Welcome back to the Gubba Podcast. I'm Gubba, a first time homesteader following in the footsteps of my homesteading forebears. I discuss everything from homesteading to prepping and everything in between. Today’s episode is one I’ve sat with for a long time before recording, because it lives at the intersection of biology, history, intuition, and the uncomfortable realization that some of the most normalized medical procedures may not be as neutral as we’ve been told.
This is not an episode designed to scare anyone or tell you what to do with your body. This is an episode about awareness, pattern recognition, and asking questions that modern systems have quietly trained us not to ask. Today we’re talking about root canals, their connection to meridians, and how a procedure performed in the mouth can influence the entire body in ways that are rarely discussed, rarely explained, and often dismissed before the conversation even begins.
Health conversations only become controversial when they challenge convenience.
For decades, we’ve been taught to trust systems without understanding them, to quiet symptoms instead of tracing causes, and to accept that some procedures are simply “standard” and therefore beyond question. This episode exists to slow that process down and invite a wider understanding, one that honors the complexity of the human body rather than reducing it to isolated parts.
Before we get into today’s episode, I want to take a second to talk about something that ties directly into this conversation about the body, chronic stress, and what happens when we ignore signals for too long, and that’s skincare. For years I did what most people do. I trusted labels. I trusted marketing. I assumed that if something was sold in a clean looking bottle and called medical grade or dermatologist approved, it must be safe. And yet my skin was constantly inflamed, reactive, dry, breaking out, and honestly just exhausted. It wasn’t until I stepped back and started questioning what I was putting on my body the same way I questioned what I was putting in it that everything changed. Along with helping my dad on his skincare journey.
That’s how Arvoti was born. I started using tallow because it made sense. It’s bio compatible with human skin. It’s rich in fat soluble vitamins. It doesn’t disrupt the skin barrier or hijack the body’s natural processes. And most importantly, my skin finally calmed down. Not temporarily, not with a purge phase, but genuinely healed. Arvoti is my clean skincare line built around that philosophy. No endocrine disruptors. No hidden fragrance. No ingredients your skin has to fight against. Just intentional formulations designed to support the skin instead of overriding it. If you’re tired of products that promise results but leave your skin more stressed than before, you can find my tallow based skincare and serums at arvoti.com. This isn’t about trends. It’s about returning to what actually works.
THE MODERN DENTAL MODEL AND WHY IT FALLS SHORT
For most people, dentistry exists in a completely separate mental category from overall health. Teeth are treated like mechanical components. If one breaks, you fix it. If one hurts, you numb it. If it becomes infected, you remove the nerve and move on. There is very little discussion about how teeth are living structures, how deeply they are connected to the nervous system, the lymphatic system, and the immune system, or how interventions in the jaw can ripple outward into the rest of the body.
We are taught that if pain disappears, the problem is solved, and if an X ray looks clean, there is nothing left to worry about. That framework sounds logical on the surface, but it only works if pain is the body’s primary warning system and imaging can see everything that matters, neither of which is actually true.
Modern dentistry has trained us to equate the absence of pain with the presence of health.
Pain is only one form of communication, and often it is the final one, not the first. The body is capable of compensating for stress silently for years before symptoms become loud enough to be medically recognized.
A TOOTH IS A LIVING ORGAN, NOT A DEAD OBJECT
A tooth is not an isolated object. It is a living organ with blood supply, nerve tissue, lymphatic involvement, and immune activity. Inside every tooth are microscopic tubules, tens of thousands of tiny channels that once carried nutrients and immune cells when the tooth was alive. These tubules are not removed during a root canal procedure. They remain embedded in the tooth structure.
When a root canal is performed, the nerve and pulp are removed, but the physical tooth remains anchored in the jawbone. At that point, the tooth no longer has circulation. It no longer has immune surveillance. It no longer has the ability to clear waste or respond to infection.
A root canal creates a dead structure inside a living system.
This is not a philosophical statement. It is a biological one. Living tissue depends on circulation to function, defend itself, and heal.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN CIRCULATION STOPS
In nature, dead tissue does not coexist peacefully with living tissue without consequence. When circulation stops, metabolic waste accumulates. When waste accumulates, bacteria thrive. Specifically, anaerobic bacteria, which do not require oxygen to survive, flourish in sealed, oxygen-deprived environments like treated root canal teeth.
These bacteria are not neutral. Many strains produce toxic byproducts that can interfere with nerve signaling, immune regulation, hormonal communication, and organ function. This is not about acute infection that causes pain and swelling. This is about chronic, low-grade bacterial activity that places constant demand on the immune system.
A chronic infection does not have to hurt to be harmful.
WHY X RAYS DON’T TELL THE FULL STORY
One of the most concerning aspects of this issue is that these bacterial colonies are often invisible to conventional imaging. Standard dental X rays are designed to detect large structural changes in bone and tissue. They are not designed to detect microscopic bacterial activity inside dentinal tubules or subtle areas of necrotic bone.
This means a root canal tooth can appear perfectly normal on imaging while still harboring chronic infection. There may be no pain. No swelling. No redness. No obvious signs that anything is wrong.
The absence of symptoms does not mean the absence of stress on the body.
This gap between what we can see and what actually exists is where many chronic health mysteries begin.
I want to pause for a minute because if this episode is hitting something for you, if you’re realizing how deeply connected the body is and how often we’re taught to ignore that, this is exactly why I created my Holistic Homestead Guide. This isn’t about quick fixes or chasing symptoms. It’s about understanding how food, herbs, stress, environment, and daily habits all shape your health over time. Inside the guide, I share how to work with medicinal herbs, how to grow and use them at home, simple ways to boost energy naturally, calm the nervous system, support digestion, and reduce the toxic load that keeps so many people stuck in survival mode. It’s designed to help you build a foundation for healing that actually makes sense, whether you live on acreage or in a small space. This is about bringing health back into your own hands instead of outsourcing it to systems that don’t see the whole picture. You can find the Holistic Homestead at shop.gubbahomestead.com, and it’s written for anyone who feels that pull toward living in a way that truly supports the body.
THE BODY’S ADAPTIVE RESPONSE TO HIDDEN STRESS
The human body is remarkably adaptive. When faced with a chronic low-grade stressor, it compensates. It reroutes energy. It shifts priorities. The immune system remains slightly activated. Inflammatory signaling stays just elevated enough to matter but not enough to trigger emergency intervention.
Over time, this background stress can manifest far from the original source. This is where many people begin experiencing symptoms that seem unrelated to the mouth, such as chronic fatigue, autoimmune flares, hormonal imbalance, neurological symptoms, cardiovascular irregularities, and persistent inflammation that does not respond to conventional treatment.
Instead of asking where the stress originates, we are often taught to manage the downstream effects, to suppress inflammation, regulate hormones, or calm the nervous system, without asking why the body is in distress in the first place.
Chronic illness is often the body adapting intelligently to an unresolved source of stress.
MERIDIANS AND THE BODY AS A CONNECTED SYSTEM
This is where the concept of meridians becomes impossible to ignore, not because of belief, but because of pattern. In traditional medical systems that long predate modern dentistry, the mouth is not treated as a separate mechanical zone. Teeth are living structures, embedded in bone, innervated, vascularized, and deeply connected to the nervous and energetic systems of the body. Each tooth sits along a meridian, an energetic pathway that links it to specific organs, glands, and physiological functions.
Meridians are not random. They are communication highways. They are the routes through which stress, inflammation, and imbalance move, often long before symptoms show up in a lab result. When something becomes chronically irritated in the mouth, an infection, a dead tooth, repeated trauma, or constant inflammation, it does not exist in isolation. It is participating in a conversation with the rest of the body.
Take the front teeth, for example. In many traditional mappings, the incisors are associated with the kidney and bladder meridians. These systems govern more than urination, they are tied to adrenal function, mineral balance, fear response, and foundational energy reserves. Chronic issues in these teeth have historically been observed alongside patterns of fatigue, low back tension, hormonal stress, or difficulty handling prolonged stress. The connection is not that one “causes” the other in a linear way, but that they are speaking the same energetic language.
Canines, the pointed teeth used for tearing, are commonly mapped to the liver and gallbladder meridians. These organs are central to detoxification, fat metabolism, bile flow, and emotional processing, particularly anger, frustration, and stagnation. It is not uncommon in traditional frameworks to see long-standing canine issues mirrored by patterns of tension headaches, jaw clenching, digestive sluggishness, or a sense of being “stuck” physically or emotionally. Again, not coincidence, but correspondence.
Modern medicine tends to dismiss meridians because they are not easily measurable with conventional instruments. But that dismissal ignores a basic truth: we already accept many invisible systems as foundational to health. Hormones cannot be seen, yet they orchestrate nearly every function in the body. Electrical impulses in the nervous system are invisible, yet they determine movement, sensation, and thought. The microbiome was dismissed for decades because it didn’t fit existing models, until it became impossible to ignore.
Lack of measurement does not equal lack of existence. It often just means our tools are incomplete.
When a tooth associated with a specific meridian becomes chronically stressed, inflamed, or energetically compromised, it is reasonable, not radical, to ask whether the organs connected to that pathway may also be experiencing stress. Traditional systems never claimed these pathways were the only factor in health. They claimed they were part of the conversation.
And the body is always communicating.
It communicates through pathways we do not yet fully understand, through patterns that repeat across cultures and centuries, and through signals that modern systems often overlook because they don’t fit neatly into isolated categories. When you begin to view the mouth not as a collection of parts, but as an integrated interface with the rest of the body, a different kind of awareness emerges, one rooted not in fear, but in listening.
That’s where the questions begin. And once they do, it becomes very hard to pretend the connections aren’t there.
FRAGMENTATION VS WHOLE-BODY THINKING
Western medicine tends to fragment the body into specialties. Dentistry treats teeth. Cardiology treats the heart. Neurology treats the brain. But the body does not operate in fragments. It is a unified system in constant communication with itself.
When we divide the body for convenience, we lose the ability to see patterns.
You cannot divide the body without losing the truth of how it functions.
THE IMMUNE SYSTEM AND LONG-TERM BURDEN
Another critical piece of this conversation is immune load. A chronic infection, even one that appears localized, requires continuous immune attention. Over time, this can lead to immune exhaustion, dysregulation, or confusion. In some cases, the immune system may begin attacking self tissue because it has been locked in a prolonged state of defense.
Instead of asking why the immune system is malfunctioning, a more useful question may be what it has been fighting for years without relief.
The immune system does not malfunction without reason.
INFORMED CONSENT AND WHAT ISN’T DISCUSSED
What is rarely discussed in dental offices is informed consent. Most people are never told that a root canal tooth is biologically dead. They are never told that bacteria remain sealed inside. They are never told that these bacteria can produce toxins. They are never told that imaging cannot rule out microscopic infection.
They are told the procedure is safe, routine, and necessary.
Safety without full disclosure is not true safety.
You cannot consent to a risk you were never told existed.
This is not an attack on dentists as individuals. Most practitioners are working within the model they were taught, a model that prioritizes mechanical success over biological integrity.
WHY SEEKING A HOLISTIC DENTIST CAN HELP
This is where holistic or biological dentistry becomes relevant, not as an extreme alternative, but as an expanded lens. Holistic dentists are trained to consider the mouth as part of the whole body, not a separate mechanical system. They evaluate how dental materials interact with the immune system, how chronic infections affect systemic health, and how jawbone health, lymphatic drainage, and nervous system signaling all intersect.
A holistic dentist is more likely to ask how your dental history aligns with your overall health picture, to consider biocompatible materials, to evaluate hidden infections more thoroughly, and to work collaboratively with other practitioners when needed.
Holistic dentistry does not reject modern tools. It expands the questions we ask when using them.
CLOSING. RESTORING CHOICE THROUGH INFORMATION
This conversation is not about telling anyone what to do with their body. It is about restoring choice through information. If someone has a root canal and feels vibrant and healthy, that matters. If someone has chronic unexplained symptoms and multiple root canals, that matters too.
Patterns deserve curiosity, not dismissal.
Health is not about blind trust. It is about relationship. Relationship with your body. Relationship with information. Relationship with practitioners who respect complexity rather than reducing it.
Your body is not broken. It is responding intelligently to its environment.
The mouth is one of the most neurologically dense and bacteria-rich environments in the body. Treating it as separate from systemic health is convenient, but convenience does not equal truth.
Sometimes the root of the problem is not metaphorical. It is literal. Root canals.
This is Gubba Homestead. Stay curious. Stay sovereign in your health decisions. And never underestimate how deeply connected your body truly is.
