Patricia Corby, D.D.S.: Importance of oral health, best hygiene practices, and the relationship between poor oral health and systemic disease

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode.
My guest this week is Patricia Corby. Pat is an associate professor of oral medicine and associate dean of translational research at Penn Dental Medicine.
Pat received her doctor of dental surgery from Unincor University in Brazil and her master's in biomedical informatics from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She completed her postdoctoral training in molecular biology and microbiology genetics at Harvard. I wanted to have Pat on this podcast for some time because I've wanted to interview somebody on the broader theme of two things. One being oral health. What are the important things to be able to actually care for your mouth? Because as we think about longevity, there are a handful of things that I don't think get enough attention. So if you want to live to be 90 or 100, imagine a world where you do that with high quality teeth and without. It's sort of like imagining a world where you don't get cancer or heart disease or Alzheimer's disease, but you're too frail to get up and walk around. And I think the same sort of applies to your teeth. If your mouth is not in good health, I think your quality of life is quite compromised.
And in the same vein, I wanted to understand to some extent, if there was any relationship between poor oral health and systemic diseases. It seems that there is an association but I wanted to at least probe a little bit this idea of could there be a causal relationship. So in this episode, we discuss all of these things and we conclude the discussion with what I think of as a very high yield list of best practices around oral care. I was surprised to learn that, for example, maybe fewer than 50% of people regularly floss, meaning floss daily. I was also very surprised to learn the importance of flossing. I always knew it was important. I don't think I realized how important it was.
We also talked about certain things that are popular and trendy that may not actually be that beneficial. Talk about teeth whitening. We talk about the use of mouthwash. What type of floss is better? Which type of toothbrush is better? All these things and more are discussed in this episode. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Patricia Corby.
Hey, Pat, thanks so much for sitting down with me today. I've been wanting to sit down with you for quite some time. And I know we've scheduled and rescheduled on several occasions, and between one thing or another, it took a while, but I am pretty confident it's going to be worth the wait. How are you?

**Patricia Corby** (3:15)
I'm good. Thank you. I'm very happy to be here. That's something that I have a lot of pleasure talking about, oral health with MDs.
That's my life is trying to do this connection. So I'm very excited to be here.
It's going to be interesting. I don't know much about what to do, and I think I can bring something new about dentistry and oral health and things, which is so important.

**Peter Attia** (3:40)
Yeah. Well, I think it is important, and that's certainly why I've wanted to talk about this for a while. And I've been trying to figure out who would be the right person to speak with. And you came very highly recommended, because I think it's actually a very underappreciated part of health.
I think it's easy to think of the mouth as this sort of thing. And we go to the dentist and hopefully we don't have cavities. And obviously we have a whole bunch of cosmetic concerns with the spacing of our teeth and the whiteness of our teeth, etc. But I'd like to sort of tie that all together. But I want to kind of start with a little bit of your background. So obviously you grew up in Brazil, I shouldn't say obviously, but I recognize your accent, and I know your history a little bit. When did you leave Brazil?