Save Your Teeth and Gums- Naturally! On Paleo Quick Tip of the Day podcast

Overall health is my hobby, and so an ancestral, paleo type of life is what I follow.  An overlooked yet essential part of natural health is having a healthy mouth, with shiny white teeth and vibrant gums, free of infection and cavities!

It’s not hard to achieve this, especially if you are already eating a paleo sort of diet of real, natural, God made foods in lieu of processed crap.  If you have eliminated bread and other grain products, (you know, the kind that stick to your teeth) and that turn to sugar right in your mouth- well, you have half the battle won right there!

Here is the other half to address:  Oil pull each morning!

If you are unfamiliar with oil pulling ( I find even now that almost no one knows anything about it), it simply means to take a teaspoon or so of oil into your mouth, and swish it all about, through your teeth, and all around your whole mouth, bathing it over and over for about 5 or 10 minutes.  This might seem time consuming and onerous, but if you do it while you take your morning shower if takes literally no additional time at all!

In my daily routine, I first do my morning workout of about an hour or so.  (I do this pretty much every single day, and recommend you do so as well).  Not for oral health, but because strenthening and stretching exercise is crucial for overall health and wellness- expecially as you get older!  

Then, I go into the bathroom, and put a fingerfull of coconut oil from the jar I keep in there into my mouth, and start swishing.  I don’t even think about it, it’s just pure habit, something I do every single morning.  Next, I dry brush my body, and then my hair and scalp.  (Again, not for oral health, but for skin health- also, it just feels great).

Then I keep swishing as I take my shower.  Afterwards, I towel off, and then use my hair dryer!  This is a new addition; I never ever used a hair dryer until this winter- I read about how a hair dryer (mine cost $10) can prevent athlete’s foot and any other fungus, even killing it on your skin.  So, after drying my hair (the dryer will also eliminate fungus if on your scalp), I use it between my toes and on my groin to completely dry those areas, and kill any fungus spores that may be lurking.  

Needless to say, I’m still ‘swishing’ throughout!  Oh, there are two additional benefits of a hair dryer, neither of them dental- it warms up a cold bathroom, and it defogs your mirror in a heartbeat!

Now stick with me: I will get back to oral health again now, I just can’t resist telling you about these other beneficial practices that go on at the same time as I am swishing away the bad bacteria in my mouth.  For that is what happens from this oil pulling: the oil smothers and destroys all of the bad bacteria that is trying to gain a foothold in your mouth, and also makes it a non-acidic environment, since it is an acid environment that such bacteria loves and can thrive in.

Later, after you have eaten breakfast (hopefully along with a paleo smoothie!), you can rinse out your mouth with a xylitol mouth rinse.  Now here is the crux of mouth health, really, for me- xylitol, a sweetener made from birch bark or corn husks, has amazing properties pertaining to oral health!

Here is a little story: back in Finland, during WW1, sugar was unobtainable in the country.  It was learned how to make a sweetener that tasted just like sugar, and measured the same (1 cup of sugar = 1 cup of xylitol), was completely natural, and safe.  

Years later, a certain doctor noticed that those children who had consumed this xylitol during the war years had remarkably good teeth as adults- no cavities, healthy and vibrant, even all these years later!  

He investigated, and it turned out that Xylitol actually starves bad bacteria on the teeth and gums!  The bacteria is fooled, since it is so sweet, and consumes the xylitol rabidly, greedily- but, since the xylitol has no nutrients they can use, they literally starve to death.  The plaque, which is produced by such harmful bacteria on the teeth and gums, goes away.  In addition, xylitol actually encourages the body to remineralize teeth that have begun to decay, since there is no plaque to prevent it!

So there you have it - rinse with xylitol rinse daily.  I make my own now, buying Xylitol (I also use it for baking), and dissolving the white crystals into a jar of water I keep in my bathroom.  I also use a toothpaste at night that contains xylitol- Earthpaste- by the wonderful Redmond Salt company, after I brush thoroughly before bed.  And I don’t rinse after brushing with this paste!  I want that xylitol residue to remain, protecting my oral cavity all night long.

And here is my last tip:  I had hesitated replacing my electric toothbrush, since the brush heads are pricey, and the new brushes always were too.  But then, I started researching…

Nowadays, there are all kinds of ‘knock off’ Chinese made electric toothbrushes that are every bit the equal of the hundred dollar plus brushes, along with their $20 plus dollar replacement brush heads!  I ended up getting a rotating one (I’ve always used sonic ones before, but my wife loves her rotating one so I thought I’d try one)-  after all, why not??  The brush, along with a replacement head, was $18.95, postpaid on Amazon!

And, I’m here to tell you that it works wonderfully.  It not only scrubs your teeth far better and faster than you could by hand- it massages your gums and instills a healthy circulation at the same time!  So, get one- or more!!  At this price, it  is way cheaper than one visit to the dentist!

And, speaking of the dentist, who is oftentimes as evil as many modern medical doctors, concerned overwhelmingly only with profit- He or she will admonish you to floss floss floss, as if your failure there is the same as your failure to take enought statins and other meds to save your life and teeth…

The current science, not the prevailing dogma of fake scientism that we should all floss, is now contra-indicated- flossing does more harm than good!  It cuts into the gums, forcing plaque and bacteria into the bloodstream, while simultaneously harming the gums themselves.  So don’t FLOSS.

Like most of ancestral, paleo, ketogenic advice- true oral health runs counter to everything you’ve always been told by the “authorities”.  But, like the dietary advice, it makes perfect sense, once you’ve really looked at the science!