How To Treat Your Child's Teeth Before Birth

Intro:
In the first of its kind dentists-to-patient podcast, you’ll gain incredibly valuable insight into the mouth-body connection. You won’t hear any fluffy filler here. You’ll actually be able to connect the dots. Join us for a worthy jolt of insight on the Total Health Dentistry podcast with Dr. Ali.

Dr. Ali:
Hey everyone. It’s Dr. Ali. In this episode, you’ll gain a worthy jolt of insight about how to treat a child’s teeth before they are born. In the last episode, we started with an introduction into this new 10 part series about what total health dentistry looks like throughout all the stages of life. If you missed the intro as well as the opening five part series, which laid out the framework for what constitutes Total health dentistry, make sure you go back and check out the first five episodes, as it will give this episode and future ones greater context.

So in the last episode we looked at the long-term viewing lens I use to examine my patients. We looked at how exactly this benefits my patients and what the track record of this approach has been over the past decade and counting.

How to treat a child’s teeth before they’re born. There is a cosmic degree of magic in this statement, isn’t it? I’ve only mentioned this title to a few people and each time I do I get the same look. Like what type of medication are you on? And maybe you need to lower the dosage. I assure you I couldn’t be more serious. And the fact that this is such a startling title is telling. Even though we are more preventive than we’ve ever been, we can still do more.

So, okay, so here it is. The growing embryo is getting 100% of its nutrition from mom. If mom eats salmon, baby eats salmon. If mom eats Twinkies, baby eats Twinkies. No judgment. I’ve been through three pregnancies with my lovely wife and her cravings. It’s not about judgment here. We want to look at this. So how to treat a child’s teeth before they born. Well, it’s actually simple. Use mom as the willing transporter of nutrients. And as always a willing transporter of love.  That doesn’t change.

So obviously this is not new information, but it’s an unapologetic focused view on the health of the next generation and I’ve not heard this angle taken before so much in other health communities. So let’s do it here.

At around six weeks in utero, the primary or the baby teeth begin to form. Okay, around six weeks in utero. Suckling starts in the third trimester and right then and there it is creating the proper arch form. Function is causing form to happen and we’re going to come back to that. That’s an awesome topic.

But rather than go into the month-by-month development of the embryo into a fetus and the intricacies of the development month-by-month, something you can look up on your own, anyway. I’d rather focus on key nutrition and lifestyle choices mom can make to the extent that she’s able to help treat her child’s teeth before the child is born.

So while this list is by no means exhaustive, there’s not right, there’s not wrong. These are my three H’s for moms to help treat their baby’s teeth before they’re born.

First H is healthy fats. In a future episode, we will take a deep dive into fats, the good, the bad, and the ugly. But for now I’ll just say that during pregnancy the fetus is just one big bundle of fatty tissue with cell membranes multiplying exponentially. It is an unmatched period of growth for the developing human. It needs fats to fuel the growth.

The whole neural tube is fat. Our brains are all essentially fat.

So what would I recommend for fats? Obviously it has to be, first of all what mom likes and what mom can keep down, right? So barbecue, wild salmon, butter from pasture-raised cows, eggs from pasture-fed chickens, generous amounts of olive oil on salads and dips, ample quantities and servings of avocado, fatty nuts like Brazilian nuts, cashew, macadamia. By the way, these can also be in lattes, like cashew latte, macadamia latte.

All properly soaked of course. And we’re going to discuss more on nuts and how to properly soak nuts in future episodes. And so that’s the first H is healthy fats.

Second H is hydration. Now I know what you’re thinking. It’s fine for him to push hydration when he doesn’t have a 25 pound bowling ball on his bladder. Well I do have two rambunctious boys who jump on my bladder from time to time, but granted it’s not for months at a time. But I digress. Okay, so why is hydration of all things to focus on? Why is it so important? Well, it’s actually a relatively gentle way of detoxing.

Let me explain. If you think about it, if mom passes as much water as she can comfortably per day, she is doing several things. She’s pushing more fluid into her arteries and returning that fluid in her veins and out her kidneys and bladder again. Think of it like a dishwasher.

If there’s dirt on the dishes, will the dishes get cleaner with less water or with more water running through the machine.

More water.

Right. So that’s the first thing. It’s like a gentle sort of detoxification of the system.

Flushing. In cases of excess swelling in the feet, make sure that you treat that swelling at its root cause. Remember, hydration isn’t the culprit for the swelling of the feet. Figure out what it is and treat that and keep up the hydration the best you can. The other benefit of great hydration is a very gentle lymphatic flush.

Again, pushing a good volume of water into the blood and excreting it out over and over, day after day, again has this gentle stimulation on the whole lymphatic drainage system. And hopefully in future episodes we can get some great massage therapists to come on and speak to this a little bit more.

The third H is heavy metals, okay? Heavy metals. Toxic heavy metals are never good, but are to be especially avoided during pregnancy. What are some common toxic heavy metals? Well, one of the most common ones is mercury. Mercury from amalgam silver fillings, for example, is by far the largest source of mercury in most women.

So from the Health Canada website, I’ll just read this, it says, a fraction, and it doesn’t say what the fraction is, but I know that it’s 80%.

So it’s actually a large fraction.

So 80% of the inhaled mercury vapor is absorbed by the lungs and retained by the body. The mercury accumulates in all the body organs and tissues, but mainly in the kidney. With lower amounts in the brain, lung, liver, GI tract, and exocrine glands. Elemental mercury in the blood can also cross the placenta and the blood-brain barrier.

So how do you avoid mercury from amalgam while you’re pregnant? Well, if you have a cavity, make sure you don’t get mercury amalgam filling placed during your pregnancy. If you have a cavity around a mercury filling, consider visiting a dentist who uses some scientific protocols to protect you and baby from mercury absorption.

One place that you can go is the iaomt.org to find a dentist near you who would be maybe trained in some of these scientific protocols. But of course there are other sources of mercury exposure.

Vaccines is one of them. You may want to check the mercury content of the vaccines and make an informed decision surrounding that.

Avoiding tuna is a good idea. Tuna and other higher predatory fish.

Another toxic heavy metal is aluminum. This isn’t as toxic as mercury, but still it’s definitely toxic. Some common daily exposures of aluminum that mom would get are conventional deodorants. Conventional deodorants do contain aluminum. It’s very difficult to find out what percentage, but they’re there. You don’t need a large percentage of aluminum to avoid it. And so conventional deodorants are a great way to get aluminum into your body because you’re sweating and you’re allowing that access. What you can do is look for aluminum-free deodorants.

And they’re available certainly at your local health store. Makeup, mascara, hairsprays, colors, and perms. This is again not meant to be an exhaustive discussion about this, although I think this should be a future episode on that.

Look for conscious salons in your community who are opting out as much of this as possible. And here’s the sleeper, okay? The one that maybe people don’t think about is aluminum foil in cooking.

Do you cook pizza or baked goods or fries in your oven on aluminum foil?  You’re putting pizza on your aluminum. If you’re cooking pizza or fries on your aluminum sheets in your oven, you are eating aluminum.

More on heavy metals in later episodes. And a special sort of deep thoughts episode. And I’ll just maybe prime it here, but if you had to take in a heavy metal poison, how would you take it? Okay. We’re not going to get into that now, but that’s more of a deep thoughts episode we’ll get into later. If you had to take in heavy metal poison, in what way, how would you take it in to be the least harmful to you? Do you know? So that’ll be another episode.

So for now I hope that these three H’s: healthy fats, hydration, and heavy metals have given you some ideas and some action items to go on on how to treat your child’s teeth and development before they’re born. And I hope that this has empowered you to not feel like you have to wait for that baby to be born before you can start treating them for optimal health and optimal overall health, and you can just start treating the baby before they’re born.

Thanks everyone for joining us for this episode. I hope you enjoyed my take on how to treat a child’s teeth before they’re even born. By looking at the three H’s, my three H’s: healthy fats, heavy metals, and hydration. Please join us for the next episode as we begin with birth all the way up until age three.

Legal:
Please note that Dr. Ali Farahani is a general dentist and that Total Health Dentistry is not a specialty of dentistry. While we make every effort to broadcast correct information, dentistry is a constantly changing science and art. One doctor may have a different way of doing things from another. Dr. Ali Farahani is simply presenting his views and opinions that will be as evidenced based as possible. We welcome any comments, suggestions, or corrections of error.

Dr. Ali Farahani takes no money from drug or device companies. By listening to this podcast or reading this blog you agree not to use this podcast or blog as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or others, including, but not limited to patients that you are treating. Consult your own physician for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guests or contributors to the podcast or blog. Under no circumstances shall Sante Family Dental, Dr. A. Farahani Dentistry Professional Corporation or Dr. Ali Farahani, or any of their employees, associates, or affiliates, any of the guests or contributors to the podcast or blog, be responsible for damages arising from use of this podcast or blog.