You might not realize it, but every tooth in your mouth is a living organ.
Not just a chunk of calcium anchored in your jaw. A complex structure with its own blood supply, nerve system, and lymphatic drainage. Like your heart or liver, each tooth is alive, dynamic, and – like your heart or liver or any other organ – intimately connected to your overall health.
Every tooth affects and is affected by the rest of the body. Everything done to or that happens to the teeth can impact your overall health.
Recognizing this lays the foundation of holistic, biological dentistry. It also makes dentistry about so much more than just fixing cavities or straightening smiles. The mouth becomes a reflection of your systemic health and a pathway through which healing – or harm – can reach every organ and system.
The Mouth-Body Connection
The relationship between oral and systemic health runs deeper than most realize.
Your mouth harbors hundreds of species of bacteria – many helpful, some harmful – and the health of these microbial communities directly influences inflammation throughout your body. Oral disease becomes more likely when too many harmful species start to thrive, yet their impact isn’t restricted to the mouth. For instance, a mountain of evidence shows a link between gum disease and heart disease, diabetes, stroke, pregnancy complications, cognitive decline, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, and more. Other research has shown a relationship between some kinds of decay-causing bacteria and brain health.
But as a biological dental practice, we’re just as concerned with more hidden sources of systemic toxicity that conventional dentistry often overlooks: mercury exposure from “silver” amalgam fillings, lingering infection in root canal-treated teeth, jawbone osteonecrosis (area of infected or dead bone in the jaw, commonly called “cavitations”).
These create what are known as “foci” – local areas of infection or toxicity that can burden the immune system and trigger health problems far from their source. Again, your teeth and jaws are connected to the rest of your body through an intricate network of blood vessels and lymphatic channels that can carry both healing nutrients and harmful toxins throughout your body.
But the mouth/body connection isn’t only physical. Biological dentistry also incorporates principles from energy medicine, such as the function of the meridian system from Traditional Chinese Medicine. The meridians are energetic pathways that run throughout the length of the body, each passing through multiple organs, tissues, and structures. Front teeth, for instance, correspond with organs such as the kidneys and bladder, while molars connect with the stomach and large intestine. What happens to any organ in the body – including a tooth – can have effects on any other part of the body that shares its meridian.
You can explore these relationships for yourself with our interactive tooth chart .
Whenever a tooth needs treatment, then, we always need to consider how it might affect the corresponding organs and structures. This helps us make more informed decisions about things like treatment approaches, timing, and materials, recognizing that dental interventions can have effects that extend far beyond the mouth.
The Importance of Biocompatibility
Given the nature of the mouth/body relationship, biocompatibility is crucial. We want to ensure that any materials placed in the mouth support rather than burden the body’s natural healing processes. We also want to take the most conservative approach possible to address any problems, favoring minimally invasive procedures whenever possible. Less intervention often means better long-term outcomes.
It’s not enough to consider whether a certain dental material will restore function. We have to consider how it may interact with the individual patient’s biology over time. Every person has a unique biological terrain, with different sensitivities, detox capacities, and immune responses. A material that is ideal for one patient might create problems for another. Blood serum testing is our best way of knowing which materials are the best fit for any given patient, helping us avoid substances that could trigger inflammation, allergic reactions, or toxic accumulation.
A biocompatible approach is especially crucial when you consider some of the most common materials and substances used in conventional dentistry. Fluoride is one of the big ones, of course, which conventional dentistry swears is essential for preventing decay. From the biological perspective, though, the risks of fluoride – particularly to children’s developing brains – far outweigh its benefits. More, safer alternatives, such as hydroxyapatite toothpaste, are available, which research has shown to be at least as effective as fluoride in preventing cavities. Addressing diet is critical – and beneficial – as well.
Similarly, while mainstream dental organizations maintain that amalgam fillings are safe, the truth remains that amalgam is 50% mercury, some of which is released as a vapor with every bite and swallow. Mercury, of course, is a potent neurotoxin that accumulates in organs and tissues over time, which can result in any number of health conditions. Even small amounts can disrupt cellular function, particularly in the nervous system.
Not only do biological practices like ours never place mercury fillings; we are also mercury-safe. This means taking extra precautions to prevent exposure, such as having amalgam separators to keep mercury from entering the water supply, never polishing amalgams, and minimizing vapor when working around existing amalgams. When amalgam removal is needed, we follow the evidence-based SMART protocol – “SMART” stands for Safe Mercury Amalgam Removal Technique – to protect the patient, ourselves, and our environment from becoming polluted by this toxin.
Prevention: The Best Dentistry is the Least Dentistry
Better than all this, of course, is to not need dental work at all. That’s why we emphasize prevention so fiercely. No artificial material, however biocompatible, can match the perfection of your natural teeth. We would rather you maintain a healthy smile for a lifetime.
This means more than just helping you avoid cavities. It means addressing the root causes of dental disease through nutrition, good oral hygiene, and supporting your body’s natural remineralization processes. It means working to support optimal orofacial development in children, recognizing that proper growth patterns affect far more than just dental alignment. They also affect airway health, breathing patterns, and overall development. Poor orofacial development can lead to sleep disorders, breathing difficulties, and a cascade of health problems that can extend well into adulthood.
In our preventive approach, nutrition is central, as we know from the pioneering research of dentists like Dr. Weston Price and Dr. Melvin Page. Price showed that communities that followed traditional, nutrient-dense diets had excellent oral health, while those who shifted to a modern, processed diet developed dental problems within a single generation. Page, meantime, found the proper mineral ratios needed to support effective natural tooth remineralization.
A Personalized Approach to Dental Health
Biological dentistry’s individualized approach considers more than just your dental history. We look at your whole health history, too, along with things like genetic factors, toxic load, and healing capacity. Your initial oral exam is apt to involve specialized lab testing and other complementary diagnostics so we can get the fullest understanding possible of your current oral health along with any underlying factors that may be compromising it.
The goal is to optimize your body’s healing capacity so that dental treatments are more successful and less likely to cause complications. As research continues to reveal the deep connections between oral and systemic health, biological dentistry offers hope for treatments that support long-term wellness through education, prevention, and gentle intervention.