Can you Reverse Tooth Decay with a Better Diet?

Most of us brush and floss regularly – we watch over our kids as they do it every morning and night too.  Some of us limit sugar too – but yet despite doing those things we face the typical cavity (or, cavities) and signs of tooth decay.

Chances are, those cavities have come up in conversation at the dentist – leading you to think that your cavities are the result of a combination of genetics and your consumption of sugar.

I thought about this a great deal after my son and I both recently an appointment – both of us had new cavities.. and we have been really good about limiting sugar for the last year.   I hesitated on scheduling follow ups with our appointments because I wanted to do my own research on our issues, because I just wasn’t comfortable with what the dentist was telling me as we were in his office.

My reading lead me to Dr. Weston Price – who is a dentist known for his theories and relationship on nutrition, dental health and physical health.  Dr. Weston Price traveled the world to study human groups to analyze the food that they used so he could analyze the relationship between their diet and their dental health.

You can read his results on those travels and studies if you head HERE.  Overall,   In his studies, he found a higher risk of decay amongst groups who had abandoned their native diet for foods of convenience (white flour, sugar, canned goods, jams and more).  

Yikes – I said to myself. I love to bake and as much as I try to use Raw Honey or Maple Syrup to sweeten in lieu of sugar, baking (even though much of it is for church fellowship) probably isn’t the best thing I can be doing for my family. Although we have dumped processed foods (a few years ago), even baking my own items at home is probably contributing somehow to our oral health.

So I started some more reading – and it really was interesting to see that diet does play a huge part in oral health.

Does Diet Affect Oral Health?

Looking at the studies from Dr. Weston A. Price, it became apparent that the type of diet each group ate resulted in their oral health.    Your oral health overall is a result of 3 areas:

1. The presence of minerals in the diet
2. The presence of vitamins A, K, E and D in the diet 
3. Not just the first 2 areas, but ALSO how well those items are absorbed into the body – which ihs the result of the presence of phytic acid in your diet

That led me to do a little reading on phytic acid.  I knew that consuming raw milk is a great way to build up our dental health, but that led me to wonder if there was something else that was preventing those nutrients from becoming available in our body, and how well they are being absorbed.

• Soaking:  Soaking legumes in water overnight reduces their phytate content
• Sprouting: Sprouting seeds, grains and legumes (germination) may reduce the phytic acid content
• Fermentation: Organic acids promote phytate breakdown – sourdough is a great example of lactic acid fermentation

Can Tooth Decay Be Reversed?

• Availability of minerals for absorption (lowering phytic acid consumption)
• Fat content of the diet (rich in vitamin D)
• A diet rich in calcium and phosphorus

Taking those 3 areas into consideration, healing cavities requires a number of dietary changes.

• Avoid processed food
• Opt for pastured butter
• 30-45 minutes of sunlight a day
• Use vitamin D3 supplements
• Take a high quality cod liver oil vitamin
• Limit nuts – beans in moderation. Always soak your beans overnight or longer before cooking.
• Eat fermented grains only – so no oatmeal, breakfast cereal, crackers, regular bread. Eat sourdough if at all possible, and that sourdough should not have lactic acid.
• Eat full fat pastured {raw} dairy products and bone broths. Include eggs, fish and meat in your diet.

The Role of Diet and Cavities

Cure Tooth Decay mentions that active tooth decay leads to low mouth pH and high bacteria levels. Whereas halted tooth decay leads to higher pH levels and low bacteria levels.

In other words, a poor diet of processed foods lowers mouth pH and increases bacteria levels, leading to active tooth decay.  Cavities are the result of a pH imbalance in the mouth – the pH in the mouth dropping every time a carb is consumed (grains, biscuits, etc).   ANY drop in pH causes the teeth (which are made up of minerals) to lose minerals. However.. the ions in your saliva can help the teeth to remineralize. 

So the more you, or your kids, snack on carbs the more the teeth will demineralize and there will be a loss of minerals as a result, resulting in demineralization. Plaque on the teeth exacerbates that problem – as plaque is nothing but bad bacteria. And we all know that bad bacteria feed of sugary carbs and starches…  as they feed, acid forms that breaks down and causes even more mineral loss.

What should you take from that? That there are several components to establishing a healthy mouth – limiting grains/carbs and keeping oral hygiene one of your priorities.

How We are Remineralizing our Teeth

This past month, on my regular dental check up for a cleaning, they found some pretty heavy plaque on my teeth, with early stages of periodontal disease. They recommended a deep cleaning – but first, I had to make a series of appointments as it was going to take about 2 hours for each “half” of my mouth.

Before this past appointment, it had been years since I had been in – 2011 was the last cleaning I had (I know… I now..) – in between that time I had been pregnant several times, had a few root canals and  been lax about making appointments.

Our dental benefits have run dry for this year, and we simply cannot afford to pay out of pocket for all of the family for the next few months. So I have decided to hold off on making the deep cleaning appointment – in the meantime, I have decided that I am going to give myself some time to read this book (Cure Tooth Decay), make changes to my diet and supplement my diet with vitamin D and Cod Liver Oil to see if I can improve what I have going on in my mouth.

My kids have recently been into the dentist and although my older 2 girls, are doing fine in terms of oral health, the boys are not – they had several cavities, and the dentist immediately recommended amalgam fillings. I wasn’t too willing to schedule appointments, and I made it clear I didn’t want amalgam fillings in my young boys and although composite are an option, the dentist we currently see does not offer BPA-FREE composite fillings.

Not to mention they want to fill them all at once, and get us in quickly for an appointment. While I can understand why he wants us to schedule the appointment quickly, I don’t think he’s all too focused on the long term aspects of the teeth if he is offering 2 limited filling choices (and telling me that neither are bad options).

In the meantime, we have changed the diet of both boys – as a hispanic family, we eat a large amount of grains (tortillas, beans) and we have refrained from giving the boys tortillas … and I haven’t made beans for several weeks.  We have also limited the bread intake, and incorporated more grain-free foods (Grain Free Pumpkin Muffins, Grain Free Banana Bread).  

I have opted to make their lunch at home versus them eating in school… and the last few weeks we have incorporated grain free snacks into their lunchbox (and they haven’t complained – which is great).

We plan on making our own remineralizing toothpaste, and going back to oil pulling every few days to see if those items can aid our efforts. My husband is also trying the regimen to see if his oral health improves – we’re going to keep you updated on the progress there, too.

Over the next few months, we plan on working just as hard on the boys as we are on ourselves. We’ll keep you posted to let you know how it turns out as we attempt to reverse some of the damage that has been done.We realize that diet is not the only commitment – all of us need to be more proactive in oral hygiene as well. Over the last few years we have gotten rid of commercial toothpaste and used our own alternatives – combined with eliminating fluoride we feel like we are a step ahead of others who might still be using toxic toothpaste.

Do you have any experience reversing some of your cavities through diet? If so, I’d love to hear about your experiences!