Health, Fitness & Personal Growth Tips for Women in Midlife: Asking for a Friend

Ep.173 Your Mouth Is the Mirror of Your Health: Dr. Mark Burhenne on Sleep, Hormones & Longevity

• Michele Henning Folan • Episode 173

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Unlocking the Oral-Systemic Connection with Dr. Mark Burhenne

Did you know your mouth may be the first place chronic disease, hormone imbalances, poor sleep, and even accelerated aging show up? In this powerful episode of Asking for a Friend, functional dentist and bestselling author Dr. Mark Burhenne explains why oral health is the true gateway to whole-body wellness—and why traditional dentistry often overlooks these critical connections.

From the surprising impact of dry mouth and receding gums during menopause, to how airway health affects sleep, brain function, and longevity, Dr. Burhenne breaks down what midlife women need to know. You’ll learn:

  • Why 90% of sleep apnea remains undiagnosed—and why slim, active women are at risk
  • The hidden dangers of mouthwash, root canals, and cavitations
  • How oral bacteria influence heart health and nitric oxide production
  • Simple daily practices like mouth taping and oil pulling that can transform health
  • The link between oral health, Alzheimer’s disease, and hormone shifts in midlife

Dr. Burhenne also shares his personal journey with sleep apnea, insights from his book The Eight-Hour Sleep Paradox, and his mission to revolutionize oral care through his “For Your Good Guys” hydroxyapatite product line.

If you care about your smile, your sleep, and your longevity, this conversation will change the way you look in the mirror each morning. Your mouth is talking—are you listening?

https://www.instagram.com/askthedentist/

https://askthedentist.com/

Dr. Mark Burhenne's book, The 8 Hour Sleep Paradox, is available on Amazon and other booksellers.

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💌 Have questions about 1:1 health and nutrition coaching or Faster Way? Reach me anytime at mfolanfasterway@gmail.com

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OsteoCollective osteoporosis resources and community link: https://app.osteocollective.com/invitation?code=BE98G9

Transcripts are created with AI and may not be perfectly accurate.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your qualified healthcare provider with any questions regarding a medical condition.

Michele Folan:

Are you still trying to diet your way, skinny on 1,200 calories and endless cardio? How's that working for you? The truth is, midlife metabolism needs a different approach. That's why I coach women in the Faster Way, a program that teaches you how to fuel your body with the right macros, strength train for lean muscle and bone density and finally break free from the start over Monday cycle. You can sign up for group coaching using the link in the show notes. Prefer a more personalized approach For one-on-one coaching? Simply reach out to me by email. It's time to stop spinning your wheels and start building the body that will carry you into your 80s. Let's get started today.

Michele Folan:

In this episode of Asking for a Friend, Dr Mark Burhenne uses the term NO. No stands for nitric oxide, health, wellness, fitness and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife. I'm your host, Michele Folan, and this is Asking for a Friend. What if I told you that the secret to your energy, your hormones, your sleep and even your longevity could be hiding in plain sight every time you look in the mirror? Today we're talking about the one area of health most of us overlook our mouth. It's not just about cavities or white teeth. Your oral health can be the very first warning sign of chronic disease, hormone imbalance, poor sleep and even accelerated aging. My guest today, Dr. Mark Burhenne, is a pioneer in functional dentistry and the author of the Eight-Hour Sleep Paradox. He's here to unpack why health truly starts in the mouth, what your dentist may not be telling you and the simple daily practices that could add years not just to your smile, but to your life. Dr Mark Burhenne, welcome to Asking for a Friend.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Thank you, Michele, glad to be here.

Michele Folan:

I have been so excited about this topic because it's not something that I think gets enough attention out there. We just did a podcast about women's hair loss and I think, honestly, this one's up there with things that get kind of overlooked in this whole thing called midlife. Before we get started, Dr. Burhenne and I'm going to call you Dr B tell us a little bit about where you're from and where you went to school and the juicy details.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Absolutely Great to be here. Absolutely Great to be here. It's funny that you mentioned hair loss. It was a quandary as a practicing dentist in the Silicon Valley that a lot of women would cancel their dental appointment because their hair appointment was not more important but more difficult to get. So anyway, I thought that was interesting. They're both very important, right? Yeah, we'll just leave it with that. So I'm California raised.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

I was born in Boston. I spent a year in England. My dad did a residency outside of London, so I was a little baby bouncing around in a basket. Then my mom and dad drove out from Boston. He had gone to Harvard and I literally sat in the back of an Opal station wagon, in a basket, no seatbelt, and made it out to California. So I was about a year old.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

I was raised in San Francisco, went to local schools, went to local summer schools, then went up to University of British Columbia for college. My dad had moved up there. It was a great opportunity to see a different part of the world. It was a great school, is a great school, very large though and they had a good dental program. But halfway through I realized that I couldn't get in as an American.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

So, but the backup was apply to dental schools and, thank goodness, not first round, but as a I was on the waiting list for my first choice, which was San Francisco, and my wife was overjoyed because she did not want to go to Boston for four years and her career would have been effective, certainly. So went to dental school at University of the Pacific Dental School, now called the school of it's named after Dugoni, the founder, incredible man and mentor, and then set up shop in the Silicon Valley and raised three daughters and then retired and moved to another valley, napa Valley, not far away but not really retired, been very active online and still have a lot to say about dentistry. There's a lot of frustration there for me and on certain topics that aren't getting discussed, which hopefully we'll talk about today, and that's pretty much. That's it, just trying to stay active, stay healthy, keep tabs on my three daughters few son-in-laws and enjoy time with my wife.

Michele Folan:

Well, we are so lucky that you haven't totally retired, because if anybody follows Ask the Dentist on Instagram you know this guy is chock full of great information and we're going to dig into that. Because you say that health starts in the mouth, but that's not something we hear a lot from mainstream medicine. Can you tell us what you mean by that?

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Yeah, it's not meant to be catchy or clickbait, it really does have you know. It's important to understand that and if you don't then you'll never be healthy. Health does start in the mouth. Physicians and dentists really don't understand that. You could first start with just the geography aspect of it. It is a gateway. You could also. The metaphor I like to use is that it is the headwaters of the whole river system. It's the beginning. Anything that happens upstream can can have effects downstream.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

But most people can relate to this gateway aspect because every bite of food, every breath we take, whether it's through the nose or mouth big difference there, every sip. I mean that gateway is sampling the environment. It is tuning the immune system based on what's coming in. I mean it's a portal and downstream, of course, it affects other systems like the gut microbiome. Healthy gums and teeth protect against harmful bacteria which do, whether they're healthy or not, enter the bloodstream. And that's what causes gum disease and inflammation in the mouth. And we know the mechanisms inflammation, injury, infection. These are the ways that these bacteria in the mouth, in this gateway, can affect the rest of the body. So if that doesn't work well or if it's affected in one way or another. Could be high CO2 levels in your room, it could be air pollution, it could be mouth breathing which leads to gum disease, which leads to super infections or infections that go beyond the mouth.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

The oral systemic connection A balanced oral microbiome. It helps digestion, immunity, nitric oxide production. That is one of the, especially after age 40, that's one of the main pathways that is not well known. I was on a podcast a few weeks ago with one of the great breathing experts in the world and of course we were talking about nasal breathing, how it can, if you do it correctly, can give you short bursts of NO. But he wasn't aware of the other pathway and we'll talk more about that. But these bugs, the oral microbiome on the back of your tongue that can take a prebiotic nitrate, a beet and a piece of arugula and turn it into NO.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

So it seems like a lot is happening in the mouth that most physicians aren't even aware of. No blame to them. They're not trained in that area. It's a fault of the academic system. But dentists don't know that either. And and again, that's not that is the fault of the academic system, but the dental curriculum is full in those three to four years that it takes to train a dentist. There's a lot of surgery and clinical expertise that has to be passed on, so it's it's an education that a dentist would get after the fact through continuing education. So again, good oral health supports the whole body and is responsible for, of course, maintaining oral health, but bad oral health undermines all of the above.

Michele Folan:

You know we talk more about midlife women on this podcast. That's my primary audience and I was reading yesterday or today that two out of three Alzheimer's patients are women and I was wondering if you might add to that conversation in terms of how that connection would be with oral health and dementia and Alzheimer's.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Great, that's a great question. And women are more likely to get Alzheimer's. We've known that for a while. The question is is why? And I'm not going to say that the oral part of the equation is everything, but it is part of it and that discussion has to be had. So it's pretty well known, I think, that many midlife women we're talking about menopausal women they experience dry mouth, it's receding gums, more cavities than usual, and it is hormone related and it's due to the effect of low estrogen and progesterone. It's that drop, whether it's gradual or sudden, it doesn't matter, but that affects the saliva flow and saliva is everything to oral health. It preserves that oral microbiome, it supports it, it provides an environment, it feeds it, it provides an immune response, it keeps things moist.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

The other thing that doesn't get talked about at all is that the drop in both of those hormones due to menopause affects the airway muscle tone of women and that's why women if you look at sleep studies, men have a kind of a linear progression in terms of the degree of severity of the obstruction of the airway and snoring. Women stay kind of low and then when menopause, perimenopause, appears, it goes a lot steeper and they catch up with men, and sometimes past men, in terms of obstructive airway issues, osa, obstructive sleep apnea, and that's all due to this loss of these hormones. So there's dry mouth, serostomia caused by the lack of hormones or the hormones being less receding. Gums, uh, bone, we we can talk about bone density. We see that. You know, women are very concerned about that. It's debatable whether that affects the bone around the teeth, the alveolar bone. There's some back and forth on that. But certainly collagen. Collagen is key for keeping the teeth in their in their sockets and preventing gum disease and also cavities. The rate of cavities go up because of the dry mouth.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Saliva acts as a buffer and every time you eat something, especially if it's a carbohydrate, you're creating acid attack. In other words, those bacteria consume the fermentable carbohydrate and acid is produced. That is the excrement or the byproduct of that metabolic process, of the bugs eating a saltine cracker or a piece of bread of course candies on the list. And if saliva isn't around, then you won't get the remunerization effect, because that's where the hydroxyapatite is, the calcium and phosphate, that's the reservoir, but also the pH is off and so low saliva means that it's less likely for that acidic moment to reverse and become more neutral, and the normal pH of the mouth is 6.8 to 7.1. So there's a lot that goes on during menopause. I mean that's the major issue that I think you're referring to.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, and so the first time you and I spoke I told you that I started using mouth tape because all of a sudden and I don't know when this started, but it was enough that my husband noticed was that I was breathing through my mouth and kind of snoring but just kind of gaspy but just kind of gaspy and so probably some apnea, but it was waking him up. And then I noticed I was waking up in the morning with really dry mouth and I'm going this cannot be good and I knew you would have some feedback for me about that. So I did start doing the mouth taping and I that. Let me tell you something my sleep quality has increased exponentially with the mouth tape.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

I mean it works for many.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

I mean you're just redirecting the airflow. Now you're lucky that you can mouth tape. A lot of people that try mouth taping and it doesn't work for them. Or it makes sleep worse, or they toss and turn a lot, or it comes off. Or even if they sit and watch tv, which I recommend first, if you're interested in mouth taping, sit in front of the tv or reading a book for three, four, five, six, ten minutes, and if you can keep the tape on and not suffer, get anxious or hyperventilate a little bit, then that's something you can do at night. But it's not a cure for sleep apnea. But you are a perfect, perfect case's so many.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Obviously, the majority of people will benefit from mouth taping. All you're doing is redirecting the air through a different, different passageway, which has benefit, and and it back to menopause. Even perimenopause, it seems to come online at that point for a lot of women, because they do get dry. There is dryness, as I mentioned, the saliva glands are affected by the drop in estrogen and progesterone, and so that leads to dry mouth. And remember, if the airway is collapsing at night and most of us have that. I mean, 90% of sleep apnea is undiagnosed in this country. And sleep apnea isn't a full apnea. It can be upper airway resistance syndrome. Where the airway narrows, it can be a high apnea that's more narrowing. A lot of very healthy, thin, fit women suffer from this slight narrowing, this upper airway resistance syndrome, and then of course, it gets worse with menopause. But remember, when the airway does collapse and let's say you've been breathing through your mouth for four or five hours at night which is very possible, most of us are doing that the airway is very dry, the mucosa has lost its lubrication and if the airway collapses during an inhale, then it's more likely to stick to itself, right, because there's no saliva there, and so it's less likely to undo itself. And then your airway is you're fighting for air at that point to undo itself. And then your airway is you're fighting for air at that point. So that's one of the reasons.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Uh, mouth taping works so well. It's because it's keeping the airway humidified. The, the nasal passage, is this is my favorite way to explain it. I mean, here's the nose, this whole system here, and with the tongue in place, let's say the lips are open here. That's the airway through the mouth, which looks like the better system for filtering, humidifying, bringing in air, slowing down the rate of air, the baffles of the conchite here and all that I mean. It's clearly when you look at it, anyone looks at it, they go. Yeah, nose breathing makes sense.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

It totally makes sense, but most of us are not doing it so that's all mouth taping does. Is that it kind of primes you, for it forces the issue Again. It doesn't work for everyone. If you can't breathe through your nose, you can't breathe through your nose.

Michele Folan:

We're going to take a quick break when we get back. I want to talk about root canals and cavitations. If you've been following my journey, you know I'm passionate about helping women build strength and protect their bones. That's why I've partnered with Osteo Collective, an incredible resource for anyone navigating osteoporosis or looking to prevent it. Inside you'll find expert-led classes, strength workouts designed for bone health, nutrition strategies that actually support your body, and a community of women walking the same path you are. It's not just information. It's actionable tools to help you stay strong, mobile and independent for decades to come.

Michele Folan:

You can try it out for yourself with a free one-week trial. Just head to the link in my show notes and start exploring everything OsteoCollective has to offer. And start exploring everything Osteo Collective has to offer. Okay, we are back. Before we went on break, I mentioned that I want to talk about root canals and cavitations. Hearing a lot more about this and the problems with these cavitations that maybe your regular dentist isn't able to, or really looking for these cavitations, can you talk a little bit about what's going on there and why we should be concerned about our root canals?

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

I'll start with root canals, because they are slightly different so, but both do fall in the same category. There's a lot of fear mongering going on with both, and there are a lot of dentists that come out of dental school and again, I'm not painting this picture for every dentist, but I'm just saying what I'm seeing a lot of is there are a lot of these dentists, most of the dentists I would say all of them are in debt, a lot of debt. It is the most expensive education you can get in the world for a variety of reasons, and it's hard for them to get into private practice. So they're an associate for a while and bread and butter dentistry isn't as lucrative as everyone thinks it is, and so what they do is they specialize in something. And you can specialize in things and charge beyond what insurance requires, because you're doing things like functional dentistry, dental medicine, which I specialized in the last half of my career. I mean, these are things that are kind of on the outer edge and it allows you to. I could argue that it makes you a better dentist and you're able to treat the patient for root causes, but it also allows you to treat beyond what insurance designates that you get paid for and that is appealing to dentists. So I see a lot of dentists that go from being just a bread and butter dentist to a cavitation dentist or a root canal specialist Although you can go to dental school and become a specialist and that's something different. But there are a lot of dentists that just specialize in root canals and maybe a different way of doing it, a better way of doing it, but of course the prices go up and sometimes they take advantage of that.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

So the fear mongering comes in, where all root canals are bad. 90% of people have cavitations. Both of those statements are false. I mean, we've got lots of evidence and scientific, we've got a track record of success and, like an old wives tale, that's what I categorize this fear mongering, as there is some truth to it. So a poorly done root canal can kill you. It can cause sepsis. When it goes wrong it's pretty bad. It's hard to know if it is going wrong. It is hard to do a root canal properly. Be careful who does your root canal. There are a lot of functional dentists out there that are doing it differently than we were taught in dental school. Just because we can do a better job of it. They're using lasers and ozone and they're using 3D x-rays. So if you have a root canal, don't panic. Don't get all your teeth taken out and put in implants, because implants are not perfect. You can get gum disease around an implant, you can get bone loss around an implant and then you lose that implant and then it's hard to put another implant in. So don't go too far down the rabbit hole. Move slowly, get second and third opinions and do your research. But anyone that is absolute and all root canals are bad. Or 90% of people have cavitations. I've heard 80%. That's not true. It's the opposite.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

A cavitation is a kind of a remnant of an extracted tooth that was done incorrectly. You're supposed to debride the socket. You're not supposed to leave the epithelial tissue in there or anything. That's infected, because it will remain, even though the bone tries to fill in and the tissue covers it. This can happen after wisdom teeth, and any extraction for that matter, and that becomes infected. And then you get this little pus pocket for the lack of a better clinical term and that can wreak havoc, and so you have to go in there and clean it out. And but the cost of these surgeries and then the things that they add on to it, these protocols of vitamin c, iv, drips, and I'm not saying that's bad, but it's become a whole industry. So again, if you truly do have a cavitation, get it taken care of by someone who's not jumping up and down and lecturing worldwide and saying 90% is bad. Get them all taken out. Just be very careful.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Like any profession, there are people that get a little carried away. Let me just put it that way and be diplomatic. So get second and third opinions. I would not retreat a root canal. Some endodontists will do that, but they will tell you a good one will tell you it's a 50% likelihood that it will work. But a properly done root canal can last a lifetime. And then, if you do have a root canal, get it checked every four or five years. Get a three dimensional x-ray. Look for bone loss, look for leakage. Have your hygienist every six months Tap on that tooth If it's tender in any way. That could be a sign that there's some inflammation and you want to jump on that before that tooth goes bad.

Michele Folan:

Most dentists have the capability of doing the 3D x-ray correct.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Not really. It's an expensive machine, I would say that's a good question. I had one in the latter part of my career. It was very expensive, but I think it's probably 50% to 70%. Maybe I could be wrong, it could be less. I mean I don't know, but it's not everyone and certainly a rural dentist. Or if it's a big clinic and they know what they're doing and they're sharing the overhead, then financially that's a great move, much like hospital organizations do A lot of dentists under one roof and they're sharing one unit or they lease it and they pay a kind of a wholesale cost per x-ray. Those are all great models but I would say it's important if you like your dentist, great, but make sure you have you can go to a lab. You can have your dentist refer, you write a prescription to a dental x-ray lab and have that done. So there are many different ways of getting it. So if you really like your dentist, he doesn't have one, don't leave him or her for that reason.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Just say you know what, by the way, my favorite dentist, please, if I need a cone beam x-ray then CBT we call it then there's a lab over here. Just refer me, I'll get the results. They get sent to you and we can discuss it. If he can't read the x-ray, you could do teledentistry and have it read online. But have access to it and check your root canals. Even though you think you're doing fine, always follow up. It's like anything. It's like a prosthetic hip. You're getting it checked.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, that's great advice. I really appreciate that because that's again, that's not something that we hear on the regular. So thanks for that. Your book, the Eight Hour Sleep Paradox, dives into a lot of the things we were talking about with sleep and sleep apnea. What inspired you to write the book? Because I think this sleep disordered breathing is way more common than we realize.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Right, pretty straightforward. I was suffering from sleep apnea and I didn't know it. I was in my early 40s, I was at a low BMI, I was skiing in the back country for six, seven days, digging holes into the snow and hiking and mountain biking for four or five hours. Five 6,000 vertical feet of mountain biking. I was feeling great right.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

But my wife and I, for the first time in a long time, were spending the night in a hotel room. We were dropping our oldest off at college in California and the next morning In a hotel room we were dropping our oldest off at college in California and the next morning they were beating me with pillows, all three of them, my three daughters, going Dad, what was all that noise? And to make a very long, interesting story short, which is the first chapter in the book, it turned out that it was my wife. She was doing most of the snoring. Again, she's very physically fit, petite. She was the one who had the AHI of 34 and a half, that's 34 times per hour that she stopped breathing, and I had an AHI of 12. And I, literally we both didn't know anything about sleep apnea. We were ignorant.

Michele Folan:

She's in the healthcare industry, right? I mean, it was like snoring.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Everyone snores. When you get to be old, you snore, and so that flipped on its side. And now, of course, I wrote in the book snoring is everything. If you're snoring, your airway is collapsing, it's touching. What else do you need to know? And it's not cute, it's not funny, it's not humorous, so it's a great way. I mean, that book has a lot of checklists in it what to look for, and sleep apnea is something that creeps up on you.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

The other reason I wrote the book is because medicine doesn't really do a good job of treating it, and that's where my wife and I were like Mark, you need to get this out of there. So, with the help of my daughter, who's the other half of Ask the Dentist, we set forth to write this book. It's self-published, it's the number one book in its category. I think it's orthodontics on Amazon. It's eight years old now, I think, and all the comments basically are. I mean, it's not a brilliant book, it's not well-written prose and all that, but it's very logical and it tries to simplify the whole process. Because if I'm confused, if my wife is confused again in the Silicon Valley access to great healthcare, lots of roadblocks I teach people how to tell a little white lie with some of the tests so that they get the sleep study that's on the Epworth test. I mean things like that, little tips, and so just waiting, that whole kind of maze of dysfunction and trying to reduce utilization. Now the cost of the sleep study is very expensive because you spend the night in the clinic. It's $3,000, $4,000.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

And then from that I became very fascinated with the whole thing, studied it with the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine, spent five, six years just diving deep in it. It was fascinating because I was curing myself and my wife, so we both wear oral appliances. Our AHIs are one or two instead of 34 and a half. Mine was 12. I even went to in Palo Alto a ENT who was very, very good. He removed a sialolith, a saliva stone, in my saliva gland and nobody else was able to do it. He did it, he was very talented. But he said it's an AHI of 12. Don't worry about it. Well, that's not what I was beginning to understand through all the research when I went from 12 to zero with this oral appliance just supporting the lower jaw from collapsing back when I'm sleeping on my back my life changed oh my goodness, I don't nap anymore.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

I'm up at 5.30, 6 in the morning. One of the unusual effects is that I went to bed earlier.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

I was a night owl but because I was sleeping better, for some reason my circadian rhythms got better, my appetite went down, more energy, you know. I mean then I started mouth taping. Anyway, I mean it was out of frustration with the system, both on the dental side. Dentistry is up to speed now. In fact I would argue that dentistry is. We are the specialists in sleep apnea by default, because we can see the prodromal signs of sleep apnea, where medicine kind of waits until you come up and the patient says I was involved in a car accident, my kids were in back and I fell asleep at the wheel. I mean that's what they wait for. I mean it's just ridiculous. Or cardiovascular disease, or obesity, metabolic syndromes, all the comorbidities of sleep apnea why?

Michele Folan:

wait that long? Well, because, because they, everybody thinks you're going to have to get fit with this big old, clunky CPAP machine. Yep, but what you're saying is that doesn't necessarily have to be your first line of defense. It can be an oral appliance, which, by the way, my husband got from his dentist.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Good.

Michele Folan:

And we have to replace them very often because he bites through them. But I figure we're saving his teeth too. But listen, you know, if you can get by with the oral appliance and some mouth taping, my gosh, do it right. And let's talk a little bit about the stress on the heart, right? I don't think people think about that.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Yeah, I mean it all boils down to. Well, let's talk about the most obvious thing. When you stop breathing, going into hypoxia, your sympathetic tone goes way up in the middle of the night. It should be the opposite. When you're sleeping, your body is designed to go into that parasympathetic state where you're relaxed, your breathing rate is maybe 12 times per minute. I mean maybe 12 times per minute. I mean you're relaxed, all the muscles are loose and flaccid. You're dreaming, you're in deep sleep, but that's the preferred state of sleep.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

But if you're not getting enough oxygen, your body is in panic mode. I mean that's why they waterboard people. That's one of the most effective ways of getting the answers. I mean, because you are panicking, you are near death. That is a primal drive to breathe. We can live without food for a month. We can live without water for three, four days. We can't live more than a few minutes without air and that's why that is such a big deal. I mean it really gets the adrenal glands going and it's fearful and it ties into claustrophobia as well. I mean, and these are all very, very base instincts of survival and the more you activate that, even during the day, you're going to be anxious, it just carries over, and that of course can affect the heart from a physiological standpoint but also from a behavioral standpoint. I mean you're starving, your muscles of oxygen and also your heart will enlarge, and then you've got microvessel issues where you're not dilating as much and maybe you're trying to conserve blood volume, so your kidneys are working over time. I mean there's so much that goes on.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

There's another thing with apnea is you start getting a reflux. There's a mechanism there and that's one of the early signs that a dentist can see. He can see the acid in the mouth. It's a very characteristic dishing of the back teeth and the sides of the top of the teeth and also the sides. It's called acid erosion of the back teeth and the sides of the top of the teeth and also the sides is called acid erosion of the teeth. And when I see that as a practitioner and many dentists are trained now they right away suspect that the hiatal hernia, the regurgitation of stomach acids which can cause esophageal cancer over time, that it's related to apneas.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Uh, scalp, tongue, uh, many different things. So so it's all connected. Uh, alzheimer's, uh, liver dysfunction, I mean without that first stage of deep sleep which is when your liver kind of shuts down if everything's going well and turns on itself and does what it does for the body on itself. Uh, the heart needs to relax all night long. It's a muscle, it needs to rest. The brain needs to shrink a little bit at night, and that also occurs in deep sleep and in doing so, that lymphatic system basically a lymphatic system, but because there are no muscles up there, it drains all the toxins differently by shrinking the brain a little bit. So sleep is, oh my God, we abuse it, we take it for granted.

Michele Folan:

We really do, and I'm guilty of that.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

I did that for a long time. I had great adrenal glands. I would stay up late at night, get up early in the morning and think nothing of it.

Michele Folan:

Man's running on cortisol, and yeah, we talk a lot about cortisol in midlife. You know what, though I just thought about this in midlife? You know what, though I just thought about this? Many of my listeners have grandchildren, and there is an issue too, with children snoring and mouth breathing.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure, there are a lot of early habits that need to be looked at. Physicians won't see it, it's really in the realm of dentists. A lot of moms will know this. I'll put in a good word for dads, or some dads that do too Pacifier use, tongue posture, tongue tie, processed food diets I mean, if you're squeezing your food out into a little into their mouth directly or into a little glass, I mean, that's not what our kids need to eat, something with substance. It helps develop the width of the jaw and all of this contributes to mouth and airway issues later in life.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

If your child is well, if you're a grandparent which I am, and of course I noticed a lot and a lot of both undergoing expansion of the jaws, they had tongue ties removed. One tongue tie surgery was not done well and my daughter and son-in-law came back and said we did it, dad, we did it, everything's good. I looked at it, I go. Nope, they missed it. It was supposed to your tongue tie. You have to go get it done again.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

They've had myofunctional therapy, but if that, in a nutshell, as we develop, babies are kind of like those Star Trek aliens big, big heads. They're bald and they got these tiny little chins right. No teeth. They look edentulous, are edentulous, they look like old men or old women, and so the head develops a little bit. There's fusing of all the plates and everything, but the lower face really expands and drops and moves forward and that's kind of the airway box. Sorry, that's the mouth box. The airway box is behind it, and then there's the nasal box and if this airway box doesn't widen properly by chewing hard foods, by breastfeeding properly, by working hard, it's kind of like here in Napa Valley, the good wine grapes are the ones that are stressed.

Michele Folan:

Right.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

You know, if you overwater them or if they're in soft soil, I mean, but it's better if the grapes are planted in rocks and volcanic soil, and you wouldn't think that would work, but it does. So that's what makes that box develop properly, so that the airway box and the nasal box is fully developed and that way you won't be seeing sleep apnea later in life. I mean, I'm slightly retronathic. My wife had a tongue tie, my grandkids had tongue ties, two of my children had tongue ties and we all have to some degree airway issues that we're either remedying early on, before the face is fully developed by age nine or 90% developed, or we're dealing with it as adults and it's a lot of work but for some reason we're just not as well developed as our ancestors and we have that record. Every time we dig someone up it's like, oh my God, that's the way we're supposed to look. But one of the leading causes of death in children is choking.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

And actually elderly after age 65, I think it's number four, yeah, so my wife and I are always like no talking with your mouth full when we're at home, because I don't want to have to give a Heimlich maneuver and fail at it or vice versa. You know, I mean it's so our airway is tiny.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

I did a early on in my whole social media thing. I was still a dentist in Silicon Valley at the Flint Center. This is where Steve Jobs would always give his big talks. It was to a high school and maybe college audience. I gave a TEDx talk and it was only 13, 14 minutes, but I was just trying to impress upon them how important this little airway is. I had a little tapioca straw in my pocket and I didn't pull it out until midway through. But people were wondering why does he have a tapioca straw in his pocket? And that's basically the size of what your whole destiny is. Is is kind of based on. I mean, when you eat a hamburger it's going through that tapioca straw. When you're breathing it goes through that.

Michele Folan:

So anyway, Chew your food.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Yes.

Michele Folan:

Chew your food. Chew chewy food, yeah. And speaking of kids, I know there's been a lot of controversy out there about fluoride. Where do you stand on the whole fluoride issue?

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

An easy one. I haven't changed my stance since I was about 17 years old and that was well before we had any good data on it. It just didn't feel right back then. I was kind of a nerdy guy in high school. Biochemistry and biochemistry at University of British Columbia, along with an art degree that's another story and it always didn't make sense to me. And now we have the data. There was a seven-year lawsuit that just concluded against the epa and they lost the lawsuit. Uh, bpa lost. Uh there is evidence now that ingesting fluoride whether it's a mom before conception, because, remember, she's storing fluoride in the bones and then when baby comes along, baby will take calcium from the bones along with the fluoride ingest that that affects the fetus's brain. Also infants, when they drink a lot of fluoridated water. That also lowers their IQ, and so that was a seven-year discussion back and forth between it wasn't politics like it is now.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

It was a valid discussion with experts very few dentists, mostly physicians, researchers, phds, statisticians, the government, ntb, cdc I mean the list goes on and they won the lawsuit. It is a concern. So I'm just glad I had that notion Again. For me it was a lesser of two evil argument and I raised my daughter's on distilled water and added the minerals back without the fluoride and I think it really did help them. They would literally go to a friend's house with a water bottle and when they ran out of water and the mom or dad would be like, are you thirsty? They go no, no, no, I can't drink that water. And they were like huh, why? It was like what's wrong with you?

Michele Folan:

Well, and that was kind of before. It was cool, your kids were trailblazers.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Right right.

Michele Folan:

So that's good to know and I want everybody to hear that. I think the other big one that is in our lives daily is mouthwash.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Oh, my God yeah.

Michele Folan:

Did I just open a big can of worms?

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

You did. Yeah, yeah, oh, my God, don't, don't get me started. I just don't understand why we've been on this bandwagon for so long. I'm talking about the profession. Corporations, of course, have been selling us this, this, this product. It's detrimental to the oral microbiome and the oral microbiome is everything when it comes to oral health and systemic health.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

It's that simple. So if you're killing the oral microbiome and the oral microbiome is everything when it comes to oral health and systemic health it's that simple. So if you're killing the oral microbiome twice a day and the studies have been around since 2005 uh, lots of recent ones big one in 2015 that support the notion that if you for for the cohorts were drinking, healthy cohorts using mouthwash twice a day elevated blood pressure within three to six days. Interesting, take away the mouthwash, blood pressure comes back down. There are other studies where people that are on medication for high blood pressure, even dropping the mouthwash can sometimes not always alleviate the need for medication. Now we have studies again.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

This relates to the whole equation tongue scraping can actually lower your blood pressure. That's assuming you're not using mouthwash. So a tongue scraper, compared to a non-tongue scraper, can lower their blood pressure. It's because you're helping nourish and support those bugs that actually produce the NO gas which lowers your blood pressure. So we've got lots of data on it. Yet we still use it. We still think it's a panacea, for you know, it's kind of like it's that whole thing about we want to be thin before we're fit. We want white teeth before we fix the rotten teeth. I mean, it's the same thing. We just want our breath to smell good for 10, 15 minutes, like a bomb went off in your mouth menthol, mint, whatever. So these products should not be sold. In fact, I think these companies should be sued or they should be fined, and these products need to be or have a warning label, whatever. I'm just blown away that we've been doing it for so long. Dentistry is part of this.

Michele Folan:

Well, and you know, we've all been to the dentist and done the rinse.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Yeah.

Michele Folan:

It was scope or Listerine or something, and that cup is blue, and so, yeah, I had this discussion with my husband before we started recording, because he still, on occasion, will use some Listerine, and I'm like I'm going to tell you right now.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Dr Burhenne is going to tell you not to do that, so he's like well, you report back. The irony of again this mouthwash thing gets me very excited. The mouth gets abused. The irony of that mouthwash, very strong antiseptic rinse what came during COVID and we were the practitioners and the hygienists were protecting themselves. That makes you more susceptible to COVID because you're knocking down the bugs that produce NO gas. No gas in your lungs can literally deactivate the COVID virus on contact.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

We got it so wrong during COVID, but anyway, yeah, don't use mouthwash. A lot of people are just like I need to rinse with something saltwater water, alkaline water, oil pulling. You know, there's so many alternatives.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, let's talk. Wait, oil pulling, let's talk about that.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Very popular. People love it, they get it. They have read about it. It is based on multi generational, thousands of years of clinical data Ayurvedic medicine. Now I've modified it a little bit. I will oil pull first thing in the morning if I'm a little dry, but I use MCT oil and I mix a little CoQ10 in there, maybe some minerals, and I only do it for two to three minutes. I use the MCT oil because straight oil pulling with coconut is kind of messy and difficult to do. But the coconut oil is quite strong. I mean it does saponify, it thins the biofilm, I think too aggressively, it almost works too well. That's why I use MCT oil. It's a gentler effect and it's easier to use. It's a refined version of coconut oil.

Michele Folan:

Do you just, yeah, mtc oil right? Do you just gargle it like you would?

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

just gargle it like you would. Yes, MCT oil, I take a sip before bed, 20 minutes before bed, because that gives me some ketones during the middle of night and it prevents blood sugar levels from dropping, which can be can lead to an arousal. In other words, it'll wake you up.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

A lot of my patients have that. They're breathing well, but their blood sugar level drops at 4am and they're wide awake. Part of that is what they eat and how late they eat and all of that but the MCT. So I take a sip in the morning. I'm lazy, I don't do the tablespoon anymore, I just take a sip out of the bottle. It's marked in the cupboard. I take a sip and I, as I'm running around the house in my bathrobe, maybe closing some windows or feeding the feral cat outside or whatever, I swish for two to three minutes with the MCT oil and I spit it out in the sink. It's so much easier and that really gives you a headstart. It basically restarts the oral microbiome, especially if you had a dry mouth. If you had a dry mouth, you've got a dysbiosis. The biome isn't doing well.

Michele Folan:

Okay, all right, I had not heard how you do the oil pulling, so that was good to know.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Yeah, the conventional way of oil pulling is kind of messy and you can't spit out into the sink it could gum up the sink. You have to scoop out the coconut oil and you have to soften it. Some people microwave it. I mean it's a lot of work and let's face it in our day and age, if it's a lot of work it's just not going to get done.

Michele Folan:

No, no, shit, Right, okay, I want to talk about your, your product line. It's called FYGG, it's for your good guys, which I love.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Feed your good guys.

Michele Folan:

It is for your good guys. Feed your good guys Feed your good guys.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

That is the main principle.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, is the main principle.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Feed the mouth, don't nuke it and are these hydroxyapatite-based products? Then they are. I mean, Dr Stacey and I and my daughter, we had lots of time to think about what we wanted to do and hydroxyapatite is clearly the way to go. We are mineral deficient. It is the same mineral that is in your teeth and it needs to be in your saliva so that when they're in solution up against each other, when the tooth gets decalcified, you've got this movement of minerals of the same mineral, the biomimetic mineral, the same natural mineral that's in your teeth. And then, of course, when you eat something like a goldfish cracker, then you have the loss of minerals from the tooth back into saliva. So you do have to replenish the saliva with that nanohydroxyapatite. And there's only really one good version of nanohydroxyapatite and that is out of the EU. And that is the first thing we went to. We went to the best source for nanohydroxyapatite.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

And a lot of people are a little concerned about the word nano. I got it yesterday. Some people still think or believe that it was banned or they're being told it was banned and it's never been banned anywhere in the world. But it was under review, along with all the other nanoproducts, again by a committee in Europe. It would never happen here in the US and this is a committee that is just very high-level researchers and scientists and they are free of any bias and they're not on the payroll of any corporations Again, very much unlike the FDA and what we have here. And they were just concerned and this is only in the cosmetic realm. So they did ban titanium dioxide from sunblock and from toothpaste Believe it was in there. They banned titanium zinc toothpaste Believe it was in there. They banned titanium zinc sorry, nano zinc, nano silver. They did ban the undigestible nano products. They did not ban and they actually have now given the recommendation of what is safe and that's what we have in our toothpaste.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

And again, this is a product that was developed by NASA in the 50s. It's not even the approved version of it. This is nothing new. It's been in use in Japan now for over 50 years, and now it's here in the US and it works so well.

Michele Folan:

All right, thank you for that, because I think it's great, since we're, you know, maybe trying to get away from using fluoride. What else should we be using to help with our tooth enamel at this point in life, because we all are starting to lose enamel, naturally, because we're in midlife, right, okay, right, that's a good one. I want to talk a little bit about your podcast. Oh Right, it's called Ask the Dentist. Did you know you're in the top 1.5% globally.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Someone told me that I don't keep track and we've been on hold for a little bit. This summer we're going to start up again slightly different format, a little bit higher production values. I may even go kind of artsy, black and white, who knows. Anyway, thank you for that. It's a great way to connect. People still are going through the database of the old and we didn't even really.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

We have great followers. We have great people that are with us at Ask the Dentist and it's just, we have our newsletter. We have 100,000 people on our newsletter. Open rate of 52%. I get feedback from them. Sometimes I reply. It's just I get goosebumps just talking about the people that are part of our community. It really is amazing.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

So the podcast I've heard that before. I've never looked at the numbers. I think it's easy because there's not much on oral health. I think we're kind of unique. There are a few, but it's mostly directed towards other dentists and I've been on those podcasts. It's more like you know, if you're a dentist, what's the road to success, you know, and that kind of thing, entrepreneurship and all that.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

But no, this is really for the people and just kind of talking about new research and so, and our newsletter has kind of carried us through the summer and we have we just put up our database of all newsletters and people are diving into that now and the newsletters are fun. They're very easy to understand, one or two pages long, and it's all the new stuff that you need to know about. We did a thing on female health, a two-part series recently, stuff that people don't understand. There's all these new studies we're going to. There's a new term called P-cycling, p-e-e recycling your urine. They're able now to pull nano hydroxyapatite from our urine. We're going to see that in toothpaste soon. I will warn everyone before we put it into our toothpaste, if we ever do. Okay.

Michele Folan:

thanks for the heads up.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

I mean it's just and that study in August that just came out that I think we referenced early on in our conversation today that maybe I didn't, but it's that aggressive, successful periodontal care that's going to see a periodontist and getting your gum scraped and gum surgery and all that it slows down calcifications of the artery and cardiac disease. I mean, again, it's always back and forth. It's you know, people that floss more don't get heart disease. People with heart disease have gum disease. I mean the connection's there. So it's something new every day. It's amazing.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, it's so fascinating and you signed a new book deal.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

I did. Very, very excited about that.

Michele Folan:

And what's this book going to be about?

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Something out of the blue. They approached us and my daughter and I are going to write it, probably along with a collaborator, and we are right now in the throes of it. We've got a lot of chapters in place already. It's going to be, hopefully, an entertaining read on oral health and how it's part of the whole human condition historically, politically, physiologically, cosmetically and, of course, with all the bits and details of the stuff we've been talking about today. So I'm just hoping to be able to write a book that will put oral health on the map in front of every conversation health conversation.

Michele Folan:

Yeah.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Which it isn't always, it's always. You know, I tried to lose 10 pounds last summer and I couldn't do it. Or it's the trivial stuff, or I just got diagnosed with thyroid cancer. What do I do? I mean, those are valid things, but what part of your oral health led to that thyroid cancer?

Michele Folan:

I mean, that's what we want to bring to light and bring to the surface, so yeah, and I think it's part of the longevity puzzle that gets overlooked, and we're all about longevity on this podcast, and that's why I wanted you here today. I have one personal kind of question for you, though. What is one of your health non-negotiables?

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Oh boy.

Michele Folan:

I know there are many.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Yeah, there are many. I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is sleep and my oral health, and I don't have perfect oral health. It's been a challenge. I grew up in San Francisco, but I was not seeing a dentist on a regular basis. My dad was self-employed. My mother was a housewife.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Later, she started working, of course, but it was sporadic and not ideal. But since I've been following what I preach, I haven't had any issues no decay, no bleeding gums, good oral health, no halitosis, no bad breath, no tonsil stones, all of those things. None of these saliva stones. That was uncomfortable, that was a calcification of the duct of the submandibular gland and that would block it. So when I saw food, I'd get a little lump here within seconds because the saliva gland would produce saliva but it couldn't get out. And that was probably because I wasn't getting enough K2. I wasn't eating enough fatty foods and meats and fermented products.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

K2 is crucial to shepherding where calcium goes in the body. So it's probably sleep and oral health, but it's other things too. It's interacting with people, it's doing what we're doing right now. I mean there's so many pieces to the puzzle and so it's very hard to say. I mean, if I was stranded on a desert island, I would figure out some way to get my stereo system and record collection there and I'd be happy. And I would just out some way to get my stereo system and record collection there and I would be happy, you know, and I would just pull coconuts off the trees. I mean, it depends, so anyway.

Michele Folan:

One last thing when can listeners find you and your podcast and your work?

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

So you mentioned the podcast, the newsletter, the website. It's all Ask the Dentist. Just search for that. The book on sleep you would search for just by typing in my last name into Amazon. It'll come up. The 8-Hour Sleep Paradox. The new book is with a publisher.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

I'm sure you'll hear about it. Certainly all of our followers on Instagram will hear about it, tiktok as well. But I mean typically if you're into oral health and you start digging deep and I would encourage you to do that online and be careful of the things we talked about earlier. You know the there's a lot of misinformation out there, but our name will come up. You'll see my face and and I'm will be very happy that that's the case and I would just reach out to us.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

I can't answer everything. We get overloaded with so many different questions but people that do do get a a very honest answer and it can be very short, of course, but at least it steers them in the right direction. So, but I would start probably with the newsletter. That's right now our hot item because it just expands that world very quickly for someone who has had issues. A lot of our listenership are women between the ages of 35 and 75, and they are very concerned and maybe they're missing some teeth or they're suffering from sogrance, dry mouth, menopause. There are things you can do, no matter what age you are. There are things you can do to make things a little bit easier.

Michele Folan:

Absolutely. This was delightful. Dr Mark Burhenne, Thank you so much for being here today.

Dr. Mark Burhenne:

Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it.

Michele Folan:

Thank you for listening. Please rate and review the podcast where you listen and if you'd like to join the Asking for a Friend community, click on the link in the show notes to sign up for my weekly newsletter, where I share midlife wellness and fitness tips, insights, my favorite finds and recipes.