Episode 5: Dr. Kim Baer, DDS on Holistic Dentistry and How Oral Health Affects Your Whole Body

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SPEAKERS: Dr. Andrew Wong, Dr. Kim Baer

Dr. Andrew Wong

Welcome to the Capital Integrative Health podcast, a podcast dedicated to transforming the consciousness around what it means to be healthy and understanding the root causes of both disease and wellness. I am Dr. Andrew Wong, co-founder of Capital Integrative Health, an integrative practice committed to expanding access to holistic root cause medicine to the global community.

Today we’re joined by our friend and colleague, Dr. Kim Baer. Dr. Baer is a biological dentist and is passionate about providing quality dental care that does not come at the expense of overall health. She offers innovative care that is free from toxins, bisphenol a, fragrances, and fluoride. Dr. Baer’s areas of expertise include holistic services like ozone therapy, safe amalgam filling removal, natural orthodontics, and nonmetals Zirconium dental implants. We are excited to bring you a conversation about biological dentistry and how oral health can affect your overall health. Welcome, Kim.

Dr. Kim Baer

Thank you! Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Andrew Wong

And Dr. Baer is a biological dentist. But I also know her as Kim because Dr. Baer or Kim is also my dentist. So, I’m very happy that you’re here. And I’m grateful that you’re taking care of my oral health as well.

Dr. Kim Baer

Oh my gosh, I remember when you first started seeing me, and you’re so young. Seems like another lifetime. Yeah, we’re both starting out. Yeah, it’s been great to watch you grow. It’s really really been amazing.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Same for your practice. It’s great. Now you have Jennifer with you and you have an amazing staff. Just giving a shout-out to your dental hygienist there. I see Kelsey there and then you have a lot of great people.

Dr. Kim Baer

I’m very blessed to have a lot of great staff.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Well, I think first to start off here, Kim. Let’s tell us about your background and introduction to dentistry, as a whole, how did you get interested in dentistry and then specifically more holistic dentistry?

Dr. Kim Baer

Well, to be completely honest, if someone had told me I was going to be a dentist in college, I probably would have been offended. My older sister was an osteopath and became an OB, and she was doing her residency. And I was getting ready to take my MCAT. And she was like, “Don’t do it. Do not do it. School is the easy part, you’re giving up your life.” You know, she hadn’t been home for the holidays in seven years. And she scared me and I was hearing about her bad days, which were really sad and hard. I knew I wanted to work with my hands and I wanted to help people. And I really didn’t know what to do. My friend said to me, “you should be a dentist. The hours are really good. I work at a dental office.” So I went into dentistry, but I had no idea at that time that I would be practicing the kind of dentistry I’m doing now. So it’s been an amazing journey and definitely more interesting than I ever thought it could have been.

Dr. Andrew Wong

That’s awesome. Well, and so we all know, I think what a dentist is, what dentists do, obviously take care of the mouth, oral health, but what is biological or holistic dentistry? Let’s talk about the basics of that first.

Dr. Kim Baer

Well, a lot of people will use these terms. But the training is really hit or miss. So biological dentistry is basically like biological medicine or functional medicine is really looking at the whole system. In this country, we chop things up. I love this country, and I’m part of it. But we chop things up. Like in dental school, I’m only allowed to look at this. I’m only allowed to look at feet. Like none of them are connected. We learned a little bit here and there. But honestly, it’s just one system, everything. Once I learned and I realized that everything I was doing in someone’s mouth, whether it was a little filling or cleaning was affecting everything. It’s a little overwhelming. There are these moments where I wish I didn’t know because once you know, there’s no turning back. But once you start to look at it that way, it really changes the way you treat people and potentially the type of treatment you would give a patient because you really are looking at their overall health and what their body potentially would work well with and what would what it wouldn’t work well with.

Dr. Andrew Wong

So connections versus silos. I kind of think that there are Iowa grainfields with a bunch of silos. And now of course, none of the silos are talking to one another, although we know that our bodies are connected.

Dr. Kim Baer

Yes.

Dr. Andrew Wong

How would biological or holistic dentistry look at the whole person and how everything’s connected? How does that differ from conventional dentistry, if you could give our listeners a bit of an example of how that approach would be a bit.

Dr. Kim Baer

For example, we look at what materials we’re using, like we’re putting something in your mouth, which is part of your GI system. It’s the start of the tube. So it’s very important. So just like some people have sensitivities to different things, whether it’s pollen, smells or metals. So we look at that person and look at what materials they would do well with, I think it’s kind of crazy that we don’t look at that with everybody. And if we have a patient who’s very sensitive, we will do biocompatibility testing, which is a blood test, where we actually send it out, and they will look for sensitivities for all the dental materials that are used in the United States. So what I tell my patients is, it’s great to get these test results, and we’ll say, list them all. And we’ll say what’s good, and what’s bad. But the most important thing on that list is what’s bad. That’s really the key right there.

Dr. Andrew Wong

So the things that are bad, you would avoid putting in someone’s part of the GI tract- the mouth.

Dr. Kim Baer

Exactly, exactly. Because a lot of times, if you use whether cement or a filling material or crown material, it might not show up in that area that there’s a problem. But if this patient has inflammation issues, it’s just going to be like it a trigger or a straw. And it can create all kinds of issues systemically. So it’s all connected.

Dr. Andrew Wong

In functional medicine, we talk about the straw that broke the camel’s back, right. And so like we keep on putting straw for straw allergies and toxins and maybe non-biocompatible- filling material or things like that. All these things can contribute to inflammation.

Dr. Kim Baer

We always use that phrase off, in like the table, your body is a table and our entire life, we’re putting stuff on there- toxins, toxins, and most of us are okay, detoxing, and we can start getting, like some of those, we can clear every once in a while. But eventually, it’s going to build and build and build and your body’s gonna say, “no more.” And that’s when you’re gonna start having, they’ll say, “I have been using this material or this product for so many years, I had never had any issues.” But now your body’s saying I’m done. So just because something was okay in your 20s, doesn’t mean it’s okay in your 30s or 40s.

Dr. Andrew Wong

And that point can’t be overemphasized enough, I believe if you’re putting something in someone’s mouth, that’s gonna be there long term, potentially for the rest of your life. And it’s not biocompatible, and then that could really be something that’s an ongoing low-level trigger, which is causing inflammation.

Dr. Kim Baer

For sure. And that’s what we try to avoid.

Dr. Andrew Wong

And I think another question we have, you know, along with biocompatibility, is what minimally invasive technologies to use and more biological dentistry.

Dr. Kim Baer

So, as far as minimally invasive goes, we’re all about only extracting teeth if it’s really necessary. And a lot of people will extract teeth for orthodontic reasons, and we’re kind of against that. And then we, in our office, use a laser which allows us to do many procedures, surgical, filling, different things, you know, and remove the minimal amount to structure.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Well, orthodontics, just to get back to a non-expert like myself on this. What would that mean? So if someone conventionally is going to extract a tooth for orthodontic reasons, what does that mean?

Dr. Kim Baer

So, we know and there’s a ton of research and you can Google it. Used to be, you know, if you, they’ll extract premolars on kids, or even adults, to make basically be able to move their teeth in and line them up. When you do that, first of all, 90% of the cases will always have some sort of TMJ issue. And it’s because, at that point, you’re not only making the jaw smaller, you’re compressing around C1, which will lead to sleep apnea down the road. All kinds of airway issues: less oxygen, these people need to be expanded, not retreated.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Is that very common nowadays?

Dr. Kim Baer

You are gonna be shocked.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Yeah, I have no idea.

Dr. Kim Baer

And I mean, that’s not all. I think education is out there, and I think things are changing, but you’d be shocked.

Dr. Andrew Wong

So it’s still happening where people are just removing teeth just to get an alignment but that’s not really getting to the root cause.

Dr. Kim Baer

No, no, it’s a quick way of lining your teeth up. It’s much quicker and easier to do that.

Dr. Andrew Wong

It’s kind of like with surgery sometimes, like subcutaneous belly fat, liposuction which doesn’t do anything to visceral fat inflammation.

Dr. Kim Baer

Yeah, I’d love to hear your thoughts making it super interesting.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Well, just as a tangent, you know, that in theory will make people look better and the contour is better, but it really doesn’t do anything for C Reactive Protein or these types of things.

Dr. Kim Baer

Yeah, yeah. It kind of makes sense.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Well, let’s talk about some of them, I’d say, you know, meaty aspects of this podcast here. How does dental health affect health overall? So we’ve listed some things here to chat about, but you can feel free to really dive into any area you’d like. We talked about how there are potential connections, certainly between dental health, and certainly, certainly gut issues, but also overall inflammation. Maybe we’ll start with that. And then we can kind of go through some other things that you might think are relevant here.

Dr. Kim Baer

So there’s, in my very humble opinion, so as far as inflammation goes, you can look at the tissues and infection in the mouth, which is huge with that. And then, also, though, when we look at someone with a small airway or sleep apnea, they’re not getting enough air or breathing through their mouth, they’re not a nasal breather, their mouth is going to be inflamed. And overall, they’re usually very inflamed, generally, systemically, and you’ll hear the same issues. These people have the same issues, it’s usually I’m seeing your list here. It’s hypertension, ADD, sleep apnea, fatigue, migraine, headaches. And they almost are all sort of wrapped together. And you see this whole connection. So we’ve definitely seen huge results with getting that inflammation down. But it’s very astute, sometimes a patient will come in and there’s something that we can do as far as periodontal-ly that we that is just an issue that we can correct, whether it’s just keeping up their hygiene, getting their hygiene better, and getting them on better biocompatible products if they’re going to use products, because sometimes in this country, we feel like if it doesn’t burn or bubble up, or fizzy, you know, it’s not working.

Dr. Andrew Wong

It’s not a real thing.

Dr. Kim Baer

It’s not clean, it doesn’t hurt.

Dr. Andrew Wong

So no pain, no gain.

Dr. Kim Baer

So it’s actually the complete opposite in your mouth. So once we correct even one of these things, you’ll see all kinds of interesting. But a lot of times we can do, you can keep going to dentists every couple of months and do cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, if you’re not breathing through your nose, and your diet is wrong, or your airway is too small, and you’re just not getting enough air, that inflammation, it’s just like you’re never going to get ahead of it.

Dr. Andrew Wong

So, the mouth when it’s too crowded from either developmentally, genetically, or acquired, there’s not enough oxygen getting to the entire system to the brain, to the rest of the tissues. And then maybe we would see some of these medical issues that we see in the health care world. Hypertension, sleep apnea, fatigue, ADD, we need oxygen for our lives, not only to survive, but also thrive, like someone could be walking around upright, vertically, but they might be a little sleepy, and they might really not be all there and think that maybe oxygen has a big part.

Dr. Kim Baer

For sure. I was tired all the time. I definitely had oxygen issues. I was like, I could sleep 12 hours and still be exhausted. But it was diagnosed as ADD, or you know, because it comes off in all kinds of different ways. But if you’re not getting enough on, what is it, the rule of 3s? It’s like, three days without water? Three minutes without oxygen.

Dr. Andrew Wong

It is pretty close to that. I think there are people that can. Cory is one of our acupuncturists on here, and he does the Wim Hof breathing. So I’m pretty sure you can go you know, more than three minutes but he’s a stud in that regard. So you know, got the 3 minutes plus the oxygen, but it’s definitely something typically.

Dr. Kim Baer

So I see a lot of patients where they’ll come in and they’ll have these long-term chronic infections in their mouth, you know, whether it’s around a root canal or just a tooth that’s dead, and they feel nothing. I could tell you so many stories, they feel nothing. They had no idea and that’s why one of the things my patients, and I totally understand. With radiation, there are issues with getting X-rays are taken and you want to be careful with that. One thing that’s been great with dentistry in the last 22 years since I’ve been practicing as everything’s gone digital. So one dental x-ray, like the attempt of what one old dental X-ray used to be radiation wise. There are pros and cons to that we don’t see as much detail because there’s less radiation, but we see enough. And these infections, that’s the only way they can be seen. And these infections sometimes can, you know, you will have lymph node issues. People are being treated for these much bigger issues that their doctors are concerned about. And you guys have no idea, this person has a huge infection in their jaw bone because there has been no pain, no one’s found it.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Now are the X-rays that you take to screen for infections like cavities and other chronic dental infections? Is this something done in conventional dentistry overall?

Dr. Kim Baer

Yes, it is done in conventional, the only thing I would say is, sometimes certain areas aren’t x-rayed often enough, or, for instance, and some dentists don’t use 3D imaging, which gives you a lot more of that. So even though the X-rays or the teeth are being taken, some X-rays only really show you cavities, they don’t show the whole jaw bone. So that’s where you could be going to your dentist regularly and they’re just taking x- rays looking for cavities. They’re not going to see anything else.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Yeah, just the tip of the iceberg. I use that analogy a lot in our practice here. Kind of that of Titanic. There’s just a little piece of the iceberg. But there’s a lot more.

Dr. Kim Baer

It’s so funny. That all the time as well.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Well, let’s talk about migraines and headaches a bit. Because we see a lot of people with migraines, headaches, and TMJ in our clinic and how is that related to mouth health and overall. There are tons of theories and over the years, I used to suffer from them. I’ve done the Dawson training. And I’ve done a gazillion different other occlusion training. And what I’ve come to find is, it’s really about compression in the joint, which is usually a jaw that’s been pushed back a little too far. And we can see it on the X-rays, and the other tuberosity by C1. And if the angle of your mandible should be about 4-6 millimeters in front of it. So a lot of these patients it’s like here, in the C1.

Dr. Kim Baer

So what they’re experiencing is there’s compression there. So they’re getting fluid build-up, inflammation, poor vascularity. So it creates this whole domino effect.

Dr. Andrew Wong

You’re seeing that poor oral health and a jaw that’s too far back are actually compressing the cervical spine and causing headaches.

Dr. Kim Baer

Yeah, for sure. And then if they have that, then I can tell you right now, because if you were to look on a diagram, and if we had a 3D here, I could show you, they would also have when they lay down at night, they’ve not been getting enough air either. So they might not have sleep apnea. The funny thing is sleep apnea is such a keyword I remember my father died of cancer a few years ago, he snored like a truck. And we kept sending them for sleep studies and they kept saying he’s fine. It is not sleep apnea. He didn’t have sleep apnea. What he had was severe upper airway resistance disorder, which actually is worse. They’re saying because it’s chronic low oxygen saturation for the entire sleep. And so you’re getting less air, because if you’re snoring, something’s blocking it. So you’re getting less air for the entire time. And so you might not stop breathing, you’re just getting less air.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Time to do those sleep studies. Because we have diagnosed a lot in our practice. UARS, we did not know about it before.

Dr. Kim Baer

With women, I started snoring like crazy, like right before I turned 40. And my daughter, who’s now 12, told me, “I don’t want to sleep in your bed anymore,” because she sleeps in my bed sometimes she had a bad dream. She’s like, I don’t because you score and I was like, “I do not snore, I’ve never snored.” Once your hormones are changing and that soft tissue starts to drop a little bit. That’s when you’ll see. I always had a small airway, but my tonsils and adenoids were removed when I was three, but it wasn’t until my hormones started to change. And then estrogen.

Dr. Andrew Wong

What is it? Is it estrogen?

Dr. Kim Baer

I always thought it was testosterone, but I am a dentist.

Dr. Andrew Wong

I have to look that up. And TMJ would also obviously be affected by dental health as well. How many people do you see in your practice that have either sleep apnea, you know, frank sleep apnea or some sort of upper airway resistance syndrome, because I know you work with Dr. Manny Kim. And you work very closely with him. So what is the percentage you think that you’re seeing in your population?

Dr. Kim Baer

People get tired of hearing about this. But it would be easier for me to pick up the people who don’t. I’m always impressed by them. I am always like, “Oh, you have a nice airway.”

Dr. Andrew Wong

What’s the root cause of all this? Getting to the why of medicine here.

Dr. Kim Baer

I think it is generations of extractions, bottle feeding, diet, because when I travel overseas, and for instance, I haven’t gone last few years, but I was doing a trip to Haiti every year. And I’ll tell you what, they have their diets for no processed foods. I mean, I usually go to these places. And there are a lot of processed foods in our diets because it’s cheaper to eat that. In Haiti, it’s actually not available to them. So really eating fresh food, not a lot of it. No one has any body fat, but they’re eating, just not a lot of it. But I’ll tell you, it’s structurally like jaw-wise, airway-wise, when I’m working on them I am always like so jealous. Just beautiful airways.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Is it kind of like weightlifting, where if you keep on lifting weights, doing push-ups, your muscles get stronger, your jaw and your airway might get a bit stronger, wider if you chew foods that are not as processed, that are not as soft?

Dr. Kim Baer

But I don’t know that it would how I can’t tell you how much it would help you if you did that. But I think it would help any children you would have. So we’ve gone down this path for many generations, and our schools were getting smaller and smaller, especially in this country. And you’ll see it in other areas is not the case. Hopefully, we’ll start to reverse that. So I look at my patients now who I’m actually doing that on. We’re using growth appliances to grow them out. And I always think to myself, I won’t be around, but it will be so amazing to see what their children’s jaws look like.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Yeah, start with the children. And you treat children in your practice?

Dr. Kim Baer

Yes, with Dr. Tipograph.

Dr. Andrew Wong

That’s great. What is the earliest age you treat there?

Dr. Kim Baer

First of all, we just love babies. As young as they can come in, and actually just sit there. So a lot of times, if they’re really little, we’ll say bring them in when you’re getting your teeth cleaned. So we can just take a look or just to get them comfortable in the office, you don’t want their first time in a dental office to be like when a tooth gets knocked out. You want it to be considered a fun place to go. So that’s what we usually tell them.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Of course, I remember loving the dental toys and the video games we used to play, going to the dentist- makes it a fun experience.

Dr. Kim Baer

I always had positive experiences with dentists.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Just officially from the ADA. What sort of the official like when should kids start going to the dentist?

Dr. Kim Baer

They say… Oh, no! I’m guessing. I don’t want to guess on the ADA thing. But usually, I think a lot of people say commonly is, age three. Some people say, as soon as they’ve erupted a few teeth. There are a lot of different philosophies on that. I don’t think you can go wrong.

Dr. Andrew Wong

And I like to say also, to look at the guidelines, but also use your brain and your intuition about health in general. I think that’s great for the listeners out there. What are some long term effects of infections in the mouth, we talked a little bit about dental health and overall health, but we know that there’s an oral microbiome in the mouth, we talked about a lot about here, but the gut microbiome Yeah, but of course, the mouth that’s part of the gut, but there hasn’t been as much research? I think there is more research now being done on the oral microbiome. What is the effect of oral dysbiosis? Or oral microbiome imbalances, how does that affect? Your dental health and overall?

Dr. Kim Baer

Yeah, so once again, I’m gonna say I’m a dentist. I can say that there’s a lot of research out there. I mean, clearly, one thing, one thing we do know, which is funny is that the heart surgeons are a little ahead. They are, have been since I’ve been practicing you they are hardcore about the mouth and the heart. There’s a ton of research that shows you now. There are also a lot of research out there saying for instance, like if you had a hip or knee replacement, the same bacteria if someone has periodontal disease or an infected tooth in their jaw like I was talking about an infected old root canal or tooth that’s died, they don’t feel that when they culture that rejected implant that they put somewhere else in the body, they’re seeing the same bacteria that they would culture out of the mouth. So, surgeons knew this, that they don’t want their patients coming in for surgery unless everything in here is good. That tells us there’s a lot of research out there that shows how if this is not good, it’s gonna affect everything. There’s like a lot of really interesting research coming out now showing even just the effects of your oral health on your mental health. So because we’re learning, you know, people say, “oh, a psychological event or a psychological issue a patient might have maybe isn’t physical, but now we know it actually is physical.” So it’s all connected. It’s like the way, Dr. Manny Kim. I use him quite him all the time. He’s a PT who does a lot of osteopathic work. And his philosophy is he thinks the mouth and the jaws are super important. He calls it the top of the zipper. So when this is imbalanced, either structurally, or even bacterial-wise, it’s as you go down, it gets worse and worse and worse. So, when you’re zipping up your coat, it’s as you go down, it gets worse, and worse and worse. So he is all about getting this fixed so that he can work on stuff further down the chain.

Dr. Andrew Wong

That makes sense.

Dr. Kim Baer

He is so smart.

Dr. Andrew Wong

He is yes. You as well. We know there’s also some research, I believe, not mistaken that there’s some research between fusobacterium, which I believe is one of the potentials that colonizes the mouth and, and colon cancer or colon pathology. And we do see that sometimes on the gut tests that we do, there’s some fusobacterium. So if we see that we might say, “Hey, go to your dentist.”

Dr. Kim Baer

I love that. I’m telling you, there have been so many cases where we’ve removed on patients, I can’t tell you how many patients have come in that have been, recovering from breast cancer, or, you know, had the treatments in. And then we look at their jaw, do a 3D and like, “Oh, you have four infected root canal teeth”, and then we go in there, clean it out. But I always wonder, I wish this had been found earlier. All I can tell you is that are a lot of white blood cells, keeping these little chronic infections, so it’s a burden on your body. And so when we clean one of these out, I can’t make any promises, systemically, but I can tell you that it can only help.

Dr. Andrew Wong

You’re cleaning out the system, maybe unburdening the immune system so it can concentrate on the entire body.

Dr. Kim Baer

Exactly. Yeah, it’s sort of wasted energy.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Yeah, yeah. It’s not needed there. If there are no infections there, that’s great. So I mean, there’s a lot we could talk about. For that, but I guess we could start also talking about just going back to the mouth breathing because that’s so important. People are people should breathe through their nose, you’re going to increase the nitric oxide there, you’re going to it’s going to be a better breath, count for pounds, so to speak, those breathing versus mouth breathing. Why do people breathe through their mouths? Maybe people don’t know that or could be their sinus issues.

Dr. Kim Baer

Yeah, for sure. So people come in all the time. And they say a deviated septum. Everybody’s got deviated septum. So if you take your finger, if you take your thumb and you put it up on the roof of your mouth, and it goes up, like this, it should not do that. That’s called a vaulted palate, the roof, your mouth is like this. So it does this, it shouldn’t do that. It should be like this. Not completely flat, but almost. And so when it does this, it usually goes a little one side or a little the other. And it’s literally sitting in your sinus where your sinus cavities are. So it’s blocking this one side or the other. Usually, I usually ask the person right or left just like this little interesting thing I want to do research on this. It usually goes, it goes up into the left, less dominant side. Usually, if you’re right-handed, it’ll be the left side.

Dr. Andrew Wong

You said if you take your thumb up, it should be flat? It shouldn’t be like this, it shouldn’t go up. You should put your thumb in it should get like this and touch the roof. And if it does go up like a tent then what does mean?

Dr. Kim Baer

It’s called is you have a vaulted palate. Super common. The roof of your mouth has grown like this for many reasons. One reason is a lot of times when people do orthodontics when they’re young, the wires, the way they are designed, they’re designed for attraction, so they don’t ever really let the jaw go out. They sort of holding them there when they’re 12 or 13, like this, and so they never get their potential of going out. So when that happens, the roof of their mouth, they’re still growing, can’t grow out, so it grows up. Okay, so to get air, then now you’re using your mouth because you’ll never gonna get enough air out of your nose. I love the lip taping and all that stuff. But it’s a problem. If you can’t get enough air through your nose. It’s going to be a constant struggle. So one could be someone who thumbsuck for a long time and put that pressure up there.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Now is there a way to reverse vaulted palate?

Dr. Kim Baer

So that’s what we do with the growth appliances on adults and children. So reversing that, especially children, you don’t get the feedback that like they’re so easygoing, but with adults, they’ll tell you right away after the first month, they’re like, “oh my gosh, all of a sudden, now I can get all this air,” because it literally will pop down a little bit. So we want to increase that air through the nose.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Should the growth appliances or the ALFs or?

Dr. Kim Baer

Yeah, there’s ALFs, there is Vivos appliance, there’s the Liao appliance. There are many different ones.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Dr. Liao is local in this area, I believe yes.

Dr. Kim Baer

Yes, he’s a good friend of mine.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Yeah. Saw him at a networking event. Functional.

Dr. Kim Baer

Felix is great. You should get him on here.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Let’s talk about a big topic that we want to also hit on here. One is amalgam fillings, Back in the 80s, when I had some fillings and everything. And that was a kind of standard of care. But they were called silver fillings. So, of course, silver sounds really sexy, really great, like jewelry, silver, gold, platinum, what could go wrong, but my understanding after looking at it more, recently, it’s like, “silver fillings are really mostly mercury.”

Dr. Kim Baer

So very little silver in there, what is it like two or 3%?

Dr. Andrew Wong

It’s very little, I think the majority is mercury. And so I got them out, got replaced some biocompatible, either porcelain or other things. But how do you approach removing silver fillings, and if you’d like to talk about this, but you know, either the sort of the what is the underlying reason why we’re still using amalgam fillings in this country.

Dr. Kim Baer

So, I think the approach of removal has been pretty much optimized, at least as far as we know, by the organization, the IAOMT. And they’ve really put together a lot of research and have, as far as filtering and the way they should be removed, basically, just so they can be removed without as little off-gassing as possible. So I could actually sometimes get one out without even touching it, as you can go right, there’s like little techniques to that. So there’s a bunch of equipment and stuff we use, it’s just about minimizing your exposure to it when it’s removed, which is definitely the way to go, especially if you have a lot of them. But as far as why we’re still using amalgam, I think it’s very cheap. And it’s very durable. And it’s very easy to play. So you’ll see it used mostly now in like HMO practices, a lot of insurances will only pay for amalgam fillings because that’s cheaper than a resin or porcelain one. And then you’ll also see it like a lot of special needs patients where it’s very difficult to potentially isolate the tooth because these other materials like that I use in my office, you have to keep it very dry. To put these other materials in and with amalgam, it doesn’t need to be dry.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Okay. So easy, cheap, convenient, but not necessarily the best for your health.

Dr. Kim Baer

No, not at all. Not at all. I learned when I was in dental school way back in the early 90s. Like I that’s what I learned to do. And I loved working with them that I could do a really nice amalgam filling. They’re fun, you carve them. And they last a really long time. But you can’t, you shouldn’t use it at all. That’s my opinion. There are too many great options now.

Dr. Andrew Wong

And we know that mercury is associated with immunotoxicity, nerve toxicity, chronic inflammation, allergies, autoimmunity. I mean, the list goes on and on.

Dr. Kim Baer

There’s no safe amount of mercury. So I remember, I was breaking open up one of these capsules in the lab working with my colleagues in dental school and saying that looking at that little ball of mercury, it’s a big ball of mercury. There’s just as much mercury in amalgam capsules, that there isn’t a thermometer like the old school thermometers, but if you break a thermometer, they clear the area and people come in with suits, right. And people say it’s different. It’s not different. It’s the same thing. But I’m gonna shake up this thing. I’m gonna break it, put it in there. I understand for a long time, it was really the best thing we had. And I think, who knows, in 10 years. I mean, the porcelain material we’re using, maybe I may be having the same conversation about but I think that’s all you can do though, is, you know, learn and grow and try to get better. And I think we are.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Good. That’s very helpful to hear. How may your approach to removing amalgam fillings be different from my conventional approach? It’s based on IAOMT? What does that stand for? Just for the listeners out there.

Dr. Kim Baer

International Academy of Oral… What’s the M, something toxicology.

Dr. Andrew Wong

But you are trained in this, which is what I was trying to get out here. Yeah, that should have put on the spot. And so this is an organization. It’s kind of like the IFM, the Institute for Functional Medicine, where it’s biological dentists are trained and how to safely remove amalgams and just also on probably biologic dentistry principles in general.

Dr. Kim Baer

Yes, we actually. We do a lot of training though it not just with them, like we do training with other organizations like Dr. Volz’s organization in Switzerland.

Dr. Andrew Wong

We’ll talk more about that. Let’s talk about that another time. That’s sounds good. So let’s talk about sleep apnea a bit. Because we know that sleep apnea, there are different ways to treat that, and also upper airway resistance syndrome. But let’s say sleep apnea, we have potentially, there’s CPAPs, but the statistics on CPAP are that 30% of Not 30%, it’s 70%. That means only 30% tolerate it after a year, which is basically 7 out of 10 people put away that mask, and just put it under their bed, and then they don’t use it. Even if they have sleep apnea, they have a treatment for they have a good treatment for it, but they’re not using it because it’s not comfortable for them. So what are some other ways to treat sleep apnea that you kind of can offer from biological dentistry or holistic perspective.

Dr. Kim Baer

So there are two things you can do. Many of my patients have CPAPs and want to get out of them or can’t tolerate them. We can make appliances that literally sort of hold your jaw forward at night and keep your airway open. And pending on where you’re at the scale as far as like, mild, moderate, or severe, that works well for like mild to moderate, they actually can work very well. But if you want to fix the problem, the two ways that are, structurally fix your airway by opening it up, would be a growth appliance. And then also, what we like to interlace with that, or some patients only need as we do a laser treatment, where we basically are lasering the back of your throat. And it takes that tissue back there and tightens up the collagen until you see the soft tissue that’s sort of sinking down. So it sounds terrible and painful.

Dr. Andrew Wong

I think it sounds cool. It sounds like night laser tag to me.

Dr. Kim Baer

I’ve had a done. You don’t feel anything. It’s actually very boring, just have to sit there for 20 minutes while we do it.

Dr. Andrew Wong

So you don’t feel pain.

Dr. Kim Baer

There’s zero pain, but you have to do it like every 21 days, three times. And it’s something that sort of like what if you were doing botox for your face or something, it’s something that you would have to do once or twice a few times a year to sort of maintaining it. So a lot of our patients will do the appliance with the laser, because that sort of opens things up immediately. Or one or the other.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Got it. And what about the upper airway resistance syndrome? How do you treat that?

Dr. Kim Baer

Exactly the same. The laser is amazing for that. Because that tightens up the tissue and the appliances knock that out as well. That’s how I fixed myself.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Got it. Nice. And how about with myofascial release? Where does that come to play with these treatments?

Dr. Kim Baer

So we work with Dr. Manny Kim. And he’s amazing. And he will basically before we do either of these treatments, I have my patients get evaluated by him. I work with other PTs in the area also, like Louise Kelly and outside the office. But we have him in the office like right now on Thursdays and he will evaluate the patient structurally and then we’ll discuss what would be the best way of treatment that they would get the most. Sometimes it’s a matter of him doing some structural work on them before we get started. Depends on what they have going on. So it can be the right treatment and wrong time. And the nice thing about all these treatments is, you can do them at any point in time. I have patients in their 70s doing these growth appliances and you get the same results. And I don’t know what we’ll be doing new in the next five or 10 years, but it’s nice to know what your options are.

Dr. Andrew Wong

That’s brilliant. So it’s never too late to change your mouth.

Dr. Kim Baer

Epigenetics. Constantly changing.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Our cells are turning over every 30 days or less time depending on the tissue, I believe. That’s great. Thank you so much, Kim. We’re going to talk about a couple of other things. I’m curious about your thoughts on nutrition and oral health. Great topic. Everyone’s interested in nutrition. How does nutrition affect oral health? I would say, we know that nutrition can be one of the root causes. One of the reasons why there are some epigenetic influences on the mouth, palate, jaw, diameter, and everything.

Dr. Kim Baer

Yeah. If I could take all my patients and put them on an anti-inflammatory diet, I think I would probably cure 90% of them- everything they have in their mouths.

Dr. Andrew Wong

We’re not talking about 16 tablespoons of olive oil a day, right? We’re not just olive oil.

Dr. Kim Baer

No, like the whole lifestyle. So a lot of some patients were like, for instance, soda is a problem. Like if we’re looking at teeth and cavities. That’s like number one.

Dr. Andrew Wong

It’s got to be the worst food for teeth, right? Sodas and phosphoric acid, and all that.

Dr. Kim Baer

So I remember I used to love Diet Coke, back in the day, in dental school, and when I got out of school and I started working people’s teeth, and I started to see these Diet Coke drinkers, their teeth, I remember being like, “Okay, I’m gonna let myself have a diet coke when I go to the movies,” that was the only time I’d let myself get like big diet coke. And then a few years later, I’d go to the movies, get my diet coke, I take one sip out of it. And I was like, “Oh, my gosh, my teeth are killing me.” Psychologically, I couldn’t do it anymore. So I saw so much. So that’s huge. But you know, I have so many holistic, unhealthy patients where it’s not soda, or it’s actually like juice. People think it’s okay.

Dr. Andrew Wong

And juice is not really great metabolically for you anyway. In theory, if they drink it through a straw, though, would that help the teeth?

Dr. Kim Baer

No, because it gets in your saliva. It’s the pH. Okay. Yeah, I mean, you know, it might decrease it a little bit, but still, I would recommend, if you’re going to drink some juice, I’m not anti all juice. But if you’re gonna drink some juice, I would follow that up with some water.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Okay, just to wash it down.

Dr. Kim Baer

And then people think when you’re drinking or eating something acidic, you don’t want to run to the bathroom, brush your teeth. Your teeth are actually very soft at that point. So I would just drink some water.

Dr. Andrew Wong

What about the classic club soda? The orange juice with the seltzer?

Dr. Kim Baer

The problem with that is it’s the pH. It’s the carbonation. Okay, so that’s why diet soda is actually worse than regular soda. Yeah, the pH is even worse. So yeah, it’s just the pH. And because Weston Price was a dentist and he wrote this whole book on nutrition. I think it was called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, I believe origin generation. I have to look at my Amazon cart. He wrote this whole book on nutrition, oral health and went around to all these indigenous societies. And they were like, eating super healthy, whole foods but they were varied on their nutrition. Some people were eating mostly meats, and, even like the blood of animals and things like that. Other people were eating mostly yams and stuff, but it was all like whole foods that they were harvesting locally and all their teeth, apparently from that book here, very famous book, is that these people in tribal cultures who have very healthy oral cavities. So even like, with juice and fruit and stuff, with his research showed, especially in the tropics, they did it seasonally. So like, this fruit was in season for a few months, so they ate a lot of fruit during that, but that was it. We have too much access. We can get pineapple every day of the year. We can get it every day. So it’s just excessiveness.

Dr. Andrew Wong

And it doesn’t allow the body to recover and kind of change with the seasons.

Dr. Kim Baer

One of the things I love about him is he talked about with all this research that there’s this mineral activated or vitamin activator thing and all this research and he wasn’t sure he gave it the name. I think it was “Activator X”, or it was “X”. And he compiled all this research on it that he felt like this thing he called “Activator X,” was the one nutrient that was key to transporting all the ones you really need into your system. And then I think it was in 2008. I can’t remember the researcher but I have it in that book I just gave you, to get together all their research and he proved that this “X” thing was actually K2 and how that was what we needed to transport vitamin D into our skin or bones. So there’s so much research out there on you should have vitamin D with vitamin K. You need it, or else it’s not going to get into your skin and your bones. And they show how in this country, you know, we’re throwing vitamin D at everybody. But where’s the K2 that they need to actually absorb? Why do we have so much osteoporosis in this country? Because what does calcium need to get into your bones? Vitamin K2. Do you know what I mean? Like we’re taking calcium, but we’re not taking K2.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Yes, it’s getting to the arteries instead.

Dr. Kim Baer

Exactly. Yeah. And so I’ve been following this, the Doctor Volz approach. There’s a ton of research out there. He says, if you have your vitamin D and K levels at a certain point, you’ll get it into your teeth, you’ll get into your bones, so you’ll see a decrease in periodontal disease and inflammation. So we’ve been working on this with our patients, and the results have been amazing. You see, even just completely opposite the orthodontic society as seen or if you’re doing orthodontics on patients, you’re moving teeth and stuff. There’s D and K, and you’re getting 30% more bone growth. 30%, which is huge. So because a lot of people lose bone when you start moving teeth and stuff, so this is very important to not just have D to have it with K.

Dr. Andrew Wong

No, I think that’s a great point. Vitamin K, all the vitamins, all the minerals work synergistically with each other. It’s not just like throwing one isolated vitamin out there.

Dr. Kim Baer

Yeah, it’s necessary to have that to pull it over and actually absorb it.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Yeah, that’s a really great point. Yeah, we do try to recommend for people when they take D3, take the K2 in addition to that, as well. How about mouthwash? Everyone’s all into Listerine right now. And all these different mouthwashes. Is mouthwash, good or bad? What does that do to the microbiome?

Dr. Kim Baer

So there are so many options out there. Now, you really want to be careful with that. Like we think more is better. My dad loved Listerine, it burns. But you want something that’s not drying. Because that’s going to destroy your biome and it’s going to destroy your teeth and it destroys the materials we put in your teeth. So clearly alcohol-free, but I think a lot of mouthwashes have caught on to that. You don’t want anything artificial in your mouthwash. You don’t want to be foamy. You don’t want to be blue or red. Okay? All right. Like I don’t know what’s in there. You want something that doesn’t dry your mouth out. So less is definitely more in this arena. It’s crazy. Have you seen that research on people with high blood pressure, they took away their mouthwash and watch their blood pressure just drop?

Dr. Andrew Wong

No, I didn’t. I didn’t.

Dr. Kim Baer

Yeah, at NIH. So because they have no nitric oxide.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Okay, so that might be something. And there are some nitric oxide salivary test strips that we use to look at the NO levels, but it might be interesting to see if they had those low NO levels.

Dr. Kim Baer

So there’s, there’s definitely natural ones out there I like that have essential oils. We have a few at the office, but you can get them in other places. But honestly, I tell my patients the best thing you could probably use is water with like a few little bits of table salt. Because that’s what your cells love. Not sea salt. Table salt.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Okay, so not sea salt like the regular table salt.

Dr. Kim Baer

Do you want Iodide? Yeah. You could put a salt shaker by your toothbrush and fill a cup with water and just go shake, shake. And you would be shocked with how happy your gums would be.

Dr. Andrew Wong

I’m going to try that tonight. But I did like that one that you have in the office. I think it’s called “the dental herbal company one?” That one was so good.

Dr. Kim Baer

Toothing gum? Actually yeah. I had some jaw work done 15 years ago, and I saw a colleague of mine up in Boston, I flew in for the appointment, and I went to his office, and he was a biological dentist. And this was before I actually did my training. And when I was leaving, I went in their bathroom and they had it there in the bathroom and I rinsed with it. And I left his office and I got a plane. I got home and I could still taste in my mouth. It tasted good. And I texted him, was like, “What’s the name of that stuff I used? That’s amazing.” And that’s how we got it.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Yeah, it is. It has great taste. I’ve tasted many types of mouthwash. I mean, it tastes like you’re actually kind of rinsing out with some herbs as opposed to something that’s unnatural blue of color.

Dr. Kim Baer

It’s not drying at all.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Yeah. And what about toothpaste? What kind of toothpaste do you recommend for people?

Dr. Kim Baer

Like fluoride-free and two things: No fluoride and no SLS, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate.

Dr. Andrew Wong

What’s the deal with fluoride and SLS? Why are these so bad for the mouth?

Dr. Kim Baer

Well, we all get way too much fluoride, it’s in our water. We don’t need any extra fluoride. Well, you’re not supposed to ingest it.

Dr. Andrew Wong

We’re already getting fluoride anyway. But should we though, even get fluoride in the water? But that’s a whole another topic, opening up a rabbit hole.

Dr. Kim Baer

We don’t do it anymore here. Now you have enough fluoride. I say no fluoride. And SLS is a stuff they put it in shampoo and soap. And it’s the stuff that makes it family and fuzzy. But you’ll see if you go really high-end, even with hair supplies, they don’t put it in there. Because it’s damaging your hair. It’s dry, and it’s no good for you. It’s very reactive. So it’s in toothpaste. And it takes a little getting used to not having your toothpaste but especially patients who get like canker sores or any kind of even like hepatic lesions like that stuff will make you get more often. It’s very irritating. Your body does not like it.

Dr. Andrew Wong

So the SLS is there to make people buy the product more, essentially it doesn’t have health benefits.

Dr. Kim Baer

Zero. Negative.

Dr. Andrew Wong

That’s important to know, because it’s in all the shampoos and toothpaste, so it must be good, right? But it’s not. Okay. Got it. All right. Well, thank you so much, Kim, for this very enlightening podcast on dentistry, oral health, and how that affects, of course, general health. Let’s we’re gonna have some closing questions that we asked our guests here, which are really amazing. Do you have a morning routine? If so, it could just be watching this funny Netflix show is very random, but it’s called “Awake, and like people are awake for 24 hours.” Watched that yesterday and they’re just rolling up and trying to hit the alarm clock, you know? Yeah. And that was one game. So it was on there. But yeah, do you have any morning routine? And if so, I understand you’re a very early morning person.

Dr. Kim Baer

I’m a morning person. I’m a runner, but actually don’t like to run in the morning. I do have a morning routine. It’s very quick and efficient. Everything’s out and ready to go. The first thing I do is let my dogs out and get some coffee.

Dr. Andrew Wong

So you brush your teeth right after that? Or?

Dr. Kim Baer

I do brush my teeth right after that. Probably before and after.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Nice. I expect that from a holistic dentist.

Dr. Kim Baer

Yes. I know. You shouldn’t do what I do. Just listen to what I say. But um, yeah, no, that’s I have nothing exciting. I listen to NPR. Yeah, there you go.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Well, coffee. I mean, just to get back to that for a second. Coffee is not necessarily. I mean, it’s considered often now. I think what the research like black coffee is considered a health drink.

Dr. Kim Baer

That’s what I tell myself. Yeah, it has chlorogenic acid that reduces blood sugar.

Dr. Andrew Wong

I drink it black. I do put some collagen it’s nice and it makes it less acidic. Yeah. But that’s it. That’s health food.

Dr. Kim Baer

So I just, I just have black coffee with a little bit of collagen in it. No flavoring and nothing like that.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Yeah, I’ve tried it with cinnamon and it actually tastes pretty good.

Dr. Kim Baer

Yeah, sounds good.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Yeah, just add a little sprinkle of cinnamon. What book or podcast are you enjoying the most right now? Maybe include your own podcast?

Dr. Kim Baer

To say I really love the podcast, “The Holistic Vigilantes.”

Dr. Andrew Wong

That’s an amazing name. So you and Dr. Tipograph as well. Yeah. How did you come up with the name? I kind of think about two women on a motorbike.

Dr. Kim Baer

We like to have fun. Because you know, life is about stimulating the vagus nerve. We laugh a lot in our office. We don’t take we take everything seriously, but at the same time, you have a laugh. So we just wanted to have fun. And we thought that’d be a fun name. And if nothing else it would be a good clothing line. Maybe?

Dr. Andrew Wong

Yes, I can see that. It’s like a cutting edge. Yes. That’s great. And what do you do every day to cultivate joy?

Dr. Kim Baer

Such a good question. I don’t have the same thing every day. But there are definitely things probably, spending time with my daughter, I definitely. I like to go home and I go running and I feel like it’s definitely like mental health. And I start off the run. And sometimes I’m working out in my head. Like, I think about things I’m grateful for. Because you run and you go and your life is moving like this. And it’s like, at what point do you really like you have to make yourself stop and think about it. So funny. Like, I’ll be on a run and I’ll be figuring some things out and sometimes I’m really happy and I might cry a little bit and I pass people and I know they’re like, let me come back. Don’t mind me just my therapy. So I’d say I’m running. And then also, I think the volunteer work that we do is actually the most joyous part.

Dr. Andrew Wong

The volunteer trips to Haiti and other volunteer work?

Dr. Kim Baer

I do locally as well. It’s been difficult during COVID. But I feel like every health care provider, everyone should do it really. Because it just reminds you what’s really important. And it puts everything in perspective.

Dr. Andrew Wong

That’s great. Working for the free clinic.

Dr. Kim Baer

So why am I really doing this?

Dr. Andrew Wong

Right. being of service.

Dr. Kim Baer

Exactly. And it’s one of the main things that bring people happiness.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Exactly. It is. Absolutely. Giving back when there’s not anything expected in return. That’s huge. Bringing that joy and purpose to life. And we know that’s part of health. Laughing stimulate the vagus nerve. Now we talk a lot here in our practice about gargling and chanting and singing and that’s great to the vagus, as well. So I’m curious. Do you have any favorite songs that you want to sing at the top of your lungs? Not necessary right now, but just in general.

Dr. Kim Baer

I have some Sia songs with my daughter.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Good. Nice. Yeah. Two-woman band there. Well, Kim, thank you so much. It has been so fun, enlightening, as well. How can listeners learn more about you and work with you as well?

Dr. Kim Baer

Our website. We’re naturaldentalassociates.com.You can find us on the internet. And our podcast, “Holistic Vigilantes,” is on iTunes.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Looking forward to checking out more episodes.

Dr. Kim Baer

Yeah, we’re gonna get you on soon there.

Dr. Andrew Wong

Awesome. Yes. I’m very excited about that.

Dr. Kim Baer

Do you like the animals that we use?

Dr. Andrew Wong

Oh, yes, exactly. Thank you, Dr. Baer. Thank you so much, Kim for joining us. And if you enjoy this conversation, please take a moment to leave us a review. It helps our podcast reach more listeners and thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today.

Dr. Kim Baer

Okay, great. Thank you.