Transcript
Episode 6: Eating Disorders, Wellness Influencers, and Dentistry
This is Dentistry Disrupted with Dr. Craig D. Clayton. I'm a wellness and biomimetic dentist, passionate changemaker, 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.
Hello my friend! I hope this podcast finds you well. It has been a winter wonderland here in Idaho, which I am very, very happy about. I love the snow because if it's going to be winter and cold and dark, we may as well have beautiful snow to look at and play in during the day while it's cold. And I love to ski.
We have a great little mountain close by. Well, not super close. It's like an hour, but it is a non profit ski resort. And so they, meaning the ski resort, keeps the prices very low. So for a season pass, it costs me like a hundred and sixty six dollars for the season and that's less than a single day of skiing at some of the fancier ski resorts.
So pretty awesome. We really enjoy that. But before we dive into the episode, I want to personally invite you to attend my free life masterclass. The 7 step framework to a cavity free life. I will be teaching you my proven 7 step path for crushing the confusion around cavities, leaving you with a confident action plan moving forward.
As you know, cavity prevention is my jam. I love taking the latest research on cavity prevention and turning it into actionable and sustainable steps for you and for your family. You will find a link in the show notes that will allow you to reserve your seat. Spots are limited, so make sure you snag a spot before they are gone.
Alright, let's get into today's episode. And you need to know something about me. May surprise you, probably won't. But I don't really fit the mold of a typical wellness influencer on Instagram. I kind of like things that are more counterculture. Like, really like counterculture. For example, I love to mountain bike.
And I live in an area that has lots of hills. So, typically, I'm either riding uphill or downhill. There's hardly any flat, and the uphills can be quite steep. Now, the objective of most mountain bikers is to ride a bike that is as light as possible, that has lots of gears, and so that you can spin your legs really fast and go slow up the hills, and it makes it a lot easier.
And If the bike is light, then it is easier to pedal uphill. Well, what do I do then? I ride a steel bike, and it's a mountain bike, steel bike. No suspension, so no front fork or back suspension so that it doesn't move when I'm going downhill, which most people want suspension. And I only ride it with one gear.
That's right. I don't have 12 different gears with Big, big gears, slow speeds to be able to just crawl up the mountain. Um, I have to really, really work for it and I absolutely love it. Love riding the single speed. And I'm definitely the weirdo in the foothills riding the single speed. And people kind of whisper, talk, sometimes say things as I ride by.
Um, but I just love it. I also am going to learn how to telemark ski. The difference between telemark skiing and normal downhill mountain skiing is that telemark skis, the heel of the boot is not attached to the ski, only the toe is. So when you turn, you have to do essentially a lunge, where you drop one leg down into a 90 degree angle and the front one as well.
And so essentially you do lunges all the way down the mountain. Um, it is much harder, a much harder form of skiing. And I thought, hey, why not try something different? So now I will be the weirdo on the mountain learning to telemark ski. Okay, let's apply that to dentistry now. Enough talking about the sports I enjoy, because I could talk about that all day long.
But let's look at the typical wellness influencer. I'm often pretty dang crunchy, and I'm actually not as crunchy as you might think. Um, the wellness space on Instagram has done a ton of good for me. It's challenged traditional thinking, big pharma in important ways, uh, and I'm very grateful for it for that.
However, the Instagram space can also evoke a lot of fear. Fear of doing things wrong, that health, and that health is a more moral decision. That there is truly good and bad. And there seems to be a chase for perfection at any cost. But at what point do we actually see a diminishing rate of returns?
Meaning, after you've made all these changes, at what point do additional changes in rules and and stressors about living a certain way actually help you get to the next level of health? So let me give you an example, a personal story. Um, this whole concept of chasing perfection and establishing a moral code for health and food impacted me pretty hard.
So when I was 20 years old, I had a roommate who, um, had gained some weight and he wanted to diet. And now that's just his objective truth. He said he gained weight, he wanted to diet, um, and so therefore he stopped. Eating at night, and we were both very physically active. And so I thought, okay, well, I'll join to support him as well.
And, um, I've always been pretty, um, small framed. And so I wasn't a big guy. I really couldn't afford to, um, to decrease in size at all. So anyways, I decided to join him. He started talking to me about 2000 calorie diet. Just kind of the typical mumbo jumbo. And I thought, oh. Really? I can only eat 2, 000 calories, and if I eat 2, 050 calories, um, I'm going to gain weight.
Um, oh shoot. I didn't know about this. And this really played into a fear of gaining weight that I developed as a child at some point in time. Um, I remember being pretty young. And, and feeling this uneasiness about weight gain, um, and not quite sure where that came from, but it was there, little monster living under my bed.
And this was just the perfect situation for that to come out. And so this fear came, became very forefront in my life. And from that point at 20 years old, um, I started to develop a very Real fear of gaining weight, anorexia, started calorie counting, everything. Um, I spent hours in the grocery store. I kid you not.
Literally hours. I could not buy anything without reading a single label, because I was so paralyzed by the, the health consequences. If it had any sort of refined sugar, refined flour, preservatives, whatever it was, um, certain certain oils, fats, um, I would just freeze. And, and it's hard to find food as a student that's affordable, um, that, It also fits all of these food rules that I had created for myself.
I was chasing this wellness to a fault. Another example, during this stage, I wouldn't eat the cupcakes my fiancé's family made for me for my birthday. I like literally said thanks and then didn't eat any of them. And then if I would, if I did decide to eat something like a cookie or a dessert, um, then I would purge by running excessively the following morning after.
Eating this unapproved food, even if it was just negligible, just a cookie, just a little treat. Um, I was so fearful of the consequences of, of eating poorly and, and not taking care of myself as, as I, um, as I thought I was trying to do. And so this went on for a long time. It wasn't until my wife was pregnant in 2017.
that this really started to, uh, to hit a tipping point. So we'd been married a couple years, and we actually had a friend that, um, had recovered from anorexia, and she had kind of whispered to Eliza, you know, a year before, like, Hey, I think, I think there's something going on with him. Uh, you, I'm recognizing X, Y, and Z.
Um, you really should try to get them help. And for me, no, I was an athlete. I was taking care of myself by eating correctly, by training X, Y, and Z, yadda, yadda, yadda. Um, but I hit a breaking point, um, during my wife's pregnancy that was really hard. Uh, where I just felt, I totally just had an emotional breakdown, um, and I'll never forget it was about her eating popcorn and she's pregnant and she needs to eat.
And I had these food thoughts of, you can't eat that much carbohydrate in the form of popcorn. It's unhealthy. And I totally just, um, broke down and freaked out. And that was the point in time where I really. I realized that this was affecting my life and affecting my family, my wife, and that I needed to get help.
And on top of that, I mean, on top of spending the hours in the grocery store, I would spend so much emotional energy every day. Recounting every single thing I ate. When did I eat last? What did I eat? Uh, why am I hungry? I shouldn't be hungry. I just had a snack an hour ago. I shouldn't have lunch. I need to wait another two hours.
Um, instead of just honoring that my body was working hard. You know, I rode my bike to school and then studied all day, which takes a lot of mental energy. It takes calories to keep the brain and the body going. Um, and it just, it was not a good mix. So finally, I got the help I needed. And started to get better, um, and started to slowly undo those food rules that I had created for myself and those, that health code, um, that I had created in, in the, in the name of being healthy and taking care of myself and, um, making sure that I could do all the things I wanted, you know, all the, all the excuses, all the things that I thought justified that extreme living.
So just a quick education about some eating disorders because it's likely that you have a friend or family member that may be experiencing these or showing symptoms of these. So, orthorexia, bulimia, anorexia, those are kind of the, the, some of the big terms. Orthorexia is an obsession with healthy eating and associated with restrictive behaviors.
Um, however, the attempt to attain optimal health through attention to diet may lead to malnourishment, loss of relationships, poor quality of life. Anorexia is an eating disorder characterized by restriction of food and leading to low body weight, typically accompanied by intense fear of gaining weight and disturbed perception of body weight and image.
Bulimia is a binge, purge, um, cycle. And so all these things kind of blend together. So looking back I spent massive amounts of time and energy over seven years Worrying about everything I was eating. I mean Everything again when I ate what kind of food what were the nutrients? Just all the details all the time.
I couldn't focus on studying I shamed myself judged myself and definitely judged others And it was miserable And I had no idea how much it affected me till I got to the other side So I worry about how many people who follow me, um, in other pages, uh, you know, health influencers are struggling with disordered eating and, and don't know it.
Because you believe you are doing something that is best for your health, but you don't realize how it's impacting yourself emotionally each day. And how it's impacting others and impacting the way you Um, just show up in general and this just isn't sustainable. It's more damaging than just allowing yourself to eat those few unhealthy foods when you desire to eat them and doing it in moderation.
And here's a fact, yo yo dieting, meaning starting and stopping a diet, is more damaging to your health and your metabolism than just not dieting in the first place. Because let's be real, it's really hard to sustain a strict diet in our modern world. In our modern world, very, very difficult. So I am definitely going to have a massive vulnerability hangover tomorrow.
So if I'm not on stories or anywhere to be found, um, know that I'm hiding from the world for a little bit because being vulnerable is very emotional. Um, it's, uh, weighty, but I feel like it's. Absolutely necessary, and if I can help just one person sharing my story, then it is, all the honesty is totally worth it.
Okay, how does this relate to disrupting the dental industry? Well, this extreme thinking about food is extremely pervasive in the dental world. For example, the specific way that we as dentists perpetuate disordered eating is through villainizing sugar as the sole cause of all tooth decay. We've all heard, if you eat sugar you get cavities, therefore eating sugar is bad because if you eat sugar you get cavities and as a result, it's created this, um, it's created this unhealthy relationship with sugar in the sense of if you're getting cavities, and you're eating sugar, then that's bad, you did it to yourself.
Uh, when it's just not black and white like this. And that's the thing with these sorts of things, like disordered eating, you know, food rules, um, health rules, whatever they are, is, is they're just, they're not as black and white as we'd like them to be. So guess what? If you have Active and Aggressive Caries Disease causing cavities, it doesn't matter if you cut out simple carbohydrates.
AKA sugars because those bacteria that are causing the cavities will get that sugar that they need from anything with the carbohydrate source. I don't care if it's a bell pepper, a carrot, an apple, um, whatever has any sort of carbohydrate. The body is going to break that down in the mouth so quickly and it's going to be available in a simple sugar form for that bacteria to eat.
That's just how our bodies work. Now I'm not saying this to scare you away from eating fruits and vegetables if you're getting cavities, because that's not the point. The point is, eliminating something from your diet doesn't necessarily move the needle like you think it will. And it's not sustainable.
You know, if you say, okay, well, I'm getting cavities, Dr. Clayton, so told me anything with a carbohydrate, then I'm just only going to eat protein and fats. Like, what are you going to be eating? You're not getting, you're not getting any plants. You're not getting other, other good foods that are important to supply your body with vitamins and minerals, as well as to help you feel healthy, to give you fiber, um, as well as the, the, the fun foods that are associated with.
With relationships, with culture, uh, so that is not the answer, um, so no, cutting out sugar isn't going to fix everything. We need to focus on the root cause, okay? So the way I approach health and food choices as it relates to cavities is much more nuanced and much less extreme than, than what you will find in kind of influencer crunchy, um, realm of expertise.
For me, there is space for all the foods that you enjoy. What I've learned in my journey is that I can allow myself to have a healthy relationship with fun foods. So that's what I call them. Instead of they're bad. They're not bad foods. They're not unhealthy foods. They're fun foods. So if I want to enjoy cookies and ice cream, that's fine.
You know, am I going to eat it every single day for every meal and snack like But by having a healthy relationship, I can eat it, enjoy it, it fills my cup in that way, and then I move on. Um, and this was so hard for me to do. So hard for me to do for years and it took a long time to get over it. The craziest thing is actually it took me a very long time to be able to have correct hunger cues again.
Like I could eat and eat and eat and eat while in recovering and my body would never tell my brain that it was full. It was the wildest thing. Like I could eat until I just felt like Awful, but I would still feel hungry. Um, so that's a side note, but something that was really interesting. Anyways, I don't ever want any of my students to feel like they have to completely cut out their favorite foods or have an extreme diet in order to achieve their, their oral health goals and prevent cavities.
Why? Again, because it's not sustainable. I learned firsthand, dieting, extreme dieting is not sustainable. So if you're putting all your stock into diet to stop getting cavities, it's not going to work out long time. Lifestyle changes need to be simple and sustainable. And that sometimes means there's gray area that we need to work with.
I would argue, it's not sometimes, there's always gray area that we need to work with. It's, we really need to step away from this black or white thinking. Um, humans want things to be binary, we want things to be good or bad, and this totally plagued me. We need more health influencers who will advocate for the elimination of this binary thinking.
Because it's, it is dangerous. We, we experience ups and downs in life. We need to be able to give ourselves grace. To fluctuate between these two ends, rather than, you know, if I eat this way, it's bad food, it's unhealthy, therefore, you know, I'm a bad person. You know, I cheated, as we use the word. I, today's a cheat day.
It's like, you're not cheating, you're not being dishonest. You're just enjoying food. You know, if that's a cheeseburger or, uh, or a bowl of ice cream enjoying it, it's not a moral issue. It's fine. Um, it's not going to disrupt your whole world and make you die ten years earlier. Uh, that's just not how these things work.
So there are ways to improve your health and reduce your risk of cavities without cutting things out completely. Or obsessively thinking about it all day. So, moderation in all, in all things. You know, think of it, you know, 80 percent of the time you're doing your best to nourish your body. That other 20%, it's like, you know, doesn't matter.
You're doing the best you know how the majority of the time. Give yourself grace that other 20 percent of the time. Okay, so trying to tie everything back together. I've talked about a lot, and I hope that you've been able to follow along. When I get pretty passionate about things, I tend to just go and talk about them.
And I know I've just spilled my guts to you, and I've shared a lot. A lot, a lot of personal story and information. Um, but just bringing this back around, you know, moderation in all things. If we have extreme thinking, about food, it leads to a scarcity mindset. The scarcity mindset leads to a hyperfixation on those foods that you want that you don't let yourself have, which then leads to a feeling of stress and anxiety.
Um, and then this feeling ruins. It just totally ruins you, um, when you finally do allow yourself to eat that food. Um, it's just, it's not a good way to live and it will really affect, more than anything, affects our, our kids. If you're a parent out there, you know, by eliminating everything from the household that's toxic or unhealthy or, or has, or sugar or whatever, um, it's, It's driving this scarcity mindset because they're going to find it.
They're going to have it at their kid's house. They're going to have it at school or out and about, or, you know, it's something that we can't control as parents. So by allowing them to have these fun foods and educating them, how to listen to their bodies. How do you feel after you gorge on, you know, um, On a whole bag full of candy.
Don't feel very good, right? How do you feel after or eat a balanced meal? You know, we need to educate them so that they can develop trust in their bodies and their hunger cues and Then develop a healthy relationship with food and my belief is when we develop a healthy relationship with food Which is just one part of this cavity cycle that we're gonna be a lot more successful At beating this disease and getting better because you're going to be able to listen to your body and your body is going to tell you what it needs.
And it may tell you, yeah, you need to pick me if you need a carbohydrate, you know, between meals because that helps get your brain boosted a little bit, which is fine, which is great. But it will also tell you, look, in order to stay satiated, you need High proteins, high fats, fibrous food, balanced diet, and then boom, you're going to feel good in between meals.
You're going to be less inclined to to snack because you're actually filling and fueling your body. And then less snacking is going to then lower your risk of cavities. So it all works together harmoniously and for this diet aspect, we really need to create a healthy relationship and trust ourselves and our bodies.
And again, if we have kids, we have to pass on that mindset to them. So I want to just finish up with a little funny story. So if we have a social media new. Trish, an influencer friend, um, who we often will talk with in DMs, and she shared a funny story. She tries so hard to do, you know, eat as clean as possible, make the best food choices possible within, you know, the, the boundaries that she has set for herself, and her husband is, respects that, but is totally not on board.
Like, he just, Just eats whatever he wants, whenever he wants, no shame, no guilt, just whatever. And so it's a, it's a funny relationship, uh, but her joke was that, you know, by the end of their lives, you know, her obsessive, uh, obsession with eating healthy and the, the constant cortisol released from the stress of always eating clean food and making certain choices and when to eat and what to eat.
will kind of offset the fact that she's eating super healthy, whereas her husband, that has zero stress about any of his food choices, but is eating ultra refined or unhealthy food. as it could be labeled, doesn't have this cortisol response, which we know cortisol has a massive impact on inflammation in the body.
So it's kind of, there's this funny joke of, well, my husband's eating highly inflammatory foods, but has no cortisol. I'm eating healthy foods, but have a lot of cortisol. Therefore, inflammation, you know, is probably just going to cancel each other out by the end of our lives. So I love it. Great example.
And I'm super thankful that she reached out and shared that with us and that she was willing to be just vulnerable and, and joke about it. And the reality that these things cause a lot of stress. I hope this helped you today. I really do. I hope this helped you in your journey to becoming cavity free.
Understanding the importance of food and diet. Understanding that sugar isn't the end all be all of cavity prevention. That there is a balance in things. I will never say you need to cut out Uh, a sweet or honey or ice cream or I don't, I don't care whatever it is from your diet. No, there's a place for that and we can work with that and you're going to learn more as you continue to learn from us.
If you liked today's episode and want help advocating for yourself, especially if you get cavities. Please join me for my live masterclass, the seven step framework to a cavity free life. See the show notes for a link to reserve your seat. And if you connected with the message in this podcast today, please share it with someone who can relate.
Help someone out. I hope that it lifted you. I hope it will lift someone else. I need your help to get the word out about this so more people can understand the different risk factors involved with getting cavities and what they can do about them so that we can stop the cycle of this disease. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Catch you on the next episode of Dentistry Disrupted.
