The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Don’t Brush Your Teeth After Sugar! The Best Oral Care Routine
07 Nov 2025
Chapter 1: What link exists between oral bacteria and cancer?
I was reading about a study in mice that linked that oral bacteria to tumor growth. Are you familiar with that study?
Yes. And it's that specific oral bacteria, so the Fusobacterium nucleatum, which has been shown to accelerate tumor growth within mice, but also for colorectal cancer and breast cancer as well.
And what's your belief there? I know this research is fairly new, but do you think there is a causal relationship, a significant causal relationship between the health of our oral microbiome and our probability of developing some form of cancer?
I wouldn't yet say causal. I think that for most cancers, it is multifactorial. And there are a lot of things that can whether or not you get the cancer and how aggressive the cancer is. I do think that oral health and some specific oral bacteria are risk factors and can definitely increase the aggression of those cancers or even the initiation of them.
Um, there's also been research, and I think I'm waiting for the research to be published, on what they're doing is they've created a antibiotic which only kills that oral bacteria that I was talking about, so Fusobacterium nucleatum. And they are going to be issuing that...
antibiotic to those patients who have the colorectal cancer, which has the oral bacteria, to see whether or not it slows down their progression or improves their prognosis. So if I see those results and it shows it, then there's for sure a strong causative link between the two.
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Chapter 2: How can daily habits impact my oral microbiome?
But for now, I would say that it's multifactorial and it's definitely a risk factor.
That oral bacteria that you're describing, you called it Fusobacterium?
Yeah.
What is it that causes that? Is it something that I'm eating? Is it a lifestyle choice I'm making?
Uh, multiple things. Poor oral hygiene. Um, some of us genetically will have higher levels of it. Um, it's what we eat, it's who we're kissing, it's what we're breathing in.
Does my girlfriend have it?
So we'll have to see. And that's the thing. That's the beauty of being able to test these things now is that you can actually see. And also what's strange is that green tea, something so simple, is extremely effective at killing Fusobacterium nucleatum.
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Chapter 3: What dietary choices affect oral health?
So it's just knowing those types of things, being able to do the test, knowing the right treatment plans and recommendations based from that. We know green tea is good for us. And now we can really understand why.
Okay, that's interesting. You have actually tested Jack over there, right? And you said to me before we started recording that he's got a ton of that Fusobacterium.
Yes, he does, yeah.
And it's really getting out of control, is what you said.
It's really badly out of control, yeah. So I've... I've given him a big vat of green tea as a gift.
Green tea?
Yes.
Green tea. This guy's going to edit that out. This is the problem.
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Chapter 4: How should I properly brush my teeth?
Hello. Green tea?
Yeah.
That's good for my own microbiome?
Yeah, really good. Stains, but really good. It's anti-inflammatory. It helps with what we call oxidative stress. This is basically stress for the body. And it's antibacterial. So it actually is very effective at killing fusobacterium nucleatum.
What is your opinion of the impact that coffee has on my oral microbiome?
I'm slightly biased because I love coffee. Okay. But there is no negative impact of coffee on the oral microbiome directly.
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Chapter 5: What is the recommended oral care routine?
Coffee does dry your mouth out, and so you have reduced saliva, and that can actually... cause problems for the oral microbiome. So the saliva is super important in your mouth. It provides all of the food, the proteins, everything for the bacteria in your mouth.
So it's kind of like this delivery service, your delivery is traveling around, providing all of the food and bacteria, sorry, food to the bacteria, and that's what keeps the good bacteria alive and happy. So when you have a dry mouth, let's say you're drinking lots of coffee or you're very nervous or you are on antidepressants, for example,
which are a big one, then you just don't have as much saliva. So those bacteria don't have as much food, and those bacteria die, and then you get bad bacteria growing in replacement.
What about tea? We're a nation of tea drinkers in the UK.
Similar, so it also does dry your mouth not as bad as coffee, but otherwise no problems other than staining.
What about if I put loads of sugar in it? Because a lot of people put a lot of sugar.
Okay, yeah, no, no, no. So actually, sugar in your tea is even worse than you having a biscuit, for example.
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Chapter 6: How can I use probiotics for better oral health?
So because the sugar dissolves in your hot tea, and the tea is hot, when you drink it, it can actually cause more problems. Another thing with sugar is... I have a sweet tooth, I love sugar, but it's about how you eat your sugar. So let's say if you have your hot tea with... five lumps of sugar in there, and you're sipping it over an hour or two, that's where you start to see a lot of problems.
So actually, you need to be having a sugar attack, so just all the sugar in one go. And that way, your mouth has all the sugar in one go, and it's able to neutralize the saliva and get back to a good state as quickly as possible.
Every time you sip your tea with sugar, what happens is that the saliva has to go from acidic back to neutral acidic back to neutral acidic, and then it starts to just not work properly, and the saliva just stays acidic, and that's where you start to see decay.
So you want to just down the tea?
Down the tea, or I don't know if you're a M&M guy, have all your M&M's in one go. Don't snack on M&M's every ten minutes.
What about other drinks, like, I don't know, Coca-Cola's and these other sort of fizzy drinks that might have artificial sweeteners in, things like that?
So they're not as bad as your natural sugars, but for example, something like your Coke or Fanta or whatever, it's also very acidic and it can actually cause erosion as well. So this is essentially where the outer layer of your tooth, so the enamel, is just worn away from having lots and lots of these fizzy drinks.
So what are the very, having seen my results, but generally from seeing the thousands and thousands of results that you've seen, what are some of the easiest things that I could do to help correct that situation and have perfect oral health and a perfect oral microbiome?
So what we've done is if you were to do the test, you would have all of the personalized recommendations for you.
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Chapter 7: What are the risks of teeth whitening?
So we tell you to have green tea, to have honey, all of those types of things, which have been shown through research to benefit your microbiome in your case specifically. But if we were just talking about someone who hasn't done the microbiome test and wants to just make sure that they have as balanced of a microbiome as possible. Diet is obviously very important.
So what we're talking about, that sugar attack, making sure that you only have one sugar attack a day. You're not having sugar consistently because it does alter your saliva pH. The type of toothpaste that you're using. I like to keep it simple. You don't need to... We don't need to make things super complicated. You don't have to spend that much money.
Having the right toothpaste, right toothbrush, and the right floss is honestly as much as is the most necessary thing that you need.
Okay, so in terms of brushing, though, you give some sort of practical advice around when we should brush. What is that? And is there any time where I shouldn't brush my teeth?
Chapter 8: How can I improve my oral health with lifestyle changes?
You should never brush straight after anything acidic or sugary. So what you end up doing is grinding the sugar or the acid into your teeth. So actually, you should wait 30 minutes until you brush your teeth.
That's interesting because when I eat something sugary, I feel like I need to brush my teeth to get rid of it.
Yeah, no. No. So you want to wait 30 minutes. So instead, you can chew some sugar-free gum or there are lots of pastels that we use. So like I use like chewable mints and you can chew one of those and it will actually neutralize your saliva really quickly so that you don't have that acid causing the demineralization.
And you said that I should brush my teeth first thing in the morning and last thing before I go to bed? Yes. Okay.
Just because that's the sort of biggest window, I guess, that's the best way to... Yeah, the most important time to brush your teeth is right before you go to bed because you spend two minutes spreading all this lovely goodness on your teeth. And then when you go to sleep, going back to saliva, when you sleep, your saliva flow reduces massively.
So all of a sudden, these bacteria are left to their own devices And if you don't have good toothpaste there, then they can cause a lot of problems.
And do I spit or do I rinse after I've brushed my teeth?
Spit. So you should never rinse your mouth out with water after you brush your teeth. So brush, brush, brush, spit into the basin, and that's it. Reason being, again, going back to my sunscreen analogy, imagine you spend two minutes putting all this lovely sunscreen all over your skin to then just go and have a shower right before you go into the sun.
So with the toothpaste, you spend two minutes putting all of that on your teeth. And then if you rinse it, then you're actually removing all of that goodness from your teeth and gums. And it's kind of like you haven't done anything.
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