Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: My name is Ben Greenfield and on this episode of the Boundless Life podcast.

Kenny Brown [00:00:05]: So we're familiar with Apple Watch, we're familiar with Oura rings, right? Think about an Oura ring for your mouth, right? One that's telling you about your teeth, your gums, your tongue and your soft tissue. You'll be amazed about the information that we can tell you from just your tongue, right? Like in the thousands of years of Eastern medicine that talks about the tongue and what it's telling you about your. The way you eat and your deficiencies. Things that we could tell you hopefully proactively about your teeth. Hey, there's something that could be going on here. We might want to get it checked. So instead of that treatment costing you $700, maybe it cost you $100, right?

Ben Greenfield [00:00:40]: Welcome to the Boundless Life with me.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:42]: Your host, Ben Greenfield.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:44]: I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist and nutritionist. And I'm passionate about helping you discover.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:50]: Unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity and beyond.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:00]: Well. I recently discovered probably one of the coolest, most time efficient oral care products that I've ever come across. Because I don't know about you if you're listening, but it is a pain in the butt when I go to the dentist and they hand me like my goody bag with water pick and an electric toothbrush and three different styles of floss and the congratulatory sticker on having my teeth cleaned. And it seems like you could spend your entire life just with some form of oral care product in your mouth following your dentist's instructions. So I had heard through the grapevine from a few different entrepreneurs and people in the health tech space about this new thing. I don't know if you call it a brush. I guess you call it a smart brush. You put it in your mouth and you just turn it on for 20 seconds and it does everything.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:51]: At least I think it does everything. My podcast guest today is going to be able to fill me in on it more, but I wanted to take a deep dive into oral health in general and this whole idea of integrating AI powered technology into teeth cleaning. Dr. Kenny Brown is my guest. He's the co founder and CEO of Feno F E N O. I think Tim Ferriss made a splash in the podcasting industry when he and Kevin Rose were making dirty jokes about something vibrating in their mouth on their podcast. So it's got to hit the streets now. So I'm not the first to get the secret out about this thing that seems to be catching on pretty big time in the health industry, Kenny.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:29]: But it's a cool idea. And you're a doctor and I'm assuming you're not a doctor of marketing and tech. Are you actually a dentist? Yeah.

Kenny Brown [00:02:38]: So I am a practicing oral maxillofacial surgeon. So it's a specialty in dentistry where we have the opportunity to obviously do anything as simple as taking out wisdom teeth or taking out a tooth all the way to reconstruction, like facial reconstruction following major trauma. So gunshot wounds, car accidents, baseball bats to the face. That's sort of my realm.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:02]: Oh, geez. Wow.

Kenny Brown [00:03:04]: Yeah.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:04]: So how'd you get into whole the technology sector with the brush?

Kenny Brown [00:03:09]: Yeah. So one of my biggest missions, and my personal mission has been to like scale care. Right. And how you scale care, meaning like how do you get great care to more people? And it's not just about, you know, the delivering the care, but it's also like what comes with that? What does care really mean? It's like taking you for wherever you're at in your journey and helping you along the way, listening to you. Right. Providing you the best solutions to help you a part of your journey. And had the opportunity to meet some great mentors in college who were scaling care through devices. Right.

Kenny Brown [00:03:47]: And so that's when it kind of like game for me as far as like the technology side, what this means to build a company that can actually do some great in the world.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:56]: In your industry. Because it sounds like you're kind of on the cutting edge of stuff. Have you ever heard of. Cause I've done a few podcasts on this. So I'm curious, have you ever heard of bioesthetic dentistry?

Kenny Brown [00:04:08]: Bioesthetic dentistry? Yes. I think it has a few names. Well, people will try to categorize it in a few different ways.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:15]: Yeah. I interviewed Dr. Eniko Loud a couple of times from Phoenix and I did some work with her and she did like cone scans and X rays and all sorts of digital analysis of the mouth. And then she uses these different mouth guards that kind of get tweaked over the course of a year or even two years to change the whole structure of the mouth and then she does the aesthetic work after that. So it's almost like biomechanical adjustments meet aesthetic work. And my understanding of it is that when you do that, you, when you precurse the aesthetic work with adjusting the actual jaw and bite first, you reduce the likelihood that those brand spanking, pretty new teeth that you got are going to get ground down something like five or 10 years while also addressing things like sleep apnea, et cetera. I think that's kind of the way the bio aesthetic goes.

Kenny Brown [00:05:07]: Yeah. And I think it's just. It's been sort of packaged in that way. But when we think about the mouth, when we think about oral health. Right. Like, it is function first, it is health first. Right. I think we've been conditioned through marketing and, you know, a lot of media about white straight teeth is the way to go.

Kenny Brown [00:05:23]: Right. But the mouth is so much more than about white straight teeth. And for example, if your bite is off just a half a millimeter. A half a millimeter, like barely decisable, but with the eye, you will chip off your veneers or chip off your crowns nonstop, or you might have TMJ issues, or you might not be able to chew your food appropriately, therefore digestion. Right. Like to. It kind of. It's like a cascading domino effect.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:52]: Yeah. And I think she uses lumineers. Is that right? It's different than veneers, isn't it?

Kenny Brown [00:05:59]: Yeah. So there's like a spectrum of these aesthetic sort of restorations we call them. And they all just had different approaches whether how much tooth is actually being ground down, what the material is made of, and basically the technique associated with it.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:15]: Okay, got it. I'm super self conscious, by the way, for anybody watching the video. And by the way, the show notes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Fenopodcast. FENOpodcast because I had a bunch of coconut flakes in my smoothie and I came rushing into the podcast and didn't even brush my teeth. So I'm literally spitting out coconut flakes and digging them out of my teeth while I'm talking to a dentist. This is great. It's horrible advertising. So the Feno. What's that mean?

Kenny Brown [00:06:42]: Yeah, so Feno is actually derived from Fenotype. When, when we were going through this process, we, you know, it's. It's like a. And we have an amazing team. Right. So we have an amazing team of specialists. And as we're going through the process of engineers and designers as women, like, wow, how different everybody's mouth is. Right.

Kenny Brown [00:07:01]: And. And that's. And that's one of the big reasons why Feno or the smart brush is more effective is because we take into account that your mouth is going to be different than even your sibling's mouth. Right. Because of the. The structure, the teeth size, where your gums are at. And it was just a kind of a mind boggling thing for the, for the team. It's like, oh, that's kind of an expression of your genes.

Kenny Brown [00:07:23]: That's where they're a Fenotype. And then, and then we, you know, like, oh, that's an interesting, catchy name. So that's where you came up with Feno.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:29]: Yeah. And so were you involved with the actual design of the brush itself?

Kenny Brown [00:07:33]: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So my co founder.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:36]: Yeah.

Kenny Brown [00:07:36]: So my co founder and I Hamett Watt, who runs Venture Studio. We really got.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:43]: I'm going to stop you. Did you just say Hamet Watt?

Kenny Brown [00:07:46]: Yes.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:46]: Okay. Because I met Hamet, like two months ago, and for the past two months I've been calling him Hamet and he hasn't corrected me. H A M E T. All right, so it's Hamet. Good to know. Sorry, Hamet. Yeah.

Kenny Brown [00:08:01]: So Hamet and I really got on this journey together. Right. So he was super interested in, like, he read an article about how the plaques in the mouth were going to the brain. Right. And I was coming to the ass of like, oh, I live that. Right. I'm in the hospital when a toothache becomes a brain abscess, when gum inflammation leads to a cardiac event, or plaque on the tooth leads to preterm labor. I learned that I'm in the hospital seeing those things.

Kenny Brown [00:08:29]: Right. And so with. We were sort of combined forces and just had this vision of bringing, like, radical innovation into the oral care space. And that's how Feno sort of started. But, you know, it took a whole team of experts to be able to design a brush like this. Because we're not only considering the way it looks. We want to consider the weight of it and how it's in your hand. We want to consider the angle of the bristles and how those affect your.

Kenny Brown [00:08:56]: How those touch your teeth, how those touch your gum lines. There's a huge clinical aspect, the movement. We hired a. We got a physicist to help us with the sweep of the actual nylon bristles to make sure that it was sweeping enough to be able to remove plaque. Right. Because anything you ever seen on a full mouth brush, you know, there's some people who have seen these things before and they're out there, but they're just not effective. It's like putting your mouth. You put like you're putting your phone in your mouth and just letting it buzz.

Kenny Brown [00:09:21]: It's like it doesn't do anything. Right. So we were super, we were super diving super deep into the science and everything we could to make this the most efficacious product ever created.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:33]: Yeah. And I've taken a deep dive into oral care for the past two years, and I've started doing a much better job. Coconut oil pulling. I even use, like, ozonated oil in the morning. Flossing, tongue scraping. I do that now. And the first time I used a Feno, there was tons of crap all over the brush. I was like, oh, what the heck? Like, I thought I'd been brushing.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:54]: Well, just, it was almost like, I don't know, when you deep clean your car and a whole bunch of crap comes out from underneath the carpet and the rugs and the panels, you're like, oh, my gosh. Yeah, I had no clue all this was in my teeth. It was kind of reminiscent when I hear some health freaks say you got 40 pounds of impacted fecal matter in your colon. Right. I don't necessarily think is true, but it was kind of that feeling like, oh, my gosh, I just purged my mouth. By the way, I don't want to gloss over something you said. It makes sense. I think a lot of people have heard about the link between oral health and Alzheimer's risk or brain health, oral health and cardiovascular risk.

Ben Greenfield [00:10:33]: You just said something like plaque in the tooth correlated to preterm labor.

Kenny Brown [00:10:37]: Oh, yeah. I mean, look, you. You're. You're very familiar.

Kenny Brown [00:10:41]: You live in this ecosystem of what inflammation does to our body. Right. And think about the gums as sort of the vitality of your mouth. Right. That's where all the blood supply is. And when you have plaque that sits in your gums that creates inflammation, it's essentially a chronic wound that's just constantly pouring bacteria into your bloodstream. Right. And you heard of this concept called inflammaging, right.

Kenny Brown [00:11:09]: Where it's at the. Basically, yeah.

Kenny Brown [00:11:11]: Basically just cycles. There's actually no valves from your mouth to your brain. So the bacteria just flows right up there. Right. But it also flows to the rest of our body, including, you know, the uterus. Right. And so that inflammation has been shown to affect low birth or to result in low birth weight and preterm labor for pregnant women. So, you know, it's very important that for our pregnant women out there to be able to get dental care and be very proactive about getting their cleans, because it is just.

Kenny Brown [00:11:47]: It could be traumatic. Yeah.

Ben Greenfield [00:11:49]: Geez. Brush your teeth, moms to be. Holy cow. Yeah. So, you know, we've kind of touched on it and alluded to it a few times. This Feno smart brush. But I want to dive into what it actually is. How do you describe the Feno to people?

Kenny Brown [00:12:02]: Yeah, so I say it's a, it's a full mouth toothbrush. We call it the first, the world's first fully connected smart brush. And so on the functional sides, we really address a few things. Time and technique. You sort of alluded to this like, man, I thought I was doing a great job and like more stuff is coming out. Right. But in reality, there's like a huge technique. It's technique sensitive.

Kenny Brown [00:12:23]: Right. You need to have that. Right. You need to have the right, the motion, the right pressure or right angle to be able to remove the plaque effectively each and every time. Right. But sometimes we're brushing our teeth, we're tired, we're trying to do it really fast. We're just trying to like freshen up. You mean we just miss spots.

Kenny Brown [00:12:39]: We're human. And so what we've been able to do with the smart brush is we've been able to build the technique into the brush. So the brush head that you see is actually built using a generative algorithm that optimizes for bristle contact on your tooth surfaces and your gum line. So we don't rely on you to make sure that you have the right angle every time, the right, the right pressure every time, the right motion every time. Right. It's done for you.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:04]: Right. Because when you hear about using a toothbrush properly. Actually, I think this was when I did an interview down at Dr. Loud's clinic. They were talking about holding it vertically when you do the middle part and then kind of a different angle as you come in towards the back molars. This, you just stick it in your mouth and you kind of like turn it in circles and it just does everything at the right angles.

Kenny Brown [00:13:24]: Yep. And if you remember, the actual brushing action of it is more translational. So that when you're doing this and the brush is moving in the translational side to side for those who aren't really able to see this, but more in a side to side angle where we were able to capture all those techniques, all those angles, just in those 20 seconds, by the way that the brush is designed and you doing just these small gentle circles.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:49]: So how big of a circle are you supposed to draw with it? Because obviously you don't just stand there and hold it in your mouth or grip it with your teeth. It's kind of like a. I kind of hold it lightly and turn it in circles clockwise. And honestly, even though you're supposed to turn on for 20 seconds. I do a second round, do another 20 seconds, just turn in the other direction. Just kind of intuitively. But what's the actual proper way in which you're supposed to turn it in circles and hold it in your mouth?

Kenny Brown [00:14:16]: So, yeah, you're actually doing it beautifully. That's actually perfect. And it's why you're seeing the results that you are. And when we think about the technique that's involved. So typically it takes somewhere about three to five times using the device to be like, ah, the light bulb really goes off. Because we all have this one spot that we want to pay attention to where food just kind of keeps getting stuck in a certain area. Well, that's part of Dr. Loud's work.

Kenny Brown [00:14:41]: And people in that field, they're trying to avoid those things because they don't want focuses of like packed food in areas because that causes problems for you. But people have that right. Or they have one area where the gums are a little more sensitive or they have an extra tooth or something like that. And so that circle is really meant to just make sure that everything is covered. If I were to give it a size, I would say probably the size of a tennis ball, right? Maybe. Maybe between a ping pong ball and a tennis ball. Like just a general size of a circle.

Ben Greenfield [00:15:11]: As far as the diameter of the circle that you're pulling with your hand.

Kenny Brown [00:15:14]: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And that should cover everything because. Oh, also remember, the mouthpiece is sized for you. Right. So it's not one size fits all. So when you go through our Feno fit kit, which is through an app, we actually map your mouth, run it through the algorithm, and then we were able to give you the size that's most appropriate.

Ben Greenfield [00:15:36]: Oh, I didn't realize that's what the app was doing. That's interesting. So it's not just like small head, medium head, large head, you actually. Oh, wow. Interesting.

Kenny Brown [00:15:47]: It's not fully custom. It's not fully custom yet. We need some manufacturing innovations to help us with that. But it's much more complicated as it relates to width of your arch, depth of your arch, and the overall kind of like if we could call it the diff the curve and how that curve looks right with V shaped or U shaped or more boxy, we account for all of those things.

Ben Greenfield [00:16:10]: Okay, so. So is it because I've had a few of my house guests who have seen me tooling around the house after dinner because I'm that gross guy who brushes my teeth while my guests are still around, ask me, is that thing like brushing, is it flossing? Is it doing the equivalent of a water pick? Can it count for all three, or do you still need to have some floss or do the water pick that the dentist is always getting on my ass to do that I just absolutely am too lazy to do?

Kenny Brown [00:16:35]: Well, this version will only address the brushing. It completely replace your brushing. Flossing is something that we're working on. One interesting thing when it comes to oral care is we've got to think about the products that we're using and how they're working. What are they doing for us? Historically, toothpaste has just been like abrasive flavor and soap. Okay. And it's like, okay, is that helping us anyway? And it's more of like a psychological thing, right? Where it's like, okay, hey, this is not really extracting bacteria or mouth rinses just filled with alcohol. So just blasting everything and desiccating and dehydrating your tissues and blasting your biofilm away.

Kenny Brown [00:17:19]: It's like, whoa. Like, that doesn't help either. Right? So the idea is that we want to bring innovation to every step of the process and be able to replace things like flossing. But today on this version, this will only replace your brushing. We still advocate to do flossing until we come out with our next product.

Ben Greenfield [00:17:36]: Okay, good to know. Even though, to me, it seems to take a lot of the stuff out of my teeth. Like, if I eat a steak or pork chop and I floss, it obviously gets the stuff out of there. But when I use the Feno, it seems to dislodge a lot of the stuff that normal brushing doesn't dislodge. But it's good to know that I should still floss because I want to be.

Kenny Brown [00:17:53]: Well, yeah, and that's designed. It's designed that way. Right? Because when we put those bristles, we need those bristles to get in kind of like in the. Where the two teeth meet. And that's how we're able to dislodge a lot of that stuff.

Ben Greenfield [00:18:05]: Okay, have you guys done any studies, either internal or independent, comparing it to a regular toothbrush?

Kenny Brown [00:18:11]: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that's. That's how we. That's how we validate anything. Right. So we did.

Kenny Brown [00:18:17]: We internally, we did this comparing to someone's normal routine, whatever they normally do, whether that's manual or electric, compared to a Feno. And what we saw was just consistently better cleaning and plaque removal with the Feno device. Because no matter if you use a manual brush, if you use an electric brush, there's a spectrum of the skill set as relates to brushing. Right. With a Feno, it completely neutralizes that. And like, look, now everyone's a great brusher. Right? Oh, and not to mention, it's a fraction of the time. Two minutes versus 20.

Ben Greenfield [00:18:52]: That's what I was going to ask you for. The studies were people brushing for 20 seconds and then using the Fenol for 20 seconds, or people brushing for more like a standard two minutes and using the Feno for 20 seconds.

Kenny Brown [00:19:01]: No, we. We wanted it to be what the optimal brushing cycle is. So we did it two minutes versus 20 seconds. And our primary measure was actually plaque removal. So the time was a complete bonus. Right. That was like. That was just a complete bonus.

Kenny Brown [00:19:15]: But we wanted it to be plaque studies. Hard scientific data as it relates to how traditional oral hygiene has been measured and studied. That's how we get it strictly up the plaque removal.

Ben Greenfield [00:19:26]: Okay, got it. And I assume as far as frequency of use, besides, if you're rushing post smoothies to go do a podcast, that this would be used for 20 seconds, the same as you'd use a normal toothbrush, like, ideally, like three times a day after a meal for 20 seconds.

Kenny Brown [00:19:40]: Yep. Yeah, really, like the recommendation in general is about twice a day. Um, if people wanna brush three times a day, that's perfectly fine. Um, the other thing that's cool about it is that, like you said, like, you like to do two cycles. Some people like to do two cycles. We have a time to be able to adjust it. Like, you can adjust the time on it. Um, you can adjust the, the speed of it.

Kenny Brown [00:20:00]: Right. So if you like, I. This is a little bit much for me. I want to slow it down because my gums are more sensitive or whatever the situation might be. We could slow it down now that will mean that we have more time, but we, we always try to keep it within the realm of efficacy. So we won't let you go so fast that you're going to destroy your gums and won't let you go so slow that you're not even removing plaque.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:21]: Why did my gums kind of like bleed? The first few times I used it, it kind of freaked me out. But then Hammett Hamet told me it was. It was normal.

Kenny Brown [00:20:32]: Yeah, it's normal. So it's like, it's like almost if you're flossing for the first time that your gums kind of bleed, it just hasn't been addressed. And when that. It's touching areas that haven't really been touched before. And so it's really trying to, like, get that out. And the inflammation causes that bleeding. Right. So when we have a site of inflammation, it's much easier to bleed.

Kenny Brown [00:20:52]: It's tender, painful even in some situations. And when you're kind of brushing it and cleaning it, now we get rid of that inflammation, and now you don't have that situation anymore.

Ben Greenfield [00:21:02]: Okay. Now it comes with this case, and the case kind of doubles as the charger, and I stick it in the case. But I always wonder, when I put it in there, should I be rinsing the brush head? Does the case automatically clean it, or what's the best way to actually take care of the brush head itself?

Kenny Brown [00:21:18]: Yeah, great question. Just rinse it. And then it's designed for that case to go in there. It charges. And what that case is designed to do is to dry it. We don't want wet nylon. We don't want that wet mouthpiece to sit there. That's how we grow bacteria.

Kenny Brown [00:21:34]: So by that drying mechanism, it allows you to now have a much a cleaner mouthpiece. Right. So that doesn't. It's filled with bacteria and junk. Right. And also it's protected from the. From the matters of the bathroom. Like when you flush your toilet.

Kenny Brown [00:21:48]: Right.

Ben Greenfield [00:21:48]: Like, yeah, it is kind of nice. It's in its own little cave. But is it from an engineering standpoint, is that like an air intake valve that's then causing airflow through the interior of the charging device?

Kenny Brown [00:21:58]: Yep. So, like, it just pulls it all the way through. Right. So it kind of comes in and then goes out to dry it.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:04]: Okay. All right, got it. And then you have like a portable charger too, right? Yes.

Kenny Brown [00:22:08]: And then we have a charger that mimics, you know, sort of like an Apple Watch magnetic charger.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:14]: That makes sense.

Kenny Brown [00:22:15]: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that. And that. Now that also allows the mouthpiece to dry, because usually it exposed to the air. It's just not as maybe compact or design, you know, like as the. As the case that you've also experienced.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:29]: Okay. When I flip on the brush, there's a dashboard. There's an interface on it, and near where you hold it in your hand, and you can scan that. You can download the app, and there's some kind of a smart scan feature that's built into the brush. You can explain how that works.

Kenny Brown [00:22:46]: Yeah. So, okay, so like, we talked about the functional part, and now we're just brushing your teeth. Where we really thought we really packed in a ton of innovation was in the Embedded scanner. The embedded scanner is meant to address two things, access and awareness of oral health. So now you have a scanner that's able to give you insights into what's happening in your mouth. So we're familiar with Apple Watch, we're familiar with Oura rings, right? Think about a Oura ring for your mouth, right? One that's telling you about your teeth, your gums, your tongue and your soft tissue. You'll be amazed about the information that we can tell you from your, just your tongue, right? Like in the thousands of years of, of, of Eastern medicine that talks about the tongue and like what it's telling you about your, the way you eat and your, your deficiencies. Things that we could tell you hopefully proactively about your teeth.

Kenny Brown [00:23:34]: Hey, there's something that could be going on here. We might want to get it checked. So instead of that thing costing you $700, that treatment costing you $700 maybe cost you $100, right? So we want to be proactive about that. So we want the ones to be giving you feedback, give you information, give you control over your oral health.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:52]: Now how's it scanning? Is it like a camera?

Kenny Brown [00:23:56]: Camera technology. And we, and we use computer vision. So we actually built it, we're building a computer vision model which is basically AI image analysis. And then we're able to break all that down and send you a report. So it's, you know, it's like a digital exam right now. It's not X ray, so we're not having any, you know, radiation and nor can we replace the X ray at this moment. But what this will give you is insights onto like, what's going on to your mouth enough for you to take action and then improving your oral health.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:27]: Yeah, I thought about this and I'm sure a lot of my tinfoil hat wearing listeners will be wondering about this as well. Obviously for it to scan and send you the data, there has to be some kind of frequency within the toothbrush. And you know, a lot of people these days are aware of mitigating exposure to WI Fi, electromagnetic frequencies, especially stuff up near the, you know, near the brain or the neural tissue. Have you guys addressed that? Have you done like, you know, EMF scans of the brush or seen what kind of radiation it's actually putting out?

Kenny Brown [00:25:01]: Yeah, absolutely. So we have to follow FCC compliance when it comes to those that are, that are coming out. You know, any, any signals that are coming out. It does have Bluetooth, it does have WI fi, so it's not completely inert of that but it is protected and contained so that it does not cause any damage to you. The other thing to consider is that, you know, you're only using it for 20 seconds when you.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:24]: Or if you. That's what I was going to ask you. Like, you're only getting that exposure 20 seconds when the brush is on for, say, three times a day.

Kenny Brown [00:25:30]: Correct. And it's not even sending all the time that you're brushing. So it's like you're only 20 seconds. And then even if you were doing a scan, it sends it and it's not even in your mouth at that time. Right. So we really are thoughtful about mitigating that, and we'll continue to do so as we develop new versions.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:51]: Now, another skeptical question, man. Because we didn't talk about the toothpaste. And the first time I put the toothpaste on, I'm like, those bastards. This foams. Because, you know, everybody now who goes to the environment, the working group website, or pays attention to personal care products, cleanliness is aware of. I believe it's called sodium lauryl sulfate sls, a very popular foaming agent that can have some toxic potential, I believe, a little bit of carcinogenicity with repeated exposure. And so I was wondering if you guys are using sodium lauryl sulfate. I think Hamet said that you weren't.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:29]: But tell me about the. The toothpaste, how you get it to foam and if you guys pay attention to the actual quality of the toothpaste itself. Yeah.

Kenny Brown [00:26:36]: So toothpaste is a big factor for us. Right. One, we don't use sodium. Sodium lauryl sulfate or really any dyes. Right. To just avoid any of that junk. Right. There's no reason to have that.

Kenny Brown [00:26:48]: Right. Like, you know, a blue stripe or, you know, like, there's really no reason to have that. So we're not trying to do any of that. But toothpaste is a big thing. Right. This is a big factor for me because I'm like, what is our toothpaste really doing? And how do we get it to be more effective for us? So we're actually working on a new proprietary blend of a toothpaste that works better for us when it comes to plaque removal and plaque prevention of plaque adherence to our teeth. So this is actually something we dive really deep into and we care deeply about because it is much easier to use this foam toothpaste on our device versus a traditional paste that gets really messy that clogs it up.

Ben Greenfield [00:27:30]: Yeah, regular toothpaste doesn't work very well. I tried that yeah, yeah.

Kenny Brown [00:27:33]: So you waste a ton of it. So we're very thoughtful about, hey, we really need to make this toothpaste as great as we possibly can, as clean as we possibly can, because we want everyone to be able to use this because it's the best way to use it with the device. So as much innovation and energy that we put into the device and all those cool things, we're doing the same thing with the toothpaste because it matters.

Ben Greenfield [00:27:55]: Yeah. Kenny, what do you think about, when it comes to toothpaste, the seeming increase, at least in the health world, in alternatives to fluoride for particularly mineralization, like one ingredient, hydroxyapatite. I've seen that going around a lot. What do you think about hydroxyapatite versus fluoride?

Kenny Brown [00:28:13]: Yeah, I actually like hydroxyapatite. We use, we use one called xylitol, which is same thing, remineralization plant based sweetener that's been shown to have remineralization properties. So look, I think that, I think fluoride has, has worked over the course of time. It has proven itself time and time again to be effective when it comes to remineralization. Well, but I don't necessarily think that it's the only one that can do that. Right. And so if it's, if you, if it makes you uncomfortable, you know, I think that the hydroxyapatite, the nano hydroxyapatite, which is also really exciting because it's even smaller, so it penetrates even better and things like xylitol are really exciting developments in this space so that everyone can benefit from remineralization. Right.

Kenny Brown [00:28:56]: I think that, you know, we, we are now thinking about not just treating the defect, but how do we prevent or how do we heal regenerative, how do we get on that regenerative side of health as opposed to just reactive and, you know, less. Oh, you address it when it's too late. Right. How do we, how do we get ahead of it? So look, I think I'm not downing fluoride. I think fluoride works. I think it's, I think it's helpful. But I also think these other alternatives are also helpful and they're also showing some really exciting results.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:26]: Yeah, well, I'm sure Now with the RFK's whole MAHA thing, we're going to see a lot more people talking about fluoride and many other hot topics. How often do you need to change the actual brush head on Feno?

Kenny Brown [00:29:37]: Yeah, we'll recommend three months, you know, but obviously that depends on how People are biting into their bristles, what speed they're using it. And so, you know, I think there will be people who will go four months, five months. What you really want to pay attention to, and this goes for any toothbrush, what you really want to pay attention to is the integrity of the bristles. Is the integrity of the bristles the same? Is it. Are they, you know, sticking straight up or, you know, straight out without any fraying? Once we start to get that fray or that splay on the end of it, it's. It's losing its effectiveness on removing that plaque. Right. So that's, that's what we want to pay attention to.

Kenny Brown [00:30:14]: And that's going to be the biggest point. So we recommend three months because we start to see some of that fraying at that moment. But, you know, there are people, for whatever reasons, they don't. Maybe they use it once a day or so, you know, here, there, and so they don't have that fray quite as fast, or maybe they're using it on a much more slower speed. But that's really what I want people to pay attention to is that fray.

Ben Greenfield [00:30:40]: Yeah, I've actually. So I was using the Feno three times a day. Now I'm using it twice a day because this company, Biolite, sent me an infrared electric toothbrush that produces these infrared and blue light frequencies that apparently assist with biome health. For me, as a podcaster and kind of like immersive journalists, I'm constantly experimenting with things, but every three months still isn't too bad for a brush head replacement for standard usage.

Kenny Brown [00:31:07]: Yeah. I mean, and you think about the bacteria accumulation like you want these things clean. We're not looking to inoculate ourselves constantly with bacteria, so it's something to be aware of for sure.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:18]: Yeah. I mentioned earlier on that I'm doing some oil pulling and tongue scraping. You a fan of that?

Kenny Brown [00:31:22]: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Tongue scraping. I'm a huge fan of. And people just like, kind of forget they need to clean their tongue. There's so much debris and bacteria that gets. The tongue is essentially like a shag rug.

Kenny Brown [00:31:37]: That's what this tongue is. And you think about, like all the crumbs that go through there, it just sits in there and it just stays. It's like, you don't clean it, it's just gonna like rot and hit your tongue.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:49]: Oh, you broke up there for a second.

Kenny Brown [00:31:51]: Sorry, I was just saying. I was explaining how the tongue is like a shag rug. Right. Is you think about if you're eating and you constantly have crumbs going into that shag rug. It's just gonna sit there and rot. Right. I mean, it's just.

Ben Greenfield [00:32:05]: Yeah, poor idea. So when that. When the Feno's taking a picture of my tongue, is it looking at color? Is it seeing, like, microscopic particles? What exactly is it looking at on the tongue?

Kenny Brown [00:32:16]: Yeah, so on the tongue, we're looking at general color. Right. Of as far as, like, a coating. Right. We can kind of see the coating of the tongue. Also, there's. There's patterns that show up on the tongue that you may not want to be aware of. Right.

Kenny Brown [00:32:31]: So, for example, I'm not sure if you've ever seen anyone with, like, almost like a more red spot or a more smooth area of their tongue that can be indicative of an autoimmune disease. It can be indicative of a nutrient deficiency. It can be indicative of just trauma. Right. Something. Something's happening or injuring that area. So the tongue is important to pay attention to. But yeah, for hygiene purposes, the coating on the tongue is like the primary telltale sign.

Ben Greenfield [00:32:59]: So you were just talking about related to an autoimmune disease or a stressful incident or something like that. You said it was a. It was a red patch on the tongue.

Kenny Brown [00:33:06]: Yeah, yeah. It could be red patches. It could be, like white lines that sort of outline, a red patch. It could be the texture of the tongue could be more smooth. In other areas, it could be what we call petechia. So basically, like red dots on the tongue there can be inflamed, like, tissue in the back of the tongue that sort of gives you a sign that maybe there's a viral infection or a bacterial infection going on systemically, like I said. So the tongue tells you a whole lot about what. What's going on not only just in your mouth, but the rest of your body.

Ben Greenfield [00:33:35]: Okay. So we have brushing properly, flossing, water picking, if you're really picky, oil pulling, and tongue scraping, which could just be once a day. Are there any other critical oral care practices that you encourage people towards, whether it be things they shouldn't be doing or things they should incorporate for oral health?

Kenny Brown [00:33:56]: Yeah. So, like, from a tooth perspective, I would say be careful, like you're chewing, like on, you know, non edible objects, pens, fingernails, things of that nature because that can chip away.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:07]: My biggie that I'm still bad at is opening things with my teeth, like a bag of chips or something.

Kenny Brown [00:34:13]: Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah. So they're really useful tools, but. But yeah, it's like, things can have some issues. I would say be careful with whitening. Whitening can damage your teeth. We have enamel. Right.

Kenny Brown [00:34:29]: And when we start to penetrate the enamel with these chemicals, it can create a lot of sensitivity. So people just need to be aware and just be cautious. Be slow. Go slow with it. Right. Don't try to get to 50 shades whiter immediately. Go slow.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:44]: Well, did you know, Kenny, that that's what a lot of these newer, like, infrared products, whether it's some kind of a mouthpiece or a brush or whatever, are claiming to be able to whiten using light?

Kenny Brown [00:34:54]: Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Brown [00:34:56]: And I think I am. I'm still. The jury's still out on that, in my opinion. I think. I think what it mostly is is the active ingredient of what it's paired with. So I think it's just. It's just a matter of being. Like I said, I think it's.

Kenny Brown [00:35:09]: I think it's good to try these things out. I think innovation is good. It's going to drive us in the right direction. We just need to make sure that we. We are also understanding what the harm could be so that we understand what risk we're taking.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:20]: Right, okay. Yeah, got it.

Kenny Brown [00:35:22]: Yeah. That's all.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:23]: Okay, so what else besides avoiding whitening?

Kenny Brown [00:35:27]: Yeah. Oh, I'm not saying avoiding.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:28]: Just.

Kenny Brown [00:35:29]: Just be careful with it.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:29]: Okay. Yeah.

Kenny Brown [00:35:30]: And I would say. I would say, you know, in this world where things get very tense a lot and people are stressed, be aware of your grinding. Right. Clenching and grinding are a sign of stress that can fracture your teeth, and it's just a bigger sign of that. Oh, hey, like, you got to kind of work that out. We got to figure out what's happening here, because you're kind of breaking your teeth down. You're not really sure where it's coming from. But stress is typically the number one.

Ben Greenfield [00:36:04]: Yeah. I use a custom mouth guard now that Eniko hooked me up with after measuring my mouth. That's obviously expensive for some people. I'm. I'm shocked at the number of people who benefit from. For either grinding or snoring and even just better sleep architecture mouth taping. Have you messed around with that at all?

Kenny Brown [00:36:19]: Yeah, I have. Right. So the idea is that, I mean, we can go anthropology here. Right? So, like, the idea is that the more behind mouth tapings, that the more air that you're able to breathe. Training, basically, nasal breathing in that airway passage. As we've gotten lazier and bigger, like, we got a lot of soft tissue and a lot of fat that's sort of like slowly closing our airway. People will talk about how diet is also slowly, you know, kind of doing that over the course of time and evolution. But, you know, oxygen is a vital necessity of, of our brain function and our body function.

Kenny Brown [00:36:55]: And so the idea that if we have our. Our palate, right, our. The arch of our upper jaw, as that has become more constricted because our diet has become softer, or we're trying to get straighter teeth, you know, for a variety of reasons, it's basically constricting the tunnel in which we're getting that vital resource of oxygen. Right. And so by doing that through the nose, it just gives you now two methods to be able to do that. Right. Also for, for snoring.

Ben Greenfield [00:37:22]: Right.

Kenny Brown [00:37:22]: It's a sign of sleep apnea. If our brain is not getting the oxygen it needs, it can't thrive. Right. And our tissues can't thrive, our muscles can't thrive. And so airway management is like a huge thing. I've. I've had some experience doing surgeries where we. I'm sure you heard of orthognathic surgery.

Kenny Brown [00:37:40]: Like, orthognathic and you've. Basically. Okay. Basically we cut the jaw, the bottom jaw and the top jaw and we move them forward. And what that does is sort of opens up the airway that allows to get more oxygen to our lungs.

Ben Greenfield [00:37:59]: So you would do this as a procedure for something like sleep apnea related to jaw or airway restriction?

Kenny Brown [00:38:06]: Yeah, in severe cases, you do surgery like that, but sort of these other interventions that are a little bit easier or less invasive, they've been shown to be pretty effective for people getting more oxygen. Right. And we even got to pay attention to our kids. Right. When kids are snoring, right. It's like, okay, we need to pay attention. Are their tonsils, like, kind of restricting their airway? Are they sucking their thumb and creating a more narrow tunnel? Right. Do we need to do some palatal expansion while they're still growing? You know, it sounds wild, but, like, this has a dramatic effect on their whole progression into adulthood.

Kenny Brown [00:38:42]: Right. There's studies about how kids were, you know, delayed in reading, but all the. It was just. They were sleepy. They were sleepy because they weren't sleeping well at night. Had nothing to do with their cognitive abilities. They were just sleepy. Yeah.

Ben Greenfield [00:38:56]: There's a whole book about that Jaws, the Hidden Epidemic book, even going into how that can be aggravated by some of the Weston A Price research on lack of vitamin A, D, E and K in a little bit more of a fat phobic culture or a culture that strayed from the use of ancestral foods like grass fed butter or fermented foods or full fat yogurt. Things that contain a lot of bone building nutrients, stress forward head posture from screen usage, a lot of factors. And I even heard by the way, shout out to the company Hostage Tape, that's the one that I use. That stuff just stays on hardcore. It's built for people with facial hair and I started using it when I had a beard and that stuff just stayed on all night. You gotta be careful when you take it off. But the other thing that I've heard, I'm curious if you've heard this as well, is that it's not just mouth breathing at night that can be problematic, but if your mouth is open during the day, there's something about the drying of the airway. Let's say you're just one of those people who every time you go to the gym, your mouth's just open the whole time.

Ben Greenfield [00:40:00]: And you train yourself to not engage in nasal breathing. That can affect the bacterial composition or the enamel of the mouth somehow. If you're constantly mouth breathing. Is there something to that idea?

Kenny Brown [00:40:11]: Absolutely. So saliva, saliva is a natural cleansing for our mouth. Right. It kind of washes away, keeps things sort of even keel. And so when you have a super dry mouth, not only your tissues get dry and they, you know, they can hurt, but your enamel gets really dry in the whole environment, gets dried, but therefore not allowing that cleansing to naturally happen. Right. Even like think about when you're eating, the saliva helps wash away the acid that can be produced when we're trying to digest that food and break it down. So having that dry mouth is a very big issue.

Kenny Brown [00:40:46]: And you know, we see this in an extreme case with like cancer patients who have dry mouth, either due to medication or some radiation that they've had, you start to see the tissue start to really break down, even crack or slough off. Right from that. And that becomes an issue.

Ben Greenfield [00:41:02]: Yeah. I'm curious for you. As a trained surgeon who's obviously credentialed and accredited in your practice in the health industry. It seems that there's been a trend towards people raising an eyebrow at traditional medicine, questioning things like pharmaceutical interest, turning to pharmaceuticals instead of natural alternatives, not making proper exercise and dietary recommendations, looking more at like just let's say from a dietary standpoint, macronutrient composition, you know, carb, fat, protein instead of quality of the food. You know, whether that be seed oils or sugars or toxins or chemicals or whatever. Have you seen a similar surge in the dental world? Because there's a lot of people now that talk about holistic dentistry, natural dentistry, biocompatible materials, using things like ozone, being cautious with the way that a root canal is performed. Is it just, you know, those of us in the tiny podcasting sector of health siloed in that information echo chamber who are aware of these issues in dentistry, or is the idea of a more natural approach to dentistry and oral care kind of catching on?

Kenny Brown [00:42:13]: I would say it's still pretty small. I would say it's still pretty small. I think it's, you know, I think it's in general in the training, eco, training, atmosphere, education atmosphere. I think that we need to integrate it more. Not to discredit it or validate it anymore. But understand, like I said, I think care is more than just about, oh, doing what the book said. Oh, there's a hole. Fill it with this.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:40]: Right.

Kenny Brown [00:42:40]: Like, I think care is much more about that. What are your priorities? Where are you coming from? What is your story? What brought you here today? What's going to work best for you?

Kenny Brown [00:42:48]: Right, so for someone like yourself, let's talk about just oil pulling. Very, very basic. Someone like yourself who's disciplined, who is going to do it consistently. Consistent, consistently is going to really see the benefits from something like oil pulling. If you are not and you're just like, kind of doing it and you forget you don't get, you know, get your refill, you know, like, you're not going to see any benefit. So does that mean that oil pulling is not, you know, good or effective? But I may not recommend it to someone who's inconsistent versus someone who's very disciplined and can use it and like, oh, hey, you're actually going to see a ton of benefit from this and so you can use it. So I think it's just. That's where I think, like, we're missing, like, on care is like, oh, there's not just one recommendation and one way to do it.

Kenny Brown [00:43:29]: It's like, where is that? Where is that person going to be the most successful and how do we make them successful in their journey?

Ben Greenfield [00:43:35]: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense when it comes to the future of dentistry. Any other cool technologies? Because obviously you've talked with a lot of people, you've helped with engineering the Feno brush. Anything else that you at Feno would be rolling out or other technologies you're excited about.

Kenny Brown [00:43:49]: Yeah, I'm consistently excited about these Models and what they're able to do. So as we continue to build up computer vision, what else can we tell? There are some early data on being able to tell, like cellular changes in tissue using light. So imagine being able to see hot spots or lesions just by using light. Right. And being. Oh, hey, there's a, Here's a, here's a. Maybe more drastic example, but here's a precancerous lesion. We should pay attention to this area.

Kenny Brown [00:44:20]: Or can we.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:21]: What do you mean, using light?

Kenny Brown [00:44:23]: So it's basically you use light to get the feedback. So the camera. So you shine a particular light and then you get the feedback and you're able to see. Oh, okay. That feedback, like that tissue is normal or there's. It's abnormal in relation to what's next door.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:36]: Okay.

Kenny Brown [00:44:37]: And so it's more of a comparison. So if I see, if I see the tongue and I see. Oh, what. Why is there a concentration of abnormal feedback in this area? It's like, oh, is that a cellular change that could be a precancerous lesion or something that we need to pay attention to.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:53]: And is that something that you would have like as a at home use device, like a Feno scan, or is this something that would be in the clinic?

Kenny Brown [00:45:00]: No, that's. I think we should be able to have these things at our disposal.

Ben Greenfield [00:45:04]: Right.

Kenny Brown [00:45:04]: If they're safe. If we're not, like shooting radiation at our, if we're, if we're not damaging anything. Why would we not. Yeah, why would we not have these things proactively? Why would we not give you a chance to get the most information and give yourself the best chance to get the best outcome?

Ben Greenfield [00:45:22]: Right. It's very similar to how, like I used to run an exercise physiology lab and someone had to come in there and put on a mask and we had it hooked up to an indirect calorimetry device, which is large and bulky. You know, measure expired carbon dioxide, inspired oxygen, get an understanding of calories, burnt carbohydrates being utilized, fat being utilized, use equations to approximate protein burn, et cetera. And now, I mean, like, I'm looking across the room in my office. I have like one tiny little device, it's like that tall, that looks like a lumen. Right. And I can breathe into that and get what I got with a bunch of bulky lab equipment with like eight seconds of blowing air into this device.

Kenny Brown [00:46:00]: Right, right. And I think the key here is something that, and it's something we're really thoughtful of. And, and, and this is one of Hamet's big points as well is like actually using that data to create actions. Like, what do we do with it? Right? You know, let's say your Oura gives you a sleep score. What do you do with that? How do we improve it and how do we intervene, maybe without having to go to a doctor, Being able to do it on your own or do it quicker or before it becomes too big of an issue. So I think that's, that's really going to be the key here is like, now we're okay, we're going to get an information overload and then now how do we, like, what do we do with that? And how does the, you know, the everyday person use that to improve their health?

Ben Greenfield [00:46:41]: Yeah. Yeah, I like it. Well, dude, this is incredible. The Feno brush. By the way, if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/fenopodcast, I'll link to it. Obviously it's not like the. The least expensive of brushes out there, but considering what it can do, the time savings and the fact that like, I think it's, it's an incredible addition to an oral care arsenal. It's worth checking out.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:09]: Check it out. BenGreenfieldLife.com/fenopodcast I think we do have a discount code or something like that. I'll throw in there. Kenny, you're a wealth of knowledge, man. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Kenny Brown [00:47:20]: No, thank you. Thank you for your questions, thank you for your interest and I'm so glad you're using it and enjoying it.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:25]: Heck yeah. All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Kenny Brown from Feno. Signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com/fenopodcast have an incredible week.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:37]: To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks and content to become the most complete boundaries version

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