#44 What's the Dental Diet and How Your Dental Health Determines Your Overall Health with Dr Steven Lin

Steven Lin (0:00)

The mouth really is one of the best signs to measure health all over the body. And so there's a fascinating story into how your dental health reflects, you know, for your whole body health. So we've actually killed off the diversity of bacteria that live in the mouth, and that's when we begin to get diseased. There are some studies that show that using an alcohol mouthwash every day can increase your risk of type 2 diabetes. If you think about your diet, if you're not, you know, looking to source or understanding where your fat soluble vitamins are coming from, you're likely deficient in them. Mouth breathing doesn't deliver oxygen as it should, and it also stunts growth and, for instance, predisposes to sleep apnea as well. So when you breathe through your mouth in the night, you're basically starving your brain of oxygen.

Siim Land (0:47)

Body, mind, empowerment.

SPEAKER_3 (0:49)

Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven.

Siim Land (0:55)

Everything the body needs.

SPEAKER_3 (0:57)

Control your mind.

Siim Land (1:00)

Welcome to the Body Mind Empowerment Podcast. I'm your host Siim Land, and our guest today is Dr. Steven Lin from Australia. Steven is a functional dentist, a TED speaker, a best-selling author of the book The Dental Diet, and a health advocate.

His work focuses on understanding dental disease through nutritional principles. Steven, I wanna welcome you to the podcast, and I'm so glad that you could make it.

Steven Lin (1:26)

Hey, Steven, it's such a pleasure. It's lovely to meet you, and thank you for having me.

Siim Land (1:29)

Yeah, for sure. I'm always curious about what makes someone want to become a dentist.

What made you want to start fixing people's teeth and dental health?

Steven Lin (1:40)

Yeah, it's a good question, actually. I was actually a strange child in that I was quite obsessed with my teeth, and I was very obsessed with kind of brushing my teeth. Actually, I remember watching my sister brush in the bathroom, and she was always not very good at it, and she wouldn't pay attention. I would kind of be looking at it thinking, you're not doing it properly, and you need to do a better job. And I remember going to our first dental check, and when she went back in the chair, she opened up her mouth, and I could see a hole in her tooth.

And that was probably my first dental check, but I remember thinking like, wow, this is, and I really teased about that, but that was, I was always interested in teeth, and it was something that I felt was important, and that kind of resonated later on in my career as well, or how I chose my career.

Siim Land (2:35)

Yeah, for sure. Like it's something that parents do tell their children that you need to brush your teeth and don't eat too much sugar, but it's still like people tend to have a lot of dental issues, especially in the modern world.

So what's the current state of dental health in Australia right now?

Steven Lin (2:55)

Well, the state of dental health in Australia is very similar to the state of dental health in most other modern West Coast countries, in that dental disease is some of the most common chronic conditions that we see in society, and it's basically not getting any better. You know, tooth decay is sitting at about a rate of around 30% in kids and carrying through into adulthood. That's a little bit higher in some countries, but gum disease heads up to about 80% in most of the population. That's probably conservative.

If you measure bleeding gums, most people have some level of it.

But the big one that we don't think about is crooked teeth and why kids need braces and why teeth don't fit into jaws and the craniofacial system. That's something that we don't talk about very often. And it's an issue that has really popped up very recently, even in our context in terms of the last decades. I think if you talk to your grandparents and the amount of people that had braces or orthodontic work just say 20 or 30 years ago has dramatically spiked since then. But also wisdom teeth extraction. So why people need their wisdom teeth out in their early 20s. That's also an issue that's very, very common and we don't talk about. And these are all problems that chronic, they're long standing and they're signs that the body is not getting what it needs to, to grow and develop properly, but also manage its hard structures, calcium, the immune system and the mouth really is one of the best signs to measure health all over the body. And so there's a fascinating story into how your dental health reflects for your whole body health.