Oral Surgeon: Poor Oral Microbiome Can Secretly Destroy Your Health! (Dr. Kenny Brown)

Wellness + Wisdom Podcast

Josh Trent

Education, Self-improvement

4.8 • 913 Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2025

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Could fixing your oral health be the fastest way to extend your lifespan and boost your health?

Josh Trent welcomes Dr. Kenny Brown, Oral Surgeon and Founder of FENO, to the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast, episode 764, to reveal why most dental problems are preventable, how bacteria in your mouth can poison your body, trigger disease, and age you faster, and how to take care of your oral microbiome properly.

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In This Episode, Dr. Kenny Brown Uncovers:

[00:50] The Importance of Tongue Hygiene

Why the tongue can tell us a lot about our health and mineral deficiencies.
How bacteria accumulates on the tongue.
Why dentists often don't promote tongue scraping.

Resources:

[05:00] The Key to Good Oral Health

Why many people don't know how to brush their teeth.
How they used AI to design the FENO mouthpiece.
The mouth is the gateway to the entire body.

Resources:

[08:00] Most Dental Issues Are Preventable

Where the name "FENO" came from.
Why they're planning to start testing micronutrients through the brush.
How their goal is to scale oral health care.
Why people lose their teeth over something that's easily preventable.
How the mouth connects to the brain and the gut.
Why pregnant women can get gum issues, which can poison their body and the fetus.

[14:10] How to Choose The Right Toothbrush

Why our gums bleed when we start cleaning the bacteria out.
How we can strengthen the gums.
Why FENO makes our teeth feel as clean as when we get a professional cleaning.
How to choose the right toothbrush.
Why many people avoid investing in their health.

[19:35] Make Oral Care Easier

How the FENO brush does a lot of the work for us.
Why technology can help us stay accountable for our well-being and track our data.

Resources:

[23:20] Healthy Mouth = Healthy Body

Why milk teeth affect the health of adult teeth.
The connection between Alzheimer's and oral health.
Why inflammation is the root of many diseases.
How bad oral health impacts the quality of our lives.
Why certain medications can reduce or change the saliva.
How our systemic health also impacts our oral health.

[29:05] Mouth-Body Connection

How our saliva impacts digestion.
Why bacteria from the mouth can cause pneumonia.
How the oral microbiome can cause bloating and indigestion.
Why the world is finally understanding that everything in the body is connected.

[31:55] The Impact of Sugar on Teeth

How kissing can transfer bacteria.
Why babies can get cavities from their mothers.
How sugar causes more damage when it's sticky.
Why rinsing out our mouth after eating sugar is better than not doing anything.
How oil pulling requires consistency in order to work efficiently.

[34:05] What You Don't Know About Oral Health

Why brushing our teeth is the most important part of oral health.
How oral care doesn't have to be hard.
Why some people don't need to floss and brush as often.
How fluoride works, but has side effects.

[38:35] The Negative Impacts of Modern Dental Solutions

Why brushing our teeth every day can prevent most oral health issues.
How there's finally more awareness around dental health.
The negative impact of veneers.
How we can't clean veneers as well as our own teeth.
Why slow teeth whitening is less damaging.
How to whiten our teeth without damaging them.

[44:05] Understanding The Root Cause of Dental Issues

Why dentistry is both an art and a science.
How good dental care doesn't have a shortcut.
Why Dr. Kenny didn't learn in dental school that there's a proper brushing technique and that we should brush the gums too.
How stress causes teeth grinding.
Why cracked teeth can be an airway issue.
How snoring and TMJ are symptoms of an airway problem.
Why 50% of people are clenching their jaw.

[51:05] The Benefits of Xylitol

How brushing our teeth twice a day gives us a better chance to be healthy.
Why xylitol rinse helps with sinus infections.
What led Dr. Kenny to use xylitol in his products.
Why we need to focus on remineralizing our teeth.
The benefits of hydroxyapatite.

[56:20] The Power of a Smile

Why we need to pay attention to what's happening in our mouth.
How we can still have oral health problems even if we brush our teeth daily.
Why our smile creates a connection with others.
How oral issues make us smile less.

[01:01:05] God's Design

How nicotine pouches irritate gum tissues and cause loose teeth.
Why faith fuels Dr. Kenny's mission.
How he always felt the calling to be of service.

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All Resources From This Episode

Power Quotes From Dr. Kenny Brown

"People don't realize that the mouth is the gateway to the overall body. Our health journey actually starts with brushing our teeth because the bacteria and the toxins from the mouth can spread to the rest of the body." — Dr. Kenny Brown

"The tongue is a shag carpet. It is not a smooth table. It has crevices where all the food that we eat, the snot, the drainage, and the bacteria can tuck in, which creates the white layer on top of the tongue, and can become the source of bad breath. So cleaning the tongue on a routine basis is absolutely necessary." — Dr. Kenny Brown

"Veneers alter the microbiome of the mouth. It's more man made material that's going in your mouth. And it will never get clean the same way that you can clean your natural teeth. The edges of veneers is where cavities start to creep in so you actually need to take better care of them." — Dr. Kenny Brown

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About Dr. Kenny Brown

Oral Surgeon: Poor Oral Microbiome Can Secretly Destroy Your Health! (Dr. Kenny Brown) Dr. Kenny Brown is an Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon who has operated on everything from a loose baby tooth to a skull reconstruction following a bear attack.

He is now bridging the gap between oral health and overall health as the co-founder and CEO of Feno.

In addition to his clinical background, Dr. Brown has strived to create impact beyond the operating room with his work in business development for two medical devices (sold) and opening multiple sustainable community clinics in South Los Angeles.

Prior to this, Dr. Brown completed his undergraduate education at Stanford University, where he also played basketball and published research in regenerative medicine.

During his dental education, he also served on the technology transfer committee, bringing innovation from the lab to the commercial market for Texas A&M.

Transcript

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0:00.0	So a lot of times for hospital patients, when they don't have proper oral care, they can get pneumonia. They're coming in and they're losing teeth for something that's preventable. It's like, wait, why are you here? People don't really realize that their mouth is the gateway to their overall body. Dr. Kenny Brown is an oral surgeon and co-founder and CEO of phenoural care. There's the Band-Aid approach to not just oral care, but to the body. Yes. Our health journey actually starts with brushing our teeth. The mouth has tons of blood vessels. It's like a sponge, right? But it's also like a sponge for bacteria as well. Yeah. So the bacteria and the toxins can definitely go in and then spread to the rest of the body. The mouth is constantly overlooked.
0:38.1	What if you had an easy step to just make sure that at least that part was taken care of?
0:41.9	In the future, you'll be able to know the microbiome status of the mouth through the device.
0:49.7	What is the hidden mystery or secrets about tongue health and the way our tongue shows up that most doctors and dentists don't ever know?
0:58.9	Right. And it has been done for hundreds of years, right? Chinese medicine, one of the first things that they'll do is say, stick out your tongue, right? And so they can see what's going on.
1:07.9	But the tongue actually has a lot of signs and signals about what's going on,
1:12.9	all the way from like leukemia, right, from cancer to, you know, just irritation, right? Is it a
1:19.6	toothpaste you're using burning you? Is it not really helping you, right? And so it can show up in a lot of different ways, which is why, you know, as we were thinking about the company that we're building, it's like, hey, we need to capture the tongue. And not only that, but work with providers and institutions who value the tongue and the data that it shows you. Yeah. So Singapore Health is like one of them that's like the largest repository of tongue data, believe it or not in Singapore. I don't know there was such a thing. Yeah. Because they're constantly looking at it and then they're tying it. Basically the thing of it this way, like, okay, what does a tongue look like for someone who's pregnant? What does a tongue look like for someone who maybe is malnourished, malnourished in a certain, you know, certain minerals or certain vitamins. And how does that show up, right?
2:01.3	We have different patterns on our tongue, believe it or not, whether we call it geographic tongue.
2:06.4	So certain areas of the tongue will look raised and inflame. The taste buds or the patella on the
2:13.4	tongue could be smooth and red or, you know what I mean? So there's a lot of different things that the tongue can show you. What if somebody's tongue is white? Like when I got the kit from Fino, it's amazing. Did such a good job, by the way. Thank you. It's actually toothpaste that doesn't suck. It's toothpaste. I think it's xylitol-based toothpaste. Which is a whole other benefits we can go into rather than just like fluoride-based kind of talcum powder tasting toothpaste. Yeah, and, and, uh, uh, uh, uh, grit, basically.
2:18.1	And, whole other benefits we can go into rather than just like fluoride-based kind of talcum powder tasting
2:34.6	toothpaste. Yeah. And in grit basically. Like eating chalk. Yeah. But I noticed I do it first thing in the
2:41.6	morning per recommendations. And when I scrape it, there is this, it almost looks like, sorry to gross you
2:47.3	all out, like snot and like crud and skin. And if I were to not do that in the morning, I would essentially just be eating and passing that bacteria into my physiology. Yeah. So thinking about it. So the tongue is a shag carpet. It is not a smooth table. It's a shag carpet. Yeah. So we have crevices in there, right? and that all the food that we eat, the snot, the drainage, the bacteria, it can tuck into those crevices. And so what you see over time is that white layer on top of the tongue. And that is a lot of the source of bad breath. We get a lot of fungal infections. There's a condition which you guys can Google or chat. It's called hairy tongue.
3:23.7	Hairy tongue. Prepare yourself when you look for it. Okay. Look at the images. But yeah, but like basically the tongue can serve as like a bed of growth of all the things that we don't, we want to avoid. So cleaning it on a routine basis is absolutely necessary. And most people don't do it, right? Yeah. Why is this something that's not, or is it taught in traditional dentistry school?
3:41.4	Um, routine basis is absolutely necessary. And most people don't do it, right? Why is this something that's not, or is it taught in traditional dentistry school? It's taught. It's just not what we,
3:47.9	what has happened is we've, you know, education is lost. It's like so much bombarding
3:52.8	when it comes to like the, when someone's talking to you the dentist is talking to in the
3:57.5	chair they're just kind of scolding you and and I think what we're missing in general in
4:01.8	healthcare is like I think that as providers we need to meet patients where they're at where
4:06.7	are you where do you show up for so long we've been so what does the book tell us what does the
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