In this episode, Dr. Kevin Conners hosts Dr. Cody Kriegel, a biological dentist from Iowa, to discuss the implications of traditional dental practices on overall health. Dr. Kriegel shares his personal journey into biological dentistry, which began with an experience involving his mother’s health issues linked to dental work. He explains how this experience led him to question conventional dental practices, particularly the use of materials like amalgam (which contains mercury) and the treatment of root canals.
Dr. Kriegel emphasizes the importance of viewing dental health within the broader context of body health, explaining how chronic infections and materials used in dentistry can contribute to systemic health issues. He advocates for the use of advanced diagnostic tools, such as Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT), to better assess and treat dental conditions that may not be visible with traditional X-rays.
Throughout the interview, both Dr. Conners and Dr. Kriegel discuss the wider implications of their work, touching on the resistance they face from conventional medical establishments and the importance of treating patients as whole human beings rather than isolated symptoms. Dr. Kriegel also highlights the need for a paradigm shift in dentistry towards more holistic approaches, noting the critical role of dental health in overall well-being.
Tune in to learn:
- The Principles of Biological Dentistry: Understanding how dental health impacts overall well-being and the differences between traditional and biological dentistry practices.
- Personal Journey into Biological Dentistry: Dr. Kriegel’s personal motivations and experiences that led him to pursue biological dentistry, including a pivotal health improvement in his mother after traditional dental treatments were revised.
- Risks of Traditional Dental Materials: Discussion on the potential dangers associated with common dental materials like amalgam, which contains mercury, and the health implications of having such materials in the body.
- Advanced Diagnostic Tools: The importance of using advanced imaging technologies such as CBCT (Cone Beam Computed Tomography) to provide a more comprehensive assessment of dental and oral health.
- Link Between Dental Treatments and Systemic Health: Insights into how hidden infections and improper dental treatments can contribute to systemic health issues, including chronic conditions and autoimmune responses.
- Critique of Conventional Medical and Dental Systems: Reflections on the shortcomings of the current healthcare systems, including the over-reliance on outdated treatments and materials and the need for a more patient-centered approach.
- The Role of Dentistry in Overall Health: Exploring the broader role of dentistry in health and wellness, emphasizing the need for dental practices to consider the health of the whole person rather than just treating symptoms.
- Encouragement for Holistic Health Approaches: Motivational insights on the benefits of holistic approaches to health and the collaborative effort needed among healthcare professionals to foster patient health and wellness.
About Dr. Cody Kriegel
Dr. Cody Kriegel is an integrative dentist and the founder of Vios Dental, a practice dedicated to advancing dental health and promoting overall wellness. A graduate of the University of Iowa College of Dentistry, Dr. Kriegel has distinguished himself in the field by adopting a holistic approach to dental care, emphasizing the connection between oral health and general vitality.
Driven by a deep-seated belief that there is more to oral health than conventional wisdom suggests, Dr. Kriegel has committed himself to continuous learning and improvement. His practice is built on the principle that health is not simply the absence of disease, but the presence of longevity and vitality. Through his work, Dr. Kriegel aims to redefine dentistry, focusing on safe, intentional treatments that enhance the well-being of his patients.
Dr. Kriegel’s dedication to providing exceptional care is supported by ongoing training and certifications, ensuring that he remains at the forefront of dental practices that contribute to overall health. His visionary approach to dental care has made him a respected figure among both patients and peers in the healthcare community.
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Transcript
Dr. Kevin Conners
Hello, everybody. This is Dr. Kevin Conners. Welcome to another episode of Conners Clinic Live, where we have a very special guest, partly because all of my patients over the years have asked us about using biological dentistry. Obviously, we’re very big into that. I have a lot of blog posts and writings about mercury in your teeth causing issues, and dental hidden infections causing issues with breast cancer. We’re very big into biological dentistry, and I have a great guest who’s a fantastic biological dentist. Cheers all around. Dr. Cody Kriegel is in Iowa, but he’s going to give you some of his insight in practice and why he does what he does. Let’s turn it over to you, sir. Tell me your story.
Dr. Cody Kriegel
As you stated, I’m a dentist in Iowa. My story, I find, as I get to know colleagues in this space, not only in biological dentistry, but in functional medicine, integrative oncology, different areas of expertise in this realm. We all have a story or something that got us into what we do, And some of us stumble into it, but there’s an aha moment or a turning that happens. For me, that was with my mother.
I was trained in dentistry the same way as everyone else is trained in dentistry. We’re all trained arguably the same way, taught the same things. I’ve always been into health and wellness myself. I’ve always enjoyed that and the regenerative medicine and in those camps, and longevity. I started to realize that things just didn’t add up in dentistry like I was told. I began to do some digging on different things such as amalgam, fluoride, hidden infections in jawbones, things like that. Long story short, my mother was a nurse, and she’s retired now, but we’re very close. I flew her to a mentor of mine, and we treated her together. We removed a root canal and treated some areas of her jawbone that had some chronic inflammatory pathology.
She had heart palpitations her whole life, and no one had an answer for why she had heart palpitations. Then, within about, usually 2-3 days is what it was for her, they went away, and they stayed away. We’re going on five or six years now. That was a turning point for me of: Hey, there are other things going on here that maybe dentistry as a whole is missing? So then I went down a rabbit hole, and so far in the hole, I can’t see the top anymore.
Dr. Kevin Conners
That changed the way you’re… So when you went down that rabbit hole, were you still in school or were you already out practicing?
Dr. Cody Kriegel
Yeah, I was out. I was out practicing. I had what I call pause for thought moments along the way, which was basically if amalgam, because of the mercury content, about 50 to 55% of amalgam is mercury, if that’s deemed a poison, when we remove it from somebody’s mouth, we have to separate it from the water systems. It’s known – Some studies will say 10x the toxicity components of lead. If that’s a problem, why is it safe when it’s in somebody’s mouth? So there were moments like that where it was almost too logical. I was told it was safe, told it was effective, and whenever those two terms are laid on something over and over and over and over, it makes me question whether they are safe or effective.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Yeah. We’re told a lot of things by our medical establishment and the government that is not true, if you think for yourself, right?
Dr. Cody Kriegel
Yes, and I think that’s what my God blessed me with, at least… I’m not always open-minded, but in a turning point in my career, I was humbled enough by Him to just say: Hey, what is this other side of this? And to keep an open mind. Pretty soon… there’s a ton of studies and literature to support that these are not good things, but we’re never told those things or we’re never shown those things, so we have to go digging on our own. God led me down that path pretty quickly.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Now, when do you label yourself yourself and brand yourself as a biological dentist looking for these things, I would think that you get a lot of people that come to you because they have other health conditions and they want to investigate whether they’re tied to dental issues or not. Is that true?
Dr. Cody Kriegel
For sure. Yeah. The lens that we look through now in dentistry, of course, we’re looking at the mouth in a sense, the head and neck in a sense, but obviously the mouth. Our patients come to us usually sick, but struggling with their problems. Sometimes it’s one or two issues. Sometimes it’s a long .. a plethora of things. Typically, they’re referred from practitioners such as yourself, functional med docs, some chiropractors. So typically, most people are coming to us working with a provider that knows: Hey, they’re struggling with XYZ, things from cancers to thyroid issues to gut issues to catch-all terms like fibromyalgia, things like that. We are looking at the mouth and saying: Hey, I just want to get the mouth healthy. I can’t cure you of any of those things, and we never promise that. But what we find is there are a lot of things that people are using on a daily basis for things that are, what I say, permanently installed in their mouth, that can be driving ill health. We just seek to remove and replace those things with things that are compatible. A mentor of mine has a coined term…
His name is Miguel Stanley. He’s a very prominent dentist in Lisbon, Portugal. He says, no half smiles. No one deserves a half-hearted smile or half-hearted treatment. People deserve to be healthy, and they deserve at least to have the opportunity to be healthy.
Dr. Kevin Conners
So let’s get into some of those things that you said that you find that can lead to other morbidities. Maybe in whatever order would be great, like most common or whatever.
Dr. Cody Kriegel
Sure. Yeah. So what I termed them interference fields, things that are interfering with somebody’s optimal health. Those can come in umbrella categories, but I boil them down into, of course, bacteria. So we’re looking at the microbiome, and we want that in balance. Of course, there are pathogens in there, but there are also a lot of good bacteria. So we want to look at the microbiome and tease it apart and say, is it in balance? Is it in harmony? Or is it haywire? We look at root canals, of course. A root canal is technically a dead tissue. We are the only branch of medicine that deems it safe and effective to leave a dead tissue in somebody and call it a success. Do I think every single root canal out there needs to come out of every single human being? That’s a tough question. But with the advent of CBC technology, we find that they are quite often chronically infected.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Tell me a little bit about that for our listeners. What’s the technology that you use to see that?
Dr. Cody Kriegel
Sure. CBCT, a lot of people will call it a 3D cone beam. What that is, it’s a machine that will put your upper and lower jaws, and sometimes your airway, depending on the machine being used in the field of view. It’s putting it in three dimensions. So we can look at every tooth from every angle. When you go to the dentist, the dentist just looks in your mouth. All you see is the tops of your teeth. You don’t see your bone beneath the gums. You don’t see the roots of your tooth. There’s a lot that’s hidden, or I’ll say under the hood. A cone beam is really, in my opinion, is completely 100% standard of care. You cannot be doing the best dentistry possible and treating people appropriately without assessing everything under the hood. That allows us to put the upper and lower jaws in three dimensions. We can look at all the upper and lower, sorry, the maxilla and the mandible, upper and lower jaws, the teeth, the roots. We can see if there’s any chronic inflammatory infections in the jawbone from previous treatments. We can assess root canals and see if they have a hidden pathology or a hidden infection on them.
I really feel like that is a standard of care. I feel like it’s a technology that needs to be in every dental office and needs to be taken on every new patient to properly assess.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Now, that’s different just going and getting X-rays.
Dr. Cody Kriegel
Correct. Yeah. Your typical set of X-rays is to look for cavities, which, of course, needs to happen. But this is much different than that. Yeah. So we still take those X-rays, of course, your routine radiographs called bite wings or periapical images. And then we take a cone beam as well to be able to lay all the data points together and assess.
Dr. Kevin Conners
That seems to be something that I have to have this discussion with patients a lot because they’ll say: Well, I went to… Because when I test with kinesiology, we find out, let’s say, a person’s breast cancer is tied to their teeth in an infection. That’s not uncommon. I have a person that already thought of that, and they say: No, I went to the dentist and he did a full set of X-rays and he didn’t see any infection. I have to go: Okay, well, that’s not good enough. You have to go deeper and you have to get to a biological dentist that’s going to go deeper. Now, you said that the cold beam should be… I think that’s… I think you didn’t use that word because it isn’t truly standard of care. It should be standard of care, according to your opinion, because by just going and getting X-rays, you could miss infections. You’re not going to see those infections unless they’re blazing infections.
Dr. Cody Kriegel
100%. Yeah. We have that quite routinely, where people will come in and they feel like something’s off or they’re coming in on a referral. They’ve been given a “Clean Bill of Health” from a local dental clinic. I think some of that is the lens that we look through with a patient – we’re looking at health and wellness and things like that differently than a traditional dentist, I’ll say. When we look at the teeth as a means to chew and function, that’s great. We’re trained in a reparation mode, I say, where we’re trained to mechanically treat a tooth. In reality, we should be, and many are, trained to be healers. Why would we put in something that would harm our patient’s health? We wouldn’t use those materials, we wouldn’t do those treatments, or we’d find newer ones, different ones, and dentistry is advancing at light speed. We should be looking at the health of the human being as our first tenant of treatment, and then how do we achieve that with what we’re in charge of, which is the mouth. But you’re right. To get back to your point, routine X-rays miss a lot.
A lot. And so a CBCT will uncover… I just had one the other day where we looked at all the images that were sent over, but when we took a cone beam, a gal had a root canal that didn’t hurt. I think she had an intuition, though. Just something’s off. Something’s in my way. I can’t get past something. I can’t figure out what it is. Her root canal was infected, and it went up into her maxillary sinus. So not only was it infected, but it had blown a hole up into her sinus, and she had a lot of sinus problems happening. That’s a problem, obviously.
Dr. Kevin Conners
You made a point there, that it didn’t hurt. A lot of people think that if they don’t have pain or they don’t have symptoms in their mouth, how could my other issues be tied to that? I’m sure you probably deal with that on a regular basis.
Dr. Cody Kriegel
Yeah. It’s arguably what anecdotally, 80% of what we do. Most cavities don’t hurt until it’s too late. When they start to hurt, then you get into a dichotomous situation of we either have to take the tooth out or you choose to do a root canal, and that’s a whole another conversation. What I like to say, what I use when I speak to patients, there’s things that allowed me to grasp along the way certain concepts. Somebody once told me: diabetes doesn’t hurt until you get neuropathy or something and you end up losing a foot or a finger or whatever. Cardiovascular disease doesn’t technically hurt until all of a sudden one day it’s too late and you have a heart attack, God forbid. So a lot of the chronic inflammation issues, that’s our battle. You know that more than I do. That’s our battle of this day and age. It’s hard because they’re not acute, so they’re not driving people into care. So sometimes it’s too late or you’re trying to backpedal, and that’s a hard game to play.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Okay, I interrupted you. You said.. you were going over those things that people have… You said infections, so I’ll let you carry on from that.
Dr. Cody Kriegel
Yeah, things that we’re looking for. So we’re obviously looking for infections, and I think you have to be trained a little bit differently to see those in some of these locations. One of the layman’s terms that people use is a cavitation. I was very humbled to be a part of a recent paper, white paper on cavitations, that is a very interesting chronic inflammatory burden, and one that we need to know more about, but one that we do know quite a bit about. So we’re looking to make sure people don’t have those. Obviously, we mentioned root canals and then metals. Metals in general.. amalgam is primarily, I would argue, the worst, but there’s no need to be putting metal in people’s mouths, period. As people struggle with heavy metal issues, the environment of the mouth is very harsh. So we see metal that will rust and corrode. Of course, that activates the innate immune system, so you can almost get an autoimmune attack on those metals. Then, of course, as we all know, EMF is becoming as much a problem, or has been, it’s getting worse, and we have studies to show when you put a cell phone up to somebody that has an amalgam, you see more mercury released from that amalgam.
Or if you have a metal implant, you will heat up the bone around that metal implant while you’re on your cell phone. They’re just an antenna. That’s what I look at it as. We’re getting into some dangerous ground as we move forward with some of this stuff.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Is that a primary thing? Where would you say that it can be difficult to remove somebody’s mercury fillings? I’ve had patients that look inside their mouth and think: Oh, I would feel sorry for the dentist that would try to do this. They grew up in an era that that’s what all their dentists did. They just overfilled and compacted this tooth, and you can hardly see any white. It’s all silver. Is there a time where you just pull the teeth and go to dentures? I mean, I don’t know.
Dr. Cody Kriegel
Good question. I would say rarely do we have a situation where we can’t save the tooth. We can work with a lot in dentistry. I think my approach is that God made teeth perfect. In fact, I feel teeth are a perfect example of how we have a creator. They’re too well intelligently designed to be otherwise. But when you then respect a healthy tooth for what it is, you don’t want to remove… Let me say it this way: You want to save as much of that healthy tooth as possible. In today’s world, with the advancements in materials, the way that we can bond or adhesive protocols and things, we can do a lot with very little tooth. I feel, honestly, the days of doing a full cap or crown are over. We don’t need to be doing that anymore. You can save more tooth structure and do much less invasive treatments and keep teeth longer if you feel that way, if you put it that way.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Okay, good answer. Here would be a question that is on everybody’s mind, I think, is that if they do have multiple mercury fillings, how many sessions? In each session of removal and replacement, how many teeth could you do? I suppose it depends on how bad it is and stuff, but in general, could you give us that?
Dr. Cody Kriegel
Yeah. Those decisions, at least I can speak for the way that we do it in our clinic, are typically made… All of our decisions are made with a patient, not over a patient or around a patient. We’re talking to a patient primarily of, this is what you have, this is what that we feel needs to be done. How does that feel to you? Does that resonate with you? I think the one thing that dentistry is bad at, and maybe health care in general, is we talk down to patients: It’s my way or the highway. I don’t like that. We’re treating human beings. So we have a good conversation.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Do you happen to know some oncologist or something?
Dr. Cody Kriegel
Yeah. It’s just weird. The last thing I want to do is speak ill will towards my profession or others. But at the same time, I’ve seen some very amazing people do amazing work, and their outset is: Hey, I’m treating a human being. I’m not just treating a mouth, for example, for me. I’m not just a head on a stick here. This is a human being we’re dealing with. We have a good rapport with the patient on this is what we have going on. I would recommend X, Y, Z. How does feel to you? Those type of things. Sometimes people are traveling a long ways, whether it’s a long drive or by plane, so that dictates some of that treatment in our clinic for the traveling patients. But, the front answer is I would prefer to remove as much as possible in one session. I know that that’s debated a little bit. I feel if you’re doing the appropriate amalgam removal protocols, you’re protecting a patient from exposure, there’s pre and post-rinses, and other things that we’re working on with laser therapies and things around that to support the system of the patient.
I feel the more burden you can remove from a patient at one time, anecdotally speaking, we see bigger improvements from patients when we can remove as much as possible in a session. The other side of that, not everybody can do that, and some people are very delicate. Their systems are in total hyper drive, sympathetic overdrive. They can’t handle that. In those cases, we will break it up by quadrant or sides of the mouth and slow it down a little bit.
Dr. Kevin Conners
My struggle with supporting that is we typically use chelation therapy around that. If somebody’s getting those fillings out and you don’t want to use heavy chelators, if the person still has mercury in their mouth, you’re trying to balance that. I do know that we’ll get people after this interview interview, and now after speaking with you, because we’ll put your information up on our website, that maybe live in Virginia or live in San Diego that want to come see you. Is that possible?
Dr. Cody Kriegel
Absolutely. Yeah, we’ve seen a lot of fly-in patients. We try to be in touch with them quite a bit on the front end to give them an idea of what’s possible. We like to get some information first, of course, that goes with any clinic. But, we like to put together sheets as far as: Hey, we can help you on where to stay, places to eat, things like that. So we do take that serious. It’s an experience for a patient that we pride ourselves on, but it is possible. My staff is pretty highly trained on just treating people like human beings. I keep coming back to it, but we have patients coming in, and it’s because no one in their area listens.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Yeah.
Dr. Cody Kriegel
I’m sure you have that, too. Sometimes that is-
Dr. Kevin Conners
That is sad, isn’t it? It’s just really sorrowful. Is this a society that we are creating now? That doctors are just a bunch of paid technicians for the pharmaceutical industry? There’s no more Marcus Welby-type. You’re too young for that. But there’s no more that type of care. Even on modern TV shows, you see hospital situations where the doctors are really caring for the patient and taking time. No, they are just swamped … I don’t blame necessarily the doctors. They have to see 500 patients, boom boom boom, so they don’t even have time to care.
Dr. Cody Kriegel
I couldn’t agree more with that. I think people go in with the right intentions, through school, whatever it may be, and they come out robotic. Sometimes maybe a pawn of systems that are in the higher places than we know. It gets tough because the systems are so broken, like you said. I personally, when I came out of school, did not open my clinic right away. I knew that was a dream and a vision of mine, but I had to get my ducks in a row. I needed to get clear on what my vision was for dental care and treatment and how we wanted to go about it. Luckily, I ran into people that have helped me from all over the world and I have become good friends with. I’ve gotten help from them on protocols and learn things. But, I was in a situation where I was being asked to do, for example, more crowns. You have a quota to hit or we have production goals. It felt horrible to me. I came into a crossroads, for me where it was, I went to school for eight years, studied my tail off, showed up every day, and this is what it was for?
I’m burned out, and I’m six months out. This can’t be right.
Dr. Kevin Conners
You were almost afraid to think for yourself.
Dr. Cody Kriegel
Yes.Terrified.
Dr. Kevin Conners
You’re not following standards of care. It’s sad. But this is across the board, not just with medicine and dentistry. It’s in our whole society. We’re ashamed to actually be thinkers. I guess it’s a sign of society’s collapse, I guess, unfortunately.
Dr. Cody Kriegel
Yeah, I agree. Hopefully, there’s still lights in it. That’s right. You are one. We’re trying to be one. But it’s hard for patients. Sometimes I think when getting back to a travel patient, it’s like, we try to help… Sometimes we try to help a patient find somebody that we know and trust closer to them that we feel can help, too. At the same time, sometimes it’s just that no one’s listening to them. Once you listen to somebody for the human being they are, then there’s a trust there that we earn, that we hope to earn for people. That’s what we’re called to do, help people.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Well, thanks, Dr. Cody, you are a bright light in a seemingly dim world sometimes. I appreciate what you’re doing. We’re going to have all your information and all your connection information on this video, and I’m going to get up on our website as well so people know how to find you. Any last words of encouragement for people?
Dr. Cody Kriegel
I think I would be remiss to say that you are a light as well. I’m very thankful for people like you doing what you do. This is a team effort to help human beings improve and get better and heal. I’m always reminded and thankful that there is a team of us. We might not all know each other, but as we start to know, there’s power in numbers and there’s healing in that. But, yeah, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. Any time to talk this stuff, I could do it all day. So I appreciate your time.
Dr. Kevin Conners
All right. We’ll have you on again.
Dr. Cody Kriegel
Thank you.
Dr. Kevin Conners
All right. Bye-bye.
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Dustin has been passionate about holistic health since he met his wife, Dr Mallory Ranem (Conners) 20 years ago. As the Digital Media Manager, he coordinates content across Conners Clinic’s large online presence, including written, video, and audio.
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