I am Katie from MonasMama.com.

A few random facts for your day. Did you know that if you're listening there's a 98% chance that you have some form of oral health problem and 75% of US people have gum disease in some form.

What's interesting is that I just thought this was an interesting random fact. The first toothbrushes with bristles were invented in China in 1498.

We're going to be talking both about oral health and how a toothbrush can make a difference. It's not what you would think.

With today's guest, Wilry Vack, who with his wife Susan, founded a great company called Oral Wellness. I use many of their products personally.

They really focus on holistic oral health and treating the mouth as a whole and how the mouth connects to the entire body.

We're going to delve into all of that today. He's a wealth of information. He and his wife Susan also put together something called the Healthy Mouth Summit, which brought together world experts in dental health.

That's an amazing resource. We'll give you some information about that as well. Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having us on, Katie.

I'm so excited to jump right in. Especially I know I get a lot of questions about this and we hear a lot about tooth decay and what causes it.

It seems to be a lot of different opinions. It seems like our culture really has a firm, they have a firm grasp on the cause of tooth decay.

Can you please explain how the understanding our culture has isn't quite the whole story and how this misunderstanding sometimes causes more harm than good and can cost our families more money?

Sure, you bet. As you know, Katie, we really love to dive into the paradigms and the cultural, quote unquote, understandings we as a global culture have regarding the cause of tooth decay.

It's a fascination for me. What we find the main barrier is to each of us really grasping what the path to optimal oral health is, is both the lack of awareness as well as thinking we already know.

We find the biggest issue regarding each of us grasping the full story about how to navigate to optimal oral health is our thinking that we already know there's a German word called Einstein that really encapsulates this forming.

Einstein translates into having a block to learning something because we think we already know the answer. We can all relate to that idea.

As you know, our background is in the Chinese health arts. For the sake of explaining where we come from for anyone listening, we've been studying Tai Chi and other arts related to Tai Chi for the past 30 years.

There's a story from Asian folklore that I think really brings us home here. You may know this story. It's the idea of thinking we know something which blocks our ability to learn the story concerns a Buddhist scholar and a Zen master.

The scholar had an extensive background in Buddhist studies and was considered an expert in academic in the field. So he came to study with the master and after making the customary bows and asked he asked the master to teach him.

Then the scholar went on to talk about his extensive background and rambled on and on about everything he had studied and the master listened patiently and then began to make some tea.

When it was ready, the master poured the tea into the scholar's cup until it began to overflow and run all over the floor.

The scholar said, you know, flustered and saw what was happening and shouted, stop, stop, the cup is full. You can't get any more in there.

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