Revolutionizing Dentistry: The Non-Invasive Approach with Dr. Jeremy Horst Keeper

In this episode of Kinda Different, Dr. Matt Allen welcomes Dr. Jeremy Horst Keeper, a pioneer in non-invasive dental care. They discuss the innovative approaches to dentistry that prioritize patient comfort and health, including the use of silver diamine fluoride and other non-invasive treatments. The conversation explores how constraints can drive innovation, the importance of listening to patients, and the need for a more human-centered approach to healthcare. Dr. Keeper shares insights from his practice and emphasizes the significance of community and collaboration in advancing dental wellness.

‍

Listen in on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch below on Youtube.

‍

Here's a transcript:

Matt Allen (00:00)
What's up everyone? Welcome back to season six. Yes, it is officially here. The inaugural episode of season six of Kinda Different. I know you've been waiting for this. We took a full like semester. We do seasons by like, you know, school semesters. We took a full semester off. I needed a break, but we are back and we are so excited about it. I'm Dr. Matt Allen, the CEO and co-founder of Different Kind and your host for Kinda Different. And I have been trying to line up this guest today for several years. He's, you know, really hard to track down sometimes, but he is here today and he is just absolutely a joy, a friend, someone that I'm so proud to know, Dr. Jeremy Horst Keeper, ⁓ founder of Dr. Keepers Dental Wellness. You might know him as like the OG of silver diamine fluoride and just any kind of preventive non-invasive therapy. He is probably the expert on it.

or certainly knows the expert on it. He is the first line of defense for all of that. So thrilled to have him on today. Jeremy, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. And I would love for you to just give us a quick, for those of you who don't know you, I'm sure they've read your papers and whatnot, but for those of you who don't know you, yeah, give us a quick intro.

Jeremy Keeper (01:15)
Right on, thanks so much, Matt. It's an honor to be here. I'm a huge fan of different kind. And I think, I don't know, five, four, six years ago, we did an episode together, but it's great to be on. Apologies for how long and difficult it is to track me down, pin me down, hold me down to do a webinar. I think folks who know me know me for helping to translate, like you said, non-invasive therapies.

Matt Allen (01:36)
Yep.

Jeremy Keeper (01:45)
from clinical trials to clinical practice and get the policies in place behind them. So we've been kind of a nexus point for information about silver diamine fluoride, but that was like the, you know, that was the breakthrough drug medicine, whatever. And, you know, getting people focused again on glass onomer, helping to introduce curadont, coming up with, you know, iodine, which had been underutilized as a preventive, but we figured out you could use it as a treatment.

If you do this just right, et cetera. But basically the idea, like you said, before we started recording of trying to make oral health care and the experience of having teeth a little more human. So my thesis on that has been that if we are able to take away the physical invasiveness, if we're able to dramatically decrease the amount of tooth structure or bone structure that's being removed, then we can actually do more to heal the population, optimize health and empower people.

into their own long-term health. that's, yeah, that's, that's my focus. And I'll just say, we started this practice almost exactly a year ago and we do not have needles and we don't use drills to remove tooth structure. So if you can imagine that as a dental professional, what do you do if you don't have local anesthetic, syringes, if you don't drill teeth, what can you do? And that's, hopefully that is enough to get your wheels turning a little bit.

Matt Allen (03:02)
Woof, yes, 100 % man, it's so good. And I have been in your office and it is a joy to behold, right? You open cabinets and there's therapies and medicines and not drills, right? It really is an amazing thing. It is not minimally invasive, it's essentially non-invasive, it feels like, right? So yeah, it's an amazing thing. We'll talk a lot more about that.

But I think that actually lends it, know, so we're talking about innovation, right? And you've obviously been innovating for a long time in terms of, hey, how can we do less? Right. And one of the things I think is really interesting is this is, I think it's helpful from like a sport analogy, right? If you think about coaching, right? Like the way that good coaches coach is they impose constraints on their players to help make the kind of desired behavior show up more often. So you might, if you're, you know, coaching soccer, my kids play soccer and I coach them.

We do a lot of small field exercises, right? Where it's like, cool, I'm intentionally creating constraints so that you can see this kind of situation more often. And so the question that I kind of want to ask you is you've obviously imposed a lot of constraints on your office in some ways, but how does that help you think in a more innovative way than like, hey, I have every technology. I think often we think about innovation as just more and more and more the next, the next, the next, but I think innovation can also be constraints as well. So talk to me a little bit about how you feel about that and...

to see your kind of perspective on that from a day-to-day basis.

Jeremy Keeper (04:25)
Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly right is like, how can you constrain things to, um, to drive yourself forward, to bring out innovations that otherwise wouldn't be focused on, you know, uh, if you look at the top five, uh, tools that have been adopted in typical, uh, dentistry, whatever faction of typical dentistry you're, you're looking at, you know, there's a lot of things that have been very magical over the last, I don't know, over at least my career. I started as a dental assistant 27 years ago.

you know, implants becoming more popular. Some people use lasers, some people don't. There's the Sone, you know, the local anesthetic tool and all that stuff. And that's like, you know, what problem is a product or service solving? Is it solving the dentist's problem? Is it solving the dental hygienist's problem? Is it solving the front office problem? Is it solving the patient's problem? Is it solving the population's problem?

And so I think one of the reasons that we hit it off so well is that I have a value. I've been developing it as a skill. You have a talent and a very well-developed skill of listening to people. And if you listen to people enough, as being in the dental profession, you'll hear some of the things about dentistry that doesn't necessarily serve people. And so if you try to look for innovations that respond to

people and their oral health problems and the disconnect between dentistry and oral health problems and suffering and goals, then you start to target a different set of innovations than if you're just focused on, what's my problem.

Matt Allen (06:00)
Hmm. Poof, that's...

Jeremy Keeper (06:01)
And so that's where

I started heading into to medicines and these, then, you know, basically for me, it was, ⁓ looking at advantage dental. know we both kind of know and love advantage dental. And, ⁓ there's a long story about that, but they got to be a place of innovation because they had a financial capitation model with their 500,000 Medicaid beneficiaries, you know, people who are covered by Medicaid. ⁓ and so that was an interesting constraint. They did really interesting, like great things with that.

Matt Allen (06:22)
Yep. Yep.

Jeremy Keeper (06:29)
including bankrolling silver diamine fluoride coming through as ⁓ a drug, including doing, I think, the main US research on bringing care to the home of pregnant women and new moms, xylitol gum for pregnant women and new moms, some of these other things that have proven to be very useful, where they were able to be innovative because they said, okay, we have this amount of money to take care of the population. We're actually not getting more money for doing a whole bunch of complicated treatment.

And that was wildly successful and super interesting. And they did all sorts of interesting stuff we can talk about all day. And you have talked with Charity, Lidwig and others about in the past on this podcast. But what happened when the founders, when the people who created that whole advantage general program sold it to another entity, the story went from being, what's all the good that we can do with the money that we have?

Matt Allen (07:04)
Yes.

Jeremy Keeper (07:16)
You know, how, like what, let's figure out what we can do to take care of the population with the money we have to let's figure out what we can do outside of the money that we get to optimize our profits. and so for me, that was like, ⁓ you know, okay, let's set up those constraints. What are the constraints so that it'll never go that way? what are the constraints so that, whatever I create, if we're really successful, with this practice and growing into multiple sites and all that stuff, that won't let it get screwed up.

And so that sounds like throw the needles and drills out the window. ⁓

Matt Allen (07:46)
I love

it, man. mean, I think, you people ask me all the time about, you know, like different kinds of like, like in terms of entrepreneurship, right? Like you start a company and everyone assumes you'll be a Delaware C Corp, right? And whatever. that's just like how you, you know, and you're like, no, we're a public benefit corporation. Like in our incorporation, like documents, right? Like we have at least a double bottom line, right? Yes. We have like shareholder value to consider, but like, we also have other things. And I think that, you know, that's a artificially, you know, imposed constraint that like, we could have just said, no, like the only value here is

like shareholder value and like if we don't do that, right, like somehow we're not being responsible to that. So I think there's lots of ways that like we can do that, you know, on a like stepwise level, maybe you're not ready to, you know, throw out all your needles and drills, right. But like there are plenty of ways I think to, you know, kind of bring some of that mindset into any kind of practice. And I guess that's like my next question for you, right? Like you have been a researcher, you've been on the like

investment side of these things. I mean, you now are backed like, you know, say, Hey, like, I'm going to do this in terms of like, let's start a practice and actually make it happen and scale that right. Uh, is the goal. so if people are just out there like, Hey, I'm in normal practice, you know, here's what it looks like. What have you found to be like, Hey, here's a very basic thing that you can do to kind of like drive this kind of innovation within your own office. Like what are those kind of.

easy things that people can pick up and do tomorrow if they wanted to.

Jeremy Keeper (09:09)
think putting out any kind of marketing about minimally invasive, about, you you don't have to be, you have an option, a minimally invasive option, a noninvasive option. You know, Matt, we've looked at the data together on access, right? mean, 50 % of people who have commercial insurance, adults, access dentistry in a given year. So from a business perspective, that means that you have 50

Matt Allen (09:12)
Hmm.

Jeremy Keeper (09:38)
you have a hundred X out there, you know, sorry, a hundred percent X, one X of the patients that are not being served that could be served. Right. So, I think if there's anything that can be done to say, what if we don't take this tooth structure away? What if we don't take this tooth out? What if we don't do a surgery here? How can we convey that as being appealing to people to get more people, more patients into the practice?

Matt Allen (09:42)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jeremy Keeper (10:06)
serve more people, improve health more, and improve your bottom line. That's been the piece for us where like that's our thesis is that people are avoiding care. I mean, we didn't come up with these ideas, right? We just learned from them. People are avoiding care because they think that they're gonna get over-treated. They think they're gonna get judged. They think they're gonna get hurt. And if you just say, you just value, if you virtue signal, if you value, show that you're

Matt Allen (10:19)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Jeremy Keeper (10:34)
You have a value that is health and that you understand that not everyone is going to get what a dentist might consider an ideal treatment plan. And you show that to the world, you're going to get people knocking on your door.

Matt Allen (10:48)
Yeah. And you've experienced that over the past year.

Jeremy Keeper (10:51)
I mean, we're coming up on a year in 10 days and we've had 600 people come through the front door, you know, a de novo dress. There are a hundred dental practices. So we are in downtown San Francisco. on the 25th floor here. Got to do this real quick.

Matt Allen (10:56)
Yeah, yeah, zero, yeah.

yep.

Yep. It is an amazing view. see. got it. There you go. You got it. Yep. Yeah, there you go. Yes. Yep.

Jeremy Keeper (11:13)
So that's one of the views. This is probably

the least exciting view that we have.

Matt Allen (11:19)
One with Coit Tower

is better. If you get that room, you're in the really good view. Okay. Yeah. Look at this. This is a benefit of podcasting with a mobile laptop, right? I mean, we got to see this view. There you go. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. Everyone, literally I'm coming. I just told you before we started recording. I'm coming to your office to bring my children there. I'm flying several states to bring my children.

Jeremy Keeper (11:22)
All right. All All right.

You can see the bay and the fog. There is no Moran.

Matt Allen (11:43)
both because I want them to see you and have that, also that's an amazing place to receive your dental care, right? They'll remember that forever. So it's gonna be great.

Jeremy Keeper (11:50)
Totally. Totally. But yeah, I mean,

there's a lot of other practices that are, you know, that are robust. But at DeNovo, it's hard to do. It's hard to say, like, I'm going to saturate market, how am going get started in practice? Well, we got there by saying that we're just not doing the stuff that people are scared of.

Matt Allen (12:06)
Yeah. Which I think is a really interesting point from the perspective of we talk about innovation, right? And it's like, I say this all the time and you're living it all the time right now of your differentiation is not, you know, more technology. Your differentiation is not, it feels like a spa in here. You're different. Like everyone else says that. Right. And your story truly is different. And I, you know, I think that the idea of like how to be innovative in this space is like, cool. Yeah. You can do SDF and you can, know, like, please like go live those out, but also then like

think about a better way to tell your story is also an innovative thing here in dentistry, not just like, hey, here's what I like to do. So we do some cool implant stuff. You're like, great, that's fine. But like literally so does the practice down the street and every other 500 dentists that are close to you, Especially if you're in a major Metro.

Jeremy Keeper (12:48)
Exactly. Everybody whitens,

everybody does clear aligners, everybody does implants. But yeah, mean, I think if you... So that said, like there's a couple of things there, right? Like one of the things is like, how do you really know if you're listening and if people see that you're listening? So plug for this amazing tool called Differentkind. ⁓ We are happy clients and users. And we do. There's been quite a few times where, I mean...

Matt Allen (13:05)
you

Jeremy Keeper (13:12)
There's this, I shouldn't say too much, but just let's say a very successful tech founder came in here and, you know, it was like his third visit. was his first, you know, six month recall. And we had done some fillings cause he had some like, you know, really intense erosion going on. And, and we had done some fillings on there and the filling didn't stay. And so I was like trying to do something a little extra to get the filling to stay for the next time. And. ⁓

Matt Allen (13:28)
Mm.

Jeremy Keeper (13:37)
And so I put a little ⁓ layer of coat, it's the glass Animer coat on top. Well, I always say it smells like death. The Animer coat does. It's unfilled resin. It smells like a nail salon. And some people like that smell. don't. But anyway, I had basically done the filling. We had talked about that. I got permission. we're going to redo this. Just put that on. I got it.

I told him what I was doing and I was going to do it. But then it was actually through your tool, like whatever, however many hours later, next day, same day, whatever it was, where he said, you know what, actually like, I wasn't asked. Like there was this really like pungent foul smelling thing that was used in my mouth and I wasn't asked. And it was like, this guy has agency. You want to talk about agency? This guy has agency. We have a great relationship.

Matt Allen (14:26)
Yeah. ⁓

Jeremy Keeper (14:30)
you know, but I never would have known that it actually really bothered him that much. unless I had a tool that allowed me to amplify the patient's voice and here, right. And it wasn't one of my staff members. It was this guy right here. It was like me that did that thing in the moment without asking and without, ⁓ you know, informing ahead of time, whatever. So I think that's really important is to not only listen, but like do more to listen, figure out other ways to listen.

Matt Allen (14:38)
Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

Jeremy Keeper (14:57)
You know, have your staff ask afterwards, use different kind, duh. You know, but like really figure out what is the part, what can we continue to do to see who we're serving to hear what their issues are, to hear what their goals are, to see if and how we've met them in the ways that we wanted to. And if, and you know, what can we do more that we're not doing? So I mean, like, I don't mean to just come on your podcast and plug your tool, but like for real, like this is like.

Matt Allen (15:17)
We didn't talk about

this beforehand, so thank you, but yes.

Jeremy Keeper (15:20)
No, no, that's I mean

that it's so I think I have been successful in the ways that have been successful because I'm able to listen although I'm not showing it right now

Matt Allen (15:28)
No, well, you're, mean,

well, you're on the podcast, you're supposed to be a dynamic storyteller here, right? But I think the through line of what you've said, you know, even initially there, right? Of like, what do people need? What do populations need? Right? Like that is a listening disposition. And like, you know, you even seeing, Hey, there's a spot in the market for this in a very saturated market in San Francisco, you know, like it shows you're listening, right? In a very meaningful way. And so your continued ability to like action on that, I think is, is, you know, certainly something to be applauded, right? Because

It's easy to talk about, it's harder to do sometimes and you're living it every day. So well done.

Jeremy Keeper (16:00)
Yeah, man. ⁓

and then the other part of what enables this just for anyone who's on here, who really hasn't gone down the silver fluoride rabbit hole or any of these others, just as a context that I feel like I should provide. ⁓ the reason that we're able to even think about doing, drill free needle free dentistry, is this procedure called the smart filling, where it's, silver modified, a traumatic restorative treatment.

Matt Allen (16:14)
Yes.

Jeremy Keeper (16:28)
And atraumatic restorative treatment is just a scoop and fill glass ionomer. You just take out less of the two structure. Classically, there's no drill, but the idea is just to, that it actually is not essential for the success of stopping a cavity or placing a restoration to remove all the caries, all the caries stent. And, and that's actually, it's been shown to be.

Superior to not remove all the curious dentin if you're getting close the bone. So that's a traumatic restorative treatment We figured out we can modify it with silver silver diamine fluoride in particular and so so much so that the idea is that At the diagnostic visit the first encounter when we see a cavity we place the silver fluoride and over a few days that hardens the cavity and it hardens it so much that it's actually harder than a than healthy dentin and if the

Matt Allen (16:54)
Yeah.

Jeremy Keeper (17:18)
tooth is already harder than, if the cavity is harder than the healthy part of the tooth, then why are you drilling it out? So we can actually use that hardened cavity to support our restoration. And we've been doing this like 12 years now or so. And so there's clinical trials showing with and without this way versus that way and everything. And it's all proven out to be very useful to decrease time, improve patient experience and the clinical outcomes are fantastic. So that's generally the ideas that we're able to

Matt Allen (17:31)
Yeah.

Jeremy Keeper (17:47)
not take out a drill because we use a medicine to do a cavity preparation for us and medicine plus time. So we have them back and literally just wash the tooth and then fill again.

Matt Allen (17:58)
Which I mean, I think, you know, it's unfortunate, right, that there are people still out there who might not have heard of that. Right. And so the hope is that we can continue to talk about these kinds of things and help people understand that you can do that. And it was interesting, even when you're talking earlier about like, there's this guy and we're doing a filling and you're like, well, if you don't have needles and drills, how are you doing that? Right. And it's like, cool. There's a perfect example. Right. I mean, I think we've talked, you know, at length about the, you know, kind of virtues of the hall crown as well. And, know, how that, you know, in pediatric dentistry where you're like, cool, you're still doing.

know, crowns and stuff like that for kids. You're just doing it in a way that actually, you know, doesn't, you know, it makes it easier for the patient, let's say that for sure. And it's actually, you know, just as effective, if not more, you probably have the data on that, right? But, you know, really, really impressive things that can be done without a traditional, you know, drill. So. ⁓

Jeremy Keeper (18:46)
Yeah.

Matt Allen (18:48)
We could talk about this for a hundred hours, but you are in between seeing patients in your day and I'm doing things. So let's move to, you know, the middle part right here, which is connection. And I always just, you know, we, we know each other well. We've gone on romantic runs on the beach together in Florida when we were like, you know, working with a company and, you know, done, done some fun things together. So we have a good relationship. And, and one of the things that I appreciate about you is your love of music. and so just currently wondering like what's on your turntable.

Like what, you know, you were listening to music like when we, right before we recording. So, you know, what's currently like making you feel like, man, this is just something that I need to share is something that's really floating in your book. Tell me.

Jeremy Keeper (19:28)
You might appreciate this for various reasons, but there's that song I was down but now I'm up. For Frank and the YouTuber guy, forget what his name is. Yeah, a friend took me to this dude, this YouTuber dude's concert. And then I was like, oh, I know that song. That was like, and so it was like literally my birthday this year, we just had a little family dance, you know, just little bumping beats, getting groovy.

Matt Allen (19:53)
Yep. Yep.

Jeremy Keeper (19:54)
That was the song that was like, no, this is it. Cause that was also like, you know, I don't know, four months into startup, you know, opening doors and you're like, where is everybody? They're here and then they're gone. they're, you know, and, um, and so it's just a little bit of like, Oh, and the, you know, the, the, the amount of money that we raise is kind of like, Oh, where's the money going? So was a little like exciting, depressing, sad, uplifting, confusing emotional moments. that was the song, uh, that

Matt Allen (20:21)
Nice.

Jeremy Keeper (20:22)
They got me moving a little bit and it's been, yeah, I wouldn't say I was like really down, but it's fine. But I guess that's been kind of the vibe here has been like, let's have a beat that like energizes, keeps things moving, keeps it a little bit light. I mean, these are just teeth after all. Yeah, we've had like two people come in who weren't patients, friends come in. Don't you want to have like a...

Matt Allen (20:40)
There you go, there you go.

Jeremy Keeper (20:49)
soothing mellow vibe. That's on the walls. What's in my ears? You gotta keep it moving, gotta keep it bumping.

Matt Allen (20:50)
Yeah.

Keep it moving. A hundred percent. Second

music question for you. For those that don't know, we both have three children and they're almost exactly the same age. Have you been able to take any of your kids to any shows? Because my 10 year old has gotten a little bit older. That's something that we've been doing. And so it's been fun to watch him start to embrace both live music, also... So just was wondering, you been able to take your kid to a show? Obviously you live in an epicenter in San Francisco of good live music.

Jeremy Keeper (21:25)
There's a lot of live music around. Nothing in particular, there's a lot of friends who just like will pull out a guitar and sing or something like that at a park or whatever. no, my daughter's starting to play the cello this year, so that's exciting. was like just last night, I was like, she had it out, she was like, I'm tired, I don't like practice. I was like, you just play one note for me. She was like, all right. And she was like.

Matt Allen (21:41)
That's awesome.

Jeremy Keeper (21:51)
like the resonance of it was amazing, know? And then like, was like, all right, one note worth your fingers on the string. It's just, you can see she was like, oh, this is my favorite note right here. was like a A. And she was just like, mm. And it was like, so sometimes just making a little sound that resonates is enough. Where did you take Jude? Where did you take?

Matt Allen (22:00)
We went to see LCD sound system at Red Rocks a couple of weeks ago, which was super fun. One of the things I didn't think about was the fact that like he's never smelled marijuana and, ⁓ Red Rocks, just the general aroma for those of you who've never been is just one of marijuana. And so it was interesting for him to like, Whoa, what does this smell like? You know, it smells like a dead fish or whatever, know, you think about it smells like as somebody who's never smelled it. So it was super fun. We danced the whole night and it was great. ⁓ but yeah, no, it's just, it's fun to like watch them, you know, experience live music. And play it too, and play it, right? Because you feel that resonance of cello is a beautiful instrument, right? Like what a gorgeous instrument. So that's awesome.

Jeremy Keeper (22:42)

And we're getting them into their different instruments and stuff. And so, yeah. So they all play a little bit of piano, but the middle one will actually read me as I play it, Moscone, and then he'll improvise on that theme. Nobody showed him how to do that. He just would play it and then he'd it a little differently. You're like, oh, oh, I want to sit here and listen to this. This is actually that cool. And then...

Matt Allen (23:04)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's awesome!

Jeremy Keeper (23:15)
Definitely got the drums. He's like, bang bang. Was that the character from the... Yeah, he's got all that. He's there.

Matt Allen (23:17)
Yeah Yeah, I think so.

Third child, make a lot of noise. Make a lot of noise. See, it's stuff that you will not hear and learn about Dr. Jeremy Horsekeeper on LinkedIn. You're going to learn it here on Kind of Different. So OK, let's move on to our last kind of topic, is all, yeah, bam bam. There you go. Bam bam, not bang. Yeah. What did you say? Bang bang. Yeah, bam bam. There you go. Making health care more human. From bam bam to making health care more human, making oral health care more human. Obviously you've been around the block in terms of like kind of thinking about care models and you all these different things and you experience healthcare I think in a different way because of the way that you are innovative and how you think about it. Just curious to something that you've had like when you've been a patient, I always love hearing people's stories of like, Hey, I was a patient somewhere else and here's something that like really resonated with me. Something they did something that like you saw, you're like, wow, like why don't we do that in oral health or you know, whatever. What can we learn from your specific experience outside of, maybe it wasn't dentistry too, that's fine, but just somewhere else when you were a patient, do you have a story that comes to mind?

Jeremy Keeper (24:32)
I mean, for me as in dentistry, yeah, so I two little vignettes. One's real short and the other is opening a topic. But yeah, basically when I was a dental student, we were checking each other ⁓ out. One of my classmates was like, I think he has a, whatever the terminology at the time was, we didn't say initial lesion, but whatever it was like incipient, whatever. One of those old words that most people still use. A non-cavitated initial caries lesion was what he was trying to communicate on the occlusal of three or whatever it was. And the faculty came over and picked up the Explorer. And I just remember like this pink skin and the sweat on his brow. And he pushed so hard with the Explorer into my tooth that his whole elbow was shaking because he was pushing so hard. And I just like, I developed a dental phobia just in that moment.

And it was, you know, it was because of how it was framed that I had been through two years of dental school where I was like, don't break something that's not broken. And so it's just like, cognitively consciously thought that it was the wrong thing to be doing. And this is exactly what this, this person was doing to me. And I had no control over it. So that's one. Two was I had this, I had this like infection in the cuticle of my, of my fingernail. I like, you know, I was at, I was in dental school also. And, I was like, all right, well, I'm in, I'm at the university of Washington. Like, let me get, you know, there's an expert somewhere that can like answer this, right? Like this is probably the best chance that I'll get to have like an actual expert, like help me figure this out. Cause it would go away. I would come back and soak it in salt water, take antibiotics. I was like, and it would, you know, you could be gone for a while and it would come back and found this old guy who was like a dermatologist, infectious, whatever specialist. And like, you know, he.

had the residents and we were like, okay, but it, worked every side. It's like it's yeast, it's not this bacteria, but you can use the bacteria cause you get secondary infections. It doesn't look that bad. And he said, look, really this is what you're experiencing is that inflammation comes and goes in the body and inflammation mainly comes from your diet and stress. And if you try to do things to control the inflammation that's in your body, then this little symptom,

of imbalance in your body is going to go away, but it's also going to help the rest of your body. And this Matt is something that I tell people all day, every day with gum disease, right? And it just having that perspective of of a, this wise old professor coming and saying like, this is just part of your body. You're just seeing it here because it's manifesting here, but there's this whole other issue going on that leads you to think, okay, whoa, like

But as a dentist, like it's not my job to fix this one little five millimeter pocket. It's my job to help someone understand that there's inflammation throughout their body. That's finding local irritation. And yeah, we can get rid of the local irritation. We could take the calculus off, whatever, but there's inflammation in the body. So the biggest thing that I can do to help this person, help them understand that. And then, you know, figure out where their values and goals are to help them set their dietary or exercise or stress handling changes.

to decrease the inflammation of their body and holy shit, that's gonna have a much bigger impact on their life than me doing a little something with their tooth.

Matt Allen (27:54)
Dude, I mean, I'm positive it was you who sent me Weston Price's, know, tome, right? I think it's nutritional degeneration, right? What's the physical degeneration? There you go. I'm missing a word. Yeah. And I mean, you start to think about it from that perspective and you're like, yeah, that's, we think about our job a lot differently when we think about those kinds of things. So that's a great story. I love it. Yeah. And I mean, but in both of those, right? Of like how...

Jeremy Keeper (28:03)
nutrition and physical degeneration.

Matt Allen (28:21)
Trauma can quickly be created, right? In a moment that doesn't feel like you're like, this is just my normal job. And it feels really traumatic to, Hey, what does the future of integrated care look like? And how does that feel for a patient? Right? think it's always different when we put ourselves in the chair, instead of, you know, in the patient kind of position, instead of in the provider position and the healthcare professional position. So, I love both of those stories as a great ones and I had never heard them. thank you for sharing. That's awesome. Yeah.

Jeremy Keeper (28:46)
Thanks for asking.

Matt Allen (28:48)
So I'm sure, you know, people are gonna wanna find out more about what you're doing, but this is not just you, right? This is a movement and there's like more of this happening. So if you wanna get in touch with you or find out more about like, I'm interested in, you know, chatting with folks who are doing this kind of thing, starting a practice that looks like this, maybe just incorporating more of this into my practice, where should they go? Tell us more about like, hey, how do I...

learn and sit at the feet of Dr. Jeremy Horst Keeper and the contemporaries that are doing similar things.

Jeremy Keeper (29:20)
Yeah, well, hopefully we can sit in a circle together and learn from each other. I mean, really, because I'll be the first to say that, you know, as a past scientist and, you know, policymaker and clinician, running a dental practice is no joke. It is a lot. And so I want to go to the people that have been doing traditional dentistry and be like, all right, like, how do you make this work? How do you, whatever, like really, really, Anyway, all that said, yeah. So thank you for the lead in. I want to have everybody know about something called Moby Dental. So this is a national nonprofit that's sort of a membership organization, but the goal is to get the word out about minimally invasive care and get people, patients to minimally invasive care. so MobyDental.org, Moby like Moby Dick, Dental.org. And it sprouted out of one of the really robust teams of dental hygienists that go out to where people are and provide non-invasive, minimally invasive care to people. In this case, long-term care facilities, older adults, nursing homes. There's a team called Sound Dental, as in Puget Sound around Seattle area, where, I mean, they were doing the kind of care that I wanted. And part of what I'm doing here is validating the care that they provide by doing silver fluoride and just, know, debridement and not doing surgery on everybody and not.

Keeping it simple. But anyway, they've been very successful in Washington state and they had the goal of getting the word out to patients about like where you can provide, find providers like this and thereby expanding the market, expanding awareness, improving health. And so they created Moby Dental. And so if you go check it out, you can say, I'm a patient and look for a provider in your area. Hopefully you're a dental provider, a dental practitioner as Matt Allen taught me to say.

And there's not somebody in your area and you could say, hey, you know what? do believe or I do offer this type of minimally invasive care and have it on my website or whatever it is. And you can join and have patients sent to you because people do come to us from that. So thank you for asking. That's my plug of the day. ⁓

Matt Allen (31:24)
Love it.

Well, no, I think it's a super important, you know, kind of piece, right? Because I get the question all the time. And I, unfortunately, like I literally had one, somebody like at different kinds of like an employee be like, where should I go get dental care? And I'm like, you know, I don't, I don't know. Right. It's like a really hard thing when you don't have an office and you can't just like, be like, yeah, I can take care of you. Right. So, I think it, it fills an important need in, you know, the, community, you know, the global community of like, Hey, where, where can I receive the kind of care that.

you I would like to Sweet man, well, thank you so much. I mean, you know, we will have a beer or a drink or whatever it is at some point and continue the conversation. But I'm just excited to, you know, be able to share some time with you today. Hopefully continue to bring the word to more and more people about, what you're doing in San Francisco. Recent winner of SF Best. Best of the Bay, best dental practice in SF, which I, a whole, I don't know like how often awards get it right, but certainly they got it right in this case. So well done. and yeah, man, just really thrilled with what you're doing, how you're doing it. And, yeah, I'm excited to keep the conversation going over the years here.

Jeremy Keeper (32:29)
Thank you.

Thank you so much, my friend.

‍