“Nothing offends patients more than to be asked to change their habits of life. Their desire is to be able to break every known law of health; then, when they are called upon to pay the penalty, they accept complete absolution in a bottle or two of medicine. They do not want to be cured but are content to be patched up sufficiently to continue their practice of self-indulgence in various forms.”
Dr. Alexander Bryce ‘ Changing people is difficult’
Introduction
Dental health is just as important as health in the rest of the body, and what happens in your mouth has an effect on the rest of the body. Good nutrition in the body equates to good nutrition in the mouth providing healthy gums and healthy teeth. It is not just about avoiding sugar, but taking daily all of the 90 essential nutrients, since healthy dental tissue and saliva play a crucial role in maintaining dental health.
The nutritional pioneer of this century
Weston A Price (1870-1948) a renowned Canadian dentist wrote in his book ‘Nutrition and Physical Degeneration’ in 1939 :
“ Since we have known for a long time that savages have excellent teeth and that civilized men have terrible teeth, it seems to me that we have been extraordinarily stupid in concentrating all of our attention upon the task of finding out why our teeth are so poor, without ever bothering to learn why savage teeth are good”
Dr Price spent 7 years travelling the world to study various peoples of the planet and the status of their dental health. He travelled to Switzerland, Scotland, Alaska, Canada, western US and Florida, some of the south pacific islands, tribes in eastern and central Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Peru and the Amazon basin. As he points out, primitive people have thrived on the same soil for years, respecting mother nature, in terms of nutrient replenishment, whereas western society has witnessed the decline in soil replenishment and the decline in animal husbandry. Compared to the primitive societies, even in 1939 he quotes, that annually in the US alone there were 100 million illnesses, while 700,000 beds were occupied in American hospitals and medical care costs amounted to $3.5 billion annually. He states :
‘The organism seems to have become more susceptible to degenerative diseases’
The US Population at this time was 130 million, while every day 1 in 20 people were too sick to go to school, and 6 million were sick every day. Cancer increased 90% between the years 1907-1936 while deaths per 100,000 increased from 203 in 1907 to 327 in 1936. Dr Hooten anthropologist from Harvard said at that time that :
‘ It is store food which has given us store teeth’
And, in terms of an approach to man’s progressive degeneration proposing an Institute of Clinical anthropology :
‘ . . for finding out what man is like biologically when he does not need a doctor, in order to further ascertain what he should be like after the doctor has finished with him. I am entirely serious when I suggest that it is a very myopic medical science which works backward from the morgue rather than forward from the cradle’.
Discovery
When Dr Price visited the Loetschental valley in Switzerland, about 200 km north east of Geneva in 1931, there were 2000 residents living in an area without physicians nor dentists because the inhabitants had no need for them. While planted ryegrass dried into hay, fed the livestock ( cows and goats) during winter, people’s staple food was rye bread, raw milk, cheese and butter.. Meat was eaten once per week. Price examined the food and dairy products of raw milk and cheese he found them high in vitamin and mineral content, including what Price called the fat soluble activators Vitamin A and D. However, by 1932 a modern bakery had been established dispensing white flour products. From this Alpine village, Price travelled further southeast to the Rhone valley where modern food was available, every child had some level of tooth decay, from 8 to 18 years, practically 30% of the teeth had been attacked by dental cavities since in this region such as St Moritz, the children had easy access to white flour, marmalades, jams, canned vegetables, and confectionary. Price also commented on the normal facial development of the isolated communities like in the Loetschental valley compared to the irregularity of the teeth with narrowing of the arches of the communities residing in the lower valleys. Many bore scars on their faces from an abscess of an infected tooth. In St Moritz in a class of 16 boys there existed 158 cavities (9.8 cavities/boy).
The story was the same when Price visited the island of Lewis in the most northern tip of Scotland where he compared the dental cavities in people living on primitive food that had 1.3 teeth out of every 100 dental cavities, compared to an adult group in Stornoway, some 60 miles away, out of 100 persons, between the ages of 20 to 40, eating modern processed food, a quarter were already equipped with artificial teeth. The primitive food consisted of oat cakes, porridge, lobster, crab, oyster, clams and cod fish. The other groups that had access to white flour products, canned marmalade, canned vegetables, sweetened fruit juice, jams and confectionery, had dental cavities of some 32 out of 100 teeth examined. Tuberculosis was a common disease in many parts that Dr Price visited, which accompanied many, that had abscessed teeth, confirming nutritional deficiency affecting the entire body. Dr Price’s primary goal was to establish the factual cause of dental decay, and I can say he achieved this admirably, having read his monograph on his expedition. One can only place this man among the great explorers like Jacques Cartier, Amerigo Vespucci, Christophe Colomb and others who all risked their lives and companions seeking out the truth, and returned with concrete evidence dispelling the dogma and ignorance of the time.
Not bad inherited genes, just nutritional deficiencies
The overwhelming evidence from most of the civilizations he encountered, the people who ate the primitive food of their ancestors maintained excellent health and dental development, but as soon as they got access to modernized ‘white people’, food, both physiological and dental health deteriorated, resulting in the children with worse physical health than their parents in some cases. Due to nutritional deficiency specifically Vitamin A,E and D, offspring displayed a narrow face and dental arch causing the crowding of teeth and misalignment, which as I have mentioned before in previous articles, the lack of essential prenatal nutrients, birth defects can occur such as cleft palate, harelip, down’s syndrome and others. Inheritance of these tragic deformities is not caused by a hand me down through generations, it is nutrient deficient mother. Apart from crucial folate acid, the new mother requires all 90 essential nutrients for her and her offspring. Cerebral Palsy caused by congenital Vitamin A, zinc and copper deficiency, Cystic fibrosis caused by selenium deficiency, Cochlear ( deafness) caused by congenital manganese deficiency, Muscular dystrophy caused by a deficiency of Vitamin E and selenium, Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy caused by a selenium deficiency, Spina Bifida caused by a folic acid and zinc deficiency, Cleft palate caused by a Vitamin A and zinc deficiency for example, as stated by Dr Joel Wallach.
Essential Vitamin A
Vitamin A ( contained in good amounts in grass fed organic butter and cod liver oil) deficiency in a mother can lead to serious deformities in the bone structure of the face and head, harelip, cleft palate, narrow dental arches, nasal passage, sinus defects, and defects in the optic nerves and eyes. In the absence of vitamin A, the ameloblasts ( cells that form teeth enamel), and odontoblasts (cells that form dentine) fail to develop. Congenital Vitamin A deficiency can also cause mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and mongolism ( Downs syndrome). A deficiency in polyunsaturated fat, specifically Linoleic Acid causes a swelling of the submaxillary gland ( also known as the submandibular glands ), by the action of Diiodotyrosine a precursor in the production of thyroid hormone thyroxine ( T4 and T3). The submaxillary glands, located on the floor of the mouth, at the junction where the front of the tongue meets the floor of the mouth, secretes most of the salivary volume in the mouth. Swelling of these glands can cause infection and abscess. Interestingly, Diiodotyrosine is contained in sea kelp so there is another reason, other than iodine, to take this supplement, but it is also crucial for metabolism, concerning the ovary, thyroid and testes, and the stimulation of liver cells to excrete cholesterol into the bile. Rich sources of Linoleic acid (LA) are contained in nuts; for example pine nuts (1 ounce = 9.4g), pecans and brazil nuts, an ounce of each = 5.8g, and sunflower seeds where 1 ounce =9.7g. Vegetable oils are also rich sources but the industry has managed to create poisonous dead vegetable oils that should be avoided unless they have been cold pressed.
Pottenger’s cats
Dr Francis Pottenger, author of ‘Symptoms of Visceral disease’, discovered the deterioration of dental and body health of cats after conducting a 10 year study in 1946, on the effects of cooked food and recorded in his paper ‘The effects of heat processed foods and metabolized Vitamin D milk, on dento-facial structure of experimental animals’. Initially, one group of cats were fed raw scraps of food that included muscle, bone and viscera, and another group were fed cooked meat scraps. The good health of the cats fed the raw scraps versus the deteriorating health of the cats fed with cooked scraps was startling, as stated by Pottenger. The healthy cats were normal in every way; they had good resistance to infection, parasite and vermin, had pleasant characters and could be easily handled. The cats fed the cooked scraps, suffered abortions, each litter of kittens had heterogeneous variations of skeletal integrity, and the kittens were often too frail to nurse, where many of the litter died due to the failure of the mothers to lactate. This group of cats were irritable and dangerous to handle, skin lesions and allergies were common and Pneumonia and empyema ( Bacterial infection of the lungs) killed many of the adult cats. The mortality rate was high within the kittens, suffering from Osteomyelitis, cardiac lesions, hyperopia, myopia, thyroid disease, nephritis ( kidney inflammation), hepatitis ( Liver inflammation), orchitis testicle inflammation, oophoritis (ovarian inflammation), paralysis, meningitis, cystitis,and arthritis. From a dental perspective many of the kittens were born with narrow dental arches, disproportionate heads with retraction of the mandible ( where the bottom part of the mouth protrudes beyond the top of the mouth), and skeletal deformities. The pregnant females developed gingivitis, diminished calcium, paradentosis ( inflammation of the periodontium which is the tissue that support the teeth), abscess and tooth loss.
Lack of adequate nutrition affects the whole body
Dr Price not only observed deterioration in the children’s teeth, but their skeleton was less stable and often bones were fragile. Mental efficiency and acuteness were less than normal and observed to be a form of mental backwardness, leaving them vulnerable to become social outcasts developing antisocial traits categorized as ‘juvenile delinquents’. Price concluded that it was the deterioration of the brain structure that began before birth that was the origin of the antisocial behaviour and not the conditioning influences of the environment in later life, but I daresay it would have been a contributing factor. Price also commented on palliating cavity stricken teeth, and with all of the repair options available to the dentist/orthodontist, and the mass medication of fluoride in toothpaste, was a poor solution to a problem of nutrition, prenatal and otherwise, origins that were acquired through intrauterine development, as opposed to a hereditary defect. Within the primitive Indians of the High Andes, Dr Price recalls, would travel hundreds of miles to the sea to acquire sea kelp, because they knew that it prevented Goiter. Even today most conventional physicians are unaware of a sea kelp supplement to treat goiter preferring to medicate their patients with methimazole or propylthiouracil (Thiouracil).
Dental cavities and the thyroid connection
Back in the 1950’s two dental researchers Muhler and Shafer provided conclusive evidence that dessicated thyroid products, extracted from pigs and cows and fed to rats reduces the incidence of dental cavities. Dessicated ( dried) thyroid extracts were and are still used ( synthetic extracts used today ) to treat hypothyroidism ( known as Hashimoto’s disease) or low thyroid function. The formidable early studies conducted by these two researchers, also revealed that low thyroid hormone levels in the blood, blocked by prescription drugs, such as Thiouracil, used to treat Hyperthyroidism (Graves disease)*, a hyperactive thyroid, increases dental cavities. Interestingly, sufficient administration of fluoride under these conditions had no effect…take heed all you toothpaste companies and governments supplying municipal water, that have been adding fluoride, stupidly believing it has some effect on dental cavity prevention. Around the same time frame in the mid 1950’s, Samuel kirkwood suggested, as mentioned above, that the submaxillary glands and the other salivary glands located below the ear called the Parotid glands, control thyroid hormone levels in the bloodstream, by degrading Thyroxine to iodide ions, establishing the ability of these glands to concentrate iodide. It is this action, according to Kirkwood, that accounts for the reduction in dental cavities when desiccated thyroid extract is administered, or that the thyroid is functioning normally with an adequate amount of dietary iodine. It is concluded that a normal functioning thyroid and submaxillary gland coupled with an adequate dietary/nutritional regimen ( including iodine ) protects against dental cavities.
*re:https://www.extremehealthacademy.com/autoimmune-disease-vii-attack-on-the-thyroid-hashimoto-graves/
Awareness of the truth
So, the question is, is your dentist aware of the importance of essential nutrients required from fetal life to death, and their association with the thyroid-salivary gland mechanism. Most of the information described above was presented at the Medico-Dental meeting ( New York Academy of Dentistry) in Feb 1958 by Dr John Myers..Do dentists today talk about nutrition and dental health ?..I suspect not, just like their colleagues in conventional medicine.. Dr Myers, esteemed as he was, need not have bothered with his presentation, but instead just went to the Pub…lol
Dr John Gunter physician and dentist in 1943 published a series of articles called ‘A guide to practical nutrition’ who stated :
“ Tooth decay and periodontal disease tends to flourish only in populations subsisting on foods of ‘deteriorated biological value’-that is, foods deficient in vitamin and mineral complexes-such as white flour, sugar, and other industrially manufactured foods of modern civilization”
Dr Gunter believed, in 1940, that dental cavities and periodontal problems such as gingivitis and pyorrhea was a concern of both medical physician and dental physician alike, since the former believes there is a crucial link to more systemic disease, while the latter has an interest in maintaining optimum digestion, by efficient processing by the teeth and salivary enzymes. Their appreciation of the vital importance of nutrition to prevent these problems are paramount. Most farmers know how important nutrition is, to the feed they provide for their livestock, because they cannot afford high price veterinary visits, so their livelihood depends on this knowledge. Most degenerative diseases that humans are suffering with today have been eradicated from the animal kingdom, because most veterinarians are aware of nutritional deficiencies.
From his book ‘Lets play doctor’ Joel Wallach insists that a pre-med course at veterinary college should be a mandatory prerequisite for conventional physicians ( ‘orthodox doctors’), just as Chinese trainee physicians are required to follow a training course in Chinese traditional medicine (acupuncture etc) before entering in western driven medical school. Dr Wallach is unique in that he holds doctorate degrees in veterinary medicine and naturopathy and is all seeing in terms of the monumental misdirection that exists in allopathic medicine. Again, as Dr Wallace points out Farmers and ranchers demand a 100 healthy calves for 100 breeding cows and expect the calves to reach market with little or no vet bills, since farming has very small profit margins, these farmers and ranchers demand adequate nutrution to prevent disease, and zero attrition in terms of new calves, or preventable birth defects. In human births no such nutritional attention to detail is forthcoming, so mothers are playing ‘Russian roulette in terms birthing a healthy child without birth defects, not to mention the potential risks of her health.
The main cause of dental cavities
Dental cavities are largely due to organic acids formed around the teeth by bacterial metabolism of the carbohydrate food residue. The level of these organic acids depends on the degree of refinement of the food, the complement of oral bacterial flora, and the presence of enzymes and the 90 essential nutrients. Vitamin A is vital during tooth development, providing adequate enamel formation. Vitamin C provides an efficient dentine formation and growth, and healthy odontoblasts ( those cells that form dentine) that have a reparative function, once the tooth is fully formed. Vitamin C also provides the ability to ‘wall off’ tooth decay, and the metabolism of the 2 main constituents in teeth Calcium and Phosphorous. Vitamin D also influences the body to resist dental cavities.
The horrific reality
Why has dentistry perpetuated this slanted tale of defenceless teeth being attacked by sugar loving bacteria even today ??, for the same reason that medicine has buried the truth behind degenerative disease, perpetuating their own slanted tale of people’s inherited defects, victims of their genes, and just bad luck. We citizens, are all ATM’s to these professions, and if they changed their approach to their ‘customers’ to one of prevention by nutritional means ( even though the majority are ignorant of this fact themselves ), then their ‘customer base’ would dwindle, and the whole drug and dental supply industries would fall into decline.
It should be mandated that dental professionals should have a duty, over and above to effect dental repair, to protect an individual’s integrity and efficiency of a well functioning masticatory apparatus that will serve them up to their ultimate demise. Conventional medicine should have to follow the same mandatory stipulation to protect the physiology of the body in terms of its lifelong integrity and efficiency, through essential nutritional requirements. The governing powers of society have robbed us of mass accessibility of raw milk and raw sugar cane, both of which are our dental friends. These governing powers lent an ear to ignorant people like Dean Noyes many years ago from the dental college of the University of oregon who stated that:
“ There is no scientific proof that decay can result from improper diet”
Or an official from the department of agriculture stating:
“There is no scientific proof that a poor soil can cause poor health”
WHAT?????…..are these people for real ?…it is this mentality that has led us down the path of reliance on health and dental care, a path that could have been avoided had governments listened to Dr Weston Price, Dr Royal Lee, Dr Roger Williams, and many others..Imagine what society could have been. The powers within govenment, that are responsible for establishing medical precedents and decrees should be mandated to make weekly visits to mothers who are struggling with autistic children. Mothers who are trying their best to control their children suffering from ADHD, ADD, Dyslexia, and people who are grief stricken from their loved ones that are dying from cancer and many other debilitating and degenerative diseases, or the elderly that are being fed substandard nutritionless food and being drugged into submission while residing in assisted living quarters. The many who are suffering from multiple sclerosis because nobody recognises its gut dysbiotic origins, or the Cystic fibrosis sufferers who could be helped to reverse their condition for a handful of selenium or a handful of brazil nuts.
Balance
We have discussed physiological balance in several articles previously, and the dental situation in the mouth is no different, and it concerns calcium and phosphorous, which is also applicable to bones and the body as a whole. John Courtney who worked for 30 years for Standard Process, a company founded by another great nutritional thinking dentist Dr Royal Lee in 1929, informs us that bacterial attack on teeth would not occur if the body as a whole, including the teeth were adequately nourished with essential nutrients. Not only are the teeth virtually defenceless but the bacteria killing action of the saliva is also compromised. A Dr Hawkins studied the importance of calcium and phosphorus balance, concluding that, if calcium is deficient, teeth erosion would occur, and if phosphorus were deficient, a calcium based tartar would form on the teeth, leading to periodontal disease from gum irritation and ultimately inflammation from the tartar buildup. This has a decalcifying effect on the bone process, causing the loosening of the teeth. Potassium is also crucial in maintaining bone and teeth structure as well as Calcium and phosphorus, explaining that potassium is an alkaline mineral that protects teeth from fermentation acids that are bacterially formed from the breakdown of sugar product residue.
Demineralization-remineralization
A study conducted by E.W. Fish and H. Maclean entitled ‘Immunity to the organisms of dental caries’ discuss the fact that some human saliva prevents dental decay and some that does not, and a dog’s saliva always prevents decay but a monkey’s vary like humans and they found the immune protective saliva is more common in men than in women. From a more modern perspective, Joel Berg, president of the American Academy foundation explains that cavities ( or the word ‘caries’) are biofilm ( an aggregate of microorganisms or bacteria) induced, acid demineralization of the teeth, and when the tooth enamel is subjected to a PH lower than 5.5 ( acidic ) the teeth begin to demineralise. If the PH is higher ( toward alkalinity or at least less acidic) a mitigating repair process of remineralization occurs. Notice the word minerals, which are part of the nutrients we have been discussing. Notice the word Biofilm which refers to the bacteria, and as we discussed before, an unbalanced gut microbiota causes an imbalance within the entire body. Mr Berg refers to a specific species ‘Mutans Streptococci’ singled out as cavity ‘diggers’, but as he points out these do not cause cavities in all individuals. The encyclopedia of life states that there are approx 25 species of mutans streptococci that live in the oral cavity and they can be either harmful ( pathogenic ) or temporarily harmless ( commensal ). This substantiates the fact that the entire microbiota is balanced when under the control of beneficial bacteria, but if the gut is allowed to become dysbiotic, the pathogenic colonies begin to rule, explaining why this particular commensal species can be harmless or harmful. He also mentions diet as a consideration, specifically the frequency of sugar exposure leading to the metabolism of sugar into lactic acid creating cavities and fuelling this demineralization-remineralization tug of war.
Dr Fred Miller in 1946 described a mother 35 years old, born in southern Italy with a beautiful facial development and a full complement of 32 healthy teeth. Her daughter, on the other hand was born in the US and raised on a typical foodless food diet, consisting of processed and refined food, devoid of minerals, vitamins and enzymes, that resulted in her developing a narrow constricted facial form and arch with crowded teeth. This proved that her dental disposition was not inherited but a result of nutrient deficiency. He goes on to say that our teeth are 144 grinding planes of occlusion, inside a mouth that is designed to self clean, and the loss of a single tooth can disrupt this masticatory mechanism which can cause the back teeth to drift forward, and the front teeth to seperate. Misaligned contact, bone resorption, gum recession, and loose teeth due to the stresses of mastication bearing down on the teeth in the wrong direction, possibly impairing the first stage of digestion. Dr Miller stated at that time that he could arrest tooth decay and rebuild the teeth transforming a soft hypersensitive malacotic ( softer than normal) tooth structure into a hard dense sclerotic (rigid) tooth structure, resistance to decay and non sensitive but in reality the basis of real reconstruction is nutrition.
Conclusions
We can conclude that, if adequate nutrition is applied to the body, the oral cavity will benefit as well, as proven by a few dental and medical professionals back in the 1930’s and 40’s who saw nutrition as the backbone of health within the human body. Dr Weston Price was able to prove to the world from his arduous journey visiting many civilizations that essential nutrients required by the body was the key to good health and the prevention of degenerative disease in the body and the mouth. This established the undeniable truth that the body self heals and self regulates and the mouth self repairs and self cleans meaning that we all inhabit a body that can survive without man’s intervention from dental and medical practitioners providing we nourish the body with life giving essential nutrients with the exception of self irreparable mechanical damage.
Dr. Alan Feinstone: “I am an instrument of perfection and hygiene, the enemy of decay and corruption. A dentist. And I have a lot of work to do”
The Dentist 1996 Movie
Check out other Articles in this series:
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose I (Phenols)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose II (Lignans, Triterpenes, Phytosterols, Carotenoids & Fats)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose III (Phenolic acids, sulphur, sulphides,sulphoxides )
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose IV (Glucosinolates, Sulforaphane, Indole-3-Carbinol)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose V (Lipid distribution, absorbed fats, Criciferous Veg)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose VI (Nutrients required for Liver Detox)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose VII (Seeds & the Omega Fatty Acids)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose VIII (Nutrients required for cellular energy production)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose IX (Water I Properties and Body fluids)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose X (Water II Cellular Hydration)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose XI (Water III Fluid filtration, reabsorption, excretion)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose XII (Water IV Blood pressure, Blood volume regulation)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose XIII (Water V Body Fluid Dysfunction
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose XV (Nutrients involved in Methylation I)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose XVI (Nutrients involved in Methylation II)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose XVII (Nutrients involved in Methylation III)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose XVIII (Nutrients involved in Methylation IV)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose XIX (Methylation V and the Microbiota I)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose XX (Methylation VI and the Microbiota II)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose XXI (Superfoods: Wheatgrass)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose XXII (Superfoods: Adaptogens)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose XXIII (A look into our nutritional past Sir Robert McCarrison)
Nutrients in Food and their bodily purpose XXIV (Pregnancy: Nature vs Nurture vs Nutrition)
References/Acknowledgments :
- Nutrition and physical degeneration (A comparison of primitive and modern diets and their effects) Weston A Price DDS 1939
- The role of some nutritional elements in the health of the teeth and their supporting structures John Myers Seleneriverpress ( Historical archives)
- The effects of heat processed foods and metabolized Vitamin D milk on dento-facial structure of experimental animals 1946 Francis Pottenger American journal of Orthodontics & Dentofacial Orthopedics (AJO-DO)
- Foods cooked above critical temperature causes digestive leukocytosis, GI dysfunction, infection, immune disease and leads to other degenerative diseases Dr Donna Smith Advanced Clinical Nutrition.
- Foods high in Linoleic acid Natalie Stein The Nest
- Mutans streptococci encyclopedia of life
- Why do some people get more cavities than others do Joel Berg Scientific America
- Biofilm Wikipedia
- Why dental caries ? John Courtney Seleneriverpress ( Historical archives)
- Nutritional aspect of dental disease John Gunter DDS, MD Seleneriverpress ( Historical archives)
- The well fed tooth Dr Fred Miller Seleneriverpress ( Historical archives)
- Let’s play doctor Book 1997 JD Wallach ND/Ma Lan MD
- The Dentist 1996 Movie quote IMDB
Author: Eric Malouin