Everyday Wellness with Cynthia Thurlow – Episode 153

I am delighted to have the opportunity to connect with Trina Felber today! Trina is the Creator and CEO of Primal Life Organics, a premier, all-natural dental care company that focuses on oral health as the gateway to internal health. She is a long-standing nurse anesthetist, a mom, and a wife. 

Trina believes that the antiseptic products we use in our mouths are doing us more harm than good. She pivoted to become an oral health expert after more than 25 years as a registered nurse. She created natural products to biohack your dental health for stronger, cleaner, whiter teeth and improved overall health. There is so much value in what Trina has to share today! This episode will blow your mind and completely change your perspective on dental health and dental care, so be sure to listen in! 

“It is all about the condition inside your mouth.”

Trina Felber

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:

• Trina explains how she transitioned from being a nurse anesthetist to becoming an oral health care guru.
• Trina discusses Weston A. Price and his theories on the relationship between nutrition, dental health, and physical health.
• Trina talks about dental health, the anatomy of teeth, how cavities happen, and why we become prone to staining, decay, and plaque.
• Some tips to help you protect your teeth.
• The effects that wearing a mask can have on your oral health.
• The impact that the ingredients in commercially made toothpaste and mouthwashes have on the mouth and gut biomes.
• The three things that any dental product that you use needs to do.
• Why you should not use toothpaste that contains glycerine.
• How various types of light therapy can whiten your teeth and prevent inflammation.
• Why you should not use peroxide to whiten your teeth.
• Trina talks about skincare products.
• Some tips to set yourself up for success after eating acidic foods.

Connect with Cynthia Thurlow

• Follow on Twitter, Instagram & LinkedIn
• Check out Cynthia’s website
• Check Out Dry Farm Wines: www.dryfarmwines.com/cynthiathurlow

About Everyday Wellness Podcast

Welcome to the Everyday Wellness podcast with Cynthia Thurlow! Cynthia is a mom of 2 boys, wife, nurse practitioner, and intermittent fasting and nutrition expert. She has over 20 years experience in emergency medicine and cardiology, but pivoted to focus on food as medicine. She loves to share science-backed practical information to improve your overall well being and is grateful to be interviewing leaders in the health and wellness field.  Her goal with Everyday Wellness is to help her listeners make simple changes to their everyday lives that will result in improved overall wellness and long term health.   

TRANSCRIPT

Presenter: This is Everyday Wellness, a podcast dedicated to helping you achieve your health and wellness goals and provide practical strategies that you can use in your real life. Now, here’s your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow.

[music]

Cynthia Thurlow: Today, I have the opportunity to connect with another advanced practice nurse. I know there’s been a lot of interest in featuring more nurses, but the truth of the matter is most nurses are kind of introverts and don’t really want to be interviewed, but yet, I have this amazing friend, Trina Felber, where she’s the creator and CEO of Primal Life Organics, a premier, all-natural dinner care company. The focus is on oral health as the gateway to internal health. She is a longstanding nurse. She’s actually an advanced practice nurse, and nurse anesthetist. She’s a mom and a wife, but I’m delighted to bring you Trina Felber, because there is so much value. I’m so excited. I’m always excited to bring my guests on. But personally, professionally, this episode is going to totally blow your mind. It’s going to completely change your perspective on dental care and dental health. Welcome, Trina.

Trina Felber: Oh, Cynthia, thank you for having me on. And I am super excited to be here and mouth off with you, how’s that?

[laughter]

Cynthia Thurlow: Tell me how a nurse anesthetist went from sedating patients and managing pain, to becoming an oral health guru. I love your story. I think it’s really interesting and for how many of us pivot and change because a health issue that their family has, but I’d love for you to share with the listeners, how you got to where you are.

Trina Felber: Everything happens for a reason, I believe that. I really believe that. When you look back at the milestones in your life, you can really plot out what happened and how you got where you are, even though at the time you’re like, “I have no idea what’s going on,” [laughs] you are confused. Initially, after I graduated from anesthesia school, my husband and I went to Fiji to get married. We were engaged, got married right after I graduated from anesthesia school. We were very healthy, but I was almost 40 years old. I was actually approaching 40 that summer and we wanted to start a family right away. We actually got pregnant on our honeymoon in Fiji, so I was really excited. Then at week seven, I miscarried. Really, my whole company was developed because of that miscarriage, and I didn’t know it back then but it really put me super in tune with my body. I know that miscarriages happen. I know that there can be some biological reason that they happen, but I knew that if there was something I could do in my life, if I could tweak something, if I was using the wrong things or breathing the wrong air, whatever it may be, if I could make some changes and be healthier, it’s only going to make me better. My husband and I were very healthy at the time, or so we thought, but I started investigating everything.

One morning I got up for work and I was putting my moisturizer on and I happened to glance at the ingredients for the very first time. I was seven weeks pregnant again at that point, so I got pregnant again very quickly. I was really in tune with my body at that point because that’s right at the point that I had miscarried. I was really like, “Oh, my gosh, am I going to make it? Is this going to make it?” I looked at my moisturizer, I glanced at the ingredients I was now used to reading what my laundry soap had in it, my cleaning supplies, my dish soap, that kind of stuff, but I never thought about my skincare. I never thought about any personal care products, makeup, anything like that. I looked at my moisturizer, I thought, okay, it’s a natural company, or so they said, natural and organic. I looked at the ingredients and immediately I knew that there were things in there that were not healthy.

You know and I know that things pass through, toxins pass through on the placenta to the baby. I immediately dropped what I was doing. I put that down and I thought what can I use. I went to my kitchen, I got some olive oil, because those ladies in Italy are gorgeous. Mind you, at this point in my life, I have suffered from acne since I was a teen. I went through just about everything everybody goes through. I went through Accutane twice. I did all the antibiotics. I did topicals I did everything. Never got rid of my acne. I had a forest, and then I would get little cystic– they weren’t huge, but little cystic acne. I had a ton of scars, oily, oily, oily skin. And the last thing I’m thinking of is putting oil on my skin, but I’m thinking of my baby at this point. So, I do it. I put olive oil on my skin, and lo and behold, a couple weeks go by, I’m doing this and my skin’s getting better and I’m blown away.

So, I started playing. I started playing with different oils, different essential oils and probably within two to three months, my skin cleared up, my willingness was completely gone, and I was starting to work on– I was now really tweaking and fine tuning, I really wanted to get rid of my scars. So, I was really playing with essential oils. Over time, my scars faded. That’s really how– And then, my daughter was born. I was breastfeeding her. She was just a couple weeks old. I was giving some of my products to friends and using them and making baby products and people were loving everything. So, I said to my husband, as I was feeding my daughter– my husband’s been an entrepreneur since he was 13. I say to him, “Hey, I should probably just sell this stuff.” And I’m thinking a little store in Etsy.

[laughter]

Trina Felber: I’m a nurse anesthetist, I enjoy my job. It’s not like I’m looking to get out. He does a 180 and he’s like, “I’ll find someone to do your logo, you just figure out what you want to be called.” Basically, that’s how it all started. So, I opened up my first online store, my daughter turned a year, the day that I opened the store on her first birthday. It was called Olives Organic Botanicals. My idea behind it was I was going to put olive oil, since it’s so healing into every product, and it worked great. We were selling, things were going well. Then, I had a light bulb go off one day when he brought home The Paleo Diet. I was reading about paleo. I was reading, it was really early, this was 2010. I started doing some research about paleo skincare, and only thing that came up was on paleo hacks.

Two people were talking, somebody said, “What do you use for paleo skincare?” And the other person said, “I just use coconut oil,” and I thought, “Oh my gosh, I have a whole company for you people.” I rebranded. I ended up having twins in 2010. In 2012, I rebranded as Primal Life Organics. I’m the original paleo skincare company. I coined that. Now, there’s thousand out there, but I originated the paleo skincare, and that’s when it really took off in 2012.

Cynthia Thurlow: That’s so exciting. I love to see fellow nurses in the entrepreneurial space. You saw a void, you filled it and very clearly have been incredibly successful. Now, when I was preparing for this, there was a name that came up and it’s Weston A. Price. When I did my functional training, I had never heard of him. Of course, we probably never had an utterance in our nursing education, either undergrad or grad school. For the sake of the listeners, when we talk about Weston A. Price, can you share with them what about Weston A. Price and the mouth kind of go together? Because, unfortunately, unless you’re in the paleo world, the primal world, the crunchy world, you may not have heard of this man, and yet his research is really compelling and certainly suggestive of the fact that many of us are heading in the right direction as it comes to oral and other health.

Trina Felber: Weston A. Price was the person who I basically made my dental products after. The story about my dental– because I’m really known mostly for my dental products, that’s how people find me and I really became this guru of dental health. Mainly because as a nurse and I know, you can look in someone’s mouth, and if their mouth is not healthy, you can get an indication of what’s going on inside. I know you’ve got a story behind that. Just knowing that if you are suffering from sensitive teeth, dingy-looking teeth or yellow teeth, if your gums are bleeding, that’s a signal that there’s possibly, not always, but possibly something going on in the inside as well. We’ll get into that in a minute. I’m going to go into a quick story and this will lead to Weston A. Price.

When my daughter was two years old, she had a molar erupt, and I love using props. That’s the nurse in me. I’m a geeky nurse. So, my daughter had a molar erupt that had a natural cavity in it. My husband and I are like, “Oh my gosh, what is this?” We don’t feed her sweets. She’s eating healthy. We took her to the dentist and a normal, regular dentist, not a natural dentist or anything biological, but just our regular pediatric dentist. He took one look at the tooth and he said that’s a natural cavity, which I didn’t even know could happen. In utero, at the moment that tooth was being developed, I must have had some sort of bacterial infection or something happened, some stressor happened, and that tooth had a defect. He said, “Well, that’s a pretty significant defect. We will put a temporary filling in it. That temporary filling will probably last about three months. Every time that filling falls out, we’ll just decide is now the time to pull the tooth or should we put another filling in. I honestly don’t expect the tooth to make it past a year.” We put the temporary filling in and as we were walking out the door, I remember him saying to me, “We put the filling in. Now, we can just hope for the best.” I thought, “There is no way this mamma is hoping for the best. I’m not going to do it.” I thought I’ve done my research on skincare, I am going to do my research on dental, because maybe there’s something that I’m not doing. Maybe I’m not doing it completely wrong, but maybe I’m not really doing it right either.

So, I started doing my research. That’s how I came across Dr. Weston A. Price. He was a dentist, I cannot believe his research, and he was so far beyond his years. It was in the early 1900s. His research was actually in the late 1800s that he started doing this. Early 1900s, he did research on third-world countries. Now, take your mind to National Geographic. All I can picture is these people that are thin, they don’t suffer from obesity, they don’t have thyroid disease or diabetes. When they smile, you see this huge jaw, and huge white teeth, like really big, almost like their mouth is bigger than what we have right now, and it is.

You see those images in your head and he researched as to why are they healthy? Why is their mouth healthy? Why are their teeth healthy? What he found was it came down to what they were eating. They were eating foods that were grown in the soil that had plenty of minerals and nutrients in it, so their mouth could be alkaline and remineralize their teeth. Obviously, if the mouth is healthy, they are thinner, and they don’t suffer from those other diseases that I talked about. He furthered his research. When they would come to the US, when people that live there came to the US, we supersize everything, the first thing that goes is dental health. They get cavities, gum disease. And then, follow that through, now they’re getting obesity becomes a problem, diabetes becomes a problem, heart disease is an issue. All of these things start to happen as our diet changes and our oral health changes.

What I did was I took his information about the minerals in the soil, and how they’re eating an alkaline diet, and those minerals are able to replace the minerals inside their mouth and keep their mouth healthy. What I did was I developed my Dirty Mouth tooth powder, dirty because it’s made from clay, three different clays, a blend of clays, that has minerals in it. Then, it’s also alkaline with a little baking soda, and I can get into the why behind that in a minute. But to make a long story short, that tooth that my daughter was supposed to lose within a year, fell out naturally at the age of 11. She never had one issue. Actually, it had the original filling, temporary filling in it. That filling lasted nine years, over nine years. When that tooth fell out, I looked at it and it had– you can see the remineralization over that temporary filling. It was actually holding it in and keeping it healthy. That’s the story of my tooth, and my daughter’s tooth.

Cynthia Thurlow: I think that’s really incredible because as a western medicine trained healthcare provider who also has functional training, I have never heard this information before, other than when I did my training and Weston A. Price, but the translation for me didn’t occur until I had my own healthcare hiccup and we’re definitely going to talk about this. I’ve never really spoken about this publicly. Two years ago, most of the listeners know I had a healthcare hiccup and spend 13 days in the hospital, one week of which vomiting. Vomiting will destroy the acids, the hydrochloric acid, the digestive enzymes that you’re vomiting up and over your teeth. Even though I was asking the nurses and my husband who thought I was nuts to brush my teeth, because I knew that it was going to be detrimental. It destroyed the enamel on my teeth. Significantly enough so that I have needed to see the dentist every eight weeks, and I’ve had a lot of staining, like my teeth look great. They would look great when I got them cleaned, and then two weeks later, they would start getting stained.

It got to the point where there were times on social media where people would say, “Did you get braces?” I would say to my husband, “Oh my God, this person is not asking to be rude. It must look gray or there must be some discoloration.” I reached out to you, and you shared some products with me. I came back from a dental appointment, and this is just purely coincidental that we were recording today. As I told you before, we got on, my dentist and the dental hygienist who have known me for about 18 years and knew what my teeth look like before which I never appreciated them enough before and know what’s happened over the past few years. They said, “Cynthia, your teeth are remineralizing. We cannot believe it’s 80% to 90% better than where it was eight weeks ago.” For everyone that’s listening, if there’s anyone who’s ever dealt with chronic stains or you’ve had medications that have impacted the quality of your teeth– and we’re going to go into some tooth anatomy, and we’re going to go into some physiology and because I think it’s really important, the more you understand, the more empowered you can be. All of this information that Weston A. Price researched and dove into became the basis for your book, for your business, and obviously helped your daughter and you’re helping thousands, if not more, individuals on a daily basis. So, I’m incredibly grateful.

I would love to pivot, and talk a little bit about anatomy and physiology. I love the science behind all of this. I actually told my dentist this morning, I know more about teeth than I ever did before. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know more, but you don’t really get a lot of an education in traditional allopathic medicine. Let’s talk a little bit about dental health, let’s talk about saliva, what the purpose is, and how we become prone to not only staining, but decay, plaque. When you go into the dentist, and they have to take out the super sharp instruments to scrape biofilms off the teeth. Let’s talk about what that is, that is not supposed to be there, this should not be our norm. If you’ve got a mouth full of fillings, it doesn’t mean that things can’t get better, but let’s dive into the anatomy and physiology piece, because I think it’s so interesting.

Trina Felber: I would love to and really quick, I just want to mention, in case anyone’s listening out there, vomiting isn’t the only way that the acids wear away at your teeth. Cynthia suffered from vomiting, thank you for sharing that. But most of the foods that we eat today are acidic by nature. That’s meats, processed foods, almost all processed foods are acidic. Really, if you’re looking for alkaline, you’re going to have to look at the vegetables. Green vegetables are the most alkaline. Coffee is going to be acidic. Think of these things as you’re eating all day, and I’ll give you some tips on what to do when you do eat, how do you eat your meal to protect your teeth, because there’s no avoiding acids. But what you do want to avoid is using things that are actually going to create more acid. Most of the products that are actually out there on the market, create more acid in your mouth.

As I go through the like, how does a cavity happen– Sensitive teeth, if you’re someone who suffers from sensitive teeth, that would be the hot and cold foods, if you get that little, “Ooh,” like as you’re biting things. If you have gums that are sensitive or bleeding, these are just warning signs to your body, that if you don’t make a change, you’re heading down that path of cavities, gum disease, root canals, and even pulling those teeth. You can change that. What’s great about what Cynthia has said is, when I send you those products, I put the order in because I wanted to see– how long has it been, because we’ve been conversing back and forth, but we lose track of time. I went back and looked and I sent you– I put the order in on February 11th. Today, it’s what, the 24th or 25th of April? Something like that. Probably by the time you got them and started using them, we were at least mid-February. So, it’s really been about two months that you’ve been using these products.

It can happen. You can change what’s going on inside your mouth, but you have to change the condition inside your mouth. It’s all about the condition inside your mouth. When we talk anatomy and physiology, I always like to compare it to the body, inside the body. I like to tell people your mouth, and that whole tube that runs from tongue to tail is, I tell people that is all outside your body. You have a tunnel, that tunnel is literally outside of your body. When you get a breakdown or a weakness or we call it leaky. If it’s leaky, if your gut is leaky, it’s going to let things into your body through the mucosa because there’s a breakdown. But your gut isn’t the start of that, your mouth is really the start of that tunnel. That’s your gatekeeper. I always say your front door, shut your front door and the rest of it can get better or stay healthy. Your mouth and your gums, if your gums get leaky, then you can suffer. That’s why there’s a link between heart disease and your mouth. There’s a link between Alzheimer’s and your gum tissue. There’s a link between preterm labor and infertility and diabetes and obesity and thyroid disease, and I can go on and on. Everything has been linked to your mouth. Now it’s true, some of it has been linked to the gut as well, but your mouth is the start of your gut.

I had a customer just recently email me and said that they’ve suffered from IBS, Crohn’s all sorts of gut disorders for the past couple years, and she had switched to a natural dental product and had no change. She found my products and made the switch to my products, and for the first time, her gut has healed. I have done talks about this about if you change the environment inside your mouth, you have to stop and realize that whatever is inside your mouth gets into your gut because you swallow everything, we don’t think about that. You swallow everything that gets inside your mouth, whether it’s from the pollution, the air, the pesticides on an apple that you eat, or whatever. Whatever is inside your mouth, you swallow.

A little bit of anatomy and physiology about your mouth. If you’re someone who suffers from frequent sinus infections, I know a lot of people suffer from frequent sinus infections, or get colds very easily, your mouth is connected to your nose, or nasal passage and your sinuses. I always say your mouth is not vagus, what happens inside your mouth doesn’t stay inside your mouth. If you have the wrong bacteria– I like to hold up my bad bacteria guy. If you have the wrong bacteria inside your mouth, this guy doesn’t stay there. You’re going to swallow him, he’s going to disrupt the biome inside your gut, he’s going to get in your nose, when you breathe in, he gets into your lungs, and in your sinus passages as well. Now, you get rid of this guy and you change the environment inside your mouth, it’s not that you’re never going to have a cold or a sinus infection, but the chance that you will be able to fight it, and the chance that you will have a lot less is really, really what’s going to happen.

In fact, I have so many people that tell me once they switch their oral health products and create that wellness inside their mouth, they don’t get cold, and they don’t get sinus infections, again, very infrequently. I can say the same. Anyway, let me get to the anatomy of the tooth, unless, Cynthia, you have a question or comment–

Cynthia Thurlow: Well, I mean, it’s on my list of questions, but it might be relevant to talk about it now. Without getting controversial, what are you seeing with regard to mouth care, mouth issues, relevant to the mask wearing? The reason why I asked this is that my kids are finally back in school four days a week, which is good for them. It’s good for everybody. They’re very happy doing this, but now they’re wearing masks for eight plus hours a day at least four days a week, and they don’t get to take them off. What are some of the changes that you’re seeing or being reported in terms of oral care or oral problems relevant to having these masks on?

Trina Felber: It’s really sad, because the masks can create more acid inside your mouth, you’re rebreathing your air a little bit to some degree. For the most part, you’re not drinking as much. You have to stop and realize that when your mouth is covered, you just don’t drink as much, so you’re also getting more dehydrated. There’s two ways you’re getting dehydrated, you’re not drinking as much, and you’re now breathing out and rebreathing some of that CO2. When your mouth gets dry, or you get dehydrated, these guys just have a party. The dentists are actually seeing people that never had cavities, never had gum disease, they are now showing up in the dentist office with cavities and gum disease. It all comes down to the environment. These guys can’t live. The bad bacteria that cause gum disease and cause cavities cannot live in an alkaline environment. I have a lot of people that tell me you can’t heal a cavity. To be honest with you, the condition that your mouth was in, Cynthia, you were really close to a cavity, like in a general way, you might not have had a hole in your tooth like this. What’s happening when you have sensitive teeth, or you have dingy teeth, it’s not a cavity in the sense that there’s a hole. It’s a cavity in the sense that it’s wearing away at the enamel. That’s exactly what happens– we call it mask mouth, is what the term has been coined. You can fix it, you can change it, you need to drink more water, make sure that you take– when you take a break, take the mask off. So, if you can go outside or go somewhere where you’re not near people and you can take the mask off, take the mask off. Don’t use breath mints, don’t chew gum, anything that has the sugar, or any artificial anything is going to create more acid inside your mouth. Mouthwash, we’ll get into why mouthwash is bad, but don’t use mouthwash. It’s going to actually help these guys survive and kill off your good guys.

That’s a great question and it’s very relevant because mouth– I never thought about it, but as a nurse anesthetist, I was telling my husband the other day, I used to wear a mask all the time, in some cases, I go in at 7:00 in the morning, you start your case and it goes all day, and I would wear a mask all day. Looking back, I used gum or breath mints because my breath was really bad, and my teeth were nowhere near as good as what they are now. In fact, at that stage in my life before I started with my dental products, my teeth were starting to chip. It really makes sense that wearing a mask all day changes that environment inside your mouth.

Let me go into the anatomy of your teeth really quick because once you understand this, and how I relate it to inside your body, it’ll all make sense or make more sense anyway. I get told you can’t heal a cavity, and I like to tell people– because I’ll do Facebook Lives a lot of times. I love dental hygienists, but I’ll tell you what, they’re the first ones when I start talking about how to heal a cavity, they are on my butt about how you can’t heal a cavity. You’re telling everybody the wrong information, you’re going to be hurting people. I agree with them, 100%. You can’t heal a cavity. You’re absolutely right. If you are using the wrong products, and you are brushing your teeth with what I call toxipaste, you will never ever, ever, ever, ever heal a cavity with this stuff. Never. But if you make a simple change, like you’re brushing your teeth anyway, ditch that, and for 30 days, try something different, and I’ll tell you what to look for. If you make the change, you’re brushing your teeth anyway, just switch what you’re using and see what happens. I’ll tell you why you can heal a cavity. So, I go into it in a second, but I want to give you the details of your teeth.

This is your tooth, this is cut in half, and what you see here, it’s colored for a reason. The outside of the tooth is the enamel. We all know what the enamel is, it’s hard, it’s white. It is really the same minerals as your bone, calcium, phosphorus, and there’s a bunch of other minerals in there that are less prominent, but same exact minerals as your bone, and it’s actually harder than your bone. This is why you can heal a cavity, so your bone– I tell people, if you don’t believe that you can heal a cavity, then you should not believe that you can heal a broken bone because a broken bone is basically a cavity or a split in the bone tissue, which is basically softer than enamel. The reason that you can heal a bone is because of the environment, it’s in a neutral environment. The pH of your body internally is between 7.35 and 7.45, and you have minerals. When you have a broken bone, the minerals will then go back and replace the minerals that were lost to heal or calcify that bone.

What’s wrong with your mouth. the reason you can’t heal a cavity, if your mouth is acidic, is because of the acid. Your mouth doesn’t have a neutral pH the majority of the time. If you don’t change the pH to more alkaline, you will never heal a cavity. Unfortunately, it has been proven that this stuff creates more acid inside your mouth. I’ll tell you what to look for to make sure that what you’re using is alkaline. The truth of the matter is if you switch what you’re using to something that’s alkaline, and you do a couple of tips that I’ll give you after you eat, and you eat more fruits and vegetables and the types of things that are more alkaline, aren’t as acidic, you can definitely change your mouth and heal your teeth and replace the minerals, just like Cynthia did.

Cynthia Thurlow: It completely blew my mind. My husband, I managed to get him off of Listerine. That’s why when he pulled it up, I made him listen to one of your podcasts. I love him dearly, but I shamed him. I said, “You are not doing yourself any benefits, and let me explain to you why, and then if you don’t believe me, please listen to my friend, Trina.” Then, on his own, the engineer was completely receptive to this. He actually said, “I don’t know why I was using this for years and years and years because my mouth actually feels better without it.”

Trina Felber: Because we’ve been brainwashed into believing that if you want fresh breath, it’s bacteria– Wait, it’s bacteria that causes bad breath. What does it say? It kills 99% of germs. Really your good bacteria is a germ. Sometimes, they say bacteria, germs, all the same thing because your good bacteria is the same thing as bad bacteria, but they live in different environments. One creates more alkaline, one creates more acid. If you’re creating more acid or if you’re killing 99% of the bacteria inside your mouth, you’re not just killing the bad guys, you’re actually killing your good guys. The problem with killing all of your good guys is the bad guys take over because we’re surrounded by bad guys. You really want to make sure that you’re setting yourself up for success and it’s really just switching the environment inside your mouth.

To be honest with you, this really creates bad breath. I know that initial– the only reason you get that, “Oh, my breath feels fresh,” is because the artificial flavor that’s in here.

Cynthia Thurlow: And it’s strong.

Trina Felber: And the alcohol– yes. It’s literally destroyed everything inside your mouth. Then, the next thing you know, you have bad breath, so you’re reaching for gum, mints, and more of this. When you have the good guys, the good bacteria inside your mouth because you haven’t killed it, you end up with fresh breath, and you don’t need the breath mints, you don’t need the gum, you don’t need any of that other stuff because your mouth is normal. Your body is supposed to be normal. We have learned or been brainwashed into believing that bad breath is normal.

Cynthia Thurlow: And you know what’s interesting, and I love that you brought up. When you were in the OR and you were overseeing cases, and obviously I worked as an NP in in cardiology for a gazillion years, and before that I was an ER nurse. I used to always carry a package of gum, like sugarless gum with me. I’m not a coffee drinker. At that point, I didn’t even drink green tea in the morning. I would just drink water and I would do my rounds. If I was lucky, I got to stop and eat. I would chew gum all day long, because I didn’t want to walk into a patient’s room and have bad breath. There’s nothing worse than being sick and then your healthcare provider leans over you and their breath stinks. It happened to me even when I was in the hospital as a patient.

During COVID, during this pandemic, what did I stop buying? Gum and mints. I mean, even the sugarless stuff. I was actually telling my husband and I can’t remember the last time I chewed a piece of gum, it’s probably been like 14 months. Now I’ve come to realize I don’t need that. I genuinely don’t need it. It’s that big kind of aha moment of we have convinced ourselves that bad breath is normal. The way to address bad breath is to cover it up with stink, either artificial things and mouthwashes, gum, candy, etc. People are just constant– or drinking more fluids which, if it’s water, you’re hydrating, if you’re drinking coffee, you’re adding to the acidification of the mouth, so it’s all fascinating.

Trina Felber: Okay, so I’m going to continue on with what is happening inside your mouth with that tooth. The outer layer is the dentin or the enamel. Underneath your enamel is your dentin. If you are someone that has stains on your teeth, if they start to look really dingy or you have sensitive teeth, the stains can be removed, but a lot of times they’re staining more frequently or easier because your enamel is wearing thin. You’ve got to think of your enamel is porous, I sometimes pull out and I don’t think I have it with me right here, but if you’ve ever seen those lava rocks, one of those lava rocks that people use in their landscaping, pick one up one day and look at it. It’s got a lot of pores in it. That’s what happens to your enamel and things get stuck in there, stains, blueberries, tea, coffee, red wine, all of that stuff gets stuck in there and can make your teeth look dingy. Sure, that’s removable, but that doesn’t fill in the hole.

The dentin or the enamel wears away, it’s the whitest part of your tooth. One of the reasons Cynthia’s teeth started looking really dingy and yellow is because the dentin starts to show through when your enamel wears thin. The dentin on this tooth is blue and is blue for a reason, because for most people, your dentin is either grayish in color, it can be blue in color, or it can be yellow in color. If your teeth always look dingy, no matter what, there’s a good possibility that what you’re seeing is your dentin and we can fix that. We can fix that. Your dentin is fluid filled. When you look at this, the other reason I like that it’s blue is because it kind of looks like fluid. It’s your shock absorber. It has minerals in it, some minerals, so it will help to be remineralized with minerals, but it has also proteins in it that are anti-microbial, anti-bacterial, antiviral, all of those anti things to prevent you from getting sick or an infection because underneath your shock absorber is your pulp, which has your blood vessels and your nerves. Your blood vessels, this is how things can get in like fluoride. If you’re doing fluoride treatments or fluoride anything or toxic ingredients, anything that gets passed your thinned-out enamel or your cavity into your pulp will ultimately probably make its way or your dentin into your pulp which is where your blood vessels are in your nerves.

A lot of people will use peroxide treatments to whiten their teeth and they get very painful sometimes. The reason they get painful is because your enamel is thin, the peroxide is caustic, which means it’s harmful or an irritant if you will. It’s an irritant to your nerves. As soon as it leeches into your dentin, it will eventually, ultimately, get to your nerves and that’s when you feel it because it’s caustic to your nerves. Peroxide is also damaging to your gum tissue and the bacteria inside your mouth. I have a better way to keep your teeth white, which revolves around making your enamel rock hard or harder than it is right now and building it up. I always say that your enamel is like your brickwork laying the foundation of a house in the bricks get stacked on top of each other, your enamel is the same thing. Just like with my daughter’s too, and Cynthia’s, you can remineralize or lay those bricks back down.

The interesting thing about your teeth, though, is that if the condition is more acidic, when you have acids in your mouth, so if you’re eating red meat or you’re drinking your coffee, it’s during the acid that makes that switch and it opens like a portal so that the minerals can leave your teeth. It’s during the alkaline environment. When you’re eating your vegetables, your broccoli and your brussels sprouts, that alkaline keeps the portal close so minerals don’t leave, but the minerals that are inside your mouth at that moment that it’s alkaline can then go back into your teeth and remineralize. This is the one thing that Dr. Weston A. Price found, it was so fascinating. The problem with this becomes a couple things. The soil that we’re growing our organic food in and hopefully it’s organic, but if it’s not organic, then it might even be less mineral rich, but the soil is so mineral depleted. They did a study at one point, this is even a couple years ago now. They said that your grandparents or great grandparents could probably eat one carrot and satisfied their mineral needs. Today, because the soil is so mineral depleted, you would have to eat 8 or 10 carrots. So, that’s how depleted. I don’t rely on diet alone, although I try to stick with more alkaline foods, especially at the end of my meal.

Anyway, I’m getting back to remineralizing your teeth. If your mouth is alkaline, the other issue is that you can’t replace one mineral for another mineral. It’s like a lock and key. If it was phosphorus that you lost in this little hole, you have to put a phosphorus back. It won’t take a calcium ion. The other thing is they have to be ions. The ion form of the mineral is what is in your teeth. You can’t take a supplement, so you cannot take a supplement to mineralize your teeth. This all happens inside your mouth. It’s like this little magic thing that happens.

Here’s an interesting thing, Cynthia, I don’t know if you and I even talked about this, but I was doing a podcast for– it was a moms’ group podcast. They were asking me, they were saying that from a lot of moms, they were hearing that there’s they get one cavity for every baby born, and why would that be? And I was like, “Wow, I’ve never heard that, but I have the answer. I know exactly why.” If I can get you to understand, I can cancel out all these people, these moms that after baby is born, have a cavity, you can eat totally. What happens, this is your body, this is the beautiful thing about your body– This happens too. This pregnancy, leaky gut, any kind of illness that is robbing your body. If you have leaky gut syndrome, you’re not absorbing the minerals, you’re not absorbing your nutrients. You could be taking a handful of supplements, and you’re probably pooping them all out. You’re not absorbing them.

What happens down the road, and the same thing with pregnancy, think of the end line as that baby, that baby is developing and going to be making their own teeth, making their own bone and guess where they’re going to get those minerals? From mom. So, they’re going to be taking and mom’s happy to give, but your blood level becomes a lot lower of all the minerals that your teeth need. The indirect way that you remineralize your own teeth is from your saliva. Your saliva has a couple of things that it does for you. But one of the things it does is that every time you salivate, it’s washing away the food that you ate. If you drink some coffee or ate some red meat, it’s going to help rinse that away so that it can alkalize your tooth, so you don’t lose more minerals. It can protect you.

The other thing it does is when it’s alkalizing– your saliva, by the way, isn’t super alkaline, it’s more neutral, but it does have minerals in it. The mineral content, the amount of minerals in your saliva is really related to what’s in your blood. If you’ve got a baby developing, by the end of nine months, you are going to be mineral depleted. I don’t care what your diet is, I don’t care what supplements, how good you take care of yourself, that baby is going to steal from you. If you have leaky gut syndrome and you’re not absorbing your minerals or any type of digestive issues, chances are really good that you are consistently living in a level of low minerals in your saliva. As your saliva washes over, it’s not going to be able to put those minerals back in because they’re just not in your saliva. The other thing with your saliva is that it carries everything from your mouth. When you salivate, it carries everything from your mouth to your gut, that’s good and bad.

The last thing that I want to mention too, is if you’re on any medications, a lot of medications can dry you out. One of the last things that gets dried out that we think about is our saliva. If you suffer from dry mouth, dry mouth and bad breath are two signals from your body that you need to take care of something, because it’s inside your mouth that’s getting harmed. The dry mouth leads to an overgrowth of these, this is why the masks aren’t helping. You want to make sure that if you’re taking medications that dry your mouth out, that you are doing things that you can increase the wetness of your mouth. Drinking more water, drinking more fluids, is probably the main thing. There’s some other things that you can do as well, but medications can do that as well. Cynthia, do you have any questions before I keep going?

Cynthia Thurlow: No. Some of the questions that came up from followers and listeners were, what happens to teeth with age? We touched on dentin, and you’ve touched on some of the ingredients. People were really interested in what causes gingivitis. It was the dentin, what is plaque? Which you taught me as biofilm, which is totally disgusting.

Trina Felber: Plaque is the number one biofilm. Biofilm, leaky gut, these are terms that have come into play or into mainstream conversations just because of the gut. But really, your gut starts inside your mouth. The most common biofilm is plaque, and you don’t have to have it. Like Cynthia was saying, if you go to the dentist, and they’re chipping this hard stuff off of your teeth, and your gum line, it’s plaque. What is it? Basically, this guy needs a house because he wants to protect himself because he wants to stay there. He is going to pretty much burrow himself down under your gum line, so he can protect himself. It’s secreting these acids that ultimately creates plaque. Plaque is basically a hard film that these guys can live under.

I always say that these guys, they love to tunnel. A lot of times they don’t start in the front of your teeth. They tend to like to gravitate to the centers, because if you’re not flossing, they love it, they’re throwing their party between your teeth. Then, they just migrate below your gum line. Then, you start to get gums that pull away from your teeth, and you can see the darkness starting under your gums. A lot of times, you see it starting at the root section of your tooth before you actually see it on the tooth. That’s even worse, because you need this root, you need this. Guess what this is connected to? This is connected to your jawbone. If you get an infection in your jawbone, now you’re going to have a lot of problems. There’s abscesses and things that can happen below the surface. It’s what you can’t see that’s really going to harm you, more than what you can see. If you’re looking at your teeth going, “I don’t like what I see.” You’ve got to imagine that’s what’s below the surface might be just as bad or where it actually started. Plaque is really these guys secreting an acid that hardens so that they can live under.

The other thing that that plaque does is it really prevents these guys when you’re brushing your teeth, you’re using your mouthwash, it’s preventing anything from getting underneath here and killing these guys. These guys– then, your gums get leaky and swollen and red and bleeding. Your gums have a lot of blood, like there’s a good blood supply to your gums. Cynthia know, a lot of the medications that we give, if any of you take medications that we call sublingual or buccal, if you put them on your gum line, you absorb so much more. You need a super small dose. If you ever look at something that you can take either sublingual or swallow a pill, the sublingual is a tiny, like a micro-dose as opposed to what you swallow. Primarily because half of what you swallow gets pooped out, but in your gums, you put it there and because of the blood supply, you absorb it, and it goes directly to your bloodstream. It doesn’t go to your liver, through your gums. These guys too, they love the blood, so they can get in the blood, and once they get in the blood and they travel, anything goes. They can settle anywhere. If you have leaky brain syndrome, these guys can get into your brain. The bacteria inside the mouth has been found to be the same bacteria inside the brains of some Alzheimer’s patients.

Here’s an interesting fact, I don’t know if you know this, Cynthia. I was freaking out when I read this. There was a study that was done between fluoride and aluminum. So, you’ve got the fluoride in your toxipaste, and a lot of times you got to watch, it’s in this stuff too. It’s also in water and things like that. Fluoride and aluminum, antiperspirants. Don’t use aluminum, don’t use antiperspirants, they’re not good for you. But aluminum has also been found in the brains of Alzheimer’s, whether there’s a link or not, I don’t know. There’s always that controversy on that, but they have found aluminum. Here’s the deal, fluoride, your brain has a blood-brain barrier, and the channel, just like your gut, everything your mouth, that channel is super tight. So, they’re cast to be tight so only the good things can get through that are micro, really tiny. As soon as you get a leak or something that opens that channel, bigger things can pass through. They have found fluoride opens the channel so aluminum can pass through. Voila, I call it death by design. Isn’t that scary?

Cynthia Thurlow: [crosstalk] It is really disturbing. While we’re talking about toxic things, what is it about conventionally made toothpaste, mouthwashes, what are the ingredients that really impact the mouth microbiome, the gut microbiome so significantly? Because I actually didn’t know that glycerin was bad to have in toothpaste but when I read a little bit and saw one of your other interviews, I was like, “Oh my gosh, people really need to know this.” Then, of course, I went digging for the Schmidt’s toothpaste that my kids use. I was like, “Hmm, there’s glycerin in that too.” I’d love for you to touch on that because I think that’s really interesting.

Trina Felber: I’ll do two different things, natural products, versus your truly toxipaste. Everybody knows what I’m talking about. When I say toxipaste, they look like this. Some of the natural products will look like this as well, but you want to avoid almost everything that’s in here. I don’t think there’s really anything in here that is doing you any good. But you want to make sure you’re not using triclosan, sodium lauryl sulfate, alcohol, any alcohols, artificial everything. Artificial sweeteners, artificial flavor, artificial color. How you know? Most artificial color has a number after it. Anything with a number after it is typically artificial. I honestly don’t know of anything that’s natural that has a number after it because the number signifies it was made in a lab. Those are the main things that you want to look out for in products like this.

What I say is, and I think at this point, most people have taken an antibiotic. Think about what an antibiotic does. When you take an antibiotic, a week later you have diarrhea, or constipation or both, and your gut biome is disrupted. You’ve killed off your good stuff and your bad stuff, so now your gut is upset and to replace the good stuff. This is like brushing your teeth with an antibiotic twice a day, every single day. Do you think the good bacteria will ever survive in your mouth? Never. If you kept taking an antibiotic every single day for life, your gut would be destroyed. You wouldn’t absorb anything, you would you know feel sick and nauseous and have diarrhea, all of those symptoms would be a daily occurrence. This is like brushing your teeth with an antibiotic. Anything with alcohol, anything with triclosan, sodium lauryl sulfate. That same goes with these kinds of things. It does the same thing. When you do that, it creates that acid inside your mouth where these guys just love it. What was the other part of that, there was something else I was going to say?

Cynthia Thurlow: Glycerin.

Trina Felber: Glycerin, that’s right. Okay, when you pick up a natural product, there’s a couple things to look for. I can tell everybody what are my three staples. When I did my research for Weston A. Price and I came up with the three things that are needed, there are three things that everything you put inside your mouth as far as cleaning your mouth need to do, as far as toothpaste or powder or whatever you use goes. It’ll be very clear to you whether what you’re using is good or bad. Glycerin, let me mention this if your toothpaste, I don’t care if it’s natural or artificial, regardless should not be in your toothpaste. If you’re brushing with something, you look at it when you get home and you say, “Oh my gosh, it’s glycerin, but all the other ingredients are good.” Still, it’s not good. Glycerin isn’t poisonous, it’s not going to kill you. The problem is for your teeth, glycerin is like a saran wrap coating. It’s going to put a coating on your teeth. What that does is it prevents any minerals from getting back in. So, it doesn’t matter if what you’re brushing with has minerals in it. If you’re brushing with it and it’s got glycerin, they have done some tests and it takes quite a bit of time to wear that glycerin off, whether it’s through tooth or brushing.

Glycerin, it’s like a little sticky thing that’ll stick on your tooth and plug up those holes. Not good for you in the long run, because those holes will continue to get worse, deeper, and then ultimately infected. You don’t want to use anything with glycerin. Like I said, it’s not necessarily something that’s going to kill you. Unless it destroys your teeth. Then ultimately could be the cause of some other health issues. Glycerin is a no-no.

There’s three things in my research, and the way I based my products for Primal Life Organics is on these three things. Your dental products have to be alkaline. If they are not alkaline, you can pitch it. How do you know if something’s alkaline? The best way to tell if something is alkaline in your dental products is by baking soda. In my opinion, it is the best product to use. I get people that say, “Hey, I brush with baking soda. Am I good?” No. I’m going to tell you why in a minute. You’re not good if you’re brushing with just straight baking soda, and I’ll explain that in a minute. You’re okay for a couple days. In a pinch, if you forget your toothpaste on a trip, brush, call the front desk and say, “Hey, can you have the kitchen set me up some baking soda?” Awesome. That’s the best thing to do. Don’t go rushing off and buying some toxipaste to get through. Brush with baking soda for a couple days. I’ll get to why it’s not good long term in a second. So, it’s got to be alkaline, baking soda is the number one. If you’re using a natural product, it’s got beautiful ingredients but no baking soda, probably not going to do you– It’s not as bad as this, but it’s not going to actually heal your teeth like Cynthia’s, and have great results very quickly.

The second thing is it has to have minerals. It has to have minerals. Minerals in your teeth are calcium and phosphorus, but they’re also other minerals, silica, manganese, all types of minerals. So, you might see in a natural product that it’s got calcium phosphate, that’s great. But if it doesn’t have any clay in it, clay is my answer. This is what Dr. Weston A. Price found as very mineral rich. The minerals are in the ion form. I don’t know if calcium and phosphorus that they put in those other products are in the ion form. If they’re not in the ion form, your teeth aren’t going to benefit at all. They have to be in the ion form. Bentonite clay, French green clay and kaolin clay are my three clays, the blend of those three clays because they have a bunch of the minerals, all of them together make up what your teeth need. On top of that, my favorite one is French green clay. This is the nurse anesthetist in me and the nurse. Anytime you know, Cynthia knows, anytime you can reduce inflammation and you can reduce pain, you can speed healing, like 10x healing, and I think of the person who just had a joint replacement, a knee replacement or a hip replacement. They get out of bed and they start walking. They go home without infection, and they go home so much faster than the person who lays in bed. What is my answer for getting reducing pain and reducing inflammation inside your mouth? French green clay.

French green is from the sea. It has algae and other plant composites in it. So, you’re getting the phytonutrients, but one of the properties is its analgesic, so it reduces pain and it also reduces inflammation. If I can reduce pain and inflammation inside your mouth between your teeth and your gums, they will heal so much quicker. Why? Because you’re going to use them in a way like you normally wouldn’t if you’re in pain, so it’s going to increase blood flow as well. Alkaline minerals, this is the reason that straight charcoal and straight baking soda don’t work. Baking soda’s alkaline doesn’t have any minerals. Charcoal is alkaline but doesn’t have any minerals. In a pinch, they’re both fine. They will not destroy your good guys. They will help keep these guys at bay, but they won’t remineralize your teeth long term. Those are the only reasons to not use them straight.

The last thing is detox. Your mouth is probably the dirtiest place of your body. It’s exposed to everything including pollution and including heavy metals. Heavy metals from tap water if it’s in anything you’re eating, or drinking, but it’s exposed to a lot of stuff and your gum tissue and the tissues of your mouth and soft palate really need to be cleansed. Clay is my answer for that cleanse. People do a clay detox all the time for their skin, internal, all sorts of things. It’s great for your mouth. Those are the three things that you want to make sure that you’re hitting, that it detoxes your mouth, deep cleanses your tissues, it’s got some minerals, because if it’s alkaline, those minerals while you’re brushing are going to get back into your teeth.

My formula does all of those three things. It has the blend of three clays, it has baking soda. Then, I have a black formula. My white formulas don’t have charcoal, but my black formula has a little bit of charcoal for a little bit more power of detox, and a little bit more whitening effect, but it still has all the other ingredients in it.

Cynthia Thurlow: I love it, and it’s so natural. I think for so many people that really want to get back to less complicated, it’s such a great idea. Now, I would love for you to kind of touch on, if people want to whiten their teeth, they’re doing all the right things, they’re using your products, and they want to take it up a notch. For full disclosure, I’ve been using the light therapy device, which makes me look like I have like a supersized mouthguard in my mouth. It’s really amazing. I’ve been doing it five days a week for the past eight weeks. Let’s talk a little bit about how different types of light therapy can benefit inflammation, can benefit whitening, and do it without toxic stuff like peroxide.

Trina Felber: Yeah. Just going through this because once it sets, I can’t scroll. I’ll have to– [crosstalk]

Cynthia Thurlow: [laughs]

Trina Felber: -up. So, this is my light therapy device for your mouth, like you were talking about. This kind of takes it to the next level. Light therapy has been used for a really long time for the skin and for other issues, for mental health and things like that. However, light therapy inside the mouth is something that hasn’t been done very much. What I developed was a system that uses both red and blue LED lights, you can use either only red, only blue, or the other setting as a combination. There’s 16 red, 16 blue, and then 32 if you do the combination. I always say your mouth is like a cave. It’s closed, it’s dark, and things hide in there. What’s really cool about this, is this puts the light on. As soon as you turn the light on inside your house things get cleaner, things feel cleaner you can see what’s going on. Even if it’s not good, you can see what’s going on. Light will penetrate is what I like.

In your gum tissue, when I talked about these guys hiding between your teeth, or inside your gum pockets, if you put this inside your mouth, the blue light and the red light will actually penetrate into a certain depth of the gum tissue and get to the places that you can’t brush and things can’t get to. This is actually going to help. What does the lights do? The blue light has been studied to help kill the bacteria that can cause the problems inside your mouth to begin with, the bad bacteria. It supports your good bacteria, so it’s not going to harm your good bacteria. It’s just going to get rid of that nasty stuff. The red light helps to reduce inflammation. If you’ve ever used red light therapy, it calms things, it increases blood flow, reduces inflammation. For your gum tissue, the red light is primarily for your gum tissue. If you’re looking to whiten your teeth, the blue light will also whiten your teeth. It also helps to remove surface stains, especially using it with the gel. The device actually comes with a syringe of my whitening, it’s called Real White because it’s made with real ingredients and your teeth will be real white. It uses a blend of olive oil. There’s zero peroxide in this because as I talked about earlier, peroxide isn’t really going to– Oh, I didn’t tell you how peroxide whitens teeth. Do you want me to tell you how it whitens teeth?

Cynthia Thurlow: Yes, because I bet you there are people listening who have the Crest whitening strips in their bathroom.

Trina Felber: Yeah, not only does it hurt your microbiome and hurt your teeth like in the sense that there’s pain, this blows me away, this is how peroxide actually works. When I talked about dentin being fluid filled, that’s the blue part in here. It’s got some fluid in it. When your teeth are thin, you see that bluish color, the fastest way– and the higher the peroxide percentage the faster this works, so in the dentist office you’ll get a higher peroxide, it dehydrates your dentin. It pulls fluid out of this shock absorber layer, dehydrates your dentin because if your dentin is dehydrated, less fluid, it’s not going to look as colorful, it’s going to be more opaque, so that your smile will be whiter. The reason that it doesn’t last is because your body will put that fluid back in here, and as soon as it puts the fluid back in here, you haven’t done anything to your enamel. Your enamel is the whitest part of your body tooth. The smartest way to whiten your tooth is going to be to replace the enamel to actually rebuild the enamel, remineralize your tooth. If you remineralize your teeth, your teeth will be white, you won’t even see your dentin and you won’t even need peroxide. Peroxide is actually dehydrate–

What that ultimately does as well is it weakens your tooth because now if you have less cushion and a weakness, you’ve removed some of the fluid, you’ve actually weakened your entire structure of your tooth. What I did with my Real White, peroxide free, it’s an olive oil base. Olive oil is very soothing, made with– it’s got a lot of nutrients, but very soothing for your gums. Then, it has two different clays in it and some essential oils. The essential oils help reduce inflammation, increase blood flow along with the whitening lights. What it’s going to do is actually help everything heal much quicker. The fact that this gel is sitting on your teeth in this, it’s not like you’re brushing and brushing it away. It’s actually going to be sitting on here for some time. That gives the opportunity of those minerals from the clays to actually remineralize your teeth.

Now, over time, you are going to have thicker enamel and your teeth are going to be or look whiter and feel stronger. Cynthia, can you talk about how your teeth– I mean, your teeth look amazing. I’ve been looking at them as you’ve been smiling, but they look really, really great. How does it feel you? Can you tell a difference between your teeth before, even two and a half months ago?

Cynthia Thurlow: Yeah. It’s a great question. I think it’s important for listeners to understand where I was before I got sick, and then where I was after. The one thing that I noticed when I was using my “cleaner” toothpaste before using your products was that within about a week of having my teeth clean, I could feel the plaque building up again. Whereas with the products I’ve been using, the tooth powder and scraping my tongue and using the serum, and then using the light therapy is that my teeth still felt slippery. For me, there was not the same plaque buildup. Obviously, there was some degree of remineralization. And you were very honest, you said it could take up to six months, but you should see considerable improvement right away, which was true. I think for me, it’s like there’s been no gum bleeding, there’s no inflammation. In fact, normally when I go to the dentist, and it’s been this way probably my entire adult life, even though I had healthy teeth before, they always use topical numbing agent when they would do scaling and when they would do a deeper cleaning. Today, I actually told my dental hygienist, I was like, “I don’t need it.” There’s clearly a lot less inflammation, a lot less plaque. In fact, she was so excited, she was like, “I wouldn’t even know this was your mouth, and I’ve been like cleaning your teeth for 18 years.” From my perspective, on almost every level, it’s completely different.

The other thing is, when we talk about your pH level being maintained, we want it to be more alkaline, for me, I’ve never had a problem with bad breath, but I’ve very conscientiously noticed that I don’t even get keto breath. Sometimes when you’re lower carb or you’ve been fasting, sometimes you get that kind of keto breath, there wasn’t even any of that, which definitely tells me that my mouth microbiome is definitely better balanced, which for me is super exciting. Because as my listeners know, I don’t talk a lot about companies that I’ve used their products, unless I really feel like there’s been like a complete 360-degree shift. I’m so grateful that you put all this information and compiled it into these products.

Now, I want to be super respectful of your time, but I would love if we could at least touch a little bit on skincare products, because I think for most listeners, they hear about the mouth and they’re like, “Okay it’s very vascular, and anything that we’re using in the mouth is absorbed into the bloodstream fairly quickly,” but I think they probably don’t realize that our skin is our largest organ. Anything we’re putting on our skin, whether it’s deodorant, or body lotion, or things we put on our face, how quickly it’s absorbed into our bloodstream. I think I saw one of your videos, you were saying it was like 20 some odd seconds, so it’s fast. And how we’re unknowingly exposed to toxins, pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals, etc., on a daily basis. We’re just inundated.

Trina Felber: I’m wondering if you want to do that as a second part only because-

Cynthia Thurlow: Yes. We will do a teaser.

Trina Felber: -it’s about an hour talk, but I can tell you and I’ll leave you with this. I get asked this all the time, what the worst ingredient in skincare is? I get asked this, “Trina, what’s the worst? If you omit one ingredient, what would that be in skincare?”

Cynthia Thurlow: Well, as I say, I know my standard answer for food is seed oils. I think it’s going to be something that sounds benign. That’s my guess. It’s too easy to say water, but things like that. [laughs]

Trina Felber: It’s water.

Cynthia Thurlow: Oh, okay.

Trina Felber: You got it.

Cynthia Thurlow: Yes.

Trina Felber: I’ll tell you why. We’ll have to come back, because, seriously, that’s an hour talk. It’s phenomenal, the information that I can give you ladies. You want to look younger, I’m 52. I’ll be 53 this year.

Cynthia Thurlow: You would not know it. Oh, my goodness.

Trina Felber: Seriously, it’s not that hard. Just like this is messing you up, so is 95% of the skincare out there, I can teach you what to look for. I actually do a class on how to read a skincare label. I give you five tips, you’re good to go. You will never waste your money again, and you will look better than you did before. Way better. If that’s good with you, I would love to.

Cynthia Thurlow: Yeah, absolutely, because one of the things that I’m particularly passionate about is the amount of estrogen-mimicking chemicals that are in the environment and our food supply. I had a whole conversation–[crosstalk]

Trina Felber: And our water, Cynthia.

Cynthia Thurlow: Yeah.

Trina Felber: Tap water is the number one ingredient in skincare products. It’s tap water.

Cynthia Thurlow: No, I don’t even let us have– we don’t even drink tap water.

Trina Felber: No, but it’s in your skincare. What I’m saying is if ladies out there and men, are using products that contain tap water, how do you know it’s tap water? You look at the label, it says water, and it doesn’t say purified. You are getting a lot of hormone disruptors because there’s– almost all drug waste is in water. Not only that, but heavy metals. That’s how heavy metals can be getting in too. I would love to do a whole chat on that.

Cynthia Thurlow: Absolutely.

Trina Felber: Before we leave the dental though, I do want to give people a couple tips on what to do. What I tell people to do when after you eat a meal, what’s the best way to set yourself up for success when you do eat acidic foods because I eat acidic foods, everybody does. Even good healthy meats and things, chicken and all that, can be acidic as well. I am a coffee drinker, I love coffee. Here’s my tip, when you’re going to eat, I always say eat your red meat first, eat your meats and proteins first. Save your green vegetables for the very last, even if you’re just saving one or two bites. When you’re doing that at the end, that crunchiness, most vegetables are still crunchy, or somewhat crunchy that is going to help wash away any of the acids in any of the food remnants, that’s left in your mouth. So, just making sure and eating some of your vegetables at the very end of your meal. This is one thing I always tell people, eat your dessert first, if you’re going to have dessert. [laughs] I don’t tell my kids this.

[laughter]

Trina Felber: Eat your dessert first, because you’re really not going to help your mouth out by eating that last. Save some of your veggies for after your dessert. The other thing to do, if you do eat your dessert last, or even if you eat your veggies last, is take your water and swish some water, a good swish through your teeth and through your mouth and you swallow it, it’s okay. Just swish it, that’s going to help loosen and get rid of any of the food that’s remaining. That’ll allow your saliva, any condition that your saliva is in, if you’re on medication and you’re pregnant, that’s actually going to allow your saliva to work better because it doesn’t have to work as hard to get rid of the acids or the food remnants. Doing those two things can definitely help.

You talked about scraping your tongue. I just want to give everybody a quick little brief down on how I put this all together in a great package. It’s right here behind me. It’s my dental detox kit. I sent one to Cynthia, and this has everything you need in it for 60 days and actually some of it’ll last longer. It’s got the copper tongue scraper. If you haven’t scraped your tongue ever, you’re in for a treat. Scraping off that biofilm that lives on your tongue is one of the best ways to make your mouth healthy, including your gums and your teeth because that bacteria creates acid or that releases the fumes, believe it or not, and that affects everything inside your mouth. Just scraping your time takes 5 to 10 seconds. I say once a day at the minimum, twice a day if you can, but it also comes with my two tooth powders, one for morning, one for night. The charcoal one is the nighttime one, because it gives you a little bit more detox.

When you’re talking about plaque, here’s the one thing I want to tell people about plaque. With my tooth powder, plaque doesn’t like anything that’s alkaline, this is the best plaque buster. Or if you have a sensitive spot, you just take a finger a dry finger, dip it in the tooth powder and then either place it on the tooth that’s sensitive or just I rub it along the gum line at bedtime. This will help get rid of the plaque because it will break it down. Most of my customers will report that they go to the dentist and they never have plaque anymore because it gets– I mean it can’t. If you think about plaque being acidic, you put something alkaline on it, it breaks it down. So, that’s one of the tips.

It also comes with my flossing tips. So, they are biodegradable. Most of them are made with plastic, but it’s made with cornstarch. So, it’s biodegradable, has a bamboo activated charcoal floss in it. Then, my bamboo toothbrush with activated charcoal right in the bristles, that’s going to help detox your teeth a little bit better and your gum tissue. There is charcoal. Most toothbrushes that have black heads like this are colored black with artificial color, this actually has charcoal in it. So, that’s great. Then, because I really want people to get healthy and I know the other stinky spot is your pits, you actually get a small, this will last about a month or two, my detoxing deodorant, made with charcoal and/or clays as well. That’s my dental detox kit as well.

This program, it comes with my whole program, set you up for success and then adding or using the light therapy along with this. Now, I tell people the light therapy, I always get asked how often do I have to use it? It comes with a syringe that has 20 treatments. So, you do five treatments for a week, so this is a month’s supply. After that, it’s up to you. If your mouth is in good condition, and your teeth feel strong, they look white, you can drop down to two or three days a week. But I always say this is for the life, because this is a therapy that’s actually going to help improve your enamel on your teeth and help keep you healthy with your gums because of the red light and the blue light. If you’re just going to do the red-light therapy for your gums, you can do a quick five minute with just the red light. Oh, I forgot my gum serum. The gum serum actually, this replaces mouthwash, this comes in the kit as well. Sometimes, what I’ll do is put a drop or two on my finger, rub it on my gums and then do the red light with this because the red light with this will help reduce the inflammation in the gum tissue as well. This is my gum serum, replaces what you would consider mouthwash and just one or two drops on your finger, rubbed on your gum tissue, helps to soothe them helps to reduce the inflammation and keep them healthy.

Cynthia Thurlow: Well, I know that this has been completely invaluable. I can’t wait to bring you back and we’ll deep dive into greenwashing and all things that are related to skincare. Can you let the listeners know how best to find you? Obviously, we’re going to have some links in the show notes, and we’ll have a full transcript for everyone. What’s the easiest way to connect with you?

Trina Felber: So, yeah, you can connect with me on primallifeorganics.com and on Facebook, it’s Primal Life Organics, Instagram @primallifeorg. Make sure to click the links that Cynthia has, because I have special pricing for you guys. Some of it won’t be through the website, it’ll be through a different site that has the special pricing. You definitely want to do that because you don’t want to pay the price on the website. I do this because I totally connect with, and love that Cynthia is sharing, so I wanted to give you guys special pricing and it’s about 60% off, so make sure you click the link that she gives you.

Cynthia Thurlow: Thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure to connect with you and I look forward to recording with you again soon.

[music]

Presenter: Thanks for listening to Everyday Wellness. If you loved this episode, please leave us a rating and review, subscribe and remember, tell a friend. And if you want to connect with us online, visit the link in the show notes.