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Jonathan Levine:
Welcome to Think Oral.

Mariya Filipova:
Where we connect the unconnected between oral and physical health.

Jonathan Levine:
I’m your host, Dr. Jonathan Levine.

Mariya Filipova:
And I’m your host, Mariya Filipova.

Jonathan Levine:
Let’s get at it.

Mariya Filipova:
So here we are. Episode one of the Think Oral Health Podcast. Jonathan why are we here?

Jonathan Levine:
Well, Maria, I am so excited to do this with you. This really grew, the whole concept organically. We could go back to the first time we met, which was.

Mariya Filipova:
Oh, I remember.

Jonathan Levine:
About, right. seven, eight years ago.

Mariya Filipova:
Yes, but who’s counting?

Jonathan Levine:
Well, you lnow, we lost a couple of years there with Covid, but there we were at Exponential Medicine on the West Coast with Daniel Kraft and team and talking about health care innovations and that really, where we first met and started us off realizing that it’d be fun to probably work together and to keep talking about the different health care industries. And really, I always kind of talked about how oral care, oral health and dentistry is so separate from medicine.

Mariya Filipova:
Yeah. And I don’t know if I told you that, but I still remember we had a full day of speakers talking about the future of health and genomic sequencing and how the cost of the genome sequencing is going to come down to in the hundreds of dollars and it’s going to be accessible and 3D printing and artificial intelligence and quantum computing, and we’ve had a full day. It was one of those eight in the morning to eight in the evening days and literally walked into the bar, and I see this very animated gentleman who was talking about dentistry and how forget all that cool stuff we talked about today, let me tell you about dentistry. And so it stopped me in my tracks literally after a full day of exponential technologies. And at the time I was leading the exponential technologies practice as one of the consulting firms. And I was thinking, okay, so how are these exponential technologies impacting health care? Wait a minute. How about dentistry? So for me personally, that was my first aha moment of dentistry as a field. And then it started layers after layers of connections and obvious opportunities that we need to be cognizant of that somehow they were so obvious, yet nobody was really paying attention or doing much about it.

Jonathan Levine:
That’s exactly right. Just people weren’t paying attention. I think I was the only dentist and dental innovator at that meeting. But so interestingly, genomics, digital workflow scanning, CAD cam, very much so, a lot of the new research, of the connection of oral systemic medicine, of inflammation in the mouth and relationship to the rest of the body, this research is really taking the dental and oral health industry by storm as it is amplified today as a very important part of health care. And you know what they say the mouth doesn’t know that it’s connected to the rest of the body, as Mariano said in her book, Teeth. And, you know, it is connected quite magically.

Mariya Filipova:
And on so many levels, right? If you have untreated periodontal disease, you are over 20% more likely to have Alzheimer’s or develop Alzheimer’s. So it’s not only the chronic conditions around diabetes and risks of preterm labor, but it’s also cognitive decline and mental health. Really excited to explore those conversations with you and our upcoming guests here and to really bring it full circle, that conversation we started at the end of a long day at a conference we have kept up over the years. And what I have also discovered that the conversations you and I are having at the dinner table or at a sidebar, at a conference are also conversations others are having. And we thought what a better way to give voice to those questions and more importantly, to celebrate the initiatives and the work of the people who are actually doing something about this. So that’s to me at least that personally, I think why this is a great platform, this podcast is what we really want to bring to, to our listeners.

Jonathan Levine:
That’s right. You know, at the end of the day, we’re shedding a light on the connection of oral health and overall health. And as you pointed out, there are today 58 systemic inflammatory diseases that have a direct link from inflammation in the mouth. And we now know that the mouth seeds the gut, and we understand the gut-brain axis better than ever before. And it also is through the circulatory system in other areas, as you pointed out. So the focus of research and science and where we are today with comp science and genomics and how bioengineering and all of these disciplines are merging together and integrating, creating incredible inventions, we want to bring that to the listener. We want people to know about it, and we really want to connect the dots between the profession because there’s tremendous inefficiencies we always talk about.

Mariya Filipova:
Yeah, I’m very excited about the opportunity to connect the dots. And we started that conversation at a conference where the future was bright, shaped by exponential technologies. Over the years, I’ve also learned and gotten more involved in the realities of health care today and oral health today. And so when we think about health care. More often than not, we don’t think about oral health. That’s what we want to change. We want to say when you think about health, think about oral health as well. And when you think about the future of health care, don’t only think about the exponential technologies and the futuristic shape of the industry, but think about the disparities. We know that low income populations are hundreds of times more likely to have difficulty doing their job because of oral health conditions. We know that minorities are also more likely to be impacted by oral health disparities. And so this conversation is about doing something today and doing something that improves the overall health for folks in rural America, those that live in dental deserts and those who live in Manhattan who have the benefit of being your patients in your clinic. And that would be really important for me and for you, I know personally to get that message out.

Jonathan Levine:
That’s exactly right. And well stated, access to care, whether it’s overall health care, medical issues, access to care for oral health. One of the number one reasons that people are missing work is because they’re having pain from a toothache, just pain in their mouths. But when you go to these disadvantaged areas where these inequality, people think that walking around in pain is normal and unfortunately, a cavity that could have been taken care of becomes something that is life threatening. In our normal day practice, the dental office, it’s clearly becoming the tip of the spear potentially for health care because people go to the dentist more than they go to their physician and their health care professional. And because of our new technologies, salivary diagnostics being a new blood diagnosis, well, there’s excitement that dentistry and connecting to medicine could forecast problems with inflammation and different biomarkers that could get connected to their physicians and their cardiologists to get to potential cardiac events or inflammatory type diseases before it runs out of control. So this tip of the spear potentially as dentistry can foreshadow issues and really get more of a wellness focus for all of health care is very exciting.

Mariya Filipova:
So let me ask you this, Jonathan. Are we going to go easy on our guests here with that whole premise of building bridges, asking our audience to think oral health when they think about health, asking our audience to think about the patients in Manhattan as well as the patients in the dentist deserts. Are we going to go easy on our conversation partners?

Jonathan Levine:
No. We’re not going to go easy. We’re going to be challenging these amazing people, these thought leaders, these innovators, these educators, these CEOs of these organizations, all of the stakeholders of health care. And we are going to challenge them to say, how do we think differently? How do we put our collective minds together to make a much more efficient system? 20% of our GDP goes to health care. Things have to change. And that’s where you and I are so aligned on this, that change is in the air, change’s coming. And everybody knows that you need courage to change. And so we’re going to challenge the people a little bit and get everybody thinking about how do we improve the system and how do we improve the lives of people who don’t have access to care and also who do have access to care, who can impact the people around them.

Mariya Filipova:
That’s right. The stakes are too high and we can’t have easy conversations.

Jonathan Levine:
That’s right.

Mariya Filipova:
So these are going to be honest conversations and these are going to be actionable conversations because, as you said, a significant part of this is an industry, that’s significant part of our GDP. Oral health is going to be a $185 billion industry by 2025. And there’s a lot of work to be done for us to build bridges and connect dots and deliver health to everybody who needs it. And so with that in mind, I’m really excited. I can’t wait to get the conversation started. And with that in mind, why don’t you tell us about our first guest who is one of those change agents who is not only talking the talk but walking the walk and is somewhat of a non-conventional voice in the conversation about overall health and oral health?

Jonathan Levine:
Well, it’s kind of interesting because this person might be the last person you would think that would be talking about the power of the smile. But what binds this person to this conversation is he greatly believes that charity begins at home. And so when Lenny Kravitz asked me to bring my team and help bring some of our professionals down to his island that he grew up in Nassau, right outside Nassau, on Eleuthera, that people don’t have access to care. Well, I said, let’s go do it. And very organically we just started and six years later it has become very exciting. And so. We’ll be talking to Lenny Kravitz, the rock star and the public-facing persona but humble person who’s very focused on humanity and bringing people to more of an equality when it comes to their health and their oral health and, of course, their overall health.

Mariya Filipova:
And here we are, episode one of the Think Oral Health Podcast series. We are so excited to kick this off. We’re so excited to bring our listeners into the conversation with thought leaders, change agents and innovators in systemic oral health. I’m excited, Jonathan is excited, but don’t take our word for it. Take it from somebody who you most likely have heard of.

Jonathan Levine:
Yes, and we’re so excited to have our first guest. So we’ll be starting our Think Oral podcast with the rock star, with the humanitarian Lenny Kravitz.

Mariya Filipova:
And here we are literally at a pit stop on the way to a rock concert, taking a break and having a chat with a four-time Grammy Award-winning artist, an actor, an entrepreneur, a humanitarian who is a larger than life figure and not necessarily known as a dentist. So he will reveal that side of him to us today. Very, very privileged to be able to talk to Lenny Kravitz. He does not have much time before he needs to get back on that bus to his next gig. So let’s dive right into it.

Jonathan Levine:
Art of the smile. Lenny Kravitz. Thank you.

Lenny Kravitz:
….

Jonathan Levine:
Thank you for doing this for us. You are an amazing, creative multi-Grammy Award winner, multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, sold over 50 million albums. You’ve done so much. On top of that, you have an amazing design company. You produce and together you joined us. Let Love Rule and Glow Good foundation. And it kind of all started here, didn’t it?

Lenny Kravitz:
Well, first of all, I’m just trying to be a dentist, man. You know, I’m just.

Jonathan Levine:
That’s what we say.

Lenny Kravitz:
I just want to do what you do. But yeah, it did start here, right here at this Airstream trailer.

Mariya Filipova:
Lenny And I’m sure most people introduce you as myself included, actually introduce you as the rock star, the Grammy winner, the humanitarian. But not many have the privilege of knowing you as the dentist. And so we’ll keep that our little secret between us and our audience today. In all seriousness, though, what sparked your interest and passion for make a difference in oral health?

Lenny Kravitz:
What inspires me is the need. People are in desperate need of medical and dental care. You know, I have a lot of friends that I was just observing and I saw that they were in pain. They were having chronic issues that were probably leading to other major issues. And it really concerned me. And so this whole thing happened very organically. And I think it’s really beautiful when things just happen, when you follow the vibe, as I say, and Jonathan came down to visit me for a few days some years ago and the joke is that Jonathan is the dentist that wants to be a rock star and I’m the rock star that wants to be a dentist. So we like to talk shop. And I was telling Jonathan about these beautiful people that were in need of serious care, and I don’t think he really realized how severe it was. So we got in my jeep and we drove through the village and I stopped a bunch of people. I think we ended up seeing about 15 people that Jonathan examined and he saw how bad it was. And so this is how the whole mission with Let Love Rule and Glow Good started. And this is well before the thought of twice and creating oral health care products.

Mariya Filipova:
And this is so true all of us tend to forget or need a reminder every once in a while that health care is personal. It’s very local and it’s very, very personal. I had to learn that lesson myself as a patient. The 18 months that I spent as a patient fighting for my life and for my kidney, dealing with a rare oversized kidney tumor really taught me more about health care than the prior decade that I spent as an executive and an advisor. And so with that grounding of the personal impact on lives and communities, that health care has on people, let’s just make this very local and very, very personal. Lenny, I heard and Jonathan shared a story with me about a community member in Eleuthera who had unbearable pain. And unfortunately in the island, there are plumbers and there are teachers and their construction workers, but there are no dentists. And that person needed to resort to dealing with his pain in all kinds of other creative ways, including using black pepper and cork. So tell us about the impact your work has had in the community and tell us about Vardo.

Lenny Kravitz:
That was the original guy. I saw him in the morning. I was just watching him. He works with me and I just saw him doing doing things to his mouth and I said, what are you doing? And he said, oh man, I have this most incredible toothache. And there was a hole in his tooth and he was putting black pepper into his tooth to soothe the pain. And then he would take a matchbook cover, roll it up and use that to cork it. So that, so that was it. That guy whose name is Vardo, who’s a very good friend, and I’ve known for, you know, 30 some odd years. He was the initial inspiration. And then it got far worse from there. Believe me, it got, the things that Doc Levine was seeing, these were problems that needed to be handled many, many, many years ago, you know. And he put together the most amazing team. We decided on that occasion that we’re going to do something. He looked at me, I looked at him, what are we going to do? We talked about it and we got right into it. Next thing you know, we had a full blown mission going down there. Doc Levine put together an all star cast of doctors and dentists, oral surgeons, etcetera, folks making dentures on the spot. I mean, it was incredible. And we set up this thing that looked like something out of Mash, you know, just doctors in this one. Doing incredible work. And at the end of those days, they had given people their smiles back, given them their health back, their self esteem. And it was beautiful. It was beautiful. And I’m sure that, as doctor can tell you, we got back much more than was given.

Mariya Filipova:
Well said. And what a beautiful way to describe your work and the mission that you have and the rewarding experiences that your mission has delivered to you and your team. This sparks a thought in my mind that has to do with access and inequity and the disparities of access that we see, frankly, not only in Eleuthera or remote islands, but here in the US, next to affluent communities. And those disparities are equally stark and dire and yet most likely not very often seen in the light that they need to be. They’re not as present in our discourse when we talk about systemic health and when we talk about oral health. So perhaps, maybe I’d love to talk to you more about access and how the lives of folks who live in poverty or the lives of folks who are of diverse backgrounds and ethnic backgrounds have been impacted disproportionately in a negative way because of their lack of access to health care and oral health solutions. And to be very, very specific, we know that people living in poverty or over 100 times more likely to have difficulty doing their job because of oral health conditions. There are over 200 times more likely to have an oral pain than those in high income communities. And so the stories of Vardo and the stories of the people in Eleuthera are also the stories of our neighbors here in the US. And I couldn’t help myself but draw those parallels. And I invite you and Jonathan, I’m looking at you right now to share, does that resonate with you as well? And what do you think we could do here in the US having seen the impact of your work in Eleuthera?

Jonathan Levine:
You know, access to care is an interesting concept. We take it for granted because we’re able to go to the dentist, we learn about nutrition and we learn about oral hygiene, oral hygiene instructions when we go to the dentist as young people and we have that access. But when you don’t have it and when you think that you walk around in pain is normal, everything’s upside down. And Lenny is a deeply empathic person, he really is. And he wanted to help his people. And he said, you’ve got to come help my people. And we did. We went down there and then we started. But the fact of the matter is, you know, I first brought my team down. We have a team of about 27, 28 people that we came down in year one. By year seven, we had over 110 people down, all specialists, hygienists, admin ops people and Lenny’s right, it was like a Mash unit. But you know what’s amazing? Everybody’s working 13 hour days with the biggest smiles on their faces, the most highest energy. And I do a lot of things in the industry. Nothing makes me happier and gives me more of a feeling of depth of joy than watching my people work their tail off and getting so much out of it. And even more than the people that we really take them out of pain and for the first time they can smile with a beautiful smile and always taking pictures and selfies with our doctors. So we started it was it was just so organic year one, year two, year three. And it just it was like a beautiful song that Lenny is playing with the crescendo of every year after another, it got better and better and better. Now we’re looking to do something even more special to build something that is more stable with real equipment so that we can help more people. And for us, it’s very special. Lenny and my sons were all one big family. And when people are like minded and when we come together with a thought that not only we’re going to do well in life, but we’re going to do good, we’re going to help people and we can level the playing field of inequality and look to do more and more every year and hopefully to inspire people in the profession to do more of this, it will absolutely bring the joy. And as my partner in crime, Lenny Kravitz, would say, let love rule.

Mariya Filipova:
So incredibly grateful for so many of the insights that you have shared. And I promise you this, a lot of the insights you just touched on, we share and we actively work to advance. Wow. What an impressive and inspiring story and what a way to bring humanity into what we’re doing.

Jonathan Levine:
Lenny can surprise people, but we’re now really family. We spend a lot of time together. And who would have thought a prosthodontist, dental specialist working so closely with a rock star. But it works so well. And in fact, the story about the person who puts pepper in his tooth and Lenny tells me that story back at the practice to really give me that narrative of why these people need help and then going down there and seeing the problem and then bringing the team there. And now if you fast forward because of Covid, we missed three years and we just finished we just finished our sixth mission and we had two missions in a row, four days apiece. We brought down about 55 professionals for each session with support staff, technicians. And I must give a big kudos and thank you to our supporters, people who believe in what we’re doing, bringing access to care for people who are living in an area that unfortunately doesn’t have access to care. And there’s an inequality there. And we’re working very hard to raise that level of health. And now that we’re going into the schools with the public health team of Boston University, with Michelle Henshaw, and we’ve been going there now our sixth mission, we feel like we can make real change. We’re looking at all kinds of testing with salivary diagnostics and a-1c testing for diabetes. And you’re dealing with a patient population that with education and teaching and with a combined effort of medical and dental, we have nurse practitioners, we’re getting baseline medical dermatologists there. And the more the doctors and the dentists work together, you can see how you can change this population. So with these missions become a microcosm of what potentially could happen as the medical population, the medical, the physicians and the dental specialists and dental professionals work closely together, improve the communication, and develop technology so that we’re sharing this information very efficiently.

Mariya Filipova:
Yeah, that’s a great teaser. It’s such a rich conversation to pick up on in our next episode because I cannot wait first to hear about the meaningful and measurable impact that change in people’s lives that you’ve seen, even in the short amount of time of 4 to 8 days. But secondarily, the lessons you learn that are very transferable to some of those hard to reach areas and the communities who really need that care and not episodic care, not dental care, not health care, but integrated health. And so I am really excited to follow up on the first mission that post-pandemic, I should say that you and the team just came back from. And I can’t stress enough the importance of us as executives and as leaders being always grounded in the life of a patient and getting that visceral reaction and visceral grounding of why do we do what we do? The frustration and urgency that only a patient can feel with our system. That’s what I would love for us to stay in grounded in in all those episodes. And remember that as you shared and as Lenny shared in our last conversation, the people who went in on the mission got as much, if not more out of it than the local community who got bright new smiles and who got diagnostics and first class care. So it truly is feeling good and rewarding and recharging to be able to do that work.

Jonathan Levine:
Hey, Mariya, I couldn’t agree with you more about the why and what has come out of these missions. And I’m just coming back from our sixth mission, which we are going to have a group of the professionals and the people who are involved with that mission. I hear this consistent theme from everybody that we get more out of this than the people we’re helping, and we’re taking people out of pain and we’re giving them their smiles back. The before and afters are just incredible. But the why of why we do what we do and the profession we’ve chosen, there’s so much validation that comes out from the hugs and the love and the sincerity from the people that were helping, but really the like-minded people that come together to take time from their busy lives and to come help these people. And what ends up happening is you’re changed forever. This filling up your soul by not only doing well but also by doing good has just a wonderful, wonderful impact on us personally. And finding your way, as Simon Sinek would say, is exactly what happens, almost an unintended consequence, but it does happen to everybody who I think does this kind of work. And it’s really exciting to reflect on the feelings that we had. And I know my own team back at the practice. They are charged up for months and telling the stories to patients and to people of what just happened. And that’s exactly the beauty of this, that everybody has their circle of influence. They go back to their lives and the idea of helping each other and having that kind of serve mentality to help people, well, if everybody is thinking that way, our society is greatly improving. And so this is just a small example of how we can have these levels of impact, this resounding effect just by starting and everybody giving their own contribution. We’ll talk about it at the next episode. So until then, let’s connect the dots between oral health and health care, and let’s elevate the profession and elevate our mindset to look for solutions to the situation that we have in health care, which is to improve efficiency and effectiveness for people who don’t have access to care and for people who do.

Mariya Filipova:
And with that in mind, I invite our listeners to join us for our next episode, where we will be covering those types of questions and many more. So stay tuned. And in the meantime, keep smiling and keep connecting the dots in health.

Jonathan Levine:
Thanks for listening to the Think Oral podcast.

Mariya Filipova:
For the show notes and resources from today’s podcast.

Speaker3:
Visit us at www.OutcomesRocket.health/ThinkOral.

Mariya Filipova:
Or start a conversation with us on social media.

Jonathan Levine:
Until then, keep smiling.

Mariya Filipova:
And connecting care.

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