Expert Interview: A Healthy Mouth Equals a Healthy Body

Healthy Mouth World Summit
Guest: Dr. Victor Zeines
A Healthy Mouth = A Healthy Body and Your Tongue Never Lies!

Will: The next expert to share their experience with us here in the Healthy Mouth World Summit is Dr. Victor Zeines. Dr. Zeines has been practicing holistic dentistry for the past twenty-five years. He received his degree from the New York City College of Dentistry, and completed an internship at the Eastman Dental Center in Rochester, New York.

Dr. Zeines has always believed that dentistry needed to do more than just fix teeth. Dr. Zeines is the author of Healthy Mouth, Healthy Body, Living a Longer Life Naturally, as well as the book Your Tongue Never Lies. He is also a contributing writer for Rodale’s, the herbal drug store. He makes regular appearances on radio and television. Dr. Zeines is also one of the contributors of the film Food Matters, and hosts the Healthy Mouth, Healthy Body show on NewYorkTalkRadio.net.

A member of the advisory board of TheHolisticOption.com, Dr. Zeines uses a combination of homeopathy, kinesiology, nutrition, and aromatherapy along with biocompatible materials in a gentle, relaxed atmosphere. Dr. Zeines also uses non-surgical laser and nutritional techniques for the treatment of periodontal problems. His offices have been mercury-free for over twenty-five years. And he practices in Manhattan and Woodstock, New York.

The title of Dr. Zeines’ interview today is “A Healthy Mouth Equals a Healthy Body, and Your Tongue Never Lies.”

Dr. Victor Zeines, welcome to the Healthy Mouth World Summit! Dr. Zeines: Well, it’s a pleasure to be here!

Will: Yeah, thank you for coming and sharing so much of your expertise and literally decades of work on this subject. The title of your presentation today is “A Healthy Mouth Equals a Healthy Body, and Your Tongue Never Lies.”

How about we start by addressing the role of the mouth in promoting or degrading the health of the whole body? And why is it important for each of us to understand the role that the mouth plays in creating greater whole-being health?

Dr. Zeines: Well, because without a healthy mouth, you simply don’t have a healthy body. That’s the long and the short of it. The Mayo Clinic, Dr. Mayo, said roughly that 80% of all diseases has some origin in the mouth. A study done at Michigan showed that early deaths from any cause at all is related to dental problems.

So, when you start looking at this, you see that it’s not that the mouth is this isolated thing that’s twenty feet away from the rest of you. But, it is an integral part of the body. And as such, it’s got to be treated with respect because everything that’s going on in the mouth is basically because of what’s happening in the body. You could really view the mouth as being an early warning sign of things that are going on in the body.

For instance, periodontal disease. We used to think it was because people didn’t brush and they didn’t floss properly. And, you know, you go to your hygienist, and they say, “You need to floss more or you need to brush more.” And you’ve still got plaque. But that’s not really the case at all. Periodontal disease is really the first stages of nutritional deficiencies.

And what we’re finding now is that it’s also important because if you have periodontal disease — and by the way, 80% of our population has some form of gum disease — so, roughly 8 out of 10 people who are listening to this broadcast has some sort of mouth infection. And, most of the time, they may not know it.

But, if you have gum disease, you are twice as likely to have a stroke, three times as likely to have a heart attack. It’s related to breast cancer, prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, possibly 40 others, and a host of other diseases.

And, one of the reasons this is caused is it’s all about inflammation. And when you have gum disease, it’s basically because the body’s acid base balance is off. It’s too acidic. The bacteria in the mouth shift so that the good bacteria are being overwhelmed by the bad bacteria that are now growing in an environment that’s more suitable to them. And they produce toxins. Those toxins form as they leave the mouth what’s called c-reactive protein.

Now, how does that affect oral systemic dentistry? Well, c-reactive protein is a substance made by the liver in response to inflammation anywhere in the body, i.e. in this case, the mouth. It’s measured when you do your blood. And it’s important because this indicator has been shown to be more predictive of heart attacks than cholesterol.

So, here’s a couple basic things you should now about c-reactive proteins. Periodontal disease has been shown to significantly increase c-reactive protein levels, thereby increasing heart attack risk. Treatment of periodontal disease has been shown to reduce c-reactive protein. Ultra-high c-reactive protein can warn a medical person of serious disease, including cancer, thereby saving lives. So, it’s very important to get this done.

And in many offices now, dentists are actually testing for c-reactive proteins. You can just do this by lab test, though I prefer doing full blood workups on my patients. So, we have that.

Now, other studies have shown that if you have decay, you are more likely to have babies born with low birth weights. They’re smaller than normal. And they have a harder time with their immune systems the first year. They’ll get sick, and the sickness lasts longer.

Now, why would that be? It’s because the mom’s got tooth decay. Why is that a factor in babies? It’s because you don’t get tooth decay unless you are nutritionally deficient. And, it’s really, again, not about brushing, not about cleaning your teeth. It’s about proper nutrition.

And this was actually proven in the 1930s by a dental researcher, a Weston Price who went along and did a six-year study on primitive diets to see if the modern diet was causing physical degeneration. He was a Harvard-trained dentist who believed, again, that dental health is a good indicator of physical health.

So, he tested the Maasai of Tanzania, the Mahai, the Watusi, and the Noish tribe, which were cattle-keeping people. And they found that these tribes had a decay rate of under five percent as opposed to twenty to thirty percent in American “modern” society.

Then he checked the [inaudible] tribe, such as the Bantu and the Wakamba. And he found, again, that their decay rate was about five percent. He also found that the vegetarian groups had some tooth decay, but, very small numbers compared to the white people that were living off of store-bought foods that they brought with them while they were colonizing Africa.

He also went along and found that the best tribes were the Sudanese tribe the Denkas. And they had fruits and vegetables. And they seemed to have the best physical health and the least amount of decay. Price also found out that the natives of Africa knew that certain insects were very rich in special foods. For instance, termites is a very good form of protein. And, so are roaches, for that matter.

So, all in all, I put this together, and I realized that just treating fillings or doing periodontal surgery at the time was foolish. It’s basically like sticking your finger in a dike, and not really getting to the root cause. And what we do now is put people on supplement programs aside from doing the general dentistry. And guess what happens? They get better.

Will: Yeah, it’s very much of a common thread from the experts that we’re hearing in this is the nutritional link or, if you will, the nutritional foundation for whether we’re talking about systemic health or disease or oral health or oral disease, like you say, the mouth is just a reflection or a mirror of what’s going on in the rest of the body.

Dr. Zeines: Exactly.

Will: So, you’ve touched on this a bit. Let me ask you anyways. You have a DVD titled Good Health Starts in the Mouth. Can you explain how you’ve come to understand how good health starts in the mouth? I mean, you just addressed the c-reactive protein issue, which I think is a huge one because if we reflect on that for a moment, we realize that people who have advanced gum disease have increased levels of c-reactive protein. When the gum disease is addressed, their c-reactive levels drop. Correct?

Dr. Zeines: Correct.

Will: So, that, to me, suggests at least somewhat of a causal relationship there, that the inflammation in the mouth can be a causative factor for systemic inflammatory conditions, which lead to la-la-la. Take your pick of the disease, right?

Dr. Zeines: Absolutely. It’s all about inflammation and it’s all about your immune system. You’re getting a problem in the mouth because you’re not eating well. I have come to the conclusion that periodontal disease and decay, for that matter, as well, is really the first stage of nutritional deficiencies. It’s not a disease so much as a symptom.

And in a way, you could say that everything that goes on in the mouth is really symptomatic of what goes on in the rest of the body. Look at the mouth as an early warning sign, an early warning symptom of what are going to be major problems. So, people come in, and I say, “What can I do for you?” And they say, “Well, you know, I’m pretty healthy.” And I say, “Why are you here?” [And they say,] “Well, I have pain and this and that.” And then we talk about their gums.

And the next question is, “Well, how’s your general health?” “Oh, it’s fine.” I say, “Are you sure? Nothing bothers you at all?” And they say, “Well, you know, I have some aches and pains and I’m a little tired and I have some allergies.”

And when I hear that, I’m hearing, “I have a weakened immune system, and it’s affecting my life,” which is in essence what it is.

Will: Right. That’s excellent. I’m really excited to have your unique expert input on our summit here for this next specific topic. You wrote a book titled Your Tongue Never Lies. I love the title of the book, by the way. Can you explain what you mean by this title?

Dr. Zeines: Sure! It’s really simple. Your tongue is the most visible member of the internal part of the body. And it can give you a wealth of information about your general state of health. For example, because the very high anabolic rate the top of the tongue has, called the epithelial layer, which is replaced every two or three days, malnutrition and other unhealthy conditions, basically, can show up quickly.

And you can see this. I’m sure you’ve had a cold or you’ve done a detox program and you notice that your tongue turns white. I’m sure most of the listeners who’ve had this have had that experience.

Will: Sure.

Dr. Zeines: You wake up sick. And you stick your tongue out in the morning, and you say, “Gee, my tongue is white. It just looks yucky.” That’s because the white indicates that your tongue is slightly toxic. So, an enlarged, pale or flabby tongue with a color that’s cheesy or greasy can suggest diseases such as chronic bronchitis, colitis. If the tip of the tongue is red, it can be a weakened or enlarged heart. Or, we just say that it’s a heart weakness or it could be a thyroid problem.

If it’s gray or grayish-brown, it’s indicative of intestinal problems. If it’s yellow or yellowish-green, it’s usually indicative of liver/gallbladder problems. If the edges of the tongue are scalloped and your tongue is large, it can be due to sleep apnea or mineral deficiencies. And, if your tongue is cracked — it’s got lots of cracks on the top of it — that can be due to vitamin deficiencies.

Now, if your tongue has a coating on it, the thicker the coating, the more chronic the problem. So, right away, just by waking up in the morning, which is a very good thing to do, and going to the bathroom and just looking at your mouth, you can get a wealth of information as to what your general health is like.

Will: So, you touched on some ideas there as far as the types of information we can learn from looking at our tongues. It sounds like there’s a tremendous amount of information that we can gather, obviously, if you have the right eyes to be able to identify them. I’m wondering, can you see…Go ahead.

Dr. Zeines: The things I mentioned, these are very easy to see. You would be amazed at how quickly you could see this. That’s what’s surprising to me, that it’s such an obvious thing that no one has ever looked at. And one of the first things we do is I have patients stick out their tongue, I have them look in a mirror, and I say, “What color is your tongue.” And then they look at it and they say, “Oh, it’s green,” or “It’s gray,” or it’s whatever. And then I show them a picture of a healthy tongue.

An interesting story to digress for a second. A healthy tongue is a nice pink tongue. And, you can see that if you start looking through my book — it’s one of the few books out on tongue diagnosis — where we actually have before and after pictures of what tongues look like before and after people have gone on detox diets.

I live in Woodstock, which is a pretty health-conscious town. And I sat on a corner with my camera and I had dental cards. And people would come by and I’d say, “Excuse me, I’m a dentist. I’m writing a book on tongues. Would you mind if I took a picture of your tongue?” And this is a town where there’s no fast food allowed at all. It’s a pretty enlightened group of people you might say in terms of diet. But it took me six months to find a healthy tongue.

Will: Wow.

Dr. Zeines: Well, you say, “Wow,” and maybe I should say, “Wow,” too. But, I guess I’m jaded because, again, go back to 80% of our population has some form of gum disease. And I would say 80% of our population has some form of chronic something, just based on what I’ve seen on tongues.

And, if anyone listening at this wants to try something, just tell your friends to just stick out their tongues. And just take a look for the heck of it. And I think you’re going to find very few people have healthy pink tongues. I think you’re going to find a lot of people have tongues that look like somebody’s doormat, with various different colors.

And there’s a lot of reasons for it. One of the reasons is that the acupuncture meridians that affect your teeth will affect your body. And what does that mean? Well, it means that when something is going on in your mouth, the body is aware of it. And the problem with dentistry is that we don’t heal teeth. We just fix them. And 90% of the time, the materials that we use are toxic. You’ve got to be careful about that.

I work with a lot of cancer patients. And we’ve had all our materials tested so that we know that they’re clean. But, a lot of them aren’t. And a lot of people have allergies to them.

But let’s say you have a filling on your canine teeth or a root canal or a crown. That tooth is related to the liver/gallbladder meridian. And when a tooth is not normal, it’s either fixed or it’s hurting, the acupuncture meridian, the energy goes from the body to the tooth trying to heal it. So, the meridians relating to each tooth, depending upon which tooth it is, will be slightly weakened always because the tooth is always not healed.

So, let’s say, again, that canine tooth has a crown or a root canal or a filling. It’s not uncommon to see patients that have slightly yellowish, yellow-green tongues because that’s related to the liver/gallbladder.

So, your average person in the United States has lots of fillings in their mouth. That’s why I said it’s not surprising to see people coming in with tongues that do look like doormats because we don’t have a healthy population. Just think about all the fast food restaurants, which by itself is a total misnomer. It’s not fast food. It’s fast. But, it certainly isn’t food as far as I’m concerned.

Will: [Laughs] Fast food-like substances.

Dr. Zeines: Yeah. That would be a better way to put it. That in itself is a weird thing. Who goes around eating fast food-like substances?! And then you add that to the general fact that our population is fat. We’re trying to make it polite now. We say, “Oh, people are obese.” It sounds better than just, “Hey, you know what? We got an entire population of fat people.” It doesn’t sound as good. But it’s just the reality.

And fat in itself is a whole other ball game. It’s not like fat just sits there. It’s more than just a lump of lard. It’s actually a heavy hitter. And quite often, it can deliver what we call a fatal knockout because besides giving us that beer belly, it also becomes an endocrine organ just like the thyroid, pancreas, or other adrenal glands that sends our body’s work.

And the message that fat pumps out can affect the cardiovascular system, the liver, the pancreas, and even the brain. And, according to Dr. Allen Spiegel, Director of the Nutritional Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease, called fat cells, are quite dynamic and hard at work.

So, this is a major, major problem, which is why we have so many disease states in this country right now. People are just not…I don’t know if I would say they’re just not getting it or they’re just ignoring it and maybe it’s better from somebody’s point of view to think that, “Gee, if I feed my family from McDonald’s, it’s really healthy because the government wouldn’t allow it to be there if it wasn’t.” But that’s not the case. And it’s just a sad commentary on American life.

I was at the PetsMart the other day getting food for my cat. And I was in the car. And this man walked out. I would say he was in his early forties, maybe late forties. And he looked like he was eight months pregnant. And his son walked out right behind him. And the kid looked like he was eight months pregnant. And then a daughter and the mother walked out, and they looked like balloons. It was like somebody stuck an air pump up them and they just puffed out.

And I looked at them and said, “This has become a typical American family.” What’s this about? Well, it’s about malnutrition. It’s about not taking care of yourself.

Will: Talk about the systemic inflammatory situation. I mean, it’s no wonder that there’s such a tremendous connection between diabetes and periodontal disease, huh?

Dr. Zeines: Sure. Absolutely! If you have gum disease, in all probability, if it’s not taken care of, you will get diabetes. If you have diabetes, you’re going to have gum disease. No ifs, ands or buts about it.

And if that’s the case, you’re looking at a heart attack or stroke down the road. And, as I said, all this can be prevented by proper diet and exercise and seeing the dentist often. And I’m going to throw in a little plug for the book, and just getting up in the morning and looking at your tongue.

Will: Totally. I mean, you touched on something a moment ago that I want to come back at. I heard that you can, but I want to ask you the question and draw it out of you. Can you see changes over time in a person’s tongue that shows you if they’re heading in the right direction or not?

Dr. Zeines: Absolutely! Absolutely. I happen to have my tongue book with me because I knew you would ask me these things. And we have a whole supplement part here, it’s a before-and-after these applications. I’m just going to quote this: “The following photographs clearly show the benefits of the detox program. Dramatic changes of the appearance of the tongue reflect what’s going on in you.” We have two-week detox, six-week detox, two-month detox, four weeks, eight weeks, one month, three months. And you can see progressive changes with people. And I mean, major, major changes in the way tongues look.

Will: That’s excellent. I know we can’t really do this subject justice here in our presentation. However, can you give us where to begin with this? I mean, what are some good general qualities of tongue diagnosis that we can go and take a look at our own tongues now to have a glimpse of what this powerful diagnostic tool offers?

Dr. Zeines: One of the simplest things to do is just, as I said, you wake up in the morning, go into the bathroom, and just stick your tongue out and look at it. See what color it is. It should be pink and it should be a healthy-looking pink as opposed to a dull, listless color.

It’s kind of like hair. You know, when someone’s got health hair, it kind of shines? The same thing with your tongue. It should just look healthy. It’s the best way I can describe it. It’s just a nice pink color. And you’re going to find most people will not have that. They’ll have some sort of what they would call night crud buildup on it. Or, it’s going to be slightly yellowish to a slightly yellow-green. And then, all the things that I mentioned before come into play.

Look at the tip of your tongue. Is it red? Is there any change in the color from that from the rest of the tongue. If it’s a bright red tip, again, that’s indicative of either heart or thyroid weakness.

And then ask yourself, are you tired all the time? Do you have any problems with allergies? That might very well be thyroid. Is there heart disease in the family? That’s one of the first things, when I see a red tongue. I ask people and they say, “Well, as a matter of fact, yeah. There is.”

Well then, we’re not saying your heart is bad. We’re saying energetically, it’s showing up. It would behoove you to see a physician and get some blood work and see if, in fact, there is a problem. And watch your diet and make sure you add in the right exercise.

So, there’s a host of things that you can do on a preventative level. But it all starts with a willingness to make changes to better your life and the awareness that this is way more important. Even if you don’t feel bad. You know? You can say, “Well, gee. I don’t have gum disease. I don’t feel bad. I don’t see anything in my mouth.”

Well, look really closely. Are your gums slightly red? Is there any recession? A lot of people come and say, “My gums are receding.” Well, it’s not that the gums are receding, it’s that the bone is being lost and the gums are just following it down.

So, these are things that you can see quite simply and then start looking to get some sort of professional help so you can start making changes. Or, just on your own. Most people are aware of what good eating is. I mean, I’ve never heard of anyone coming in here and telling me, “Gee, I’ve been eating at McDonald’s. And I thought that was really healthy.” I never hear that. I hear they eat there because they don’t think it’s that bad. But, it is. It just is.

Will: So, you talk in your book about distinguishing between the tongue itself and the coating on the tongue. Can you touch on that and what the different factors are there?

Dr. Zeines: Sure. Well, the coating is what’s covering your tongue. For instance, your normal tongue color is pink. But, let’s say your tongue, the outside, is pink and on the inside there’s a coating. It’s not pink. It’s yellow or it’s green. That coating is energetically what’s going on. For instance, it’s a tongue that’s yellow or yellowish-green.

And when you see these pictures in the book, you can see that the entire tongue is not yellow or yellowish-green. It’s just the middle part may be, two-thirds may be, and the pink is coming out from underneath that. But, that’s usually stomach or spleen. And it’s the result of poor digestion. If your tongue starts turning from yellow to green, it can be indicative that the liver or the gallbladder is involved.

The thicker the coating — and you would really have to just look at your tongue to see it — the thicker the coating, the more chronic, meaning the longer you’ve had this type of problem because if you just do a detox program, you’re going to see your tongue with a white coating. But it’s going to be thin. And you’ll see that right away.

If you’ve had a, let’s say, a digestive problem for a year or so. And you look at your tongue, it’s probably going to be yellow, yellowish-green, maybe brown. But the coating will be a lot thicker. And it’s astounding, if you go to the website and you look at these things, how obvious this is once your attention is drawn to it.

Will: Wow. That’s excellent. So, given the number of general qualities you just touched on, can you offer us broad brushstroke suggestions to support a person in establishing a healthier system based on what their tongue says?

Dr. Zeines: Sure! I would start by eliminating all processed foods. And I would start getting rid of the hydrogenated fats, all the garbage. And start eating a diet that’s basically 80% alkaline, which is fruits and vegetables, and between 10% and 20% acid foods, which are beans, fish, and meat.

And I would only eat organic meat. I would never eat any genetically-modified foods. All organic. Exercise. And it doesn’t have to be a heavy, heavy exercise program. When you get home, walk around the block. And I say that coming from New York. You live in Hawaii on homestead. You don’t have blocks, I would imagine.

Will: [Laughs]

Dr. Zeines: But, take a 10-minute walk. Just aim to leave work at work. And just kind of settle in and get your heart rate up a little bit. Just take a nice brisk walk. And, just doing that, that simple stuff, will really make changes for you within a month.

Now, that being said, I would also make sure I don’t eat late at night because that food doesn’t get digested. And, again, I’d make sure that I have good supplementation with it because you can’t really get what you need, unfortunately, from foods alone. You’ve really got to have a good supplement.

And there are a lot of good supplements out there right now. It should’t be any kind of problem. Get a good organic green powder or drink, something that will give you what you need to stay healthy.

Will: Perfect, perfect. So, I want to kind of take a different course here for a moment. What about oral pH? What type of information does oral pH give us?

Dr. Zeines: Well, there’s lots of different illnesses in the body. But, most of the time, it comes from too much acid waste in the body. And oral pH will tell us whether your body is too alkaline or too acidic. Ninety-nine percent of the time people are too acidic. And it’s a very simple thing to test. You can get pH paper at any drug store. You just stick it in your mouth. And there’s a little chart with the colors. And you just match up the color that you have with the chart. And you’ll know immediately what your pH is.

Now, I would do this in the morning as opposed to after I ate because food will change the pH. For instance, if you have lemon juice, and then take your pH, it’s going to show up as acidic even though the lemons in the body are alkaline, in the mouth they’re acidic. What you want to do is alkalize yourself. It’s calculated that urine and saliva pH should be 6.4, which is slightly acidic for human body function. I like to see it around 6.8 or 6.9. It’s just slightly, slightly acidic. Very, very lightly so.

Will: So, first thing in the morning saliva pH should be, you’re thinking, high 6s? 6.8 and 6.9…

Dr. Zeines: Yeah, that’s fine. Just to let people know, the lower the pH, the more acidic it is.

Will: Sure.

Dr. Zeines: So, 6.9 is almost neutral. 4.0, you would have some serious problems.

Will: Sure, sure. And, I mean, with other research that we’ve done, there’s a direct correlation between tooth decay and oral pH. Tooth decay doesn’t happen unless you’ve got an oral pH down in the fives, if I’m correct about that.

Dr. Zeines: Right and you don’t get tooth decay or, say, a decrease in the pH if you’re eating properly. So, again, it all goes back to nutrition.

Will: Right. So, from your perspective, can we use testing oral pH to see if our oral hygiene habits are heading in the right direction?

Dr. Zeines: I certainly would. It’s a very good thing to do. It’s simple. Between oral pH and just checking your tongue, you can really give yourself a wealth of information. Now, if you’re into doing that, you might as well get a urine stick, a dipstick, and check your urine pH, as well. So, you have three things that you can do.

These are very simple tests. And, also, just take a good look at your diet. [You say], “Gee, I’m eating healthy, I’m eating all organic meat,” and you’re having a diet that’s 70% meat, you’re going to have an acidic chemistry, no matter what. So, again, your diet really needs to be a minimum of 80% fruit and vegetables, 20% acid-forming foods. And I say 20%. I’d like it even less than that. But I’m allowing for genetic differences and for the fact that a lot of people like meat. And they’re not going to change.

I have a good friend. We’ve gone through this. And he’s basically getting gout in his joints right now because he eats a ton of meat. And he burns it. And we talked about it. I put him on a supplement program. I said, “The best thing you can do for yourself is do a lot of juicing and get off that diet of yours.” And he’s just not going to change. But he knows. At least he knows what’s going on.

Will: Right. So, I’m grappling with this in my mind a little bit because I’m familiar with Weston Price’s work and some of the peoples that he studied. To the extreme, obviously, you look at the Eskimos. And they had really high diets in animal products. So, do we have to consider our genetic heritage?

Dr. Zeines: Absolutely! But there’s a misnomer there. People always say that to me: “Well, what about Eskimos? They ate a ton of meat.” They eat a ton of fat, which is very nutritious. They eat more vegetables than you think because one of the things they do is when they kill walruses and things, they scoop out the stomach contents, which is a lot of seaweeds. They eat a lot of insects, also high in fat.

And they have intestinal modifications. They’re shorter, they’re a little rounder than the average person. They have intestinal modifications for meat-eating. Most people don’t.

But, there is no one diet. For instance, people living in the South Sea Islands have a much greater diet of fish and vegetables than someone living in the Andes, which would be living, say, off of a lot more meat and vegetables. So, it also depends on what your genetic background is. German-English people seem to need more proteins than people from the south of Europe, say.

So, that’s why I said there could be like a 10% or 15% variation. But, all in all, 20/80 percentage of 20 acid foods, 80 alkaline foods is a good generalized shotgun approach that would work well.

Will: Where do fats — and we’re talking about quality fats here, not hydrogenated fake fats — where do quality fats fall in this acid/alkaline balance?

Dr. Zeines: That’s a good question because it depends on where you’re getting them from. If you’re getting them, say, from salmon, then that would go under the acid. If you’re getting them from walnuts, it’s going under the alkaline side.

Will: Oh, I see. Okay, so it depends on the source of it.

Dr. Zeines: Yeah! So, the fat itself is just the fat. It really is not something that works in terms of acid or alkaline by itself. It’s the food that comes with it that’s the important part here.

Will: Right. Wow, so between looking at our tongues and taking the broad tools that you’ve offered us here today and testing our oral pH an even our urinary pH, it can really give us a lot of immediate feedback tools to see where we’re at right now.

And once we have a sense of where we’re at right now, we can chart a course based on your or other people’s suggestions. We can chart a course to create positive change. And then utilizing those same feedback tools, we can see whether or not we’re making progress, huh?

Dr. Zeines: Sure. The first thing I would do is I’d write down my diet. Well, I go back. The first thing I would do is say to myself, “Am I healthy?” And if you have no problems at all, then don’t worry about it. That’s not going to be most people.

One of the things we have on our website is a little test that people can take to see how healthy they are. But, I would just write down, “Am I healthy?” and then what symptoms do they have? “Do I feel tired? Do I have allergies? Do my joints bother me a little bit? Am I not sleeping well?” I would just put that down just to see if I do have any problems.

And then I’d take a look at my tongue. “Is my tongue nice and pink? Is there a problem with it?” And, then the third thing I would do is I’d write down my diet for a week. And I’d make it detailed. For instance, I would put down, let’s say for breakfast, you have two eggs and toast. You need to write it in detail, “Two eggs fried in butter, toast with butter and jam,” and how much. And what time you eat. Because that’s important, too.

So, I get a sense right there, you can tell, “Gee, I have these symptoms, my tongue is this color, and this is my diet and this is when I eat. And let’s see, am I really eating 80% of alkaline foods? No, it looks like I’m eating only 40% or 50% of alkaline foods. And, oh, gee, I didn’t realize I ate…”

You look at things and all of a sudden, you get a real sense of what you eat that you really didn’t think about before. And now it’s right in front of you. So, I would do that. And then I would start changing. Just start changing your diet. And start maybe talking to someone about getting healthy.

For instance, in the tongue book, we have a couple things. We do one test that’s based on the five elements of Chinese medicine: fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. And they’re just little questions. You check of what you seem to have as a problem. We have a couple tests like that. And you get a real good idea as to your own general health.

Or, you can go on the website, the NatDent website and check out some of the radio shows we have on there. And we also have a simple test on there. It says, “How Healthy Are You?” Take the symptom questionnaire test. Find your problem areas. And if you go on that, you can look at the test and just put a “1” next to the symptom that bothers you a few times a year. And put a “2” by the thing that bothers you all the time or most of the time.

And all of a sudden, you’ll see, there’s group one, group two, different groups. And at the end of this, when you finish it, we talk about what each group means. For instance, group one means you’re too acidic. You may need more alkaline foods. Group two is you’re too alkaline. And it’s possible sugar problems, heart, gallbladder, digestive, hyperthyroid, hypo[thyroid], etcetera, etcetera.

And there’s a lot of things like that you can do. But you’ve gotta take responsibility for your own health. That’s what it boils down to.

Will: That’s really it. And that’s perfect. It sounds like it would even be helpful nowadays with smartphones technology and everything, it’s so simple to do so. Maybe take a dated photo of your tongue, and do so every week for six or eight weeks. And you’ll be able to get a sense of am I making changes here, so that our eyes don’t trick us. We can actually have an image each time.

Dr. Zeines: Yeah, I think that’s a great idea!

Will: Cool. So, Dr. Zeines, do you have any closing comments or suggestions to offer our listeners to assist them in navigating to greater oral health? And I know that you just kind of gave us a lot of gems there. But maybe you’ve got something else you want to throw out there to us.

Dr. Zeines: Well, I think the best thing to do is if you’re having, let’s say, dental problems — and this is stuff we haven’t even talked upon. I’m just going to toss this out at the end because I imagine we’re running out of time. If you have what are called “silver” fillings in your mouth, which are really mercury fillings, you must get them out. No ifs, no ands, no buts because they are depleting your immune system. If you have diseases such as chronic fatigue, heavy allergies, cancer, hepatitis, any immune system problem, and you have root canaled teeth, you may think about removing those also. Any metal in your mouth, you may want to remove because most of those are toxic.

So, we talked about diet. We talked about tongue. We talked about taking little tests. Those are just some tips I would tell you about simply because it’s another part of the equation. For instance, I have a patient now who has 24 crowns in her mouth. She had it done five years ago. And she hasn’t been healthy since then.

And we did a saliva test and sent it to a lab to be checked out. And it all comes back toxic for heavy metals, for a whole slew of things that are in the metal that these crowns are made of. And we’re replacing them now with pure porcelain, which is a heck of a lot healthier. And we’ve done twelve of those so far. And she notices a change.

Will: Wow.

Dr. Zeines: So, your mouth is more than just a happy smile. [Laughs] That’s the best way to put it. It’s a great way of telling what’s going on in the rest of your body.

Will: Perfect. So, Dr. Zeines, where can folks learn more about you and your work?

Dr. Zeines: You can email me at Zeines@AOL.com, or call the city office at 212-813-9461. And you’re welcome to go to the website. There’s a ton of information on that. That’s NatDent.com.

Will: Perfect. And we’ll post all these on the visual side of this just so that people will be able to see it easily and track to your work that way. Wonderful!

Dr. Victor Zeines, thank you so much for offering us really here so many, what I consider to be fundamental simple solutions for us to help be able to discern whether or not we’re heading in the right direction with our oral health as well as our whole-being health.

Dr. Zeines: Yeah! It’s all one thing! It’s all one thing!

Will: Perfect. Thank you so much!

Dr. Zeines: You’re very, very welcome. Take care.