Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men
Charles and Dan are just two guys talking about relationships, masculinity, and authenticity. Join them as they discuss books and media, as well as their (sometimes messy) personal stories, to encourage men to join the fight for their mental, physical, and emotional health--because a world of healthy, resilient men is a thriving and more secure world for everyone.
Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men
Tough Guys and Tooth Fairies: Clean That Mouth!
Ever wondered about the unexpected connections between oral hygiene and German's chocolate cake? Settle in as we embark on a lively journey through the world of self-care for men, starting with those pearly whites. Our latest Mindfully Masculine Podcast episode isn't just a treasure trove of dental wisdom—it's a rollicking adventure through personal anecdotes and myth-busting that will leave you both informed and chuckling. We peel back layers of oral care marketing and share our own experiences with the latest dental gadgets and routines.
Hold on to your toothbrushes because we're dissecting everything from the efficacy of floss picks to the smooth, minty allure of alcohol-free mouthwash—and why it might not be for everyone. Our discussion doesn't shy away from the nitty-gritty of mouth care equipment, debating the merits of electric toothbrushes and tongue scrapers. Plus, get a front-row seat to Charles's 20-day Crest product suite experiment, where I test the limits of at-home (tooth) whiteness. By the time we're through, you'll be equipped with personal perspectives on everything from flossing techniques to the truth behind that fresh, tingly sensation.
Wrap up your dental deep dive with us as we delve into the world of teeth whitening and oral health tips. Whether it's weighing the pros and cons of professional treatments or exploring the health impacts of your sugar and fat intake, we're covering all the bases. And for those contemplating the cost and convenience of dental tourism or invisible aligners, we've got firsthand insights to guide you. So join our candid conversation, and let's navigate the maze of mouth care together—because a healthy smile is always in style.
Hey there, charles here, welcome back to another episode of the Mindfully Masculine Podcast. This week we will continue to discuss self-care for men by Garrett Munce, focusing this week on oral hygiene, keeping those teeth pearly white and that breath minty fresh. Please enjoy this episode and follow or like or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts and enjoy our videos on YouTube.
Dan:Thanks, Good morning Charles.
Charles:Keeping it weird every single episode. How do we do it? Oh, keeping the magic alive. What that smell is. Yes, how are you? I'm great. How are you doing? Doing pretty well. I told you I got some startling information this morning that, on a meme that I happened upon, german chocolate cake is not of German origin.
Dan:What.
Charles:Yeah, it's some American dude, yeah, from Yankee. Yeah, named Sam. German decided to make a new kind of chocolate cake, and now we have German chocolate cake Fat.
Dan:Yeah, nobody ever thinks of the last name is actually I know, okay, so uh, I'm a little I don't know disappointed, let down, I don't know what.
Charles:I thought it was an enthusiast of German food, but it just turns out I like chocolate cake.
Dan:Well, turns out, the Italian sub was made by Bob Italian and uh guy in Kentucky named Cleetus French invented the French fry. Franch dressy, franch fries.
Charles:Yeah. So now I just don't know what to believe about anything. It's a real, a real crisis of faith, but other than that, I'm good. How are you? I'm well. Yeah, did I already ask you?
Dan:that you did. You did had a nice little trip for your first time on Brightlight? Oh, yes, Did your last weekend. Yeah, Did you train hit any cars? No, neither. It was amazing. We actually got from Orlando to Fort Lauderdale and the lottery week and under three hours. Okay, it was a very smooth experience.
Dan:So I really went with the intention of going okay, look, there's a lot of stuff going on in South Florida that I'd like to go to but don't have like a whole weekend to in terms of sure, down there, because it's, listen, that drive for whatever reason, down 95 is just a nightmare. Uh, it just there's like nothing. I fall asleep. I have to pull over every, you know, at every rest, stop to peer or whatever, or just take a nap. Sometimes it's really yeah, so, um, anyway, uh, I was thinking, hey, you know, let's, let's try this and see if it makes sense to just get like a room for one night, go down for an event, take down, take the Brightlight down, take it back. How easy is this? Get it now, Right, it's great, you don't have to. I mean, you can literally get there like 10 minutes before you know train leaves. Uh, you know, and like Grand Central or Penn Station. It's like it's much easier. Really. It's easier because there's a lot of room, no crowds.
Dan:There was no line to get through any type of security. All right, Um, you just kind of scan your phone. It lets you through these you know plexiglass gates. You throw your bag up on the scanning machine. There was no wait for that. You can bring a much bigger bag on board if you want to. You can check bags. You can bring liquids and fluids, so we've made a couple of drinks and uh, and you sit there. You got some great wifi and if you need food or drinks on the train, that's available to you there as well. Um, and it only makes a couple of stops along the way. So it was a great experience I highly recommended. The only thing I would say is just make sure you're not going to try to change the train. You're going to be going on or coming back on after you buy the tickets, because it literally doubles in price In order to change. Make a change, uh, for the most for most.
Charles:That's right. I remember we were a podcast talking about that. It's kind of like spirit where yeah, there changed me, it just makes more sense, just buy a different ticket.
Dan:Right yeah, basically yeah.
Charles:Yeah, that's, that's interesting. Now, um, how many? Do you know how many trains go down to South Florida and back up to Orlando per day? Quite a few, Like every hour every other hour, any idea.
Dan:It's about every. It's almost like every hour, hour and a half, two hours or something like that. So there's a lot, of, a lot of.
Charles:And where does it do West Palm for Lauderdale and?
Dan:Miami West Palm. It does Boca West Palm for Lauderdale, aventura and then Miami. Okay.
Charles:Yeah, no, no, stops really between Orlando and, like what, west Palm. West Palm, yeah, nope, not really much to see between Orlando and West Palm.
Dan:Yeah, you know it'd be great if they extended all the way to Key West. That would be fantastic, that would be nice.
Charles:Yeah, miami, we're talking about that, and I've heard Orlando to Tampa. Oh, that would be a great one too. Yeah, on the, on the agenda at some point too.
Dan:Well, amtrak does do that. You can. You can take a train from from Orlando to Tampa and then also to Miami. So I I did the Amtrak a while ago, which actually is cheaper than Brightline, but it takes like seven, seven, eight hours because you're making a lot more. Yeah, that makes sense.
Charles:I did when I bought my car. I did a bust from Orlando to Sarasota.
Dan:Hmm.
Charles:And that was. It went Orlando, tampa, then down to Sarasota, took a while. I want to say it was about four hours, because they they did make several stops, not really between Orlando and Tampa, but once you get to Tampa there's a bunch of stops. And that was down to Sarasota Braydenton there's a few stops, but it was like $4. I mean, it was like ridiculously cheap to do. And so you know, it's always a matter of trading time and money right now and and sort of working the levers. Yeah, you know. What do you want to speak it of?
Charles:I was talking to you yesterday about a trip that I'm planning to do at some point, I don't know when. Where I visit. I go around the continental United States visiting the southernmost point, the northernmost point, the easternmost point and the westernmost point, and I kind of decided, okay, I've got a lot of travel plan for this year, so I probably won't get around to it in 2024, but then I I went back to my planning and I was looking at, uh, there is a way, in June specifically, that if I wanted to, I could do the southernmost point and the northernmost point in the U? S in a single day where I wake up as far south as you can go and then by the time I go to sleep I've been as far north as you could go and it's not that expensive and it's a bit of a logistical challenge. But I think I can make it work where I basically take an inexpensive bus down to Key West on one day, spend the night in Key West, wake up and go to the southernmost point fairly early in the morning and then at 7am I get on a flight from Key West to Winnipeg, manitoba, and then drive from Winnipeg's airport back south, back into the United States and visit Angle Inlet, minnesota, the northernmost point, in the lower 48 before bed.
Charles:And I would do it on June 21st because that's the summer solstice, that's my longest day, longest day of the year, and so that would, because the the journey from Key West to Winnipeg takes like nine hours, including like a three hour layover in Atlanta. That you can't, can't be avoided. So I got to decide if, if that's a way I want to waste my time on a Friday in June to wake up, do I get a vote? No, you cannot. Wake up as far south as I can and go to bed as far north as I can and still be in America Interesting. Yeah, again, we, we don't count Alaska for for high drinks like this. Right, I'm either the northern or the western side. Yeah, wow, right. So I would make the east to west trip where I watched the sunrise at a lighthouse in Maine, and then watch the sunset in Olympia national park in Seattle, over the Pacific, okay.
Dan:What is the thrill about doing all this in one day?
Charles:It's just something that people don't do and that makes me want to do it. Okay, that I mean that that really motivates a lot of my behavior Like this is this is something that somebody else wouldn't do.
Dan:I'm going to do it. This is what the this is what sane people would not do Correct, so let's push the envelope.
Charles:Yeah, I think it's a little bit of a of a mental and physical I mean not physical endurance. Obviously, you know running in a five K is probably harder on your body, but yeah, but the combination of the mental, the physical, the logistics, okay, just get figuring out and making it happen. Yeah, I don't know, that appeals to me. It's interesting, that's the kind of challenge I enjoy. Okay, so we'll see if I end up doing it in.
Charles:I mean, I would have to choose one or the other on the sub-resolstice. I can't do both. I would have to do either north, south or in south. To north works easier because I'm already in Florida, yeah, where the east to west thing is going to be more expensive and more time consuming and I might be able to do. I don't have to necessarily do that on the longest day of the year, because when you fly from Maine to Seattle, the sun is working with you. So, yeah, you can. You don't have to do that on a long, long day to still make it work. So I'm thinking about it. All right, well, keep us posted.
Dan:Yeah yeah, the inquiring minds really don't want to know.
Charles:Yeah, it's. It's a pretty crazy use of time and money, but it did no. Kidding dude, I it appeals to me, I, it, it. There's something in whatever tickles your pink, something in my, uh, in my wanderer genes or whatever it is that things, hmm, this is something you have to do, yeah, um, it's funny. They uh in the uh the reach your book series, um, which is now a an award winning television show on Amazon prime that I love. Uh, he talks about how, you know, most people evolve whatever the gene is to want to sit by the campfire at the end of the day and other people think, okay, it's time for me to leave. I gotta, I gotta get out there and explore and, uh, yeah, and, and doing it alone, just really something about that appeals to me just getting out there and doing it and make it happen.
Dan:I mean, you know, if you look at our, our evolution, both are important. Yeah, both of those genes are absolutely important for human survival, for sure. Yeah, and it'll go out and be fine. Fine, you know, find new, new land for people to, to migrate to, as well as to. You know, take care of, uh, take care of, the, the women and children at, and and the, the community, uh, backed by the campfire, yeah, so, absolutely Okay, I can see need for both. So you are needed and you're crazy. You're crazy genes.
Charles:Well, hope they're not needing too much, because I don't know if they're going to be be around much more than 40 more years. All right, Well all right. So, uh, let's get into the next chapter in self-care for men by Garrett months. Uh, this one is called fix your teeth, fix your life. And uh, I have heard from other sources that, uh, basically, how healthy you keep your teeth and gums does have a big effect on how healthy the rest of your body is.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:Like, uh, specifically like your cardiac and circulatory system. If bad stuff is going on here, it's going to take the rest of the ship down with it.
Dan:And and if you think about it, it's the first sign. If you don't have healthy teeth, that means the things that you're putting in that hole in your head for food aren't the right things. Because, yeah, think about that, that is a fact. Yeah, hard and and you know the coating and everything is on our teeth, and think of how soft all of the rest of the stuff is on the inside. So, if, if the teeth aren't healthy and they're showing signs of being decayed and and and destroyed, imagine what your insides are dealing with.
Charles:Yeah, but also remember you know that not too long ago, when we were all on our our healthy paleo diets, our teeth would break down and we'd lose the ability to eat and we would die. I mean, that was one of the reasons that the average you know life expectancy was was so low. I mean, I think fluoride in our water, fluoride in our toothpaste and the ability to go to the dentist twice a year is probably any even bigger factor in our in our mouth health than our oral health, if you're fancy.
Dan:What, what? What I've heard and again I haven't done a lot of deep dives is that it doesn't really matter, toothpaste doesn't. I've heard that the the mechanics of it's a mechanics, it's right. Yes, yes, I've heard getting the crap off of your teeth. So, because that's you know, think about it. You know you, whatever it is, you know food particles, whatever you know, that's going to track bacteria because they're going to feed off of that. Right, that's going to.
Charles:Your teeth. So yeah, and that's a lot between your teeth and your gums is a real cozy spot for bacteria. Exactly they like live in there, right.
Dan:Yeah. So you know, flushing your teeth out with you know, mechanically is much more important. And what I, what I'd read, was that toothpaste came about, um, and it wasn't very popular until a marketing agency decided to put mint in the. Oh, interesting, okay, what happened was people got addicted to that, the minty fresh. The minty fresh because you're associated with clean, clean as, and you get that tingle. Yeah, I could, and, and and you want that feeling again, and so that's how people started to use toothpaste over and over and over again, and now yeah, so I guess you know I mean you would.
Charles:You would assume that oral hygiene and longevity of your teeth has certainly gone up, as as science and medicine and widely available medical care has gone up at dental care, yeah, I wonder, um, if there's a correlation between the fact that we use toothpaste now and our teeth last longer, or if it, if there's causation there or if it's just correlated because we're doing all a lot of other stuff.
Dan:Right, I mean, it might be. It might be one of those things that made the habit of actually using the mechanical brushing, the uh, it just made it more, you know, enjoyable. So people created that habit and so now you know people are are brushing more the other. You know that mythmize that. Yeah, the other thing to think about too is the? Um, you know a lot of bacteria feed off of, off of carbohydrates and sugary things and you know so. Yeah, so the more you know, the more sugary things that we started to eat, I think, also causes a little bit more of the, the cavities. That makes sense. If you're eating less of the sugary sticky stuff, um, and and it's not sticking on your teeth as much, you're not going to have as many cavities.
Charles:Yeah, I would think that surely the the technology we have as far as toothbrushes and dental floss and water picks and stuff like that, just being able to get the bits of whatever kind of food you're eating out of those crevices has got to be a huge plus. Yeah, and we'll. We'll get into some of the equipment here in uh in just a second.
Dan:but and, that being that being said, uh, I've heard that it's actually recommend chewing gum because that takes up any any like food. Part of I kind of get stuck in your teeth. You know that the gum will kind of pull that out, which I did it as well.
Charles:So I'm like yeah, I would do that. I hate, oh, I do not like gum. Now, I'm a sucker for uh other breath freshening uh things like listerine strips, the little listerine pump Uh, I really miss ice breakers. Did you ever have those? Uh, they were the little little. They look like little glass ball.
Dan:What do you mean? You miss them. They're still. I still see them. No, they're supermarkets, Not well the?
Charles:what do you mean by the ice breaker mints are still available. Hmm, but the little. There were these oh no Bebes and you put them in your mouth and then they would burst and oh and like Not experienced. I'll, I'll show you some, some videos and some pictures. I I feel like I remember when Elon Musk bought Twitter, I was like why is he wasting his money on the social media platform where he's definitely rich enough? He could bring the ice breaker liquid gels back. And and I think history will prove me right on that, uh, on that position, uh, okay, so the other thing is, um, people who are happy with their teeth will smile more, and you know the correlation between you smile more when you're happy and when you and you get happier when you smile more. That's another reason to take care of the hardware.
Dan:Yeah, I didn't. I didn't occur to me until I read this book. I give this guy credit because he said you know people, they found that people who suffer from depression neglect their oral hygiene.
Charles:I highlighted that too. I would say that they like all their hygiene right Probably.
Dan:Yeah, I would think so, Probably, and I think, yeah, it's probably a mental state of I don't feel good. So I am not going to do things to make myself look good, right, or potentially even feel better, because you, my, my understanding, my limited knowledge about depression is that when you're really depressed, it's not that's something that you kind of get used to and that's kind of your comfort zone and it's difficult. I, yeah, it's one of those where you can't be like, oh, just feel better, or stop it, or you know, or, or, or, or just go for a walk or smile, right, it's there's, there's a whole cascade of of of things going on mentally that you don't actually want to feel better.
Charles:Unfortunately, no, I, I, you know, yes, I mean intuitively, that sounds a hundred percent true. I mean, when you even consider, you know, why do we replay our traumas in our, in our adult relationships? Because comfort, yeah, comfort overrides pleasure in a lot of even painful comfort, it's still comfort, is what we're used to, it's what we know and so, yeah, it can, it can. I can definitely see that depression would have a huge impact on your ability to take care of yourself, because you also I mean it sucks the negative feedback or even desire, not even just ability.
Dan:The ability on top of that, yes, the desire to even do something kind to yourself or yourself and investing in yourself.
Charles:proving to yourself hey you're worth doing difficult things for is one of the best ways to make yourself feel better, and it's the thing you feel like doing the least when you're in the middle of it. So, yeah, it kind of kind of sucks how this, this bag of goo in our in our skulls. You know it will work out what it thinks it needs to do to keep us alive, but keeping us happy just isn't part of the equation. In a lot of the time it's like I'll keep you alive, but that's where that's all I'm willing to do, and sometimes it even fails at that. Okay, so some studies this surprised me. Some studies have shown that only 64% of Americans visit the dentist once a year and 23% of us a quarter of us are walking around having not brushed our teeth in two days or more.
Dan:I guess if listen, man, just like everything else, if you don't have habits, these are teens built into your world. But yeah, I could see it just not happening. You know, and here's and this is the reason why I mentioned this is you ever go on vacation and you, you know, I've done it where, all right, I haven't brushed my teeth for a day or two, it's happened where I haven't showered or I have not followed my exact same. You know routine and it's in a different environment, it's a different world. So it's a different, becomes a different habit. It becomes more difficult to do because like, oh well, my, you know, my toothbrush isn't exactly where it is, but my toothpaste, I left that in the bag over there. And then you know you've got something else distracting you before you know it.
Dan:You're not doing all the healthy routines, and that includes also if you're taking vitamins, if you are eating a certain way. A lot of times, that's why I think a lot of us get sick on vacation. It's it's not that we're parting our faces off and then end up getting sick, which obviously happens at times, you know, for drinking all day. But on top of that, all these other healthy routines that we're used to doing. They go out the window because they're more difficult to do.
Charles:Interesting. And I had the opposite effect when I especially when I travel solo, and usually the hotel bathroom is very clean. So pretty much every time I go in the hotel and the hotel bathroom I will see my little toiletry kit with my toothbrush, my mouthwash, my toothpaste, my deodorant, and if I'm just going in there to use the bathroom I'll like I'll go ahead and refresh the deodorant, I'll go ahead and brush my teeth, since I'm seeing it, it's right there, why not? Where my own house is a little bit more, everything's a little more organized, everything's put away, han, okay. And so in my face as it is, so it's less work for me to do it a little bit more to hotel.
Dan:So, that being said, because you're very limited on space in your place, I think the key what you just said is put away right. So if not there and you're at a site, it's out of mind, whereas you know a lot of people, we've got everything kind of in the bathroom, like you described right on the counter, and it's like the first thing we get up in the morning. We go to the bathroom and then you know, everything is right there, reminding us to kind of get into our routine.
Charles:Yeah, maybe I'll look at redefining this and putting see if there's some things like my toothbrush and my. They had that I could put on a hook instead of there you go, or maybe like a little shelf or something like that.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:Yeah.
Dan:A shelf. That yeah, or because yeah, because you know they make the sticky shelves for like inside, inside the shower and stuff. Put that like outside or whatever, like next to the mirror or whatever. I did that in my camper and that helps remind me. Oh yeah, I got a brush of my teeth.
Charles:Yeah, yeah, I'm still. I'm still pretty on target with the twice a day that is recommended. Oh, that's great. I don't know that. I go two minutes twice a day. I usually, you know that's a long time. Now I do. I have recently gotten a new toothbrush. We'll talk about that in a second. It is electric. It's a battery-powered electric. It's not rechargeable or anything too fancy. But the main reason I got it is because it's got that built-in timer.
Dan:That's exactly right.
Charles:It'll tell me okay, 30 seconds. You know I've got four quadrants. I do each quadrant for 30 seconds and then it shuts off when I'm done.
Dan:It's a lot easier sometimes when I switch to a manual toothbrush. Yeah, it's hard to know how like.
Charles:I've been doing this for? Have I been doing this for five minutes, five seconds? I can't tell.
Dan:And I mean and I've timed it once in a while and it seems so much longer when you're doing the manual, yeah, yeah, okay.
Charles:So let's let's talk about yeah, we just said twice a day, two minutes is what is recommended. Only 40% of adults floss their teeth every day. I did look up when I was talking about flossing. I looked up on the flossing picks to see how they rate and basically what they say is okay, those are better than not flossing at all. But you can't get as much of the surface of your tooth, especially under the gum line, with those picks as you can with the real widen the floss around your fingers.
Dan:Every time I I use the picks and I've I've asked my, I've asked my, I've asked my, my dental hygienist and my dentist about that, and they absolutely said the same thing.
Charles:Yeah, Better than nothing, but I was going to go real fast.
Dan:Right, you used real floss, because you can get a wrap around that Right A lot better with that.
Charles:Yeah, I, I hate the. I wish there was. Now I have used you ever used the, the Cape floss or the? Uh, yeah, there's Not the tape. I don't like, I don't like the stuff. I don't like what feels like fishing line in my mouth and there is another kind that is more of a cottony cloth feeling. Okay, and I may, I may need to go ahead and get that and switch back from uh, just using the picks to using the uh yeah, it makes it more comfortable.
Charles:Yeah, they make a different color. I don't like putting a lot of filament fishing line in my mouth. It feels, it doesn't feel good. So I'm going to look at, uh, I'm going to do some shopping for some mouth care accessories, uh, and I'll talk about a little more about those as as we get to those sections. But yeah, I'm going to pick up some new stuff. Um, alcohol-free moutherance that's a hard pass for me. It tastes gross. I believe at Disney World when my ex I used to stay on property frequently and we would oh, I forgot my mouthwash they only sold alcohol-free mouthwash. It is so gross and it doesn't give you that good burning feeling that you get from mouthwash. It's part of what I'm in it for. For the list screen you're wearing that. Yeah, absolutely. Even scope. I think they have alcohol-free scope. It's not as good as regular scope.
Dan:Yeah, I remember as a kid my dad, we used to regular it, before they even had mint flavored anything. Oh, the Just to read, yeah, and he'd eat, having his mouth for like a minute or two, and I'd try it and I'd be like I couldn't do 10 seconds. I'm like you're freak. If you do it long enough, it stops burning. Okay, oh yeah, because when the tears stop coming out of the sides of your yes, whatever is in your mouth reacting to the burn either numbs it or whatever.
Charles:So if you stick with it long enough, that burn does go away and you can hold it in your mouth indefinitely. I found that out once when I was driving on my way somewhere and I wanted to have good breath and there was no. Like I was driving and there was no convenient stop sign, stop light, anything to spit it out. You were spitting it out in the sunroof. This was before. I did not have any kind of options, no options like that in the car I was in. So it was either stick my head out and spit it all over the side of my car or just hold it until and I just held it long enough and, yeah, after 30 or 40 seconds I was like, oh, this doesn't hurt anymore. That's weird. I didn't know that was. Yeah, I didn't know that was a thing it is now. You know, tongue scraping. I also did some research on that and apparently it can and does help with bad breath and really not much of anything else.
Dan:I do it every morning. I got in the habit of it. I like to use it because I have this. I feel like I get a little bit of a film on my tongue in the morning and that takes it off better than people. Oh, just brush your tongue. It's not the same thing. It's like a metal scraper and it does such a good job. Just oh, it's metal. It's metal.
Charles:Yeah, I've looked at the plastic ones that I haven't pulled the trigger on.
Dan:I got the metal one and I scraped it three times and it's great.
Charles:I would imagine like a stainless would probably get less funky than a plastic-y one would, especially if I keep it in the shower where I do my usual morning brushing of the teeth, as opposed to my sink where I do my evening toothbrush. If I kept it in the shower, that I could use in the shower, rinse it off and then just get back in its spot. Or with a plastic one, I'd be like this thing is gonna get nasty. I don't think the same thing about my toothbrush, but I'm sure it also does get nasty. Yeah, I mean I always rinse it off with the hot water before and after I use it, but still, Well, he does talk about changing the brush every three or four months.
Charles:I'm more of a six month guy.
Dan:I'll be honest with you. I kind of with electric ones. It has the little color coding on it so it shows when that color is faded from the. Oh. Yeah, then you know, then you know it's ready to change. Yeah, I do. That's kind of how.
Charles:I. I had roommates in college where their toothbrushes, like the bristles, wouldn't even be like oh no, oh, yeah, right, yeah, dude, I think I mean Somebody scrubbing the toilet. I mean, two of those were 89 cents when I was in college. Like, okay, it's time to you know, do I need to buy this for you? What's going on here? I think it's done, yeah, so let's talk about our equipment. I use an Oral-B Pro Health Battery-Powered toothbrush that I got on Amazon. I've had it for probably three or four months now and I've not had to replace the batteries yet, and it was $15. And it does have the timer and stuff and I like it. It's getting the job done for me. What do you? I bet you use a fancier thing.
Dan:Yeah, I have a rechargeable one. So I have a Philips Sonic Air, so it's, yeah, I mean it's about a hundred bucks, maybe a little bit more, but it's lasted me. I mean, it seems it's gotta be seven, eight years now, okay, however, not the brush, but the actual, yeah, yeah, of course, versus the right, and I had to I'm gonna replace my head's costume, you know or, it's not crazy expensive 10, 15 bucks, yeah, something like that. Right, and it'll last, you know, it'll literally like six to eight months, something like that. And it's easy, it's rechargeable you just drop it in the rinsing glass and it just charges through that. So nice, really easy, it's really easy to use and it's got a whole, you know, three different settings on it in terms of the strength, of how hard it's vibrating, and then it's got the timer, and it's also got a gum timer on it as well. So the gum health function. So you get the two minutes for the teeth and then they do another two minutes for your gum so you can actually use the brush for your gums.
Dan:Now, what my dentist told me was gotta be careful brushing gums too much, because I always think they were a little bit swollen and bloody and bleeding a little bit and they said if you're using it too much, you could actually be contributing to your gums receding. Oh yeah gotcha. They said don't brush the gums for like that full two minutes. That was my case, specifically Other people. What I've heard is if your gums are bleeding, you wanna brush it a little bit more to bring the stimulation so it heals that part of your mouth again. So you wanna actually it's okay to like let that bleed a little bit as you're brushing.
Charles:Yeah, that makes sense that you would want to. You know things get stronger when they're used Pretty much in the body. Good point. So yeah, he does say that. You know the downside of electric toothbrushes is that they're expensive. Again, when I paid $15 for mine on Amazon and the only ongoing cost is going to be batteries for it and new heads and those are not very expensive either of those and I would say, yeah, compared to replacing a regular toothbrush, I would think over time it's gonna be pretty close to the same. And you know they like the flossing picks, the best solutions, the one that you're actually gonna use 100%, and so if it's more enjoyable to use the electric, then do that.
Charles:Yeah, now I don't take it on the road with me. On the road I just use a. I've got a little folding toothbrush and that's what stays in my toiletry kit and I'm fine for using that when I'm traveling, but, yeah, when I'm at home in the shower, that's where I leave my. So once a day I use a manual and the other time a day I use the electric and I'm okay with that process. Have you done any at home whitening Dan?
Dan:I have your key to your skin. So I used the strips, yeah, the crests, the 3Ds, yep, yep, I use those. Those work pretty well. I've also done it at. I've done the zoom whitening at the dentist as well.
Charles:Oh yeah, yeah, what's that? Did it hurt? It wasn't expensive.
Dan:It was a little bit uncomfortable sitting there with your mouth in that position in order for that light to light to work in there. And then afterwards they were sensitive for a few days to the point of where it was noticeable, but it was much more of a dramatic white difference. And then they give you a little gel to bring home, they give you a little tray to use so you can use a higher and a stronger gel than what's on, like the whitening strips in you know, and to, kind of as a boost, the white strips consumer products max out at 14% hydrogen peroxide.
Charles:I learned that in my research this morning. So whatever you could just get at the store is going to max out at 14% and where they can go higher than that, at the dentist, did you? Did they reference anything like the number of shades brighter that the zoom treatment was going to give you, you remember?
Dan:No, they didn't.
Charles:Because one of the things I like about crests marketing on their white strips is like each of their boxes will have a number that says if you use all of the strips in this box as directed, you'll go up this many shades of white.
Dan:Yeah, they said it. You know, results may vary, which means yeah, well, yeah, that's a little bit more accurate, I feel like, depending on where you're starting from, how your teeth respond to it. So yeah.
Charles:So one thing I did read was teeth whitening. Toothpaste generally has 1% hydrogen peroxide, and just that 1%, if you use it twice a day, can increase the whiteness of your teeth 62% over a six week period, which is a really big difference. Wow, that's hard to believe.
Dan:Well, it was on Google, so I don't know. But what I didn't realize was some of the whitening toothpaste. It's not. It's not chemical, it's an abrasive. It's got. Yeah, that's it. That makes sense. And I was like I mean, all toothpaste has a little bit of an abrasive Right. You don't really want to be scraping off the thing that the important stuff. You're not all right Like yeah, I didn't, I didn't realize they actually made abrasive toothpaste like that.
Charles:So yeah, enamel, I learned on a episode of Jeopardy, is the hardest substance made by the human body. Right, the person who, the person who will bring them to answer said calcium and they're like nope, sorry. And then so nobody else guessed. So Trebek said it's actually enamel.
Dan:That's the hardest. So again, I'm going to go back to this. I'm really anti-sugar, but because, think about that. Like something is able to, something's able to eat through that enamel, the hardest substance in the human body, right, you can't tell me that it's not doing some other kind of damage, is it insolent, insolent?
Charles:Well it's. I mean, it's not the sugar directly doing it, though, right, it's the bacteria that love the sugar, right, that are able to then break down the enamel. Absolutely, absolutely.
Dan:In the body.
Charles:So at least, you got your stomach acid to keep those bacteria at bay, which is also why probiotics are so hard to get benefit out of right.
Dan:So something else to think about, though, is if you look at like table sugar out, you know, and you look at that like the sharp little granules and things, right, yeah, yeah. So you picture that, as it's not exactly the same. But once it's digested and gets into the bloodstream, if you have too much of that, all the, all those molecules actually damage your blood cells and and that the lining of your arteries, your veins and and so, a lot of times, a lot of our heart diseases are kidney disease, eye disease, heart disease. It's because of too much sugar in the blood, it's damaging the cell walls, and then what happens is, if there's a little bit of a problem, cholesterol comes in, come and and and starts to hatch that, oh, and then you have too much to. If you have too much cholesterol, and from from whatever from your body now, you can potentially clog that artery, and that causes kidney diseases, causes heart attacks, and that's from a lot of times, just the sugar.
Dan:Yeah, if your sugar is constantly, if you have a lot of sugar and it's constantly high, it's constantly kind of sandblasting all of your, all of those, all the important pieces inside, yeah, and, and so that's why it's a lot of times. You know the, the, the diseases are not just from. You know high fat and and, and you know it's. It's from high fat and high carbohydrate. Right, that's, that's the issue, right.
Charles:So yeah, I heard somebody say that and that's why. That's why a cheeseburger is like the worst thing you can eat.
Dan:Yeah, it's not. It's not the main right Right.
Charles:So combination.
Dan:Right, so you can do. Yeah, you can do. You can do a higher carb if you're watching your fats and and at that point, right. Or you can do, you know, a higher fat if you're watching your carbs. But when you start combining them both and unfortunately those are some of the best tasting things like pizza and and, yeah, cheeseburgers and stuff Sure yeah, that's where you gotta be careful.
Charles:Yeah, I did. I did give blood the day before yesterday and I'm looking at my cholesterol chart and I hit the last two times I've donated I've been over the the high cholesterol line which they put it at Desired. Is it under 200 and high? Is anything over 240? And my last two times I've been over 240. I could pretty much look at this chart and tell you exactly when I was eating good keto and when I wasn't, and my cholesterol goes higher when I'm not eating keto and when I am eating keto it goes down. Okay.
Dan:Yeah, so that's really a bad record. It's just overall cholesterol, all cholesterol. It doesn't look at LDL, hdl, the small LDL particles, the VLDL, and also cholesterol isn't really an indicator of heart disease. It's triglyceride yeah, I wish that was true.
Charles:That's the amount of fat circulating in your blood. Triglycerides has always been the they've correlated. When I my cholesterol has been high, my triglycerides have been too high and that's why, way back in the day my doctor wanted to put me on a statin and prescription grade fish oil and all that stuff and in my case, just dropping 40 pounds pretty much fixed those problems for me.
Dan:Yeah, it's the circulating fat. So, and then the other thing if you're eating lower carbs, your body's using more of the fat that you have and that's going to use those triglycerides. It's not going to hang out your bloodstream anymore, and that's that's where the problem comes in.
Charles:All right, we, we were able to probe our our love of fat and protein into the conversation yet again. Yes, let me tell you about the, the white strip. So I told you, uh, crescent 3Ds are 14% hydrogen peroxide, the highest level you can buy, and they're fanciest product they have out right now. That will, uh, increase your, your tooth whiteness by 34 shades in 20 days. Uh, it is both the strips and the LED light. So you use a little bit on the strip for an hour on the uppers and lowers, and at the end of the hour you do the light for five minutes and uh, yeah, 20 days, 34 shades. Uh, it's. It's currently 80 bucks on Amazon and I'm going to go ahead and pull the trigger on it and then I'm also going to buy these.
Dan:Let's document it. Let's see some pictures. Yeah, I will see some before after I'm going to do some.
Charles:Uh, I'm going to get the whole Crest product suite, which includes their mouthwash, their whitening toothpaste and the white strips. I want you to use all three of them at once, which of course they do. Um, now for my, for my shower time, uh, regimen, I'll still stick with my, my, my, my, my, my electric toothbrush, electric toothbrush, my Crest like gum restore toothpaste that I use in the shower and, uh, my Listerine gum treatment that I use in the shower. But for my, for my nighttime regimen, I'm going to use all the whitening stuff that Crest makes. And then, yeah, see, see how it. So that'll be the variable. Okay, We'll see what impact it has over 20 days.
Dan:Oh, that's great, yeah, and I'm assuming you're not going to limit your your stain drinking habit. I'm going to, I'll feed you. You're going to keep that consistent, right, yeah, your habits are going to be what they are.
Charles:Okay, um, and I'm not going to really mess with that too much, and we'll see what effect it has. You just got to figure out a way to, from a lighting perspective, a way to consistently light my mouth. The same, I guess I'll just probably use the light on my phone. That should overpower whatever the ambient light is and be fairly no matter what time of day I take the picture. So that's, uh, that's what I'll do and I'll see how it goes. Uh, they do mention light there, or LED light therapy, which is what they use at the dentist, but now, apparently it's, it's available in the consumer products as well, and a whitening pen is is used to kind of spot clean, you know, any, any stains that you might have. Um, yeah, they do talk about professional whitening, which we've already addressed. It's expensive, it can hurt, but it lasts for like a year. So that's the benefit right there.
Charles:Um, other than your color of your teeth, how straight they are, as a factor, and so I'm, uh, I'm starting up with a new dentist soon and, uh, I'm going to uh, take my, my maintenance a little bit more seriously. Um, I may have a cavity or two that need to be addressed. I'm not really in any pain right now so I'm not too concerned, but once I sort of get that going, then I'm going to start talking about uh one of the invisible alignment uh protocols and the products that are out there that I might be able to do, cause I do have some crowding. I may need to get a couple of the molars yanked out to make room for straightening things up, but I'm I'm planning on doing that as well.
Charles:Now the other thing that uh, we read about in uh dating essentials for men by Dr Robert Glover. He he encourages men to get their oral health situation uh fixed, both medically and cosmetically, and he likes to tell people to go down to Mexico to get get new procedures done. Yeah, you can save a ton of money. Make it, make it a vacation, go down there. And especially if you want to do like whole mouth veneers and stuff like that, you can save a ton of dough doing that over getting it done here in the state.
Dan:Yeah, I had no idea he's. He's talking about in the book here a couple of thousand dollars per tooth for a veneer. I had no idea it was that expensive. I knew it was pricey, but yeah, Think.
Charles:I've read that uh, by going either to Mexico or Costa Rica, some, some other countries, you can get it for 30 to 40% of the price, not off but of so you could save like 60 or 70% of what it costs in America by going, and you know that's, you know I would, I would hit. I'm. I'm not jumping on a plane to Guatemala to get a triple heart bypass, but for veneers.
Dan:Yeah, right, and like the leather it. So something I want to match it to is I have, uh, I use the water pick. Uh, yes, I've, I've been wanting to get those for a while and in terms of making your mouth feel refreshed, it's nice. You can pour a little bit of mouthwash into the reservoir with the water and that that's kind of nice it does. But that's brisk, it really. Yeah, it really gets in, it really gets in there. So I kind of supplement that once or twice a week with my, my floss picks to kind of make sure I'm getting under the gums and and the settings. That's where I'm not. I'm not able to get with them.
Charles:That is something I did not research, which is how does a water pick? How do they compare that to flossing? I imagine they're still going to say flossing is the best you can do. Oh, they said water picks better, Better than floss.
Dan:Yes, the conventional floss. Yes, because because of the pressure of that water pickets, okay, under the gums, where the floss doesn't go. All right, fair enough, because you can go with, like direct straight on as well as behind. Direct behind the. Yeah, okay, it gets under the, the, like the center part there, all right. So I will verify that.
Charles:Yeah, do my own research. And yeah, if that, if that turns out to be true, I would much so they're well, it's in a water pick then.
Dan:That being said, rapid stuff. They are a little bit messier like, so it makes a mess. I don't care Again, I'll just you're in the shower. Yeah, that's the way to do it for you, I I.
Charles:I. I give the shower with me and then put it on the charger outside of the shower when I'm not using it.
Dan:Yeah, so that does limit how often I use the water pick as well.
Charles:Now, do you use like distilled water or just tap water? I?
Dan:just use tap water.
Charles:Okay, I just use tap water brush my teeth, yeah, but I would think that again you're you're getting into the blood vessels a little bit more with the water pick than you would with a toothbrush. Probably Maybe not what. You got a fancy toothbrush so you also brush your gums with, so maybe it's not a factor.
Dan:Yeah, I mean, I don't. I don't think I haven't heard or seen any recommendations from any of the like though the from water pick or anything that you should be using. Okay, water for that, okay.
Charles:All right Good.
Dan:I think it might be like an open wound. Maybe then you want to be a little bit more careful, but I, you know I think you probably don't want to flat pressure water and an open wound anyway. Right, you know. And the other thing too is the water that you're using should be pretty clean Coming in and coming out of your, your faucet, if you're using for other things, yeah.
Charles:So we'll? Yeah, I don't think you should, unless somebody at the RV park has run over a spigot recently. Who would do that? It's an idiot. All right, I think that covers us on on teeth. I'm going to make some purchases and, uh, sounds good. Try to remind myself to uh keep everybody updated on how that's going, as I as I work through it. All right. So I think it's time to end the episode and go eat a piece of frozen crumble cookie in the spirit of good dental health. Yeah, and I'll talk to you again soon, dan. All right, have a good one you too. Wow, you made it through the whole thing, so you must like us at least a little bit, in which case you should definitely follow or subscribe to our show in your chosen podcast app. Thanks, see you next time.
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