A Tale of Two Dentists (Part 2)

My journey to healthy teeth

Last week, I gave a little context as to my ugly history with the dentist—any dentist.

Year after year, my mouth was full of new cavities and the only explanation I received from the dentist was that I must have bad genes… how discouraging is that?

I know our genetics has the ability to affect so much of our health, but I also know there is so much more we can do to support our bodies that can even override our genetic predispositions.

I’ve seen this manifested in my own life and the lives of friends and family. That’s why it still infuriates me to this day that not a single “traditional” dentist offered me advice beyond extra fluoride in my toothpaste.

It wasn’t until my first visit to a holistic dentist that I began to understand the root cause behind my troubling oral health.

Why We Get Cavities

From the time we’re old enough to sit in those reclining chairs, we’re told by our parents and our dentists that eating too much sugar will give us cavities. While that’s very true, there’s so much more to the story that we’re never told.

From the book, The Dental Diet, “In our mouth and in the rest of our body, there are different types of bacteria. At a basic level, we can divide them into two groups—slow eaters and fast eaters. The fast eaters feed on simple carbohydrates like sugar. When we eat sugar and white flour-based foods, we send these bacteria into an eating frenzy.

“And when they metabolize sugars, they release acids. These acids can act to pull calcium out of tooth enamel. But the microbes in the mouth all seem to know this; they provide a counterbalance by releasing calcium from salvia and their own biofilm reserves… Eventually, the bacteria run out of calcium from salvia and their biofilm reserves, and they’re forced to start siphoning calcium from the only place left, the tooth enamel. If this process of acid release and calcium depletion continues for too long, bacteria eat away too much enamel, and bingo, you have tooth decay.”

More simply put: tooth decay (i.e. cavities) don’t just occur from eating too much sugar. I want to emphasize this because simply removing sugar from your diet wouldn’t necessarily stop tooth decay (although it would help!). Tooth decay also occurs when your teeth are depleted of important minerals that keep enamel strong and in tact.

A Root Cause Approach to Cavities

Did you know that tooth enamel comprises a higher percentage of minerals than anything else in our body? So it makes sense that we should be replenishing the vitamins and minerals they need on a regular basis. And this was the important key element that I had been missing my entire life.

I left my first visit with a holistic dentist—the dentist who saw the same demineralization the traditional dentist saw—with a white sheet of paper titled “Tooth Remineralization Protocol.”

The traditional dentist had one solution: more fluoride. The holistic dentist has more than 30.

The white sheet of paper contained a bulleted list of supplements and foods to consume that would flood my body with the right vitamins and minerals it needed to “deliver” the right nutrients to my teeth, which would in turn help remineralize the hurting teeth before the decay began.

Isn’t that amazing?

My FAST Results

I went straight to work after receiving this sheet. I was already beginning to eat many of the newer foods to me on this list—foods like sauerkraut, kefir, and raw cow’s milk. I made high-quality, raw dairy a priority in my diet because it was clear that I needed more calcium. Before this visit, I wasn’t drinking raw milk, but suddenly it became a food I consumed every single day—much like a supplement, I gave myself a daily dose.

I prioritized vitamin D by getting out in the sun more often (vitamin D helps the intestines to absorb calcium from the foods we eat and delivers it to all the right places in the body). I made sure I was getting enough saturated fat through foods like egg yolks and butter, increased my dose of daily collagen protein and started filtering my water and adding back minerals with a brand called Concentrace Minerals. Bone broth became a weekly staple in our diet and I finally threw away all the fluoride toothpaste in our home and switched to hydroxyapatite instead.

A year later, I went for a routine checkup at my new dentist’s office and wanted to bawl when the dentist looked at my teeth and said, “Everything looks good. We’ll see you in 6 months”

That was it. Just those few words. Words I’d never heard before.

I looked at him shocked: “Really? Everything looks good? That’s it?”

He smiled, nodded, and said, “Keep up the good work.”

It’s been years now and I’m so happy to say I’ve yet to have another cavity since taking on this remineralization protocol. It still blows my mind, though.

All I needed was food.

All I needed was proper nourishment.

How many cavities, fillings, and root canals could I have avoided if I’d only learned this sooner?

I hope my story helps one of you—my faithful subscribers. This is only more proof that we have to take ownership of our own health. Nobody cares as much as you do.

Keep reading. Keep learning. Keep digging through those books and research papers for answers. You might just find a different solution that changes your and your family’s life forever.