The Root of The Matter

Naturopathic Oral Health

• Dr. Aviva Wertkin, Naturopathic Doctor • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Meet Aviva Wertkin, Naturopathic Doctor, as she shares her unique approach and background to functional medicine and restoring health by finding the underlying cause.

After meeting a very unique Naturopathic doctor who was identifying and treating the Causes of disease, Dr. Wertkin was able to reverse each of her own diagnoses. Now it has been over 13 years without any of her “incurable” diseases. 

This launched Dr. Aviva's journey to becoming an amazing healer:

"It’s been a dream come true to provide others with effective holistic healthcare in a loving and nurturing manner." - Dr. Aviva.

In this episode, Dr. Aviva and Dr. Carver cover many topics, including how the mouth is used in naturopathic medicine to guide diagnosis and treatment. 

Check out this episode to learn what are some of the oral indications of non-optimum health or even disease processes, from the tongue, to how your breath smells or your cheeks look. 

Other topics covered are... 

  • Stress and your health. 
  • Vital vitamins & minerals for disease prevention & optimal health. 
  • Hormonal health & function for women. 
  • How to create the optimal oral pH for strong, cavity-free teeth. 
  • Amalgam fillings and heavy metal poisoning. 
  • Importance of drainage for detoxing the body. 
  • Mouth ulcers or sores and B-vitamin deficiencies. 
  • Applied Kinesiology to find the root cause. 
  • And much, much more!  


To contact Dr. Wertkin, check out her website:

https://avivawertkin.com/contact-dr-aviva-wertkin/

Or call her office at Tel (303) 775 - 3198


To contact Dr. Carver directly, email her at drcarver@carverfamilydentistry.com. 

Want to talk with someone at Dr. Carver's office? Call her practice: 413-663-7372




Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only. Information discussed is not intended for diagnosis, curing, or prevention of any disease and is not intended to replace advice given by a licensed healthcare practitioner. Before using any products mentioned or attempting methods discussed, please speak with a licensed healthcare provider. This podcast disclaims responsibility from any possible adverse reactions associated with products or methods discussed. Opinions from guests are their own, and this podcast does not condone or endorse opinions made by guests. We do not provide guarantees about the guests' qualifications or credibility. This podcast and its guests may have direct or indirect financial interests associated with products mentioned.

[00:00:00] Rachaele: Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Root of the Matter with me, Dr. Rachel Carver, where we discuss the oral connection to systemic disease. And I'm very excited to have Dr. Aviva Wertkin on today. 

[00:00:15] Rachaele: She is a naturopath out in Colorado. She has her own practice Naturae Medical

[00:00:21] Rachaele: out there in Colorado, but she also does telehealth.

[00:00:24] Rachaele: So that's the wonderful thing about technology today that we can reach people even if they're not in our vicinity, which, if you are from an area like me in Western Mass, when we don't, where we don't have a lot of options, it's really wonderful that technology allows us to seek out providers all over the country.

[00:00:40] Rachaele: So, Dr. Viva, thank you. I'm so grateful for you to come on and share your wisdom with us. I'd love for you to, kind of tell us a little bit about your story.

[00:00:47] Aviva: Thank you so much. It is such an honor and a delight to be on this podcast with you. So my background in some ways is a little bit similar to yours, and I think many people who find [00:01:00] themselves in this field. It began with my own health issues and really exhausting what Western medicine had to offer and finding that, that, that route of intervention either didn't work or was causing more symptoms and side effects, and taking more medications for the side effects and. and throughout that time period in my life where I was, I was suffering from several different chronic diseases, all of which I was told were not curable. I would ask the doctors, why, why is this happening? There has to be a reason. And they would say, there is no re, it's just bad luck, or it's probably genetic and, and very dismissive. And I eventually, found in the very beginning I found a chiropractor. I had been in a terrible car accident, and my mom at the time said, I really want you to try this chiropractor. But she was not just an ordinary chiropractor. She thought much more holistically. And when I [00:02:00] told her about these other issues I was having, she talked to me about modifying my diet and she did a stool analysis to evaluate what was happening with my microbiome and my gut function. And I never knew you could do that. I didn't understand at all the role of, of diet and how what we eat can be affecting things. And for the first time in my life I started getting better. I started feeling a difference. And then around that time I also discovered, I think it was listening to Candace Pert talking about her book, the Molecules of Emotion. and I got really fascinated by the science behind that of the whole neuroendocrine immune and looking at that related to the mind body connection. And I just started becoming so fascinated with nutrition and biochemistry and all these different aspects, and it led to me deciding, I wanna become the kind of doctor that [00:03:00] I've been looking for so other people don't have to suffer the way I have. And so I ended up doing my pre-med after college. I, I had my bachelor's and then I, there's a bunch of things I'll skip over, but after college, while I was doing my pre-med, I got a job at the NIH doing clinical research in the neuroendocrine immunology branch, which was so awesome. It was kind of nerd heaven and then they also opened up the Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, and I began doing research for that center as well. And really sort of combining my love and fascination with alternative medicine and, and the basic sciences and how things work in the body. 

[00:03:41] Rachaele: So that, just, just real quickly to, a lot of people will say, oh, there's no science. It's all voodoo when you talk about, but you know, you just heard Dr. Aviva say, you know, 

[00:03:51] Rachaele: National Institute of Health, they have a whole department based on that. And just to back up a little bit too, can you tell our audience what were you suffering from?

[00:03:59] Aviva: [00:04:00] I had daily migraines, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel, and hypothyroid and endometriosis. So Pretty much, yeah.

[00:04:13] Aviva: Yeah. There was a 

[00:04:14] Rachaele: Yeah. 

[00:04:14] Aviva: was a lot.

[00:04:15] Rachaele: and you were young, right? So you were very young 

[00:04:18] Rachaele: when all 

[00:04:18] Aviva: And it was just getting progressively worse and, and I will add, I started seeing naturopathic doctors along the way, and not many of them were able to really help me, and I've learned not all naturopathic doctors practice the same way. What some naturopathic doctors do is they give a natural supplement in place of a drug, but they're still just treating the symptoms. What changed everything for me is when I found a naturopathic doctor who practiced the traditional philosophy and really looked for the underlying causes. This doctor ended up becoming my mentor [00:05:00] and really just changed my life in so many ways.

[00:05:02] Aviva: He helped me reverse all of those, so I no longer suffer with any of those. It's been, close to 15 years and no drugs, no surgeries, just addressing the underlying causes.

[00:05:15] Rachaele: So that that's, I mean, that's astounding, because most people are told so, Sorry. Too bad. Just like you said, and dismissive or they just, because they just don't know. Right? We're not trained in dental school or medical school to look at the causes. We, we look, okay, here's the problem, here's how we fix it.

[00:05:31] Rachaele: But to most of us, that's, it doesn't fix the problem, right? Maybe the symptom diminishes a little bit, but we never really get well, and those of us, like you and me, who are just so curious and they wanna know the why, because, you can't get fully well if you don't get at, at the, cause, we keep taking one medication to cover the symptom of the other medication of that side effect. And that's not 

[00:05:53] Rachaele: true health, right? That's just kind of managing, managing disease and so it's important and like what you talked about, that's, we [00:06:00] kind of have traditional medicine.

[00:06:01] Rachaele: Then we have functional medicine, which is a lot what you talked about and, and in a lot of functional medicine it is, it's replacing something a little more natural versus a prescription medication. Whereas, Both of us, we kind of connected over the company CellCore, which we love, and they really talk a lot about foundational medicine, right?

[00:06:18] Rachaele: I mean, the whole. Title of this podcast, 

[00:06:20] Rachaele: The Root of the Matter, where get way down at that cellular level, what is happening, what are these toxins, what are these infections, um, that are, that are causing all of this. And what I love how you talked about that whole neuroendocrine immune.

[00:06:35] Rachaele: So maybe you can talk a little bit more about that and how I, I've come to find that so much of disease, especially things like chronic fatigue, had this massive mental emotion component. So can you talk to us a little bit about that neuroendocrine immunology

[00:06:50] Rachaele: emotion stuff?

[00:06:51] Aviva: I, I would love to, and I, and let me preface it because there's. There's a paradigm associated with your [00:07:00] practice and with your podcast that you're inviting people into, and you talk about getting to the root of it, and it's really introducing people to this concept, this other worldview. Because the dominant school of medicine looks at the body at at the whole body, almost like a machine where there's different parts that work completely separately. And then there's another view where the body works as one whole complex unit where everything is working together. and it's interesting to me that there's a, a sort of sub-branch in medicine that, you know, the neuroendocrine immunology is almost considered an alternative view within mainstream because it's connecting it and somehow it's allowed in that particular arena. but really from my experience, my perspective and I, and I know that you share this, we are a living, [00:08:00] breathing entity and it is complex, but everything is working together ultimately for our highest and greatest good. We just don't always understand that when we get sick, we think our body is working against us, but really it's working for us.

[00:08:14] Aviva: It's just trying to understand what it is the body's trying to communicate. And I've been, as I mentioned, very interested in the mind body connection for a very long time, and it's an area that I'm continuing to learn about and continuing to try to understand, not just. How that works. But really, what are the best ways that we can help ourselves navigating it?

[00:08:38] Aviva: Because everybody has stress, right? And we think of, of stress, we go, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Stress, stress, stress, stress, management, Sure, sure, sure. I should go to yoga. I

[00:08:48] Aviva: should meditate, I Um, But so many of us, Have become conditioned from a, a young age of a learned way that we perceive the world and how we respond to it. [00:09:00] And most of those stress responses appear to work for us in the moment, almost as an innate survival, but ultimately is working against us if our goal is to be really healthy and well. 

[00:09:13] Rachaele: So that's important what you just said too, that, that these, we, we kind of see life through these filters and these stories, right? That we tell ourselves from a very young age, right? Our brain, that prefrontal cortex is not fully formed till we're about 26 years old. So for those first 26 years of our life, we're telling ourself these stories that may not in fact be reality, but that at in the moment of time, for instance I forget one of the books I was reading talks about a Popsicle memory where, a child was at dinner with her sister, sister finished the dinner, mom gave her a Popsicle, and the mom said to this girl, you can't have one until you finish your meal.

[00:09:51] Rachaele: Totally reasonable, right? But in that five year old's brain, she didn't feel she wasn't good enough. To have that Popsicle. So then moving forward [00:10:00] in situations in her life, she had that filter of I'm not good enough. So she could never quite achieve everything she wanted because in the back of her mind, she was playing that story of not being good enough.

[00:10:09] Rachaele: Right. And so, so that's the trick with stress. Right. And meditate, just simple meditation or bath, like you said, isn't necessarily going deep enough to kind of help rewrite those stories.

[00:10:21] Aviva: Yes, Exactly. That is a perfect example of, of what I was referring to. And so when we think

[00:10:27] Aviva: about the nervous system and neurological things, most people think about the brain that is in their head, and many people are unaware that those neurons and part of our brain, they say the second. Brain is our gut because we have so much of our nerves and our nervous system in our digestive tract, but also literally throughout our body. It isn't that our nervous system is just our brain. and everything else, again, is separate. There's a, a very literal anatomical connection going on there. And then there's the cascade. [00:11:00] So we have, let's say, even a stress response that begin in the brain. And you know, you would be aware of the H P A access, the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal. So we can have stress hormones that begin being activated in the brain, and then they go directly to our adrenal glands. And the adrenal glands is becoming, I think, more of a known sort of household name that people are learning about adrenal fatigue. So there can be this direct correlation where somebody is under continuous stress or undergoing an extreme stress that activates the adrenal glands.

[00:11:35] Aviva: And the adrenal glands are responsible for secreting. Our stress hormones such as cortisol or our adrenaline, depending on which part of the adrenals are being activated, and there can be different symptoms associated with it being overactivated or depleted. But when those adrenals get taxed, that then further can impact how our thyroid is functioning. It can impact our reproductive hormones. [00:12:00] So there can be this very. Real, very concrete connection that occurs from stress where suddenly a woman might find herself with thyroid issues and hormonal menstrual issues, you know, and that can be at any different time of their life. And you can also see this, where now what is funny to me they call it, um, a period flu because of this phenomenon where women's immune system gets weaker. in that PMs phase in that week before their mens see start, and they are not looking at why they're just now naming the symptom. Oh, it's just very common that women can get sick before their period, so we'll call it period flu And instead of understanding what may be happening with their neuroendocrine immune function, 

[00:12:44] Aviva: can. You know, address each of those things. But also the underlying R root cause may be how they are responding to the stressors in their environment. Because with the world we live in, we can't avoid [00:13:00] stress. It really comes down to how we respond to 

[00:13:02] Rachaele: Yeah. So what you're saying is for, since we are talking, this is about oral connection to disease. You know, if we have a stressor, say in our mouth from an unidentified infection or gum disease, right? So what you're saying is that stress can affect our adrenals, which can then, as you said, affect our thyroid, affect our hormones.

[00:13:22] Rachaele: So, again, this, there is this connection and the thing that's unique about the mouth is a lot of these infections don't hurt. , you don't find these. It's just been amazing, since I got a 3D X-ray. The amount, much more you can see on these things happening in the sinuses that I would never have been able to see before.

[00:13:41] Rachaele: But again, people don't feel anything and so most doctors aren't looking in the mouth. So tell me, do you have any experience, like do you, when you're doing an intake, do you ask people about their oral health and what connections have you 

[00:13:56] Aviva: Yes, 

[00:13:57] Rachaele: seen? 

[00:13:57] Aviva: would love to answer that. I wanna back up just to make [00:14:00] one quick connection related to stress and oral health,

[00:14:02] Aviva: which is one of the things that happens under stress. With that response is our body actually shuts off our hydrochloric acid production, our stomach acid, because the body is not meant to digest under stress in that sympathetic response. And when that happens, that directly affects not only digestion, but the pH. And there's a direct correlation between the pH in our gut and the pH in our mouth and how that impacts the flora. And also just our gums are everything actually related to our dental health 

[00:14:35] Rachaele: Thank you for saying that. That is very important. I'm actually giving a talk on that next week at the Holistic Dental Association, but 

[00:14:41] Rachaele: people, people don't realize that, again, that that gut, I mean the same tissue that lines our mouth is the same tissue that's lining the rest of this. So we talk about leaky gut all the time, but in your mouth, you can call it leaky gums.

[00:14:53] Rachaele: It's the same. Phenomenon. But yes, so the pH, so when we see, we do pH testing in the office, and [00:15:00] when we see somebody who's very acidic, we're always asking what's happening in the gut, what's, what's the inflammation? Because it is intimately correlated,

[00:15:09] Aviva: Yes. Yes it is. And if I can also just share as a personal note related to this. Growing up I had a lot of cavities and I would get so frustrated because I did everything that I was told with and flossing, you know, not eating sugar, all these different things. And I'd still get cavities and I would ask the dentist why?

[00:15:29] Aviva: they were just, it just happens. It's just, you know, stop eating sugar. And I'm like, I'm not eating sugar, I'm not drinking soda. And it was finally when I was working with a biological dentist and they said, well, your pH is off. Your mouth is so acidic. There's no way you're not going to have cavities. and it was, it was so helpful to finally get the why and of course understand,

[00:15:51] Aviva: okay, yep. This makes so much sense knowing my digestive history and all these other things, to correlate that. Because again, and as you know, [00:16:00] and you've talked about so often people get dental procedures that are going after the symptoms and not treating the underlying, why is this happening in my mouth kind of a thing. 

[00:16:10] Rachaele: Yeah. You can go and you can have your teeth drilled and filled, but if, I mean, nobody likes to come to the dentist. So, my goal is really trying to educate that, when I have a new patient comes in, a child especially, And their cavity on every single tooth. One, it's just heartbreaking.

[00:16:24] Rachaele: But it's not, it's not a judgment on the parent's caregiving, it's not the brushing, the flossing and fluoride. It's, what is happening, what stress is that kid under that is affecting that digestive? Cuz that's where it's at, right? The pH is off, the digestive tract is off, microbiome is off.

[00:16:40] Rachaele: Like you just mentioned that there's so many toxins in our environment today. Kids are being born with their buckets already 

[00:16:46] Rachaele: half full. So, so we're seeing diseases earlier and earlier and earlier. So we really need to talk to I, I want more and more pediatricians to really be talking to the parents about that nutrition, about, it's so important.

[00:16:58] Rachaele: They're gonna see the pediatrician before they ever [00:17:00] see the dentist. And if we can really get that whole nutrition, get those fat soluble vitamin, get those minerals, Binders even getting, again, because there's so much glyphosate, pesticides in all the foods that we're eating, you have to have some way, of binding them up and some way of mitigating stress. Even in our, our littlest ones, right.

[00:17:19] Aviva: Yes. Oh, there's so much. And I, I'm not gonna take us too far off topic, but it's really fascinating for me to have learned about how. there's so many different effects, so many different things affecting children's health, and one of the phenomenon that we've seen with the increase of c-sections, which they do happen, um, sometimes they really are essential and life-saving to do, but also a lot of deliveries now are scheduled and more convenience that way. And when children do not have the opportunity to be birthed through that canal, it impacts their cranial structure. And with that can impact the palate and the breathing and how the teeth and everything is formed, [00:18:00] which can have such a direct impact on their health growing up. And I just think there's so much around this that parents, and as you said, pediatricians are not aware of that

[00:18:09] Aviva: I just, I get so excited knowing that you are out there speaking and sharing this information and increasing that education 

[00:18:16] Rachaele: Yes. We've got a podcast all about you. Yeah. All about those kids and growing healthy jaws and all that kind of stuff, so yes. 

[00:18:23] Aviva: All of that. The earlier we can intervene, the better 

[00:18:26] Rachaele: Mm-hmm. 

[00:18:27] Aviva: And so as I, I mentioned about this naturopathic who helped me. Um, I ended up doing my residency after medical school based in Connecticut, and he was my main supervising physician. And I just, um, you know, part of that, anyway, I won't go too far off topic, but seeing patients with him, how he examined his patients was very different from other doctors. And one of the things he did is he looked in every patient's mouth. he had to, he had to see what their tongue looked like inside, what the gums, the inside the [00:19:00] cheeks looked like. And then I would ask him, what are you seeing? And what does that mean, you know? and of course he was very disappointed that they were not teaching that in medical schools anymore because when he had gone to school 40 years prior, that was part of their education and training and. and then combining that with some of my background in Chinese medicine because they do a lot with tongue diagnosis. The combination was very, very helpful for me to start understanding what's happening in the body and showing up in the mouth. And I do have this question for you. We can come back to as far as your perspective on sort of the chicken or the egg with what comes first. Cuz I, I find that so interesting. But naturopathically, just looking at the mouth, understanding it's the first part of digestion. It's the first phase. We cannot separate the mouth from our digestive tract. It's like the beginning of one very long tube. So right off the bat, we [00:20:00] know from a naturopathic perspective that what's happening in the mouth is revealing some of the things happening in people's intestines and GI tract. So there's a lot there that can reveal if there's a lot of inflammation, if the gut floor is off, if there's a yeast overgrowth, if there's, you know, any of those variables. 

[00:20:20] Track 1: Can you give us a few, can you give us some examples of what you. What you look for. 

[00:20:26] Aviva: Sure. So when I'm looking at somebody's tongue, I'm looking at the shape, I'm looking at the coating, where the coating is, how it's coated, and the colors underneath the tongue, what's happening with the veins ins, and then also if there's scalloping on the tongue. And in Chinese medicine there's also a mapping of the tongue. So different parts of the tongue correlate with specific organs, but all of that can indicate different imbalances looking inside at the cheek, where some people might have what's called a buku line and going, okay, is it because [00:21:00] they're biting down? Is it because there's a yeast imbalance and a decrease beneficial flora? Um, Is there inflammation, is there bleeding? They can all mean slightly different things, and some of that can also be not only what's happening with Flora, but is this person extremely nutrient deficient? Because ultimately from a naturopathic perspective, for me to figure out what is causing the symptom, it generally, or what's causing whatever illness, manifestations in the body. it's ultimately very simple. I'm looking for what's toxic to the body and what's missing from the body that it needs to function. 

[00:21:38] Rachaele: Yeah. I love that. I mean, it is, it's, it's, if you break it down, it's, it's 

[00:21:42] Rachaele: very simple, right? Where toxicity causes deficiency, right? So we need to try to identify those toxins and then replenish, everything that's been depleted. 

[00:21:53] Rachaele: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

[00:21:55] Aviva: Yes, and that's also, and so, you know, not [00:22:00] having a background in dental health, not having the, the training and the experience you have, I tend to refer out to holistic biological dentists because they're really the experts. But what I do is I look at it more um, Internal perspective of what is this indicating for me that I can do to start helping this person and correlating it?

[00:22:22] Aviva: And one of the other things that we do naturopathically is what's the lowest common denominator? What are the most fundamental imbalances that need to be addressed to correct all the different things? Cuz again, everything's gonna be connected. if they're coming in and they're saying, you know, I have these canker sores and these like sores on my mouth or my tongue and I'm having these digestive issues and and I have brain fog, and you know, kind of the gamut that people come in with and they think that they're all independent symptoms.

[00:22:52] Aviva: I'm like, no, actually this might all come down to I think you might be eating the wrong food you have this overgrowth and this, um, [00:23:00] insufficient amount of this, and if we can address this toxicity and replenish your body, it just, it never stops being fun watching people regain their health Um, So other things I might look at is, do they things that I can see, because as you also said, people can have chronic infections in their mouth and have no idea if they're not having substantial pain and obvious symptoms. Sometimes they have no clue what's going on. One of the things that I evaluate for frequently, depending on the patient and what's going on, is if they're having heavy metal toxicity. And one of the most common sources, right? We know heavy metals now they're in the air, they're in our food, they're in our water. But many people are walking around with metals in their mouth, and one of the studies I read about years ago highlighted that every time somebody eats, every time they're chewing, vapors from the mercury, from the amalgam fillings are being released and going right into [00:24:00] their bloodstream, their lymphatic system, going right into the brain and having an effect. And they have no idea. So it's ha, it's, it's not just the local effect that's impacting things, right? And so when I see that somebody has a lot of those fillings going on, I know that there's going to be, no matter what, there's going to be a, a mercury issue. People can have issues with mercury without those fillings. quite often. Um, But that's one more variable that I'm looking for to see is this one of the main contributing factors.

[00:24:33] Rachaele: definitely. There's, there's a little video on YouTube, I believe it is called The Smoking Tooth, and you can see, uh, the mercury vapor rising. And again, it's, it's, the thing about I love about naturopathic medicine. Biologic dentistry is it's very individualized. So some people, Have great detox enzymes and they may have a mouthful of amalgams and no issues, but the other person, maybe they're, they've got the MTHFR (gene) which I think the majority [00:25:00] of us do have some kind of deviation in those enzymes. So, and again, our, our livers are so overloaded because the amount of toxins in our environment today, we've never seen such levels. So that's why, that's another thing to look at. Doesn't mean just because you have an amalgam, you're going to be sick.

[00:25:16] Rachaele: No, it's, it's combination of things usually, but, but it's a big thing. The other thing that's interesting is when you have, say, amalgam or a silver filling next to maybe a gold crown or a porcelain piece metal crown, when you have dissimilar metals in the mouth, saliva acts as like the conductor, right?

[00:25:33] Rachaele: And so you can create a little battery effect so that that electrical effect happening in the mouth can also be problematic sometimes with heart rhythm issues. 

[00:25:44] Aviva: Oh combine that with maybe, you know, EMF exposures and other components that really set things off. And then you add chronic infections. I mean, there's so many people now, it's like, it's not. a question of what's wrong? It's, where are we going to start? Because so many things [00:26:00] have layered on top of each other.

[00:26:01] Rachaele: Yes. And that's what I love about being a dentist is the mouth is 

[00:26:05] Rachaele: so accessible, right? I mean, when you've got all these gut issues, it's so much more challenging. Thyroid, all these things are challenging, but in the mouth, boom, we can see it. It's accessible. We can get rid of the infections, we can change out restoration.

[00:26:17] Rachaele: And it's, so that can be really rewarding because people can get so well just by cleaning up the mouth. 

[00:26:26] Aviva: It's so true. And, and people

[00:26:28] Aviva: have no idea. So one of the. One of the interesting things that seems unrelated, that's related, starting out my residency and my practice in Connecticut, I began seeing a lot of Lyme disease or people with Lyme disease. And then, um, after practicing in Connecticut for seven years.

[00:26:48] Aviva: I relocated to Vermont and opened my own primary care practice. Um, So it was a little bit different and I continued to see a ton of acute and chronic Lyme cases. And also at that time [00:27:00] still very few people were aware that there could be such a thing as chronic Lyme. And as you may know, Lyme disease is never just Lyme disease, but be a whole other topic. Um, But there were times that people would come in and I would say, I think what's happening here is, uh, a tick-borne illness or a chronic Lyme infection. And people would be like, no, no, no. It can't be that. I, I've never had a tick on me. And there would just be this reaction of, no, I don't want it to be that. And then there'd be other people that would come in and they would say, I'm pretty sure I have Lyme disease and that's causing my symptoms. And I would evaluate them and I would say, no, you, that's not the issue. Um, And I remember one of the first times that somebody came in like that, and I said, it's, I know that your symptoms appear to be Lyme, but you have some serious infections going on in your mouth and your jaw. I want you to get that addressed first and then we can see. What I can do is open up your detox pathways, get everything clearing so your body [00:28:00] can handle this. You need to get the dental work done and get that treated. And then if you still are having symptoms, come see me. But I don't think have this. you know, unknown autoimmune, inflammatory joint disease. It is all coming from your dental health. And when I have had to say that to people, they're like, no, I don't think so. And then sure enough, 

[00:28:23] Rachaele: Yeah. 

[00:28:24] Aviva: they get the appropriate dental work and all of their systemic issues are gone. 

[00:28:28] Rachaele: Yeah. What Dr. Aviva just said is really important. I just wanna highlight, she said, so, the dentist can take care of the oral infections, but if those detox pathways, right, if our bowels, if we're constipated, if our kidneys and liver, if we don't sweat appropriately, if our lymph isn't draining properly, we, and we try to clear infections, we may just end up re detoxifying ourselves.

[00:28:48] Rachaele: So having, so that's why it's really important to kind of have a team approach. Where, I've learned a lot of these. I know how to open the, because I had to do it for myself, but not all biologic holistic dentists, are [00:29:00] literate in opening those detox pathways. So it is really important that you, again, have that team approach with a doctor who can make sure that before you start really detoxifying those pathways open, that's where a lot of people fall short in detoxing, because really first you have to drain, you gotta get those detox pathways open so that you can actually remove those toxins. So I just wanted to reiterate how important that, that part of cleaning yourself up is. 

[00:29:29] Aviva: yes. yes. Thank you for saying that. And that is one of the unique things I think about your practice because most of the biological dentists I've worked with over the years are not familiar. They may know that detoxing is important, um, and they may know a little bit, but they're not familiar with. The importance and the how-tos of opening up all of these detox pathways so that things can actually get out instead of just being recirculated and reabsorbed into their body

[00:29:56] Rachaele: Well, I know because I caught myself. I had my own , I, I, for [00:30:00] 10 years I spent my, circling drain around and around and around, until, until I really found, CellCore and really started to understand the whole drainage pathways and, and act and healing systematically, right.

[00:30:12] Rachaele: My biggest problem was parasites. Which makes sense. I'm around heavy metals all the time, right? Parasites can be kind of protective from those heavy metals. , but you know, if I'm trying to get after this and that symptom, but never getting after the parasite, then I just, wasn't, wasn't getting better and I struggled with, more constipation, so it was problem.

[00:30:29] Rachaele: I would try to detox so hard and so heavily, but then I was also never putting the nutrients back.

[00:30:35] Rachaele: And, and that was a big thing too, and that's another reason I like the CellCore products, right? Because with those fu humic and fulvic acid, they're nourishing you while. You know, taking this stuff out too, which again is super, super important.

[00:30:47] Rachaele: We had to detox, but we also have to put those nutrients back. You talked about mouth ulcers, aps ulcer, a lot of sores and a lot of those normally find are, are kind of like B-vitamin deficiencies. 

[00:30:58] Rachaele: Is that what you [00:31:00] find with people who get recurrent? 

[00:31:01] Aviva: see low beneficial flora, low B vitamins, low zinc. ,um, It's name low vitamin C, depending. Yep. A lot of those. And of, and one of the number one ways you deplete your B vitamins. Stress and lack of absorption. Um, And I know it's a little bit off topic,

[00:31:19] Aviva: but so often people go out and they get supplements on their own.

[00:31:23] Aviva: They may not be getting quality supplements, they might be getting the cheapest version, having no idea how much quality matters. And then, It's like they're dumping it into a murky pond because things aren't draining. And so they're, they're dumping all this stuff in the body doesn't know what to do with it because it's just so overburdened. And then people wonder why it's not working and 

[00:31:42] Rachaele: Right, 

[00:31:42] Aviva: feel

[00:31:42] Rachaele: right. That's really, really, really important, because there's so much information on Dr. Google today, right. And people, wanna try to be, and, which is great. I love that people are taking, their health into their own hands. But that's very true, and that's why there's a lot of controversy over supplements where some guys would say it's total junk.

[00:31:59] Rachaele: Well, [00:32:00] some of the supplements are, and like you said, if your drainage pathways are, if you're not doing it in the right order, you know you really need to, to work with somebody if you want to, not waste your money and make sure you're getting the results that you expect it's important. You tell us a little bit more where we're kind of, ma you're making me think about my kinesiology and that, that's what I learned.

[00:32:19] Rachaele: Muscle kinesiology. When I learned about nutrition, because you could look at somebody and say, wow, I think you're deficient in magnesium. . So then you tell the person, go get magnesium. Well, there's a million different kinds of magnesium. There's so many 

[00:32:30] Rachaele: different brands, So how do you know what to get?

[00:32:33] Rachaele: So I learned a technique where we could check the, 

[00:32:36] Rachaele: with somebody holding, um, the actual supplement is that a supplement that's good for your body is not good using, energy testing. Can you, do you do something like that with your 

[00:32:47] Rachaele: testing?

[00:32:49] Aviva: you know, I do much less now I did in the past. Um, But I would like to credit Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt. He introduced me. He was, I actually found him because he [00:33:00] was the first medical doctor I could find who was treating Lyme disease and co-infections without antibiotics. And he had been doing it for years successfully.

[00:33:08] Aviva: And I thought, all right, this. If I think every infection can, I've seen them all be treated successfully without antibiotics. Why is this different? But I didn't have the experience or knowledge to have the confidence. And then I discovered him and went, oh, okay, he's been doing this for a long time. I wanna know how to do this.

[00:33:26] Aviva: And he developed a specific type of applied kinesiology. He calls ART autonomic response testing. And so I did that type of training and that was actually the first way I really discovered even more of the systemic connection between oral health and physical, um, symptoms that people were having. And it was through that muscle test.

[00:33:49] Aviva: And I'm going, you know what? There's something going on with your jaw. I don't understand this. It's, it's like there's some hidden infection and it doesn't, it's not showing up as a symptom in your jaw [00:34:00] or your mouth, but I think this is, Causing these other things that you're seeing me for. And so I found it very valuable, um, especially early on in practice.

[00:34:10] Aviva: And I also loved it as a tool. I sort of said, if the lights go out and I can't use these labs, I'm gonna need a way to evaluate people for all these

[00:34:18] Aviva: different things ranging from infections to deficiencies, um, and even mental emotional issues that the body's storing. So I find it to be a very useful tool. I'm also just a big nerd when it comes to data, so I really love also having other testing and I just test every, so even metals and minerals. I like to test the hair because you get about three months worth of nutrient levels and it tells me

[00:34:44] Aviva: if somebody's able to excrete or if they're storing metals and you know how well they're absorbing their minerals and just, there are so many things that just come down to toxicity of heavy metals and efficiency of minerals, and it just, that's not the answer to all

[00:34:59] Aviva: things, but it's, [00:35:00] it definitely plays a significant role. 

[00:35:02] Rachaele: Absolutely yeah, talking about Lyme too, and, and those, the co-infections I, The more that I practice and the more I experience life, it seems to me that almost all of us have whether or not it's the Borrelia or Babesia or some co-infection, but it's not just by a tic, right? These are in mosquitoes we can sexually transmitted mother to baby.

[00:35:23] Rachaele: So, and, and it's, it's a very common thing, but it depends on the, quality of our immune system, whether or not we. Exhibit some kind of symptom, right? And we find Lyme bacteria, even in root canal teeth in cavitation, old extraction sites. That's because those bacteria, they love to hide in these little areas where there's no blood supply.

[00:35:43] Rachaele: But you know, their byproducts are draining, like you said, into the lymph system, right into the rest of the body and, and causing problems. And we know that it's much more effective. To enhance the immune system versus trying to go after. And that's the other problem why a lot of times antibiotics doesn't work.

[00:35:59] Rachaele: If [00:36:00] they're in these areas where there's no blood flow,

[00:36:02] Rachaele: the antibiotic's not gonna get there. Right? So that's not going to be effective . So we need to find those sources, clean them out, use things like ozone that can go in there and, and clean them out. But, but I think most of us do have these co-infections and like I said, depending on the,

[00:36:18] Rachaele: the quality of our overall immune system, whether or not we're going to, exhibit the symptoms or not. 

[00:36:25] Aviva: Yes, I completely agree. And so much is susceptibility and I have known patients that have the infections and they live with them and they have zero symptoms because the rest of their

[00:36:36] Aviva: system is under the right conditions where it's not going

[00:36:40] Aviva: to be active, which again comes back to the

[00:36:42] Aviva: other things that we were talking 

[00:36:43] Aviva: about, 

[00:36:43] Rachaele: Mm-hmm. So I know, looking on your website where you talk a lot about, there's a bunch of different energy healing and that's kind of one of areas of fascination for me. So can you tell us a little bit how the mental emotional toxins play into physical symptoms and maybe some [00:37:00] good ways other than just meditating that we can help deal with those kind of toxins?

[00:37:06] Aviva: Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. It feels like that could be a topic. Um, And so often people have different emotions that they were never taught how to express in a healthy way, and they get suppressed. And so I commonly ask patients, where do you think those emotions go? They get stored in the body, and one of the things that I'll do when I'm working hands on with a patient is simply putting my hands on them or in different parts of the body, and as long as they have their permission, I can tune in to get an energetic read. Of what's being stored and say to a person, then, you know, like you're holding, this just came up the other day, so I'll use this example of there's so much anger that's being stored in this person's [00:38:00] large intestine, and it's showing up as Crohn's disease. Right. And there's also the very real physiological causes that I have found associated with Crohn's. But to really get somebody to a cure, they have to also include addressing the emotional and spiritual energetic aspects. And so of that, ,um, can be identifying it, bringing awareness, and then figuring out for each person what's going to feel like the safest, most doable way to address this. And it really depends on where a person's at and what their current lifestyle is, to know how slow or how quickly to go in. But I often recommend, and part of what I do now with patients, my practice model has changed quite a bit over the years. I. . And now what I do with patients when I work with them one-on-one is enrolling them in a health restoration program. And those programs include teaming up with a type of therapist, a [00:39:00] type of psychotherapist, somatic therapist, somebody to do that additional work to help guide them through so I can help bring things up to their awareness and be a place for them to talk things out. But I find that talk therapy doesn't really resolve the issue. .And so I find that, you know, I can say to a person, um, you know, yoga be helpful, meditation might be helpful. You know, Self-care is really important. But I have seen so often people just go through the motions that don't actually get them into that relaxed state or have the capacity to really face those things that have been suppressed for a reason. So there's a lot that has to be addressed first to get to that point, and sometimes what I'll do with patients is, is ask them if they're comfortable with me doing some prayer with them or energy healing, just to provide a, a time when we're together to help their nervous system [00:40:00] just relax and take in some of that healing energy. I sort of think of it when I'm working on people is that I am. a, a vessel for God's energy. And we all have this ability. It is not unique to me, it's just that not everybody wants to access it or tries to, but it's allowing that divine love and light to come through my hands and transfer to them. So I'm also not using up my own energy at all.

[00:40:27] Aviva: Um, And depleting like I did very early on in practice but allowing that divine healing coming in. And sometimes that's also energetically. Draining energetically removing things that are creating obstacles on that level and replenishing it with a healing light. And sometimes that alone can create shifts in their physical symptoms, but also getting them closer to that place of feeling safe to address those underlying emotional pieces that are directly contributing. [00:41:00] 

[00:41:00] Rachaele: Yeah, mean, it's huge. Like you said, it's 

[00:41:02] Rachaele: a massive topic and one very few people are kind of aware of, or, understand that it is a major piece of, of the healing. So I love, again, what you said is, you can do some of the groundwork, but having somebody else who, that's all they do, they specialize and you're right, and, and a lot of the studies show talk therapy doesn't.

[00:41:23] Rachaele: doesn't, it's, it can be helpful obviously, to talk about things, but it doesn't necessarily remove those physical traumas. So, my husband is a biofield tuning practitioner, and that's another way of using energy and frequency because every, like you said, every emotion gets stored in the body and it gets stored as a certain frequency, right?

[00:41:42] Rachaele: Our cells are all vibrating at certain frequencies. They communicate via light, which is another, kind of frequency and sometimes , those emotional like anger, right? And if we were to tune in, it might sound like right?

[00:41:55] Rachaele: It's not happy. So there's things, there are a lot of different techniques, but with biofield [00:42:00] tuning, you hit this tuning fork.

[00:42:02] Rachaele: With a specific frequency, you lay it, let's say it's the liver where a lot of us store anger, right? You store it, you, you hold it over there, and over time, things will all start to vibrate at that same frequency. So it's, that's one of the ways to physically remove it without having to go through the sad story and why you were so angry and some of us, like, I know when I do my, I'm like, I'm not sure why I'm angry. I'm not sure why I have these heart walls. Because I've 

[00:42:28] Rachaele: blocked it out. Right? So, so just so if I went to talk therapy, I would say I have a great life. I don't know why I have emotional problems.

[00:42:34] Rachaele: So, so these other therapies are important because we do suppress them, or they could even be from our ancestors, 

[00:42:41] Rachaele: right? We can carry that even through generations. So, I was told once I have . My lungs, I have do these energy scans and lungs would come up all the time, which is related to grief. And I was like, I really, I don't have any grief in my life, but I had a practitioner tell me, oh, it's actually your grandfather's grief from when his mother died.

[00:42:57] Rachaele: And somehow that, I was around him [00:43:00] at the funeral, somehow that got imprinted into my, my soul, my energy body. So, again, that's why this kind of thing is really important. And I think in the chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, a lot of in my experience anyways. See, you see a lot of those emotional, things that are, that are affecting us.

[00:43:16] Rachaele: Cuz it's one of those, those diagnoses, right? We're like, we're not exactly sure, we're just gonna throw it into that category, right, ,because we don't know how to Exactly. We don't know how to test exactly for what's going on there, it's common. 

[00:43:30] Aviva: Oh, I love so many things 

[00:43:31] Aviva: that you were, that you just said. You know, And a lot of people think of energy medicine interventions as so woowoo, but what you were just touching upon is that, you know, every electron, every molecule in our body is vibrating and has a frequencies. And when you can match the frequencies to different things or shift the frequencies, it can have such profound and immediate effects on the body. And then thing that you were saying too, you know, sometimes for healing people [00:44:00] don't have to know the exact source or relive the trauma to heal it. And one of the things I love about the somatic therapeutic approach is that you're just learning how to connect with your body and honoring it, listening to it, and responding, because sometimes a body has a need that you can address without having to go back to a trauma. And then, like you said, some of it may not be your own. It could be your parents or your grandparents or your great-grandparents. And sometimes too, people just walking around living their life, they're picking up on things from everybody around them and having no idea that maybe they're having heart palpitations and feeling anxious and

[00:44:44] Aviva: it's not their own. They've just sort of picked up somebody else's and have no awareness that that could be impacting how 

[00:44:51] Aviva: they're feeling. 

[00:44:52] Rachaele: I have a empathic daughter who's highly sensitive and from an early age, she just absorbs all the energy and it [00:45:00] creates a lot of anxiety. And at first, before my husband and I understood this, You know, we would think she was, it was hard to manage her because we didn't understand how much energy she was feeling and absorbing from it from, from other people.

[00:45:13] Rachaele: So, yeah, some people are more highly sensitive, more in tune with that and it tends to lead to more anxiety and physical, physical issues. So it's definitely, definitely 

[00:45:23] Aviva: So many things. 

[00:45:24] Track 1: Mm-hmm. . 

[00:45:24] Rachaele: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. 

[00:45:25] Aviva: When I had my primary care practice, I also, um, I had brought on many other practitioners as the whole practice grew, other um, you know, cranial sacral all different kinds of things, and including a shamonic healer and. when? When she came on and. it. It would just be very funny sometimes when patients would say, my primary care physician just referred me to a shaman that I would say, but I really think this is going to help you.

[00:45:52] Aviva: That's why I'm suggesting it, and people would have no idea what

[00:45:56] Aviva: to expect, and it was just phenomenal for me as a [00:46:00] physician to observe what she would pick up on and address with her skillset that could have profound benefits. Ranging from physical things to mental concerns, um, just phenomenal. 

[00:46:14] Rachaele: Awesome. Well, we're kind of coming to the end here, so is there anything else you wanna leave our audience with?

[00:46:21] Aviva: I wanna share one

[00:46:22] Aviva: of the things that has also really helped me connect dental health with systemic health issues is the use of thermography or thermal imaging, which is predominantly done for breast health as an alternative, let's say, to ultrasounds or mammograms. If people are not familiar with it, it's just picking up a temperature range essentially. Using digital imaging. And there are times that I've had patients get thermography to include the head and the neck, and you can actually see where there's something highly inflammatory happening in the mouth or the jaw. And it will, a line can go [00:47:00] down directly to an organ and often to the breast to correlate.

[00:47:06] Aviva: And I've had patients who didn't know that they were. Reacting really badly to an implant or had serious issues, um, from root canals that were causing these serious health issues. And it just is so helpful when you can see there's literally an issue you didn't know going on that is affecting this. You would never know these are connected, but it's directly connected. Um, And so for people to consider that as an option or for doctors who are listening to consider including that as part of their evaluation. I feel like I'm at the point in my practice where I can start now, hopefully not missing it, and deducing when something is happening with someone's oral health that is directly impacting what they're seeing me for. But I feel like at this point too, everybody should have a biological dentist that they're working with because you're either going in and treating something that's become a [00:48:00] severe problem, or you can nip something early on, you know, nip it in the bud, so to speak, so that you can prevent. A whole slew of problems.

[00:48:07] Aviva: So there's so much with our oral health that I can't emphasize enough for people to get addressed to really help their overall health and wellness in ways they, they have no idea. 

[00:48:19] Rachaele: Absolutely, and thank you and I, I love thermography. We're, we'll be interviewing. There's one in our area in the Albany, New York area, and he'll be coming on in a later interview to talk that's all about thermography, but it is really important because even as a holistic dentist, we may have 3D X-rays and you can see something, but it's hard to know.

[00:48:36] Rachaele: You can see there's, a, a dense opacity there. There's. Or a density, it's not right, but you don't know is it actual active infection or not. So a thermography is great with, and it is, it's true. You can see those lines of those heat. So, then it's not in question at all. Some people really wanna have that objective or subjective evidence, that something's happening.

[00:48:56] Rachaele: So that is, that is really great. [00:49:00] Point and I thank you for bringing that up. So tell us how, if people wanna reach out to you, maybe get some advice, how can they find you? 

[00:49:08] Aviva: So probably the best way to find me is to go to my website, which is, it's either avivawertkin.com, which is my first and last name, which it can be easier than naturaemedical. My practice name as you mentioned, the beginning, uh, naturae is a Latin for nature, naturae medical.com, and you can find me there, find out a little more information about my practice and it's all, the contact information 

[00:49:30] Rachaele: Well, thank you. This has been a fabulous conversation. We could talk for hours more, I'm sure, and I hope everyone enjoyed this episode, got some information. If you'd like to reach out to Dr. Aviva, please go to her website and we'll see y'all on the next episode. Have a great day.

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