The Root of The Matter

Unlocking Oral Health & Modern Disease: Toxins, Infections, and Cellular Health

• Dr. Rachaele Carver, D.M.D. Board-Certified, Biologic, Naturopathic Dentist • Season 1 • Episode 11

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What if the mysteries of modern disease could be unlocked by understanding the intricate dance between toxins and infections at the cellular level? 

That's the bold assertion we're making this week as, Dr. Rachel Carver, shares revelations from her own research and a recent CellCore Biosciences Conference. Dr. Carver dissects the groundbreaking theories of germ versus terrain, and the transformative power of pleomorphism, giving you a fascinating insight into how our environment can stealthily manipulate our health.

Don't overlook Mother Nature's magic and our bodies' remarkable ability to self-heal! 

This episode is a deep dive into the essential nutrients for impeccable teeth and gum health, the sinister role of toxins and inflammation in dental damage, and the vital connection between your oral health and your liver and gallbladder function. 

The episode wraps up with an insightful discussion on the importance of proper drainage for effective detoxification and a bag full of tips to optimize your drainage and uphold your health. 

Tune in and enjoy this enlightening journey with Dr. Carver, as she demystifies the toxins and infections that underpin modern disease.


To learn more about holistic dentistry and find a biologic dentist located near you, check out Dr. Carver's patient education page:

http://carverfamilydentistry.com/patient-education-library/


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.

Dr. Carver:

Hello everybody and welcome to another mini episode of the Root of the Matter podcast with me, dr Rachel Carver, as your host. Today, we're just going to talk about some things that I've been thinking about lately, that I've been seeing in my practice, that are very interesting and of note I think people would be interested in. So recently I attended Cell Core Biosciences Conference their annual conference and those of you who have been following me know this is one of my favorite supplement companies. The annual conference in person is just absolutely amazing. The energy in there, like-minded professionals, and one thing I really love about this company is one of their major tenants is to be intentionally disruptive, and so they ask the hard questions. They're trying to get us to think outside the box and really understand.

Dr. Carver:

I think we all can accept the fact that modern medicine is not only not helping but actually potentially making us worse. We have never been sicker. Our children have never had as much poor health as they do now. Their estimates that our children today are not even going to live as long as their parents and grandparents, which is a startling and scary statistic. Again, what I've really learned through Cell Core is that we really can boil down most of modern disease to toxins and infections And, as many of you have heard me say, depending on our genetics, our lifestyles, we will manifest this disease as something different. Maybe an autoimmune, maybe high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, cancer, whatever you name it. But if we really take a closer look and looking at that cellular level, it's basically the immune system is going awry. Why has the immune system been so compromised that it can no longer function the way it's supposed to?

Dr. Carver:

In modern medicine, in modern dentistry, we think a lot about how do we kill the bug. We've got gum disease And most traditional therapies are to kill the bacteria because it's seen as a bacterial disease. But how does the bacteria get there in the first place? It's not that you all of a sudden swallow the bad bug one day. Or some patients say well, my mother or father had gum disease, so therefore I have gum disease, and the way I kind of think about that is that we inherit certain genetic susceptibilities. Maybe we don't detox as well, right, so we accumulate more of those toxins. But really when I think about gum disease, i'm thinking about an autoimmune condition, because basically in gum disease your body is attacking its own bone and obviously bacteria is part of the story. But again, how does that bacteria become so pathogenic? And this is where we kind of can talk about germ theory versus terrain theory.

Dr. Carver:

Germ theory became very popularized when antibiotics came along, and the idea behind germ theory is that all diseases from a germ right Bacterial disease cured by antibiotics, a virus cured by a vaccine, and this became very profitable. It seemed to make a lot of sense And so that's how you know. The pharmaceutical world and medicine kind of took off. At the same time, while germ theory was developing, there was also this theory called terrain theory, which is basically we all have bugs, they're all over the place, but it's depending on the susceptibility of the host whether or not you will manifest a disease. And if you think about it, there's a lot of common sense to this theory.

Dr. Carver:

You think that you could develop the flu, but your spouse, who's sleeping next to you all day, every day, does not develop. How is that possible? If it's the specific bug, then everybody should have the same degree of disease. But we know that's not true. Some of us may just get a sniffle, some of us may be out in bed for a week at a time. So really, when we're thinking about the terrain is how healthy is our immune system? If we have and this is why children typically tend to have less severe disease because they have more mitochondria, which are energy producing organelles within ourselves. They have more energy, they have had fewer years to develop any chronic illnesses, so they, their immune system being more robust, they can handle these new attacks generally. Obviously, there are some diseases that affect children more, but that's what we really want to want to think about. How can we so, instead of always thinking about killing the bug, killing that oral bacteria so that we don't get gum disease, how do we prevent that oral bacteria from taking over in the first place?

Dr. Carver:

And what I've learned a lot again through the cell for is that toxicity will create deficiency. When we have toxins, whether it's a physical toxin, an emotional toxin, we all know stress is a major predictor of disease If we have these, these toxins, and then we have deficiency, right. So when we have a lot of toxins in our body create inflammation, we create acidity in the body and we need minerals to neutralize this acidity. So those minerals, they are going to get pulled from our teeth and our bones to try to kind of save our organs And unfortunately sometimes our teeth and jaw bones will get sacrificed a little bit there. But when we have that deficiency now, those healthy bugs that are normally present in our mouth, they know they're starving. Right, and think about anybody who's hangry all the time.

Dr. Carver:

You're not yourself, you don't feel good, and so this is a process we call pleomorphism, where some certain bugs bacteria, viruses, parasites they can transform into a more pathogenic form, or these so-called bad bugs that you can detect on certain saliva test, are present in a normal, healthy amount. For instance, myself, i have incredibly high levels of the supposed cavity-causing bug, strep mutans, but I've never had a cavity because I have very healthy saliva. I have other good things going on. So again, it's not just about the bug, it's about the entire environment. So if we become very deficient we don't have enough minerals we're not going to be and less oxygenation that's a big problem too Then the whole environment in our mouth is going to shift into this more acidic this environment and the so-called bad bugs. They thrive in that more acidic environment And then they start giving off all these little cytokines, these messengers, their own toxins, which the body reacts to by creating inflammation.

Dr. Carver:

And when we have chronic and that's normal, right, a healthy body will become inflamed because that's our body's way of dealing with any infection or toxin. However, as we know, the problem is that chronic inflammation, you know, normally we get injured, we have a little bit of inflammation, that's why it gets red and it gets hot, and usually the body will come to clean it up and it's all taken care of. But if we constantly have this nutrient depleted environment, then we are going to have a classic scenario of chronic inflammation and infection. So this long-term infection is what then causes destruction of the boat. Because we have all these chemical messengers, all this inflammation starts kind of destroying the body.

Dr. Carver:

So, yes, while killing the bacteria, and acutely, this can be really important If you have raging, let's say, you have to have a knee surgery, right, a hip surgery and you have just raging infection in your mouth, well, we may not have the time to be able to clean it all up, you know, in the proper order. So, acutely, yes, we can give you some antibiotics and we can give you some more antiseptic mouth washes, but that's not going to cure the problem. That is a bandaid type solution But, again, important, if you're going in for surgery, there's some kind of emergency. We need to get that bacteria count down or it's going to compromise the success of that surgery. But long-term, what we want to do is how do we discover what that toxin is? How do we replenish those nutrients so that we can put the environment back into the healthy state? so the immune system is happy.

Dr. Carver:

And I did my own little mini-study using an oral diagnostic test we did at the beginning Because I was unhappy. I was always saying the only solution with antibiotics And yes, it worked. But then what are we doing to the rest of the gut bacteria? We know that chirodipersone in the gut is absolutely vital for health because the bacteria in our gut is responsible for absorbing our nutrients, for creating certain chemicals. That affects our hormones. Again, the bacteria is very, very important and we don't have diverse colonies. Then we are less healthy. So we don't want to use antibiotics as a long-term solution. Again, acutely can be very important and life-saving. So it's not to say that we never want to use antibiotics, but for long-term health.

Dr. Carver:

So in this study what I did instead of using antibiotics is I put patients on oxygen drops. I put them on revitin toothpaste, which is a paste that has vitamins and minerals in it. There's no fluoride It. Also I put them on digestive enzymes right. So when we have a lot of inflammation we're creating a lot of excess proteins and stuff that helps diminish inflammation, and I put them on a binder so cell cores, biotoxin binder, so help the body get rid of that so we don't continue that inflammation cycle. And within four weeks the best case I got in four weeks was 60% reduction And in my least, the patient who was least compliant I should say, still had a 27% reduction in only four weeks. So, and in all of the cases that I did, the evidence of porphyromonas gingivalis, which is kind of the nastiest oral bug out there is, the one associated with the most chronic diseases like Alzheimer's and heart disease and kidney disease, et cetera, et cetera was gone to completely eradicate in every single patient. And with this therapy I was supporting their oral environment and I wasn't killing anything. So it was really exciting And I kind of knew that I was onto something And that's really helped me try to focus on how we want to create health in the body.

Dr. Carver:

So same thing for the rest of the body. For somebody who has this periodontal disease, how do we bind up those toxins refresh the nutrients so that the body heals itself, because that's the idea. Nobody is smarter than Mother Nature, Universe, god, whatever you want to call it. The human body is absolutely amazing and designed to work perfectly. If we can remove all of those obstacles, it will heal itself, and I think that's absolutely incredible and important to know.

Dr. Carver:

One of the other interesting things I see a lot is a lot of moms coming to me with their kids and they're very holistic minded and they try to feed their children the best things they're giving them. You know I'm always talking about the most important things for teeth and gum health. They're the fat soluble bitements So that's right. D, e, a and K and the Moeca III fats and minerals right, those are really really important kind of the building blocks for healthy teeth and bones there. And these moms, you know they're doing everything right, trying to eat right, and yet the kids still having a lot of cavities, what's going on? And it has been frustrating to me in the past and you're like what is the problem? But now I go back and think okay, if things are caused for toxins and infections, you know what's the missing piece there And a lot of times you know I'm thinking it's the toxicity, right.

Dr. Carver:

The toxicity this inflammation causes the parotid hormone to reverse the fluid direction in the teeth. So every tooth is its own organ and it has its own blood supply, its own nerve supply, its own lymph right, and so normally it will bring up the nutrients from the bloodstream and supply it into the enamel, keep it healthy, right And kind of think its teeth is just these solid things to help us chew. But it's a living, breathing kind of organism that is constantly calcifying and decalcifying all day, every day, and so how do we make sure that it tends more towards the calcifying, you know, versus the decalcifying, which allows it to be more susceptible to the natural bacteria and acids that are in our mouth? So any kind of inflammation is going to reverse that fluid flow and now pull the minerals out of the teeth and get into circulation to try to help with that, the systemic inflammation happening. So we need to reverse that inflammation, we need to get the toxins out of the body so that the inflammation does not continue. So that's why binders become really, really important.

Dr. Carver:

Some of the most common ones we know about are activated charcoal, modified citrus, pectin, zeolites, bentonite, clay. As you know, i'm very fond of cell pores. They are different than any other binder because they have activated carbons in different chain lengths of carbons. Therefore they're a little bit smaller. They the idea is they can pass, like beyond the gut and they can go into some of the organs where some of these toxins really high. Not all toxins are just in the gut, right, we know they can be in the brain, in all the organs as well the bones. So we need to help mobilize and grab onto these toxins and get out of there. I am very specific. I like to sell poor products very much and I give my children binders every day, because we have over 80,000 chemicals in our environment today and there is, you know, even if you're completely aware of everything that exists, you cannot avoid them. So I think it's really important.

Dr. Carver:

Our liver and kidney were only designed to take care of so much. We've never had such an onslaught for our poor, poor liver and kidneys. That's why so many of us are developing fatty liver disease. Right, and I think the tricky thing about diagnosing liver problems is that we don't have a lot of great tests, as I talked about with Dr Sue last time. Right, we have a couple enzymes that we check for. But most of the time your liver has to be functioning at less than 10% to even show up on a typical traditional testing. But any kind of insulin resistant, blood sugar issues, pancreas issues, that usually starts as a liver issue.

Dr. Carver:

Gallbladder Gallbladder removal is, i think, one of the most common surgeries done And, yes, the gallbladder is overloaded, creates a lot of pain, but the bile is made in the liver. So there's really a liver problem. And if we just take out the gallbladder but we never address the problem with how the bile is produced in the liver, are we really fixing the problem? Sure, the pain goes away, but we haven't really corrected the problem. So again, we want to really look at that, the root cause there. And Dr J Davis and talked about many people he was able to save from gallbladder surgery by doing specific liver flushes. Again, by getting the toxic substance out of the liver you create better bile flow, you get rid of the sludge and allow everything to work better without having to have invasive surgery that has its own side effects there. So back to the moms and the kids. That's what I want to think about is adding in a binder. You're putting in the nutrients, but we got to bind up the toxins so we can reduce that inflammation level, so that we can make sure that that fluid is flowing properly in the teeth.

Dr. Carver:

The other fascinating thing that I've seen recently and I'd love to know if some of my other colleagues are seeing the same thing but absolutely rampant amount of cavities forming at the gum line And these are so rapidly forming, so deep. I have very steady patients who have been seeing regularly for years, six months. They were fine. They come in for their six month check and carries everywhere. I mean it's just kind of mind blowing. My hygienist just remarked on it the other day, tuesday. What's going on? I had the other day just three patients in one day again, just everywhere, and again thinking about this at the gum line, that's where there's less enamel, so it's less mineralized in that area. So if there's a constant inflow of minerals going from the teeth into circulation, those are the areas that are gonna be the most susceptible to, like I said, the normal bacteria and acids that exist in the mouth. So that's the first place you're gonna see a lot of these cavities And again it's just been unprecedented.

Dr. Carver:

So yes, i can fill those cavities, but ideally I wanna be able to prevent this. I mean, dentistry is getting very, very expensive And we need to really think about prevention, and that's part of the reasons I'm doing this podcast is just to create awareness to everybody knows that their body best And, yes, we have solutions for these things, we can treat these, but wouldn't it be so much better if we could get the body to heal itself? So again, binders. I'm putting so many of these patients on binders so that we can reduce this toxicity and prevent all this deep decalcification. So, unfortunately, our nutrition today, the food supply from just over farming and hybridization of our food, is very deficient in the minerals and the healthy fats that we need today too. So just some interesting things I've been thinking about.

Dr. Carver:

I also just recently held an open house for our new wellness services. We're very excited. Again, our main focus. I have a quote that somebody gave me one time that said if you do not make time for your wellness, you will be forced to make time for your illness, and I think that's a really interesting statement and very relevant to today's times. So that's what we wanna try to do. We have some services that will help with detox and drainage.

Dr. Carver:

It's another really important thing I talked a lot about to the people who came by to learn about some of those services is that before you try to detox all these toxins or infections that may be in your body, you have to ensure that your liver, your kidneys, your bowels, your skin right. You have to be able to sweat, your lymph has to be able to drain. If any of these systems are clogged and you're trying to detox, you're going to make yourself worse. This is how people sometimes they start a detox program and they end up with headaches or they get what we call a herximer reaction, which is kind of like flu-like symptoms. So they just feel worse. Right, they start on a supplement regimen and they feel worse, which means that they are mobilizing toxins. But ideally it would be better if we can go slowly and go in the right order so that you don't have too many of those reactions.

Dr. Carver:

So drainage is absolutely key. It's one of the reasons I had such trouble with skin issues. So you think about a funnel, and CellPore talks about this a lot. They talk about the drainage funnel. Right, we start at the cellular level. We go to the extracellular matrix, tissue, the fascia, the lymph. Then you have the liver, the kidneys and the bowels. So if you are commonly constipated, how on earth are you going to get those toxins out of your body? Maybe you can sweat them out a little bit, but a lot of people who have constipation issues they may not sweat very well.

Dr. Carver:

When I first got my sauna, i'd go in there and I would never sweat. It would take me an hour before I could break a sweat, which is not a good sign. Everything was so clogged up. So again, you have to make sure you get the, and one of the best ways I've found is simply taking vitamin C. You have to kind of high dose it. The brand I really like is called Vitality C. One little scoop is four grams And you just keep increasing until you have loose bowels And then you know you back up a little bit and you know that's what your body's dose is. So again, you've got to open up that drainage funnel, otherwise everything backs up.

Dr. Carver:

So one of the most common things I see on TV today are commercials for new drugs that help with skin rashes. I think it's like every other drug now is for some kind of skin rash And the reason we are having all these rashes is because of this back up this clogged pipe, right. So the bowels aren't draining, liver and kidneys are overloaded with all these toxins And so, instead of being able to get out of the body, they're pushing back up into our skin and into our lungs. So people who have may have newer asthma or lung symptoms, a persistent cough. This could be a sign that the liver is overburdened, bowels aren't working properly. Maybe your kidneys can't filter as well as they should. So you always have to start with drainage, right. So vitamin C is one of the great ways Lymph very important like that.

Dr. Carver:

You may have heard of things called rebounding exercise. Obviously, the only way to move the lymph is by physically moving the body, so there's no pump in the lymphatic system. We have a new tool in the office We call it the flow presser And it's basically a suit And you get all wrapped up in a wall kind of compress and release, compress and release. It helps move the lymph in the proper way. So anybody who has chronic swelling edema, it's a wonderful way to get things flowing and get those toxins out of your body.

Dr. Carver:

And we can use certain supplements and other things, but that is the number one thing we need to do is drainage. Drainage You need to be sweating, you need to be peeing, you need to be pooping Like those are the really, really important things that we want to consider before going into any detoxification mode. So again, just a small little short episode on some of the things that have been happening in my world, some things that I've been learning, and find anything that resonates with you Wonderful. Share this with all your friends and family. Let's create a new way of doing health.