Dr. Uche Odiatu is a practising dentist, holistic lifestyle coach, and NSCA-certified personal trainer. In this episode, Dr. Odiatu shares health tips for fellow dentists, emphasizing the need to maintain wellness in a profession he describes as “high performance.”
Key moments this episode:
1:29 – How dentists operate in a high-performance field akin to contact sports.
2:15 – Don’t wait until your second half of your life to get healthy.
2:59 – What we eat is who we are.
6:54 – The detrimental effects of prolonged standing and sitting on the hips.
8:50 – Turn on your mitochondria: Building energy throughout the day is possible.
9:36 – Only 5% of the population does weight training, cardio and flexibility.
10:55 – It all starts in the grocery store including the placebo effect.
11:38 – Say ‘no’ to antibiotics in chicken, food.
11:48 – In the future, hip replacements and implants might be too dangerous due to bacterial resistance.
13:24 – Simple cheap sustainable snack idea: A mix of nuts, yogurt and fruit
15:20 – To maintain a youthful body, look, go to bed with an empty stomach if you can.
17:51 – Stress management: Being goal-oriented doesn’t make you happy.
18:51 – Blue Zones and being purpose-driven is the way to go
21:52 – Morning sun is crucial for brain health.
24:22 – It’s never too late: Dr. Odiatu explains that muscles can always respond to training.
Read the audio transcript below:
Dr. Luisa Schuldt (LS): Hi everyone. Welcome to Brush Up, presented by Oral Health Group, the dental podcast where we speak with industry experts to discuss a variety of topics such as technology, finance, and practice management. I’m your host, Dr. Luisa Schudlt, a prosthodontist and periodontist based out of Fonthill, Ontario.
Today’s guest is Dr. Uche Odiatu, and we will be discussing the importance of physical health and wellness for dental professionals. Dr Odiatu is a professional member of the American College of Sports Medicine and a practising dentist in Toronto. He is a busy healthcare professional. He is an NSCA certified personal trainer, certified yoga instructor, certified bootcamp instructor, and has given 700+ lectures around the world. Some of you may have seen him at the Spring Meetings in Toronto and many other venues. You can find them on Twitter and Instagram as well @fitspeakers. Welcome Uche.
Dr. Uche Odiatu (UO): Hey, great to be here. Love sharing information with my colleagues. I’m ready to go.
LS: Great. How about we just start on what brought you into this area of combining dentistry and physical health. Why do you think it is so important for dental professionals to stay healthy?
UO: Yeah, well, one, I say it’s like a contact sport really, like, it’s high performance. It’s like, when you think of the Indy 500 when those cars go on the track, 500 miles in two hours, they stop seven times to change tires, fuel, clean up the car. The average car once a year for oil change. So, we’re not once a year performance vehicles. We are high performance. So, I think it’s very imperative for us to make ourselves see the value and also treat our bodies with more reverence than just like getting through the day, getting through the decade, and then, all of the sudden, 50, spending a whole lot of money trying to get their health back. And we’re so passionate about our patients and offices, we basically sacrifice our bodies for our offices and our patients. And then in the second half of our life, it takes so much money to get it back. It’s so hard. You know, we talk to patients about prevention, but many of us just kind of get through the day on, you know, caffeine, espresso, and then it’s major rehab from 50 on. So, I’m here to remind my dear colleagues that it’s very important to treat your body with reverence and it will become your best friend again.
LS: Yeah, it’s surprising just how physical our day-to-day work actually is. How can we better incorporate this nutrition and fitness mindset into our day to day? What are some simple steps that we can start with?
UO: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think you are what you eat, and whether in front of 500 people or on a zoom call, everyone agrees. But somehow, we don’t realize that, you know, everything you are and I am right now, they’ve actually shown that, every three years through radio isotopic studies, that every one of our cells is completely different every three years. If you think back to 2020, you and I are completely different entities in front of this camera. So, the only thing that changes who we are is what we’re eating. You know, when you think of all the parts that make us up, I think 99% of who we are, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and calcium, and the other 1% is about 24 small, micro amount chemicals. So, we’re made up of the food we ate, you know. So, is it fast food? Is it drive through food, or is it food that’s whole? Is it grass fed beef? Is it, you know, raised without a lot of preservatives and chemicals. So, if you want a better functioning brain, 85 billion neurons, if you want a better functioning heart, knees, hips and eyes, we need to look at our food differently. And I think most of us eat for pleasure. And I always say, when you look at food, it has two roles, either function or social. You know what we want to do, or hedonism. But most people choose their food choices through pleasure. You know, what do I feel like having? I say, think more like a high-performance athlete. Michael Phelps, LeBron James would say, What do I want to achieve today? And if you look at your pre office breakfast as what I want to achieve today, I have a full mouth rehab. I am interviewing two new hygienists. All of a sudden, now you’ve got to make different choices, and it’s bringing that mindfulness to those choices that makes them become better when we slow down the process. Oh, I have a meniscus that’s still torn. I have a headache from yesterday. I feel dehydrated. Different breakfast choices. So, it’s making our choices more mindful. And then moving forward.
LS: I love how you brought up that new muscle, new cartilage, new everything with our nutrition. We talk to patients, being in the area of periodontics, when we’re planning implants and bone grafting. I say that to patients all the time how the bone, which we think is so static, really isn’t, and it’s totally replaced. I had just never thought of it in the mindset of the rest of her body as well. I’m so happy you brought that up. So, obviously, diet is extremely important in staying healthy. How can we do this more easily? How can we incorporate keeping that healthier diet, making these better choices in a way that’s simple? We’re all so busy.
UO: True, one of these obstacles for most of us, to either to get fit or get healthy, is time, lack of time. Can’t exercise. Busy day. You know, people have multiple offices, family lives, social lives, CE requirements. But I think if you start not overthinking it. I think as dentists, you know, multiple degrees, multiple post grad training, we intellectualize everything. We overthink everything. We’re overthinkers. And I think if you overthink fitness, many dentists, they go “until I get a master’s in nutrition, I’m not going to talk to my patients about calcium, until I become a certified master’s level personal trainer, I’m not gonna start exercising.” You know, dentists want an upper body coach, a lower body coach. I’m like, make it simple, easy, because what’s simple and easy is maintainable and sustainable forever. And I’d much rather have my colleagues do a little bit most days, not even every day, most days, for decades, than to do an all-out onslaught on January 1 two hours a day mindfulness training, heated Zumba class at 100 degrees Fahrenheit temperature. A little bit every day. And whenever I ask my 95- or 100-year-old patients, how did you get this way? I walk every day. I have a glass of water first thing in the morning, boom. They never talk about keto, paleo, Navy Seal, booyah, yoga, you know, so and then keeping it simple and make it easy. And that whole concept of treating our body with reverence, you know, that whole thing of one body, one life, we don’t get a second body. Sure, there’s parts we can get replaced. You can get a kidney transplant. I’ve had a patient with a pancreas transplant, but that is expensive, and it also has drawbacks of side effects with the rejection drugs. So, I think if we treat our hips like we get one set, knees like one set, and we’ll do those exercises, because a lot of times joints break down and melt away. I say simply from inactivity. It’s not just old, football and hockey injuries that make us lose our body parts. It’s simply standing and sitting, standing and sitting for extended periods of time, and the hips literally melt away. And you get people who’ve never been physically active and go, I don’t know how I lost my hip, but you know, when you think of a hip replacement, it’s a very aggressive surgery. The top of the femur is sawn off by this Dwayne The Rock Johnson orthopedic surgeon, and then you get this spike thing put in, and you think, Oh, I got a new hip. It is not the same as what God gave us. And I think, as you said, we talk about prevention all the time, but not with ourselves, like we are nonrenewable resources. So, if we start treating our bodies with more reverence, like think of it as one body, one life, that could be a post it note that could be a screensaver on a phone. One body, one life. How do I treat one body, one life, with reverence. And then, like Hippocrates, I always go back to Hippocrates, the first doctor. The Hippocratic Oath of medical doctors, in 300 BC, so 2300 years ago, he said, Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food. Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food. What do I need to eat today to support my goals, my professional goals and my personal goals? And now you’re going to make different choices. You’re not going to go through a drive through and eat behind the bushes really quickly and shove this food down. You’re going to stop at a restaurant, or you’re going to pack your own food from home and bring your own salad and bring your own food from home so you can actually more predictably look and feel good, not just the entire day, when you get home with your family. Now, many dentists, we give our all in the office. By the time we get home, we’re like a squeezed out wet towel, and our family gets fumes. They deserve the full-on energy that we give our patients. So, if you want that second wind, that will only happen if we take care of ourselves and we build energy into the day, which is entirely possible. You can actually build any energy into the day. And if you’re physically active, you can actually epigenetically turn back on the mitochondria, which many of us by age 50, if someone hasn’t had a physically active life, your mitochondria actually turns off. Like, why would the body pump out ATP if someone sits and stands, sits and stats, you know, valets their car, comes out from the underground parking garage. If there are six cars, I’m not sure, I’m not sure how well you do, but you look like a person is doing well, and what happens is the mitochondria epigenetically turn off. What’s cool is you’re not destined for a life of no energy. You can actually turn back on those mitochondria simply by getting a complete exercise program, which is weight training, cardio and flexibility, and you have those three components. Now we’re in the top 5% of the population. Only 5% of people do all three components, so we’re already in the top 5% of income, with all deference to other professionals, we’re in the top 5%. Why not be in the top 5% for physical fitness? Okay? Like we owe that to ourselves, our family, our Creator. Not to get Spiritual here, but I’m lecturing in Alabama at some point. So, when I bring in the Creator, I always get an amen, you know, from the audience.
LS: So, over this last little bit of conversation, you’ve been talking about planning for our day, making sure that, like from that very first meal, we’re thinking about, how can I use this meal to get that full mouth rehab, or whatever we have planned to make our day better. You’re mentioning, eating behind the bush, hiding something really quickly, eating something really quickly and in hiding, maybe not the best, healthiest choice. Do you have any tips on how we can better prepare these foods at home? Ways to work this into our schedule, healthy snacks we should be thinking of bringing with us instead of buying that fast food, not so healthy, high sodium meal.
UO: Okay, so that’s kind of easy. Basically, it all starts at the grocery store, like when you go in the grocery store, that’s when I start feeling healthy. I mean, we always talk about the placebo effect with evidence-based science. Well, the placebo effect is the most consistent effect in all science in terms of what you believe about something that affects the outcome. So healthy eating starts when you go grocery shopping. Believe it or not, when I park my car, I start getting emotional. When it comes down to my food, I walk in thinking, wow, I’m building Uche. I am building Uche. And with that incessant chatter, I’m building Uche. What does Uche need to build? You know, what do my patients need? You know, what do my friends need? And so I bring home whole foods, whole foods like apple, kiwi. When I go look at meat, and a lot of meat now, if you want high performance Formula One performance cars, I want chicken that’s raised without antibiotics. I want less antibiotics. You know, the World Health Organization says by 2050 it might be too dangerous to do hip replacements and implants, simply because there’s so much bacterial resistance and we always think, oh, bacteria, we can handle it. They don’t have a brain, but bacteria have a consciousness. They have no brain. They’ve never been to Tufts or Harvard, but they have a consciousness. And, they’ve been on the planet for 4 billion years. They do something called horizontal gene swapping. In the middle of an antibiotic prescription our patients are filling out, dead bacteria can switch genes with each other. As a last resort, they’re switching genes. Hey, we got this human. So, I think if we buy meat, and raised without antibiotics, raised without hormones, it’s an easy way to start planning. Because you think of that flesh of another animal that is even more intimately connected with who we are, and that’s the true miracle. I think there’s a medical doctor named Christiana Northrup that said eating food is one of the most intimate things we do to our environment. I know we breathe, 15 times a minute, 20,000 times a day, but the very food we eat becomes who we are. It becomes my chin, it becomes my nose, my eyebrows, my hair, and again, I think a lot of dentists want specifics, and I think we’re very specifically driven. Give me the seven part Uche plan, you know? How can I weigh what I did in college? Well, I weigh what I did in grade 11 for the last 30 years without dieting, simply because I have a philosophy. It’s a mindset. So, whole food, nutrition, go around the grocery store or, if you want Uber Delivery, whole foods. Not the store, but I want apples with no ingredient except apple. So, one easy snack. I know dentists still say, Uche, what do I bring to the office? Plain yogurt. I wouldn’t do zero fat, because I want some fat in. All calcium in nature comes with fat. So, one, two and three percent fat plain yogurt that, if you look at the date on that, that often keeps for a month, you can have a big one 500 ml or one liter amount. You can scoop that out into any Tupperware or plate. I would bring apples. Apples also keep for seven to ten days. Those can be cut up and placed in the yogurt. So now you have yogurt, you have an apple, you bring a bag of mixed nuts. People think, oh, nuts are expensive. Hey, remember we’re the top 5% of income? So, if you fill this Tupperware up at your home… walnuts, Brazil nuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and macadamia nuts. You put that in a big Tupperware, put a ziplock bag in, bring that to work. Now you have yogurt, sliced apple or blueberries. They all keep for weeks at a time. Throw those nuts in, and now I’ve got a complete meal. I have fat, protein and carbs. Know what that means when my bacteria and basically, this is Dr. Robin Chutkan and Dr. Tim Spector, UK epidemiologist said, there’s only 30 enzymes of human origin, but there’s up to 10,000 enzymes of bacterial origin. They digest our food, and when they’re happy without their brain, they say, cut down the cravings. So, if I eat plain yogurt, nuts, and cut up fruit as a meal, you think, Uche, doesn’t sound like much, but that is the perfect combination of fermented food, yogurt, fiber, in the protein and in the nuts and the apple. And now my bacteria goes, after a plate, I’m good for three or four hours. Total cost, maybe $3. So I like to make things simple. Simple, sustainable. And I think choosing food with that whole concept of, what does my body need? What am I trying to heal? Why do I still have sciatica? What’s going on with my sleep at night? If we eat a meal before bed, within three hours of bedtime, we don’t release as much growth hormone. This is Matthew Walker. He’s a neuroscientist out of Berkeley. So, you’ve got to go to bed almost with an empty or no food in your stomach, if you can, and you’ll actually sleep deeper. And it’s during deep sleep that we repair skin, cartilage and muscle, and where the body releases 80% of our growth hormone. So if we want to look better than our driver’s license picture, I would say, going to bed with an empty stomach, you will have that growth hormone production. Because by age 60, the average man or woman only has about 30% of the growth hormone that we had at age 13 or 14. So looking younger, feeling younger, having a toned body, is simply hacking into that wisdom of our body, giving it what it wants, not giving food when it doesn’t want food. For that glass of wine in the evening time people say, I have a glass of wine to take the edge off the day. Well, neuroscience says when we take the edge off the day with alcohol, the back of our pharynx gets loose and we snore more. We don’t sleep as deep, up to 20% less. But that can be just enough that those injuries never heal. That’s just enough that we have that brain fog. We’re chasing the dragon with coffee all day to get clarity. So, I believe it can’t be done simply. I think it’s much more than obviously this conversation can do. But hopefully, I’m setting the tone or planting the seed for the viewers to really get this. And I think once they get it, they’ll become unstoppable. If I ever meet anyone that watches this, 10 years from now, but I’ll see someone at Lawrence Market, or I’ll see someone somewhere and they’ll say, Dr Odiatu, I saw you on that webcast with Dr. Luisa. I started treating my body like a high-performance race car. I’ve lost 15 pounds. I have a wellness-based office. I’ve connected with my son. So, this is what I hope for the viewer. This is really what I wish for them and you and myself ongoing. I’m a student of all this.
LS: Yeah, well, you could only be there for those around you, whether that’s your office team, your home team, your family, if you are well yourself. So, it’s really, really great advice. You’re mentioning going to sleep on an empty stomach, but that will only work if you already took in the nutrients throughout the day, or else you’re sleeping great, but you don’t have the nutrients your body needs for your skin to look great, for your body to heal. So yeah, it’s timing and planning, and you’re making it sound very easy to do. So that’s wonderful. How about managing stress? Oh, and how does all this physical fitness, nutrition play in with managing the stress? Keeping our mental health where we want it, feeling well and positive? How does it tie in?
UO: Okay, that’s like a PhD. That also could be a mind-body, three year commitment to becoming a chanting Tibetan monk. However, in a nutshell, I think most of us are very goal oriented. It got us into dental school. It got us through all our CE, whether it’s Kois, Pankey, all these different continuums. However, goal oriented doesn’t often work to make people happy. Because when you get a goal, you celebrate once, right? Ooh, I got my postgrad degree. Oh, I’m now a full mouth rehabber. Oh, now I’ve gone to the moon. The astronauts who went to the moon, when they came back, they were depressed. Michael Phelps, when he won the 24th gold medal at the Olympics, he came back, he was seen smoking marijuana trying to get higher, like literally. He’s the most winningest athlete in Olympic history. Very goal focused, but he was smoking marijuana to get higher. There’s something about achieving goals that doesn’t make us as satisfied as we think. You know, there’s a myth that goal acquisition makes us happy forever. They’ve actually shown that when you reach a goal within two weeks, you’re back to the same level of happiness as it were before. So, there’s something other than goals, and that’s challenging. If there’s any parents here, they always talk about, hey, my son is goal focused? My daughter’s goal focused? Well, they say being purpose driven, it could be the way to go, being on purpose. Now, I just saw on Netflix that whole documentary on the Blue Zones, you know, Dan Buettner, Blue Zones, where he looked at five places in the world where there’s the most 100-year-olds. And these 100-year-olds all had a common theme, and they were in Loma, Linda, Icarus, Sardinia and Okinawa. And what they asked these people, what makes you happy, why do you have such less stress, they talk about being on purpose. They have a commitment to their ongoing mission, day to day. So, the Okinawa, they call that ikigai, and the Costa Ricans call that Playa de vida. So, it’s in the moment. You and I basically are living our dream, if you think about it. As a doctor, double certified, you educate and share and up-level people. As a dentist, I’m up leveling and sharing and supporting people to be healthier, whether I do a chair side, whether I do it in a conversation on Zoom, whether I do it with a friend at a restaurant. So, my purpose-driven is to uplevel and help people be healthier. I can do that every day. I can do that when I put on my sneakers and walk outside, and maybe role model to my neighbors that, hey, you could be fit after 50. So I think being purpose driven and having a purpose could help us be happier in the moment. Because, at this point in time, like this alone, I am living my dream. I don’t have to win an Oscar with a documentary on health. I know Morgan Spurlock, I think just passed away. He was the guy that did that Super Size Me documentary, interesting guy. So, I don’t have to get that level of winning an award. I’m doing it now talking to you. I’m enjoying this conversation. I’m enjoying seeing your face light up when I share something. I’m living my dream right now, and I can celebrate right now. My Uche-ness. My mom and dad were very shy people, never went to university, but I think even though they passed away, now they’re with me right here. I’m living out their legacy. Their love. My dad loved a sound mind and a sound body. My mom was all about nutrition. So, I have them right here. I stand on the shoulders of my sweet parents. So, I am purpose driven, and moment by moment, we can be happier than if we wait for that all-encompassing, oh, I want to wait till I have 10 offices or I want to wait till I start doing full mouth rehab. Well, how about celebrating each and every person you inspire and bring their mouth back to function and get them out of pain. So being purpose driven could be the path to fulfillment and happiness, more though, than being goal oriented.
LS: It sounds just kind of like, just enjoy the journey. Enjoy getting to know yourself and those around you better contribute to society. We get more back sometimes when we give, right? So, this all sounds familiar, presented in a slightly different way. That’s really great advice.
UO: Well, even, I drive into work today, driving to work, I’m on my mash. I don’t have to reach work to be happy as a dentist. I’m driving to work, maybe listening to a podcast, maybe listening to a zoom call as I drive to work. I’m on my mission, right? I can have the windows down, I can have the sunroof open, and like the neuroscientists say, morning sun is very important to have a good brain. We have this little center of neurons. It’s called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. There are 20,000 neurons in the center of our brain. They know we’re exposed to daylight or sunlight in the morning, if we get exposed to body; it’s not necessarily beside a window. So, if you haven’t been outside, letting your dog go to the bathroom, you’re in your car now, sun roof open. Remember top 5%, so leather seats, top 5% dentists. Sun roof open, sun beaming down on my face and skin. My circadian rhythm is reset, which makes me have more energy for the day. Makes me release good hormonal balance. It makes me sleep deeper. So, they’ve shown if you get out and have some sun on your skin in the morning, just 10-15 minutes, could be on the way to work, what happens is you sleep better, because we reset our 24 hour and 50 minutes. It’s actually not exactly 24 hours every morning, but we can only do that if we get some morning sun, because we think about it. And I remember, from the book called Sapiens by Harari. In it, he said, You and I are more like cavemen and cave women. We’re more like Freddie Flinstone and Betty Rubble than we know. Even though you might wear, you know, Gucci belt and Prada shoes, you’re more like a cave woman. So back 100,000 years ago, first thing in the morning when the sun came up, everyone in the tribe left the cave. Everyone left the cave to go outside. The only people that stayed inside were the sick and the dying. The sick and the dying stayed inside for the last 100,000-400,000 years of Homosapien, Homo habilis, Homo erectus. So, when we stay inside our dark, beautiful homes, and we go in the parking garage, get in our car, keep the sun roof closed, because you don’t want to hurt your skin, you get to work, no skin exposure. We have the physiology of a sick and dying person. So that sets the tone for low energy days. So, you can actually reignite your caveman, cave woman roots by getting some sun exposure. Get that sunroof open. So, honoring our body. Think of it as, how did we grow up? What do we need? Exposure to the outdoor world first thing in the morning, sunroof down, windows open. I’m now reinventing myself every morning, and that’s a beautiful thing.
LS: This particular podcast has been so rich of really easy things that we can incorporate into our day to day. Do you have any last comment, any last bit of advice you can provide us very busy dentists? As you said earlier, we have our home life, we have our professional life, hobbies, other things that are keeping us very busy. How can we most easily incorporate some of this advice into our schedules.
UO: Okay, no matter where you are in your journey, whether a new grad or 40, 50, 60, 70, exercise. Scientists have shown our muscles have no idea how old we are. They have no idea. All they know Luisa, is that we move a lot, which is youth, and we don’t move a lot, which is accelerated aging. We stand more, which is called a fidget factor, or we sit more, which is a death physiology. So, I know we’re both sitting here talking, but again, Australian study 2010 said, if we sit for 45 to 50 minutes, if we stand and move one minute, stretch, go get some water, maybe a green tea, maybe a dark roast coffee, we actually remind our physiology that we’re still alive and we have another day left. So, knowing that our bodies can renew every three years, knowing that our muscles have no idea how old we are, they’ve actually shown that a 70-year-old man or woman, if they exercise with strength training, cardio and flexibility, we can be as in shape as the average college student. Which doesn’t say much for the average college student. Okay, what it says is we can renew. Like 70! We can be there for our patients, our families and our friends. 70 plus, and we could be that vibrant older man, 80, 85, 90. Which you might think, oh, Uche, that’s so far away. But 70 to 90, 20 years can be magical. Eiffel Tower, Great Wall of China. If we have our back, our minds, and our hearts and our lungs. So, I just want to share with people that again, I know I’m optimist. My mom raised me an optimist. But our muscles have no idea how old we are. All they know is that we either move, which is youth, or we sit a lot, which is death. Physiology, we feed our bodies and we become what we eat, which sounds too simple, but a lot of the best health anecdotes in life are simple. So simple, maintainable, sustainable, forever, and that’s what I wish for my colleagues.
LS: Thank you so much, Uche, for bringing us this fresh opportunity to be a new self throughout the day, tomorrow and the day after. Thank you also to all of our listeners for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe on Spotify and follow us on social media to be notified every time we post a new episode. Keep brushing up!