8 ms·
Reversing Tooth Decay with Good Diet
- Femur 18y agoGreat article. The fact that teeth could heal themselves was unknown to me for quite some time. I thought that if you had a cavity, you had to have it filled. I used to have horrid teeth (and the diet to match). I stopped drinking soda and my dentist recommended a product called Recaldent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recaldent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recaldent). This concentrated paste helped most of my teeth strengthen and recalcify.
- tigerthink 18y agoYou ate a paste that straightened your teeth?
- Femur 18y agoI did not eat the paste. I applied the paste to my teeth with my finger and let it set for approximately 30 minutes. I did this once a day for several months right before I went to bed.
- ryanwaggoner 18y agoI don't see where he says anything about straightening.
- Retric 18y agostrengthen: To make strong or increase the strength of. It looks like straighten but it's a different word.
- tigerthink 18y agoOh, sorry!
- seren6ipity 18y agoMy mom grew her tooth back after it was extracted due to excessive decay. We thought it was just an anomaly.
- ph0rque 18y agoThis sounds great... maybe we'll be able to avoid spending $12k to get my wife's teeth fixed (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=454040 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=454040).
- tokenadult 18y ago"These data were first published in 1924. Why has such a major medical finding, published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals, faded into obscurity?" Possibly because the reported research results were not replicated? I wish I had the citation at hand for a finding that 50 percent or more of all medical research findings published in top peer-reviewed journals end up not being replicated. But perhaps that finding can be found in one of the sources cited in Peter Norvig's excellent article about analyzing scientific research papers, http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html which I recommend readers of this thread check as they consider the claims made in the submitted blog post. After edit: Another problem at the practical level is that it may very well be that a diet optimal for recalcification of teeth (there is no controversy at all that teeth can recalcify throughout life, that's the point of fluoride treatments, but the question is by how much) may not be optimal for cardiovascular health or some other aspect of your health that is important to you. The way human evolution works is that all of your body parts are fitted by haphazard adaptation from ancestral patterns using available materials in an environment of biochemical trade-offs, and it may be a better trade-off to have teeth that decay after reproductive age and a heart that keeps beating longer than to have teeth that never need to have cavities filled. That would have to be the subject of further research, to see which diet is optimal overall. (Yes, I am aware that some research tends to show that good dental hygiene contributes to good cardiovascular health, with the hypothesized mechanism being that infected gums allow bacteria to enter the bloodstream and cause inflammation of the heart's blood vessels.)
- Femur 18y agoI would posit that the diet presented in the article not only contributes to good dental health but also would contribute to good cardiovascular health. The diet is low on refined carbohydrates (which lead to heart disease http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/carbohydrates/ http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-...) and rich in vitamins.
- triplefox 18y agoInteresting that you mention that given that dental health is already directly linked to cardiovascular health, via incidence of inflammation and gum disease.
- pavel_lishin 18y agoI will be toothless before I give up bread.
- ph0rque 18y agoI gave up on bread, so I now eat cake :~).
- gamache 18y agoFreshly ground whole grains and sourdough are OK too. But I'm right there with you. I could never hack the Atkins diet. If I had no teeth, I'd just soak the bread in broth. :)
- Ardit20 18y agoTo me it sounded like he said that if you have enough good food (fish, liver, veg, eggs, milk, etc) you can have some bad food (i.e bread).
- geuis 18y agoWhat I don't understand is that no one addresses the bacterial component of cavities. I just had some work done and my dentist clearly stated that cavities are caused by bacteria eating through the enamel. I get that poor diet contributes to calcium loss and so the body will re-strengthen teeth given improved nutrition, however this will not do anything to address the bacterial infection problem.
- billswift 18y agoThe bacteria don't eat the enamel. They feed on sugars (and other carbs, but especially sugars) in the mouth, then excrete an acid that attacks tooth enamel. They live on teeth, especially in the crevices where they won't get knocked off, so that's where the acid is concentrated. Diet can help reduce the incidence of decay in the first place by reducing sugars in the mouth.
- ars 18y agoBacteria don't actually hurt the teeth directly - they just sit there and they make an acid that can etch the teeth, but if the teeth are strong they resist the acid, plus repair any areas that are eroded. Also saliva contains immune components that can stop the bacteria. Bacteria may be the final component, but the causes of decay lie elsewhere. It's not really an infection either, anymore than the gazillions of bacteria living on skin are.
- mhp 18y agoVitamin D = the most common vitamin that doctors themselves actually take: http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/diet.fitness/11/13/ep.vitamin.primer/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/diet.fitness/11/13/ep.vitamin...
- parenthesis 18y agoIn my life, I have eaten very little refined/added sugar (i.e. very rarely do I eat such things). Aged 30 I have no fillings: the only dental work I have had done was having my teeth straightened and having eight of them removed (yes eight, though not all at once) that didn't fit in my mouth (I have big teeth). When I was a child, my dental hygiene wasn't always very good. A single data point doesn't tell you anything. But there it is, anyway.
- pierrefar 18y agoThere is a lot more to this story, but briefly, the pH of the mouth. The more acidic and the longer it is acidic, the more likely you are to get caries. Also, just because Diet 3 is a lot better than Diet 1 (and 2 for that matter), that doesn't mean that Diet 3 is the ideal/best diet. We would need to research this more using Diet 3 as the starting point.
- shibido 18y agoI'm british, so especially grateful. I am in your debt for posting this link sir! Pip pip!
- rarrrrrr 18y agoMuch of the American population (including a majority of pregnant women) are deficient in vitamin D. Odds are good that you are too. A big contributing factor is insufficient exposure to sunlight. Some have speculated that seasonal winter flu season is attributable to vitamin D levels. http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-07-13-vitamin-d-tests_N.htm http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-07-13-vitamin-d-tes...
- Ardit20 18y agoIn the UK we get sun only during May or April. So accordingly we should hardly have vitamin D!
- asdlfj2sd 18y agoArticle: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2304908 http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=23...
- JulianMorrison 18y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylitol#Dental_care http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylitol#Dental_care
- asmosoinio 18y agoI am from Finland and Xylitol has been hugely popular for as long as I can remember, mostly as chewing gum. How popular are Xylitol products in other countries?
- JulianMorrison 18y agoHard to get in the UK. Some chewing gums have xylitol but don't say how much and they still have other stuff like sorbitol and maltitol. I'm not sure why it's commercially unpopular - expensive, perhaps?
- rgrieselhuber 18y agoBig in Japan.