laser wavelength … The wavelength of this particular kind of laser stimulates the mitochondria in the cell, that’s getting kind of scientific, but it stimulates the mitochondria in the cell to produce faster, to turn over faster, to heal faster in essence. So just using this wavelength of light actually stimulates your body to heal quicker, which is pretty crazy and pretty cool. So we’re already using that on every patient that walks in the door that needs any kind of healing.

But the thing I was most excited about, and if you get the course you’ll hear me talk about root canals, and honestly root canals are probably the biggest burr in my side right now because I know the reasons why I won’t do root canals anymore, but there are so few good alternatives. And being without a tooth is really a lousy thing, so I want to figure out a way to be able to have people still have their teeth once they have had some kind of traumatic injury or problem with that tooth. So I sat across the table from a woman at lunch one day, and literally I don’t think I ate a bite because I was just asking question after question after question, but she is working to figure how to regenerate teeth, which to me is the coolest thing that could ever possibly happen in my career. So we’re gonna be working together some to try and figure out how to make this happen. Whether it does or not, I don’t know, but we’re sure gonna give it our very best.

Robyn:                                      So you just invested $90,000 in a laser technology, which by the way everyone is very on point, because when we’re talking about living a higher vibration life, lasers are just focused frequencies. It’s the next frontier in medicine as Dr. Oz said. We have lasers that heal. My first biological dentist sold me a $2500 laser to help me heal after he pulled three of my teeth because they were root canaled and they needed to come out, and he was right that they needed to come out. And Michelle Jorgensen is right that the alternatives aren’t great, and these dentists hate pulling our teeth but root canals are incredibly toxic, and we’re going to get into that here in a minute. They’re incredibly … I believe. Michelle will not tell you this. She can’t. She could lose her license. ADA watches and makes sure that their procedures and their standard of care isn’t being criticized out there, but I think that root canals put our overall health at serious risk. I think that it’s becoming clear that root canals put us in jeopardy for serious issues like cancer and autoimmune disease. I won’t ask you to confirm or deny that, Michelle. So what you’re saying is this $90,000 laser, which is a healing laser, this woman you met, this dentist you met, is using it to heal or regenerate root canaled teeth right? Or avoiding root canals or bring back a dead tooth?

Dr. Jorgensen:                      Bring back a dead tooth, yeah. So avoid root canals. So hopefully if a tooth has died, at this point the only option there if the tooth is dead is a root canal or take the tooth. Both lousy options. So yeah, she’s working to actually to, not necessarily to re-enervate, meaning the nerve doesn’t come back, but re-vascularize, meaning the blood vessels and things bring that tooth back to life in essence. Yeah pretty cool.

Robyn:                                      That would be beyond excited, and whoever can make that happen, that’s anti-aging medicine if there ever was any. Bringing things back from the dead. So let’s talk about … So the burr in your side is root canals, and honestly that’s been the one that’s hardest for me too because it’s not like, “Oh we have this magical fix over here and we have guaranteed outcomes.” Most of the biological dentists are pulling the dead tooth out of your mouth. But can you talk a little bit about what a root canal really is and what you don’t know about it. What your endodontist or your dentist isn’t telling you about the risks of the root canal procedure? Whatever you can say.

Dr. Jorgensen:                      Yes. So for me, I really back things up with science, and with just realistic information. I’m not about hype. You can jump on the “Root canals are horrible for you” bandwagon and know nothing about them. I’m not about that. If you truly want to understand your health, you need to understand why, and I try to present it in a very simple, consumer-friendly way. So that’s how we’re gonna talk about root canals with you today. When a tooth has died or is badly infected, what happens is that the nerve tissue inside of the tooth dies, literally dies. So in order to save the tooth, dentists were sick of pulling teeth. This was 100 years ago. They were sick of pulling teeth, and they thought, “Well certainly if we can fill the top of the tooth, can’t we fill the inside of the tooth as well?” So that’s what a root canal is, is the nerve inside of the tooth is removed, the tooth is disinfected, and then a filling material is placed inside the root of the tooth. It sounds great. A lot of times symptoms go away, the immediate symptoms, meaning the toothache stops hurting and the tooth stays in your mouth.

The problem is that that isn’t the whole story. So inside of a tooth there is the main central nerve, but off of that nerve are little side channels. There are literally a 100 yards of tubes inside of every molar. So there is no way that the entire 100 yards of tubules can be disinfected when you’re doing root canal. You would have to leave disinfectant in that tooth for days to be able to get all of that tissue gone. So when that root canal is filled, there’s still dead tissue and probably bacteria in those little tubules. So your body works its darnedest to keep that tooth healthy, but if there’s any kind of immune system insults. So you get sick, you get a cold, you have a death in the family, or some kind of an emotional thing that happens, a divorce, something happens and your immune system is depressed. You don’t have the strength to keep that bacteria and that dead tissue healthy anymore, and so that tooth reinfects. And then that reinfection becomes systemic, meaning it gets into your bloodstream and it goes everywhere.

And there’s now correlation between root canal teeth and like you said cancer, joint problems, systemic illness in other organs that are long distant from the tooth, each of these. You talked about energy and vibrations, each tooth is on an energy meridian. Basically we’re wired just like your house is. Your house, if you turn on a light switch, there’s a wire that goes from that to the light that it turns on. Well the same thing happens in our bodies. We’re wired so that everything continues to work. So the tooth is on a wire as well, and if there’s a blockage on that wire, if that tooth has disease in it, it affects everything else on that wire. And this has been known for thousands of years in eastern medicine, which organs are on which wire in essence. So we’ll find that a tooth on the top up here is associated with your kidney. So if you have an infection in that tooth, you may have an infection or a problem or a blockage in that kidney that has nothing to do with the kidney itself. It’s actually everything to do with that tooth.

So that is why this is so frustrating. Because we want to keep the tooth. We’re doing a good job. Dentists are just trying our hardest to keep teeth because people want teeth to chew with and smile with, but the root canal procedure itself is fraught with problems, and that is simply that we cannot remove all of that infection.

And the thing that really changed my mind about this is I got another very large investment, a CT scanner, a CAT scan basically in my office, a dental specific kind. And what I can see is I can see in three dimensions every single one of these roots and the bones surrounding it. And what I’m finding on a daily basis is every single day I find multiple root canaled teeth that have new or residual infection at the bottom of them. And what’s particularly scary, and I’m talking multiple teeth a day, what’s particularly scary is I also can see the sinuses, I also can see the jawbone, I can see everything on the CAT scan, which is amazing. And I find people who’ve had chronic sinus infections for 20 years have never been able to have it repaired, had been through multiple surgeries, nothing ever goes away. When I look on the CT scan, that I find is that there’s a tooth that died who knows when, maybe 10 years ago, and rather than creating an abscess and coming out the cheek so we knew it was there, it just ate its way through the bottom of the sinus and it’s been draining in the sinus for the last 10 years.

So, that is the reason for the chronic sinus problems, and as soon as the tooth comes out and that drains, the sinus problem goes away. But we never could see those things before. We never knew. So now that I can see, I just can’t not see it anymore. It’s every single day. So there has to be a solution for those. There has to be a problem, and right now all we do is take the teeth out, and we do a lot of things very carefully to make sure all that infection is removed, make sure of that. You can just take a tooth out. That’s a simple procedure, but actually removing the infection in the bone surrounding that tooth is another thing entirely. So if you’re gonna have a root canal tooth removed please make sure that it’s being done with additional steps, so that that bone is also clear of infection as well.

I have a brother who’s an oral surgeon, and he asked me he said, “Why are you taking teeth out?” Cause honestly taking teeth out’s actually the hardest thing I do in my practice. It makes me more sweaty than anything, literally sweaty. But he said, “Why are you taking teeth out? Why are doing that? That’s what oral surgeons are for.” And I said, “Okay, will you take the tooth out? Will you use Ozone in there, Ozone water, Ozone gas? Will you also use a laser to take out all the rest of the tissue and the bone that’s infected? Will you also then add fiber?” And from then he looked to me and he said, “If I did that, I’d have to charge $5000 a tooth that I removed.” I said, “Exactly. That’s why I’m doing this for my patients because I know what’s necessary in order to really remove the infection.” So make sure if you’re having one removed that it’s not just removed. There’s more to it than that, but right now that’s the only answer is removing the tooth, and it is a frustration. And I know, Robyn, you’ve personally been down this road, and it is frustrating.

Robyn:                                      I’ve personally been down this road. I’ve had three teeth removed. I’ve had the bone grafts. You were the dentist. Cause you took over my care in the middle of all that. I’ve mentioned before in other platforms as I’ve been blogging about my journey the last few years that, and I believe that my first 35 years of life of eating a lot of sugar and a lot of crap has everything to do with having to pay the reaper later. But I don’t think I’ve told you that a conventional dentist well before I ever went to my first biological dentist did the regular x-rays and said, “Do you know you have a sinus infection? It looks like you’ve had a sinus infection for a long time.” I said, “No, I don’t feel anything. I’m not suffering.” Probably by that point, my really good diet is why I stay propped up and feel great, and you wouldn’t know it but that was probably going on for a long time.

I do want to mention a couple of things that come up as you tell that story, and one is, so Dr. Jorgensen’s talking about then you try to kill all the bacteria in a 100 yards of dentin tubules in one tooth. Just imagine the impossibility of that, so a regular dentist or an endodontist will tell you, “Oh, we just kill it all.” Well think about that. How do they kill all the bacteria in a 100 yards of dentin tubules? And I’ve heard other biological dentists, Michelle’s conservative and careful with her figures, but I’ve heard others say three miles of dentin tubules. You can fossilize that tooth, which is an organ. It has all the features of organs, and it is attached to a meridian. I’m just using different words than what Dr. J already just said, but the tooth is connected on these meridians of the body.

And Dr. Thomas Rauh, who we’ve talked about him before and we’ve done two interviews, including one on biological dentistry with Dr. Dietrich Clinghart, who is an absolute pioneer. But Dr. Thomas Rauh had made this chart of some research on 100 women with breast cancer. No, it was 100 women with breast cancer had a root canaled tooth on the meridian where their breast cancer was. So whether it was on the left breast or their right breast, there was a root canaled tooth that connected to that meridian. There are different organs that connect on these different meridians. And I thought that was really interesting. It was about 100 women in this survey that he or some other researchers actually did. And he just kind of put them together, and I thought that was really telling, and it’s indicative of how our tooth does not live in its own rarefied environment. It’s connected to other organs of the body, and when we disrupt these things there’s a price to be paid.

So what we’re doing when we fossilize a dead tooth in our mouth is we’re putting ourselves at risk. I want to mention that when I had my root canaled teeth pulled in a five and a half hour surgery where my mouth was propped wide open and I was under general anesthesia for that long with my first biological dentist, and I came out of it with TMJ. Couldn’t eat an apple for a year, literally couldn’t open my mouth that wide, and lots of suffering, lots of pain, massive amount of expense. Michelle got to be the inheritor of that whole situation, and I think they’re in a lot better position now with her care.

But I had one of my teeth sent off to a lab. I paid several hundred dollars, not because I needed to know whether these pleomorphic organisms or these bacteria that change forms and become extremely deadly, some of them those deadly organisms known to be harmful to humans, especially for autoimmune disease. I wanted to know, and I got my two root canaled teeth pulled the first time and later a third one. I wanted to know if I had some of these organisms in my own tooth because the reason I got the tooth pulled in the first place is I was breaking out in rashes. I had several months of just rashes all over my trunk, all over my arms, and they were crazy rashes. They would come and go. They were super ugly. I would itch like crazy. And I just had a feeling they’re connected to my root canaled tooth. I had a little blister above my root canaled tooth, and it was probably 10 years old and that’s pretty classic, happens a lot.

But anyways, I sent it away to the lab, paid several hundred dollars, and it came back and it did have some of these extremely dangerous organisms that you don’t want ranging around your body because they can trap that tooth in the jaw, and you can go on with your big white smile, but it’s a dead organ and those bacteria can get out. That’s the important thing here. No antibiotic can get in and kill it all and keep it all killed. And they can get out and range the body. Have I stated that accurately, or can you even comment on that?

Dr. Jorgensen:                      Sure. Your tooth is connected to the rest of you, right? It’s interesting cause I’ve actually been doing some research on the start of integrated medicine, and doctors used to all be general practitioners. But what they figured out is that there was so much liability related to that, they figured out that they could actually only be safe if they specialized. They could only be safe from people suing them, which is crazy, but this is what it’s driven the world to. But they could only be safe if they could specialize. So now that came up with people that only treat noses or people that only treat guts or people that only treat feet or whatever. Well, somehow dentistry fell into that as well. The tooth is just all by itself in its own little universe. Well that’s not true. Anything that’s in the tooth is gonna get everywhere. It’s one body we share from top to bottom. We’re all just one thing. So absolutely I can talk about the fact that the organisms and the things that live in your tooth and in your mouth are going to be expressed in the rest of your body as well. That’s just plain old science. So most definitely, the rash probably that you were having was due to those bugs.

Robyn:                                      Yeah, and I should mention that after I got those two root canaled teeth that were luckily in the back of my mouth, when I got them pulled I never had another rash. So my hunch was clearly accurate. Let’s talk for just a minute about imaging. You’ve invested in some really expensive imaging. What’s better about yours and what are most dentists using?

Dr. Jorgensen:                      Well there’s two things that I think are important. The first is, traditional imaging is traditional x-rays that everybody knows about, and most dentists nowadays will have converted to a digital system, and I would for sure not see anyone that doesn’t have digital x-rays, just because the amount of radiation is significantly decreased. It’s about 80% less on a digital system than on the old way where we used to have film. You all probably remember those dental x-ray film, little rectangles. So for sure, that’s the first thing to look for, is a dentist that has digital x-rays, which will just really significantly reduced the amount of radiation that you’re exposed to. And to alleviate some fears, I have people that are very fearful of the radiation coming from dental x-rays. Typical dental x-rays, even if I x-ray your whole mouth, is about the same as being out in the sun for 10-20 minutes, so it’s actually pretty minimal radiation. So that’s nice.

But like I said, I now have a CAT scan machine, and the difference in that is like the difference between riding a tricycle and driving your Tesla, Robyn. It’s not even in the same category because now, on a typical dental x-ray, you’re seeing two dimensions. So you see how tall it is; you see how wide it is. You have no idea about what’s really going on with the bone surrounding it. That third dimension that we don’t see at all. It’s amazing to me how, I’ll take a traditional dental x-ray of a tooth, and then I’ll say, “This looks a little suspicious. Let’s get a CT scan.” We take a CT scan and whoa it’s completely different than what we expected from those x-rays. So it’s becoming, in dentistry in general, standard of care for some procedures to have a CT scan, particularly dental implants. That’s standard of care now. A dentist should not be placing dental implants without a CT scan. So the industry is changing in that regard, and I’m glad to see that.

Robyn:                                      So what is actually better for seeing is actually less radiation, but still not everybody has this imagery. I’ve heard you say, “I can’t imagine practicing dentistry without it.”

Dr. Jorgensen:                      I can’t imagine. Even if a dentist doesn’t have it themselves, they typically have imaging centers somewhere nearby that they could get this information. I really believe that you can’t truly see what’s going on in a mouth until you have CAT scan of it. I take one on every new patient now, just standard, and some people are surprised at that. I was just talking with some colleagues over the weekend, and they were asking about that, and I said, “That’s just standard for every new patient.” And they thought, “Oh, isn’t that overkill?” I said, “Why? So I can see everything? I don’t think that that’s overkill.” I find things … Just this week, a patient came again form a holistic practitioner that was concerned about his health. Some weird looking things, so I took a CT scan. He has a tooth, an extra tooth, that grew down on his bottom jaw and it’s created an entire bony cavitation, a hole in his bone, in essence because the bone never really grew over top of that root of this extra tooth. I would never have found that on a regular x-ray. Never. Now we’ll see what his health does when that’s removed and cleaned up. So, like I said, I can’t practice without it now. But you can find, dentists can find imaging centers. You can find this technology pretty much anywhere now.

Robyn:                                      And talk for just a minute about there’s a lot of people out there who are mercury free or mercury safe. They’re not the same thing and that’s just scratching the surface of what biological dentists offer, right?

Dr. Jorgensen:                      Yeah, so there is definitely a difference. I’ve been mercury free for 20 years, but I have not been mercury safe for 20 years. Mercury free simply means that I do not place any mercury fillings. So I don’t have mercury in my practice. I don’t have the equipment needed to place it, and I don’t place any. So if you have a dentist that’s mercury free, that’s what that means. Mercury safe is different than that. Mercury safe means that mercury in every form is handled very safely in your practice. So typically, well all the time, if you’re mercury safe you’re gonna be mercury free. You’re not placing those. But it means that when you’re removing mercury fillings, you’re doing that in a safe manner. No matter what we do, they’re going to expose ourselves and our patients to a trace amount of mercury when we’re removing the mercury filling. That’s just the way it is. There’s no way to do that completely cleanly. So we want to reduce that burden as much as possible for ourselves, as well as our patients.

So there’s an organization called the IAOMT, that has set up a protocol. It’s called the Smart protocol, that’s typically the industry standard for what needs to happen in order to remove those mercury fillings safely. So you need to make sure that you have a dentist that follows those protocol. They don’t necessarily have to be certified with the IAOMT. That means you’ve taken some tests and things, but they do need to be following those protocol. And that’s a real good question when you call and ask dentist, say, “What procedures do you use when you remove a mercury filling?” And that’ll give you a real quick heads up on whether that’s a place that you should be comfortable going.

Robyn:                                      In the video course you and I just finished, we just launched two weeks ago, and again we will link to that at greensmoothiegirl.com/podcast, and just look up this podcast episode’s number. We link there to the free holistic dentist finder where I told you we contacted all 800+ biological dentists nationwide. If they aren’t represented in there, please let us know, but it’s not from lack of effort of wanting to include them and listing out all of the things that they offer in their biological medicine practice. Cause somebody can hang out a shingle and they’re mercury safe, but that’s as far as they go, and I’m gonna have Dr. Jorgensen just run through a quick laundry list of the things that she would like to see in somebody who’s serious about a safer dental practice and serious about the patient’s safety and educating the patient and exposing them to less radiation and exposing them to no heavy metals, etc. But in the course we go into detail not only about how to engage with a dentist, how to find the best one, how to be your own best patient advocate, but we also cover home care, like what you’re using at home, what you’re doing at home, some really cool ninja tips from Dr. Jorgensen.

But will you, as we wrap up, Dr. Jorgensen will you run through the practices, the procedures, diagnostics, whatever, just a run through of what you have in your office that you would like to see every biological dentist invest in.

Dr. Jorgensen:                      I don’t our list in front of me, so I’m gonna just wing this one. So hopefully I hit on everything that you also asked about. But I’m gonna just kind of walk you through my practice a little bit, and the things that I think are imperative to use. The first thing I think is important is the dentist should get to know you and not just you and not just your teeth, but actually you and your health. That should be something that you should expect, that there is a detailed interview asking about your health and your health concerns and things that you’ve had in the past, and there’s a discussion about how those health concerns affect your dental health and vice versa, how your dental health affects your health in general. So I think that’s essential, is that there’s some kind of interview process that you should have with that dentist.

Second, obviously all the diagnostic tools. We have all kinds of crazy things. We go through a 42-point checklist when we do our new patient exam, and not all of that’s essential, but I think for sure there should be digital radiographs, so digital x-rays, that should be for sure something that you should not compromise on. There should be some other testing. There should be testing done on the function of your jaw joint, the way things fit together. There should be testing on your gums and gum disease, periodontal infection, that’s something that I’ve really keyed in on lately. There are thousands of articles linking systemic or overall health to gum health, and how inflammation in your gums can literally be the trigger that starts autoimmune diseases. So you need to have some diagnostics, an exam that examines your gums as well as your teeth.

During treatment … Well, actually let’s back up even there. There should be nutritional discussion. They should be able to discuss with you which foods you should eat in order to strengthen your teeth and in order to strengthen your gums. I had a gentleman just this week who teaches health. He teaches nutrition at a local university, and he had horrible dental health, and he’s so frustrated because he doesn’t know what to do about it. So he and I are gonna work together, and we’re gonna figure out what is missing in his diet. He’s working harder than anyone I know, so something’s gotta be missing, and you need a partner in that. Your dentist should be your partner in that. Should be your partner in that healthcare to be able to help you figure out what the missing piece is.

During treatment, obviously mercury safe, like we already have discussed. There should be root canal alternatives. I believe they should also be able to offer you zirconium as well as titanium implants if they still place titanium implants, but zirconium implants as well. That’s also very cutting edge. Laser usage in the practice is a huge bonus. Ozone I think is something that should become standard of care for biologic dentists. One molecule of Ozone is as powerful as 3000 molecules of Clorox, of bleach, in its anti-microbial activity. It is absolutely amazing what Ozone can do and what Ozone can kill. So I think Ozone therapy should be part of their services.

Wellness services are something I think you should expect. How can they keep you well rather than how do they just fix the problems? How do they keep you well and how do they partner with that? So hopefully I hit most of what’s on our list, Robyn. I’m not sure if I did or not, but those are some of the things that I would for sure look for when looking for a dentist.

Robyn:                                      I appreciate that. That was a quick run through. I’m sure we missed something. I didn’t prepare you for that exhaustive list, but I appreciate your commitment to shifting your practice. It’s not cheap. It’s probably not any more profitable, but I appreciate that you are so committed to finding out what’s best for your patients and protecting your own health and your staff’s health as well because I think that what we’ve been doing in the last, whatever it’s been, 100-150 years since hatters got the dentists and the barber to start sticking mercury in our teeth has been really catastrophic, and I don’t think the American Dental Association will ever admit to it. They’d be opening themselves up to a class-action lawsuit like has never been seen in the history of the United States, so we have to protect ourselves. There’s a reason why over half of our dentists are now refusing to place mercury fillings, even though the ADA will, on its deathbed, go down saying there’s nothing wrong with mercury in our teeth. I really appreciate the stand that you take. I appreciate the dental care that you’ve given me and my family, and so may Green Smoothie Girl readers have come to your clinic right?

Dr. Jorgensen:                      Yep. It’s just a reunion some days.

Robyn:                                      It’s big Green Smoothie Girl party to the office of Dr. Michelle Jorgensen. Tell everybody where they can find you.

Dr. Jorgensen:                      Our office is called Total Care Dental, and we’re in American Fork, Utah. There’s a lot of information on my website. Go on there and check it out. A lot of information about how to help yourself become more healthy.

Robyn:                                      Well that you so much for this, Michelle. I always look forward to getting together with you and comparing notes on what you or I have learned since the last time we chatted about health and wellness. Always love to see your texts about something new you’re learning, and you’re a great blessing in my life. So thank you so much for doing the show with me today.

Dr. Jorgensen:    Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.