Cure Tooth Decay- book review
So maybe it was only a matter of time before we started looking into natural oral care.
Over the years I've taken most my children to the dentist to have cavities filled and even tooth extractions. It was always baffling, because I don't feed my children what most would consider junk! They eat so much fruit, whole grains, very little processed/packaged food. They always have to brush twice a day...and yet cavities kept coming.
Last year my 6 year old had toothache, and we booked her in to the dentist and found she actually had a mouth ridden with cavities and needed two teeth extracted also! And she ended up with a crown inserted too! How could this happen on the diet these children have?
I'd read blog reviews about 'Cure Tooth Decay' by Ramiel Nagel. All the natural homesteading blogs that I follow raved about this book, and it appeared time for me to read it and see if there was something I could do to turn around my children's oral health. Wow! It's a game changer!
Ramiel is using a lot of research from dentist Weston A. Price in his book, to give us a glimpse of what oral hygiene is like around the world in traditional cultures eating traditional foods that have been prepared properly...and contrasting that with people eating modern diets. The difference is astounding. Did you ever wonder how the ancients cleaned their teeth? Well actually, it looks like they didn't need to. From Australian Aborigines on their traditional diet to natives of the Swiss Alps (also on their traditional unprocessed diet), Weston A. Price kept coming across native cultures of people who had perfect teeth. Low sugar, properly prepared grains and good levels of fat soluble vitamins A and D were some of the factors contributing to their superior oral health.
There's far too much information for me to run over here, read the book for yourself if you're interested. But as an example, some of the tooth remineralising foods are: bone broth, fermented cod liver oil, raw grass-fed dairy products, soft boiled or raw pastured eggs (especially duck eggs), fish (not farmed), lightly cooked grass-fed beef or lamb, wild caught fish eggs, lard from grass fed animals, fermented foods, cooked vegetables with butter or cream (the fat helps you absorb more of the nutrients in the veg), seaweeds.
And the nasty foods for your teeth include: packaged and processed food, infant formula (interestingly enough, I could never produce enough breast milk, so my babies were all formula supplemented which very likely contributed to their cavities later on), whole grains, breakfast cereals, oatmeal, granola (these grains are not prepared properly and contain antinutrients), refined sweeteners, vaccines and pharmaceuticals.