Dental Plaque Is No Problem After Year Of Peating

Bruv

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I used to have to really keep on top of the dental plaque before and during paleo (especially when I was on a fairly standard diet and also when I was on a very low carb version of paleo).
Since following a diet that mainly consists of orange juice, sugar, meat and homemade gelatin, I no longer seem to have a problem keeping dental plaque in check. :D
 

ilovethesea

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What do you think is the cause of the plaque? Do you rinse your mouth after drinking the juice or having sugar? What do you brush your teeth with?
 
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Bruv

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I don't know enough about it to give an informed opinion on the cause of dental plaque.
Yes, I always rinse my mouth after juice (the only time I have sugar is in juice). Before I started drinking lots of juice I was drinking a lot of water so my mouth was getting rinsed out fairly frequently.
I use an electric toothbrush and Sensodyne toothpaste (I use Sensodyne because I really dislike toothpastes that have a bit of a "sting" to them and this one is only mild). I have been using this brush and the same toothpaste for years so there is no change there.
 

ilovethesea

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I didn't go to the dentist for over a year and noticed on this diet I was getting a rough feeling on the back of my bottom teeth from plaque buildup... gross.

I eliminated it in a week with high doses of Thorne K2 (45 drops a day) and xylitol. I use Xyla cocoa mints (they have the safest ingredients of all the flavours) in between meals and swished some xylitol powder before bed at night.

I am amazed it went away so fast, now I don't need to go for dental cleaning. Now let's see if it can get rid of what I suspect are 2 cavities starting...
 

BobbyDukes

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Would drinking milk protect from the bad effects that fruit juice can have on someone's teeth? Anyone know?
 

jimmyquick

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I use to have a small cavity and bad plaque. Vitamin k and d eliminated both for me. Sometimes I forget to even brush me teeth and it's still amazing how white and clean my teeth are despite lots of sugar. For me, sugar has nothing to do with cavities (other than speeding up the metabolic rate) thus requiring more fat soluble vitamins.

Every morning I run my tongue across my teeth. If I feel any plague I just up my dosage of vitamin k the following night.
 

schultz

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Good clip for those interested.



I'm of the opinion that sugar is good for the teeth. It can lower phosphorus, creating a better calcium:phosphorus ratio and it can help to keep thyroid up, which Ray says is important for tooth health. Another thing could be the increased carbon dioxide.
 

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ilovethesea

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Do you guys think the vitamin K (and D, A, Peat diet in general) could reverse decay in baby teeth?

I think I remember my dentist saying years ago that these 2 teeth I suspect have cavities in were baby teeth. So maybe it was inevitable that they'd start decaying eventually... but I really want to hold on to them as long as I can since the alternative is dental implants at $4k apiece.

I think I got cavities because I struggled with allergies for 2 years on this diet, which caused unwanted mouth breathing... low co2 and not having the protective saliva probably contributes to decay. I only recently figured out from food elimination testing which things I can eat and be able to breathe properly at night through my nose.

(I was reading a theory on the FB group that the food sensitivities come about on this diet not because they're something new, but because high cortisol was masking them before. Makes sense to me...)
 

tomisonbottom

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ilovethesea said:
Do you guys think the vitamin K (and D, A, Peat diet in general) could reverse decay in baby teeth?
I think I got cavities because I struggled with allergies for 2 years on this diet, which caused unwanted mouth breathing... low co2 and not having the protective saliva probably contributes to decay. I only recently figured out from food elimination testing which things I can eat and be able to breathe properly at night through my nose.

What things did you eliminate that helped you breath?
 

ilovethesea

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All starches, all commercial juices, honey, eggs, tomato, all gelatin (both red and green can), certain supplements eg. Erfa and aspirin give me terrible allergies...

Now I started adding in maybe 1/2 a potato per day every few days and I seem to handle it now... so I'm not super strict. But maybe my tolerance has improved now after taking cyproheptadine so long.
 

EIRE24

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If you can't consume juice, honey, eggs, gelatin where do you get most of your sugar from? Those foods are some of the centre staples of peats work but I understand there are good substitutes for them I'm just curious what you consume instead?

I agree that sugar speeds up the metabolism and does increase need for the fat soluble vitamins but what do people think on here are the best sources of fats to insure we consume the fat soluble vitamins we need to sustain the fast metabolism?
 

ilovethesea

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I make homemade OJ. Also have lots of mangos, papayas, grapes and white sugar. I learned not to be afraid of the white sugar... I think it's ok since I'm hitting my targets with everything else. Sometimes I have as much as 1 cup a day but most days I think it's probably 1/4-1/2 cup. Oh and I drink a can of Coke almost every day as it's the only way I can get down the beef liver.

I don't know the answer to the other question. I think I probably don't hold onto nutrients well since that's a common problem with hypo people, and the reason for the cavities. Do you think eating more or different type of fat would help? Coconut oil and dairy fat (cheese) are my only sources of fat.
 

tomisonbottom

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jimmyquick said:
I use to have a small cavity and bad plaque. Vitamin k and d eliminated both for me. Sometimes I forget to even brush me teeth and it's still amazing how white and clean my teeth are despite lots of sugar. For me, sugar has nothing to do with cavities (other than speeding up the metabolic rate) thus requiring more fat soluble vitamins.

Every morning I run my tongue across my teeth. If I feel any plague I just up my dosage of vitamin k the following night.

How much d and K did you take to get rid of it?
 

Nicholas

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if i notice my teeth suffering i make sure to get more sunlight and this usually fixes the problem. if i'm good on drinking raw milk or eating gouda i don't have plaque issues (IF in conjunction with sunlight). it's amazing how a little vitamin D can make that sensitive feeling in teeth go away.
 

jimmyquick

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tomisonbottom said:
jimmyquick said:
I use to have a small cavity and bad plaque. Vitamin k and d eliminated both for me. Sometimes I forget to even brush me teeth and it's still amazing how white and clean my teeth are despite lots of sugar. For me, sugar has nothing to do with cavities (other than speeding up the metabolic rate) thus requiring more fat soluble vitamins.

Every morning I run my tongue across my teeth. If I feel any plague I just up my dosage of vitamin k the following night.

How much d and K did you take to get rid of it?

At the time I was taking about 1-2 teaspoons of cod liver oil (before I knew about unstable fats) a day. I think it took about a month before I noticed the cavity was gone. Not sure what that relates in terms of exact amounts of each vitamin though. But you could just keep increasing the dose until your mouth feels clean and your teeth feel much harder. That should produce the right environment to heal it over time.
 

Platinum

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I had two cavities as a teenager but I started taking Vitamin K2 and D since I was 18 and never had a cavity since then.

On the other hand, I saw a dentist for the first time in 2 years just before I started eating a peat diet last October. I had heavy tartar build-up and they had to do a periodontal scaling and planing. In December, I did a follow up and a lot of tartar had returned already. At that point I was already on my orange juice and milk diet for a couple months. Even now in the mirror, I can see the calculus buildup around some of my teeth and I don't know why. Even high dose K2 does absolutely nothing to stop it..
 
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my dentist always said that low carbers have the worst plaque. He's observed that over the years (including in me when I was low carbing.)
 

schultz

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Good clip for those interested.



I'm of the opinion that sugar is good for the teeth. It can lower phosphorus, creating a better calcium:phosphorus ratio and it can help to keep thyroid up, which Ray says is important for tooth health. Another thing could be the increased carbon dioxide.

Yes, I am replying to my past self...

I ran across this post and sort of laughed at myself a bit as it makes me look like an idiot (It's quite possible I am :eek: ). I didn't explain myself very well.

Sugar most definitely is able to feed bacteria. Some of these bacteria produce lactic acid when they metabolize sugar. Lactic acid can de-mineralize the teeth if not buffered quickly by the saliva or some external agent (by food or a dentrifice like baking soda). Sugar itself is not actually directly harmful to the teeth, it's lactic acid that is harmful. Presumably, if the bacteria in the mouth was kept to a minimum, or if the bacteria couldn't adhere properly to the teeth (some foods can prevent bacteria from doing this, like cocoa I believe, or xylitol?), or if the saliva in the mouth buffered the pH quickly enough, then sugar wouldn't be a problem and would likely be beneficial to the teeth indirectly by being beneficial to the body and overall metabolism. As Ray mentions in the clip I posted earlier in the thread, hypothyroidism is a known cause of dental caries as well as estrogen and cortisol. Sugar (preferably in the form of fruit since it has the micros and other nutrients to go with it) can help prevent hypothyroidism. Ray has also mentioned in the past that sugar is the best thing to lower cortisol. PUFA on the other hand can put someone on the path towards hypothyroidism and increased estrogen. In this sense PUFA is indirectly harmful to the teeth.

I have the links for some of these studies on thyroid, estrogen and cortisol, but I suppose I'll start new threads and link to them that way. They are quite interesting.

I will say though that I ran across a study in which they gave chocolate to kids and measured the pH of the saliva afterwards at various times. They also tested the pH changes using paneer (a type of cheese). Here are a few things I found interesting from the paper...

"Paneer did not make a great change in salivary pH with time. In the first minute after eating paneer salivary pH showed a significant increase (p < 0.001) from baseline. Thereafter the pH showed a small decrease after 5 minutes but stayed significantly higher than baseline value even at 60 minutes"

Cheese caused the salivary pH to stay slightly basic even after an hour had gone by from when the cheese was consumed.

"In the present study, a shallow drop in pH (acidic) was seen in 70% of subjects and is consistent with Stephan’s observations that sugar containing foods cause a rapid drop in plaque (oral) pH.15 This shallow pH response to chocolate maybe attributed to the difference in the method of assessing oral pH since, most studies assessed plaque pH. However, in 30% of children no change in pH was detected. The probable reason for this lack in change in salivary pH maybe because their resting salivary pH was higher than 7.0 thus, had better buffering capacity and was similar to Birkhed’s findings."

So in 30% of children no pH change was detected after consuming chocolate. I would imagine these children would be more resistant to dental caries considering they had a baseline pH that was slightly basic. Because of this, dietary sugar would likely be much less of an issue for them in terms of oral health.

At the end of the study the authors encourage people to get pH strips and test their own saliva. I haven't done this yet but plan on see where my baseline is and perhaps how much something like a 10% sucrose solution in water lows my pH. Lastly I should mention that what really matters in the end is plaque pH (as mentioned above) and not necessarily the pH of saliva, though the 2 are probably connected. If plaque is manually removed daily with brushing a couple times per day, and kept low with various foods (coconut oil for example has been shown to lower plaque just through consumption), then plaque pH is no longer important since plaque doesn't exist, or is very minimal, and salivary pH can buffer much more efficiently.

I hope this has been interesting for anybody reading this. Somehow my posts always turn out to be really long...
 

thomas00

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I just had my first dental appointment in 4 years.

The last one resulted in 4 fillings, which was a pretty standard visit for me. I was always riddled with cavities even when I did everything they told me to do, eat what they said to eat.

So today's visit was a bit of shock when I was told he couldn't see any decay, though I rejected x-rays so something else could be going on.

The changes I've made in those previous 4 years include more milk, cheese, occasional raw carrots, generally less starch, lots of sugar, juice, fruit, sodas, chocolate, junk, antibiotics which I'd avoided like the plague and experimenting with thyroid during the last year. Looks like something has protected me. I've even worn an occlusal splint for the last couple of years and those things are basically germ traps.

My gums have gotten worse though after taking silly amounts of progesterone about a year ago. The dentist said that will never improve. We'll see.
 

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