Website ⁠Wonder of Wellness⁠
Instagram ⁠Biological Dentist⁠

Ahmad (00:00.61)
So yeah, so Seb, we’re not gonna tell your branding team or marketing team that you did this in a caravan. So everyone who’s watching, poor Seb is living in a little caravan while, yeah, while his house is being built. You know what, honestly, I was saying just a second ago. I would love to be in a place where I could build my own house, but it’s a dream. I don’t think it’ll ever happen.

Seb (00:00.802)
Yeah, it’s amazing.

Seb (00:08.27)
No.

Seb (00:13.062)
Try my best.

Seb (00:17.91)
You won’t be able to tell from this perfect view.

Ahmad (00:30.306)
Anyway, so. Hmm. It would also help if I wasn’t suspended from work, but that’s another story. Anyway, listen, I want to ask. Yeah. I want to ask you about, you know, a lot of questions about dentistry and teeth hygiene, everything. I’m going to dive in straight away into the deep end. Right? So I just had a vet on and the podcast came out on Monday. I was like,

Seb (00:30.786)
It helps that I’m in the north, doesn’t it?

Seb (00:39.883)
Oh my gosh.

Seb (00:54.186)
Yeah. Yeah, nice.

Ahmad (00:58.358)
blew my mind how much we don’t know and how much they tell us is absolute garbage. So let’s go straight in. What is it that mainstream dentistry and the orthodoxy tell us is good for us when actually it’s not? Because clearly in this clown world, I’ve realized there’s a lot of things they tell us, which is not true. So do you want to debunk any of them, the dental myths that are out there?

Seb (01:21.647)
Mmm.

Seb (01:26.182)
Well, it’s not even just telling us, is it? It’s completely indoctrinated to us, even in dental school, middle school. We’re taught evidence-based science and things ultimately science is paid for. And it’s, gosh, I mean, the thing is, you can even hear and watch things on the Netflix series. I mean, one of the best ones for me ever was House of Cards. And you just look at how corrupt the whole thing is. And it’s just so plain to see.

from whatever decisions are being made. It’s never the president or the prime minister who’s making the decisions. It’s the influences, the external influences that are happening on those at the time, isn’t it? And I think what’s really illuminating now is not to get into politics, but you know, the whole Robert Kennedy Jr. thing, and he’s just completely showing a different light on, well, he’s the first person campaigning that’s ever spoke about this, I think, that in my lifetime anyway, that it just thinks that

of us like people that think slightly differently are actually gratified and like, oh maybe we’re not crazy. Maybe we do live in this world that is kind of tied to favouring the wealth and favouring the research that can be paid by the wealth. So yeah but I think the world is definitely shifting and for me in dentistry, gosh where do you start? Like I think ultimately yeah.

Ahmad (02:51.931)
I dunno.

Seb (02:54.674)
ultimately dentistry has been…

Seb (03:01.058)
focus of dentistry probably for, I don’t know, a couple of hundred years, it’s just been saving the teeth at any cost and allowing the person to function and not thinking about the health of the person during that phase. So I guess originally, you know, I mean to be fair, you are taught that sugar causes decay, right?

very tip of the iceberg, but what you’re not talking about is all of the lack of metabolic processes going on in the body because of the overriding of refined sugar, that the teeth aren’t being fed. You’re taught that teeth are just there, the enamel is just there, it’s not repairable when actually everything is repairable from the inside out and then the outside in from your saliva from a tooth’s perspective. You’re taught that the only way to strengthen teeth is through fluoride toothpaste and yes of course it does strengthen teeth.

But is it the only way? No. Can you use more natural products? Yes. You’re taught that root canals save the teeth when they’re not. The teeth are dead. Most people that come into the office don’t know that their root canal, well, more and more of that’s not happening now with social media and people being aware of things. But when I first started, it was really about, oh, well, I’ve got a root canal and that means my tooth’s dead, that I’ve got a dead tooth in my body. Most people are like, ah, that’s strange. Most…

Ahmad (04:09.934)
Thank you.

Seb (04:26.802)
Dentists still believe that the only posterior back of the mouth material to use is amalgam, which is 53% mercury, which is toxic to the human body. When it’s not true at all, I’ve been placing, even in my dental school, I’ve only placed three of them and that’s because I kind of had no choice in those situations. But none of my feelings have been failing and that’s because we’re not looking at all of the…

other aspects to what causes filling to fail, the whole body health, the airway health, things that put pressures on teeth, imbalance of the bite, you know, so there’s so many each, I guess we can dive into each of those points but it’s basically the whole spectrum of dentistry, there’s an alternative or there’s a natural or a functional or just a normal way of looking at things, but yeah it’s…

have to undo, I think, or relearn. I always say to my patients that the standard education for all of us that we get in the UK is like average. If you want to excel in anything you have to look at more and you have to take have a passion in something. You have to want to live, learn, breathe it and focus on it right and I’m sure you’re the same.

Ahmad (05:48.67)
Yeah, yeah. 100%. I mean, I think, you know, I’m just constantly in a journey of learning and there’s so little that I know. I’m just like, what? Like even now when you’re just talking, I’m like, okay, I know some of those things, like what are the other things you’re talking about? I think also, you’re quite similar. Even though you’re like on one end of the body and I’m on the other end, I’m in the foot and ankle, you’re down at the teeth end.

Seb (06:13.216)
Yeah, exactly.

Ahmad (06:16.542)
I think we’re both kind of holistic in the sense that I don’t look at a foot and ankle problem in isolation and go, right, what’s wrong with that fifth little toe on the right? You know, I look at the whole body because I realize we are a complete being. We are, you know, everything’s interrelated and linked and what you eat, what you, how you sleep, your stress, what impact your feet. And likewise, I think it’s the same with what you’re saying, like

You can’t just look at your teeth in isolation and not look at the breathing patterns, not look at the diet and the nutrition. And all of this, how you sleep, all of this is related to dental. And we don’t, I don’t know for dental med school, I think we are very much. You know, pigeonholed and we think in isolation in different parts and we don’t look at the whole, we don’t join the dots. And I think that’s one of the big failings, but you know, do you think there’s a, like in medicine, I really think big pharma.

Seb (06:51.567)
No.

Ahmad (07:12.418)
has a very unhealthy influence on the curriculum and on research, on funding, on sponsorships, and on the literature, the journals. It’s really kind of quite corrupt now and unhealthy. Is it similar in the dental world? Is there that kind of influence from companies?

Seb (07:37.686)
Of course there is, yeah. Just look at the toothbrush. So the industry of the toothbrushes, it says that the best researched toothbrush and the only one that is 99% effective is the Oral-B, you know, the twist and push one. That’s the most effective of clearing all of the plaque.

Whereas I’ve always used an ultrasonic because it’s more gentle on the gum line. It just feels better in the mouth and you feel like your teeth are cleaner at the end. And what have they gone and done in the last couple of years, or will be have made their own ultrasonic, but it’s got a little twist and push on it. So it’s still twist and push. And all the research before that said that was the most effective one. I mean, that’s one tiny thing, isn’t it? There’s, you know, all the research into like, there’s a web, there’s a whole, um,

community of dentists and probably functional doctors and whoever else is joining called the International Association of Medical Toxicology and they look at everything research-wise from the fluoride from in the water from into the toothpaste and you should go on and see their system systemic systematic reviews and their meta analysis that they’ve got it’s like the highest of the high literature and research

but it’s not published anywhere apart from their journals and it’s not accepted anywhere. And when I, sometimes I get people reaching out and said, I can’t believe you’re not recommending, you’re not recommending fluoride. I said, I’m not recommending fluoride. It’s up to the person what they do. I’m just giving alternatives to that. And my favorite is hydroxyapatite because our teeth are hydroxyapatite. That’s the crystalline structure. Our bones are hydroxyapatite. So if you’re going to want to restore them naturally is…

chemical free as possible. Obviously diet, nutrition, all the other things we touched on earlier, but the localized effect is putting the same mineral back onto the tooth that’s gonna help remineralize it and reduce the acid attack. And it’s water soluble, it goes into your blood, it doesn’t form calcifications in soft tissue. So yeah, there’s so many different little, but yes, the answer is yes, I do agree that it is. But I’m seeing more and more conscious companies

Seb (09:51.114)
striving and pushing forward. Like for example we’ve just changed in our clinic the cleaning, disinfection, prevention protocols and we’re using hyperchlorous solution which is completely non-toxic to humans to breathe in anything like that and all that is salt water with electrolysis and it lasts for seven days, highly concentrated and you spray it, it doesn’t smell of anything.

Ahmad (10:16.919)
Amazing

Seb (10:20.642)
people don’t get headaches anymore in our clinic. And you know, they’re the things that you need to look at. And a bit of what weird story that was invented to clear the Coca-Cola lines out between batches because it was quicker than warm water.

Ahmad (10:32.814)
Wow. Yeah. I mean, I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom. I think there’s a growing movement of people who are just starting to realize what’s healthy. And it’s funny. I had Jeff Webster from Hunter Gather Foods here and he went, ah, chickens, hey, gateway to conspiracy theories. And I was like, okay, but no, I,

Seb (10:41.548)
Yeah.

Seb (10:48.803)
Yes.

Ahmad (10:57.71)
I don’t think it’s just chickens. I think it’s a little journey that we all go on and, and people who are really keen to discover their health. And one of the first things, you know, you do is you go, Hey, I’m not really sure about these vaccines. It’s all a bit weird. And what’s that all about? Then you go, Hmm, what’s with the seed oils? Wow. It’s an industrial lubricant, not known to the human diet 150 years ago. I don’t know if I want that inflammatory toxic substance. Then you go.

Seb (11:13.231)
Mmm.

Seb (11:17.923)
Mmm.

Seb (11:23.03)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (11:26.634)
Hmm, what’s with the fluoride in the toothpaste? So I was doing this at home and I was saying to my wife, oh, I think we need to go fluoride free toothpaste. And she was like, why? And I was like, cause it’s not good for us. And she was like, show me the literature. You know, she’s a doctor. And I’ll be honest with you, I was really struggling. And I was like, baby, you know what it’s like? The research, you can get any paper you want to justify any position you want and it’s corrupt.

Seb (11:44.531)
Mmm.

Seb (11:51.027)
Mmm.

Ahmad (11:55.89)
and maybe they’re just not publishing the research. And I just went, look at fluoride. It’s not a chemical that’s found in the body in any physiological process. No enzyme, no protein, no nothing. It’s toxic. It’s a toxic byproduct of aluminium production. Hey, guess what? They had all this fluoride, didn’t know what to do with it, and then they were like putting it in toothpaste. And then I was like, look at the back of the packet. It says, do not ingest. If you do, contact your local toxic poison center. I mean like.

Seb (12:08.451)
Exactly.

Seb (12:12.439)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (12:25.334)
There’s nothing. It just doesn’t make sense. And then she was kind of like, OK, let’s look at something else. But like, she’s on board now, totally. But then it’s like the next thing was like, maybe we shouldn’t use sunscreen, you know, because that’s got chemicals. And you know, it’s just one thing what I’m trying to say. And then you go like, I’m not going to drink tap water anymore. Tap water is not good for you. And it’s just I think.

Seb (12:41.015)
Yeah.

Seb (12:46.927)
Yeah.

Ahmad (12:49.066)
when people start going down this journey, they just start asking questions and looking into every aspect of their life. And once you do that, you never go back, you know? So that’s why I think more and more people know, know. So can we focus on a little bit on the fluoride thing quickly and move on? So there are lots of different fluoride-free toothpaste, and I use a few of them.

Seb (12:58.958)
No, I don’t think you can.

Seb (13:08.419)
Mm.

Seb (13:13.452)
Yeah.

Ahmad (13:16.022)
Do you think they’re okay, they’re good, or do you just recommend the Hydroxyapatite toothpaste? And is there any kind of brand that you would recommend?

Seb (13:26.747)
I… yeah there’s not loads in the UK. In fact the only one in the UK that’s manufactured and done in the UK is one called Dimples and it’s from a dentist up here actually and she created it maybe a year ago so she’s been on her journey trying to market that in the UK but that’s a positive thing. I use any toothpaste which has hydroxyapatite in it. There’s there’s a whole varying degree of toothpaste and

good they are for the body because there’s always something in the toothpaste that’s a little bit of a negative effect like the glycerin where it doesn’t it coats like the tooth and doesn’t allow the surfactants to go onto the tooth and the minerals to bind to it. So I always say the main key ingredient is hydroxyapatite and anything else to remove all of the other things is a bonus. I have patients coming in and all they do is brush their teeth with salt.

salt and a bit of water and that’s what they do. The mechanical action of removing the plaque is the most important thing right and then it’s all of the other stuff that you do to support the microbiome within the mouth such as your prebiotics and your probiotics and your whole foods with fibers within them and well so much so. I don’t brush my teeth in the morning, I coconut oil

Ahmad (14:50.402)
So you do what, sorry, coconut what?

Seb (14:54.758)
coconut oil pulling. That’s what I do in the morning.

Ahmad (14:58.85)
Pulling.

Seb (15:00.39)
Yeah, but yes. So you put a teaspoon of coconut oil in the mouth and you swish it around for about…

Well, they say 20 minutes, but I do it for any time before that. And I’m normally out doing my exercise, going for a little quick run, taking their dog out for a quick walk while I’m breathing through my nose, because it’s reinforcing the nasal breathing at the same time, and you’re literally just going.

with your tongue, pushing your tongue up and back and side to side and then pulling it back through once it’s pushed through. And that is not only for the balance of the mouth, it also coats the teeth, so not allow loads of plaque and it’s got like this bacteria static effect. So it doesn’t just kill everything like a napalm strike. It kind of creates an unfavorable environment for the

bad bugs to live and it favors the good but like you know that dynamic equilibrium that we’re all taught in chemistry it pushes it towards the positive side slightly more.

Ahmad (16:03.704)
Yes.

Ahmad (16:07.654)
Wow, fascinating. I might try that. And that kind of makes sense because at night, at night you’ve brushed your teeth, so you got rid of all the debris, all your food products. So overnight, it’s not like suddenly there’s like physical material in your mouth. So that makes sense. Coconut oil. Right, there you go, I learned something new.

Seb (16:12.454)
try it.

Seb (16:23.97)
No. Exactly.

Coconut oil, sesame oil, they’re the two medicinal oils that have those like anti-microbial slash properties. I always scrape my tongue as well. So I use a copper scraper, the first thing I do in the morning, you stick your tongue out and you scrape the debris off of the tongue to clear it because you detox at night.

Obviously we’ll probably come into it later, but mouth taping and nasal breathing while you sleep is super important So that saliva that process in the mouth can remineralize the teeth because if you’re mouth breathing all night, you’re drying out your teeth you’re not allowing them to Rebuild and also when you mouth breathe you’re more likely to clench your teeth Which then means you’re smashing and breaking the enamel as well. So double whammy

Ahmad (17:18.818)
So you use a copper, copper what?

Seb (17:23.75)
It’s called a copper tongue scraper.

Ahmad (17:26.574)
Okay, I’ll look that up as well. I’m learning all this new stuff. This is amazing. Okay, fine, and I’ll start with my kids as well. So what about toothbrushes? Like, you know, normal standard toothbrush with the bristles, are they any good? Is it better to have like the battery-powered swishy-ran ones or like you said, this ultrasonic thing? Ultrasonic sounds expensive. I mean, people like me can’t afford the expensive things right now. What do you recommend?

Seb (17:49.036)
Mmm.

Seb (17:55.191)
it is um i mean to be fair a student and his mentor have created an ultrasonic toothbrush which has red light blue light in the bristles so when you’re brushing your teeth the uv light is killing the bacteria that’s the bacteriocidal effect and then you’ve got the red light that is um

providing this photo biomodulation positive effect to the gums, the gingivy, the ligaments to reduce inflammation. So I think it’s absolutely fascinating and that toothbrush I think is like a hundred pounds which is still a lot of money but you’re getting more than just a toothbrush and it’s got the ultrasonic action so that is my pinnacle, my favourite ones but if you compare that to like Phillips it’s called bristle so B R I S T

Ahmad (18:42.43)
What’s it called?

Seb (18:49.398)
LTL, I don’t think there’s an E on the end. It’s amazing. And I think, yeah, I’ll send you all the details and stuff when I send across my things later to you as well. And he’s been going for like a year now and I’ve been heavily supporting him on his journey. And I just think that, why would you not want to harness these extra technologies to brush your teeth at the same time? And I’ve honestly, some of the biggest gum disease patients we’ve had.

after brushing their teeth, it’s with that for a couple of months, it’s completely shifted the inflammatory reaction that’s happening within the gums themselves, just from the red light and the… Obviously they’re going to be doing other things, they come and see us, but you know it’s massive, we’ve noticed the difference between our protocols before and then when we started using this.

Ahmad (19:39.254)
Now, you know what? I’m totally on board. I’m fascinated by all this stuff. So I had this podcast with someone called Jack Cruz, who’s a neurosurgeon, and he was talking about how we are beings of light and magnet, oh, you know, and you know, light, magnet and water. And he was talking about internal photons and internal light. We create light within us. It’s pulling my brain. I’ll be honest with you, I was sitting there doing this podcast. I didn’t know what to ask him because I had no freaking idea what he was saying. I need to go back and listen to that podcast.

Seb (19:48.312)
Love him.

Yes.

Seb (19:57.604)
Yeah.

Seb (20:01.198)
Yeah.

Ahmad (20:08.93)
So the idea of red light and stuff and totally I’m on board. So another thing, my wife used to love her mouthwash. Frish frish frish. And I used to look at it and go, well, it smells weird. It looks like a funny chemical. You can guess in our household, I’m the skeptic, okay? And, but my wife is great. She’s fully on board with everything now. I love watching her journey, by the way, from what are you talking about to, mmm.

Seb (20:19.723)
Yeah.

Seb (20:29.544)
Yeah.

Seb (20:36.29)
Nice.

Ahmad (20:38.338)
great, yeah, let’s look into this. So that’s been amazing. But she used to love her mouthwash. And I used to just think, this is some weird toxic chemical. And you just look at the ingredients and you’re like, what the hell? And the idea of that napalm like you just described and destroying your whole biome in your mouth, I just thought was terrible. What’s with the mouthwash? Is there any good mouthwash? Or should we just stick to what you just said with the coconut oil and the sesame oil?

Seb (20:56.462)
Mmm.

Seb (21:01.254)
Hmm

Seb (21:08.646)
That’s personally what I do. There are better mouthwashes and the whole, the whole belief system is the germ theory compared to the terrain theory, right? And I’m heavily in the terrain theory, fix the balance of the body, the mineral balance in the body, the balance of the bugs living within your body, keep them happy, keep them fed, keep them watered and nourished, and they’ll be the ones that support you. And mouthwashes are the opposite. Germ theory, they destroy everything with the napalm strike.

Ahmad (21:19.194)
Mm.

Seb (21:37.59)
So I’m just not a fan at all of any of the conventional ones. It’s even been proven now that the Corsidil, which is the one that they prescribe for gum disease, raises your blood pressure because it destroys the bacteria in your mouth that produce nitric oxide, which relax and vasodilate your blood vessels. So it’s just not even worth it. So I have a mouthwash. My mouthwash is an essential oil mouthwash. Some people still believe essential oil mouthwashes are…

bit like that, too aggressive. I have not found that, I’ve got no dental disease, I’ve got nothing like that. Obviously there’s loads of other factors but my what I tend to do is my morning routine is the tongue scraping, teaspoon of coconut oil, a drop of capybara essential oil because that’s been shown to destroy target the strep mutans which are the ones that cause dental disease and the porphyrmonous gingivalis which are the ones that cause gum disease.

And I swish my mouth around with that for 10 minutes, spit it into the bin, never into the sinks, it blocks sinks. And then I use a little bit of that mouthwash just to, just because the mouthwash pulls all of the oil out and then you spit it down, get the, get the feeling out of your mouth. And then I use my probiotic, um, which is, I use this super teeth one, which has got the three strains of bacteria that promotes oral health. Um, so that’s my kind of routine in the morning.

And then of course at night time you go into the normal in between your teeth cleaning, brushing your teeth, all of those little bits.

Ahmad (23:11.842)
So that thing that you used just after the coconut wash, what was that thing you said that extracts all the oils out?

Seb (23:20.554)
It’s so I there’s not really one brand that I use. I use a few. There’s one called bioseidin and it’s dentoseidin mouthwash. It’s a really good brand from America and the one that I use is doTERRA. And it’s just the essential oil on guard mouthwash. doTERRA also have hydroxyapatite toothpaste as well. So that was my first hydroxyapatite toothpaste I ever found.

because I use the essential oils anyway in the clinic and in at home and we then went so my going back to the you know the toothpaste question my absolute favorite toothpaste of all time it’s so expensive it’s like 30 pounds for a little tub like that but it has it probably lasts maybe one person two months but it’s just it’s called Auralite and it’s from a company called Master

and it’s got like fossilized minerals in it, it’s got CBD, like it’s got frankincense oil in it, it’s got myrrh in it, it’s got all of these amazing compounds for the mouth but it’s so expensive so I normally mix up and do one night that, one night the other.

Ahmad (24:36.694)
Well, well, the idea of having broken up dinosaurs in my mouth sounds great. Anyway, um.

You know, I want to talk about some other things because it’s absolutely fascinating. Dental health, you know, we talk about dental health and how it impacts the rest of your body. You know, um, mouthwash, if you destroy the biome in your mouth, how that can cause havoc in your body. I mean, you know, dental health is intrinsically linked to heart disease, for example. You know, heart disease, heart blood pressure, mitral valve disease, all this kind of stuff. I don’t think people realize

Seb (24:47.014)
That’s right, isn’t it?

Seb (25:08.425)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (25:14.51)
how important the mouth is for your whole total body health, particularly cardiac health. Do you know why is it that poor dental hygiene is an issue when it comes to things like heart disease?

Seb (25:30.978)
I had, well, okay, let’s start at the very basic level of the systemic links. And even when I was at dental school, they were even showing us then that if you have gum disease, which is leaky, bleeding gums, the bacteria in your mouth, if it’s the wrong type of bacteria. And of course the whole mouth, I mean, the way of thinking about it is if your mouth and stuff is bleeding, normally you’ve got the wrong bugs, the wrong balance within your body, cause something’s not happy. That’s the way that I look at things. So you’ve got to try and get to why.

It’s not happy and change lifestyle, not just oral care. Um, and when you get bugs going into the, um, bloodstream directly from the gums, your body’s got to have an immune reaction to, to quell it and then get it out. And sometimes what happens is it gets stuck on the walls, it caught, then your body protects it and it forms these plaques and then obviously they can dislodge and then go somewhere else in the body and cause either, obviously, um,

heart problems, cardiac breathing problems, brain problems, depending where the clot ends up. I had a crazy story this week that it was, I’ve got to remember it properly, but it was, I think I shared it on my social media. I did. It was this…

Okay, so that’s the gums and I’ve just remembered the exact story, so I’ll get into that because it’s a little bit further. That’s what normal dentists, even most of them, should be preaching now because that is what we’re taught. That is evidence-based now. So the other thing when I was at uni, we were doing cadaver work and the person that I was working with that day, I was talking about Alzheimer’s and I was talking about the amyloid plaques and this, that and the other.

And we had someone come and lecture to us that was saying that her research now is within dental microbes in the amyloid plaques in the brain. So it’s even causing things like Alzheimer’s dementia. The other side of dementia is the vascular side, isn’t it, where the blood flow is restricted to the brain. And I personally believe, my intuition is, the people that have the vascular dementia are the people that do not get a good sleep. And if they’ve not…

Ahmad (27:41.588)
Yeah. Mm-hm.

Seb (27:50.562)
already had cardiovascular problems from the sympathetic system over-activation at night time with the sleep apnea, they have lack of blood flow to the brain because it’s trying to protect it when you’re not breathing correctly at night time. That’s my theory on collapsible airways at night time and vascular dementia too. But going back to that crazy story that I heard, it was a dentist in America that shared that her patient was super, super healthy.

and he was like, had a farm, grew his own food, lived off the land, like he was the pinnacle of health to her, and he had, when they did, then he died in the autopsy, went into things, they asked, because she was a patient, they said can we look at the jawbone and analyse the jawbone, what happened was, where the teeth had been removed, he had four teeth removed, and I think it was wisdom teeth that had been removed.

and each of the wisdom tooth areas had an inflammatory cyst within the jawbone and the same bugs when they biopsied that were found in the heart clock. So it was just wow. The heart attack was caused or associated with the bugs that were found within the jawbone. And they’re the undiagnosed things, the un-painful things, no signals. And that’s what we’re not looking for as dentists at all in the UK.

Ahmad (29:00.674)
Wow.

Ahmad (29:04.663)
Yes.

Wow.

Seb (29:15.298)
And it’s quite hard to diagnose because it doesn’t show up on an x-ray really, it doesn’t really show up on a 3D scan. So we have to do other means of testing, like blood testing, like ultrasound testing, like bone density scanning, that will actually show these for our patients.

Ahmad (29:30.89)
Yeah, wow. I mean, yeah, I knew there’s a link between the math and the heart. And I think that’s why people really need to pay attention to their math just for their general health and fitness. I mean, there’s a reason why I think what is it, you know, people who buy horses and camels look at their teeth, they look at the animal’s teeth because you know what I mean? You know, you know, I’ve seen these Arab Bedouins.

Seb (29:55.863)
They do.

Ahmad (29:57.086)
looking at the camel’s teeth and the camel doesn’t look very impressed as its gums are being pulled left and right. And it’s because everybody knows like even these Arab Bedouins that you know if the animal’s teeth are healthy that animal is healthy. And it shocks me how many people I meet and they’ve got fillings galore and you know you open your mouth and you can just see it all. And it’s kind of sad you know. I didn’t tell you this story but

because we’ve been talking backwards and forwards and on social media, but I’m quite old. I’m 48. I think I was when I was 20, I was a med student and I went to see my dentist just for a checkup. He said, son, I’ve been treating you for several years now. He’s like a family dentist. He was like, I know you’re going into med school. You’re going to be a doctor. Let me give you one piece of advice. Stay away from dentists. I was like, what? He goes,

I’m retiring, the whole system’s changing. They all just want to get money from every intervention and filling. Your teeth are great, you don’t have any fillings. Just keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll be just fine. I mean, what about a checkup and cleaning and scraping, but nah. And that was like, what a shock. And you know, since then, I’ve been to a dentist, I think twice, just for a checkup. And they keep saying to me, wow, who’s been looking after your teeth?

Seb (31:13.808)
you

Ahmad (31:22.474)
Like, where did you go before? I’m like, me? They’re kind of shocked. Now, you might say that’s bad advice and you should go and see a dentist. But I’m just I’m just telling you that what this dentist who was retiring, telling me like ages ago, just stay away because the industry has changed and they will be doing too much intervention. And I don’t know if that resonates with you, but it was kind of sad hearing this from, you know, my dentist at the time.

Seb (31:37.69)
Hmm

Seb (31:51.15)
100% resonates with me. My goal is that all of my patients don’t have to come and see me or my team anymore and they just come for a check and we just tell them fine, no work. I, when I, my new patient consultations consist of so much stuff that normal dentistry doesn’t look for and even if I found everything on you right and I was like right this is you know these are all the things I’m finding or we can improve I always say but you’re fit, you’re healthy.

Ahmad (31:54.605)
Ahem.

Seb (32:21.274)
You know, you don’t need to do anything. It’s just my advice based on what I think. And here’s a bit of the latest research that I found, go away, read this book, listen to this podcast, do this, do that. And then they come back and say, Oh no, that does resonate with me. And I’m feeling a drive to do that type of dentistry. And even in my perfect way of working, there’s, um, you know, you get the gums healthy first, you remove the decay, you get the body right, you remove the mercury and the metals from the mouth. You then do the surgery. You remove the

root canals and you remove the infections from the jawbone at the same time as all of that in parallel you’re stabilizing the airway that’s my average thing but if someone’s coming to me and they’re like Seb this tooth came out 15 years ago I’ve had pain there ever since I know it’s damaging my body I can feel it the throbbing every time I get ill it flares up and it comes back down I don’t I say that that’s what I would advise in that period and that way of doing things but they say no I just need to do that now I say okay that’s

know it’s your mouth, I’ve advised against it but you get to make the decisions. I’m not telling you what to do here, I’m just providing you a bit of my expertise because this is my passion, this is my love right?

Ahmad (33:28.722)
Yeah, so I try and discharge patients as quickly as possible and I never tell people what to do. I just advise them. I had a patient who I saw yesterday in one of the hospitals I can still work out of and she had an achilles tendon rupture and I don’t tell them whether you should have surgery or not. I just tell them the options. This is non-optive treatment, this is optative treatment. These are the pros, these are the cons and you need to go away and do your research and come back and tell me what you think.

Seb (33:46.613)
Mmm.

Ahmad (33:58.498)
bring back people routinely. And I said, look, if there’s a problem, you know where I am, come and see me. I think there’s an over, you know, medicalization, over, you know, seeing patients and rebooking them in just unnecessarily and treating them unnecessarily. There’s a patient who I saw as well yesterday, I had three patients yesterday, woohoo! My clinic numbers, I used to see roughly 20 patients a week, now I’m seeing three a week, great.

Anyway, this other patient came and saw me and had been seen by another surgeon who’s retired and they’ve got this condition and they were treated with six injections, like yearly injections and the condition doesn’t respond to these injections. I mean, just think about it. If it worked, you wouldn’t need another injection. But this patient just kept going back and getting these injections and scans and saying, you know, my surgeon’s retired now, can I come to you for this? And I was like, you don’t need it.

Seb (34:47.106)
We need it now, yeah, exactly.

Ahmad (34:57.45)
If you reverse your diabetes, if you stop drinking alcohol, stop going to bed at two in the morning, this problem will go away of its own. And maybe you’ll also stop yourself getting cancer and heart disease. And it was like, for that patient, I was like, wow. I was like, yeah, what you don’t need is me just injecting you every year. Yeah, it’ll be great for me. Send you for a scan, get you an injection, see you again. Great business for me, excellent businessman, but I’ll be a really bad and unethical surgeon. So.

Seb (35:05.202)
Mm-hmm.

Seb (35:12.116)
Yeah.

Ahmad (35:27.482)
I think more doctors and dentists need to kind of practice in a way that’s in their patients’ interest, not in their pocket. And I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of cynical. I think too many people think like that, where, you know, let’s just get the repeat business. Anyway, can I move on back to things like plaques and gum disease a little bit before we talk about airways and jaw development and mouth breathing, nose breathing, because we’ve got those kind of things to talk about. What is a plaque?

Seb (35:27.757)
Mm-hmm.

Seb (35:44.079)
Yeah.

Seb (35:48.528)
Mmm.

Seb (35:55.426)
course.

Ahmad (35:56.875)
What is a plaque?

Seb (36:00.166)
The plaque is a combination of a salivary pellicle, which is like glucose-y type stuff from your own body, which kind of like forms a layer on the tooth. And then you have like the bugs and foods and stuff stuck to it. Like, but when I say bugs, I mean like bacteria, viruses, anything that’s in the mouth that will be wanting to hide out. And then it forms like a…

a biofilm, that’s the word I’m looking for. And the biofilm is like this self, it’s really quite amazing actually. Let’s just say you had a ball of these bugs, the ones on the outside would be the super strong ones and the ones on the inside would be the ones that needed protection but produced like food for the rest of the group and stuff. So it’s like this commensal internal like ball that sticks and moves around the mouth or in the body, you know, wherever it is. And it’s one of the hardest things to break up. So…

We actually do, you know, when you’re talking about the cleaning and the scraping and stuff, our hygiene team don’t do that. We do obviously the brushing, the cleaning, the normal stuff with the oral hygiene at home for patients, the first focus, and then only when their oral hygiene’s good and their plaque levels are down, do we do the maintenance. And our maintenance is actually just disruption of the biofilm through not scraping, unless it’s hard stuff, obviously. But it’s like a spray.

called guided biofilm therapy and that removes like the big builds up of bugs and disrupts the microbiome. Remember we’re talking about pushing it back to the positive way, breaking up, dispersing it, removing it from the mouth. And yeah so you’ve got the soft plaque which is the stuff that is the biofilms really and then you’ve got the harder calculus, Tata, which is my belief when the

Seb (37:56.838)
then that then because it’s got bugs and minerals in it your body actually mounts an immune response to it and it says you need to get out my mouth but can’t move anywhere because it’s stuck to the teeth and then your bone levels start reducing because it’s like a vicious circle your body starts attacking itself it’s almost like an autoimmune disease gum disease so that’s what you don’t want

Ahmad (38:05.358)
Mmm.

Ahmad (38:20.778)
So you get the plaques first, the bacteria, the biofilm, and then you get the resulting gum disease, which is your body’s response to that. Is that right?

Seb (38:30.094)
and the plaque normally turns into calculus when it’s stuck onto the teeth with the minerals. And then the body tries to fight off through the gums with all of its like immune cells, but at the same time, the collateral damages the bone of the body. So then it destroys some bone and then the gums recede. And then there’s other factors in there as well. Like if you’re clenching your teeth, your ligament system will be wobbling while it’s happening, so it will destroy it quicker.

Ahmad (38:37.336)
Mm.

Seb (38:59.85)
Yeah, it’s a real thing.

Ahmad (39:02.958)
How do you reduce the amount of plaque then that your body makes?

Seb (39:09.778)
I think it’s a bit like fibre, you know, like, yeah.

Ahmad (39:12.662)
Because can I quickly say something? I… So the, sorry, the plaque in my teeth, I used to find that I needed to get a little metal scraper thing and scrape every day, a massive buildup. But about four or five years ago, I started intermittent fasting, reduced my sugar intake, I reversed my diabetes. And now I hardly ever have to do that. It’s like once a fortnight. Like I’ve got a lot less plaque than I used to, but I don’t actually know why.

Seb (39:38.095)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (39:44.735)
Is there something that causes a plaque and is there ways to reduce the plaque?

Seb (39:51.438)
I personally believe, there’s not a huge amount of science on this, I personally believe that the plaque is always going to be there in your mouth and it’s actually about having a good plaque, a plaque that supports remineralisation of teeth which has been proven as well. And the foods that we eat, if it’s refined, you know like you’re saying with sugars, it means the bugs can go crazy because they can digest it super quick in the mouth, no problem at all.

Whereas using whole foods, the bacteria in the mouth can’t break down that quick enough. So then it actually, the mechanism of eating then isn’t feeding the bugs, the bad bugs, it’s kind of feeding the body and it’s acting as fiber to wash away whatever’s in there and carry it through the system. And I feel like there’s other factors like mouth breathing. Mouth breathing causes more plaque.

staining build-up because you imagine your saliva that is in the mouth washing things around just keeping the bugs in balance is being dried, evaporated, it’s not getting to the same places and that’s of course true for people that are on medications that have low saliva flow and or even just don’t produce so much saliva because they’ve had surgery on one of the glands or something so then you have to be even more careful with maintaining oral hygiene.

and balancing the system. But yeah, I there’s no exact answer. But my belief is that there’s so many multifactorial little factors that build into that really and cause some dysregulation. But you’re a perfect case study, right? You change your diet, change your nutrition, change your balance of your metabolic state. Then of course, you’re even things in the mouth are obvious. You’d be a good camel to look at now.

Ahmad (41:43.51)
Maybe. Yeah. Um, it’s amazing because honestly my, um, my plaque things, it’s not a problem ever, you know, just hardly ever. Um, and now I think, so what about flossing? So when, when I did floss, I used to find that the stupid thing is to catch my teeth is for nightmare. My gums would bleed sometimes is flossing good or bad.

Seb (41:44.71)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Seb (42:10.854)
I personally only advise flossing between canine to canine because that’s really about the morphology of the tooth structure. So the front six teeth on the top and bottom, they have roots that are single rooted and they go straight up. So floss can get in and up the root easily, right? So it’s going to pull the stuff out each side. When you start going

Seb (42:39.234)
much more roots and it’s got like these little dints in them and stuff. So if you’re flossing down that groove, you’ve got space that you’re not even getting. So you’re leaving stuff on the tooth anyway. The other side of it is you have to be pretty skilled, pretty dexterous to do flossing, especially at the back of the mouth, because it’s just hard. So especially if you’ve got wisdom teeth back there too, there’s just no chance of people being able to do that. So I always recommend flossing from the front.

K9 to K9, upper and lower, and then behind that, I don’t even use the metal brushes because they poke the gums, they make them bleed. For me, it’s all about reduction in inflammation, and we can do that ourselves. And if we’re doing that ourselves every night, then it’s not a good thing. So I use something called like an Easy Pick. It’s like a, it looks like a toothpick, but it’s silicon and it’s got little bubbles on it. And it just, those little bubbles just push things through the teeth. And I do that right before bed, through all the teeth.

I actually don’t even personally floss between the front K9 to K9, I just use those little picks, but some people have to floss because the teeth are too tight at the front. Mine get fit through easy enough and I feel like it can get a good result there.

Ahmad (43:51.118)
Okay, what about the weight? Yeah.

Seb (43:51.607)
Also…

Seb (43:56.124)
I was going to say flossing. The right, the wrong floss has plastics, BPAs in it, estrogen and mimicking compounds. So if you are flossing, make sure you get a natural one.

Ahmad (44:08.462)
Of course, makes sense. Bloody hell, estrogen like, oh my God. And I was gonna say, what about the best technique to brush your teeth? So, you know, I’m there in the morning, I’m brushing my kids’ teeth. Is there a recommendation on how to brush your teeth? Is it all just front e, like this? How long should you be doing it for? You know, any kind of advice?

Seb (44:33.674)
I… So the one thing you don’t want to do is we’re taught in dental school that 24 hours or more plaque left on the teeth can lead to gum disease, can lead to decay. Of course that’s from research from who knows how long and it’s not ethical to do those studies anymore. But what we… and it’s normally dental students that do those studies, it’s quite funny actually, a lot of the research is from dental students and they’re at university and the…

Ahmad (44:51.374)
Mm.

Seb (45:02.702)
technique is once, so that’s the other thing, once a day is enough, which is why I do it once a day, but they advise twice a day because not everyone will do once a day, and I’m like, well, if you empower your patients with education, then they’ll know that they should do it once a day, and that’s to me the better thing to give them the knowledge. Now brushing the teeth, they say two minutes, it’s actually been shown that one minute’s enough, but I still always do two minutes.

And I think two minutes is split into each of the quadrants quite nicely. So you can do like 30 seconds in each quadrant from left upper, upper right, you know, go around the mouth. I always do it in a periodic way. So start here and make sure, because then you can do it subconsciously that, you know, you’re always doing the same thing. Cause like, if you’re tired and you’re changing a routine, you’ll probably forget a little bit or, you know, it’s like in the morning, if you’ve got to do something extra in your morning routine before going to work, there’s always something I forget and I’m like, Oh, I forgot to do that. So I always say, get that.

routine, subconscious, and do it. It doesn’t matter how you do it, but you want to do the, say you’ve got a tooth and you’ve got the gum line around the tooth. You do the top of the tooth first, easy pit, the bit that you chew your teeth, chew and incisal edges. And then you do the one side gum line and then you do the other side gum line. Because the gums actually have 0.5 millivar flap on the top of them.

So food and stuff gets caught down those gum areas. So you want to make sure that no food and stuff is caught down there and it’s super clean. On the flossing topic, my favorite device is the water pick, which just, you fill up with water and you just squirt it through the teeth. And it just goes really good for wisdom teeth as well. When people have those flaps on the top of wisdom teeth and they can’t keep clean, you just squirt the water through. It gets rid of all the stuff.

Ahmad (46:32.11)
Mmm.

Seb (46:54.046)
I personally use that one maybe like two or three times a week. And then I use my little Interdental TP easy pick things the other times.

Ahmad (47:03.502)
Okay, cool, that makes sense. Right, next, let’s talk about children’s teeth and jaw development. You know, I had a lot of teeth taken out as a kid. I had braces, and they still haven’t really, they didn’t straighten my teeth. My front teeth are kind of slightly overlapped. Hey ho. So, you know, I’ve already signed up my daughters.

to your program, they’re wearing their gums. I need to get the password again, I’ve forgotten. Please get someone to send me a refresh link. Please, thank you. Because I need to show the videos, the latest updates. But how do we stop our kids getting braces and having their teeth out? Because I can’t believe that this was normal from an evolutionary point of view. I spent time in Tanzania when I was a medical student and with the Masai Mara.

Seb (47:39.482)
I’ll remind, I’ll do it.

Ahmad (48:01.526)
And it’s that classic kind of image, you know, these tall, black, athletic, you know, people with amazing white shiny straight teeth, you know, I don’t think they were going down to their dentist or orthodontist, you know, so you come back to the UK, especially Scotland where I’m from, and we’ve got the worst teeth ever. So how, how do we make sure we have those great, amazing teeth like the Masai Mara?

Seb (48:30.394)
Saw that iron bro.

Ahmad (48:34.166)
right? Oh my God. So anybody who doesn’t know iron brew is iron. Brew is a fizzy drink in Scotland and this in Scotland has this, you know, amazing, um, thing where every country in the world, the number one fizzy drink is Coca-Cola except Scotland. So Scotland has that distinction in Scotland. The number one fizzy drink is this chemical drink called iron brew. It doesn’t have

Seb (48:37.414)
Bye.

Seb (49:02.89)
Scottish.

Ahmad (49:04.65)
It’s Scottish and made from garters. I need to tell you something funny said before you answer that question. So I was doing pediatric surgery up in Glasgow in a children’s hospital. And I was in any seeing someone for some surgical kind of like condition. And the doctor next to me was like, oh, my God, I can’t believe this. And I was like, what are you talking about? I’ve got this malnourished neonate. And I was like, what here in Glasgow? And she was like, yeah, the mum’s been.

giving her bottled iron brew instead of breast milk. And I was like, what? And she was like, yeah, because she was like, it’s got iron in it. It’s good for the baby. I mean, yeah, there’s a lot of deprivation and lack of knowledge in some parts of Glasgow. It’s really quite bad. So yeah, I’m not a fan of fizzy drinks. Anyway, you’re going to answer. So tell me about the development of the teeth.

Seb (49:55.937)
It’s crazy.

Ahmad (50:03.874)
straightening and all that kind of stuff.

Seb (50:08.442)
Yeah, well you hit the nail on the head with going back to the simple farm to food hunter-gatherer type diets which have those fat soluble nutrients, vitamins, and produce like hard cartilage, bones that you chew on, things that… I always say that, you know that saying…

I don’t even know if it’s true, but you know, like the, you get a new skeleton every eight years and that’s because all your cells turn over and they’re all constantly replacing. So what we have to do is provide one, the nutrients for the bone to support the teeth and obviously to support the teeth, to be healthy and chew food. Two, provide the right type of food, consistency of food, strength of food to develop and grow the jaws. And three, balance ourselves.

um to create uh so I would say teeth are like sails and whatever we do, how we swallow, how we breathe, how we hold our tongue, how we even talk, um the capability of our tongue, if it’s got a tight fascia or not, all of those things influence on our neutral zone within the mouth and when I was learning dentistry the neutral zone was

thought to be the area if someone lost all of their teeth and they had dentures in, the muscle pressure from the lip to the muscle pressure from the tongue, where was the stable part where the denture could stay in that the patient could function with a denture in? Now I’ve taken that knowledge and said it’s not just that, it’s teeth as well because as a child we’re growing, developing, circulating, all of those things.

and it means that we can see changes really quickly because we’re growing so fast. In an adult obviously we’re remodeling, our bones changing but very slowly, so even as an adult we change these habits, our bone and teeth will shift into a positive way. Now obviously Weston A Price was the big influence on all of this stuff. He was the American Dental Association President in the 19 or 1800s, sorry, and he went traveling the world looking at all of the

Seb (52:25.958)
1900s I think it was actually sorry and traveling while looking at all of the communities such as the one you just talked about went to Australia went to the Indies went to Switzerland and the Alps went everywhere and the one thing that they noticed when they were living from the land perfect teeth no decay no gum disease no dental disease did they have good oral care no they would use a stick to take away the plaque they would use their tongue to move things around their mouth but

what they found was that the nutrients that they were consuming from the, the core meat was, um, well, he called it Activator X, which was vitamin K2. And that’s the one that transports the minerals into the right places in the body, such as the teeth and the bone that coupled with the diets that they were eating and the strength that they’re having to do to chew their food. Just, um, yeah, it went from.

what was really interesting as well was he did research on when the younger generations went to university, when the world was developing more and more, and they would come back and after only 10 years their teeth would look completely different, they’d have all the western things that we’ve developed. So dental disease is a cause disease by the world that we live in really, and talking myself out of a lifetime of work here though, but you know if we can get on top of

on top of the balance of everything, then you know the foods we eat and we you know like you say and you speak to Jeff and Hunter Gatherer and their mission that is the mission isn’t it? Trying to get back to our source of eating good food that’s nutritious but still having the niceties in the world that we live in with the you know the ketchup that they make or the you know something like that it’s just it’s just a lovely concept.

So then bringing that back to children, nutrition is one thing and that’s the hardest thing obviously if we live in the world that we live in. The second thing is checking for tongue ties and tongue ties I believe…

Seb (54:37.77)
we don’t really know why it’s caused but you know I would say there’s some gene defects such as the MTHR gene which is the detoxification gene and that’s heavily linked to tongue tie and it not removing the fascia under the tongue before birth obviously premature babies have it as well so there’s definitely something there I believe and I think that goes down to our system of pregnancy and birthing and

maybe doing it too early, and I think that’s why we’ve seen an increase in that. But if you’ve got a tongue tie of any sort, number one is anterior tongue tie, where the tongue doesn’t move. It’s like, it’s like at the front of the tongue is tethered to the, um, lower jaw. That one is mostly picked up. You know, I’ve seen some that haven’t been picked up and Harry Kane is a great example of that, that wasn’t picked up. Um, but that one stops breastfeeding. So most of them are released with scissors young.

Ahmad (55:20.406)
Mm.

Seb (55:36.378)
The one that’s not picked up is a posterior tongue tie, and the posterior tongue tie is where the fascia of the tongue is tightly associated with the floor of the mouth. So when the tongue moves, the floor moves. And what that does is it stops you from sleeping deeply, the older you get, typically seeing more, because you’ve got tighter muscles, more toned muscles when you’re younger. The older you get, everything gets looser.

Ahmad (55:46.946)
Hmm

Seb (56:04.118)
So then you get this, oh, why have I got sleep apnea now? Why have I got this now? It’s just aging. And it’s just because the tongue’s lost its tone, the airway’s lost its tone, the tongue’s always been tired, it’s living in the wrong place and it’s blocking the airway. It’s obstructed sleep apnea, which what 30 odd percent of people have, which is crazy stats. But they’re saying like 80% have upper airway resistance syndrome, which is some degree of sleep apnea, just not as extreme. So us as dentists need to be more on this because we’re the guys that look at the dental

Ahmad (56:30.608)
Mmm. Ahem.

Seb (56:34.458)
compensations for sleep apneas, for upper airway resistance. So release the tongue, maybe if needed and if picked up, but when I’m doing my functional programs, especially in clinics, obviously I get more visual diagnosis of things. We release the tongue tie after we’ve exercised the tongue to try and get it functioning in the right way. So it can get up, get out and grow the top jaw.

Because when you’re swallowing in a balanced way, that tongue is pushing on those teeth, creating a new neutral zone. So then that neutral zone is the arch shape, a nice Roman arch of the top jaw. When you get the top jaw wider, the lower jaw comes downwards and forwards and the teeth straighten up. So that’s the true growth and development. And if anything hinders around that, then the top jaw is lower, the lower jaw is held back, the teeth are crooked, they’re trying to fit in, or the lower jaw just overtakes to try and compensate for not being able to breathe at all. Now, if we fix this young enough,

I start like four, five, six, seven, before they go through their huge growth spurts between 10 and 14, chances are we don’t need braces a lot of the time. And I would say the hardest thing is compliance because it is a course and a routine that the families have to do at home and that’s the hardest part about it, but if you can get that… it’s tough.

Ahmad (57:49.735)
We’re guilty of that.

Ahmad (57:53.77)
Yeah, we’re guilty of that compliance issue. I need, yeah, I’m not gonna lie though. I mean, it’s, you know, I’m not doing it as regularly as possible. I mean, I’m getting them to wear their gum shield things. I need to do more of the math exercises. We need to get doing that again. Right, I’m motivated. Right.

Seb (58:10.49)
Yeah, and those, absolutely. And those gum shields keep the muscular pressures off of the teeth. So when we’re sleeping at nighttime, we’re not undoing the work that we’re doing. And it’s not, and because when we have a dysfunction of some sort, and that sounds like a bad word, but it’s just a habit that’s not right, that just means it’s putting those pressures on those teeth in a way that’s not in the balance. So what we have to do is change the function, change the balance, change the tongue position, change the breathing.

then wear the mouth guard just until everything’s perfect and all the teeth are in the right place, right? Because then the balance should be there because the best retainer is the function of the muscles around the teeth. The mouth breathing is a separate thing. Obviously that’s when someone can’t nasal breathe for whatever reason, structurally inflammatory. So we always try and establish nasal breathing for the first three months. If not, we refer to our ENT friends to try and look to see if there’s anything going on. But.

If your mouth is open, your tongue is low, your top jaw has got no support for the teeth, the teeth come inwards and down, the jaw tries to come down, it then traps the lower jaw when you’re chewing and blah, blah. It’s a very slow process, but it happens over many, many years, that causes airway obstruction, which we don’t want. It’s all about staying as far forward out of the airway piece as possible.

Ahmad (59:21.674)
Mmm.

Ahmad (59:30.898)
Yeah, you don’t want that recessed jaw, that micrognathia, do you? You want that jaw to develop properly. And do you know, I think it’s also important, like what we’re eating, like if you’re not eating foods that are tough and you’re biting and gnawing and chewing, you know, I mean, nowadays we’re all just eating mushy food. Everything’s mush. And if you don’t use it, you lose it. So how important is that? Like…

Seb (59:37.091)
No.

Seb (59:40.546)
Absolutely.

Seb (59:54.67)
Yep.

Ahmad (59:59.958)
getting into a bone and, you know, gnarling on it. And like nowadays everything’s pasty, you know? Pasty, beigey mush.

Seb (01:00:07.114)
Yeah.

Seb (01:00:10.702)
It’s true and that’s probably the hardest thing to change in our society isn’t it but we’ve tried to start ordering from local farms with the bones, eating the bones in the stews and it’s hard and my little niece is the perfect example of yeah everything from being born to not doing any interventions really at all to

using myo-chewies rather than dummies, because obviously that can change the function of things as well, that’s another subject, but, and the myo-chewies are like an arch shape thing, a bit like those braces that we’ve got, the myo braces, and they’re chewing on it to develop the arch so that they can stimulate that growth. So there’s lots of things now that are being developed to support this in this, even mastic gum, which is super hard gum that makes you chew and develop the jawbone, but.

There is another side to it, isn’t it? That if you do it too much and you reinforce those pathways too much, then you’re gonna wear your teeth out. So I always say to patients, don’t do it all the time. It’s really about when you’re trying to achieve growth, development, changes, and then once you’re there, keep it, get it from the diet, get it from… Because the whole clenching thing, you’re sleeping at nighttime and you’re activating your sympathetic nervous system because your airway’s collapsing. You have to clench or grind your teeth to open your airway or mouth breathe. But all of those things as survival.

um wake you not wake you up but keep you breathing to survive but activate and over activate your neuro autonomic pathways of sympathetic so then you’re living more anxiously you’re eating more sugary foods because you can’t digest the other ones so much you’re just living on glucose so i i’m most of my dentistry is focused on sleep regeneration and not clenching keeping the airway patent and i use things like um

nasal dilators, I use the Maya functional appliance, even myself as an adult now, I’m happy with all my teeth and I just put a little bit of tape on my mouth. And yeah, the biggest thing that I thought I sleep well anyway, it’s just huge changes. And you just notice you get up with a bit more energy or you’re waking up at a bit earlier and yeah, it’s fascinating.

Ahmad (01:02:24.258)
So tell me about mouth taping.

Seb (01:02:29.538)
Mouth taping is just short-cutting nasal breathing. Because if someone’s struggling to breathe through their nose, what you do is you, I always say to people get used to nasal dilators first, which go into the nose and they hold your nose open so you can breathe. Because if you’ve got a nose like mine, which collapses on one side.

It means that at night time when you’re detoxing, because we detox 70% through the nose, you’re gonna block your nose, you’re gonna mouth breathe, you’re gonna clench your teeth. So nasal dilators first, and I found two brands that are really good. Mutes seem to be the easier, cheaper ones, but not everyone can get on with them. And then intake breathing. Mutes, M-U-T-E-S.

Ahmad (01:02:55.138)
Yes.

Ahmad (01:03:07.318)
Yeah, tell me.

Ahmad (01:03:13.361)
What’s that one called again, sorry?

Ahmad (01:03:21.102)
Okay.

Seb (01:03:23.406)
and then the other one is intake breathing which is that so mutes go in the nose hold it open intake go on the outside of the nose and magnet and hold it open they’re both good try mutes first then you can’t get on with them try the others

Ahmad (01:03:41.966)
Okay, I will look at that. One of my nose does collapse. And no, I definitely will look into that. And what about taping the mouth? Is there any particular tape that you would use? Because tapes have all got chemicals on them as well.

Seb (01:03:47.209)
Mmm.

Seb (01:03:56.506)
There’s so many, there’s so many. I personally just use the Sensitive 3M Micropore Tape, but there are specific ones for the mouth. There’s one called Drift Sleep, which is…

Seb (01:04:14.186)
made to not have the as nasty chemicals in it but I just found it didn’t work as effectively for all of my patients so it’s one of those things as well that once you get yourself into nasal breathing and you’re reinforcing that day in day out should you need to mouth tape all the time I guess you shouldn’t um but

Ahmad (01:04:34.37)
Hmm.

Seb (01:04:37.518)
The question is, once you know how you sleep when your mouth taping your nasal delays and you’re sending your mouth to hold your airway open, or you, or if you’re structurally deficient and you need these little tools to get you to a better place, it’s not worth risking it for me because sleep is so important. So I don’t often not.

Ahmad (01:04:50.286)
Hmm.

Ahmad (01:04:56.158)
Yeah, I’ve been quite bad in the last month. I started to go to sleep at 11 instead of 10 and I’m feeling it. And it’s because I’m trying to do the sub stack. I’m trying to do the podcast, trying to upload it. And, you know, I’ve just been stressed with, you know, my suspension and I need to get, I’ll be honest with you, I need to get back onto that. I need to get back to bed at 10 and just, you know, wake up early.

Seb (01:05:23.878)
definitely.

Ahmad (01:05:26.11)
Because I’m feeling it. I’m feeling it. And it has such a massive impact on you.

Seb (01:05:31.246)
Massive impact, yeah.

Ahmad (01:05:35.022)
I was going to say we’ve covered a lot. I just want to ask you another thing. Children, is it necessary to take your children to the dentist for a checkup every year? Or is that just unnecessary?

Seb (01:05:49.526)
Obviously, I think it’s about the values, isn’t it? And if your dentist is aligned with your way of thinking, then I think it’s a really good thing to do because then you’ve got that professional input from someone that’s watching the growth and development, would want to intervene early with the my functional therapy or the supporting of simple things. Because if we don’t do these things early, like we were talking about earlier, at 14, 12, 13, there’s gonna be so much crowding in the mouth.

that teeth are gonna have to come out, that we’re gonna have to use metal braces. And I think that’s such a key part of growth and development. And if you think about it, if we’re locking those teeth together for two years of that child’s development, trying to get them, well, what’s worse is when we take teeth out, we normally retract the rest of it back. So you’re almost hindering that true growth and development, I believe, when kids grow up to 21. So my whole thing is…

Ahmad (01:06:37.751)
Mmm.

Seb (01:06:47.542)
early intervention with non-locking devices. Sometimes I have to use devices to expand when it’s really extreme, and then hopefully not needing it later. But if you’ve got a dentist that’s on the same page, thinking the same way, got the same belief system as you, I think it’s really important to have someone there that’s focused on one aspect of the human body that can support you. But I suppose it’s an interesting thing, isn’t it? Because…

Ahmad (01:07:13.196)
Yeah.

Seb (01:07:16.178)
You don’t see your patients every six months, do you? You only see them when they need to.

Ahmad (01:07:20.266)
No. Yeah, I don’t say to people, come and see me next year and I’ll check your feet and cut your toes.

Seb (01:07:28.322)
Yeah, well, it’s similar, isn’t it, in a way, but it’s just this habit that they’ve created an industry based upon. But I suppose it’s because dental disease is so prevalent and some of the statistics are pretty bad. Like I think in terms of the decay in children for most of the UK, it’s like 93% of kids have decay. So it’s quite a, yeah, in some of the areas in their baby teeth. Yeah.

Ahmad (01:07:47.851)
Wow.

Ahmad (01:07:52.526)
That’s insane.

That’s insane.

Seb (01:07:57.606)
It is insane. But that just goes to show you based on your postcode, the foods you eat, the care that you provide, how much it influences teeth health, right?

Ahmad (01:08:02.306)
Mm-mm.

Ahmad (01:08:10.066)
Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Have you got into trouble for practicing the way you do? I don’t know. You’re probably aware of Dr. Michael Mu and his father. They seem to have gotten themselves into a lot of trouble with the dental regulatory body and whatnot. And they don’t seem to be doing anything particularly controversial other than practicing in a way that jeopardizes the dental

Seb (01:08:19.462)
Ahem.

Seb (01:08:23.876)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (01:08:40.694)
Have you managed to like dodge them?

Seb (01:08:46.394)
So far, I have been reported for some things and they’ve done small investigations, but that’s just for me talking about things that I believe in. And I think, you know, we can’t be, we need to be able to express our opinion and our belief system. And so people can, I mean, the way that I look at things is, am I, my whole belief system and the way that we think, it’s not…

we’re doing it to help people, genuinely, and support people. And I sleep much better at night now knowing that I’m practicing in a way that is trying to get to the root cause, the foundational problem, rather than before. I was seeing the same patient over and over again because their tooth kept breaking and I just kept patching up and I’m now like well your tooth’s breaking because you’ve got a tongue tie, you’re clenching at night, you’re not breathing well, and to me it just like why would I want to practice like you said at the beginning in any other way when you when you see it.

and you understand it. And I think the changes are going to start coming within the dental industry as well because there’s so many students and dentists that are reaching out saying I want to start practicing in this way and I think it’s going to start with, you know, hopefully the new clinic that I’m setting up being like the way of working and then expansion across the UK is what I kind of want it to be because

even within the holistic biological dental world, there’s not all of the dentists that do it, focus on the whole thing. There’s very little pieces of it. So then patients go there and they think they’ve got the whole picture. And one thing that I’m really keen on is that everyone that’s coming to me is that I tell them everything of everything that I currently know, and I’ll stay up to date with all the knowledge as I keep going, because otherwise they’re not getting the full picture.

Ahmad (01:10:29.214)
Mmm.

Ahmad (01:10:38.222)
Mmm.

Ahmad (01:10:44.054)
Absolutely. 100%. I mean, I think that word belief is very important. You know, you and I believe that what we’re doing is the right way to practice, is the safest way to practice, is the most ethical way of practicing, looking at the whole patient, not saying we have all the answers and sharing education and just saying maybe there’s a way of doing things without intervention, without drugs, without chemicals and returning back to a more natural

kind of way of doing things and looking after your body. When you say you’ve been reported, who reported you? Were there other dentists?

Seb (01:11:21.866)
Oh, you don’t know, do you? They just report. So then you get an investigation from the governing body. So, yeah, it’s normally just from, you know, where they can’t believe what you’re saying or they can’t understand it.

Ahmad (01:11:36.914)
Yeah, yeah, it’s sad, but I think there is going to be a movement and people are going to start changing. I mean, there’s psychiatrists now who are questioning the role of, you know, psychiatric medication and antidepressants and all this kind of stuff. You know, there are more biological and functional holistic dentists like yourself and hopefully doctors as well. And I just hope it just, you know, it’s just a movement that would just get bigger and bigger and bigger. Um, normally

Seb (01:11:50.717)
Mm-hmm.

Seb (01:11:59.782)
Definitely.

Ahmad (01:12:06.938)
I asked my guess this question, my last question, but before I do, have I missed anything?

Seb (01:12:19.322)
We’ve touched upon, I think, everything briefly. Obviously we could go into so much more, but I don’t think we need to. I think we’ve covered it all really beautifully.

Ahmad (01:12:20.182)
Deep sigh.

Ahmad (01:12:31.606)
That’s nice. Okay, listen, Seb, you’re now 151. You’ve lived a great life. None of your teeth have been removed. You’ve never had a filling, none of that toxic mercury garbage in your mouth, which I just think is ridiculous. Again, I never understood this even as a kid. Like, why would you put a filling with mercury in it? You know, like that just doesn’t make sense. Of course, that’s going to go in your bloodstream and your body.

course it’s toxic. It’s just, and I don’t understand how these smart, bright people just can’t see that. It just doesn’t make sense. Anyway, you’ve lived a long life and now you know your time has come. So you’re on your deathbed, you’re very comfortable, you’re surrounded by your family. What health advice or any advice would you give to your family before you pass on and meet your maker?

Seb (01:13:07.427)
Mmm.

Seb (01:13:26.65)
You know the biggest thing that I found in my life is we can do all of these physical, physiological improvements to our life but a lot of the time our emotional well-being is neglected I think and for me it’s about having the balance between being happy, being joyous, feeling emotion, living life.

but also doing things every day to improve your physiological well-being as well. So, you know, when I was talking about what I mean is that I used to, one period of my life, I used to be heavy into weightlifting and gymming, and that was it, and I was massive, and I could lift heavy weights, and I couldn’t run upstairs, so it didn’t make me happy. I then went on this illness journey where my health declined so much.

and function, normal medicine didn’t work and you know pharmaceuticals didn’t work and that’s what opened my eyes to the whole other thing and then I got so fixated on I had to eat this, I had to do that, I couldn’t drink alcohol, I couldn’t eat sugar, I couldn’t you know do all these little things and for five or six years I was just so restricted and like wrapped up in this little bubble that when I started relaxing and living life again and saying I can dabble a

and I can have a little bit of sugar and I can have an alcohol when I want to go to a party and it’s a friend’s birthday and it’s a special occasion. And you know, those moments are the moments that you never get back. And if you don’t relax your mind as well as your body and train a little bit at the gym and go for a walk and laugh with friends, you know, that’s what my belief is now. Just live everything how you want to live it. But knowing where your reference point is, how good you can feel and always getting back to that reference point if you go away from it.

Ahmad (01:15:25.806)
I like that. That’s nice. I think you’re right. Being sometimes a bit too restrictive isn’t great either and it creates stress, creates tension. And I think just be in tune with your body and be happy. Amen to that. Seb, thank you so much for taking your time to do this. I think a lot of my listeners will really, really appreciate.

Seb (01:15:36.107)
Mm-hmm.

Seb (01:15:41.975)
Absolutely.

Seb (01:15:49.325)
Welcome.

Ahmad (01:15:52.49)
everything and I know I was bombarding you with questions, but I just wanted to extract as much knowledge as possible. And then yeah, I think we got there. So thank you so much. If you can just send me all your details and I’ll post them up so all my listeners can find you and your Instagram and your website and you know, you do remote consultations. Send me the password reset thing for my kids so I can start chasing them up on that as well.

Seb (01:16:01.475)
You’ve done it.

Seb (01:16:17.962)
I will.

Ahmad (01:16:20.962)
Thank you so much. Everyone listening, I really hope you enjoyed this. Please follow Seb. He’s got a great Instagram account. He’s full of knowledge. He’s so generous with sharing his information and knowledge as you’ve just seen. And you know, he does remote consultation. So I definitely recommend him. You know, like I said, my kids are actually under his care. I just, I’ve been a bad parent and not been compliant with the exercises as much as I could be.

Seb (01:16:43.183)
means a lot.

Ahmad (01:16:48.998)
And also guys, please support me. You know, I’m totally supported by my listeners. Less than 1% of you actually are paid sub-stack subscribers. It’s only £3.50 a month or £35 a year. I don’t think I’m going to be going back to that main hospital where I worked for in any time soon or maybe never. I am pursuing a legal case to fight it because it’s all about medical free speech and medical free speech matters. People like me.

should have the right to say what we want on social media, on any topic. And it’s not right that we’re being silenced. It’s not in patient’s interest where doctors are being penalized for doing that. So I’m gonna fight that case, but in the meantime, it’d really help me if more people could subscribe and help, you know, support me and this show.

So if you listen to the podcast, you’re enjoying it, you love my guests like Seb, do me a favor, subscribe. All right, folks, thank you so much, Seb. God bless you, man.

Seb (01:17:57.67)
Thank you, my friend.

Ahmad (01:18:01.014)
You’re awesome. Thank you so much.