A reader named Nancy wrote in this week with a question I’ve been getting in different forms for years:
“What order do you actually use your stuff?”
It’s been almost a year since I last walked you through the before-noon routine. So this week: no tip, no study, no 2,000-word dive. Just the whole morning, in order, with links to everything…
1. First, before anything else, a big glass of water with electrolytes. I stir the cleanest, best-tasting electrolyte I’ve found into a full glass of filtered water. Just minerals to rehydrate after eight hours of breathing through (ideally) closed lips.
Saliva is mostly water, but it’s the minerals that let it remineralize enamel, buffer acid, and hold off the bacteria that cause cavities.
If you caught my “one thing I put in my water every morning” edition back in January, this is still the thing.
2. Then the stationary bike. Ten, fifteen minutes of light pedaling, and not for the calorie burn, but for circulation, and for one quiet window before the day starts asking things of me. If the bike isn’t happening, a long stretch instead. Same idea.
3. Then the oral care block, before any coffee or breakfast, in this order: Tongue scrape → Floss → 1- to 3-minute swish with the Oragin MCT blend, the one with CoQ10 in it → Brush with Fygg, my fluoride-free toothpaste, then spit, no rinse, so the toothpaste stays on my enamel.
I’ll die on this hill: brushing after coffee or fruit or really any kind of breakfast (besides raw broccoli) means scrubbing softened enamel, which is how recession, sensitivity, and gray teeth start.
If you absolutely must brush after breakfast, wait 30-45 minutes to give your teeth a chance to recover.
4. Then breakfast outside, if the weather lets us. Two soft-boiled pastured local eggs, a cappuccino with Roseann, and the early morning sunlight – light to the eyes within an hour of waking sets your circadian rhythm and starts the melatonin clock that gets you sleeping deeply 14 hours later.
If you’ve been with me a while, you know I came to coffee late. It started with a sip from my wife’s cup in Verona on our 40th anniversary, and I wrote the whole silly confession last September. Now we pull two every morning on our Profitec, with A2 milk for digestibility, and a glass of mineral water on the side to rinse between sips. (Milk proteins help pigment stick to enamel. That’s another reason why I like the oil rinse before my coffee, to reduce that sticking power.)
5. Then, by mid-morning, green tea. You’ve seen me mention this one before. This one is triple toxin-screened, which matters more for tea than most people realize (heavy metals in the cheap stuff are a real, documented problem). It’s the EGCG-rich cup I wrote about in the Alzheimer’s edition. One of these packets, hot water, nothing else. Delicious treat I look forward to.
I’ll save the nighttime version for next time. There’s one thing in there that genuinely surprised me, and the answer to a question I get more than any other.
Warmly,
Dr. B
Want to go deeper on any of this?
Should You Brush Before or After Breakfast? The longer version of why I’ll keep dying on this hill.
Tongue Scraping: 6 Reasons to Scrape Your Tongue. If you want to know exactly why it’s so important.
Oil Pulling: How to Oil Pull. The full how-to, including what I wish I’d known when I started.
Coenzyme Q10: What You Need to Know. The science behind why your gum tissue actually runs on it.
What I Wish More People Knew About Green Tea and Your Mouth. Green tea isn’t just antioxidants.