Dr. Teresa Scott is an honors graduate of St. Pius X High School, and University of St. Thomas, both here in Houston. Graduating Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology in 1991, she went on to extend her education, receiving her doctorate from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio Dental School in 1995. She received both the Jurisprudence Award and the Award for Excellence in Clinical Dentistry while still in dental school. She is a member in good standing of the American Academy of General Dentistry, the International Academy of Biological and Dental Medicine (IABDM), the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT), the Holistic Dental Association (HDA), and the American Academy for Oral Systemic Health (AAOSH). Recognizing that modern conventional dentistry still uses toxic mercury, Dr. Scott has ensured we are a mercury-safe office by becoming SMART certified AND ACCREDITED by the IAOMT & a CERTIFIED BIOLOGICAL DENTIST by the IABDM. She has also earned her Mastership AND Fellowship in Biological Dentistry with the IABDM and is president of the organization from March 2020 through October 2023.
Dr. Scott has committed to continuing education throughout her career and has steadily worked through the rigorous requirements to advance in her knowledge and skill sets. She regularly takes classes from all of the biological dentistry organizations, as well as additional continuing Dental Education in general dentistry, averaging over 150 hours of CE annually, when state licensure only requires us to take 15 total hours per year. In 2020, when everyone else took time off during the shutdown, Dr. Scott finished the remaining tasks needed to complete both her fellowship and mastership in Biological dentistry, earning the coveted AIAOMT, FIABDM, and MIABDM designations.
She is an award-winning dentist:
Houston’s Top Dentists, H Texas Magazine, 2007 – Present
America’s Top Dentists, Consumer’s Research Council of America, 2005 – Present
Dr. Teresa Scott has built a successful practice by delivering the best in family dental care since 1997. She has been married to her husband Dan, since 1999, and they have a grown daughter, Iliana, whom they adopted from Russia when she was 12 years old, and 2 biological daughters, Grace and Promise, whom Dan homeschools. She has an incredibly unique story in terms of what she is doing now and why, and it ALL speaks to intention and authenticity in terms of her patient care, as well as her “thinking outside the box” approach to both her health as well as her patients.
Her journey into biological dentistry started with her youngest daughter Promise’s premature birth in early 2009. Dr. Scott was already suffering the effects of mercury toxicity and was very sick and unable to breastfeed, but had not yet discovered the root cause of her many health issues. Promise showed serious allergies to every single commercial formula out there, including the organic and non-dairy ones. Everything that touched her stomach that wasn’t real breast milk caused her to projectile vomit. And back in those days, it was incredibly hard to find a donor for human milk. We completely recommend the Human Milk 4 Human Babies site for ladies who cannot breastfeed their children or who simply don’t make enough milk, and would like to find someone who is blessed with abundance and is willing to share. However, even now, it’s not always possible to find donor milk. When Promise started projectile vomiting everything man-made, the pediatrician wanted to put her on the broken-down protein formulas and reflux medicines, and Dr. Scott decided that there had to be a better solution out there. She figured that babies had been born for millennia who did not have a wet nurse available, and modern formulas had only been around for about 75 years at the time. She asked her pediatrician to prescribe milk from the Austin Milk Bank for the short term until she could do some research and find a better solution. The Austin Milk Bank provides donated milk for babies, but it is NOT FREE (except for babies covered by Medicaid, believe it or not!). At the time, it cost $4.25 per OUNCE, and Dr. Scott knew that this was not economically sustainable, as it was not covered by her medical insurance. However, it bought her 5 weeks to do research and make her plan. During that time, Dr. Scott found the Weston Price Foundation and found their homemade baby formula recipe. They connected with a raw milk coop driving group, a website that connects people to providers of Raw Milk. After she got all of her ingredients for the raw milk formula, she gave it to Promise, despite the pediatrician’s dire warning that the raw milk would cause the baby to have intestinal bleeding, and…. She THRIVED. THAT was the beginning of Dr. Scott questioning everything she had ever learned about medicine and dentistry. Because not only did Promise NOT have ANY issues with the raw milk formula, it caused her to grow and thrive into a happy, healthy baby.
For the next 3 years, Dr. Scott learned everything she could in terms of nutrition, essential oils (the family who headed the raw milk coop introduced her to them), and organic living. However, despite excellent conventional medical care, Dr. Scott continued to get sicker and sicker. The conventional doctors had no answers. More importantly, they never questioned WHY she was getting sicker and sicker. They just kept prescribing more pharmaceuticals. At one point, Dr. Scott was on 12 different prescription pharmaceuticals, finding no improvement in her health. But her children were getting healthier and healthier as a result of Dr. Scott’s choice to forego conventional medical care for them and seek alternative approaches. After 3 years of studying and making changes in her personal life, Dr. Scott finally discovered that it was likely mercury toxicity that was making her so sick, and that Dentistry was probably causing it! She had to make a decision - either to quit doing what she loved or find a way to marry what she did to her new holistic paradigm. So in 2012, Dr. Scott decided to switch entirely to biological dentistry. She became a member of the biological dentistry organizations and committed to learning everything she could to both help her patients and reclaim her health.
Unfortunately, Dr. Scott was so sick already from mercury toxicity by that time that the damage was already done in terms of health issues. On December 1, 2015, she received a devastating diagnosis and death sentence. She was diagnosed with grade 4, stage 4B endometrial cancer and given a year to live, and a 1% chance of survival by her conventional medicine doctors. Rather than accept her fate, Dr. Scott took everything that she had been learning since 2009 and applied it to her health. Though she did accept the hysterectomy and focal radiation therapy for pain control on her hip, where her metastasis was, she refused all other forms of conventional treatment, opting instead to seek alternative healing methods. Her reasoning was this: If conventional medicine could only offer her a 1% chance of survival, she was going to find something that gave her hope for her better odds. And if she was going to die anyway, she would die on her terms. She watched her father and grandmother die from cancer. She knew what that conventional route looked like. And so she refused it. It took her several months to find providers who could help her with her choices. Once she started, she was able to achieve remission in 90 days from IV vitamin C and nutrition. Dr. Scott is quick to point out that everyone is different, and that she can’t claim to know how to help someone else with their cancer journey, but she is a fierce advocate for medical freedom of choice as a result of her experiences. It’s this kind of outside-the-box thinking that saved her life and is now serving her patients as well. It is also why her patients can see her authenticity and commitment, from our Holistic Dental Associates Social Media Page to her Food for Living page to her public speaking engagements. She has also become a speaker for Healing Strong, an organization committed to holistic and integrative healing and thriving from cancer diagnoses. She is truly the REAL DEAL.
It is this set of unique circumstances that set Dr. Scott on her current path, and also what makes her different from other healthcare providers. She looks for root causes and then works toward eliminating the oral contributions to systemic health issues. This is her mission and passion, and she pursues it with enthusiasm and determination. This is also what makes Dr. Scott so authentic. Having come back from the brink of death, she is determined to do what she can to help others avoid going that far or losing their lives. She doesn’t pretend to have all of the answers, but she has worked incredibly hard to get her life back and is committed to helping her patients do the same.
To that end, Dr. Scott not only works full-time as an airway-centered biological dentist but teaches airway and biological dentistry to others who want to go down that path. When she is not busy working, Dr. Scott loves anything that involves traveling with her husband and daughters and is an adrenaline junkie, especially if it involves Jetskis, ATVs, or Snowmobiles. :-)
