Transcript
Episode 1: How It Started: Cavities Are Caused By A Curable Disease
This is Dentistry Disrupted with Dr. Craig D. Clayton. I'm a wellness and biomimetic dentist, passionate change maker, social media thought leader, and educator on disrupting the way we approach oral health care. Come along with me as we journey towards a healthier and more empowered you.
All right, my first podcast episode. Thank you so much for being here with me. I am stoked. I have so many things I want to dive into with you on this podcast, but I want to start at the beginning of my journey from the dissonance I felt in dental school and when I was an associate dentist to finding my passion. One of the main things I am known for on the online space is being a cavities educator, but to understand how I got there let's rewind to dental school.
I chose the career of dentistry and oral health because I felt like it would be a good fit for me. I love the sciences, it sounded interesting, I would get to work with people and not be tied down so much to being in the hospital on call, all the things that come with being a medical physician. But as I got into dental school and started getting into the nitty-gritty, I realized it just didn't sit well with me. I wasn't excited about it. I just couldn't get into it. And especially as I started to progress through the first year, first year and a half, we spent so much time on learning how to cut teeth down. And just the idea of being a technician for the rest of my life really didn't sit well with me.
We learned about anatomy, biology, all the interesting stuff but when it came down to it I really felt like my profession as a dentist would be reliant on cutting down teeth, restoring teeth with fillings, crowns, all that stuff and that I just didn't like it. I almost dropped out about a year and a half in but decided, you know, I'm gonna stick it out we'll see how things go. I can always find a path out later down the road, but then I started to find other thought leaders and change makers thanks to Instagram.
I have so much to owe to Instagram. It was Instagram that introduced me to a whole wellness approach to dentistry, functional medicine, functional dentistry, biomimetic dentistry, all the things that I stand for today, I found through Instagram. It's really amazing.
And then as I continued to dive into this world, I found great leaders like Dr. Kois, Dr. Zaghi, my friend Dr. Nolan, who all work hard to address the entire person and the total wellness of the person rather than just focused on being a tooth technician. So finally I found what I felt was out there, but didn't know about, while I was in dental school.
But because of my unique approach to dentistry, it was really hard to find somewhere I could practice dentistry the way I wanted to. So I knew from early on that I wanted to open my own dental practice. So I worked hard at it.
So finally about a year ago I opened my own dental practice focused on total wellness, treating the root cause of issues rather than just treating the symptoms.
But why cavities? Why of all the things I could focus on, why do I focus so heavily on cavities? This is why. As I opened my practice I began seeing more and more patients that were struggling with cavities and had been their whole life and now their kids are struggling, but they didn't check the typical boxes we were taught to look for in dental school, like too much sugar, not brushing well, you're not using fluoride, all those things.
During that time I connected with an expert about and researcher of cavities and traveled down to Utah to meet with him in person. For months I spent hours on the phone with him being educated by him about the current cutting edge research on cavities.
So now let's switch gears a bit and talk about my social media journey. I really never intended to grow a following outside of my local audience, but we were hitting a pain point that a lot of people had. Cavities are a huge problem. 92% of people in the US have a cavity by age 20. So we posted a video about how cavities are caused by a curable disease and went from maybe 30 followers on TikTok up to several thousand overnight.
As we continued to explain how cavities were not normal, and there was a real solution to it, our following continued to grow. We hit 10k in under a week, and that blasted us into the social media world. We shifted our messaging to a global audience and attempted to answer everyone's questions in the comments. It was honestly really overwhelming.
So what exactly did I say in that video that went so viral? Well first off, I have to thank my friend Mackenzie Teigs for having me on her podcast Raw Thoughts. Without that platform who knows if and how we would have eventually made the leap into the social media world.
The text on screen (in the video) was “cavities is a curable disease” and what I said was,
“People should not get cavities. That is a disease. That is not normal and people who continue to get cavities, the disease isn't being treated. The symptoms of the disease are being treated. They're getting fillings, crowns, losing teeth. This is something that can be prevented. I'm very passionate about a holistic approach to dentistry and I have learned that when the people hear holistic, they sometimes think of an alternative or naturopathic medicine model, which is great, and there are a lot of great alternative medicines out there. But when I say holistic in my practice or in the dental field at large, it means evaluating a patient as a whole person. It's not just looking at the teeth or signs of disease. It's looking at mental factors, social factors, other risk factors, other health conditions, and getting a full idea of who this person is and what could be playing into their oral condition before we pick up the handpiece or the drill as some people will call it.”
Boom! Big message and people loved it.
If you are listening right now and this concept is creating a light bulb moment for you, I am so glad you are here. Cavities really are caused by a curable disease. The disease is caused by an imbalance in the bacterial layer on the teeth called the biofilm, but this is fixable. You truly can achieve a cavity-free life.
We just launched our cavity-free starter course that is absolutely free to you. Please click the link in the show notes to get it sent straight to your email. It's three super actionable simple videos to get you started on answering the most common questions that I get in my DMs about cavities.
If you have enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review. This would mean the absolute world to me and help us get our message to more people.
Thank you so much for joining me today on Dentistry Disrupted. Until next time, bye!
