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Kreatures Of Habit Podcast
Dr. Jonathan Levine on Dentistry Reimagined: Optimizing Health Through Oral Care
01:16:58
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- [00:00]
A
We can test in saliva inflammatory markers that gives us a preheat of any type of inflammation, whether it's in our arteries. The dentist can now work with their medical colleagues to prevent a cardiovascular event because people go to the dentist more than they go to their primary care physician. So the dentist could be the tip of the spear for getting ahead of chronic inflammatory diseases.
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B
I'm Michael Chernow and this is the Creatures of Habit podcast. Our habits will make us or break us. It's just that simple. I've lived on both sides of the tracks and have learned that the decisions we make on a consistent basis truly define who we are as human beings. On this show, I will be interviewing some of the most inspiring, motivating and high performing humans I've encountered to share their daily habits, routines and rituals that help them stay on top of their game and ultimately happy. So sit back, relax, and pay attention because what you hear over the next 30 to 45 minutes could potentially change your life. Let's go. What up, guys? Welcome back to the Creatures that have it podcast. All right, I've got a very unique guest on the show today. For the Creatures that have it podcast. We are going to talk about oral health, oral hygiene. We're going to talk about how oral hygiene could very well be the gateway to wellness in general. And not enough people are thinking about their oral hygiene outside of just brushing their teeth in the morning and the evening maybe, but most likely not flossing every day. There's so many habits that are involved in oral care. And when you think about it, it is literally, like I said, the gateway to potential wellness in general. Like your mouth is how your mouth is required to survive. You have to actually ingest any, any substance you ingest actually starts in your mouth. And so I'm really, really excited to have Dr. Jonathan Levine here who is, really, has built an unbelievable empire in the world of dentistry and he's built multiple businesses. He's got an organization where he's really helping, trying to help as many people as possible no matter where you' no matter what you've done, no matter what economic bracket you live in, have access to oral health care. And his whole family is also creating and doing entrepreneurial things in this arena. So I'm really, really excited to talk about jbl, to talk about the glow.
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A
Is it the Glo, the company Glow Science. Glow Science and our Glow Good foundation.
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B
And the Glow Good Foundation. Glow do the Good. I want to learn about that, but really I want to kick off by just, by just either Myth busting or learning about some of these things that we've heard about, like tongue scraping and charcoal toothpaste. And what is it called when you put oil in your mouth and you swallow oil Pulling. Oil pulling. Anyway, Jonathan, welcome to the show.
- [03:23]
A
Yeah, Michael, it's great to be here. Excited to spend some time with you.
- [03:27]
B
So, you know, when I found out about you, it's funny. I grew up, my mother was a dental hygienist, right? And then she went from dental hygienist to the office manager. So I literally spent my childhood in the dentist office. I know the smell, the music, the chairs. I was never like, I don't have a fear around dentists because. And a lot of people do, right? Like, there's like a real kind of. It's a scary place for a lot of people to go. My wife was not as much anymore, but like all through her childhood she had terrible teeth. And so they had to do a lot of funky stuff to her teeth. But you have really tried to, like, not only destigmatize this whole thing about like the kind of almost like sterile dentistry vision that we have, but you've created a, like, you've connected oral care dentistry to wellness. And that's not really talked about. That's not something that people think of when they think of wellness. They don't think of that. And you're doing an amazing job. So I'd love to just hear, first and foremost, let's just get a little story and then I want you to sort of debunk some of these things.
- [04:47]
A
Okay, so let's start with a little bit of a story. I came out of college, played a sport called lacrosse. I'm going to start with lacrosse. I had this amazing coach, Richie Moran, John Wooden of basketball, Richie Moran, lacrosse, legendary. So I went from my sophomore year, we lost in the quarterfinals. My junior year, we lost in the semifinals. My senior year, we were undefeated. Of course, I had to play against my twin brother who was on the other team. And my mom didn't know what side of the field to sit on. By the way, little side note, she was down on the field, so nervous. My Jewish mama. And we won the game. But what I realized from that experience in college, that life's a team sport. And I end up kind of almost by default, hated hospitals, thinking of getting a PhD in biochem. I was at Cornell. I said, you know what? I'm going to go into dentistry. And I like kind of the artsy side of dentistry. And I was doing some sculpture I get into dentistry, graduated dental school, and sure enough, I'm saying to myself, oh my God, this is pretty nascent type of industry, very siloed. One dentist, one hygienist, one assistant. You walk into a dental office, everybody knows that eugenol smell. You know, everybody saw the wood paneling on the walls. It was like cut and paste of all these dental offices. And I was the kind of person like, okay, first of all, you got to build a team. Second of all, this thing is so ripe for reinvention. This was quite a while ago when I realized that almost 30 years ago, I ended up getting very lucky where the person who invented porcelain veneers, I learned how to do it at 26 years of age. I'm one of the first guys in the country to do it. The ceramist who figured it out. And that kind of set me on an innovative pathway and to really think as an entrepreneur. And also I always enjoyed the scientific side because I had a big background in immunology and biochem from college and, and then onwards. So I kind of got thrown into this industry that I was always like, how do we reinvent it? How do we break the rules? How do we do things differently? And I know my colleagues were looking at me like there's something really wrong with this person. But I enjoyed it. I've always built teams. So I have. I've started multiple companies, had an academic program, bunch of different books, both to the profession and to the consumer. And where we've landed today is that health care. When you look at the growing body of research that's happening in all of medicine, and when you look at what's happening with the combination of bioengineering and AI and computers, all of healthcare is taking off. Takes 17 years of adoption for new innovation in healthcare. Dentistry takes longer. But it's catching up. And it's catching up because it's getting, it's kind of getting modernized now. And as you see a trend, there's a trend on the business model side. So dental practices are now able to be owned by non professionals along with the professional ownership. They're called dental service organizations, just like MSOs on the medical side, what that has done is brought in entrepreneurial thinking and business concepts, marketing, finance, how do I invest in all the new technologies? Because the dentist of old and even today 60% of dentistry still one dentist, one hygienist, one assistant, and the dentist wears these multiple hats. So you remember visiting mom, the hygienist, the dentist has to be understand business has to understand some level of accounting, of course, has to understand dentistry and as a clinician and on and on and on, a psychologist and taking care of the fears of a patient. But today, when you have multiple doctors in one office and you have professionals helping grow those practices, this is why this DSO industry is now almost 25% of the overall as a business model. Dental service organizations, the dentists themselves are now coming together to work together. And I have always felt this is the way to go. So I've evolved in my own practice. As a friend of mine says, you know, overnight success in 25, 30 years. And I have this amazing team uptown at 923 Fifth Avenue. But having started multiple companies and what I do is invent, so I have about 29 patents at this point. Started a couple different companies around therapeutics and cosmetics, teeth whitening. And that's allowed me, and also running kind of these clinical programs at nyu, it's allowed me to say, how do we constantly grow? How do we get better and better? It's just like an athlete's mindset. It's like every day, what kind of progress can I have? And that's where healthcare is starting to go to, where you're getting innovation coming together with research, improved business models all converging together. You look at the healthcare system, the healthcare system needs a lot of help, right? We have 20% of our GDP is spent on health care. So trillions of dollars on just health care because it's a sickness model. What does that mean? We wait for these chronic inflammatory diseases, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cognitive function type diseases, gut type of diseases to develop before we go upstream and get into a wellness model. Well, guess what? The mouth is no different than the gut. In fact, the mouth seeds the gut. What does that mean? So if you have bacterial overload, that's pathogenic, bad bugs in the mouth, just like having bad bugs in the gut, the mouth will seed the gut. That means P. Gingivalis. This is a bug that causes all the inflammation in the mouth for periodontal disease, gum disease, you can find it in the interstitial cells of inflammatory bowel diseases and leaky, leaky gut. So we know that all the systems are connected. Who's the smartest docs in the room these days? It's the integrative medicine, functional medicine, doctors who are linking all the systems together and look at the body as an ecosystem. Well, why would the mouth be any different than any other system in the body? It's got a microbiome just like every other area in the body. The body's got more bacteria inside and outside of it than we have human cells. It's called holobionts. So when you think about it, why isn't the mouth connected to the human body? And that's what I'm pushing. We believe oral health is health care. It starts in the mouth. And the most interesting thing about the microbiome of the mouth is how easy it is once you understand it, how easy it is to be healthy in the mouth. You just have to have access to care. If you have access to care, you could learn about nutrition, you could learn from your dental professionals of how do I go upstream and be preventative? The dentists need to upgrade their skills because dentistry is not just about being a tooth designer or fixing a tooth. The dentist today is all about multiple things, small transformations, but really to improve structure, function and biology. And what do I mean by that is when we look at diagnostics, we look at those four domains. Aesthetic structure, function of biology. And now today we have salivary diagnostics. We know the microbiome of the mouth. What bugs are causing inflammatory disease, what bugs are causing a lot of decay. We can test in saliva inflammatory markers. That gives us a preheat of any type of inflammation, whether it's in our arteries. The dentist can now work with their medical colleagues to prevent a cardiovascular event, because people go to the dentist more than they go to their primary care physician. So the dentist could be the tip of the spear for getting ahead of chronic inflammatory diseases, diabetes, cardiovascular disease. So the new book that I wrote, you know, it's all about this. There are 58 systemic inflammatory diseases. Name one. It's part of it is directly linked to inflammation in the mouth. Pretty amazing, right? 58 of them. Every one of them. So it's just starting. It's called oral systemic medicine, this connectivity. But dental schools, they miss the boat. Dental schools don't understand enough about this oral systemic connection. But they're starting to get there and forget about medical schools. You still got only about 20% of medical schools that are really studying nutrition, functional nutrition and nutrition at the level it should be. And what impacts the mouth impacts the rest of the body. So that's why we say oral health leads to overall health, because there's so much we can do in dentistry. So in our clinic at 9:23 Fifth, we call it JBL. Use my initials, the core values of our company, because I've learned how to build businesses. J stands for of course. Thank you, Nike. Just do it. B stands for bring the Joy. And our foundation partner is Lenny Kravitz. So the L stands for let love rule. And what we mean by love is like you bring the love, which means for my people that do the serving of people and of course the people, we serve our patients and we think of our JBL practice in a way that we can get ahead of the systemic inflammatory diseases by educating our patients. You come in, there's these educational type things, but we do microbiome testing of the mouth. We now look at the airway through CAT scans for the jaws. So the standard of care, it's not yet, but offices like mine, there's a handful of them in the country that take these CAT scans that we look at the upper airway and see how people are sleeping. So we do a lot of sleep diagnosis with our medical colleagues. We work collaboratively. And in dentistry, instead of forcing air down the nose and the mouth through a cpap, which isn't a great answer for an acute problem, but for these longer term sleep, obstructive sleep apnea problems or snoring, we make these mandibular advancement devices. So we have very good solutions for sleep. As an example of where dentistry has now taken to.
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B
And are these, are these patents of.
- [14:54]
A
Yours on the sleep side? It's really understanding the research, the science and the diagnostics. My patents are more about medical device and delivery system around that, around devices for therapeutics in the mouth and also for teeth whitening. So the mouthpiece you ever see with light and heat on it, I have all the early patents on those.
- [15:13]
B
I find that so interesting. I have been working with functional medicine and integrative medicine doctors for the last eight years. And 2017 was one of the worst years of my life. One of the two worst years of my life. 2017, I had the symptoms of undiagnosed Lyme disease were through the roof for me. No one could tell me what was wrong with me. Everybody thought I was out of my mind. Everybody thought it was, you know, literally everybody thought it was a. It was, it was my, it was my mind.
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A
Everybody thought that I was in your mind.
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B
Everybody thought that I was struggling with severe stress and anxiety from building business and working hard, including my wife, my mother. Ultimately, I was led to a functional medicine doc named Frank Lippman.
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A
Sure.
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B
And Frank sat. I sat down with Frank and he took literally one look at me, asked me three questions and he said, you have Lyme disease.
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A
You have Lyme disease.
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B
And I was like, I've been tested for Lyme. He's like, no, you haven't. I was like, no, I have. He was like, no, you haven't.
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A
Not the right way.
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B
Not the right way. And that began my journey in the world of functional medicine, integrative medicine. I've worked with a number of different doctors over the years because of the Lyme and just sort of how it suppressed my immune system, ultimately destroyed my gut. Now I'm in this massive gut reset. But it's so interesting to me to hear you say these things. And I cannot recall one time any of these functional or integrative medicine docs talking to me about my oral health.
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A
Yeah. Which is interesting, but they will.
- [16:56]
B
But that's what I'm saying. I think what you're doing is so innovative. Right. Like, you have literally taken an industry that is relatively archaic in the eyes of most people, and anybody that would look at you would be like, that guy. Well, you're not a dentist dentist. You're a prosthodontist. So I want you to actually explain what that is. But you're, like, the coolest dentist I've ever met. Right. Like, you just are. And I think. And maybe it takes someone like you that thinks a little bit more entrepreneurially or a lot more entrepreneurially to sort of reconfigure an industry that I would. And I would probably argue to say most dentists don't want to be innovated on. Right. Like.
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A
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. That's how dentistry was, you know, kind of 30 years ago, plus a little when I first came into the profession. And what's happening. We have. You know, I've always taught, and I love teaching the young dentists. I hand off my program of almost 20 years of it called Advanced Aesthetics, and now I'm back giving guest lectures. And you look, the young dentists, you know, they're more savvy from a technology standpoint, from understanding, you know, the power of AI, how it can impact our lives. And it's more about, you know, it's all about our personal mindset. Right. But I would say there's a lot of people who go into the professions that we need them. They're very focused within their world. They're great scientists or researchers or clinicians. But when you're talking about reinvention and reimagining a profession, you got to think really broadly. And, you know, I've been fortunate in that with the mindset of, we gotta change these things. We gotta break the rules here. And now, you know, I'm getting into, you know, the higher decades. It's great, because what kind of helped me get to where I am today is going to help me kind of help move the needle. There's a bunch of us with this mindset, so it's called DMI, dental medical integration. There's a group of about 10 of us that are working with one of the largest dental companies to get new insurance coding for dentistry to be preventative. So what does that mean? There's companies that are focused on salivary diagnostics. It's a company called Oral Genome that is focused on looking at the inflammatory markers in our saliva. We could just remember from COVID and all the saliva tests, we can see saliva in a way. We call it the new blood diagnostics. And so these companies allow us to do screening in the dental office that we do for every patient now. And we look at what are the bugs. Is it high risk for periodontal disease, inflammation of the mouth? Is it high risk for decay? And is it high risk for these inflammatory markers, Some of them, like a C. Reactive protein or something called IL 6, IL 1. But these are these type of inflammatory molecules, signaling molecules will say ding, ding, ding, ding, like a dashboard on your car. You got something going on, and here's your dashboard. And so this is really critical because then from there we can do further tests. So let's just say that you have high risk for diabetes. We can tell from the saliva. Great. Then let's test your markers. Let's get you to the physician. Let's see if you're pre diabetic and your blood glucose is off. So you can see how there could be a workflow if dentistry and medicine work closer together, and medicine and dentistry right back the other way. So it had that dual path. And healthcare is missing what's called this universal health record. It doesn't exist in medicine. You go to NYU and you get a scan for your knee. But you know what? I decided I want to get a consult over at hospital special surgery. You have to go to nyu, pick up your disc, and take it physically over to hss.
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B
I know, I've done that.
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A
You've done that. But if you, you know, jumped around Cornell a little bit while they're all on the EPIC or they're all on their system. So all of a sudden, you know, we're realizing in healthcare that, you know, what we needed to share information, and it's just that much worse between medicine and dentistry. But things are changing, and I love it. You know, overnight success in 30 years, you know, so it's like these later of okay, let's try to break the rules now. I got like my compatriots, people who are thinking like I'm thinking that we are going to do it and we have to do it in multiple ways. We have to do it from the school, the academic standpoint, dental schools and medical schools. We have to do it from the business model. That's changing because business models are now you starting to have health care practices, whether it's medicine or dentistry. These individual practices now could be run by very smart business people. And that's evolving. So it's very focused on clinical care, better patient outcomes. And then we have of course this growing body of research and this crazy technology that AI is about to take over so many things as co pilots for all of us. So when you have this convergence of these trends, things are going to happen and I think it's going to be.
- [22:12]
B
Positive on this show. I try to get the, to give the listener and the audience a few things that they can take home with them, throw in their back pocket and give a shot and see if it makes an impact in their life. Typically those things have to do with some sort of a habit routine, a ritual morning, evening routine, operational decisions that you make throughout the day to sort of declutter stress, things like that. I would love to understand what a good oral routine could look like for optimal success in the morning and in the evening. I think that that would be really something that, like coming from a guy that's really innovating the space. I think understanding what is the right things to do. You know, I, for me, quite frankly, it's been brushing my teeth in the morning and flossing in the evening and brushing my teeth in the evening. And that's really it. Yeah. And I'm sure that I'm kind of lucky that I haven't had a struggle with my teeth. My wife, on the other hand, just genetically terrible teeth like she's had, she's battled with teeth and I, you know, so obviously genes have something to do with teeth. Right. But can you just walk us through what a great oral care routine could look like?
- [23:25]
A
Yeah. So the routine is critically important. But I'm just gonna back up just a little before I tell you about that, which has a lot to do with what is the most important thing for us for health of the mouth. So the acid base balance or our mouth, in other words, ph. Right. We understand about what pH. So 7 is neutral. Anything above it is basic. Anything below it is acidic. Foods that we eat. Acidifying foods, too much of it. So these are the high protein foods versus the alkalinizing foods, vegetables, most fruits. Our balance has to be more towards the alkalinizing side. Things we put into our mouth. Alcohol, whether, you know, and we all know the problem with alcohol, but even alcohol in mouthwashes. Because I'm explaining this because I wanted to get into that discussion of what people should be looking for within their oral care products. So you have this PH balance going on. Then people have systemic issues with acid reflux and acid getting into the mouth. And so the dentist today has to do ph testing, salivary diagnostics. Now, having said that, and you have an awareness of the basics of importance, which is ph. The other important thing is our plaque control in our mouth. So it's one of the only microbiomes that we really can control. So how do you control it? The best way to control it is through mechanical removal of the plaque. You never want to be taking antibiotics or these antibiotic rinses. It's good for an acute moment, like there's something really going on or an antifungal or bacteria. Bacterial problem in your mouth. That's to use an antibiotic. But when it goes long term, you really gotta be thinking, how do I keep my microbiome diversified? Which means the good and the bad bacteria. So just so we know, the gut, the mouth, all these microbiomes of the body, it's all about a balancing act between good versus bad bacteria. Homeostatic balance, it's called. Great. So what do we have to do? Electric toothbrush versus manual toothbrush. Electric toothbrush 5x better than manual toothbrush. I'm sorry for all you manual toothbrush users, but your technique has to be fantastic if you're a manual toothbrush user. The beauty of these electric toothbrushes, I could give you a couple of different names, but we all know I love that, actually. Okay, so the ones that I'm really in love with, there's two, there's Sonicare by Philips, but there's also the oral B. These brushes either sonically vibrate or they oscillate and rotate together. At the end of the day, it's the brush head movement that does all the work for you. The key is that everybody brushes quickly. So average American, by the studies, 37 seconds, you're supposed to. You gotta do at least two minutes. We say two minutes. A really long time. So, you know, I used to do a lot of Dr. Oz shows and, you know, and the oral health Experts, you do Dr. Oz yeah. And you know, we say funny things like you gotta, you gotta be hopping on one foot. You know, I do like a yoga stretch while I'm brushing with electric brushes. Two minutes takes a long time and it's 30 seconds per quadrant area of the mouth.
- [26:33]
B
So what gave me that was that that brand Quip Quip changed my whole breathing game because it had like the little pause.
- [26:38]
A
A little pause, yeah. And oral B actually started that. Yeah. With their, with their electric brush at that time. And Quip followed suit on it. But yes, it does a little ding. 30 seconds. 30 seconds. So you do the electric brush, then you say to yourself, where is the rest of the microbiome? You got a microbiome that's sitting on your tongue. So what causes bad breath are these bacteria that live within the recesses of the tongue or between the teeth that's hard to reach at, and that creates what's called VSCs, volatile sulfur compounds. But basically, these gram negative anaerobes, these bugs that live without oxygen, cause the bad breath. So you gotta do a tongue scraper. So you do a tongue scraper. So you get electric brush, you do a little tongue scraping. Now what do you gotta do? You gotta get between the teeth.
- [27:23]
B
So tell me about the tongue scraper. I want to hear about that.
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A
So, so the key with the tongue scraper, you know, we used to have a gel that we would have people put on. But the nice thing to do is, you know, you look at your tongue, you stick your tongue out, you're looking at the color of the tongue. If you have a big thick white coating, that's plaque, that's the bacteria. So you want to get that off. So these tongue scrapers. And my son Cody is, you know, my boys have started an oral care brand. They couldn't get away from the family business. I said, I always say you millennials are geniuses. You didn't go to dental school for seven extra years, and it's a specialty school and you're in the family business. But they're amazing how they. Oral health and oral care, and they're twice brand. But the tongue scrape, you start from the back of the tongue, sticking your tongue out, and you literally, there's these tongue scrapers that will just take that film right off. And now when you take that film right off, you really want to rinse now. So your electric brush. And look, it does take a little bit of time, but electric brush, tongue scraping, then a rinse. Now the key with rinses is no alcohol in it and you have this great opportunity to raise the PH because you want to alkalinize the mouth. When you get a Ph reading below 6.5.5, you now can start demineralizing teeth and set up an environment for the bad bugs to live. I said it quickly. Gram negative anaerobic bugs, which means gram negative anaerobes, they live without oxygen. What does that mean? They live under the gum. What does that mean? It causes inflammation. What does that mean? The bacteria causes the gums to have a reaction like a splinter under our skin. It gets red. It's just what happens in the mouth. The problem in the mouth is you don't feel any pain. It's painless. When inflammation gets chronic, in other words, over a course of months, because 70% of American adults has gingivitis, has some gingival inflammation. But when it goes for a long period of time, it's called chronic. That's when the bacteria in the mouth goes to all these distant organs in the body and causes these chronic inflammatory diseases.
- [29:26]
B
Well, my dentist, unfortunately, I went to the dentist a couple months ago and he was like, you're gonna have to come in for like a deep.
- [29:32]
A
A deep scaling, A deep scaling. So you're starting to get. You're starting to. You got some gingival inflammation. You're starting. They probe with a little and you start getting a number.
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B
They started taking numbers, and once you.
- [29:42]
A
Get a little five and greater, it's like, okay, we gotta get some deep scaling. And what they're doing is they're taking off that bacteria that gets on the roots of the teeth and it causes like a splinter under the skin. These endotoxin causes the gums to react.
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B
That's the way to prevent that, though.
- [29:57]
A
The way to prevent it is to mechanically remove the bacteria in our mouth twice a day, morning and night. Electric brush, flossing, flossing, electric brush. Any of the brushes will not get between the teeth. And periodontal disease is really where it ends up between the teeth. Because between the teeth you have this kind of triangle of tissue. And if you look really closely, you know you have a beautiful smile, you got nice pink and tight and healthy. But when it's red and inflamed, and you might have seen it on friends or yourself, the bacteria are now causing the gums to be swollen like a balloon that gets blown up. But what happens is those endotoxins, that bacterial byproduct, we call them, goes into the bloodstream. What's the bloodstream? The superhighway. What happens with the superhighway. Now, where is it going? It's going to the gut, it's going to the brain. It's in the amyloid. P. Gingivalis is in the amyloid plaque of Alzheimer's patients. How's that? It's in the carotid artery of cardiovascular patients. That's The Invest studies 20 years ago from Moisey Devereaux's team at Columbia. And there's so much data on this that shows all of these inflammatory disease has a link, a link to inflammation in the mouth. So when you start to understand how important this is, not just to have a beautiful smile or save your teeth, but to save your overall health, you say, well, I'm going to spend the time and I'm going to make it a ritual. Just like the way you work out. And you do the same thing every morning. Because I'm the same way every morning. I'm doing all of these things because I know what's going to get.
- [31:31]
B
And I want to hear about that too.
- [31:32]
A
Yeah. What's going to get? Longevity. Well, you know what, this is what's going to get oral health. So brush, brush, floss, tongue scrape.
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B
So is there a specific order you like to use?
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A
I argue with lots of people about this because it becomes a little personal. But at the end of it, you want to start with electric brush.
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B
Okay.
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A
Then you could do tongue scraping, which is really good. Then you can do. I like to do a flossing. I'm a little bit of a maniac because I'll do floss. And then you really want to finish with a rinse. And I was going to the rinse, the rinse. You want to raise the ph and you have an opportunity to oxygenate the mouth in a healthy way. The boys have the twice brand, has a great rinse, call it immunity rinse, which doesn't have alcohol. I love that it's a great rinse and you can carry it around a couple of squirts and it just keeps you healthy all day long. Ph raising and oxygenating. Why that's important is the bugs that are living without oxygen, when you hit them with oxygen, you kill them. But it keeps the bacterial balance diversified. So healthy, so healthy ecosystem.
- [32:31]
B
And let's just. So we talked about, we talked about the brushes. Is there a specific tongue scraper that you like?
- [32:38]
A
The boys have. I use the twice one. Oh, great.
- [32:41]
B
There's one at twice. Okay. I'll make sure to get one of those. And then for flossing, do you like, you know, there's so many different things you can do. Now I have a water pick that I do, but I've heard that that's not great.
- [32:53]
A
No, no, I love it.
- [32:55]
B
You do?
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A
My ad is water flossers. The new ones are so good. I get thrown a number, but you want high pressure. The new ones have 60 PSIs, which is high pressure water. And I like to use that right after my electric brush. And then I do the other things and I finish with a rinse.
- [33:12]
B
You do a water.
- [33:13]
A
I would do electric brush. Then I use a water flosser. Right. And then I'll do a rinse, tongue scrape, and then I'll finish with a little. Those floss picks I find are very, very easy. I boys have a great floss pick because you carry them around and then you rinse after it. So the beauty of the water flosser is that it really gets between. You don't really need to floss when you do a water flosser because those jets are really getting any food particles and bacteria.
- [33:42]
B
Makes me so happy. I was using my water floss.
- [33:45]
A
Oh, it's fantastic.
- [33:46]
B
I was using it so much. And then my dentist said, but, you know, my dentist actually said, and now, mind you, I go to dentist. I don't live in New York City anymore. I live all the way out and just south of Albany. We moved upstate. So my dentist, even though he's a young guy, he's actually pretty cool, hip guy. But he was like, no, you gotta use the old school. You gotta use the old schools. Because I was using the quip flosser, which simplified it so I didn't have to do the whole wrap around the fingers thing. But the water pick was so. It's just so easy. It's easy and I like the way it feels. But he was like, no more water.
- [34:19]
A
You feel refreshed. But, you know, after you do a water pick to your dentist south of Albany, you could, you could do. You could do the little. The little flossers that are on the handle because they're just super easy. The thing with floss in general, it does need to evolve. And that's why I thought the, the, the handle, those little flossers is a nice evolution.
- [34:41]
B
What water pick do you recommend?
- [34:43]
A
So we make one. We. We make one at our jbl. But I love. I get you one. I love. The oral B has a good one. I have one actually very similar to the oral B. But you really want high power. And with them is nice. You got three or four different levels. So imagine you Go through this regimen, five minutes, five minutes, you're in and out. Okay? You go through that regimen, you gotta hop on one foot or you do some yoga stretches. So we can show people how to do that. But then think about eating right. Right. Because we know what's happening. Let's talk a little bit about longevity because I'm so into this stuff. When you start understanding the impact of sugar and alcohol and having sugar or alcohol too close to when you're supposed to be sleeping and not focusing on your sleep and not doing all these sleep hacks that know that you know you're going to get the right amount of sleep. And when you understand that, you know kind of these domains. When you look at nutrition, when you look at sleep, when you look at motion and fitness, and then when you think of mindfulness and stress management, when you hit those four domains and you hit them all at the same time, in other words, you do all of those things throughout the day and especially in the morning, you're going to set yourself up for a pretty goddamn good day, you know, because it's all here. We know it, you know, we go a little sideways. We're thinking, you know, things that are causing us stress. You start your day right. And I love these guys. I like Robin Sharma, right? Brandon Bouchard. High performance habits. I love these guys who have spent their life thinking about this, interrupting this.
- [36:19]
C
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- [37:44]
B
I want to hear your morning routine.
- [37:46]
A
Yeah, well, the most important thing after I'm brushing and getting out of the bathroom and my wife's always sleeping, so, you know, I gotta be a little quiet.
- [37:56]
B
Mine too.
- [37:57]
A
All right. Is over to the coffee station. So I gotta hit the coffee, but then I do a whole kind of antioxidant vitamin green drink.
- [38:05]
B
I want to hear it. I want.
- [38:06]
A
Really bring it up. We're here, right here.
- [38:08]
B
This is a creature to have a podcast.
- [38:10]
A
Okay, So I hit the coffee station, then I work to the right and I'm hitting the green powder, you know, the one out of New Zealand in the packets. But we have a couple different ones of that that's loaded with Phyto.
- [38:25]
B
AG1.
- [38:25]
A
AG1, yeah, AG1. Somebody says, Ah, you gotta use this other one. Meanwhile, I do AG1 for the last like 5 years, 6 years. Then in the. I go to the refrigerator, and now I got my lysosomal stuff. I love this stuff, right? Oh, yeah, love favorite.
- [38:39]
B
That's the best. I am a mass. Not only am I a massive fan, but I've worked with them for the last year and a half.
- [38:46]
A
They're amazing.
- [38:47]
B
I love their supplements.
- [38:48]
A
So do I. RO.
- [38:49]
B
Nutrition, as far as I'm concerned, has, like, truly, truly revolutionized. Now, I know that there's liquid supplements out there. The liposomal stuff is not like brand new, but I feel like those guys have done the best job. Yeah, I love their stuff.
- [39:02]
A
I agree, I agree. Vitamin C, ultra vitamin, cumin, resveratrol, a couple of those. Bang, bang, bang. Takes two seconds.
- [39:09]
B
Little like in a morning cocktail.
- [39:11]
A
Well, I'll do that or I'll do it right under the straight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then I hit. Then I hit a whole bunch of different antioxidant types of supplements that I think does a great job kind of balancing everything. Like what? Oh, man, I got too many of them. But I will tell you this. It takes me a good two minutes to go through all of them. Right? You know, and they're just like, they're just. I gotta believe they're loaded with good stuff. And it came out of when I, you know, I'm a big fan of Mark, Mark Hyman, Peter Attia, Victor Luongo, all these guys. So if you listen to all these folks, everybody's got a little bit of a bias. But, you know, I'll end up with, with a bunch of those. Got it. And then I'll hit that and then onto the coffee. And now I'm sitting and I'm doing my breath work. So it's, it's Shama talks about 20, 20, 20, you know, 20 minutes for breath work and some meditation, journaling and then motion. So but that's the thinking that you're hitting those three kind of categories and verticals and 5am Clubs type. And I love that. But I'll do my Manoj, which is all about this podcast called Open. And Manoj is this brilliant guy that takes you through kind of this 10, 12, 15 minute meditation and then hit his breath work. And he's got about four or five people that are on this open app. That's my favorite app.
- [40:48]
B
I love that. I haven't heard of it.
- [40:50]
A
Yeah, Op.
- [40:50]
B
Is it a new one every day? Is it a new every day?
- [40:52]
A
He's got a new one every day. Sometimes they duplicate it, but it really talks about all the things. It's a great way to start the day. Whether it's creativity, whether it's resilience, whether it's how we think optimistically, how we will keep negative thoughts out, but really thinking through, creative thinking. Just soup to nuts. And Manoj is a very special guy. I met him through my son Cody. He became a patient. He's now coming actually to New York to open up a studio. So stay tuned because he is something.
- [41:23]
B
The Open app. We'll link to that.
- [41:25]
A
Check that Open app.
- [41:26]
B
We're also gonna link to all of the toothbrushes, the mouth, the tongue, the tongue scraper twice for sure. We'll link to all that in the show notes as well. Just so everybody knows.
- [41:36]
A
Yeah, cool, cool, cool. So I'll go through meditation, breath work. If I got a little extra time, I'll hit the journal. And then I'm either on my bike outside, meeting my pals on the corner. So my friend Michael, we're meeting him or Jeff, or I'm in the basement where I got full gym. Great. Full gym. Got the bike up on Oahu. Trainer, got the big screen. Sometimes I'm gonna watch a little Netflix, but I'm hitting that at least an hour, hour, 10 minutes on the bike, because cycling is, for me, is where it's at. Then I'll do a quick little circuit If I have a little bit of time, I try to give myself about an hour 15 downstairs and then I'm off. I'm either doing stuff from the house where I work on the foundation, I advise about seven startups within, within the industry. I have relationship with the company, I started that I do the innovation for our Glo science work with my sons and now we're working on our new project.
- [42:32]
B
Smile House.
- [42:32]
A
Yeah, Smile House. Because I am the luckiest guy in the room because I have two sons that are my best friends and they, they think I'm still relevant. It's amazing. And they want me to go into business with them and I want to bring them in the business with me. And you know, I just want to.
- [42:46]
B
Pause there for a second and just say, so I've got two sons, I've got a nine year old and a seven year old. And hearing you say that and just. And your son's right here.
- [42:56]
A
Yeah.
- [42:57]
B
Seeing the relationship that you have and hearing you say that for me is like, I can't tell you how special that is, man. I really, I can't tell you how special that is because I didn't have the greatest father and upbringing and I was, I knew that I wanted to be a father, but I was terrified thinking that, you know, is there a chance? Even though I didn't feel like I had that kind of anger that he had, had that kind of had the ability to talk to people and treat people the way he did. Like, I just had this fear that maybe having children would bring that out in me because of what happened in my childhood. And I gotta say that, like hearing that I'm best friends with my two sons and I, I want to talk about my sons when they're at your son's age, the same way you talk about them like it is, it's just a very special thing, man.
- [43:53]
A
You're going to, you're going to because you realize how much joy it brings you and you have this experience right. Of it the other way. And whatever your dad was going through, you had to fight that through the experience. And for me, my dad was never around too much. He had an unbelievable amount of work ethic, but he was always on the road traveling. And I always said to myself, I'm going to be there for the boys and what has happened. And my wife, she's extraordinary and we call her the Mama bear. So we're a very tight family. And my boy's friends, they're always goofing around and say, I can't Believe how your sons actually like to spend time with you. And you know that we really a very tight family. So now it's like we're gonna have this business together, which just. It just keeps taking it up to that next level. And I don't think there's anything better. I really don't think there's anything better. You know what happened on our mission? So we have a foundation, and I came back from East Africa. I just gotta tell you about this in Kravitz. He's a patient, Lenny's a patient. He corners me. And he heard from a hygienist what we just did in East Africa, in Rwanda. And we went with a team and we were helping the people who were working with the children that were born out of the genocide. If you remember what happened with Rwanda, 900,000 people got murdered in 90 days. And the women who gave birth to the children who were raped by the Hutus, they are Tutsis. The Tutsi women are angular and high cheekbones, and the Hutus are very flat forehead and kind of so the kids look different. And so this foundation I was working with, that's what brought me there. And I realized how much need they had in dentistry and oral health. Okay, long story short, Kravitz corners me in my office. He goes, johnny, you got to help my people. I heard of what you're doing. I looked at him, I go, lenny, you're half Jewish, you're half Bahamian. Where do you want me to go? So he says, no, we got to go to Eleuthera. It's this island in the Bahamas. Anyway, long story short, that's 10 years ago. We started on his lawn chairs and helping his people. I brought my team down, about 25 people. We now come down with about 100 people. Public health teams from four of the schools. We go into the schools. We have a freestanding 14 chair clinic for the people. Free for the people. This is the first year it's going to be fully sustainable where I have people, dental professionals coming from NASA. We have two missions there. My sons at the second mission gets all excited. One's in finance, one's in marketing. Dad, we can't believe what you and your team does. We want to do that. We want to build a brand all about the power of the smile. I looked at him, I go, you got to be kidding me. I said, you know, we all went to Cornell. Oh, I didn't tell you this. I played lacrosse at Cornell. Guess what they did. They played lacrosse at Cornell. They had One year of overlap. They, you know, had great teams, you know, how many years apart from us, but, you know, great experiences. Although I am the only Levine with a national championship ring. But we won't go into that.
- [46:54]
B
But is that that ring?
- [46:56]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [46:57]
B
Oh, gosh.
- [46:58]
A
I put this ring on at my. I'm gonna get into the 911 story, but I lost a teammate at 911 and I put on his funeral. So anyway, the boys started a brand called Twice, and now they went deep into oral care without really being going into dentistry, you know, being a dentist. But they understand business and they understand things that we're talking about oral health and longevity. And so we're building this brand together now we call Smile House by jbl. We're opening up in Tribeca. We'll have all the specialists under one roof, but we'll have dmi, dental, medical integration, where we have all the salivary diagnostics, airway. And you're gonna walk into it, it's gonna be like a boutique hotel. You know, it's like a lot of reinvention. I call it the law of opposites. Everything done in dentistry, we're doing the opposite. And we're gonna do it, you know, very game changing. And it's exciting. It's exciting to take an industry and really try to, you know, kind of be a thought leader, but really, you know, put your actions behind the words, you know, let's go after it. And so we're going after it as a family.
- [48:02]
B
I. I mean, I just. I'm just hearing you, you know, and you talking about your tight family. I mean, I think for me, it sounds like we're both very kind of hard charging humans in our business life. It inspires us, it makes us feel. It fills my cup to innovate and to create. And I love developing ideas and then surrounding myself with really smart people smarter than me to help bring those ideas to life. But really where I see you light up is when you talk about your family.
- [48:35]
A
Yeah.
- [48:35]
B
And I've been with my wife for 20 years.
- [48:40]
A
Yeah.
- [48:40]
B
I'm a young dude.
- [48:41]
A
Wow.
- [48:42]
B
We met when we were really young. And I've been with this woman. And when you talked about your wife when you were just like, she's like, wonderful. I have to gravitate towards that because business, like, we were talking before the cameras started rolling, like, business is tough, man. It's tough. Right? There's always a challenge or 30 and having, like a family that you love and supports and support that you love, they support you. And, like, I just, I Can't. My favorite part of life is hanging out with my wife and kids.
- [49:17]
A
It's just, bam, that's it. But bam, that's gonna stay with you. And you have a tight family. It's amazing. But look, you know, life is headwinds. We're on this journey, and I think people make some mistakes on this where, you know, they don't focus on the relationship. You gotta focus on your relationship. I remember I was told by a friend, and it's all about the work we put in. It's like anything else we do. We have to put the work in. It's not just gonna happen for you, you know, and we're evolving. We're constantly evolving. So if you have a mindset that I always want to get better, just like an athlete, I always want to grow, you know, and it's the same thing with our relationships. Because then what happens is you put that time into your kids. It comes back to you so beautifully.
- [50:03]
B
I want to, you know, I know that we're here talking about oral care and stuff, but I want to dive into this too, a little bit because I just, you know, it's inspiring hearing you talk about your family. You know, it's inspiring. And my wife and I will celebrate 17 years of marriage this year. And, you know, we met when we were seven years old.
- [50:27]
A
Exactly. I say the same thing. I ain't gonna tell you my anniversary number.
- [50:33]
B
But, you know, I. There's a. There's a real magic to long term relationships. Right? And unfortunately, it's more and more rare. Right. When Donna and I hang out with, you know, people, and we're like, yeah, we've been together for 20 people.
- [50:53]
A
Like, what, how old are you?
- [50:56]
B
You know, and, and, but, you know, I think I would love to just hear from you a couple of things that you do intentionally. Things that you do intentionally in your relationship, specifically with your wife that has. I'm telling you, like, I wish I had. I mean, there is a camera on you. So you'll see when you talk about your wife, when you talk about your kids, you literally light up like a Christmas tree. Like, what, what, what, what? Can you, like, if you had to point to a few things that you do intentionally with, like, mindfulness in your relationship. Can you think of a few things?
- [51:32]
A
Yeah. Yeah. First, I gotta start with this notion. It's called who Luck, Jim Collins calls it. And it's in business. You know, you find somebody who has this huge impact on you in your life, you think back, who was that person that you met? That had that huge impact that really either set you on the right course or put you in the right place. Right? Was it a coach, a teacher, a mentor? Well, you also got lucky. We got lucky. Now, we can say that, you know, being prepared, you know, favors the luck. But the truth of the matter is, when it comes to meeting the right person, you do have to be lucky. And then you also have to realize that that's the right person. So I'll start with the fact that I was very lucky and meeting what I think you know, is my soulmate is my Stacy. And the truth of the matter is that if you get that right and you have a mindset that all relationships you have to put your effort in, especially a marriage. And then when you come down to it, you know, look, all relationships based on core values, our alignment of values. So as an individual, you know, if you're disrespectful, if you're disloyal, if you, you know, you're. You don't think communication is important, if you're not willing to put in, from a work ethic standpoint, the hard work that it takes, things are going to go sideways when there's an issue that happens. I was told early on in my relationship, never go to bed angry with each other. You have never.
- [53:09]
B
Stop right now. An hour before my wife and I got married, an hour before we had spent time with this pastor, we got married in Denmark at my. On my. Like, very close to where my wife grew up. This pastor sat us down, this woman, and she said, you know, we've hung out a few times over the last few weeks. I got to know you guys a little bit. And she said, you know, I just want to leave you with one thing before you walk up there and say yes to each other. Make a promise to me, a commitment.
- [53:39]
A
Yeah.
- [53:40]
B
Never go to bed angry at each other.
- [53:42]
A
Exactly. Never go to bed angry and tell everybody why. You wake up in the morning, you went to bed angry with each other.
- [53:50]
B
Residual anger.
- [53:51]
A
You know, you're angry, but you forgot what you're even angry about. But, you know, you're angry. It's ridiculous. It's gonna screw up your whole goddamn day. Residual anger, you called it. That's exactly right. So that's one of, like, an inviolate rule. And I have to, you know, and then it's like. It's literally basic empathy, empathic listening, just listening to each other. Now we all have our shitty days, you know, and you're intense. I'm intense. But as I tell my Boys, the most important decision you're gonna make in your life is the woman you marry, or vice versa. And so you really have to kind of shit test that. You got to really test that this is the right person. It really is. You can't be scared of making a commitment. And you know what it's like, you know, when it's right. You might have had a relationship where your parents had a lousy marriage. So it made you nervous. We always, the psychologists say, psychiatrists say, oh, that's your first marriage. Your parents marriage, right? If was a lousy marriage, but you might have that residual thinking. But the truth of the matter is that this is the most important decision that you can make. And when you make that decision and you have somebody who aligns with your value system and is willing to put in the hard work, and you have a couple of these inviolate rules. One is, yes, don't go to bed. And then to be a really good listener, to be a real. To hear each other, you know, look, the truth of the matter is, you know, men are cavemen in majority. You know, I always have this conversation, oh, God, my wife's friends hate me when I, when I talk about this. But it's the truth. Men and women are very different. So how do we bridge the gap? Right? You know, women are definitely, in general, there's a more emotional side. You know, guys are a little bit more on the cavemen side. But the truth of the matter is, everybody could move a little bit more to the middle. And the key is you gotta hear each other because you're always gonna get the headwinds. The other thing that we have in our family and my, my sons know this very well, is a couple of key expressions. One expression we came up with is, it's not the problems we face, it's how we face our problems, right? We're always going to get a headwind. When you hit your headwind, all of us are headwinds. We have a choice. We're going to do the OMGs. Oh, my God, what am I going to do? Throw your hands up or you're actually going to kind of take some time. You stop, you think, you get your creative mind juices going, and you say, how am I going to solve this? And you solve it. And you don't just sit through it. And that goes for everything with business, with our personal life, with our relationships, with our friends. The minute you stop and get that creative juices going, and never send an upset email or a text, and we all make that mistake, we all make that. But we got to force ourselves not to do it. And then you wake up in the morning and all of a sudden there's clarity. All of a sudden the smoke cleared. You can think clearly. You get a hold of yourself. You get those negative thoughts out of the way. You get the oh, what did you do to me? Routine. And it's more about us. It's all about you. What I've learned in my later life is really to think like a servant leader, because I'm in a position with my different things that I do that I have to lead. And servant leadership is all about making each other and making other people around you the best versions of themselves. In turn, we become the best we can be, right? And if we think like that. And what I have had the most amazing, extraordinary experiences with my family on our foundation mission, with our teams, because I have friends, you know, I used to lecture a lot internationally. I have friends from Madrid and from London and from Brazil. My dental office, 21 out of 26 people are internationals. I love that hard working mindset, right? And they were all together in one big room in the foundation with my family serving people talk about understanding and getting your why, but it creates a very deep relationship with my family, my family and my extended family. So, you know, I would think as you, you know, young people like yourself, you're very young compared to me. Young people, as you're going through your journey, as you do these things together with your family, you know, helping people, showing your children that it's not just about us, but it's about the collective good. You know, Lenny always says charity begins at home. He says, my mom always taught me he's 100% right. Lenny's an amazing, soulful human being, Lenny Kravitz. But it's surrounding ourselves with people that we elevate our thinking, elevate our actions, help each other, bring your family into that. It's going to be great.
- [58:25]
B
I met a guy probably five or six years ago, actually a banker, who was like taking one of my companies through a small process. And really interesting guy, just like very interesting guy from the south, Southern dude from Tennessee. And he said he shared what he does with his family every, every year, his vacation with his family. Yeah, they go to beautiful, wonderful places.
- [58:50]
A
That's great.
- [58:51]
B
They go there to be of service. So they'll go, they'll travel the globe, but they're going to these third world places that are, that have unbelievable beauty but also immense poverty. And they'll go help Rebuild homes. They'll go plant farms with people. And I was just like, man, he takes his whole family, his young kids, and that's what they do for their family vacation every year. And I was like, my gosh, that is such a great concept, right? You know, like, for me, you know, my kids are growing up in a very different environment than I grew up in. Could not be more different. Right. Like, I'm so lucky to have absolute confidence in saying that.
- [59:37]
A
Right.
- [59:37]
B
These kids are stoked and happy and safe and comfortable. And sometimes, you know, my situation as a kid growing up in Manhattan. I grew up in the city, very small apartment, because it was so unsafe, uncomfortable, and tight, quartered in my apartment. It forced me to get resourceful. It forced me to have absolute resilience. It forced me to want to go work very young because I just simply, A, didn't want to be at home, and B, wasn't. Didn't. Wasn't getting any money from my mother and father to buy sneakers. Because you grew up in New York City. Everybody's got cool sneakers. You want cool sneakers, you gotta have cool sneakers. And so in order to get cool sneakers, I need to work. And, you know, the one piece is like, you know, how am I gonna make sure that I get these kids that grit? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do to make sure that they have an epically fun time as kids, but also have an ethic? And unfortunately for me, I grew up working in restaurants. I got a job in a restaurant when I was 12 years old. I worked in restaurants from 12 to 39, and I opened up 13 restaurants in New York City from 28 to 39. And it was a grind, and, you know, it was brutal. But the one way I know to develop grit as a kid is to work in a restaurant.
- [61:10]
A
Yeah, serving.
- [61:11]
B
It's. It's.
- [61:12]
A
You're serving.
- [61:13]
B
You're serving, like, literally. Yeah, yeah. And so my thought is, like, well, I just gotta. Gotta open up a restaurant for the kids. I just gotta open up a restaurant. And then, funny enough, and I love that you. You said you're in business with your kids. My older son Finn said to me about. About two or three months ago, you know, I try to ask him as many questions as possible, right? They like to roll their eyes, but I literally. I try to ask him as many questions as I can just to just, you know, learn about this little kid's brain. And he said to me, dad, I want a restaurant. And I was like, oh, fuck, man.
- [61:47]
A
What do I. Of course he does. He wants to do what you did. Yeah, it's a. It's a. It's a beautiful thing. You know, you're hitting my buttons also. I'm right there. I'm right there with you. You know, the general. You think about generations. So your parents, your parents. Parents. You go back a couple of generations, and what is the different environment? Right. I think about my grandparents. I mean, my mentality is a complete immigrant mentality. I was very close with my grandparents because my father was traveling, so. And my mom and dad didn't have a great relationship. That was just the truth. But they did stick it out. It was of that generation that you didn't have a divorce.
- [62:24]
B
Right.
- [62:25]
A
But my grandparents, who I was very close with, they had a very, very close relationship. And they were immigrants from Eastern Europe, from Poland, and it came over in the 30s. And that generation developed from my parents generation. My grandparents did the best they can do to provide some safety, left their countries because of what was happening in Nazi Germany and Eastern Europe. And then here I am saying to myself, well, how am I going to provide for my kids? And I had the same mindset of, I want my kids to have that work ethic, that fire in the belly. And they got it through their sports, and they got it through their coaches. That's why I really deeply believe in these kind of group dynamics, especially athletics, how it really builds individuals. But, you know, kind of the boys and the girls as they evolve. But then as a family, you know, of course your boys want to go hang out with you because you're a close family and do what. Look at doing what you do, and it's spectacular. So, all right, you're gonna have a new restaurant concept.
- [63:27]
B
I could sit here and talk to you all day long. Honestly, I can. I mean, we covered so much. We also. We got a great routine out of your morning routine and an oral care routine just to close that loop. Would you say that same oral care routine should be at night, too? Yeah, right before bed. That should be the same thing.
- [63:49]
A
Yeah, absolutely. It's the same thing during the morning, during the night, you know, before you go to bed. The key with plaque, there's just real quickly, there's the science behind it. There's four phases of it. The longer it stays on the teeth without removing it, the more the inflammatory process takes over. And we know about the inflammatory process. And so just so, you know, very quick statistics over Covid, if you had periodontal disease, which is chronic inflammatory disease, you were five and a half times More likely to end up on a ventilator. If you have periodontal disease, chronic inflammatory disease, the guys are not gonna like this, but you're two and a half times more likely to have erectile dysfunction. I can keep going. Every type of inflammatory disease cause what happens. The body gets overwhelmed. We have an inflammatory response, an oversight in a cytokine storm. It gets overwhelmed. What does that cause that causes these cardiovascular diseases and these autoimmune diseases? Rheumatoid arthritis, directly linked to periodontal disease. The studies that came out of Rockefeller from Dana Orange. I had her on my own podcast. I have a podcast that's all about elevating people's thinking of oral health. But you know, when you really get into it and you understand just some of this basic research, we have a book coming out. When we launched Smile House, we have my third book coming out, all about the health and the connection of the mouth and the body called Oral, exclamation point. I was going to call it get Oral, but my editor said just call it oral. But it is to raise awareness of all these things that we're talking about. And so the routine's got to be morning and night. And I would say during the day, a good rinse that elevates the ph and oxygenates the mouth. Your mouth is going to feel really fresh. You can do in the middle of the day.
- [65:31]
B
I got to step up my oral care routine and today's the day. That's it. I say it out loud, it's happening. There's no doubt about it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna double down on it for sure. Real quick before we close. Do you have a, an evening wind down routine that you, that you stick to?
- [65:48]
A
I. Yeah. Well, post, post dinner. And I have a sweet tooth, truth be told.
- [65:55]
B
Me too.
- [65:56]
A
Okay, so what are we gonna do? So what are we gonna do? So we have. What are we gonna do? So I have this. I have this whole routine where they make so delicious. The company so Delicious makes. It's like a whipped cream made out of almonds. That is, they have almond and coconut. That is just like a whipped cream. So I'll take some blueberries. I'll take that. I'll take some gluten free granola. They have a so delicious also ice cream sandwiches. I'll take these little sandwiches, chop them up. I put it in a very small cup. Key. That's my dessert. And my kids laugh at me because I squish it down a little bit. But you know, so that's my, you know, so I really watched sugar and of course alcohol.
- [66:44]
B
So it's the almond. So it's the almond whipped cream.
- [66:48]
A
Almond whipped cream. Amazing. Blueberries. Blueberries. A little bit of this gluten free granola. A little topping. And you're making like a little layered parfait which doesn't have any sugar and is absolutely delicious. Right. And the family, the funniest thing, we're at a restaurant and the waiter comes over, says, who wants dessert? Everybody goes, no, no, no, no. And of course I'm always ordering like at least something that goes in the mail. And you got to see like four spoons diving in. Of course, like sharks, like it's a big fight. But anyway, so that's the one routine. And then, you know, there's all these sleep packs that, that we do keep the room at 67 degrees.
- [67:26]
B
How does your wife feel about that?
- [67:27]
A
She's good. She's good. Get under the covers, honey. My wife, she's amazing. She sleeps to like you know, eight, nine hours. And you know, we both wear the Oura ring, which I truly believe the Oura ring or the apple watch. But I'm always looking at, you know, your light sleep, your deep regenerative sleep, which is the most critical in rem. So I'm always looking at that. I'm always looking at the, you know, me too.
- [67:47]
B
I'm a maniac.
- [67:48]
A
Yeah, maniac for that.
- [67:49]
B
Because that three different.
- [67:50]
A
Well, and it drives our behavior because we see what happens when you add too much sugar. Like before you did have a couple of, you know, glasses of wine or some drinks. So you know, sleep is a. Looking at your sleep is a really good way to work backwards from that and say, what are the. So what do you do specifically for sleep? So specifically is no sugar. At least about three hours before I'm going to bed. I try to get to bed because I like to get up early. I'm a little bit of the 5am Club. But I'll get up anywhere between 5 and 6 to get all those routines in. So working backwards from it. Cool room, no phone. I work really hard at this, keeping the phone into the closet area, this kind of walk in closet thing. So it's not at my end table. So I keep that away. No blue screens, alcohol, sugar. Before oura ring is on. And you know, if my wine dine is usually, you know, I have dinner if I'm not out and it's just kind of just chilling down. So I love to watch like a Netflix or just something just before just kind of a little bit on the mindless side. But if, but it's making sure that it's sleep hygiene or sleep hacks. It's doing all the things that the experts talk about before we get to bed.
- [69:09]
B
In bed by 9:30, 10, totally.
- [69:12]
A
Maybe 10, 15, but that's it. Then I know I'm going to get a good seven hours plus. And it's not so much how long we sleep because we've been diving deep the oral health professional scene. But it's. Yeah, it's the quality of our sleep.
- [69:26]
B
Do you. So you wear the OURA ring only when you sleep. You put.
- [69:29]
A
I only put on before because I'm always taking off gloves and it would, it would. That's great.
- [69:33]
B
I actually never.
- [69:33]
A
Right before I keep it right on that little charger.
- [69:36]
B
So you only, you only use it for sleep. You don't use it for.
- [69:39]
A
No, I use. I'm in motion all the time, you know, every day I'm working out, hour, hour and a half.
- [69:44]
B
So. Jonathan, this was amazing, dude. Gosh, that was great talking. I really, I had so much fun talking to you, learning from you. Like, you know, it's. You've got, you've got such an incredible energy and it's infectious, man. It's infectious. Whatever you're doing, I want to do, you know, it's the truth, man.
- [70:04]
A
Thank you for that. I appreciate you so much for what you're doing and giving me this opportunity to share, Share, you know, kind of what, what I've Learned over the 300 years. You know, I always say that. How old your dad, my kids. I love and I love hanging out with my kids friends more than my own friends. My friends are talking about Medicare cards. I go, dude, just stop talking about that stuff. I'm in complete denial. Come on, we're staying young.
- [70:32]
B
Me too, man. I have zero interest. I got my last, last round of blood. I got. So I've been working on my blood work intensely and I'm at this 93% optimization score and my biological age.
- [70:47]
A
Yeah, yeah, guess how old. 37.
- [70:51]
B
No.
- [70:52]
A
35.
- [70:53]
B
Nope.
- [70:54]
A
Come on.
- [70:55]
B
Nope.
- [70:56]
A
Really?
- [70:56]
B
26.7 is my biological age. My blood work compared to every other male's blood work within this telehealth organization. And when I got that number back, everybody rolls their eyes at me about being the habit guy, about being the fitness guy, about being the nutrition guy, about, you know, the time I go to bed, the time I wake up, the shit that I do when I wake up like a. You could roll Your eyes all day long. For me, it doesn't actually provoke stress. It actually, like, mitigates stress for me. The feeling that I get at 6:45 when I'm done with my morning routine and I walk back into my home.
- [71:35]
A
Yeah, energy's up.
- [71:36]
B
My wife and kids are just getting up. I'm like the absolute best version of myself. And my fucking age is 27 years old. You know what I mean? Like, that's what it's telling me. And so I really do believe that. You know, I love Rob Sharma. I loved, you know, the Jim Collins. Like, the names that you, that you mentioned are all names that are just like, very prominent in my. In my influence in my life. Right. And I think if people that people that are listening to this show, I mean, there's so many, you know, we've got a great audience here and.
- [72:08]
A
You.
- [72:09]
B
Know, it's a new year. Right? Like, I'm not saying you have to do all the things. I'm not saying you have to do anything. But I am saying if you want to have the energy and vitality and sort of like your vigor at your age, you. I feel like we're the same age, and I know it's because you do the things that you just told us you do on a regular basis. It's not brain science. Right. It's like, go the extra step.
- [72:42]
A
Yeah.
- [72:43]
B
Take the extra time.
- [72:44]
A
Exactly.
- [72:46]
B
You want to have. You know, I didn't think about skincare ever until about three years ago. And then all of a sudden, my wife looked at me and she said, have you ever moisturized your. And I was like, what's that? And then I started doing the skincare routine. And I love it. I spent. I spent five to seven minutes in the morning, in the evening, doing the skincare thing. Now I'm going to introduce the tooth thing. Because guess what? I want to. I want to have an awesome family for as long as possible.
- [73:11]
A
Exactly.
- [73:12]
B
You know, I don't want to be part of the sick care system. I don't want to be. I like, that's it.
- [73:17]
A
That's. Let's get upstream and stay on the wellness track. That's exactly right, brother.
- [73:22]
B
You're the man. I appreciate you. Where can everybody sort of follow along but also participate in your businesses? How can people do that?
- [73:30]
A
Yeah. So I have a website, Dr. Jonathan Levine. I have JBL New York City dot com. Dr. John Levine is my Instagram handle. J O N. And we are Smilehouse Co down in Tribeca. Opening up. It's going to be A family affair and, and my other family, which is my team from uptown. But we're excited about it. But I love the things we're talking about. I really do. I think we all have to share these type of things with each other and for you to have this platform, to bring this out, I think is super special. So congratulations to you and to your growing family. Life is learning. And that's what this is all about, is sharing these ideas.
- [74:16]
B
Life is learning. I think we'll finish there.
- [74:20]
A
Wow.
- [74:21]
B
I know, I know. You got amazing value, entertainment and some awesome things to walk away with from that podcast.
- [74:30]
A
I did.
- [74:31]
B
I mean, I'm like, I literally am. I'm. My cup is filled for sure. I am going to leave here and walk down to the East Village, about four to five miles with a big smile on my face because I, you know, getting to meet people that are inspiring, innovating, touching a lot of people, making service their priority, putting family as a priority, being able to balance this whole thing. You know, there's so many, there's so much jibber jabber about this work life. Balance, impossibility shit. I disagree wholeheartedly. I think that there is absolutely a way to have an incredible family life, an incredibly successful and busy and almost sometimes fast paced business life. I think you can do both. I think maybe, maybe it's gonna just require a little bit more patience. Maybe you don't have that hockey stick off the chart growth that everybody talks about being super sexy, but then ultimately you talk to the founder three years later and they want to jump off a building because all they did was beg and burn money, right? It's possible. Dr. John is a living, breathing example of someone who's been doing it for decades and I can hang out with him for weeks on end and I'm sure we would still have tons of things to talk about and really smile about.
- [76:07]
A
So.
- [76:07]
B
This was an incredible podcast for me, for sure. I'm sure you, you guys enjoyed it as well. It would mean the world to me if you shared it. Share the podcast, share it with your friends, share it with your family, share it with a foe. Why not share it with somebody that you know you're battling with, you're struggling with? This could be the, the, the, the hatchet that you bury your, your, your, your battle with over. I can't thank you guys enough for listening to this podcast. I love doing this and it really fills me up. It's part of my work, it's part of my business, and you guys make that possible for tuning in every single week. So I love you. I appreciate you share the podcast, Give it a review. Maybe a five star rating would be helpful. And until the next one, y'all, peace.