Does dementia start in the mouth?

A number of studies in which the brain tissue of people who have died of dementia have revealed the presence of microbial species such as Porphyromonas gingivalis, Fusobacterium nucleatum, and Tannerella forsythia--all oral microbes. This is an example of translocation, i.e., the migration of microbes from one body site to another. But does this cause or accelerate dementia? This remains an unsettled issue. 

However, if you have had an oral microbiome test and you have one or more of these species in your mouth, should you eradicate it? Dental hygiene is likely not enough. For this reason, I created a homemade oral rinse using a combination of the fatty acid derivative, monolaurin, with the essential oil from peppermint that is intended for short-term use:

Monolaurin Oral Rinse
This recipe yields a 2% monolaurin solution. The inclusion of peppermint essential oil adds additional antimicrobial effects. 

Makes 100 ml (3.5 ounces)

2000 mg monolaurin (powder or liquid)
70 ml filtered water
30 ml glycerol liquid
4 drops peppermint essential oil

In clean glass container, combine monolaurin, water, glycerol, and peppermint. Cap and shake. Be sure to shake prior to use. 

Rinse, then spit (do not swallow), for 10 minutes once per day for no more than 14 days. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Oral Microbes Found In Diseased Brains
• 2:10 Pathways From Mouth To Brain
• 3:20 SIBO, Endotoxemia, And Brain Barriers
• 4:50 Microbe Translocation And Colon Cancer
• 7:00 Cause Or Bystander In Dementia
• 8:05 Can We Eradicate Oral Pathogens
• 9:20 H. Pylori Lessons And Recurrence
• 11:20 Monolaurin, Peppermint, And A DIY Rinse

Transcript

William Davis, MD: 0:00

I'd like to encourage you to start thinking about this issue. If we take people's brains who've died of Alzheimer's dementia, and this has been done, so I give great credit to the researchers who thought to do this, if they ex when they examine the brains of people who've died of Alzheimer's, you'll find bacteria in the brain, species like Streptococcus mutans, Tannerella forsythia, fusobacterium nucleatum, porapheromonus gingivalis, treponema denticola, and some others. Now, these are microbes that are also found in abundance in the mouth, in people who especially have bleeding gums, gingivitis, or periodontitis. Now, if this is true, that is, could microbes from the mouth migrate into the brain, maybe through one of the nerves that connect the two, or uh through the near the sinuses, because sinuses are very close to the brain tissue. Now, something else to fold in here. This issue I've been talking a lot about, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth and the bacterial endotoxemia that accompanies it. That is, small intestine colonized by fecal microbes because of our overexposure antibiotics. Those fecal microbes die and release their toxic compounds, endotoxin, into the bloodstream. Now, when that happens and it's going on in half the population, it's extremely common. When you have this situation, it increases the permeability of the tissues protecting the brain. In other words, it may be an open door to the entry of invading microbes, such as those in the mouth. You know, the mouth is second only to the colon in the density of microbes. Scary thought when you think about it, right? So what I'm suggesting is there may be migration or translocation, we say, of oral microbes into the brain. Now, there are other instances of translocation of microbes. This is not unique to this area. For instance, that microbe I mentioned, fusobacterium nucleatum, can, upon microtrauma to the teeth, flossing, brushing, teeth cleaning, etc., those episodes of microtrauma can allow that fusobacterium to enter the bloodstream and then it can colonize the colon. And the evidence is quite good that it may be a major factor in causing colon cancer. There are other causes for colon cancer also, such as colonic dysbiosis with proteobacteria. But fusobacterium, when it colonized the colon, a very significant cause of colon cancer. If we put that microbe into the colon of a healthy mouse, it gets colon cancer, for instance. If you take the colon cancer out of a human and look at that cancer tissue and see what's in it, you'll find tons of fusobacterium. So the evidence is pointing towards this microbe, fusobacterium nucleatum, to be a major contributor to colon cancer. So it can translocate in the bloodstream. Can it translocate, therefore, to the brain? Well, it does, because it's found in the brain. But does it contribute to dementia? And that's the tough question here. All those microbes found in diseased brains, are they a cause or contributor to dementia? Or are they just an accompaniment, a curious accompaniment? No one knows the ultimate proof would be unethical. That is, I would say to somebody or a bunch of people, here, take this capsule and it has either a pathogenic microbe like Fusobacterium or placebo, and we'll follow you for the next decade or so, see if you have dementia. No one's going to do that, right? So, but another way to prove this, and no one's done this yet, is to eradicate those oral microbes by some method. Now, what it can't do, most of these methods, let's say some kind of a rinse or a probiotic in the mouth, it will kill the oral microbes potentially, but it won't go to the brain to kill those microbes. So all you could, the best you could hope for with oral eradication would be to stop the process for future. But maybe that's sufficient. No one knows. No one's done that clinical trial. But I tell you this because I believe you have the capacity to make a rinse that kills all of those microbes. I got thinking about this because I was talking to my group in my inner circle.deardavisinfinite health.com. We talk about these kinds of things, and one of the things we've been tackling are natural methods to eradicate H. pylori. So recall that H. pylori is a stomach microbe. He'll go back to pylori, is a stomach microbe. It's been reduced in incidence to about 15% of Americans now because of the use of antibiotics. In some parts of the world, it's still 90% or more. And we know that H. pylori is a major cause of stomach cancer, the fourth most common form of cancer in the world. And so eradication of H. pylori has been shown to reduce the incidence of stomach cancer and other things. In fact, eradication of H. pylori improves some of the symptoms and signs of Parkinson's disease, for instance. So because H. pylori is very good at generating resistance, the conventional three or four drug regimens to eradicate H. pylori are proving to be less and less effective. So current efficacy is on the order of about 60 to 70 percent. There have been some improvements lately with some other additions, like the addition of lactobacillus rotori, for instance. Uh that is true. Rotari has anti-H. pylori effects. But uh one of the things I got thinking about was this. So a number of people in our programs have used natural methods such as mastic gum, nigella sativa, higher doses of vitamin C and proton pump inhibitor drugs, and have successfully eradicated H. pylori. But a handful have had a recurrence. This is not unique to our methods, it occurs even with the antibiotic regimen. There's a high frequency of recurrence, maybe as high as 50%. Well, why? Is it because the original regimen was inadequate and didn't kill all the H. pylori, or is there something else going on? Well, this has been debated for 20 years or so, but it seems to be true that the mouth can be a repository for H. pylori. That is, you take the antibiotic regimen, whatever, and you eradicate stomach H. pylori, but then you reseed the stomach from the mouth. You can also catch H. pylori from people you're intimate with. So if one person in a household has H. pylori, it's likely that over time everybody in the household will have H. pylori, especially the ones you're intimate with, like your partner. And so I got thinking about this. Well, one agent that's hugely effective in killing H. pylori is a fatty acid derivative called monolorin. Monolorin is a combination of lauric acid, the fatty acid, and glycerol. So uh half uh the contents of coconut oil, so it's it's a common food fatty acid. And glycerol, of course, a very benign sweetener, but it doesn't act like sugar. It tastes sweet, but it's not it's not metabolized like sugar. Well, monolore is a combination of lauric acid and glycerol, and it's extremely effective in killing H. pylori. So it's tempting to use that for stomach eradication of H. pylori. No one's done that yet. But I got thinking if it's true in this in a cell culture experiment, could we use it to eradicate oral H. pylori? So I made an oral rinse that I shared with my inner circle uh group. But it also got me thinking, because the monolorin is effective in killing what we call gram-positive species. These are species like Streptococcus mutants, the principal cause of dental cavities. It also kills fungi like candida as well as H. pylori. But most oral pathogens, like the fusobacterium and the porphyromonus, these are gram negatives. And monolauren is not that effective at killing gram negatives. It can, but it takes a higher dose, it takes longer time. So I added peppermint extract, essential oil of peppermint, because that oil is very effective in killing gram negatives. And so I made an oral rinse, and I'll put the recipe down below that you can use if you think you have these microbes in your mouth. Now you can do an oral microbiome test. The best one I'm aware of is a company called Bristle, B-R-I-S-T-L-E. I have no relationship with the company. They do a nice job, and you can send in some saliva. Now, saliva is not the best. Ideally, you send in some plaque as well as scrapings from the hard palate up top, tongue, and other parts of the mouth, but no one really does that. So we end up using just saliva. But you can submit a saliva and they'll do DNA sequencing to see if you have any of those pathogens like fusobacterum or porphyrimonas. And if you do, what should you do about it? Well, dentists will tell you to have teeth cleaning and, of course, engage in typical dental hygiene, brushing your teeth, of course, with fluoride toothpaste, uh, flossing, etc. Is that sufficient? Probably not. So, what I'm going to propose to you and give you the tools for is you can make this oral rinse that we know kills virtually all the microbes that occur in gingivitis, periodontitis, bleeding gums, and potentially can translocate to the brain. Now, there's a lot more work to be done. Wouldn't it be cool to do this and then engage in cognitive testing over time to see if we have an impact on slowing the decline of cognition if we get rid of oral pathogens? So no one's done that. I don't know if we're gonna have the budget to do that. I'd like to do it though. Now, recognize that this is just meant to be a short-term solution. You don't you shouldn't do this for a long period of time because it's essentially an antibiotic. And we should not take antibiotics for a long period of time because you don't know what happens, right? So I would use this rinse maybe for a few days, maybe a couple of weeks at most. But the other half of this equation has not been sorted out. And that is, okay, you're going to kill the oral pathogens if you have them, because you did a bristle or other oral microbiome test. Maybe you do a follow-up and you showed that you got rid of the tannarella, you got rid of the porphyromonus. But what should you do to rebuild or restore healthy microbes? That part is not fully worked out. I believe our favorite microbe, lactobacillus rotorite, is probably part of it because one of the great advantages of rotorite is that it colonizes from mouth to anus, the entire gastrointestinal, which is very unusual. So lactobacillus rotori may be a modest advantage. It's also a producer of a bacteriacin called rotorin, that is a natural antibiotic that's especially effective against those gram negatives like porphyromonis and infusabacterium. But I gotta believe there's got to be more to it than just rotori, and we don't know what that looks like. Maybe it includes a lactobacillus salivarius and some other species. So it's this is going to be a work in progress to tell you how to best restore an oral microbiome that's healthy. In the meantime, if you know you have these pathogens that cause dental diseases and potentially are associated with cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's, one of the things to consider is to make this oral rinse for short-term use. Now, these kinds of conversations that include evolving ideas are appealing to you. I invite you to join my conversations. My blog has thousands of blog posts, WilliamDavismd.com, my books, of course, Super Gut, that lays out a lot of these recipes for making these microbes as yogurt and other fermented foods. My superbody book talks about how this all applies to uh redistribution of body, fat, and muscle. And of course, my membership website where we have these conversations two way, which is inner circle.dr Davis Infinite Health dot com.