a VERY long post about tooth decay

About a month ago, Dan and I decided to modify our family’s diet. It hasn’t been a huge deal at home, but when we go out and about, I hear my children chatting with folks about our “diet” and what is or isn’t on said diet, and it sounds weird to me. I have known people who have cumbersome diets, and whose children are so restricted that they become obsessed with food in general. Really, their parents too. I don’t want us to be one of those families, but on the other hand we really feel that the changes we have made have been for a specific purpose and have already been beneficial to that end. Oh, the quandary!

Why did we decide to do what we are doing? Well, Dan has horrible, awful, no good teeth, and he has had since he was a very small child. My teeth on the other hand, have always been good, and at nearly thirty I have still never had to have a filling. We hoped that the kids would just somehow get my good teeth, but we still took precautions. We have always brushed the kids teeth ourselves, to make sure that it is done well. We used fluoride rinses (’cause hey, that’s what you are supposed to do!) and have always limited the sugar intake. The kids NEVER have soda, and only rarely have candy (like when Grandma visits). Kinsley, at age six, had to have a pulpotomy on a back molar. Truxton (who we had allowed to develop a juice addiction) began to show signs of rotting on the inside part of his two front teeth, though to this day he has never complained about that. Then, the final blow came when we discovered a cavity on Sophie’s six year (permanent) molar and a small cavity on one of her front teeth.

At the end of February, we called to make an appointment with the pediatric dentist (who we came to love through his handling of Kinsley’s tooth issue) and the date was set for the end of April. That day I kept thinking about mercury in fillings, (I know that there’s a lot of debate out there about mercury) but I just kept thinking that there had to be a better way. I learned from chatting with our family dentist that the newer plastic and composite fillings contain BPA, and we really didn’t want to go that route, either.

Really, I just did not want the kids to have to have fillings at this early age. What to do?? So I went to pinterest (the ladies’ Google, right?) and found all sorts of interesting stuff, including this mama’s testimony, along with this mama’s testimony, which together led me to Ramiel Nagel’s book, Cure Tooth Decay. Being a cheapskate, I didn’t want to buy the book, so I tried to google my way around it, adding lots of diet related stuff to my month’s bucket style to do list on pinterest, but the more I searched, the more I wanted to read his book.

That night when Dan came home he said that he had been thinking all day at work that there just had to be a better way to handle our tooth problems. So I showed Dan the book, and articles and videos of all the testimonies I had been browsing, and he agreed that we should just get the book so that we could see what, if any, science is behind all these claims. We bought it that night, and skimmed as much as we could take in. Dan is ever skeptical of any of these faddish type diet claims, being a biology minded guy (is that really a thing?) and I knew that if we were really going to make real changes, they would have to be across the board for our whole family, therefore Dan would have to believe they were worth the effort. Basically, in the end, Dan thought Mr. Nagel’s interpretations of various studies, including the work of Weston A Price, made a lot of sense.

What exactly do we do? I will say that while I wish we could carry out the protocol exactly as described in the book, we are living in the real world, and we aren’t made of money.

We try to keep in mind these three main things:

• Do the children consume enough minerals?
• Do they consume enough fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K) in their daily diet?
• Are they able to absorb the good vitamins that they do consume through diet? The main way these good fat soluble vitamins get bound and rendered useless is through the consumption of too much Phytic Acid in the diet.

We are still learning what’s what in this process, and what we actually do or don’t consume seems to vary as our understanding grows and changes.

Right now we are avoiding sugar, oats, legumes, and most grains. The protocol for curing tooth decay is very similar to a primal or paleo style diet, which is how I personally prefer to eat.

We consume lots of whole dairy, especially raw dairy when we can get it. We eat meat, and lots of fresh veggies. I try to use home made bone broths in cooking. We increased our consumption of organ meats (lamb that we had raised and calf liver especially). Eggs are our friends. We sprout lots of sprouts, make kombucha, eat homemade sourdough bread, and fermented veggies. We try to eat shrimp at least once or twice a month. Basically, if it is a processed, quick and easy style meal, it’s a safe bet that we want to avoid it for some reason or other.

We decided that we can’t afford the really good cod liver oil that is recommended in the book, but we buy the best cod liver oil that fits reasonably into our budget. We think coconut oil is GOOD stuff. Dan and I even use coconut oil for oil pulling, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post. We changed to a home made toothpaste, but the jury is still out on what our favorite recipe is.

Basically, we shop at our normal stores (Aldi and Kroger mainly) and buy what we can afford to buy. We feel that cutting out the bad stuff has to be doing us some good, even if we aren’t able to replace it with the best of the best organic meats and veggies.

Within the first week, we were pretty sure that we saw visible improvement with Sophie’s teeth, and now (three or four weeks in) we are certain that Truxton and Sophie’s teeth are better, though they still are not completely healed. Neither of them complain at all about toothaches. We canceled Sophie’s appointment with the pediatric dentist.

It’s encouraging to remember that Dr. Weston Price reversed tooth decay in a group of children he studied with just one good meal (bone broth, raw milk, cod liver oil, and butter oil) a day. They continued to eat their poor diet consisting of refined fried junky foods and sweets like donuts and cereals for the rest of their meals.

In the end, we do the best we can, don’t sweat it too much, and trust that God will bless our efforts to be good stewards of what he has given us, dentally and financially!