Healing, Health, Healthier, and Becoming Healthiest

I have made health and getting fit my top priority over the last two years. As a result, I’ve lost over 60 pounds, my aches and pains are gone, my energy has returned, and I feel more like myself than I have in years. But this journey has been about far more than weight loss. It has been a journey of healing, curiosity, and redefining what it truly means to be healthy.

As a dental hygienist, I have always been focused on helping my patients achieve healthy mouths. In school, we are taught that dental health comes from improved oral hygiene—flossing, electric toothbrushes, the “right” toothpaste—and removing tartar and plaque in the office. Yet, year after year, even with excellent care, I continued to see the same patterns: bleeding gums, bone loss, and recurrent decay. Something wasn’t adding up.

While there was often improvement, true healing remained elusive. I began to suspect that I was missing a critical piece of the puzzle. That suspicion sparked curiosity—and that curiosity changed the course of my career. It made me question everything I thought I knew about healing and about health itself.

Around that time, I came across the definition of health from the World Health Organization, which defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being—not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” That definition stopped me in my tracks. Because what we often call “health” in dentistry—and in medicine—is really disease management: fewer symptoms, better numbers, temporary control. But complete well-being? That is something entirely different.

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Redefining Health Requires Better Questions

This blog has more questions than answers—and that’s intentional. We must be curious. What is health? How are the mouth and body connected, and how much does one influence the other? How do we truly achieve oral health, and what does it actually take to sustain it? Why can’t we simply scale, polish, and “fix” our way to health? Is it really just bacteria, or is it something more? And perhaps most importantly, how do we maintain health—both oral and systemic—over a lifetime, rather than simply managing disease?

These questions extend far beyond dentistry. They touch medicine, public health, and especially the challenges faced in lower socioeconomic communities, where chronic disease is rampant and resources are limited. I didn’t find the answers to these questions in a textbook or a single protocol. I found them by turning the lens inward—by becoming my own case study and letting my body teach me what healing actually requires. So, I decided to become an N-of-One.

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My Personal Turning Point

When I turned 50, I took a hard look at my life, my health, and how I wanted to live the second half of my life. I watched older family members follow a path that felt almost inevitable: heart disease, diabetes, strokes, cognitive decline, broken bones, a growing list of prescriptions, and endless doctor visits. It seemed as though this was “just what happens” as we age—a narrative I wasn’t willing to accept, even though I didn’t yet know how to avoid it.

At the time, I thought I was doing enough. I wasn’t on prescription medications. I took aerobics classes three times a week, walked miles and miles, and ate “healthy”—well, except for the wine, the desserts, the seed oils, and the occasional rationalizations. I assumed that was sufficient.

But slowly, almost imperceptibly, things changed. Weight crept on. Aches and lower back pain appeared. I couldn’t squat down without needing something solid to help me stand back up. Sleep apnea became a constant companion, my CPAP machine and I inseparable—especially while traveling (and seriously, why don’t hotels carry distilled water in their snack shops?). Walking uphill left me out of breath. My body felt heavy. And perhaps most telling of all, I wasn’t happy.

I had reached a crossroads. I could continue down a path that was quietly eroding my quality of life, or I could make hard, honest changes about how I wanted to live the last part of my life (I am a slow learner…). Diabetes, heart disease, cognitive decline? I chose change.

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Daily Habits

Healing didn’t happen all at once. It happened through small, daily choices that began to compound—each meal, each walk, each breath through my nose, each night of better sleep. I stopped looking for a single fix and started focusing on consistency. Over time, I realized that every action is a vote—a vote for the person I want to be not just next year, but at 80, 90, and even 100. No one choice defines us; repeated choices do. Health isn’t created in dramatic moments. It’s built quietly, day by day, through habits that support the life we want to live.

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What I Learned About Healing

What I uncovered surprised me and fundamentally reshaped how I think about health. Healing is not about willpower. It is not about doing “more.” And it is certainly not about forcing the body into submission. Healing happens when the body is regulated.

For a long time, I didn’t share one important part of my healing journey. For nearly a year and a half, I kept quiet about the fact that I used a GLP-1 medication, because on some level I believed it meant I was “cheating,” that losing weight this way wasn’t truly healthy, or that it reflected a lack of discipline or willpower. I see now how deeply we moralize metabolism.

Just as we don’t shame someone for using medication to manage high blood pressure or diabetes, it makes little sense to shame tools that help restore appetite signaling, blood sugar regulation, and metabolic balance. Yet we often do—especially to ourselves. For me, a GLP-1 medication was not a shortcut or a replacement for lifestyle change. It was a tool. It helped bring my blood sugar into a healthy range. It quieted the constant food chatter—something I didn’t even realize was shaping my days until it was gone. And in doing so, it allowed my body to finally respond to the nutrition, movement, sleep, and breathing changes I was making. The medication didn’t do the work for me; it helped make the work possible.

Over time, I learned that true health depends on restoring the basic conditions the body needs—the building blocks of healing. These include real nutrition that stabilizes blood sugar and reduces inflammation; proper breathing, day and night, to deliver oxygen and support nitric oxide production; feeding the mitochondria, because healing requires energy; movement—not punishment—to restore strength and flow; adequate minerals and micronutrients so tissues don’t have to rob one system to support another; balanced copper and ceruloplasmin for energy production and inflammation control; reducing sugar, which quietly drives inflammation and breakdown; and stress reduction with nervous system safety, because the body cannot heal in survival mode.

When these inputs came into alignment, something remarkable happened. My body did what it was designed to do—it healed. That realization changed not only how I view my own health, but how I now care for my patients, with greater curiosity, humility, and compassion.

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Why This Matters — for the Mouth and the Body

The mouth is not separate from the rest of the body. It is one of the most sensitive early warning systems we have. Bleeding gums, dry mouth, recurrent cavities, jaw tension, and delayed healing are often signals, not failures. They are the body whispering—and sometimes shouting—that something is out of balance. When we listen, rather than simply suppress symptoms, healing becomes possible.

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Becoming Healthiest

Health is not a destination. It is not a number on a scale or a checklist of “good behaviors.” Health is a regulated state—one that must be supported daily, gently, and consistently. I am still learning, still refining, and still curious. But I can say this with confidence: healing is possible at any age. Vitality can return. And becoming healthiest is a journey worth taking.

Thank you for joining me on mine.

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Warmly,

Barbara Tritz

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