BioPhotonic Scanner
BioPhotonic Scanner
The BioPhotonic Scanner is incredible technology that measures skin carotenoid levels, allowing Meetinghouse Dental Care to quickly gather dietary baselines and assess the consistency and quality of a patient's diet. The scanner takes less than a minute and the score is explained right away. No need for an appointment. The cost is $20 (free with all new patient exams)!
NOTE: We do not sell Pharmanex supplements. Our focus, as always, is whole foods.
How Do I Scan?
You eat organic, right? And supplement conscientiously?
But . . . are you SURE your diet and supplements are providing the antioxidant defense network needed for optimal health in a toxic world? Is your body receiving the minerals it needs to protect your gums, oral tissues, and teeth?
Place the fleshy part of your palm over the scanner’s blue light, and the scanner takes less than 1 minutes to read your skin carotenoid level!
You do NOT have to be a patient of Meetinghouse Dental Care to scan!
Tell your friends! Tell your integrative healthcare provider! Tell your nutritionist! Tell your favorite health food store and organic grocer!
Call 215.293.0909 to appoint.
How Does It Work?
The BioPhotonic Scanner works on Resonance Raman Spectroscopy, producing a narrow beam of blue photon light in a wavelength of 473 nanometers that shines onto the palm of your hand. When the blue 473 nm photon of light contacts carotenoids in the skin, the blue 473 nm photon becomes a green 510 nm photon.
A carotenoid is the only molecule that can shift a blue 473 nm photon of light to a green 510 nm photon of light. Resonance Raman Spectroscopy technology counts the green photons for the carotenoid score.
What Exactly Is It Measuring?
The BioPhotonic Scanner is commonly called an antioxidant scanner, but that is not technically true. While the score can be thought of as a general antioxidant score, it is specifically measuring carotenoids and other phytonutrients.
What Are Carotenoids?
The vegetables and fruits we consume contain many antioxidants with which we are all familiar. Vitamin C and Vitamin E are two great examples, but vegetables and fruits also contain smaller, lesser known compounds called phytonutrients that provide the body with incredible health benefits. The BioPhotonic scanner allows for accurate measuring of phytonutrients, specifically carotenoids.
Carotenoids are a class of more than 600 naturally occurring pigments synthesized by plants, algae, and photosynthetic bacteria (ask Anthony more about bacterial produced antioxidants). The deeply colored carotenoids are the sources of the yellow, orange, red, purple, blue, and white colors of vegetables and fruit. Even the green-leafy vegetables contain these colorful pigments, but the strong green color of the chlorophyll masks them. Consistently eat an abundance and variety of carotenoid-rich foods to improve scanner score.
Antioxidants of all kinds quench free radicals.
A high level of skin carotenoids indicates a rich antioxidant defense network in the body and a correspondingly low, healthy level of unquenched free radicals.
Furthermore, fresh organic vegetables are the body's primary source of the minerals needed for successful remineralization of tooth enamel.
Is It Accurate?
Yes. Incredibly accurate. Fluctuation is slight; if you scan ten times in a row, and your first score is 35k, the other nine scores will range from 32k – 38k, but never will the score go up or down by more than two or three thousand points. The same goes if you scan ten days in a row. We recommend scanning about every six months to check levels.
What Time Frame Is It Measuring?
This is a common question. Often people try to eat really well and increase their multivitamin intake the week before they scan. Sometimes people try to blame a bad score on a week of poor eating. In reality, the scanner is measuring about 3 months, and nothing you do can artificially spike or plummet the score.
Your skin carotenoid score reflects the consistency of consumption of green leafy and colorful, non-starchy vegetables. Fruit can be helpful, but in moderation. Organic plays a big role. One study years ago showed that one organic apple contains the same amount of nutrients as four regular apples. Lifestyle and exercise habits, as well as efforts to avoid environmental stressors and toxins all contribute to the overall BioPhotonic score.
Even though the score cannot be acutely manipulated up, it should be mentioned that we have found that some specific factors can temporarily lower a score: air travel, severe illness / infection, extreme emotional/mental stress. What do all of these things have in common? Unexpected, abnormal, elevation of systemic free radicals.
What Can Lower The Score? (Free Radicals)
If the scanner is measuring relative antioxidant status, then anything that produces increased free radicles will lower the score. Free radicals are unstable molecules. Missing an electron in their outer shell, they bounce around the body stealing electrons from healthy cells. Even though free radicals are a normal by-product of many natural bodily processes (breathing, exercising, ATP production, immune system functioning), anything that causes an abnormal increase in production can negatively effect the balance of health.
How Does Overexposure to Free Radicals Happen?
We can be overexposed to free radicals by multiple sources of toxicity - both from our diet and from our environment:
- First and second hand smoke
- High-altitude flight travel
- Airport scanners
- X-rays of all kinds (yes, including dental)
- Other radiation exposure
- Environmental pollution (air and water)
- Toxic household cleansers
- Pesticides and herbicides (especially glyphosate aka "Round Up")
- EMF pollution (cell phones, microwaves, WiFi, fluorescents, wireless devices, etc.)
- Emotional / physical stress and illness
- Exposure to dental heavy metals - like mercury, cadmium, nickel, etc. - in amalgam silver fillings, orthodontic braces, porcelain-fused-to-metal crowns, gutta percha filling in root canalled teeth, metal substructures of bridges, denture, or partials
- Oral and/or systemic infection and inflammation
How Can I Boost Antioxidant Levels?
- Consider dental revision under the supervision of your integrative health practitioner.
- Consume a variety of deeply colored fresh organic fruits and vegetables – deep reds, oranges, yellows and also purples, blues and greens. The deeper the color, very often the higher the antioxidant level.
- Precede consumption of carbohydrates with a healthy source of fat and protein (maybe a handful of organic raw almonds, for example) to avoid glycemic index spikes.
- Increase consumption of nitric oxide-producing foods like kale, spinach, beets, etc.
- Choose well-formulated nutritional supplements containing phytonutrient antioxidants.
- Laugh a lot.
- Engage in other endorphin-producing activities.
- Exercise optimally, avoiding excesses.
- Be aware that a higher percentage of body fat often represents the body’s retention of heavy metals and other biotoxins; said retention compromises the functioning of your antioxidant defense network as well as the functioning of all other systems, from your immune system to your hormonal system to your extracellular/lymphatic drainage system to your elimination system.
- Eliminate toxic intake represented by diet products, white flour and white sugar, partially hydrogenated products, GMO foods, and processed foods with high fructose corn syrup.
- Avoid first and second hand smoke.
- Exchange toxic household cleansers for greener cleansing products.
- Limit exposure to EMF pollution, pesticides, air pollution, xeno-estrogens from plastics (including bisphenol-containing plastic resin composites in your teeth - always request composite material free of xeno-estrogens).
- Filter your drinking water.
- Get enough sun for Vit D production. Take K2.
When Is The Scanner Available?
T 11am-4pm / W and TH 8am-3:30pm.
Call ahead at 215.293.0909.
What Does A Scan Cost?
$20 a scan!
THE BIOPHOTONIC SCANNER DOES NOT PREDICT OR DIAGNOSE DISEASE.
NOTE: All things in moderation. Supplementation can be important in reestablishing welless, but it is NOT a substitution for healthy dietary intake, exercise, and clean living!
If you do not have a nutritionist, call 215.293.0909 for a consult session with our on-site whole-food nutritionist, Anthony Trovato, MSACN, MNM, LMT. Anthony has an undergraduate Bachelor's degree in nutrition from La Salle University, a Master’s of Applied Clinical Nutrition from New York College of Chiropractic, and a second Master's degree in Natural Medicine from Quantum University He regularly attends postgraduate continuing education in integrative medicine, biologic dentistry, and nutrition, and he is currently writing his PhD dissertation on remineralization of tooth enamel through whole food and natural remedies. Anthony can help you modify your diet and supplementation to support drainage, detox, and function for optimal weight control, long-term health, and longevity. He can help you create the oral environment that will allow you to re-mineralize tooth incipiencies, areas of starting decay that have not yet broken through the enamel to enter the dentin.