Teeth are Alive and Need Their Vitamins

What a lame title. I am running low on ideas today, and I’m spending another afternoon pretending not to flirt with reading more of Cure Tooth Decaywithout my husband. Yesterday, I flipped through the book whenever I walked by it and read the various charts.

Charts don’t count, right?

My dear husband, if you could just stay home until we’re done reading, that’d be great.

Ahem.

Even though it is nice when nutritional booksjump right in to The Cure for whatever it is they are claiming to cure, I’ve found I retain a lot more when the author explains How Things Work.

Take teeth, for instance. I have always thought of teeth in the way I think of hair and nails. They’re practically dead! Just like hair and nails, nutrition can effect them, but I didn’t think of teeth as existing in some sort of harmony (or disharmony) with the rest of my body. I mean, I couldgobaldor lose a nail and not be in bad shape, right?

Well, teeth apparently aren’t like that. If you don’t have a good diet that lacks essential vitamins then it isn’t just your cells and body that suffer but your teeth too. If you feel you don”t get enough vitamins in your diet then look at these vitamins and supplements in Canada.

Now, if you took real science in school, perhaps you already knew that. I, unfortunately, went to a school where they did what Esolen says is needed in order to kill the imagination–they turned all science into biology and all biology into ecology.

I didn’t even know the lymph system existed until I took my first science course in college.

But I digress.

Author Ramiel Nagel uses the work of dentists Ralph Steinman and John Leonora to explain how other parts of the body are actually responsible for tooth health:

The hypothalamus in our brain regulates the relationship between our nervous system and our glandular system through the pituitary gland. Drs. Leonora and Steinman found that the hypothalamus communicates with glands in our jaw called the parotid glands via parotid hormone releasing factor. When the parotid gland is stimulated by the hypothalamus it releases parotid hormone which triggers a movement of mineral rich dental lymph through microscopic channels in our teeth. This mineral-rich fluid cleans teeth and remineralizes them. When a cavity-causing diet is ingested, the hypothalamus stops telling the parotid gland to release the hormone that circulates the dental remineralizing fluid. Over time, this interruption of mineral-rich fluid results in tooth destruction, what we know as tooth decay. That the parotid gland is in charge of tooth remineralization explains to me why a small portion of the population is immune to tooth decay, even with a relatively poor diet. They were born with a strong parotid gland.

Chapter Two deals primarily with summarizing the research findings of the dentist Dr. Weston Price, who is probably best known due to the work of the Weston A. Price Foundation, which promotes traditional food, farming, and healing. Around the time that Si ended up in the hospital (summer 2009), a friend had lent me Price’s definitive tome, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. I read most of it, but I was so busy dealing with Si’s recovery that I finally gave it back to her–I felt like it had overstayed its welcome in my home! How I wish I could finish reading it!

I am contenting myself with the primer given in the second chapter.

If you are not familiar with Dr. Price, I’ll introduce you briefly. Dr. Price was first appointed as the research director of the Nation Dental Association (which became the American Dental Association) in 1915.While carrying out the duties of his post, hetraveled the world in the 1930s, studying the characteristics of the people groups who were immune to tooth decay.

Yes, you read that right.

Immune from tooth decay. He found multiple populations that suffered from less than 1% tooth decay. This includes the Australian Aborigines, who had 100% immunity. Cure Tooth Decay goes into this in detail.

Dr. Price found that tooth health was dependent upon six primary nutrients: the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and what he called the “X-factor” (known today as K2), plus the minerals calcium and phosphorous. All four of the fat-soluble vitamins are found only in animal products, including dairy products. Nagel tells us,

Fat-soluble vitamins are essential for our physical health, not just because they provide nutrients to the body, but precisely because they are activating substances that help our bodies utilize the minerals present in our diets.

Nagel doesn’t mention this, but I recently read that vitamin K2 is protective. So, for instance, if you are taking in a lot of D and A–too much, perhaps–K2 keeps you from actually reaching toxic levels. (I wish I couldrediscover my source on that. I knowI read it somewhere…)Not sure how that happens, but that’s what I read. It is already widely known that vitaminA protects against vitaminD toxicity.

What I found particularly interesting is that, so far, the problem seems to be two-fold as far as teeth are concerned.

1. Not eating enough of the right foods
• Even though the fat-soluble vitamins are prevalent in animal products, they are usually concentrated in organ meat and pastured raw milk and eggs, which most Americans no longer eat
• A traditional source of calcium is bone broth, which many families no longer make
• Vegetables contain pro-vitamin-A and K1, both which are only minimally converted into their useful form by the human body, so the emphasis on eating more vegetables doesn’t help heal the teeth
2. Not raising our food correctly
• A lot of research is finding that the industrial methods of raising animals result in huge nutrition deficits. For instance, pastured milk is higher in vitamins A and E than grain- and soy-silage-fed milk (probably because cows are designed by God to eat grass).
• Grain-feeding birds results in eggs of inferior quality. Pastured birds, which eat a variety of grasses and seeds as well as bugs and insects, lay eggs that are higher in vitamins A, D, and E–and by higher I mean much more than double.

It’s funny because I sometimes read something on nutrition and get overwhelmed. It starts to sound like a lot of work, or a big balancing act. But really, this book, at least, sounds like it all boils down to eating like our great-great-grandparents ate, which includes raising the food the way they did.

With that said, I am highly interested in the author’s protocol for healing cavities which already exist.

In other words: We have cavities. Now what?