Looking After Our Teeth

There have been several articles being passed around lately, either by emails or on the Internet, dealing with the topic of the health of our teeth. How can we keep our pearlies looking their whitest? What should you do, or just as importantly not do, when your teeth are in need of repairs? Some dental procedures that have been in practice for decades are now being considered detrimental to our health. As with most health issues, medical experts and nutritionists don’t always agree.

Diet plays a big role in the health of our teeth. Sugar is probably the number one cause of tooth decay, and soft drinks are one of the worse contributors. Along with 12 teaspoons of sugar or more per can, most sodas also include phosphoric acid, which gives them a tangy flavour. “Phosphoric acid is used in shipyards to remove rust from aircraft carriers and transport ships,” explains Mike Adams, author of The Five Soft Drink Monsters, a book that teaches consumers how to beat their addiction to sugary sodas. “Consuming highly acidic substances is not only bad for your teeth but also terrible for bone health and can promote a deterioration of the jawbone, pelvis and femur. Essentially, drinking phosphoric acid dissolves away your skeletal system,” Adams said.

A beautiful smile begins with sparkling white teeth. While we are not all blessed with perfect teeth, we can take measures to make them whiter. First and foremost, avoid all fluoride. Despite what your friendly dentist tells you, fluoride is poison; it does not belong in your mouth. Fluoride is not something your body needs; nobody has a fluoride deficiency. It is effective as an insecticide and rat poison, let’s leave it at that.

There are several different combinations of homemade toothpastes you can try. Baking soda is probably the most common ingredient. Being a mild abrasive, it provides a gentle cleansing of your teeth. It can also neutralize acids in your mouth that are often at the root of tooth decay, along with absorbing odours and helping to produce a fresher breath. Coconut oil is also commonly used to kill harmful bacteria in your mouth while you brush. It is excellent for your gums and can help to eliminate bleeding, sore gums. If you have gingivitis, you might want to massage some coconut oil into your gums regularly, in addition to using it in your toothpaste. Coconut oil has been found to stop and even reverse some tooth decay. And drops of peppermint essential oil can help freshen breath, kill bacteria and even clear your sinuses. Just simply mix a 50/50 solution of coconut oil and baking soda, and add a few drops of the peppermint oil for flavor.

One of the more common procedures dentists perform on our weakened or decayed teeth is fillings. And while it is said over half of today’s dentists are moving away from mercury fillings (amalgam), there are still some using this practice. Mercury is the most damaging toxic heavy metal to your brain, and there is no such thing as a safe amount of mercury in our system. Boyd Haley PhD, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at University of Kentucky, stated that mercury is a “biochemical train wreck in your body”. Mercury causes your cell membranes to become leaky and inhibits key enzymes your body needs for energy production and toxin removal. Mercury doesn’t kill you quickly like cyanide …. it kills you slowly and insidiously. About 75 percent of adults have mercury fillings. There is approximately 1,000 mg of mercury in the typical silver filling. This is nearly one million times more mercury than is present in contaminated sea food. Most people don’t realize that the mercury amalgams slowly release mercury vapour. Every time you chew, mercury vapour is released and quickly finds its way into your bloodstream. Some people choose to have these mercury fillings removed later in life. Just as mercury can cause havoc with your health, removing these poisons may result in eliminating some sicknesses. Be sure to have this procedure done with a holistic dentist, as even the removal of the mercury must be done in a proper manner.

Root canals are performed on a “dead tooth”, rather than pulling the tooth or replacing it with a denture or implant. Just as with mercury fillings, most doctors will tell you root canals are a perfectly safe procedure. But there are many in the health profession that have been warning of the dangers of root canals for as long as they’ve been used. Back in the early 1900’s, Dr. Weston Price was a dentist and researcher who studied the relationship between nutrition, dental and physical health. He found that bacteria and the toxins from root canals could enter the bloodstream and thus travel to any point in the body and create disease to that particular tissue or organ.

Dr. Price went on to discover that numerous degenerative diseases have their origin in root canal procedures, the most frequent are circulatory and heart disease. One day, he recommended to a woman, wheelchair bound for six years, to have her root canal tooth extracted, even though it appeared to be fine. She agreed and immediately recovered from her arthritis and could now walk without even the assistance of a cane. He later took the extracted tooth and implanted it under the skin of a rabbit. The rabbit amazingly developed the same crippling arthritis as the woman and died from the infection 10 days later. Although his research was buried and hidden from the public in the 1920s, Dr. George Meinig would discover his work 70 years later and bring it to the forefront through his book, Root Canal Cover Up.

The removal of wisdom teeth is another controversial topic, and there are some who feel that these “third molars” are pulled unnecessarily in most cases. Dr. Jay Friedman is a dentist and public health advocate and has argued for more than 30 years that removing a young person’s healthy wisdom teeth is an irresponsible practice. He published an article in the American Journal of Public Health claiming at least two-thirds of the millions of wisdom teeth extracted each year at a cost of billions of dollars were removed for no good reason.

Dr. Friedman accused his colleagues of ignoring the lack of evidence supporting the need for such surgery in order to line their own pockets. “There can be no excuse for tolerating so many unnecessary extractions on millions of unsuspecting and misled people and putting them at risk of so much nerve injury. This is a public health hazard,” Friedman wrote.

Back in 2012, the official oral surgeons’ group, the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (AAOMS), adopted a new recommendation on wisdom teeth removal. For the first time, the group said surgeons should consider retaining young patients’ wisdom teeth if they do not show signs of disease.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and I don’t have any medical training. I am just an individual that researches information that other people have studied and proven to be effective, and I just pass that information on to you.