July 1, 2025
In 2024 alone, more than 560 million wearable devices were projected to ship, with 162.2 million of those being smartwatches. If you’re someone who cares about your health (which you likely are if you’re reading this), there’s a good chance you’re already part of this movement.
You and I live in a time where health optimization is no longer a fringe interest—it’s a way of life.
You can track your sleep with precision, monitor your heart rate variability with wrist-based tech, and even use augmented reality (AR) or cognitive training tools to sharpen your focus and reaction time. From your supplements to your morning routine, it’s possible to personalize and optimize your performance and longevity.
But here’s the surprising part: in a world where people are constantly upgrading every aspect of their health, one of the tools you use most often—your toothbrush—has barely changed since the 1950s…
This is a striking blind spot, isn’t it?
While health monitoring technology has advanced significantly, oral care technology has seen relatively modest innovation until recently. You have the ability to optimize so many systems in your body—your sleep, your recovery, your focus, even your metabolism.
But the tool you use first thing in the morning and last thing at night?
For most people, it’s still an analog relic in a hyper-optimized world.
Research shows that conditions like tooth loss and periodontal disease are strongly linked to chronic inflammation, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, pneumonia, and even increased risk of early death.
Your mouth is more than a place for clean teeth—it’s the gateway to your entire system. When harmful bacteria enter your bloodstream through poor oral hygiene, they can trigger inflammation that affects your heart, brain, metabolism, and immune function.
Here’s the good news, though…
Recent developments in artificial intelligence are finally bridging this critical gap in health protocols. By merging advanced AI algorithms with precision engineering, new smart oral care technology is transforming preventive health.
In this article, I’ll share everything you need to know about optimizing oral health and provide insights into why outdated oral care remains one of the most overlooked threats to your longevity.
You’ll explore how poor oral hygiene can trigger systemic inflammation that compromises everything from your immune system to your mitochondrial function.
We’ll also dive into the revolutionary technology behind the Feno Smartbrush™—a precision-engineered, AI-powered system that turns your daily brushing ritual into a real-time health intervention—and hear directly from Dr. Kenny Brown, an oral maxillofacial surgeon and the co-founder of Feno (if you haven’t checked out our podcast together, you can listen to it here).
Key Takeaways
Oral health is a critical but overlooked component of whole-body wellness: Despite advances in health tech, oral care has remained largely stagnant—yet it’s directly linked to systemic inflammation, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and increased mortality.
Your toothbrush could be undermining your health optimization efforts: Most people are still using outdated oral care tools, which leave behind harmful bacteria that disrupt recovery, metabolism, and immune function—even with perfect diet, supplements, and sleep routines.
AI-powered oral care is the next frontier in health monitoring: The Feno Smartbrush combines 18,000 precision bristles with advanced AI scanning to detect plaque, inflammation, and oral health patterns in real time—transforming brushing into a powerful diagnostic tool.
Real-time data and personalization are now possible in oral care: With custom mouthpiece sizing, real-time feedback, and integrated coaching, users can now treat oral health as seriously as they treat their heart rate variability or sleep tracking.
Upgrading your toothbrush isn’t just cosmetic—it’s preventive medicine: By closing this overlooked gap, you’re not just improving oral hygiene—you’re reinforcing every other investment in your health, from supplements to performance and long-term disease prevention.
Health enthusiasts invest over $4,000 annually in cutting-edge supplements and biohacking tools, yet the majority of them unknowingly compromise these investments through an oversight in their oral care.
That pristine diet?
Those expensive supplements?
Your carefully crafted recovery protocol?
If you’re still using a regular ol’ toothbrush, your health protocol is likely being seriously undermined by colonies of harmful bacteria multiplying in your mouth while you sleep.
This is because your mouth serves as a command center for your body’s health. Harmful bacteria that thrive in the spaces between teeth and gums can create microscopic tears, creating pathways directly into your bloodstream. These invaders then travel throughout your body, disrupting your cellular power plants (mitochondria) and triggering body-wide inflammation that affects everything from sleep quality to recovery time.
This silent invasion forces your body to divide its resources between fighting off bacteria and repairing exercise damage, leaving your recovery systems working at half capacity. It’s like trying to run a high-performance car with contaminated fuel—even a perfect diet and exercise can’t overcome this constant bacterial assault.
As Dr. Kenny Brown, the co-founder of the Feno Smartbrush emphasizes:
“I’m in a hospital when a toothache becomes a brain abscess—when gum inflammation leads to a cardiac event, or plaque on the tooth leads to preterm labor.”
While your smartwatch might alert you to a slight dip in sleep quality, it can’t detect all of the potential health concerns that stem from outdated oral hygiene tactics. However, AI-powered detection tools are finally illuminating this blind spot, offering a glimpse at a new and important critical health optimization frontier.
If you’re still using an electric toothbrush, you’re likely missing nearly half your tooth surfaces, as this so-called modern tool hasn’t evolved much beyond its motorized stick design, which was crafted in the 1950s.
Dr. Kenny Brown’s experience as an oral maxillofacial surgeon inspired him to combat the issues stemming from poor oral health and the flawed design of “modern” toothbrushes by creating a daily health optimization tool for your mouth—the Feno Smartbrush. As he describes it:
“Think about an Oura ring for your mouth. The one that’s telling you about your teeth, your gums, your tongue, and your soft tissue—you’ll be amazed at the information that we could tell you from just your tongue.”
At the core of this advancement is a system that combines precise mechanical engineering—18,000 bristles working in concert—with intelligent scanning technology that maps oral health in real time. The integrated scanner analyzes patterns against a database of 20,000 dental profiles, while AI algorithms identify potential issues before they escalate into systemic health problems.
“It took a whole team of experts to be able to design a brush like this,” Dr. Brown reveals. “We hired a physicist to help us with the sweep of the actual nylon bristles to make sure that it was sweeping enough to be able to remove plaque… we were diving deep into the science and everything we could to make this the most efficacious product ever created.”
With the Feno Smartbrush, each brushing session becomes a detailed health screening.
Through real-time bacterial load monitoring, you can finally understand the true state of your oral health and its impact on your overall wellness. The system’s real-time scanning technology reveals the stark difference between conventional brushing and AI-powered care, while detecting hidden inflammation that could silently increase the risk of serious health conditions.
Additionally, the AI-powered app that pairs with the Feno Smartbrush transforms this data into actionable insights, connecting users with oral health coaches who help prevent problems before they start.
Feno’s shining feature is its TrueFit Mouthpiece. As Dr. Brown explains:
“The mouthpiece is sized for you… When you go through our Feno fit kit, which is through an app, we actually map your mouth, run it through the algorithm, and then we’re able to give you the size that’s most appropriate.”
This ensures comprehensive surface coverage, transforming the daily ritual of brushing your teeth into a precise, measurable health intervention. Additionally, this technology proves particularly significant for patients with dexterity issues—a long-overlooked challenge in oral care.
The first time I used the Feno, there was tons of crap all over the brush. I thought I’d been brushing well, but it was almost like when you deep clean your car and a whole bunch of junk comes out from underneath the carpet.
Dr. Eniko Loud, my dentist, confirmed that this new addition to my health optimization routine has significantly reduced both plaque buildup and gum inflammation.
Clinical comparison studies show that my experience isn’t unique—while traditional brushing methods often leave behind significant plaque, even with extended use, this AI-powered approach delivers near-complete plaque removal in a fraction of the time.
From resolving persistent oral health challenges to transforming dreaded hygiene rituals into efficient, effective protocols, the technology is able to deliver a “professionally cleaned” feeling after each use.
Additionally, by integrating real-time oral health monitoring into your existing wellness stack, you’re not just adding another data point—you’re closing a critical gap that has plagued modern health tracking.
Aside from all the health benefits, the Feno Smartbrush provides a hands-free experience that lets me move around and get things done, like setting the garage alarm or prepping for bed. Instead of standing at the sink with a motorized stick in my mouth for a few minutes, I can now let my Feno do all the hard work while I jet through the rest of my routine.
The Feno Smartbrush and its corresponding Plus app represent more than just additions to your wellness toolkit—they’re closing a dangerous gap in health monitoring systems.
By transforming basic oral care into a sophisticated health monitoring tool, this technology democratizes professional care through real-time analysis and expert guidance.
As health technology continues to evolve, this preventive approach represents more than just an improvement in oral care—it’s a transformation in how you can approach long-term health optimization. By embracing the technological advances discussed in this article, you’re not just protecting your health today—you’re investing in the future of preventive medicine.
Throughout this article, you’ve explored a critical blind spot in modern health optimization—the often-overlooked realm of oral care. The key insights are clear: oral health is a critical, often-ignored component of overall wellness, and traditional care methods leave significant health risks undetected.
AI technology now provides real-time, comprehensive oral health monitoring that can protect and enhance your existing health investments. As such, the Feno Smartbrush emerges not just as a cool new device but as a sophisticated health guardian that turns your daily oral hygiene routine into a precise, data-driven health intervention.
So while you’re tracking sleep, fine-tuning recovery, and dialing in your supplements, don’t forget that ignoring your toothbrush could be one of the most dangerous weak links in your health routine.
If you’re ready to transform your approach to oral health and upgrade your health optimization routine, you can save $50 off your Feno Smartbrush with code BEN here.
