Food and Your Teeth
What does food have to do with your dental health? Isn't it all about brushing? No, not entirely. Remember, your teeth grow out of your body. If your body isn't healthy, your teeth and gums will show signs of degrading health. Healthy soil produces a healthy crop.
Years of going to the dentist have taught us all an important lesson—it's not the doctor's job to prevent cavities, but rather to fill them once they've already occured. After all, how would the doctors pay their mortgages if everyone had healthy teeth? The responsibility of preventive health care lies with each of us. We need to be educated about the factors that effect our health, rather than depend on doctors to do it for us.
If you've never heard of Dr. Weston Price, it's highly recommended that you read about his work. He devoted his time to learning how environmental factors, such as the food we eat, affect our overall health—particularly, our dental health. In his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, he relates findings from his journeys to several different civilizations. He visited communities from the first-world, all the way to the third-world in order to learn more about health. Naturally, you would expect first-world communities to have the best health. However, Dr. Price found that in some third-world communities they were nearly 100% impervious to cavities. These were groups of people who made no attempt at all to brush their teeth, yet they had almost no caviites. As he visited various people he looked for patterns. He found that some people were basically cavity proof, and it was because of certain factors in their diet. The healthiest people ate at least 2 of these 3 foods:
- Dairy products from grass-fed cows, rather than genetically modified grains
- Organs from land animals, rather than just the muscles
- Organs fro sea animals, rather than just the muscles.
The vitamins in those foods occur at much higher levels than those found in the average diet. Taking a multi-vitamin that was made in a labratory won't produce the same results. Naturally occuring vitamins, such as the ones found in fish, are far more potent and will yield better health results. You're probably not going to rush to the nearest lake to catch a fish and eat it's organs. But, there is an easy way to get those vitamins: Cod liver oil. It's fairly inexpensive, minimally processed, and it will have a significant impact on your nutrition.
So, what about dairy products from healthy cows? Those are a little harder to come by. Milk from a grass-fed cow dairy will likely cost you upwards of $7/gallon. However, you can find high-vitamin butter capsules to gain those same benefits. It's not nearly as affordable as the cod liver oil, but the effects of both together are synergistic and produce great results.
This page was made with help and research from The Storage Room.