The Biopsychology of Your Smile with Cosmetic Dentist Dr. Anjali Rajpal
Your smile is connected to your whole body image, and when you worry about your smile, your whole body can reflect it. In this episode, Beverly Hills cosmetic dentist Dr. Anjali Rajpal, who studied biopsychology before dental school, shares how she sees the link between your smile and your emotional health, why she says the bacteria in your mouth matter for the rest of your body, and what she recommends for nutrition, oral care and healthy mouth development for kids.
What you'll learn in this episode
Your smile is tied to how you feel. Dr. Rajpal says her purpose as a dentist is to help people smile from the inside out, so that a healthy, natural-looking smile lets them show their inner joy and feel good.
Hiding your smile can change how others read you. Dr. Rajpal describes a boss who would not smile at her team because she was embarrassed by her teeth, and who was then seen as cold or unfriendly. She adds that children pick up on emotional cues from faces very easily.
Oral health is connected to whole-body health. Dr. Rajpal says bacteria from inflamed, bleeding gums can enter the bloodstream, and that oral bacteria have been linked to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer's and arthritis. She sees her patients every 3 to 4 months to keep the bacterial load in check.
Think alkaline-leaning, not acidic. Dr. Rajpal says bacteria thrive in an acidic environment. She calls soda straight acid and sugar, and recommends leafy greens, berries, fruits and vegetables, and fewer processed foods with synthetic ingredients.
Calcium needs its partners. She says calcium works best alongside vitamin D, vitamin K, phosphorus and magnesium, which help get calcium to the bones and teeth so they are strong and more resistant to cavities.
Make brushing and flossing a fun family habit. Dr. Rajpal says to start very young and be the role model, because little kids follow us and copy our behavior.
Breastfeeding and habits can shape the palate. Dr. Rajpal says our ancestors had wider palates and straighter teeth. She says breastfeeding for as long as you can helps form a wider palate, and that pacifiers and thumb sucking for too long are not great and can lead to an open bite and a narrow arch.
Consider an early orthodontist visit. Dr. Rajpal says most kids now have slightly narrow arches and that a palatal expander is easier when the mid palatal suture is more flexible, around ages 7 or 8 rather than the mid-teens.
Breathing and sleep matter. Dr. Rajpal says poor breathing can lead to poor sleep, and that she often sees this linked to ADD and a short attention span, almost like a mild case of sleep apnea in little ones.
Give kids coping tools. Dr. Rajpal recommends teaching children mindfulness and breathing techniques from a young age and leading by example, because kids face a lot of stress.
About the guest: Dr. Anjali Rajpal
Dr. Anjali Rajpal is a cosmetic and general dentist at Beverly Hills Dental Arts. She has a background in painting and sculpture and brings the same artistic skills into her work as a dentist. She believes that dentistry is more than a scientific pursuit, and she considers herself a practitioner of the art of dentistry. Her approach allows her to create healthy, aesthetic smiles that look natural.
She earned her Doctorate in Dental Medicine from Tufts University in Boston, MA. Before her dental training, she pursued a B.S. in Biopsychology in the honors program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Following dental school, Dr. Rajpal continued her education as a General Practice Resident at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA. She completed an advanced cosmetic residency with Esthetic Professionals in Tarzana, CA, where she became proficient in porcelain work, such as veneers, inlays/onlays, and crowns.
In her spare time, Dr. Rajpal enjoys painting, playing the sitar, classical dance, swimming, tennis, hiking, polo, and is an avid traveler. She practices yoga, mindful awareness and meditation.
Website: bhdentalarts.com
Instagram: instagram.com/beverlyhillsdentalarts
This episode is for general information only and is not medical or dental advice. Talk with your own dentist, doctor or health provider before making changes to your health, diet, or your child's dental or orthodontic care.
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Full episode transcript
Read the full transcript
Intro (recorded)
Your smile is connected to your whole body image. When you worry about your smile, your whole body reflects this. Today's guest is going to tell us all about that connection. Hi, I'm Marijo Tinlin from the Teaching Your Toddler Show. Dr. Anjali Rajpal has a background in painting and sculpture and brings the same artistic skills into her work as a dentist. She believes that dentistry is more than a scientific pursuit and she considers herself a practitioner of the art of dentistry. Her unique approach to dentistry allows her to create healthy aesthetic smiles that look natural. She received her doctorate in medical dentistry from Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts.
Dr. Rajpal continues to educate herself on how oral health and body health maintain a delicate balance, ensuring all her treatments are safe for your physical and mental well-being. Dr. Rajpal is also driven by a deep curiosity about the mental aspects and needs of her patients. Before her dental training, she pursued a bachelor of science in biopsychology in the honors program at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. Following dental school, Dr. Rajpal continued her education as a general practice resident at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. She completed an advanced cosmetic residency with Esthetic Professionals in Tarzana, California, where she became proficient in porcelain work such as veneers, inlays, onlays, and crowns.
In her spare time, Dr. Rajpal enjoys painting, playing the sitar, classical dance, swimming, tennis, hiking, polo, and is an avid traveler. She also practices yoga, mindful awareness, and meditation. I know you're going to learn a lot today. I hope you enjoy the show.
Marijo: Hello, this is Marijo Tinlin from the Teaching Your Toddler Show. Today we have a great show full of very interesting information. I can't wait to talk to Dr. Rajpal about dentistry and about the importance of nutrition, your teeth, the aesthetics, all the things around it. So, welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Dr. Rajpal: So, yes, my name is Dr. Anjali Rajpal. I am a cosmetic dentist here in Beverly Hills and I basically focus on everything that I do is very cosmetic minded, but I'm also a general dentist. So, we're also always promoting long-term health, making sure that we're doing cleanings and fillings and all of the basic general dentistry along with Invisalign, veneers, bonding, teeth whitening, all of the cosmetic type oriented procedures. So, that's basically what we do here. And the name of my practice is Beverly Hills Dental Arts. So I went to college at University of Michigan, studied biopsychology and then I went to dental school at Tufts University in Boston and then I ended up matching for residency out here at Cedars-Sinai and that led me to being in Beverly Hills and sticking around ever since.
Marijo: Wow, that's awesome. So biopsychology is new. That's a new phrase for me. Tell us a little bit about what that is.
Dr. Rajpal: So it's re really like the medical study of the mind in a way. So we would study the influence of drugs and medicine on the mind and just at the same time how to basically you to develop the mind and create an emotional maturity and stability to be at your best. So, so in my general practice, it's the purpose of what what I'm doing every day is really an emotional backing where we're trying to promote people smiling from the inside out. So, the whole purpose of me designing beautiful smiles that last well through the years is really so that people are smiling and radiating that inner joy and feeling good.
So that that smile ends up being contagious and is spreading joy basically to whoever they interact with.
Marijo: Oh my gosh, that's amazing. That's it's that's so unique. I think I think we maybe we take for granted or something as when we go to the dentist, we think, well, we're cleaning. It's more like practical, but you're really talking about the aesthetics of it. And as as we were chatting before we started recording, you mentioned the artistic side of this. So tell us a little bit about about that about because you really are like you said designing smiles right?
Dr. Rajpal: Yeah. So I since a young age I would always love working with my hands everything. I would just make things out of fabric or wire or paint or do a little bit of sculpture ceramics blowing glass. I just always wanted to be making things. And so I think I just have a natural inclination of working with my hands. And so dentistry is a perfect fit for me because of that because I love crafting teeth. So I love when I'm doing bonding and I'm sculpting bonding to reconfigure the way that a tooth looks. It's very artistic for me. And when I'm just visualizing and looking at a smile before I've recreated it, it's just like a little artistic vision that I have before I start.
So, I love that I get to have the opportunity to use my artistic sense and just kind of create like all my patients are my little art projects with their smile so I can beautify their smiles and that way they can actually feel better about smiling and smile more in the end.
Marijo: That's amazing. I looked at some of the before and after pictures on your website and we'll of course link to your site and all that so people can see. But what you're saying I mean she she's right like when you look at these before and afters they're just so astounding for some of the patients the differences that can be made. And I'm sure that those transformations really really do like you were saying affect people when they can feel good about having a pretty smile.
Dr. Rajpal: Right. Yeah. Because if you're if they are hiding their smile, then they're kind of suppressing the way that they would be naturally expressing themselves because they're being conscious of smiling and not just freely freely showing how they feel. And so it can lead to a lot of misunderstanding between maybe if the like one of the consultations I did the woman was a boss but she wouldn't smile to her colleagues and employees because she was embarrassed of her smile. So, what ends up happening is they interpret her as not being as friendly or maybe even being slightly mean or cold because she's not expressing joy whatsoever through her face.
Because we interact so much on not by the words that are said, but by just these emotional cues. And especially with children, children, they're not really listening to the actual words you're saying, they are they are by far more intuitive than adults. I mean, I have nieces and as I've watched them evolve, but they would pick up on just such subtleties. Than every kid I've interacted with, they they can really feel the emotional output and what how a person is feeling way more than I think a lot of us adults do because we cloud our visions and our senses. But that's why expression of the face is so important because it's such a visual and subconscious cue to all of us.
So yes, if you're suppressing that, then not only are you being misunderstood by others, but you're being misunderstood by your own body as well, because now your emotions that you're wanting to express are actually just getting stuck inside of you. And obviously that's going to manifest somewhere and just cause an imbalance maybe in one of your organs or something like that because it's not as positive of an emotion as you maybe would have been able to have. So, so that's why it's it's a lot more important than we may realize because so much of our communication comes from our oral cavity and all of our facial expressions, a lot of it is through our eyes and our mouth.
Marijo: I remember during COVID that was a big thing because you're you lost half of that and so the children like you said because they they read us all the time they were losing that because they weren't able to make that connection because half of our face was gone.
Dr. Rajpal: Right. Yeah.
Marijo: Yeah. I you bring up a lot of interesting points about sort of that that internalizing you know and it really comes back to sort of that like the whole body health, right? It's not just your teeth. It's not just your mouth mouth and your smile. It's all all of it is connected right in our bodies.
Dr. Rajpal: Yes. So people sometimes don't understand like why do we have to visit our dentist every few months? I mean we see our patients every 3 to four months to make sure that they're they're being maintained so that their bacterial load doesn't get out of hand. Because if you have all this inflammation from bacteria where now your gums are bleeding and you've weakened this this thin gingival tissue barrier from your from your gums to the rest of your mouth and just you have this overgrowth of bacteria. Then you have you're facilitating the bacteria's ability to actually enter the vascule, enter the bloodstream and travel through the rest of the body and start wreaking havoc in different areas.
That's why they found that oral health, the bacteria in your mouth are linked to heart disease, stroke, just cardiovascular disease in general, heart attacks, diabetes, Alzheimer's, arthritis, all of these things because it's the same bacteria that they find in these atherosclerotic plaques which are constricting your blood vessels which are affecting the flow of your blood and oxygen through the rest of your body. So, it's I mean, we're one unit. That's why like the biopsychology, the way that you're thinking is obviously affecting how well your cells are functioning throughout your body. So, we have to keep all aspects of ourselves in order so that they're all working in balance as well as possible.
So, we always have to be managing our thoughts and managing our exercise and our diet. All of these things need to all be in balance so that we're at optimal health. And our oral health is so important for that because that's where all of our food is entering. So, we have to make wise choices about what we're eating. And we just don't want that bacteria to be causing issues in the rest of our body.
Marijo: Absolutely. And I'm glad you mentioned diet and nutrition because I was going to say I think there's probably a lot of people that don't make that connection of all those diseases that you just named into in our body being connected to our mouth, but but it all starts with what we put in to our mouths as well. So talk to us a little bit about a nutrition for parents and for children.
Dr. Rajpal: So you really want to be thinking of an alkalinebased diet because bacteria thrive in a very acidic environment and so obviously things like soda are horrible for you because they're filled with straight acid and straight sugar which bacteria have a party with. So you just want to be mindful. I mean, our food in this country is not the best. We we have so many options. We're so lucky to be given all these different cuisines and all these the ability to have so many different options, but we have to choose wisely. And a lot of the food that's out there in the grocery store, you need to be checking and seeing which ones are very processed or there are a lot of synthetic ingredients in them.
Anything that's going to act as a toxin and inflammatory is going to weaken your immune system. So the cleaner the diet you have, the more alkaline diet. Alkaline means it a lot of green leafy vegetables, spinach, kale, asparagus, broccoli, all these things that you know would be good for you while also having antioxidants like your raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, all you just want to make sure that I mean we know fruits and vegetables are the are the way to go. But then obviously balance it with proper grass-fed meat when you can and when you're having we need to have proper intake of calcium.
But then you need to know that if you're intaking calcium, you need the vitamin D to help absorb the calcium and the vitamin K, the phosphorus, the magnesium, these minerals to help once the calcium's absorbed to allocate it to the bones and teeth so that they are as strong as possible and as resistant to cavities as much as possible or osteoporosis as we're aging. So, it's just it's a little tricky with the way our food is these days, but we have to just do the best we can to get it those minerals and vitamins into our system every day and just try to minimize the toxins as much as possible.
Marijo: Thank you for all of that. And so for parents as they're trying to create good habits for their children, nutrition clearly is a thing. But then what about what are your recommendations for like oral care for the for kids?
Dr. Rajpal: So, kids when they're really little, just trying to help them get used to brushing their teeth and getting them into a very regular habit of brushing and flossing from a very young age. Whatever you can do to try to kind of get them into that habit. I mean, we are always little kids follow us and mimic our behavior. So, we have to be the role models and make it fun because if they're enjoying you brushing your teeth and showing them how to brush their teeth, then they just it'll it'll make it n a natural habit for them. But we have just changed so much evolutionarily.
Like 300 years ago, our skeletons were very different because we weren't on the types of diets that we're on now. So in the past we had very wide palates. Our wisdom teeth fit in our mouths effortlessly. We had much straighter teeth. We had a better flow of oxygen because when you have a wider arch form then the nasal passages also form wider which facilitate the flow of oxygen into our brains and bodies much better. But as we've we as we've industrialized and we're on these processed food diets, the baby bottles, the soft mushy food, that's not how things were back in the day. So breastfeeding is very important for as long as you can.
If you can for a year, that that's amazing. Because the actual suction and movement of the tongue with breastfeeding really helps to form the palate of the mouth in a wider fashion. Bottles I mean there's different teeths for the bottles that some are better than others to help with the palate as well. The pacifiers are not as great. Thumb sucking. Thumb sucking for way too long is not great either because then you can end up with an open bite and again a narrow narrow arch. But in general, our most kids have slightly narrow arches now. So, it's really important for parents to have their kids visit orthodontists at a young age because they should really start getting their palates expanded with palatal expanders so that their skulls are just forming in a better fashion from a young age.
We have a piece of cartilage in the middle of our palates that's called the mid palatal suture and that kind of it stiffens up and hardens around like ages 14 16 somewhere around there. It becomes a little harder to open up. So while they're younger, like if you can start them around ages seven or eight, it you can that that that piece of cartilage is so much more flexible. So it allows the palate to expand much more easily. So if you can get that expander in there at a young age, it's so much easier for them. And they can just help correct it. It helps with their the children's profiles.
It helps so much with their breathing. Their breathing is so crucial because if they're not breathing properly, then they're not sleeping that well because they can be gasping for air and you don't realize that they're doing that. But that's often linked to ADD because they're just they're not getting enough sleep and they're agitated and so they have a short attention span. And a lot of times it's just because they're they're so oxygen and sleepdeprived. It's it's almost like a mild case of sleep apnea when they're so little. And so these things need kids have so much stress these days. Like I don't even know how they do it.
So all of these things are so important. You just you want them to be getting their sleep. You want to help them with their mental health too. Like teach them from a young age how to their mindfulness practices. I know my nieces are taught mindfulness in schools and hopefully more schools have more of that, but kids need it. They just they have so many stressors with them all the time. Like if they can find a way to manage them themselves whenever they need to just with breathing techniques, their their imaginations, their imaginations are so powerful.
If they can get into the groove of that and also be led by example by parenting so that they their self they can help themselves and they don't need you they if they have these techniques in place then it just will help them so much through the years I mean we have the social media everything it these are things that are so hard for kids to deal with so they need coping mechanisms yeah wow Wow.
Marijo: Gosh, that was that that was a lot. And and I've been hearing a lot about this and actually just recently did a another episode that talked very similarly about what you're talking about with the with the connection between this breath at night that we don't even know is happening with our kids that they're manifesting with ADHD or ADD or or you know other kinds of attention span disorders because they truly just aren't breathing correctly. And so I love that you brought that up as well. So really your recommendation of course is nurse as much as you can. I hadn't heard about I think I hadn't heard that that our that we've actually changed.
My daughter actually had to have an expander. And it's as it's a challenge to deal with it as you know parents and kids and making sure that it doesn't fall out and all the things like that, but I mean the way you said it is it's just it's so important, right?
Dr. Rajpal: Yeah, for sure. I had a palatal expander when I was a kid, so I mean I know that it if it was common in my time, then it's definitely even more more likely needed now.
Marijo: Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for talking to us today. This has been absolutely fascinating. Before I let you go, is there anything else that you think the listeners should know? Anything else you'd like to tell us before? I want you al also to make sure that we know how to find you too.
Dr. Rajpal: I mean, really just to be mindful of your oral health being linked to the rest of your body, your emotional health being to linked to the rest of your body. And just to find just to prioritize all of those things and understand the importance of why we actually have you come to a dentist. It it's it's deeper than that. And yeah, I'm I'm here for all ages. I'm any questions that anybody has, I'm always here for everybody, any any way that I can help out. And the name of my practice is Beverly Hills Dental Arts. So, my Instagram is Beverly Hills Dental Arts. So is my YouTube.
My TikTok. My website is bhdentalarts.com. And you can contact us from any of those outlets and we'll always get back to you.
Marijo: And excellent.
Dr. Rajpal: And even if you if anybody needs a complimentary consultation, everyone's always invited for that as well.
Marijo: Oh, that's fantastic. And I did see that you had a link on your site for out of town guests. There's ways to help people that don't live in Beverly Hills or in California, right?
Dr. Rajpal: Yeah, we see a lot of people that fly in or drive in from places and we're able to just work out their appointments so that it's still convenient for them however they can work it out. And then we also do virtual consultations.
Marijo: Oh, perfect. Okay, great. Great. Well, thank you again for speaking to us today. It's been a pleasure. We I think we've probably learned a lot about some things that we didn't even know we didn't know. So, appreciate it very much and thank you again.
Dr. Rajpal: Of course. It was wonderful speaking with you. Thank you.
Outro (recorded)
This has been the Teaching Your Toddler Show with Marijo Tinlin. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you enjoyed today's show, please leave a five-star review or a thumbs up so we can reach more parents like you. To be notified when new shows post, please subscribe by sending an email to subscribe@teachingyourtoddler.com. For more expert interviews, fun activities, and storytime podcasts, please visit our website at teachingyourtoddler.com. All of our shows are also posted as videos as well on our YouTube channel at Marijo Tinlin. Find us on Facebook at TeachingYourToddler, X at TeachingToddler, Instagram at TeachingYourToddler, and make sure you check out our past shows.
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