The Surprising Link Between Oral Health and Fertility with Dr. Katie Lee

Lorne Brown:

By listening to the Conscious Fertility Podcast, you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or others. Consult your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guest or contributors to the podcast. Welcome to Conscious Fertility, the show that listens to all of your fertility questions so that you can move from fear and suffering to peace of mind and joy. My name is Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical hypnotherapist. I’m on a mission to explore all the paths to peak fertility and joyful living. It’s time to learn how to be and receive so that you can create life on purpose.

Welcome to another episode of the Conscious Fertility Podcast. I’m here today with a dentist, Dr. Katie Lee, and I am very excited for those that are looking to grow their family because she wrote a book called Save by the Mouth. Those that are watching this on a video can see me holding up a copy of her book. I got a signed copy and I’ve been aware about oral health and how it affects your health and a little bit about pregnancy health. But Katie’s going to share with us ways and why it’s important to know about your oral health and how it impacts your fertility.

So let me introduce you to Dr. Katie Lee and the author of Saved by the Mouth. So as I mentioned, she is a dentist, she’s a speaker and author, and also a coach who lives in Aurora, Colorado. I’m Dr. Lee. Gap. Graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2010, and she was an owner partner in over 80 DSOs, I assume those are dental type practices throughout the us. And she also served as a clinical partner overseeing five states, and now she consults for health technology companies and provides implant education for general dentists. And her passion really is about the oral systemic health link that comes from her own personal experience, which I hope she’s going to share today.

And I think it really jives with our audience and what we talk about, about this holistic approach and how everything you do has a systemic effect. Now, Katie, I kind of think your story’s important. So I thought maybe if you could share, if you’re willing to, your personal story with fertility because you have a personal story with fertility, and also can you tie in why you think wearing helmets when you’re using four wheel drives, ATVs is also important. I think that’s another good message you have.

Katie Lee:

Yeah. Well, let me start with the ATV accident since that happened first and kind of started me in dentistry. So when I was 14 years old, I grew up in the country, so I grew up being around ATVs my whole life, actually, I’ve never told this part, but before I had my major accident, a friend of mine ran over my foot when I was in fifth grade and broke my foot on an ATV. And that should have been my first warning sign to stay off of them, but I didn’t. And so my family had an ATV and one day I went for a ride on July 5th, 19 eight, only did and put a helmet on. And sure enough I crashed face first. And when I say face first, I face planted into a telephone pole, left behind some teeth, lost a bunch of teeth, broke everything in my face from my eyebrows down, had a traumatic brain injury, and ended up in a coma for a few days, had a bunch of surgeries while I was in the hospital and had my jaw wired shut for about eight weeks.

And they wired my jaw shut with all of the broken dislodged teeth that I had. And while they needed to do that for stability’s sake, it also was really hard, obviously for me for those next eight weeks, I couldn’t eat anything. And so I survived off of ice cream, putting box mashed potatoes and jello, which I see you cringing and eye cringe just thinking about that. I’m like, why weren’t we smart enough to get some nutrition in there? But I think we were just trying to survive at that point. And so obviously the broken teeth started to decay into rot. I started to get lots of dental infections, lots of systemic inflammation, and became very malnourished. So liver enzyme spiked kidney started shutting down. And so I learned at a very young age just how much your oral health affects your systemic health. And then I had to go through high school without having, I was missing two front teeth. So I had to wear flippers, which are little retainers with teeth on them to school. And I often would forget the flippers and I’d have to take ’em out for lunch. And it was just a humiliating experience. And so I remember when my dentist was able to put in my implant crowns my senior year before graduation, I mean, it was like a light bulb went off. I know this is what I want to do for people. So that got me into dentistry

Lorne Brown:

And why you recommend helmets

Katie Lee:

And why you should always wear helmets. Yeah, I’m lucky I’m not brain dead. The doctors kept telling my parents when she wakes up, we don’t know what we’re going to get because I mean anyone going face first into a telephone pole at 30 miles an hour, she might not be the same. They were expecting me to have some brain damage, which a lot of people would argue I do. But I think I turned out okay. Yeah,

Lorne Brown:

I think so as well. And again, this life-changing experience, this opportunity changed your trajectory and you became a dentist. And now can you share your history of fertility and then the connection to fertility and oral health?

Katie Lee:

Sure. So you mentioned my career. I had a very successful, I call it first career, working on my second right now. So I had a very successful first career and I was working all the time, probably stressed out to the max. And during that time was when I decided to try and have a family, which is not always the best time to try and conceive. And I was able to get pregnant naturally about four months after I started trying, which was great. But I did that a couple times and I miscarried the pregnancies. And so I decided to go in and get some tests done. And all they tell you when you’re mid thirties is now you’re geriatric and your eggs are fossilized and you’re all dried up and you’re probably never going to be able to have a kid, so

Lorne Brown:

You should, that’s a myth, but that’s a myth.

Katie Lee:

It’s totally a myth. It’s not

Lorne Brown:

A switch. Your eggs don’t expire at age 35, but there is a decline. But just for our listeners, if there is no switch, it doesn’t turn off. But that’s what you got. That was the message you got.

Katie Lee:

And it was very much like, this is kind of your only option is to go down the fertility route, but you have to wait a year because my diagnosis was unexplained infertility. And so in the US they always say, unless there’s something medically wrong that explains why you’re infertile, you have to try for a year before you can go into fertility treatment.

Lorne Brown:

That’s that definition. So if you’re under 35, they want you to wait a year of trying. If you’re over 35, it’s six months now is what they usually say. Unless you have a known diagnosis, you don’t ovulate, you know, have endometriosis or PCOS, but I know we’re going to get into it. There’s this whole preconception. So there’s things you can do that you’re going to share to optimize your fertility while you’re waiting. Totally. Let’s hear. But again, I just want to share with the audience, like when do I go get tested? Yeah, so you were trying for a year, you were getting pregnant and you were miscarrying.

Katie Lee:

And so I would have tests to figure out why I was miscarrying. And the only thing that came back was that there were chromosome abnormalities in the embryos, which was good to know that that’s why I was miscarrying. But there was nothing physically wrong with me or my husband that would cause a miscarriage. And so waiting a year when you’ve already been trying to get pregnant, you’ve miscarried is the hardest thing for a woman to do. So I did that, and then I started going in and getting checked out by reproductive endocrinologists and they said I was probably not a good option for me just because we know that the reason I’D miscarried in the past was due to chromosome abnormalities. So therefore we needed to do IVF and test the embryos to make sure that the chromosomes were good before transplant. And so I went down that route.

And being a dentist, I’ve known for a long time that the mouth affects the rest of the body. I had that experience. But what I was really surprised about in my fertility journey was that the doctors never spoke about any alternative methods that I could do to try and optimize my health, reduce my systemic inflammation, and make sure that I was the healthiest vessel to receive this transplant. And being a busy career person at the time and being a clinician myself, I was just trusting what the best reproductive endocrinologists in the states were telling me to do. So I had gotten into microbiome testing around the same time, well, a couple years earlier, actually, 2014 is when I started microbiome testing. And this was around 20 16 20 17 that I started.

Lorne Brown:

Is this the gut or oral microbiome testing? Oral?

Katie Lee:

So I started looking into oral microbiome testing and just seeing if it could help patients. And what ended up happening was by chance I had a couple referred to my practice by their OB GYN, and it was an empty referral. She had no idea that I was doing this microbiome testing. The OB GYN was treating this young couple, and they were having difficulty conceiving and she said, well, nothing’s wrong with you, but maybe go see your dentist. Now, that’s the first time in my 13 and a half years of practice that any OB GYN or physician for that matter, has really referred anyone to the dentist to see if there was an underlying cause. And when she came in, immediately I could recognize that she had an infection, so did her husband, but I wanted to know what bacteria were specifically causing that infection. So we did the microbiome testing. Sure enough, she and her husband had sky high levels of two of the bacteria that affect fertility conception, carrying the baby to term and then maternal health outcomes. And so we treated,

Lorne Brown:

Could we unpack that for a second? I don’t want to pass over that. So there is research and in three years of clinical practice, there are bacteria in the mouth that can lead to what has been called unexplained infertility that can lead to miscarriage and also can lead to poor pregnancy outcomes, even still birth.

Katie Lee:

Absolutely. So the oral microbiome, and I am sure we’ll get into all this, affects fertility in so many ways. One is, it affects sperm count, motility and morphology. It affects the man’s ability to get an erection. It affects the ability to ovulate, it affects implantation, it affects miscarriage, stillbirths, preterm labor, and maternal health outcomes. So all along the way,

Lorne Brown:

And this is why I wanted to have this conversation, and so happy that you wrote the book Saved by the Mouth, and you have a chapter on fertility there because maybe some of the people like yourself, and again, please continue your story that had been diagnosed with unexplained infertility or told they need to do donor egg or IVF. It may be just an issue that’s starting in the mouth that’s gone systemic.

Katie Lee:

Totally, totally. It is an infection, right? So anyway, I treated that couple And you have to treat both parties. And wait,

Lorne Brown:

Say that again. We usually receive the

Katie Lee:

Women. Yes. So everyone always thinks that infertility is usually caused by the woman, and it’s not. We know all infertility cases are 50, 50 half men, half women, and besides that, even if it was the woman that had the infection, obviously we’re swapping spit, we’re being intimate, so we’re transferring all the bacteria from one person to another on a constant basis. So we have to make sure that both parties are clean. So I treated the couple and they were able to get pregnant a few months later. And I can’t say cause and effect, but I do know that her pregnancy was much healthier. The baby was much healthier, and she was much healthier because of the treatment.

Lorne Brown:

And back to your personal journey, how many IVF cycles did you do and what intervention did you end up doing for yourself and how did it all turn out for you?

Katie Lee:

Yeah, so I ended up doing six rounds of IVF. I saw multiple different renowned reproductive endocrinologists. Looking back, I wish I would’ve gone the more holistic route. And this is why I’m really getting into all of this now because I am stuck with very traditional western medicine. And in the end we were putting in euploid embryos. I would get pregnant. Euploid means that they are chromosomally healthy. I was getting pregnant, making it to the heartbeat, getting all the way to the final check at 12 weeks and the heartbeat would stop. And so I started miscarrying euploid embryos. Wow.

Lorne Brown:

So you made it past eight weeks. So that must’ve been very challenging, putting

Katie Lee:

Back, very challenging, putting embryos. And then when I miscarried, we’d run a gamut of tests to figure out why that happened and couldn’t figure out what it was. And then I got pregnant naturally and miscarried after the heartbeat 12 weeks and ran. I had a biopsy just to see what it was, and it was a euploid embryo. I had one embryo left and I didn’t want to chance anything, so I went the surrogate route. And so I have a son and he turns one next week.

Lorne Brown:

Congratulations.

Katie Lee:

Thank you.

Lorne Brown:

Okay, so a newbie.

Katie Lee:

A newbie, yeah. Just had him last year.

Lorne Brown:

And when you said you did six cycles, was it six retrievals or how many retrievals and transfers just

Katie Lee:

So I did four retrievals, two, I got zero euploid embryos, and then I think, yeah, six transfers.

Lorne Brown:

Six transfers. And then now from what you’ve been through and what you’re doing, what you saw in practice, I’m curious, then our listeners are like, okay, I have euploid embryos, not implanting or I’m getting pregnant. And miscarrying people might’ve had stillborns dive into oral health. And you mentioned the holistic approach and systemic. So what are you seeing then that’s starting in the mouth and is impacting the body and why?

Katie Lee:

Yeah. So what we know from science is that the bacteria in our mouth do not stay in our mouth. And what happens is they will burrow underneath the gum tissue, start eliciting a localized inflammatory response that causes the gum tissue to start to break down. Our gums are supposed to act like our skin. It’s supposed to be like a barrier to keep what’s in our mouth out of our body. Sure, we swallow 80 trillion bacteria a day, but most of those bacteria are going to be killed in the stomach and in the small intestine. But the bacteria that harm us are the ones that we call ’em anaerobes, the ones that survive without oxygen. They go through our gum tissue into our bloodstream and circulate throughout the body. So if someone has bleeding gums, that means that their gums are leaking. I call ’em leaky gums, just like leaky gut. And that means that their gums are perforated and the bacteria is getting into the body and where the bacteria goes. I don’t really know the answer as to why it goes to the heart in some people or the brain, but what we do know is it does, and one of the places that it loves to go is the female and male reproductive systems.

Lorne Brown:

And so with the female, you’re seeing that is it impacting egg quality? Is it impacting uni receptivity then? And do we have data on

Katie Lee:

That? Yeah, so what we know is there’s really three bacteria that we get or four bacteria that we get really concerned with when it comes to the oral microbiome and damaging fertility. The main one is Fusobacterium nucleatum. 95% of the population have this bacteria, and it’s not necessarily harmful unless it’s kind of paired up with other bacteria and then it starts. Or if it’s in really high levels, then we know that it’s not good for us. And I call FN, fusobacterium nucleatum, kind of like the Uber of the body because it’s really good at burrowing through the gum tissue, putting other bacteria on its back and kind of circulating throughout the body. And it has proteins that bind to cells and to membranes and can bring things across with it. And one of the places that it’s really good at crossing is into the uterus. And so FN is directly tied to stillbirths. We know that when stillbirths were born and they were testing them, they had high levels of FN in them, which is super scary. FN also is responsible for premature rupture of the amniotic membranes, or not responsible, but correlated with premature rupture of the amniotic membranes leading to preterm birth and low birth weight. So FN is a scary guy.

Lorne Brown:

And as you mentioned, that’s one out of four. I’m curious about the other three, but that one is you’re going to find it, but it has to be paired often with something else to make it a problem.

Katie Lee:

It needs to be at low levels and we need to make sure that the other three bacteria aren’t present. So FN when I talk about FN, I tell patients, think of FN as being associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes. So you’re already pregnant, but now your pregnancy is going to, you’re going to have complications and or miscarriage, stillbirth, preterm birth because of FN. What

Lorne Brown:

Are some of those complications that you can get in your pregnancy?

Katie Lee:

So mainly the miscarriage and the stillbirth and the preterm birth weight. Now if we throw PG into the mix, that’s kind of FN’S partner in crime, poor porphyromonas gingivalis, the other really, really nasty one, FN and PG together just wreak havoc all over the body. They damage the heart and the brain also. But for fertility, PG is implicated more in maternal health complications. It’s implicated more in male sperm, quality motility morphology and the woman’s ability to ovulate and implant. So PG is messes with the ability to get pregnant and health issues of the mom while she’s caring. FN is more associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes

Lorne Brown:

And PG also has a male factor. So there’s that. It takes two to tangle and regardless, you want to assess and treat both because you’re cross contaminating each other.

Katie Lee:

So PG actually disrupts arginine production. And arginine is really critical in nitric oxide formation. And so that’s why we need nitric oxide because nitric oxide is a very potent vasodilator. And so that’s why PG is really associated with heart issues because if we’re not getting that vasodilation, we’re going to get things like hypertension. But it’s important in men because that’s how they end up getting erection. So if we have reduced arginine production, reduced nitric oxide, that’s why gum disease is related to erectile dysfunction. Everyone always asks me how that’s correlated.

Lorne Brown:

Actually want to jump on that and do a mini tangent. It’s not a true tangent, but once a reproductive urologist that we have on our podcast as well, Paul Turek, I heard him once say, in men what’s good for the heart is good for the penis. There’s a relationship, which is why in a workup, if somebody has erectile dysfunction they look at cardiovascular risk issues because they usually go hand in hand. And then so many of the supplements like coq 10 are really good for the heart, but it’s also good for motility. And then you brought up nitric oxide. In our practice we like to use, we talked off camera, the low level laser therapy, and one of them is that it creates an increase in nitric oxide. When you do the treatment, it dislodges the nitric oxide molecule and you get an acid dilation. So we use it for both men and women. And then this ties into your oral health is that nose breathing increases nitric oxide versus mouth breathing.

Katie Lee:

And that’s why we know a lot of patients who have sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is directly related to heart attacks and strokes and heart issues. We also know that men who have sleep apnea oftentimes will have erectile dysfunction too. So it’s all related.

Lorne Brown:

And so we can teach them about nose breathing and then supplements to help with nitric oxide, but hey, why not clean up the oral health? Because I think you said that the PG is the one that’s the culprit for that one.

Katie Lee:

And when we’re mouth breathing, mouth breathing causes the pH in the mouth to drop to become more acidic, it causes the mouth to dry out. When we have a dry mouth, bacteria are more prone to sticking to the teeth and forming these plaque biofilms, which are full of the bacteria that we don’t want that harm our body. So nasal breathing is really important for a healthy oral microbiome and it helps with nitric oxide. So it’s all related.

Lorne Brown:

And if you do nasal breathing, especially during the day, if your lips are closed, you’ll talk less so you’ll be a better listener. So double whammy. Yeah. Do you ever recommend sleep tape then for people?

Katie Lee:

All the time.

Lorne Brown:

You do? Yeah

Katie Lee:

All the time. I was just on a podcast yesterday talking about that. If anyone, I tell people, everyone should do a sleep study. If you snore, you absolutely need to do a sleep study. What we know is in the, I think it’s a US statistic, but at least 70 to 75% of all patients who have sleep apnea or sleep disorder breathing are undiagnosed. That’s massive. And that’s so scary because untreated sleep apnea is fatal. It’s just a matter of time. And so if you snore or grind your teeth, grinding your teeth is a direct symptom of sleep apnea. Or if you have severe acid reflux or if you’re on two or more high blood pressure medications or if you have diabetes, those are all red flags that you may have an airway issue. So I always recommend people to get tested for sleep apnea, and now they do really easy home sleep tests.

You don’t even have to go into the doctor’s office, do it at home in your own bed, and then a sleep physician will read the results and give you the diagnosis. And there’s all sorts of treatments these days. You don’t have to do just A CPAP, but if you can correct that, a lot of things will become more manageable and you’ll prevent a lot more disease. But once you have that diagnosis and you know you don’t have sleep apnea, then yes, mouth tape is amazing. And a lot of people will tell me, and I’m sure you hear this too, they’ll say, well, I can’t breathe through my nose so there’s no way I can tape my mouth shut. So what I tell ’em to do is, like you said, during the day, start taping it shut or breathing with your mouth closed because you have got to start to filter the air through your nose, through the silly and the turbinate to clean the air and then a lot of the congestion will start to clear up.

Lorne Brown:

That’s true. It will clear up if you do it that way. Have you read the book Katie Called Breath by James Nestor?

Katie Lee:

Yeah, that’s what got me into all this, and I’m a bit embarrassed about this, but I heard about the book through a patient I was talking about, talking to his wife, I think you may have an airway issue. And he said, well, have you heard about this book by James Nester called Breath? And I was like, shameful. I was like, no, I haven’t. And so I got it and it’s been amazing

Lorne Brown:

Because of that nose breathing, he documents how it changes the shape of the jaw and the teeth. So mean what you’re sharing about oral health, how much that impact. And he talks about systemic as well. So let’s get back to you though, because in your book Saved by the Mouth, you talk about actually when you mentioned diabetes, I think you mentioned that the oral health could impact your risk of gestational diabetes and just the systemic inflammation which we talk about in my practice in Vancouver to Acubalance and on our podcast how that, the way we phrase it is chronic systemic inflammation leads to accelerated biological aging, which leads to all these chronic diseases including premature infertility. And so if you can address the chronic systemic inflammation, then there’s potential to slow down this accelerated biological aging or even reverse the biological aging. If this has been your experience then going, it sounds like you’re getting to a lot of the root cause right now. Testing in our practice, we’ll do the gut microbiome, we’ll do some genetic testing. I think you and I share we’re both, I’m a poor methylator, so I’m good at making inflammation, the ill six gene, I got to take care of my diet and lifestyle because I got those gene cards. Same.

But I think from reading your book, which I just finished recently and now we’re having our podcast interview, I want to know more about the bacteria that you’re looking for. And then I want to know for our patients, how can they get tested? And then for me locally, if we can’t order it, we have naturopathic doctors in our practice. If we can’t order these oral salivary tests to test these, because I dunno how easy it is, the gut microbiome, we have access to those, that’s easy for us. And the genetic testing is easy for us, then how do we, do you offer some training or whatever so we can get our local biological dentists to offer this so our patients have a place to go during the preconception or even when they’re pregnant?

Katie Lee:

Yeah. I’ll start with your point about systemic inflammation. The root cause of 90, 90%, 95% of diseases, as you know, is inflammation. A lot of people thought it was genetic. And so we did the genome project, spent trillions of dollars probably trying to sequence the genome. And what we know is genes are important, but they have to be switched on or turned off in a certain way to cause disease. And a lot of times that triggers carcinogens, but most of the time it’s going to be inflammation. So if we can figure out where the source of inflammation is coming from and get rid of it, then we know we’re less likely to get disease or we can better manage the disease that we have. And my whole point of talking about this is a major source of inflammation that a lot of people don’t know about is from the mouth, whether it’s from our gums or from tooth abscesses or cavities or anything like that, or sleep disorder breathing.

So it’s a source of inflammation that we need to be looking at. When I do the microbiome test, it depends on what tests that I use. There’s several on the market and I’ll talk about a few of them. The main one that I use, I like it because it tests for the IL six gene. And that to me is really important because if I know that a patient has a genetic mutation that predisposes them to inflammation, I’m going to treat their bacteria much more aggressively and more frequently than someone who doesn’t have that mutation because I know that any amount of bacteria in their mouth is going to cause an exacerbated response in their body. So for instance, I had a patient yesterday, I was reviewing her saliva test with her and she had even AA, which is the scariest bacteria of them all. It’s only present in a very small percentage of the population.

It runs in families, but it’s really horrible bacteria that causes you to lose all your teeth. But she had IL six, she did not have an IL six mutation. And so her clinical presentation has actually been pretty decent to be honest. Now if that was in me, oh, I’d probably have all my teeth out by now. And so that inflammatory marker is really important. So the test I use is called Oral DNA by access genetics. I’m not paid by them or anything like that. I’ve used it for years. That’s the one I started with. And it screens for 11 different bacteria. And the main ones that I’m looking for are aa, TFTD, pg, fn, ec, those are all implicated, mainly infertility. So I look for those the most. But there’s several others on the market. I do know I check for another podcast that I was on Oral DNA does ship to Canada. So what you can do, and I should be sponsored by them, but I’m not actually, you as a provider can go to their website, oral dna.com and sign up as a provider and then you can give the test to your patients.

Lorne Brown:

Yeah, because I’m a big fan of leaving no stone unturned and my background before I did Chinese medicine and clinical hypnotherapy, I’m CPA, so an auditor. So I like to dig, right? Yeah. And so when patients come in, and I think this is where we really are similar, if you really like to get to the root cause. And so to me, looking for that underlying cause or leaving no stone unturned, there are the big guns of treatment like IVF, but that’s today’s dollars. It’s close to a $20,000 process. And so maybe we do not need to do IVF or if you do one time, right? Because they say it’s an average three cycles to get three IVFs to get a baby on average. So that gets up there in money and we want a healthy baby. And that’s something you talk about a lot as well in that holistic approach.

So we do some genetic testing, we can look for inflammatory triggers and methylation issues. We can look at your mitochondrial dysfunction, lots of things. This is new. So I haven’t met with my team yet because literally we just connected recently. I read your book. Here we are. My plan is to look into this so we can have this available so we can help treat many of these people that are told unexplained. And again, like our goal is a healthy baby, which comes from a healthy egg plus healthy sperm plus healthy unit environment. And I’m learning that we can start addressing the gut issues and we can be giving lots of supplements and things to improve egg and sperm quality, but if we haven’t dealt with the bacteria in the mouth, we’re just going to, we’ll see some good things and then all of a sudden they’re back to not good. So we do have to get to that root cause. And this is something, I think this is your message, right? That the mouth is important.

Katie Lee:

Well, and we got to think, how does the gut microbiome get established? Because when babies are born, they’re pretty much sterile, not all the way, but pretty much. And they first get introduced to the microbiome through the vaginal canal, the birthing canal, and then the mouth is ideally sterile or close to being sterile. And everything that we have in our mouth has been acquired over our lifetime. And it starts with breastfeeding, it starts with our caregivers. I’m constantly kissing my son. I can’t get enough of that little boy. So I’m constantly transferring my microbiome to ’em. When you’re eating, you’re sharing spoons, anything around your child’s environment is where they’re getting their microbiome from. And then that microbiome is seeding your gut microbiome. So as you mentioned, you may be able to take all these supplements, but if you have an infection at the beginning of the digestive system, you can’t have a healthy gut without a healthy mouth.

And then to your point about not leaving any stone unturned, I think looking back at my journey, I have a lot of regrets. I don’t think I treated my mind or body very kindly during that process because I was working so much and I was really focused on my career, but I didn’t turn over all the stones and I didn’t dig deeper. And I took the information that I was given at face value and I spent a quarter of a million dollars on IVF. That’s not even a surrogate route, which is a whole nother expense. And I wish I would’ve been kinder to myself. I wish I would’ve given myself that respect of turning over all the stones. That’s why I’m so passionate about this.

Lorne Brown:

And you can tell in your writing and when we’re chatting and you talked about the amount of money you spent on the IVFs, some people think, well, this holistic is affordable. It’s not affordable for everybody, though it’s a fraction of what the IVF cycles would cost. And our goal is still a healthy baby. So you can do the IVF route as you’ve experienced and other people experienced and not get the baby or pregnancy complications. So if somebody had tested and they saw that they had the oral health issues, what is the treatment approach? And can you talk about the holistic, so love to know the dental aspect of it, and then are there other things that you are recommending as part of the holistic approach to treat the root cause and optimize your fertility and pregnancy outcome?

Katie Lee:

Absolutely. So the really important thing, and I was just talking to another patient who had found me on Instagram. I was talking to her about this because she said that she asked her biological dentist for a saliva test because she’s pregnant. And the biologic dentist said, we don’t need to do a saliva test because the same. And I cringed at that because we know from science that is not true. And that was a biologic dentist saying that. So what we know is when we get that report back, it will tell us the bacteria that are present and how they’re best treated. Of the 11 pathogens that I routinely test for six out of the 11 are resistant to mechanical cleaning. The blanket treatment for gum infection is a deep cleaning or other, it’s called scaling and root cleaning, otherwise known as a deep cleaning.

That’s where the dentist will give you some local anesthetic and clean above and below your gum line. Sometimes they break it into two appointments just to make it more comfortable for the patient. But we know that it only gets about half of the bacteria. So we need to do other things to treat the other bacteria. And by the way, the bacteria that are non-responsive to that cleaning are the ones that are implicated in infertility. So some of the bacteria are tissue invasive, meaning they love to attach and live in our gum tissue. So for those, I like to use diode lasers to eradicate those bacteria. And then other bacteria, I’ll use some antimicrobial irrigation. I love ozone. That is super effective at reducing the biofilm. And then what’s really important is that we make sure that the patient is adequately supplemented afterwards. So sometimes even the infection can be so severe in my patient yesterday that we have to give them systemic antibiotics, which I don’t like doing. But research has shown time and time again when it gets that severe, sometimes you have to wipe it out and rebuild it. Yeah, I mean everyone says, oh, I don’t want to take, and I get that. But I’ve done it both ways. I went through a season in my practice where I was like, no antibiotics ever unless someone was swollen. And then I’ve done it the other way and I can never get the patients fully controlled when this infection is that bad without antibiotics.

Lorne Brown:

And you’ve shared that you don’t treat one size fits all. So not everybody has to have that level of antibiotics, but there are going to be people that need that kind of treatment.

Katie Lee:

Totally. And so once we do all that, even if we don’t use antibiotics and we’re doing all this other stuff, we still need to rebuild the microbiome because we’ve kind of gone in and disrupted everything. So I always make sure that patients have adequate pre and probiotics. And then I’m a big supplement fan. I’ve been on supplements since I was in my early twenties. And so vitamin A is really good for oral health. Vitamin C is critical for wound healing. So anyone getting, and it’s really good for collagen formation, so anyone getting a deep cleaning and we’re going in and disrupting all that, the collagen fibers, they definitely need vitamin C, vitamin D three paired with K two is critical, magnesium is critical. So those are just a few that fish oil is really good for anti-inflammatory.

Lorne Brown:

Alright, I got to repeat some of these and talk about it because in our practice I have my faves again, if you have PCS, you have endometriosis. Depending on what’s going on we add or take away. But you mentioned, so vitamin A and vitamin C, because we often do nutritional IV drips with our patients, just supplementation like you, we actually compound our own D with K two.

Katie Lee:

Awesome.

Lorne Brown:

With the right ratio. So we can go a high dose, you can get a wrong ratio with D and K two. So our naturopaths formulated so we can dose it up or we can do, if the D is so deficient, we can do intramuscular injection. But we have our pills in 2,500 IU units with K two fish oil we like. I’m going to throw out a few others you didn’t mention, but I’m just curious to see if because of the inflammation, there’s two I like. I’m a fan of N-Acetyl cysteine.

Katie Lee:

Okay.

Lorne Brown:

So I don’t know if you’ve ever used that or are familiar with that one.

Katie Lee:

So I alternate between N-Acetyl cysteine and alpha lipoic acid. For myself, because it’s a good detox and being a dentist, I’m taking out mercury fillings all the time. N-Acetyl cysteine is a precursor to glutathione, which I love. So for me, I alternate between the two, but I don’t typically recommend it unless someone really needs to detox.

Lorne Brown:

And I also like it because NAC, it’s a gentle detox for the liver and it’s used at high dose for Tylenol poisoning, but in a low dose. It’s a nice gentle detox shown to prove IVF success reduced miscarriage. And it’s been in research for endometriosis and PCOS. So that’s why

Katie Lee:

We need to write that down. I did not know that.

Lorne Brown:

Usually I think the Italian study, I think it was either 1500, 1800 milligrams where they would do five days on, then a few days off. So we tend to use 1800 milligrams for that. I also like my inositol because A in research has been shown to improve a quality, but because it helps with the insulin sensitivity and helps with inflammation with the blood sugars, I just like it as another way to help systemic inflammation.

Katie Lee:

I was on that during when I was undergoing IVF stuff and then I also took PQQ 10,

Lorne Brown:

We pair that with our coq 10. So our KQ 10 has PQQ in it. And the glutathione, when we do our nutritional IVs, we’ll inject it into, not into the bag but into the tube. So, we are not convinced that the glutathione pills can get absorbed because when it goes through the gut, there’s some brands out there saying they can. So we do have access to those. We found that the intramuscular glutathione wasn’t doing what we thought it would do. So we usually use the glutathione as part of our nutritional IV and as you said, NAC is a precursor to that. So anyways, I just wanted our listeners to know about supplements. I am just curious. Yeah, I can see similarities there.

Katie Lee:

Yeah, I got on PQQ, it’s really good for mitochondrial health and we MIT mitochondria is like the longest living microbe on the planet. Well bacteria ingested mitochondria I think back in the day. So I’m obsessed with making sure my mitochondria are healthy and mitochondria are passed down from your mom. So I take PQQ for that. And then coq 10 is really good for your heart and heart stuff runs in my family. So I’m still

Lorne Brown:

On that and good for egg quality. And for our listeners, our coq 10 that we carry is with PQQ, so it’s combined so we don’t have to do it separately. So let’s talk a little bit about mitochondria and for those that are seeing the video, her little guy has joined us Roman as well. And reminding you guys this is Katie’s long journey of multiple IVFs and doing stuff to create this little miracle. So we’re glad to have Roman with us as we do this and hope others have this opportunity as well while we’re having the podcast. So we were talking about mitochondria health and we’re talking about the supplements. So coq 10, alpha lipoic acid and PQQ. I want to remind our listeners that there’s things that can negatively impact our mitochondria. So that’s why, and you like your Katie, your holistic approach, like your diet and lifestyle can impact your mitochondria negatively. So we want to preserve that. Many people don’t know, but there has been studies in rats using Chinese herbs, the yang tonics and QE tonics in particular that improve a TP production. So that’s been shown. And then I’ve been a big proponent of using low level laser therapy and the red infrared because it’s been shown to improve mitochondrial function in its relationship for causing a little zap of a nitric oxide release as well. Cool. So lots of opportunities with that. That’s cool.

Katie Lee:

How do you use the laser? Do you just shine it on the body?

Lorne Brown:

Yeah, so in our practice, and I don’t want to go too much on a tangent on it, but the laser I combined from what I learned through the Osro technique, he’s the one that started in the nineties. So he will treat certain features on the neck. So he’s basically getting the carotid, so he’s systematically treating the blood, the stellate ganglia and the vagus nerve is what he’s done and that engages the parasympathetic nervous system, increasing blood flow. And then in Denmark they were using it with good results and they were putting it over the abdomen thinking they’re maybe getting the photons to the ovaries. It’s debatable to reach that level to get to that depth with red infrared. But I think, and here’s something that will connect their device that we have one in our practice as well, the giga laser and how we’ve used our other lasers, it covered the gut. So I think we know, by the way, photo modulation can impact the gut microbiome in a good way. So I think these women had an improvement in fertility because they were systematically getting the photons into the blood, so it helps with inflammation, but they were also treating the microbiome.

Katie Lee:

That’s so interesting. Yeah, I am sure it exists in dental in some way, shape or form. I haven’t heard of it. So I’m going to look into that.

Lorne Brown:

And the dentist I saw here when I had to have some work done and they would do PRP and low level laser therapy to help with the healing. And we talked once off camera, but I’m curious, I’ve been looking now for devices on Amazon that have the red and blue light, the blue light in the 400 zones area that has been shown to be antibacterial. So it’s something that I’d be curious about. You have to do the deep clean and sometimes the antibiotics, but this is another preventative and just supports people who want to be involved in their healing. Something that you can do because the red will help with inflammation, improve mitochondrial function and blood flow and the blue will kill bad bacteria.

Katie Lee:

And you hit a really good point there it’s really important. And patients will always ask me, well, can I just do this? I get a lot of questions about laser therapy. Can I just do this at home? Will this treat it? Unfortunately the answer is no. Once the infection is there, you have to see a professional to treat it. Then once we get you treated, all of these other modalities are awesome for you to maintain it and to prevent it from coming back. But it’s like once you have cancer, you have to treat the cancer. I’m not saying microbiome is cancer, not, but you get my point. It’s too far. You can’t use homeopathic or home remedies, sorry, home remedies to treat it at that point. But you absolutely can use ’em to maintain health.

Lorne Brown:

So a couple more questions. I’m so excited to have you as a dentist here. So we’re learning that your oral health can impact your overall health and we didn’t really talk about that, but you as experienced that the inflammation, which leads to so many diseases, we didn’t give specific things, but it can affect cardiovascular brain health and now we know fertility, you shared that there’s some testing that can be done. Here’s a question. I have a myth or fact, I’ve often heard that, oh well you’re pregnant now, so don’t do any dental work.

Katie Lee:

Oh, that makes me cringe. I want to cry. Total myth. Total myth. I mean that was debunked in the nineties. There’s a really good paper in the nineties that says dental care during pregnancy is safe and necessary. The American or the American Dental Association even says it’s safe during pregnancy. So again, what we know is bacteria in the mouth don’t stay in the mouth. So if you have a gum infection, we know that even when you’re pregnant because of the hormones that are released by the placenta, that causes a lot of vasodilation and a lot of inflammation and edema, swollenness anyway. So you become even leakier when you’re pregnant. So anything that you have in your mouth gets worse. That’s why we know that there’s a condition called pregnancy gingivitis. When people are pregnant, oftentimes one of the first signs for me, even one of the first signs that I was pregnant even before a pregnancy test was my gums would be sensitive.

And so we know this because of hormones and science, so we have to be even more diligent when we’re pregnant about our dental care. And so no, you should not be going and getting veneers and bleaching, but you absolutely should be going and getting your gums cleaned and taken care of because whether you do that or not, the bacteria are going to the female reproductive system. So it absolutely needs to be taken care of. And then the other thing is when women are pregnant, oftentimes they’re not feeling well. They’re vomiting a lot. They’re often vomiting. All that acid is causing the teeth to decay and they’re eating stuff that isn’t always optimal because of cravings, right? Lots of sugar, carbohydrates, things like that. And so pregnant women oftentimes will have tons of cavities. And if a small cavity happens when you’re pregnant and it doesn’t get taken care of because of all these issues, it could progress to the nerve very quickly. And now you have an abscess, which is horrific for the baby.

Lorne Brown:

Alright, more rapid fire to our doctor, Katie or the dentist. Fluoride or not fluoride.

Katie Lee:

Fluoride or no fluoride. I think that there’s a time and place for fluoride for sure. But however, I think for the vast majority of the population, there’s better alternatives to fluoride. There’s nano hydroxyapatite, which was invented and used by NASA for several years, and if it’s good enough for nasa, it’s good enough for me, but it actually is putting the minerals back into the teeth. Arginine is fantastic to take if someone has a high cavity risk. Arginine inhibits the bacterial growth that causes cavities in the mouth so patients can use that. When I tell people that fluoride has a time and place, I’ve had some patients that come in and say, moms will come in and say, I’ve eliminated all fluoride in my house. We don’t do any fluoride, non fluoridated water, none of that. But then they’re still giving their kids Capri Suns and Cheetos and they suck on candy and they’re not brushing their teeth and then their kids have rampant decay all over their mouth. That rampant decay is far more dangerous for their child or for themselves than if they were just to use a little bit of topical fluoride. So if I do need to use fluoride, I’ll apply it myself in the office. That way I know it’s going on the teeth and I only do it in those cases where people are not following what they need to be following to stay healthy on their own.

Lorne Brown:

And then toothpaste, what type, because I read ages ago that they added the foaming agent so people felt like something was happening because people weren’t brushing their teeth. It just didn’t feel fun in the mouth and with a little tingle and foam. Isn’t that crazy? I heard that may not be so beneficial. So do you recommend the minty and alcohol mouthwashes or is there a better way to do this as well?

Katie Lee:

Yeah. So that agent you’re talking about is SLS sodium, laurel sulfate is what they added. No, so I am glad you brought this up. It’s really important that people use a very gentle toothpaste and mouthwash. It doesn’t need to be full of chemicals. It should not be killing 99.9% of bacteria in the mouth. That’s another thing that in America, Americans love sterilizing everything that’s actually not good for the microbiome. So I tell ’em to stay away from anything that has alcohol in it, anything that has a chemical in it that you don’t know what it is or what it does, you probably shouldn’t be putting it in your mouth. So there’s lots of cleaner brands out there. Tom’s is really good, Retin is good. Primal health is really good, Biocidin is great. Boca, all those brands are really great.

Lorne Brown:

And then as we get close to wrapping up the holistic approach, oftentimes we’ll recommend a hundred days to peak fertility. That’s the time period for follicular genesis. And interesting enough, when I was going through my training, one of my professors said, when we treat gynecology, treat three cycles. And I asked why. And he says, on average it just takes three full cycles of acupuncture herbs to see the PMS, the painful periods, the clotting to shift. It’s neat because now we know follicular genesis is about a hundred days. So if you’re treating, you get that recruitment period of a hundred days that you’re impacting the environment in which the egg is maturing.

Katie Lee:

Oh, that’s interesting.

Lorne Brown:

What about your oral health though? If somebody does this, do you recommend, because of your holistic approach, is there a timing that you like for this when people are trying to get pregnant? If somebody could time when they’re going to try and conceive or go into an IVF, do you recommend getting your teeth cleaned and then do IVF tomorrow? Or do you have a period that you like what I call preconception or the hundred days to peak fertility?

Katie Lee:

It’s funny. I usually recommend three months. And mine was not based on that science whatsoever. It was just based on intuition of knowing that bacteria tend to repopulate about every 90 days. We also know that once we do any kind of dental treatment, we get what’s called bacteremia. So the bacteria in the mouth from the dental treatment, cleaning, whatever, is going to go into the bloodstream and you have to give it time to get out of there. Plus I always recommend doing a retest for patients. So if I test them and they have an infection and we have to treat it, I always recommend doing a retest about eight to 10 weeks after treatment to make sure it’s gone. So that was really the reason why I said wait three months is because I wanted to make sure they were clear. But now that I know about follicular genesis, that makes me feel better.

Lorne Brown:

And I want to repeat, make sure I heard that. So you will test, you’ll do your intervention, and then if they had an IVF, you want them to wait the 90 days, then retest and make sure it hasn’t repopulated and then go into the IVF.

Katie Lee:

Yeah. Now if I test someone and they’re pretty okay, only a few minor things, I won’t recommend a retest. But I would say out of everyone I test, I maybe had two patients that I said didn’t really need anything. That’s

Lorne Brown:

Not that many. And for the majority of patients, and just for our listeners again, and you’re perfect, you went through this, it’s really hard to hear. Wait, right? Yeah. And you shared the message you got, you’re 35, geriatric rush, rush. How do you address that when patients are told by the reproductive endocrinologist, you need to do this quickly, but you see what’s going on in the mouth, how do you communicate to them so they’re open to this?

Katie Lee:

Well, I think for me being told to wait, there was no reason for me to wait other than someone had made this a policy, a statement of best practice, whatever it was, there was nothing tailored to me specifically telling me to wait. It was just this is what we do with everyone your age and everyone with this diagnosis. And so for the patients that I do tell to wait, I tell them, Hey, I’ve been through this. I’ve done this six times and not been successful. I have not gone and turned over every rock that I could have. And what I know is that if you do this now, sure, you can roll the dice and you could get pregnant and you could have a healthy pregnancy and healthy outcomes, or there’s a high likelihood. So at the end of the day, it’s really up to the patient. If they want to do it, they can do it. But I tell ’em, you’re spending all of this money, do you really want to gamble

Lorne Brown:

On the IVF? There’s a lot of money involved and a hundred days in the reproductive world, although chronologically, they may be a hundred days older if they wait, oftentimes, biologically they’ve regained over a hundred days.

Katie Lee:

Ooh, that’s a really good point. I’m going to say that

Lorne Brown:

On the systemic side, that’s what we’ve seen. I’ve seen people where they’ve had all the embryos come back negative, like abnormal employed, and then we’ve worked with ’em for six months and they lose weight because changing their diet and lifestyle, their skin issues are changing, dealing with the inflammation and the gut health increase in blood flow, all those things are changing. They’re just seeing their body change, their digestion change, their body temperature change. Yeah, they’re six months older, but biologically they’re appearing much younger. And that’s what we’re aiming for. Can we make it? I love that. So as we wrap up, I have two questions. One is, I don’t know if I heard it on another podcast or if I read it in your book, I’m saved by the mouth, the hormones, estrogen, progesterone, and the synthetic hormones that you often get in an IVF treatment. They do a lot of estrogen priming and they’ll do progesterone. I think you mentioned that it can impact oral health. Did I hear that from you or did I hear that elsewhere?

Katie Lee:

No. Well, you probably heard it elsewhere. It is true, but I have it in the book too. So those hormones definitely increase inflammatory levels in the bloodstream. Progesterone is a dilator also. And so that’s why those hormones cause a lot of gingival inflammation during pregnancy. So

Lorne Brown:

To me, if you’ve been through IVF cycles, more reason to start testing to see if it’s Totally,

Katie Lee:

Totally. And I have so many patients come to me after they have babies and they say, I’ve never had gum or teeth issues until I had children. The baby sucked all the minerals out of my teeth and now I have gum disease. I hear it all the time and I see it all the time. And it’s because these hormones were there during pregnancy. They probably had some bacteria that were there before they got pregnant. They never got treated, now everything’s just exacerbated.

Lorne Brown:

And to reiterate this, the male partner, if it’s a couple where it’s heterosexual or they’re using the person, they’re with sperm. Let’s just get really specific. You believe that he needs to be tested and involved because it takes two to make a baby when you’re using somebody’s sperm in a relationship.

Katie Lee:

I mean, I would say whether they’re heterosexual or not. Because even, let’s say you have a homosexual couple, you’re still swapping spit, right? So if you have two females, that one’s trying to get pregnant. If she does get pregnant and the partner has an infection, she can infect the carrier.

Lorne Brown:

So there’s two reasons that both people are involved. So if you’re single, you’re using a donor sperm, so that’s taken care of. If you’re in a relationship, whether it’s same sex or heterosexual, if it’s same sex, you’re swapping fluid. So you can cross-contaminate each other. So there’s a reason to be tested and both treated. And if your partner is the one contributing sperm to the egg to make the embryo, you’re shared that these oral microbiomes and inflammatory issues can impact motility count morphology.

Katie Lee:

Totally. You got it.

Lorne Brown:

And when you did your healing journey through your fertility and your mouth, you used functional medicine as part of your journey, correct?

Katie Lee:

Yeah. And so that after I did all of this and I took a second to pause, obviously my body was wrecked after all of this. I just kept doing it one cycle after another, like no break in between. I’d miscarry, we’d wait for a period and I’d start the next round, which is horrific when I think about the things that I did to my body. And so, yeah, I did use a more functional approach. And that’s why in this new clinic that I’m building right now, it’s a total health clinic that integrates medicine, functional health, natural path dentistry, and airway health. I’m going to have a sleep apnea clinic, and then I have a training and education center so I can bring dentists from all over the world to train them on this. So I’m really excited for that.

Lorne Brown:

That was my next question because we’re going to wrap up everybody and how you can connect with Katie and get a copy now about her book Saved By the Mouth. So if somebody’s interested in this, do you do telehealth sessions so they can have a discussion with you?

Katie Lee:

That’s what I’m doing right now. I wrote the book and then I had my son, and so I was really planning on spending all my time with him, but then everyone started reaching out to me saying, oh my gosh, I need your help. Will you please treat me? So now I do telehealth for patients. And so people will contact me, I’ll do a saliva test for them, go over their results, create a care plan that includes everything from dental treatment to supplementation, all of that. And then I’ll work with their current doctor, dentist or find them a dentist that will do it for them.

Lorne Brown:

And if we can find, because I know there’s some biological dentists in the city, you have a training center, so I can also introduce them to you, so they may want to get more training when we want to make it more specific to fertility and just what you’re doing for rural health.

Katie Lee:

Yes. Yes. So that’s the other thing that I do, and it’s on my website too, is that I train clinicians on how to incorporate oral systemic health into their practice, whether they’re like you and you have a medical practice or if they’re dentists.

Lorne Brown:

Oh, good. So Katie, we’re going to follow up then, because I’m going to do that with my team. We want to introduce this into our practice or at Acubalance in Vancouver, because as I mentioned, we like to leave no stone unturned. And our goal is a healthy baby. And this sounds like it’s another avenue to see what could be interfering with getting pregnant or maintaining the pregnancy, and also improve the health of the baby. And Katie has an offer for you guys as well. As I mentioned, her book is called Save by the Mouth, Be Healthier, Save Money, and Live Longer by Improving Your Oral Health. And again, I have a signed copy and if you look in our show notes, she has provided a link where you can download the first chapter of Saved By the Mouth for Free so you can get a feel for the book. I’ve been through it, so I highly recommend it, recommended if you have any health issues, and particularly if you’re looking to grow your family. And again, just go into the show notes and you’ll see a link for that. It’s katie lee dds.com/saved by the mouth. And again, just go into the show notes. You’ll see it there as well.

Katie Lee:

Thank you. Thank you for your patience too. This is what happens when you have a baby and the nanny calls out and you still have to be a mom and work.

Lorne Brown:

He’s been great. He’s been a real trooper, and he’s getting all this information. And so be curious to see where Roman grows up and contributes to the world because of all the podcasts that he’s getting to learn and listen about oral health.

Katie Lee:

Totally.

Lorne Brown:

As he sticks things in his mouth. See, he’s working on his microbiome right now.

Katie Lee:

I know he’s teething. Yep. There’s certain things that you can control and other things you can’t.

Lorne Brown:

Awesome. Katie, thank you for writing the book, and thank you very much for taking time to share what you know from a dentist’s perspective on oral health in general for our health and your holistic approach, and how this could impact your fertility. I really appreciate our time

Katie Lee:


Together. It’s my pleasure. Thank you.

Speaker:

If you’re looking for support to grow your family contact Acubalance Wellness Center at Acubalance, they help you reach your peak fertility potential through their integrative approach using low level laser therapy, fertility, acupuncture, and naturopathic medicine. Download the Acubalance Fertility Diet and Dr. Brown’s video for mastering manifestation and clearing subconscious blocks. Go to acubalance.ca. That’s a-c-u balance.ca.

Lorne Brown:

Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Conscious Fertility, the show that helps you receive life on purpose. Please take a moment to subscribe to the show and join the community of women and men on their path to peak fertility and choosing to live consciously on purpose. I would love to continue this conversation with you, so please direct message me on Instagram at Lorne Brown official. That’s Instagram, Lorne Brown official, or you can visit my websites lornebrown.com and Acubalance.ca. Until the next episode, stay curious and for a few moments, bring your awareness to your heart centre and breathe.