36. Runners...What’s Your Dental Health Strategy? | Dr. Ken Pierson

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How often do you think about your teeth in the context of your running?  Kim comes from a family full of dentists, so dental health has always been something on her radar.  Despite it being something she thinks about, there doesn’t seem to be many people talking about dental health in running and endurance sport, so she invited her cousin, Ken Pierson, to come on the podcast to discuss this unique topic.  

Ken is a married father of 4 girls.  He is a dentist who spent the first 18 years of his career in general dentistry and he currently owns and works full time at Happy Bear Surgery Center, which serves children in central California who need sleep dentistry to accomplish their dental treatment.  

Ken has completed 6 marathons and 2 Ironman triathlons, but still states that mountain biking is his first love...we’ll forgive him for that.  This is a super interesting discussion on:

• how to minimize the impact of those sugary gus, chews, and sports drinks on your teeth 
• how mouth breathing can negatively impact not only your oral microbiome but your face structure, and 
• how stress related to high training loads (and life) can result in grinding your teeth!

He has several logical and simple tips for runners who want to protect the health of their teeth during training, racing, and life.  Honestly we found this conversation fascinating and we hope you do too!

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