What AI Doesn’t Know About Your Oral Health Journey

Over the past few months, we’ve noticed a significant increase in emails from our community containing some version of:

“ChatGPT says…”

“Claude told me…”

One customer who reached out to us was trying to make sense of conflicting information they had encountered regarding hydroxyapatite and was looking for our perspective.

In the process of addressing their question, I began thinking more deeply about the role AI is beginning to play in how many of us gather information and make decisions about our health.

In many ways, artificial intelligence is one of the most remarkable information tools ever created. Questions that once required hours of research can now be explored in seconds. We use AI ourselves. It can be an incredible tool for learning, brainstorming, organizing information, and exploring new ideas.

Yet as these conversations have become more common, I’ve found myself reflecting on something much larger than artificial intelligence.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized this isn’t really an article about AI.

It’s an article about a very human habit.

 

A Very Human Habit

Throughout history, we’ve often looked outside ourselves for answers.

Teachers help us learn.

Mentors help us grow.

Researchers help us understand.

Dentists, physicians, authors, coaches, and guides provide us with support and knowledge that would be difficult at best to discover on our own, which is precious and valuable.

In fact, being life learners, so much of what we’ve learned over the years has come from standing on the shoulders of giants who devoted their lives to studying a topic. Their dedication, curiosity, and willingness to share what they’ve learned is a gift to the rest of us.

The issue isn’t the authority or expertise.

The challenge arises when we unconsciously transfer our responsibility to those authorities.

When we stop participating and questioning and presume they know best for us because they’ve studied a subject longer than we have.

Most centrally, when we assume someone else can navigate our path for us.

The object changes throughout history, but the pattern remains remarkably consistent.

For one it may be a physician or clergy.

For another perhaps a favorite author.

More recently, social media influencers have found their way to this esteemed place.

And yes, today, for a growing number of people, it may be artificial intelligence.

What’s interesting is that AI didn’t create this tendency.

Our tendency to outsource our authority has always been with us.

However, because AI is capable of producing answers that feel impressively complete, it can tempt us, once again, to forget something critically important.

No source of outside information can replace our role as the primary decision maker in our own health journey.

 

The Missing Perspective

One of the reasons I find this topic so interesting is that AI can gather an extraordinary amount of information.

Researchers, practitioners, books, studies all have information.

However, AI can synthesize this information from thousands of sources and present it in a way that seems, so, well, ‘right’.

Yet there remains a critical category of information that none of these sources possess.

Your experience.

While an AI bot can summarize thousands of studies and a practitioner may have worked with thousands of patients, neither can fully know what it’s like to live in your body. 

They don’t know what you’ve noticed over the past six months, what changed before a symptom appeared, or the subtle patterns you’ve begun to recognize through your own experience.

This is particularly important in oral health.

We know that we’re not satisfied with one condition or another with our oral health. For some, it’s healthier gums because they bleed. For another it might be hyper sensitivity due to loss of enamel.

The challenge is that before we can chart a new destination, we must know our current location.

Without this crucial piece to the puzzle, oftentimes, more information will simply result in information overwhelm and analysis paralysis.

We’ve been sharing this principle with our community since 2010. We simply cannot make progress without knowing if our efforts are helping or not. And to determine that, we need a really accurate grasp of where we are in the journey.

This is why one of the very first articles we wrote for OraWellness was ‘The first step to dental self empowerment’ which details a very powerful (free) discovery process anyone who really wants to know their current state of oral health can do.

The good news? It only takes 15 minutes!

Developing the skill of self-assessment remains one of the most empowering oral health practices we’ve ever encountered.

Of course, knowing our current location is only part of the equation.

We also need a reasonably accurate map.

If we’ve accepted assumptions that aren’t actually true, they can quietly shape the decisions we make and the directions we choose to travel. In oral health, some of the most common misunderstandings have become so deeply embedded in our culture that we rarely stop to question them.

This is one reason we’ve spent so much time exploring common oral health myths and misconceptions. If you’re interested, you can read our article, “Debunking 3 Common Oral Health Myths,” where we unpack a few examples of how inaccurate assumptions can sometimes send us down unhelpful paths.

After all, even the most accurate assessment of where we are won’t help much if we’re navigating with the wrong map.

 

Can We Find Wisdom in a Sea of Information?

We are awash in quality information. This may be one of the greatest challenges of our modern age.

We have more books, podcasts, quality information and yes, AI-generated answers at our fingertips.

So, why is it that more and more of us are finding ourselves feeling more overwhelmed than ever?

Because information and wisdom are not the same thing.

Information can be gathered and knowledge can be gained.

But for us to cultivate wisdom, we must integrate the information.

The customer who reached out about hydroxyapatite provides a good example.

They had asked an AI tool whether nano hydroxyapatite or micro hydroxyapatite was better. The AI confidently suggested nano hydroxyapatite.

Now, to be fair, there are certainly people who believe nano hydroxyapatite is the superior option. There are also people, including us, who have reservations about introducing nanoparticles into the oral environment and who prefer a larger-particle approach.

When we shared our perspective, along with some of the concerns and considerations we discuss in our video “Is Nano Hydroxyapatite Safe?” that takes a deep dive into hydroxyapatite particle size, the customer got what they were looking for.  They weren’t looking for us to tell them what to think.

What they appreciated was gaining a broader perspective.

AI had provided information and our conversation helped provide context.  

However, it was ultimately the customer’s responsibility to weigh the various viewpoints and decide which approach aligned best with their own values and comfort level.

This is where I think wisdom begins to emerge.

Not when we find the “right” authority to follow, but when we learn how to thoughtfully engage multiple perspectives and integrate them into our own decision-making process.

We often assume that if we simply collect enough information, clarity will emerge. However, more often, clarity emerges when we take responsibility for making sense of the information we gather… and pick what information we even expose ourselves to.

I like the analogy of digestion to illustrate this point.

We can consume enormous amounts of food, but our bodies are only nourished when that food is digested and assimilated.

I believe that information works much the same way.

Many of us spend our lives consuming information.

But to make sense of the information, we need to digest and integrate it.

 

Outer Knowing and Inner Knowing

One of the downstream problems of the constant information overload is it can crowd out our inner awareness and we lose sight of the fact that we have an inner world and intuitive guidance available to us.

On one side, we can become so focused on outside information that we lose touch with our own observations and lived experience.

On the other extreme, we can become so attached to our own perspective that we stop learning from others and our external cues.

Neither approach provides us the full picture.

Outer knowing includes learning from research, scientific literature, mentors, guides and practitioners.

Inner knowing involves self observation, bringing awareness to your experience, intuitive reflection and self assessment.

When we reflect on our own experience, the knowledge we learn along the way deepens into self-knowing which then (with perhaps a bit of luck 🙂 leads to wisdom.

And self-knowing is something no expert can give us. Others can point us in a direction. They can teach us concepts, share observations, help us avoid common pitfalls, or identify helpful toolkits to help us get heading in the right direction.

But the work of understanding ourselves can never be outsourced. Each of us must discover that through our own experience.

 

Staying In The Driver’s Seat

Perhaps this is the simplest way we’ve found to express what we’ve been trying to say throughout this article.

If we want to walk the path to optimal oral health, we believe that we have to make certain that we maintain the MVP status, be the captain of our hero’s journey, and not allow our own lived experience to be overridden by ‘experts’ (including us here at OraWellness).

The path to optimal oral health isn’t to find the perfect dentist or the greatest blog on holistic oral health (although we can learn plenty from both).

The goal was never to outsource our decision making.

The goal is to develop the wisdom to integrate what we learn from the world around us with what we discover through our own experience and inner reflection.

Gather information widely, but never surrender your role as the steward of your own journey.