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  #766   ^
Old Sun, Nov-23-14, 15:44
Plinge Plinge is offline
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Plan: No factory-processed food
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Verbena
My dentist told me years ago that toothpaste is really not necessary; brushing alone is sufficient. I admit to using toothpaste still, but mostly because brushing without leaves a funny taste in my mouth.

I agree, Verbena. That is why I still do it too. But I use a very small amount of toothpaste these days, which freshens my mouth just as well. I do not brush for long or over-hard--and so far I have not found any problem with this. That should surprise me, but I am sure it is because I have low plaque thanks to not eating refined sugar or sugary products.
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  #767   ^
Old Sun, Nov-23-14, 20:14
Verbena Verbena is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Plinge
I agree, Verbena. That is why I still do it too. But I use a very small amount of toothpaste these days, which freshens my mouth just as well. I do not brush for long or over-hard--and so far I have not found any problem with this. That should surprise me, but I am sure it is because I have low plaque thanks to not eating refined sugar or sugary products.


Ah yes! Only a little. I use a brand I first learned about in Germany. Concentrated, flavored with fennel - which I prefer over mint. Directions say to use a "lentil" sized amount; a lentil is really very small I had my semi-annual teeth cleaning the other day. It went fairly quickly; the hygienist seemed pretty happy with the state of my teeth. I should perhaps add that my check ups in the past have usually shown that "something" needed to be done - at the very least I got the recommendation to floss more. Got off scot free this time, after being low carb for almost 2 years.
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  #768   ^
Old Mon, Nov-24-14, 09:56
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Aradasky Aradasky is offline
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Plan: Atkins
Stats: 199/000/000 Female 5"3'
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I have decided not to swallow the baking soda, just rinse then brush. Can't wait to see what the Dental Hygienist says this time.
Last time there was evidence something in my body had changed ph.
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  #769   ^
Old Mon, Nov-24-14, 10:54
Plinge Plinge is offline
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Posts: 2,136
 
Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: UK
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Aradasky
I have decided not to swallow the baking soda, just rinse then brush. Can't wait to see what the Dental Hygienist says this time.
Last time there was evidence something in my body had changed ph.


I really believe in it as a mouth wash, though I do not usually need it. I also sometimes take sodium bicarb down if I feel gout coming on, and it stops it dead. As I understand it, the key parts of our body regulate their own pH, so the blood, for example, takes care of itself, stays neutral, and is unaffected by changes in the pH of body fluids; the stomach maintains quite an acidic pH in order to break food down. I do think sodium bicarb is useful for lowering uric acid levels, which in my case I believe can cause gout and kidney issues, etc. But one does need to be careful. In the old days, people used to get stomach ulcers from overuse of antacids, because the stomach needs acidity.

Did your hygienist just measure mouth pH or something else? I am pretty sure mouth pH is localised, which is why I can have a neutral saliva and an acidic urine. I have these little pH strips that I can suck, and they go certain colours, like the litmus paper in school experiments. Not that I bother any more, because I am certain my diet takes care of all that.
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  #770   ^
Old Mon, Nov-24-14, 11:04
Plinge Plinge is offline
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Posts: 2,136
 
Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Verbena
Ah yes! Only a little. I use a brand I first learned about in Germany. Concentrated, flavored with fennel - which I prefer over mint. Directions say to use a "lentil" sized amount; a lentil is really very small I had my semi-annual teeth cleaning the other day. It went fairly quickly; the hygienist seemed pretty happy with the state of my teeth. I should perhaps add that my check ups in the past have usually shown that "something" needed to be done - at the very least I got the recommendation to floss more. Got off scot free this time, after being low carb for almost 2 years.

Exactly! That is why this subject started to fascinate me, because I noticed that my oral health was transformed overnight once I started my low-carb diet, and I wanted to find out why. (Answer: I gave up white sugar and junk food--voila!)

I never liked the taste of fennel when I was younger, but--the wonders never stop coming--now I do. I include fennel seeds in a seed punch I have in a sauce on the side of my plate. These are not straight fennel seeds, which might not digest, but from the contents of used fennel teabags. After I drink a fennel tea, I keep the bag and then empty some of the bits (they are chopped seeds) into the sauce. Is this weird? Surprisingly, they still pack plenty of flavour. In history, and in many parts of the world today, fennel seed is chewed after meals as a breath freshener. So it makes sense why fennel finds its way into toothpaste.
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  #771   ^
Old Mon, Nov-24-14, 14:03
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Aradasky Aradasky is offline
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Plan: Atkins
Stats: 199/000/000 Female 5"3'
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Location: Southern California
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Plinge
I really believe in it as a mouth wash, though I do not usually need it. I also sometimes take sodium bicarb down if I feel gout coming on, and it stops it dead. As I understand it, the key parts of our body regulate their own pH, so the blood, for example, takes care of itself, stays neutral, and is unaffected by changes in the pH of body fluids; the stomach maintains quite an acidic pH in order to break food down. I do think sodium bicarb is useful for lowering uric acid levels, which in my case I believe can cause gout and kidney issues, etc. But one does need to be careful. In the old days, people used to get stomach ulcers from overuse of antacids, because the stomach needs acidity.

Did your hygienist just measure mouth pH or something else? I am pretty sure mouth pH is localised, which is why I can have a neutral saliva and an acidic urine. I have these little pH strips that I can suck, and they go certain colours, like the litmus paper in school experiments. Not that I bother any more, because I am certain my diet takes care of all that.


I had four spots where I was losing enamal. I even had to have one filled. They were right under some caps I have. I had not had any trouble before, and asked. She said maybe something was changing my ph. Gums are good and hardly any tarter. Not doing anything any different. So, trying this.
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  #772   ^
Old Mon, Nov-24-14, 15:41
Plinge Plinge is offline
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Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Aradasky
I had four spots where I was losing enamal. I even had to have one filled. They were right under some caps I have. I had not had any trouble before, and asked. She said maybe something was changing my ph. Gums are good and hardly any tarter. Not doing anything any different. So, trying this.


My last piece in this grindingly long series is going to be a right old rant against dentists and hygienists. I have come to the conclusion that two things cause dental problems, bad diet and dentistry. Since you eat so clean, you know where my suspicion lies in this case.

Maybe there are localised spots of low pH under the caps. But a cap should seal the tooth, surely?
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  #773   ^
Old Mon, Nov-24-14, 19:44
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Aradasky Aradasky is offline
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Plan: Atkins
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They were just at the point where the cap ends and my enamal begins. I am reading this now,

Cure Tooth Decay. My daughter the nutritionist and I are trying to figure it out, too.
http://www.amazon.com/Cure-Tooth-De...p=1416879842199
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  #774   ^
Old Tue, Dec-02-14, 01:54
Plinge Plinge is offline
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Posts: 2,136
 
Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: UK
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Aradasky
They were just at the point where the cap ends and my enamal begins. I am reading this now,

Cure Tooth Decay. My daughter the nutritionist and I are trying to figure it out, too.
http://www.amazon.com/Cure-Tooth-De...p=1416879842199


I am broadly in agreement with him, though, as you know, I prefer to go to scientific evidence rather than intermediary writers. I do not agree, however, with the theory of Nagel and others that because bacteria do not directly damage teeth they are not a problem. For me the fact that acid is produced when bacteria ferment food is compelling. And I am not convinced by the anti-fluoride line--though I do not think fluoride is essential either.
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  #775   ^
Old Tue, Dec-02-14, 02:46
Plinge Plinge is offline
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Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
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Progress: 100%
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Mouth Piece 16 Rinsed (part 1)

I am nearing the end of my series about mouth care. I have tried to go through each aspect of the matter cautiously, laying out a sensible, balanced approach to oral care that costs neither money nor time, based on a mix of personal experiment and my reading of scientific evidence. Each stage in the argument, moderate in itself, has inched me towards a radical conclusion: that good oral health might be achievable without the help of the dental industry. I am not alone in proposing that idea, of course; but too many of those who propose such a thing strike me as offputtingly far out or faddy. I have tried instead to come over as hesitantly reasonable. Nonetheless, in these final two posts on the subject I intend to take leave of my objectivity and descend into an opinionated rant. So feel free to take what follows with a pinch of salt.

*

When I look back at my dental history, I cannot help thinking some my dental problems were worsened or even caused by dental work itself. Obviously, I believe the blame for my tooth decay lay with my eating of sugary and processed products and my poor or ineffective tooth care and hygiene. Simply put: I ate sugar; plaque grew on my teeth; I did not clean it off properly; it caused damage. But I cannot look back on the remedies enacted on me by my dentists with anything but dismay.

My dad liked to share work back and forth between business associates. So the main dentist of my earlier years, Mr Jenkins, was a friend of his. I still have evidence along my back teeth of Mr Jenkins’s handiwork—rows of gnarly metal fillings. To be fair, as a metal worker, he was a craftsman, since most of his fillings remain in place now that I am sixty years old—though some did fall out, as I mentioned in an earlier post, when the bits of teeth to which they were fixed came away.

Mr Jenkins’s method of filling a tooth, I now see, was to drill a big hole in the tooth, which not only removed the tooth decay but a good portion of the healthy tooth around it, so he could establish purchase for a metal plug. Without such purchase, the filling might fall out. On close inspection, I notice that one of his techniques was to cut holes across the tooth to give a filling “claws”, as it were. This resembles the carpentry technique of dovetailing, which locks a joint in place. As a result, some of my back teeth contain more filling than tooth, and others come close. The scene looks worse where weakened areas of tooth have broken off, leaving the joint stuck out like shrapnel.

I read now that all this amalgam in my mouth is not only obsolete but potentially dangerous, because it releases a constant microscopic drip of mercury and other alien substances into my body. I looked into having the fillings removed. Not only would it be exceptionally expensive, but it seems the amount of metal released into the bloodstream during the process might be counterproductive. It is not as if the new types of filling that would replace the metal have a clean bill of health either. On the positive side, however, I am not too worried about the small amount of metal released by my fillings, since my healthy diet contains plenty of substances to detox the body of alien matter, for example by chelation. Thankfully, I do not suffer from the symptoms of those who believe their metal fillings are damaging their health.

Three of those back teeth filled by Mr Jenkins had to be removed due to abscesses—two when I was relatively young. Three more are highly damaged and have felt abscessy in the past, leading to refillings. Had I attended the dentist in the last fifteen years, I am sure those would have been removed by now too. And others refilled. Since I have not been to the dentist, none of that has happened. Fillings have come out or come away, leaving broken or hollow teeth that, on the basis of all we are told, should by now have caused me serious problems. They have not. Yes, they are broken, but they cause little trouble nowadays. Yes, they used to hurt sometimes, in the days when my diet was poor. And they were sensitive, when I was prone to tooth sensitivity. But now, presumably well protected by the healthy regrowth of dentin, they cause no problem and surprisingly little inconvenience. One is actually hollow. After its filling came out, I assumed food would get stuck in it all the time, but it rarely does. If it does, a touch of the pick, or a post-prandial chewing of gum plucks it out instantly.

*

Methods of filling teeth have changed over the years. During my last period of dental attendance, the nineties, my dentists liked to jam a non-metal, cement-like substance into my teeth. That all came back out ages ago. From what I have read, those types of fillings—unlike Mr Jenkins’s metal constructions—are not designed to last. They have to be replaced every so often. At least they required less drilling. Their introduction coincided with the switch of my local dental services from free treatment on the National Health to private practice. It makes more sense for a private dentist to fill teeth less permanently, as it establishes the need for repeated work in future.

One notable difference between Mr Jenkins’s metal fillings and the work of the cement-packers was that the cement packers made no attempt to imitate the shape of my teeth. Whereas the tops of one’s back teeth are naturally uneven, so that teeth can bite, these modern dentists packed the cement across those grooves to leave a strangely flat surface. Over time, this would wear back to a more natural profile, but at first it felt odd because it desensitised the whole top of the tooth. In those days, I was impressed by the fact that a newly filled tooth was flatter than those around it; but now I think it questionable to lump anything on the teeth which alters their natural shape. Modern dentistry, however, seems determined to treat dental work rather as a cover-up job. Teeth are now replated, recoated, capped, and crowned as a matter of course. In my opinion, the cover-up principle is fatally flawed. Not only is it highly expensive, but teeth, in my opinion, fare better the more contact they have with healthy saliva. The last thing they need is to be shielded from it by dentists whose tool kit now resembles that of the plasterer as much as the carpenter.

*

In fairness to old Jenkins, I do not remember much pain straight after he had filled my teeth. But on a couple of occasions, my later mottle and daub dentists filled a tooth only to make the pain worse. One time the filling had to be replaced and the tooth removed instead, a decision akin to shooting the horse because it was rubbing against a new fence. That was my biggest tooth. What I believe happened is that the dentist had jammed the cement so hard into the centre of the tooth that it was pressing on an exposed nerve within, leaving no room for dentin to regrow over the nerve and thereby soothe it.

By then I never seemed to see the same dentist twice. The practice I visited was part of a chain round the local towns that largely employed young locum dentists to do their work. I suppose you cannot blame the owners of the practice, now more businessmen than health workers, for taking as much time as possible away from personally dabbling in people’s mouths. But, interestingly, it meant that my dentists were happy to criticise each other’s work. On one occasion, a stand-in dentist decided to extract one of my teeth because it had become abscessed. He gaily told me that the abscess was caused by the previous filling. By then I had sufficient experience of dentists to make me cynical about the profession; but it was the first evidence that dentists had been harming my teeth. I remember a young Irish dentist I saw at university, whose method was to take photographs of the teeth. After studying a photograph for a moment, he discovered he was looking at it upside down. That incident suggested to me for the first time that dentistry is by no means the sophisticated profession we are led to believe.

*

From my reading, I have come to see teeth as composed mostly of nerves, dentin, and pulp that are an intrinsic part of the body. The enamel surface alone is inorganic, the rest regrows. The beauty of a tooth as a piece of engineering is that it combines flexible and rigid parts, like a wheel suspension or a washing machine. But as soon as something presses tight against such a mechanism, it is constricted, leading to dysfunction and damage. So though enamel is a rigid material, as it must be to chew foods, it rests on a softer layer of dentin, which itself sits on an even softer layer of flesh. This degree of give helps teeth absorb impact. In addition, teeth are not uniformly shaped but have subtle indentations along their tops, plus curves on their fronts and backs, that disperse the impact of hard matter throughout their mass, meaning they do not break even when crunching the hardest of materials.

It stands to reason, therefore, that fixing much less flexible materials into the heart of the teeth, such as metals, amalgams, and cements, must reduce the ability of teeth to withstand impact over time. I can see the effect of this when I inspect the broken places in my teeth. There are now points in my mouth where the metal filling is left standing out like an ancient ruin, the shell of the tooth clinging around it. It is clear where bits of tooth have snapped away from the fillings. As I have said, I believe three of my teeth are, in effect, dead. By that I mean the tooth enamel has more or less lost contact with the dentinal structure that should support it and instead holds on in my mouth only by virtue of Mr Jenkins's fiendish metalwork system. In my experience, very small pieces of these teeth break off every so often (you think you have a piece of grit in your supper). What has happened, I believe, is that these teeth—in the absence of contact, at least in places, with dentin—became brittle with age. Supported only by metal, they lost the ability to resist hard force, and therefore they inevitably crack under pressure or trauma.

That is why these days—unintuitive though it sounds—I prefer to let my damaged teeth go unfilled. In the case of those still alive, it allows them to breathe and move freely, as they were designed to do, without having to cope with being plugged by a substance alien to the body and inimical to their organic design. In the case of my dead teeth, it saves them from a return to the filled state that killed them in the first place. Since to my great surprise it turns out that even damaged teeth help with chewing and cause no problem so long as they are fully washed by saliva, I would rather keep them as useful relics of what they once were than artificially shore them up with substances that will make them hurt again and advance the day of their extraction.

*

It is not just the breaking of the teeth—admittedly a very rare phenomenon—that I want to avoid. I want to avoid the toothache and infection that dental work can cause. Fillings might work in the short term, if they are well done, but over time they inevitably loosen, opening fissures between them and the teeth into which bacteria can find a way. By this route, noxious fluids could penetrate the deeper parts of the teeth, promoting soreness, infection, and abscesses.

When I look back at my abscess extractions, I see a pattern. If you insert an inorganic plug into the tooth—which is what a filling is—it creates a greater risk of infection than if you left that tooth unfilled and allowed dentin to grow back and mend the damage or seal the surface of the broken area. I have found that when a small piece breaks off one of my teeth, I have toothache for several days, but that it slowly dies away—after which the tooth does not hurt any more. It is how nature’s healing process works in the rest of the body. At first, the broken tooth is exposed to the oral environment, for which the signal is pain from the exposed nerve. Then dentin comes to the rescue and seals the raw spot, in the same way that collagen is restored in skin and bone. Afterwards, the pain goes away because the nerve has done its job and now is sealed back in.

The tooth which caused me the most pain was the one that Mr Jenkins drilled hollow to ensure a neat, stable filling. After the filling fell out, I have had no further pain from that tooth. Nor is it inconvenient, to my surprise, having a hollow tooth in my mouth. (I forgive anyone who doubts me on that, but it is true.) Saliva now has a clear route into all parts of the tooth; and the lack of pressure means abscesses have no reason to form. When I had a piece of tooth break off along the gum line—as with a tooth at top right which backed shallowly into the gum—I felt a double pain, that of the tooth nerves and that of the inflammation where an area of gum was opened up, as in a cut. Both pains died away naturally over several days.

*

It was a revelation for me. In the past, I would rush to the dentist with the tooth pains; the filling would be inserted; and, as the pain died away, I would attribute the relief to the filling rather than to the normal healing process that follows damage. Now I ask why—if I maintain a healthy pH in my mouth by avoiding sugar and processed food, and if I clean my teeth effectively so that plaque, tartar, and food particles do not build up—I would need dental check-ups or routine hygienist appointments. If I am right, it should be possible to avoid such expenditure entirely. Not only might this save me money, but it might save me from future damage caused by dental treatment.

By avoiding fillings, I avoid having healthy tooth structure weakened or removed by the drill; I avoid having inorganic substances plugged into gaps so the tooth cannot breathe properly, leading to blocked nerves, undrained inflammatory fluids from bacterial infections and abscesses, and friction of rigid matter against enamel that causes cracks, shearing, and breakages. And by avoiding the hygienist, I avoid having the natural film and outer enamel that protects my teeth scraped off leaving them more vulnerable to plaque and decay over time.

Last edited by Plinge : Tue, Dec-02-14 at 04:30.
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  #776   ^
Old Thu, Dec-04-14, 02:30
Plinge Plinge is offline
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Posts: 2,136
 
Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: UK
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Mouth piece 16. Rinsed (part two)

My final raised eyebrow is reserved for the dental trade’s more artificial interventions, many of which have nothing to do with the long-term interest of the teeth. For example, all manner of crowns (caps) and veneers are stuck over the natural surfaces of teeth to make them look more how we think teeth should look. This side of the business sustains the income of dentists while extracting such eye-watering costs from patients as to put dental work up there with paying the mortgage and running a car as one of life’s most daunting costs.

*

Tooth resurfacing ignores the fact that teeth possess internal processes to counter the wearing down of teeth over a lifetime, such as the continuous formation of dentin to replace abraded enamel. Many early skeletons show teeth worn down and severely damaged by the rough materials man had to chewteeth nonetheless untouched by decay. As with bones, wear and tear is not decay. Even a tooth which has lost its enamel on top can chew as well as before, thanks to the coating of dentin. Along the tops of my own teeth, I see that dentin clearly and chew perfectly well on it. Those worn teeth do not need crowns, which will come off in time and have to be renewed, at renewed expense.

What is a crown? According to The British Dental Foundation’s website:

A crown is an artificial restoration that fits over the remaining part of a prepared tooth, making it strong and giving it the shape of a natural tooth. A crown is sometimes known as a “cap”.

Why would I need a crown?

Crowns are an ideal way to restore teeth that have been broken, or have been weakened by decay or a very large filling. A crown could be used for a number of other reasons, for example:

You may have a discoloured filling and would like to improve the appearance of the tooth.

You may have had a root filling which may need a crown to protect what is left of the tooth.

You may help hold a bridge or denture firmly in place.


My translation: crowns are an artificial way of making your teeth look whiter or of covering up the results of previous dental work, such as a tooth weakened by a large filling.

I already concluded the problem with some of my teeth is that they were weakened by large fillings. Here an orthodox dental source unembarrassedly confirms the possibility. I note also the suggestion that crowns may be needed after a root filling or to hold a bridge in place. This supports my impression that much dental work is a jigsaw network joined to the teeth in a way that prevents it falling out of the mouth.

A root filling, by the way, is a procedure that digs deep into infected flesh around the root of the tooth, removes that flesh, and then jams alien material into the dentin there and against the flesh to fill the hole. Unless a patient improves their diet and mouth pH, I do not see how such surgery could possibly prevent a recurrence of the problem. Surely a crown, in sealing a problem area off from the saliva, blocks the natural osmosis of the saliva into the gum, by which the abscess fluids drain out naturally and infections heal?

And do not get me started on gum implants, a procedure whereby an artificial tooth with a pointed thread on its base is screwed through the flesh of the gum into the jaw bone.

As for the use of a crown to hold a bridge in place, it raises the matter of bridges, which are pieces of engineering that effectively weld teeth together. Welding teeth together by such bracketing is bound to restrict the shock-absorbing ability of individual teeth, which nature made separate from each other for good reason. Jamming caps over such man-made mess merely conceals the fact that the remaining parts of teeth are being held together by what amounts to crude fencework.

I would rather get by with an odd tooth missing than have further alien materials grafted into my mouth. The three teeth I lost, being at the back, do not show. Only one gap remains. The other two gaps—in a marvel of nature—were filled by the neighbouring teeth, which shuffled along like chorus girls. If I lost a front tooth, I would certainly get a false one, but not one screwed or bridged permanently in place. I would get a removable one and put it in only when I went out, thus limiting any discomfort it could cause the gum and teeth around it.

*

As for aesthetic dentistry, it is a dimension of tooth care which feeds on the vulnerability that people want their teeth to look nice. It surprises me the public have bought into the idea that teeth should be white rather than ivory and look gleaming rather than natural. Cosmetic dental work is bound to deteriorate and need replacing at intervals, so anyone who buys it commits to repeated dental work and expense ad infinitum. I can understand why young models and celebrities feel they need expensive dental work to support their careers; but they will need to keep renewing that work till the end of their lives, and many of them will not be able to afford it indefinitely. That is their lookout. But the everyday person should think twice about paying vast amounts of money for unnatural treatments that put appearance ahead of utility and common sense. Not only does artificial dental work cost a packet and last a short time, but it damages the underlying health of the mouth and gums and needs vigilant maintenance if—lacking the self-cleaning properties of natural teeth—it is not to become dirty and riddled with bacteria.

Dental whitening procedures involve bleaching or dyeing the teeth, which are achieved by intruding chemicals such as peroxide into the reactions that lay down calcium sulphate and fluoride into enamel. It works the same way as pouring a tin of white paint into a bucket of cement before you concrete a path. The colour will start fading immediately and need restoring in future.

If trying to make ivory teeth whiter, whether by dental treatment, whitening gels, or toothpastes, is futile, we might better accept that clean teeth are ivory teeth. As for food stains, the cleaner we eat, the fewer we should have. I drink lots of coffee and tea; and these days they do not stain my teeth. When I used to eat badly, they did stain them—until every so often I resorted to scraping the fronts of them crudely with a serrated kitchen knife. Tea and coffee, which are good for oral health, stain the teeth less when the saliva pH is less acid, because the pigments in them penetrate enamel when it is being eroded.

*

I do not blame dentists for their system of check-ups, cleanings, fillings, and architectural micro-carpentry that ensures them such a good living. After all, they are confronted by one patient after another who clearly will never be able to look after their teeth organically (by eating healthily, avoiding sugar, and cleaning them smartly). So dentists provide a justifiable firefighting service. I do not say dentists plan it consciously, but they reap professional advantage by systematically damaging tooth fabric and replacing it with constructions of their own that will require servicing for a patient’s lifetime. It is only human nature that a profession which both decides and charges for a course of action is biased in favour of the most profitable operations.

We know from media exposés that groups such as builders, bankers, car mechanics, and lawyers have been known to fraudulently mis-sell their services. But in the case of dentists, I am not talking of conscious chicanery. I just believe that, over time, professions which charge money based on their own diagnoses develop a bias in favour of their own interests at the expense of their clients. New generations of professionals are then trained on the assumption that the accepted procedures of the profession are the necessary procedures of the profession. In addition, dentistslike any good selling professionare always seeking to expand their range of operations. In my lifetime, I have seen the introduction of more elaborate procedures; the hygienist visit become as essentialised as the regular check-up; and the expansion of cosmetic dentistry to the point where everyday people perceive the natural ivory colour of their teeth as an unsatisfactory yellow.

*

So I end this series on oral health, during which I drew a series of cautious conclusions based on scientific evidence, with a rather extreme proposal that must regarded only as a personal opinion. It is that with good nutrition and a few simple precautions, most people might get by without the majority of dental products and dental visits which they inflict on themselves and their purse. If I have a point, they could potentially spare themselves not only unnecessary damage to their teeth but also thousands of pounds or dollars between here and the grave. (I doubt we will need teeth in heaven, where I hear the main foods are nectar and Ambrosia rice pudding.)

If any dentist read this, they would probably flay me alive. I have come to my conclusion reluctantly, however, being naturally conservative, of an uncynical disposition, and uninclined to conspiracy theory. I sincerely believe dentists do more harm than good to our teeth. It happens, I am sure, with the best of intentions, because dentists are genuinely motivated to help their patients avoid tooth damage and pain. But damage and pain put bread on their table. Sugar fills their wallets. For good oral health, it makes sense, therefore, to turn first not to the dentist but to the food we eat.

Last edited by Plinge : Thu, Dec-04-14 at 05:21.
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  #777   ^
Old Tue, Dec-30-14, 12:25
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pivoine pivoine is offline
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Plan: lchf + if
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Dear Plinge, I have read every post up to page 16, and couldn't resist the desire to post here and thank you for every witty, wise, and interesting word, and for all your brave self-experimenting and wonderful communicating. It is most refreshing.
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  #778   ^
Old Tue, Jan-20-15, 10:34
Plinge Plinge is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pivoine
Dear Plinge, I have read every post up to page 16, and couldn't resist the desire to post here and thank you for every witty, wise, and interesting word, and for all your brave self-experimenting and wonderful communicating. It is most refreshing.


Thank you so much for reading it. It has been a steep learning curve for me, and I am surprised at what I have learned. It is still going on. I had not realised how much one continues to learn and change on maintenance. The changes have belatedly started to alter me as a person, something I did not think could happen at my age.
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