From HerbMentor.com, this is Herb Mentor Radio.
You are listening to Herb Mentor Radio on HerbMentor.com. I'm John Gallagher. My guest today is doctor Leslie Alexander. Leslie is a medical herbalist and former research scientist.
She is co author of the book, Dental Herbalism, Natural Therapies for the Mouth. Leslie is a professional member of the American Herbalist Guild and co owner of Restoration Herbs in Pennsylvania. You can visit Leslie and check out her book at DentalHerbalism.com. Leslie, welcome to Herb Mentor Radio.
Hey, John. Thank you very, very much for inviting me to have a chat with you today.
That's an honor. So you have a PhD in biological sciences.
So how do you go from being a scientific researcher to an herbalist? Like, tell us about that journey.
It's a very, it was an interesting journey.
I began working with intertidal seaweeds, particularly and looking at the effect of heavy metals and environmental factors affecting the seaweed.
And from there, I went to my first post doc position which was actually a molecular lab, in Coventry in England.
My PhD was undertaken at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh in Scotland.
So I spent a little while in Coventry and from there, I became interested in environmental epidemiology, the effect of the environment on our health. And from there, I quickly realized that the work I enjoyed doing most was of a very practical nature.
And having always been a gardener and growing and being interested in herbs, when I came back to the States in the mid to late 90s, I began to really look more and more into so from there, it was a pretty straightforward journey.
I went back to Edinburgh in Scotland. I was continuing to work as an academic, and I decided to make a break and to focus my training on becoming a professional member of the guild and a full time practitioner.
And then from there, I made a journey to focus on the mouth.
Wow. So, you know, it's it's really fascinating because, you know, you just never know people when they learn about arms or what inspires them. Sometimes it's like that, you know, grandmother they had when they were little that that that's took them outside all the time. Did did you have anything like that? Like growing up as a girl, like you spend a lot of time outside or, you know, a relative or anything? Is it just purely just your scientific interest brought you into this?
No. It was really, folk herbalism that got me you know, people joke about, like, when you're sick, oh, you gotta have some chicken soup.
Mhmm.
And so I started to wonder, well, what else is in the soup besides chicken?
And, so that was that sparked some ideas. And indeed, I do continue to look at traditional ethnic uses of herbs, particularly in Judaism.
So from there, I also started to become interested in knowledge that has been passed around as hearsay and began to marvel when I saw herbs in action, and how they have been incorporated in our culinary use, like sage, for example, not only is it great for the mouth, but also it helps us digest fat. So isn't it kind of funky how it is incorporated when we serve fatty meats or, like turkey or duck or when we make sausage.
Or for example, when, cinnamon, also another fabulous herb for the mouth, cinnamon helps us regulate blood sugar. And here in America, why we often incorporate cinnamon and apple pies.
Mhmm.
And I was like, wow. Is this is this real? How did they know?
So that's kinda how my journey began.
Fantastic. You know, I I just I have to just say for now we're gonna get into the book and I'll, you know, get into dental herbalism that I it's just a fantastic book. I mean, it just, you know, it speaks to everybody. It's it's it's very it's it's clear and I it's just like anyone who's even just like, hey, I'm just interested in natural remedies and herbs and it's really just accessible to to anyone in this. And it's just I I just love the the whole package that you put together here in this journey. So that's why I hope hoping you share a bit with people today.
I'm so pleased that you like the package because Linda and I worked extremely, extremely hard and had some concerns and decided to go with my instinct. But, we really wrote for three audiences, and and I'm pleased to hear that you enjoyed what we put together.
Because I always I'm always reading into the eyes. I think I'd like to keep myself at the level of family herbalist, you know. Like, I don't I don't geek out too too much into the world of all all this stuff. So when I'm reading it, I'm reading it through those eyes and, and and that's why I just loved it. So and and and and so to start off, you know, you say very early in the book that, it all begins with the mouth. So I was wondering if you could just begin there and tell us what you mean by that.
Well, a lot of things from an emotional point of view, you know, watching someone smile, watching them express themselves, being attracted to people, by their facial characteristics.
Of course, when we get to, the systems of the body, let's not forget digestion begins in the mouth.
And for many years, certainly since the late 1800s, we've been tossing about the idea that the health of our body in general is linked to the health of our mouths, which for me was a wholly new idea. You know, I grew up in the era where you went to the dentist and you got a lollipop.
And so that's changed and there's more to the mouth than just teeth.
Yes. Because people yeah. People think that, yeah. Your mouth is that your teeth and tongue.
Or maybe some other parts they might know. Maybe the palate and so you go into like, you know, how there's a whole ecology.
There is a whole ecology. A healthy mouth has a balance of bacteria and viruses and fungi and a whole suite of microorganisms.
There's a great researcher in in Boston, doctor Sikransky, and he says there are more bugs in the mouth than there are people on the planet.
Wow.
So that's a lot. So I suppose we can be really pleased that they're small and invisible.
And a healthy mouth sustains this healthy, what we now call biofilm, this balance of microorganisms.
And when things happen, when we miss when we begin to lose teeth, when, we don't attend to the cleanliness of our mouths, when we kiss people who have unclean mouths, when we live in environments that have an adverse effect on our health, all of those things help to shift the balance of bugs in the mouth. And of course, let's not forget food or herbs.
They too have an effect.
And so it requires constant attention.
And, it's it's just marvelous to begin to explore this as an herbalist, with people who are wanting to really take control of their health and have be more empowered. And I hope dental herbalism goes some way towards that.
So then, what what behaviors do we do besides like eating sugar and the junk food that we eat that contribute to poor oral health? Because we often think it's just sugar or it's processed food.
And and we think that if we're brushing our teeth at night, then we're taking care of everything, you know. Like I just am wondering like, you know, it's that I get I guess I'm gonna say like, see, we seem to have separated. So it's like, oh, there's a dentist. There's dentists. And they just take care of our mouth and we brush our teeth and that's that. It's like we don't really think there's a connection between that and the rest of our bodies.
I totally agree with you. I mean, and I was for I was one of those folk who for a very long time abdicated the health of my mouth to other healthcare professionals.
And I didn't know which teeth were filled. I didn't know which had been removed.
I I knew very little about my mouth. And as you just said, I thought, oh, well, I'll just go to the dentist and I'll see a hygienist and they'll floss my teeth once or twice a year.
And the rest of it is just rush and brush.
And, no, that's not the case. So behaviors that contribute, well, thumb sucking is one that we can, see amongst young people. Sometimes that carries on into older children and indeed adults.
Biting nails is sometimes the adult expression of that.
All of which is applying pressure and introducing organisms to the mouth.
Some of us as adults will think chewing on a pen cap or a pen or a toothpick.
So there are those chewing habits which have an adverse effect on the on the mouth.
When it comes to food, well, well, before we get to food, let's talk about brushing. Mhmm.
Two to three minutes, two to three times a day. And, the first time I put on a clock with a stopwatch, I was like, wow, three minutes? That's a long time to brush my teeth.
So paying attention to how we clean our mouths, not just brushing but rinsing.
And rinsing even with water is advantageous when we eat a lot of processed carbs that can hang out in the mouth and, are actually food for all of the organisms in the mouth.
So our daily hygiene regimes really figure greatly in our oral health and sustaining our oral health.
Who we kiss, as I said earlier, the health of our mouths is very closely related to who we kiss and what we eat.
And sugar, as you said, we've come back to sugar again and again in, the conversations surrounding, the health of the mouth. In particular, it is sugar that lingers in the mouth. So what happens when we eat certain foods is the pH in the mouth changes.
Water for example even can affect a pH change in the mouth. And when the pH drops below five point five, which is somewhat acidic, then we begin to experience conditions which contribute to erosion of our enamel, which is a precursor towards care to caries, or cavities.
Mhmm.
And so leaving foods linger in the mouth is a contributing factor to, a type of a type of environment we would like to avoid.
So when we eat a snack or we eat a meal or we sit with friends and and drink beer or wine or other alcoholic beverages, it's all of which contain I get I get it's like so that's what we, you know, we're told that as sugar is is is a main thing and we grew up that way and think it's, you know, we think that just it's just sugar in our mouth causing problems.
And, I'm just wondering is there a certain paradigm in which a person should think of their oral health rather than just the bad stuff that might be lingering on their teeth? In other words, like, you know, the focus on the health and like because I I just like, you know, the microorganisms and they should should the focus be on the, you know, the the the keeping a healthy biofilm, as you say, versus versus just getting rid of the sugar? You see what I mean?
Like Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Like, how do I start? Yeah. What do I do?
Yeah. I totally get it. So I suppose there could be three, pieces of advice, if you like, that someone could follow if they were interested in improving and sustaining a healthy mouth. So one is to strive for balance and to avoid excess.
We, you know, sugar is not all sugar is avoided and we shouldn't berate ourselves when we have an ice cream or somebody cooks us a lovely homemade dessert. But ice cream after every meal and desserts after every meal, that's kind of imbalanced. So we should strive for balance and we should avoid excess.
And eating a variety of foods is very, very important.
And so we can look towards in particular fruits and vegetables.
And there's that old saying, eat a rainbow, eat a colorful palette. And particularly, we're looking for raw foods that are crunchy. And in their crunchiness, they help massage the gums and enhance blood supply to the gums. So raw crunchy foods are important.
In addition, hard cheeses help clean the palate and that is very, very important.
Being well hydrated and ensuring that we have adequate amounts of vitamin C in our diet is very important indeed.
And reading food labels, I mean, that is integral to our health overall. And, of course, the mouth is important there too.
So we're we're we're we're met. We have to remember that the mouth is part of the whole body. And while we're eating a great diet and eating these things, we have to take that into consideration.
I'll leave it all to the hygienist to take care of for it.
Exactly.
You know, and another thing that that, a big word when people are talking about the health of the rest of the body, that's really big now that we need to look out for. I mean, the the concepts of, inflammation and stress. So what role does inflammation play in people's oral issues?
Well, to the best of my knowledge, John, the body in our bodies, we don't differentiate in our reactions to an emotional stress or a physical stress or a spiritual stress.
So when we're stressed, the body responds.
And sometimes, we can measure stress in terms of looking for particular markers like C reactive protein or CRP as it's sometimes called on a laboratory, analysis, And we also know other types of stress markers. For example, some of us may grit our teeth. Some of us may grind our teeth.
And that certainly is an indication of stress for some of us.
And of course, that then creates, undue and unwanted pressures in the mouth.
We can experience stress in terms of inflammatory responses of tissues.
So in the mouth, we might see, swelling. We might see softness. We might see even bleeding.
And let's remember and I think it's important to remember that the mouth is not a homogeneous environment.
So in other words, one tooth could be perfectly healthy and the next tooth can have a cavity. We're all familiar with that. But when we look at the tissues of our mouth, so Mhmm.
The same concept applies and can be extended. So one area in our gums could indeed be very healthy and another might show signs of inflammation.
They might be red. It might bleed when we brush or we floss.
It might be tender to the touch or sensitive to hot and cold.
All of those should be flags for us.
For some time, I experienced, bleeding in my mouth when I would brush my teeth. Not always, but occasionally.
And I would simply rinse my mouth and think, oh, you know, oh a bit of blood and that was the end of it. So we're lucky that we can draw on a number of herbs and particularly if we're making home remedies for the mouth, rinses and washes and pastes and, powders, we can adjust these as the health of our mouth changes.
So when, a thirteen or a fourteen year old person gets fitted with braces, for example, or an adult gets fitted with braces, for example, we can prepare a homemade mouthwash that would specifically address inflammation arising from all that poking and prodding and that occasional bleeding.
And ensure that, infection didn't blossom and to help heal. You know, we have access to a lot of vulnerary herbs that help heal open wounds. We have astringents to help tighten gums and we have herbs with various antimicrobial activities.
So we can blend herbs to not only address those actions as and when needed, but also to to produce some pretty tasty results.
Well, that just goes beautifully into the next section that I wanted to talk about. And so, when with herbs and and blending with toothpads, maybe in the world because we use toothpaste or some use toothpowders, can we kind of, put a maybe an all purpose you know kinda when people learn about salves and it's like, oh, you start with a nice all purpose salve, you put a little comfrey and plantain and some calendula in there and you learn about these herbs and that's a nice classic blend for salve for basic first aid. So if we're making, a tooth powder, that people could easily make at home, Could we explore what would go in that and then also the benefits of each of those ingredients?
Sure.
Well, we can start with, to clean the mouth, we can start with just water, for example.
Let's say we go away for the weekend and I forget my toothbrush and my toothpaste and all those things that I need to that I think I need to to clean my mouth.
Well, I can actually begin to take care of my mouth while I'm away simply by, taking some warm water and using the tip of my index finger and perhaps massaging each tooth, each surface that I can reach.
So it is definitely a possibility to work in the mouth without any herbs at all. We can then look to salt, for example. So again, I've gone away. I'm camping and, oh, you know, blimey.
I forgot my toothpaste. Mhmm. Well, salt is absolutely marvelous when we work in the mouth, and it is, particularly useful to when it comes to astringing the gums. It helps us move remove debris, and it can be used with water, or on its own as scrub.
I mean, we use salt scrubs all the time All right.
To address, the skin.
So tooth powders, one of the important things if we're going to approach a powder is indeed it should be a powder and not herbs that we have ground and not ground finely. So powders are finely ground herbs and many herbalists don't purchase powdered herbs or many herbalists who grow their own herbs can't adequately powder herbs.
So True. Yeah.
So, you know, we need to be careful because when we're putting, like, chunks of willow bark in our mouth, we could really make a mess.
So let's think about a powder. Powders are, generally a blend of herbs, and they're contained in a tin. That's the best way to contain them. So when we brush our teeth, we would be dipping a wet toothbrush into this, tin of powder, shaking off the excess.
So it's a good idea if you're gonna make powdered herbs, powdered herbs for use in the mouth, to be careful who you share that tin with because they're going to be dipping their toothbrush in there also.
So tooth powders, let's think about ingredients for tooth powders.
In terms of breath freshness, we might look to the mints, spearmint, peppermint, capnip, monarda, all of those would be, useful additions to a powder to help enhance breath, the smell of our breath and the taste in our mouths.
For young children in particular, however, their taste buds are indeed so sensitive that they may well wish to, we may well wish to stay away from mints and to look more towards for example, stevia or wild cherry bark, I've used a little bit of with children.
Licorice, a little bit with children.
Slippery slippery elm or omas rubra can be added as a nemoscent.
It's also an antitussive and a nice addition.
Bayberry, for example, is an astringent and an antimicrobial and a voluntary herb which we can add in varying amounts depending upon the changing health of our mouths.
Prickly ash is a circulatory stimulant. Of course, here we don't wanna add too much otherwise we might be salivating all day long.
And white oak is an excellent anti inflammatory and antimicrobial.
And that too can be added. As bases, we use a variety of things, orris root, which grows in the zone where I live. I'm in Western Pennsylvania just now.
Arrow root grows in warmer zones. And it was recently suggested by a herbal pal of mine, Leslie Williams, that possibly kudzu would make a nice base.
So it's all absolutely And I should mention no.
I I should mention too that when you say base, I I wanted because you have this great chart in the book and, and we're using example of Michael Moore's tooth powder recipe and and and what's cool is that like you have these actions and so you say base and then you have these things like analgesic, like painkilling, anti inflammatory, the anti microbial, all these astringent circulatory stimulants.
You know, it's neat because I like what you're doing here is you're just making sure that, hey, you know, these are the things you need to look out for. These are the qualities that you have to look out for when you're making a blend. And then of course, you can then choose, right, which herbs that you wanna use by keeping in mind all of these actions, which is really clear. I like this. So I just wanted to say that because when you say base, I wanted to kinda put it all into a bigger perspective of the whole recipe.
Thanks. And I'm glad that you were able to succinctly suggest, one of the things that we really paid a great deal of attention to or I paid a great deal of attention to in writing Dental Herbalism when it came to the herbal aspects of the work we present is we tried very hard not to be autocratic Mhmm. But to give people information so that when they were creating a tooth powder or a mouthwash or whatever it was, that they understood properties and they could come away with an understanding of how to blend and why they might wish to place different emphasis on various herbs at different times in their lives.
Right.
Right. Exactly. So I could see where if my son who may be getting braces soon, he we're talking about the poking and prodding. Well, we may wanna make sure there's a vulnerary in there. Right? And then maybe some extra, antimicrobials for to prevent infection.
Exactly. Or an analgesic because there might be a teeny bit of discomfort.
Yeah. Yeah. True. I see that. Yeah. And it's a great chart there. And so that's that's great.
So anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt you before. I just I love that that concept of the base. So you were on the bases before talking about the kudzu, which is really interesting idea too.
Yeah.
So so there's a wealth of material.
If we're going to use powders, of course, we needn't use powders. We could also use roots.
And so we could look to, for example, like chew sticks or mizwax as they're called, in other parts of the world. And there, we might consider taking a licorice root or an alfalfa root or even a marshmallow root about the length of a pencil and taking off the exterior to a depth of about a quarter of an inch and then using that just slightly dampened with water in the mouth, the saliva will have an action of splaying the fibers of the roots in these the roots of these herbs.
And then it can be used to clean around the teeth and also to massage the gums. The great thing about a chew stick, John, is you can take it with you wherever you go. It fits nicely in a back pocket.
What are some examples of, different kinds of of chew sticks?
Well, as I said, licorice or alfalfa or marshmallow roots, those would all be can be used as chew sticks. We can also use birch twigs.
And then of course neem, Neem twigs. Neem is a fabulous herb for the mouth, has a great many functions, being not only antiviral and antibacterial, but also antifungal.
You know, I I when when when I was learning about plants and then, I remember living back east and and they're being, of course, sassafras trees and people saying, oh, yeah, native folks would, chew this and it was for dental health. And I'm thinking like, oh gosh, that's just before they had toothbrushes. You wouldn't do this now. But you're like, no, no, no, use these chew sticks.
Well, you know, I think I think, sassafras roots, that's such a lovely aroma. Like, who would not want to chew a sassafras root or massage the gums?
But John, one of the things that is, important is oral health imbalances are increasing throughout the United States.
Many people, a significant proportion of people over the age of thirty have, some some degree of periodontal disease.
And oral health care supplies are very expensive.
So many people don't know that it's a good idea, for example, to change our toothbrushes, every three months or after we're sick, and that we can wash our toothbrushes.
You know, I used to be under the impression that, oh, when I had my tooth cleaned teeth cleaned at the dentist, I got a new toothbrush.
I'd occasionally buy one if I left mine somewhere, but, otherwise, I didn't change it with a great great deal. I never paid attention to changing it.
So now I mark it on the calendar when I get a toothbrush.
But if you're a single person or you're part of a family of four, dollars three a toothbrush every three months plus the cost of tooth powders or toothpaste plus the course, the cost of mouth rinses, that's a lot of money. And really, we can put those dollars into purchasing, brightly colored fruits and veg and make mouth care products from the herbs we have in our kitchen.
And that's what's really fun is you get to, you know, access that inner herbalist and child here and make up some tooth powder potions with all kinds of cool like what I'm looking at the chart here just in the Michael Moore one and you talked about a base like arrowroot or orris root or you have baking powder and then analgesic. Like some of these have multiple ones like marigam, you have analgesic, anti inflammatory, antimicrobial, antioxidant, astringent. I mean, that's almost like a couple of these can take care of. It doesn't have to be complicated is what I'm saying.
It doesn't have to be complicated at all and that's one of the very great beauties, isn't it, about working with herbs is that I don't know of many herbs that have a single action.
And so one of the tricks of building sound strong formula for the mouth is to choose herbs that have overlapping inter overlapping actions so that we can build a lovely web. And, you know, if we are just starting out, why salt and cinnamon make a great paste for the mouth.
And many people have cinnamon in their kitchen cupboards.
Or salt and sage make a great way of abrading the teeth and cleaning the mouth.
And we can go from there.
Wow. That's, do we when you say paste like what in people's mind like, you know, we use toothpaste, you know, the thing in a tube that we squirt out. But if we're making a toothpaste, I mean, powder is like we're just blending powders and we have a nice powder out a little couple dabs of maybe essential oil or whatever if you want. And but, but really what, what what differentiates when you're making it yourself, the paste from the powder?
Well, the paste is often made with something that holds water well and sort of, has a different texture as we know. So for example, we can make a paste with a base of betonite clay.
And betonite clay is also whitening to the teeth.
And rather than starting with clay and adding water or essential oils or indeed teas and tinctures, to create that paste like consistency.
It's much easier when we're working with clay to start with the menstruum.
So the water or the infusion of time, tea, and to add, betonite clay to it because it's very hydroscopic.
It absorbs a lot of water. And if we start with the powder, why we could have enough paste for everybody on the East Coast to be brushing for decades to come.
And when you Kinda out of hand.
And do you have a, paste recipe in the books to, in here?
We have we have several paste recipes. We also have recipes for mouth washes and mouth rinses and for variety of imbalances, you know, from, thrush to young people who are teething, who are experiencing discomfort.
Indeed the whole house might be somewhat out of balance when a young person's getting teeth. Wow.
So, yeah. There are awful lot of recipes throughout dental herbalism.
What a concept. I I mean, usually it's like, you know, we have the whole household, we all have our tube of Tom's of Maine or whatever it is we're using, and one paste fits all. But here we're just like, hey, you know, everyone have different situations. We can you can address anything here.
Well, not only do we have different situations, I think we have different taste preferences. Right. So I might really enjoy a blend of sage and stevia and thyme, with a bit of orange thrown in. And you might have an aversion to orange.
And you might you might prefer mashed up strawberries and salt with a touch of cinnamon.
And so maybe that's what you use this week. And then next week you think, you know, I'm kind of tired of this.
And so we just make small amounts. They can be kept in the refrigerator as can washes and rinses.
And they can be used until, we need to make more or until we decide we're tired of them and we'd like a change.
Do you know, like, if if, before marketing, before Madison Avenue created the modern toothpaste and sold us on what we need, kinda like they all made us believe that you could only have orange juice in the morning.
You before before this revolution, this Madison Avenue thing and probably, you know, forties, fifties, whenever that was. Previous to that, did people kind of treat oral health and, you know, what they chose to clean their mouths with like this and differently depending on what they had? I mean, was is this like something that we're coming you're you're suggesting that we're all coming back to here?
Or We are all coming back to it.
I think we've been using herbs for medicinal points of view, for medicinal interventions as long as we've been on the planet Earth.
And estimates of how long that's been have varied considerably.
So certainly we've been using medicinal herbs for a very long time and of course throughout all of these millennia we have had teeth and our teeth have different functions. The the front teeth are more for like gnawing and our back teeth are more for grinding for example. But we do have interestingly in our book a photograph of a beeswax dental filling which, Bernardini and his colleagues estimate dates back some six thousand five hundred years. Wow.
So that's kind of a long time, you think?
Yeah. It is. So we're regaining are you you're helping us regain dental intelligence here.
Well, yeah. Maybe. Maybe. Just returning to plants and you know, there's no there are no additives, no chemicals.
There are no warnings. Many people don't even know that on their toothpaste, their commercial toothpaste, there are warnings that if they ingest more than a single dose, they should contact the poison center.
So we don't have those warnings on herbal preparations.
Got it.
It's kinda nice.
You know, and another type of herbal preparation I know we use in my house especially my wife to help with gums, receding gums, are rinses and washes. So I'd like to get into this and maybe how we talked about, you know, with the with the, tooth powders, some common herbs that we use there for that. What is a nice rinse that we that everyone could use to either work on or prevent, gum disease?
I I guess a nice rinse depends on who you are. Okay.
So for example, I really like the combination of mint and orange in my mouth.
Sometimes mint, orange, and and cinnamon, Mhmm. Or mint, orange, and monarda.
So what I might do is I might use say, two parts of monarda and a quarter part of cinnamon and one part of orange peel.
And I might infuse those as we would make a decoction but for a short period on the stove while simmering. Let it cool and then put it in a bottle and a mason jar for example.
Put it in the fridge, take some to keep in the bathroom which is where I choose to brush my teeth.
And I might refresh that on a daily or every other day basis.
And then, use that to rinse my mouth.
So I really like that.
Sage makes a wonderful, wonderful, mouth care herb from its use of fresh leaves to help whiten the teeth, to infusions, to for gargling or rinsing of the mouth. And sage and thyme are historical herbs that have been associated with certainly oral care products in the west. So those could well be flavors people are familiar with. Thymol for example comes from our pal, time, what others.
And, and so say you're making this, the the rinse, do you just keep that in the fridge and just use it? Or do you put, like, an alcohol preservative in it and put it in your medicine cabinet?
Or Most people, John, are making volumes so small that we don't need alcohol.
Alcohol has a drying effect.
And so many, commercial oral care products that contain alcohol, also contain hidden sugars and really aren't doing the mouth a great service at all.
So if we're making in the region of about a quart of a mouthwash, often we're including an antimicrobial herb like sage or thyme, for example, or turmeric, for example. And so there really is no need to add a preservative.
When we finish infusing or de cocking our preparation and we let it cool, I often pour it straight into the jar but many people prefer to strain it. And for people who are new to making oral care products, why it's a great idea to strain it because then you can hold the jar up, against a window, for example.
And if it's still clear, then you're good to go.
It's pretty obvious to see a when a rinse goes off.
And then you just store that decoction just, a jar, say it's a small Mason jar or something in your bathroom and just use it like that?
Yeah. Or you can keep it in the fridge and dispense small amounts on a daily basis.
Another, oral care rinse that I particularly like is a spice lily tea, which grew out of the work of Suzanne Poth and Gina Sawyer.
And that's a cardamom, cumin, and fennel mix. And because of my affinity for orange, I add orange peel which, you know, I always think of as an excellent digestive herb.
So thatis two parts of cardamom, one and a half parts of cumin, one and a half parts of fennel, and half a part of orange peel. And what I do is bruise all those up and, put about, a teaspoon to two teaspoons in a mug of hot water, and I let that infuse.
I often cover something like that, with a lid or a saucer because there are aromatic herbs involved.
And then I just again, would filter that and use that as an oral rinse. It's kinda nice.
That's great. And then so, and also so in any case, if you have inflamed gums or whatever, you can use this or to prevent, which is nice. Right?
In both cases, you can Exactly.
And we can add, for example, echinacea or we can add willow or we can add, stronger micro antimicrobial herbs depending upon what's going on in the mouth.
And, I'll point out too again just like the the tooth powder, there's a great chart that I'm looking at now in your book that, goes down the different actions and has the associated herbs. And then if you don't if anyone's listening and it's new to a lot of these fancy words that we're using like, 'vulmonary' or whatever, there's a glossary. Or if you're Herb Mentor members, you can go on Herb Mentor where Rosalie's made videos describing all of these herbal actions. And so you can really, you know, dig deep into that and understand each action and then knowing then what's going into your your mouth rinse or your tooth powder. I don't want to invent her. That's how big way we like to learn, is just take it piece by piece, experience to experience, and and, it kinda not it makes it so it's not so overwhelming.
I agree, John. And in fact, not only have we included these tables in the main body of our book, but we've also included appendices where we actively encourage folk to make copies and to experiment.
And the tables, I think, do a pretty good job at breaking out actions, whether it is alterative or analgesic, whether the herbs are aromatic or astringent or nervines even or rubofaciens.
And we cover about forty herbs in dental herbalism.
And we look at the actions of each herb. So that enables us to put together formulas that suit our needs and the needs of the people we're working with.
Exactly. And like so there's lots and lots of herbs. And once you, it's fascinating because there's echinacea, marshmallow, calendula, myrrh, turmeric. And what about turmeric? I mean, you put that in your I mean, turmeric seems to just do every Everyone's talking about turmeric. All the things that you can do with turmeric. So you put that in the powders or in the rinse or?
Actually, I use it in both ways. I'm a big turmeric fan. And when I was doing a diploma in herbal medicine, I actually did a dissertation on turmeric. So I am a I am not a recent convert.
But it has a a variety of actions indeed.
So and one of the most important points about the herbs we chose is they're safe. They're all safe. There are hundreds and hundreds of herbs for the mouth. And the suite we present here are, provide a good foundation for someone to get familiar with concepts relating to oral health and then to expand their own materia medica.
So turmeric's a culinary herb, and it's also a vulnerary, so it helps with wound healing, which is important.
It's a styptic or a hemostat. So that means that it can help with bleeding.
So when there has been interference in the mouth, it could be an injury, it could be gingivitis or more probably periodontitis or there could be a recently fitted prosthetic device, for example, like braces.
Using a herb that helps stop bleeding is pretty important. It's a fabulous immune support, turmeric is as well as being an astringent herb. So it helps tighten the gums and soggy and flabby and they certainly shouldn't and soggy and flabby and they certainly shouldn't smell.
And it's a great inflammatory where I think that's where a lot of the recent discussion has been residing.
You know, I I am looking at the materia medica, and we're seeing of course there's ones that we're used to seeing in medical herbalism like echinacea and arnica but with ones like orange peel and and rosemary and sage and salt and turmeric and thyme and and just looking clove, cinnamon, it seems to me that what you're also suggesting that, hey, you know, like when we have these herbs in our diet, it's and we're just eating them and it's in our systemically, this is also helping our teeth because it's all connected.
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. It's all connected. You know, there was that there was, well, Hippocrates said, let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.
And, you know, it's often a phrase that's taken out and thrown here and thrown there. And it's one of those things that really deserves long a long period of consideration and our attention indeed. Because you're absolutely right.
You know it's not just the application of medicinal herbs in a medicinal context. It's incorporating herbs into our daily diet.
And cloves are a great pain killer, you know.
And so when it comes to teething, that's where clove oil comes in or peppermint oil, in helping to relieve discomfort.
And certainly these aromatics also are useful in our daily diet.
Yes. Another, amazing chart you have here is this table which which which associates, dental problems with, chronic illness.
So you you can see, you know, with this, whether it's diabetes or herpes or infections or or, all kinds of things.
You can go down this chart and see associated things that are going on from, you know, bleeding and blisters and abscesses and all kinds of stuff with receding gums and just kinda match them up and see that that connection between systemic illness and oral health.
And, I think that's amazing.
I think it's really important. And one of the one of the messages we hope that people do take away from our book is that the mouth isn't an island.
And the health of our mouth is intimately connected to the health of our bodies overall.
And when we start to work with the health of our mouth in this way, we can also see improvements in other aspects of our health and well-being.
Indeed there's a recently formed association in the states of people who are interested in links between orals and systemic health.
And increasingly we find that things like arthritis and cardiovascular disease and hypertension and erectile dysfunction and osteoporosis and of course scurvy was the classic example.
But all of these are connected to the health of the mouth.
And and self empowerment in this information is really important because I used to go to a dentist, maybe ten years ago or so, and and he was, involved in this wilderness school where I worked and he would just tell me on the side, he's like, you know, you know, I I I love the ideas and the natural therapies and everything, but, you know, his connection to my license and the and the American Dental Association vice tell people stuff. I could get in trouble and all this kind of stuff. I don't know how the climate is now for dentists because that was a bit ago. But is it still like that for dentists or you know like like it's it's not like for we we really kinda have to almost take this into our own hands.
Well, I think taking our health into our own hands is very, very important.
You're quite right.
And know and knowing when to, when to consult a professional of any type is of equal importance.
And we talk about integrated health. And it was a big deal for a dental hygienist, Linda Stroud Bruce, my co author, and myself, a herbalist, to come together and to write a book. And as herbalists, we don't have a clearly defined quote unquote scope of practice.
And so we are offering this information for educational purposes.
And I'm not sure how dental professionals will be able to move within this realm. But hopefully, they'll learn to collaborate with folk like us.
Absolutely. You know, I told you, Leslie early on before we started that the hour would go by quick. And it did, didn't it?
It went by really quickly.
We did because there's so many questions, so many more things, we could get to. But I just loved how you kinda wrapped it all together there. It's good natural breaking point. And and I just as everyone can tell, I mean, I just I think it's an astounding book and, and you can go to dental herbalism dot com, and I always recommend supporting the authors and resource, resource, great basic herbal information, a lot of things in current topics in herbalism, I mean, in in in dental health rather, such as from fluoride to supplements to probiotics.
We can literally do a whole series here, Leslie, on this, I think. And so, so so I again, dental herbalism, natural therapies for the mouth by Healing Arts Press and dental herbalism dot com. And Leslie also has a site restoration herbs dot com. So doctor Leslie Alexander, thank you so much for sharing with us today. It's been an honor to have you here on EarthVenture Radio.
John, thanks for asking me. It's been my great pleasure.
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