What Your Mouth Knows Before You Do with Dr. Rana Al-Rasheed

Episode 103: What Your Mouth Knows Before You Do with Dr. Rana Al-Rasheed

Topics Covered

• Meet Dr. Rana Al-Rasheed, Integrative Dentist and Founder of Heal the Healer
  
  
• Choosing Dentistry Twice: How a Mystery Rash Led Dr. Rana to Integrative Medicine
  
  
• What Your Mouth Is Telling You: Oral Health as a Mirror of Whole-Body Stress
  
  
• The Scary Truth About Gum Disease: Heart Disease, Alzheimer’s, and Diabetes Risk
  
  
• Habit Stacking for Burned-Out Physician Moms: Small Steps to Better Oral Health
  
  
• Who Are You Beyond “Doctor”? Reclaiming Your Identity as a Physician Mom
  
  
• The Athlete Mindset: Why Self-Compassion Beats Perfection for High Achievers
  
  
• Connect with Dr. Rana Al-Rasheed + Key Takeaways
  
  

Can stress actually cause gum disease? 

Today I’m joined by Dr. Rana Al-Rasheed, an integrative dentist, UCLA School of Dentistry professor, and founder of Heal the Healer, a program for burned-out healthcare professionals. 

Before she built that program, she needed it herself. Rana looked healthy on paper: happy marriage, healthy kids, a career she’d worked hard for. Then her own body sent her a wake-up call she couldn’t ignore, and she realized she wasn’t sick, but she wasn’t healthy either. 

It’s a feeling a lot of physician moms know well – and your mouth may be the first place it shows up. What do your gums have to do with your heart, your brain, even diabetes? And what’s the smallest habit that could turn it around? 

If you’ve ever felt like you’re pouring from an empty cup, this one’s for you. 

Meet Dr. Rana Al-Rasheed, Integrative Dentist and Founder of Heal the Healer

Dr. Cindy: Hi, everyone. Thank you for coming back to Inspired Mom MD’s Podcast. Today I am joined by Dr. Rana Al-Rasheed.

She is an integrative dentist, educator, and founder of Heal the Healer. I like that name. It’s an initiative dedicated to addressing clinician burnout and helping healthcare professionals reconnect with themselves and their purpose. Rana serves as a health sciences clinical assistant professor and group practice director at the UCLA School of Dentistry, where she teaches the connection between oral health and whole person health, and brings integrative approaches directly into patient care.

As a full-time academic, clinician, educator, and mom of three, she brings both expertise and lived experience to today’s conversation about how small daily practices can create meaningful change in our lives. Welcome, Rana. I’m so excited to have you here.

Dr. Rana: Hi, Cindy. Thank you for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to talk with you, and it’s a pleasure to know you, and thank you for having me here.

Choosing Dentistry Twice: How a Mystery Rash Led Dr. Rana to Integrative Medicine

Dr. Cindy: Yes. And just so the audience knows, I know you already. I’ve known you for a few years. We did an integrative medicine fellowship together.

I’m very excited that you’re here, because you just, you’re so eloquent… let’s move on. So, I would love to start with just your story. It can be, you know, what led you into dentistry, integrative dentistry, wherever you want to start.

Dr. Rana: So I graduated from University of Jordan and I always say I chose dentistry twice. But, it took for me to go into integrative medicine for me to enjoy dentistry and to find my purpose in choosing the profession and enjoying the profession that I chose. So I graduated from the University of Jordan in 1997, and then I moved to the US with my husband. The path for dentistry is a little bit more complex than medicine.

You have to go through a lot of examinations, and many times you have to go back to school. So in this time I thought, “You know what? Maybe the universe is telling me you don’t have to do dentistry. You can explore other things.” So I did explore other things.

I took psychology classes, I took business classes, and then nothing gave me the satisfaction of working with patients in the capacity of dentistry. The close proximity and the intimate life-changing moments that we have as dentists with our patients was very rewarding. But still I did not enjoy dentistry.

Dr. Cindy: Mm.

Dr. Rana: I chose it another time. I moved to California. I did my license exams, and then I started working. I was teaching, and that gave me purpose.

Education … gave me purpose. And it took a personal story of mine where life was good for me. Again, I was born in a very healthy family, a happy family.

I have healthy siblings, healthy relationships with my parents, with my siblings. I did not face any major adversity. I am very blessed in that. I married the love of my life, and had kids.

Everything was good, and yet one day I woke up and I had, like, layers and layers of some skin rash, urticaria. It was a big, big thing. And I went to the doctor, and they did all the tests, and nothing was going on. It got me thinking that although I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t healthy. And that showed me in real time what stress can do to someone.

And that kind of led me down the integrative medicine path, exploring what goes into being healthy. And then I did the fellowship in integrative medicine, and it kind of reframed how I think about dentistry, about life, and it just gave me a different scope to see life

Dr. Cindy: So you chose dentistry twice or maybe more than twice. But I like how you phrased it, that you weren’t sick but you weren’t healthy.

Dr. Rana: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Cindy: What an interesting spot to be in.

Dr. Rana: And for me, I thought since I lived with all that privilege and still my body reacted that way to little stressors. It wasn’t even… It’s not even a major stress. There were little stressors here and there.

And, my heart still goes out to people who struggle with so much more and yet do not have the tools that we, the evidence-based tools that we have from integrated medicine to help themselves along the way. Again, integrative medicine gave me all the tools that I can help my students, I can help my patients, I can help myself, and I can show up for my family. Just because we are made for this. If we know how to work it.

What Your Mouth Is Telling You: Oral Health as a Mirror of Whole-Body Stress

Dr. Cindy: So we will get into some of those tools because I’m fascinated by that, but I’m also interested in how oral health can capture really a picture of how our whole body is doing. So are there some indications that you see in your practice that say, you know, this patient may not be sick, but they may not be healthy? Walk us through that.

Dr. Rana: 100%. In 1999, I think the surgeon general said that the mouth is a mirror of what’s going on in the body. And can be an indication of early signs of disease. And the first thing, if we think of ourselves or our loved ones, the first thing that goes out when you feel any stress is what? Not brushing before you go to bed.

Dr. Cindy: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rana: It’s so easy. You know what? I don’t have the energy to do it, I’m just gonna go to sleep without… It’s just like people don’t think about going to sleep with their makeup on, right?

So that’s the first sign you see. If you want to dig deeper, if someone is stressed, not even diseased, right? If someone who’s not healthy, not sick, but is not healthy either, if you’re stressed you’re more likely to breathe through your mouth. You’re more sympathetic, right?

So everything is stuck here, and we know that you need to breathe through your nose for that effect of the nitric oxide for your body to relax. So people who are breathing through their mouths will have more plaque or buildup on their teeth. So think of someone not brushing, a little bit more of mouth breathing, then you will have more plaque, more bleeding. Your tongue can have some irritation.

So these are the signs of just someone who is a little bit stressed. It’s exam time. Early decay. When we see patients who are in their early 20s, like early, still in college.

The parents could work so hard and when the kids are young, in their teens, when they’re still at home, to kind of give them the good snacks and brush well and try to eat just whole foods. No processed foods, no sticky foods, and then they go to college and then everything goes out the door. So they start snacking on junk and eating all kinds of processed foods, and then suddenly the kids will, have a lot of decay and a lot of disease in their mouth.

So these are little transitions that happen. So for me, when I see someone in 2021, ’22, it is a high caries state, high decay. For many people. It could be a turning point.

But if people pass through that point, then having kids for women. Getting pregnant. Many people tell you, “My teeth were fine, but then I got pregnant and then it got really bad.” It could be two things. It could be that because the mother is so tired, she’s not brushing.

Or snacking, or not sleeping well, or there’s a little bit of more acid reflux. As someone who is stressed could have a little bit more acid reflux, right? Not sleeping well. Then the body reacts differently.

The gum disease has a lot of host response in it. The same woman having that little bit of build-up on her teeth before pregnancy versus while pregnant, the body reacts differently. So there will be a lot more gum disease when, during pregnancy, during PCOS.

Women in menopause, also the body’s reaction is different. So it’s, it is very interesting once you reframe oral health in that aspect.

The Scary Truth About Gum Disease: Heart Disease, Alzheimer’s, and Diabetes Risk

Dr. Cindy: That is fascinating. You have this little window into your patients’ worlds.

Dr. Rana: Yes. Yeah. What’s pretty interesting is that oral health, I think, is a kind of a mystery to many, no matter where your socioeconomic intellectual level is. I think many people I have to say, even physicians are not aware, even though the research is there.

But I think us dentists have to be more vocal and educate everybody about how important oral health is to cardiovascular disease. There’s a 40% higher chance of a cardiovascular event in people with periodontitis. There is higher risk of Alzheimer’s or stroke, higher risk with periodontal disease. There is a bidirectional link to diabetes, so people with diabetes will have more periodontal disease, that is gum infection, right?

Gum inflammation and infection, and vice versa. So people with diabetes will have more gum disease, and people with gum disease are more likely to have diabetes. They drive each other. And then kidney disease.

So you cannot have a healthy body without a healthy mouth, and I always will say oral health, it is a stamp of mental and systemic health.

Dr. Cindy: Wow

Dr. Rana: It is that important, and it is modifiable. It is. I will say to my patients, all patients, but especially patients with chronic disease who have many things, that sometimes with chronic disease, you know more than I do, It’s like a perpetual cycle that you cannot get out of, because that’s what chronic is.

Introduce oral health, and just the act of brushing, and think again. I want you to think of someone who hasn’t… To wake up after not brushing your teeth, and then you’re just, like, not feeling good. And think of once you have brushed your teeth or you have flossed your teeth, you feel completely fresh.

So that simple act of self-care can be transformative on a perspective level that I showed up for myself. And at the same time, systemically the markers of inflammation will drop- when someone does get the cleaning at the dentist, takes care of their gum health and mouth health, and does the brushing and it actually goes to activating your parasympathetic, where you are building and restoring. So it is super, super important, but we dentists, I feel, oral health providers, we have to be more vocal about it.

Habit Stacking for Burned-Out Physician Moms: Small Steps to Better Oral Health

Dr. Cindy: Yeah. I love this bidirectional flow of the body affecting oral health and the other direction. And the importance of these small habits that don’t take much time, like brushing your teeth and flossing, that can really have that effect on the whole body and the health of the person. If only small habits were so easy to integrate into our lives.

Maybe this is a point where you can pull in some tools that you learned from the integrative side. How do you help even just friends, family, and patients integrate more of these healthy habits into their lives?

Dr. Rana: The most important thing is you have to meet your loved ones, and you have to meet your patients where they are. So I’m not super demanding. And again, it is small steps that, that kind of get, can get you from point A to Z. You have to go through B, right?

You cannot ask someone who is, who’s not even on the alphabet sheet to kind of go to Z, right? So you have to meet patients, meet your loved ones where they are. Yesterday I was talking to my son about the book Atomic Habits. You just want to remove the friction from where you are to where you want to be.

So I’ll talk to many patients who… I want to say most patients that I see brush their teeth, most of the time. But let’s, many people struggle with flossing. So I will ask them, “Do you own floss?” And all of them, not one, does not own floss.

It could be the floss sticks or it could be the floss threads. But so I ask them, “Where is it?” So if it’s in a cupboard in its unwrapped box, or like electric toothbrushes, like yeah, I have it. I bought it last year, but it’s in a box somewhere. So get it, put it out in front of you.

And the most important thing, I think, for anybody who wants to establish a new habit is to be judgment-free. So just show empathy for yourself. Always do your 100%. Just, just do it, right?

Nike, just do it. Try to show up, and just doing it doesn’t mean, again, from A to Z. It just means, like for someone… Again, many people are on a spectrum of where they are mentally.

So if some patients struggle, they could be on different medications or they could be on the spectrum of autism. You just tell them, “Okay, so just maybe gargle your teeth for a couple of days.” So you start with that. And then you can start stacking habits. So habit stacking, adding something that you want to do to something that you already do.

Most people do wash their face in the morning. So try to add that in. I personally think if you wanna do anything is to just be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself.

Give yourself a pat on the back and just be aware, be true to who you are, be true to what your intention is. Anything you do, you’re doing it for yourself. So again, brushing your teeth. Many people brush their teeth in the morning.

I keep going back to brushing their teeth as if it is the best habit, but it’s just an example I am using. If you’re brushing your teeth once in the morning, you’re not brushing for yourself. You’re not brushing for your body. You’re brushing because when you talk to someone, you just don’t want to have a bad breath So what is your intention? Being very intentional with what you do.

If your intention is you are doing it for your health, and then your health is going to kind of be a good thing that spreads around, then you are brushing at night, you’re flossing, your body gets the rest at night. It is building and rejuvenating, right? And in the morning you brush one more time, and then, yes, you’re not gonna have bad breath. Your body thanks you.

People around you thank you, right? Yeah. So it’s all setting the intention, being kind. I think those are the most important things if you want to establish a new habit.

Who Are You Beyond “Doctor”? Reclaiming Your Identity as a Physician Mom

Dr. Cindy: So a lot of this feels very mental. I don’t mean mentally in a bad way. I just mean it’s all in your head. It’s, meeting yourself at-

Dr. Rana: The mindset …

Dr. Cindy: Mindset. Yes, that’s the word I’m looking for. And it’s meeting yourself where you are yourself too, not just others, and showing some self-compassion and some grace. And it’s just fascinating.

So I know with a lot of, you know, with some people listening now, we’re talking to very driven, high achieving, smart, smart women. And I’d like to shift the conversation a little bit to the roles we play. You and I were talking the other day, um, and you were talking about the difference of who you are versus what you do. And what you do is an easy one to answer.

I’m a doctor, I’m a dentist, I’m this. That’s an easy one. But who are you? How do you help people explore that distinction between who you are and what you do?

Dr. Rana: I do a course for, Reset for Resilience, I call it, and it’s all through my Heal the Healer series that I’m trying to raise awareness how important it is for us women in healthcare specifically. It is very important to not lose ourselves in the many roles that take so much from us, take a piece of us. So we are healers, right?

We see ourselves as giving a piece of ourselves every time you have to. You are, you’re a physician. You want to help your patients, and you empathize with your patient and want to do the best for your patient. And then you go home and you are…

You could be a mom, that is, again, you put your kids first, and you put your family first. You want them to eat healthy. You want to… And it’s very easy in all of that to lose yourself and your identity of why you chose to be a physician in the first place, right?

So it is important, physician or a dentist, again, in healthcare, it is important to, kind of have that, um, uh…, it’s not compartmentalization, but it is a little boundary. So, it is about establishing your boundaries with your patients, and that is by filling your own cup. So, it is little things that you do to increase yourself, your sense of self and your role as a person.

And once you do that, it will be easy to still show up for your family. You show up for your patients, and you show up for your nuclear family, and then you have your extended family. Again, we are a sandwich generation at this time where you’re caring for your kids and you’re caring for your parents. And this is where integrative medicine kind of pulls in.

So today I’m wearing the jersey for the Jordan team because they’re playing in the World Cup for the first time. But when I talk to my students, and I try to start them early on with this, I try to tell them that the little things that you do every day, the little habits that you do every day, is what’s going to help you, and then the mindset is the athlete mindset. It’s a marathon. Life in healthcare is like a marathon, so you have to eat well.

You have to exercise. You have to sleep well. You have to… Again, the wheel of wellness.

For a marathon, you cannot wait until you work, work, work, and then I go on vacation, or work, work, work, and wait for the weekend. It’s not like that. It is every single day. You have to do what you can.

Again, it’s 100% every day, but your 100% can be 1% one day, and it can be 100% another day. But you do your best and resting in knowing that you are doing your best gives you freedom if you add in the self-compassion. I think you just need to be very clear about your boundaries because we’re like giving, right? 

I am married to a physician. My husband is a physician. I see what he does, and then in… I see patients at the faculty practice.

Many of my patients are physicians. Many of my best friends are physicians, and then when they sit in my chair, they are exhausted. They did not sleep. They are on tons of medications, the women doctors, and that’s not the way it should be.

If we are in a profession that once we are healing, you have to start with yourself because you cannot pour from an empty cup if you’re not gonna burn out.

Dr. Cindy: Right.

Dr. Rana: So just having the mindset of the athlete, “Hey, go Jordan.” That’s how we need to be thinking. And then there’s a little exercise that I do, in my course where I have people write what are you, who are you. So, I invite everybody listening to think of who they are. If tomorrow you cannot do medicine anymore, what would you be doing?

I share with my daughter wants to do, medicine and she’s applying. Uh, but I tell her, “I’m working full time,” but in my head there is another part of me that just wants to be reading books every day. And then coming up with new recipes every day and going on hikes and going on walks. So that person doesn’t have the chance now to do it, but then I try to incorporate little pieces of that in my day to kind of fill my cup.

Because when I do that, I can show up better for them, for my patients, for my students. For myself. That’s the most important thing. It is, one, being good and kind to yourself is the most selfish thing you can do.

A selfless, sorry, selfless thing you can do. Because when you are good and you know you are so capable, you’re so loving, you are an empath, you are empath and smart, and are… Like, we have the best of the best, right, listening in.

We are so much, and we can give so much, but we have to do that for ourselves, and you lead by example. Yeah. When we started the fellowship, I would learn something and be like, “Did you know this, this and that?” Like, “Okay, Mom, whatever.” My husband is like, “Just don’t start again.” And I stopped. And just by living it, just by trying to apply what I can from what we learn, you do what I do, don’t do what I say, right?

So, live it, enjoy it, and then people will just gravitate, and they’ll want to do what you do.

Dr. Cindy: Yeah. So be true to who you are and what you do doesn’t have to mean what you do for other people. The answer could be what do you do for yourself and that involves having boundaries so that you can take care of yourself and have self-compassion for yourself.

Dr. Rana: Yeah. Don’t feel bad about your boundaries.

Dr. Cindy: Yeah. No. Wow. Your family and your patients and your students are lucky to have you teaching them-

Dr. Rana: Oh, thank you …

Dr. Cindy: such, oh, just such core lessons. I love that. Thank you.

The Athlete Mindset: Why Self-Compassion Beats Perfection for High Achievers

Dr. Rana: It took me a while. I’m very grateful to integrative medicine I think I, I want to say I’ve always lived in an integrative way. Mm. But when you know that the science backs these things to a healthy life, I think it kind of, that’s when I started teaching.

I may have been living it. I wasn’t so good with compassion, the self-compassion. I was compassionate with other people- I empathize with other people, but with myself, because we are high achievers, and I think you can identify with that, and I think many of our listeners will identify with that, if you are such a high achiever all your life. You’re like, you set goals for yourself, and you crush it, and you set another goal, and you crush it.

And then once you’re at that goal, it’s like, “Okay, what’s next?” But even when you crush that goal, you know there were like a couple of things that you fell short on.

Dr. Cindy: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rana: And then these live in your head.

Dr. Cindy: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rana: These are the microstressors I think that were getting to me.

Dr. Cindy: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Rana: So just self-compassion, I think, is one of the most important things that we can learn and teach to our girls, and it goes a long way.

Dr. Cindy: Now I’m thinking about the athlete mindset you were talking about, because I’m looking at your Jordan shirt. And I’m thinking, you know, they may win the game or not win the game, but I hope that the players give themselves self-compassion about those little mistakes, and that they don’t take up too much rent in their heads,

Dr. Rana: because we’re human.

Dr. Cindy: Yeah. Uh.

Dr. Rana: We… And no one-

Dr. Cindy: Exactly.

Dr. Rana: No one is born… We are born perfect the way they are, but we’re never asked for perfection. And giving yourself grace is just acknowledging your humanity.

Dr. Cindy: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And doing your best every day doesn’t mean it has to be 100%. That’s another wonderful takeaway.

Dr. Rana: Exactly.

Connect with Dr. Rana Al-Rasheed + Key Takeaways

Dr. Cindy: So, if the listener today wants to reach out to you and learn more about you, where should they go?

Dr. Rana: I’m building my website. It’s not up yet.

Dr. Cindy: Okay.

Dr. Rana: But now I’m on Instagram at, my name, Dr. Rana Al-Rasheed Probably we can link it. And then there’s The Healing Goddess. It’s the handle I started many, many, many years ago, even probably before starting integrative medicine, @thehealinggoddess.

Dr. Cindy: Got it. Yes

Dr. Rana: And then I’m on LinkedIn, and I would love to answer questions and build our own community with you. It’s amazing

Dr. Cindy: Mm-hmm. I encourage anyone listening to reach out to you, Rana. You’re amazing. Thank you for being here today.

Dr. Rana: You’re welcome

Links for Dr. Al-Rasheed:

IG: @drranaalrasheed , @thehealinggoddess_dds

LinkedIn: Rana Al Rasheed, BDS | LinkedIn