Gum Health and Heart Health: The Missing Link

for people with short attention spans

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This article is for people who have short attention spans but still want to know more about heart disease and its association with the microbiome.

In this fascinating one-hour presentation, Dr. Paul Mason reviews several factors that contribute to heart disease. He explains that both oxidative stress and infection can damage the inner lining of the arteries, which is coated with something called the glycocalyx, and that this is what starts the process of atherosclerosis.

He goes into a lot of detail in his talk. First, he debunks the lipid heart hypothesis, the idea that high cholesterol is the cause of heart disease. This idea has been debunked many times, yet no matter how often it is challenged, it remains the “official” cause according to leading experts.

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Quick interruption to the article:

I just wanted to share that I’m looking into where to get a cheap post office box so anyone who wants to send me coffee cash can do so! Part of the reason asking you to pay me is important is because when people invest in something by paying for it, they value it more. I think cash is the best way to get paid. Even if you choose not to send cash, you could always send mail.

Getting away from the digital environment also seems crucial—everything we do online is monitored. Eventually, I think the plan is to demand that we put all our information on a digital ID, which will be required to use the internet. So why don’t we go back to analog?

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After debunking this, he turns to what is really causing heart disease: germs, pollution, and diet.

Today, the focus is on germs, because the microbiome has been such a big topic here lately.

screen shot taken: Porphyromonas Gingivalis Bacteria 3d Illustration Anaerobic Stock Illustration 768848566 | Shutterstock

The plaques that build up inside our arteries are very similar to the plaque on our teeth. A 2011 study found that all of the arterial plaques tested contained bacteria. A 2014 study that examined biopsies from people with gingivitis who had fatal heart attacks found bacteria in 95% of the arterial plaques.

So taking good care of your teeth is very important. Furthermore, as he explains in the talk, these plaques on our teeth and in our arteries are actually strong colonies of pathogenic bacteria and fungi. They protect themselves with what is called a biofilm, which makes them especially difficult to remove. A dentist can scrape away what is on your teeth, but there is nothing to scrape the inside of your arteries – and it seems unlikely that scraping the inside of your arteries would ever be a good idea.

However, as discussed here recently, there are many probiotics recommended by Dr. William Davis to help restore a healthy microbiome.¹ Dr. Davis is very clear in his book and in many YouTube videos that the specific strain of probiotic you take matters. This is important, and not something to gloss over. One of the reasons these particular strains are so useful is that they are often capable of doing two very important things:

1. Creating their own biofilms, which makes them resilient in a way that is similar to the pathogenic bacterial plaques that are killing people.

2. Producing bacteriocins, which are natural antibiotics that are superior to pharmaceutical antibiotics because they target pathogenic bacteria without wiping out the entire microbiome.

Another important point that Dr. Davis makes repeatedly is that the probiotic pills we buy off the shelf are very limited in their ability to counter the pathogenic plaques described by Dr. Mason, because the doses are so low. This is why he provides recipes for fermentation, which allow you to create much larger effective doses.

There is much more to say about all of this, and this barely scratches the surface of Dr. Mason’s talk. But as stated at the beginning, the goal here is not to make this article overly long, for the sake of readers with short attention spans.

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