Episode 012 | WHY Tooth Decay doesn’t strike at random

Transcript:

Hello and a very warm welcome to the episode 012 of Elmar´s Tooth Talk: The missing link to total health.

So, before we start let me tell you, What’s in it for you today:

We talk about:

WHAT is tooth decay
WHY teeth decay – the mainstream perspective
WHY teeth really decay – The secret even most dentists don’t know
WHY emotions can cause tooth decay
HOW to prevent tooth decay
HOW to reverse tooth decay

Before we discuss what tooth decay is and why it happens let us take a look inside of a tooth and you will be up for a big surprise.

At first sight teeth seem solid, rock hard objects. Inside and outside. However, if you look closer you discover that the area of a molar tooth where you chew your food with, consists of a labyrinth of crevices and fissures. And with increasing magnification this gets even more exciting.

The video clip “a look in a tooth” shows from no magnification to very high magnification, how the tooth is actually structured and you realise that the tooth isn’t solid at all.

Once magnification reaches 500 times, you can see small holes and lines that permeate the entire tooth structure. With further magnification it becomes visible that those tiny channels consist of crystals.

The same crystals we see at this magnification are not only in the enamel, dentine and the root cement, all our bones are built like this. Which means in actual fact our teeth are hollower than a Swiss cheese.

Those crystals only make up 96% of the enamel, the remaining 4% are made of water and proteins which cover and connect those crystals.

With maximum magnification at 25 million we can see the atomic structure of those crystals, a mineral made up of phosphate and calcium ions.

Isn’t that absolutely fascinating. Kind of don’t judge a tooth by its enamel or so …

We know that our teeth are made up of the hardest substances in our body.

How is it then with teeth being so hard, that under normal circumstances they would survive for thousands of years, that nowadays those teeth are so vulnerable and decay so easily?

Whatever the reason for this decay it must be very aggressive!

Why teeth decay – the common perspective

It is because you don’t brush your teeth properly and because you don’t brush your teeth properly plaque accumulates on your teeth and in this plaque bacteria thrive. And these bacteria are so aggressive, they attack your teeth, demineralise them and then destroy the enamel which causes your tooth to decay.

And once the decay has penetrated into the dentine, the game is quickly lost because dentine is softer than enamel and therefore to decay dentine is far easier and quicker. From dentine it is only a short distance to the pulp.

Once the decay reaches the pulp the tooth is most likely about to take its last breath and faces one of two very unappealing solutions. The first is to become taxidermized by way of root canal or to vanish out of the holder’s mouth reappearing in tooth fairy land.

Now, what about if this story should be told in a completely different slant?

What if your teeth aren’t those vulnerable victims of bacteria and the bacteria are just some opportunistic critters which use what is on offer?

If every organ in our body has a defence mechanism to protect itself from attackers and harmful influences, which research shows that this is the case

Why shouldn’t teeth have such a mechanism as well?

With this assumption, Dr Rolf Steinmann and Dr John Leonora went to work.

All organs are nurtured and protected through the blood. A reduced blood supply leads to a reduced supply of nutrients and can therefore lead to malfunction.

In your teeth, the blood supply ends in the capillary arteries within your tooth pulp which is the most inner part of your tooth.

The scientists discovered a fluid movement that flows within those smallest channels that we have just seen in the magnification video. This whole mechanism of fluid flow is governed by a hormone which is utilised in the parotid gland

It is a constant movement of nurturing fluid that runs from the tooth pulp outwards through those channels into the dentine then into the enamel and entering your oral cavity.

Isn’t that incredible? That’s what I thought when I heard that the first time.

So there exists a transport system that permeates every single tooth providing it with nutrients. Steinmann and Leonora could prove with radioactive dye that this fluid flow originates in your intestine and that it appears within only six minutes in the tooth enamel and that it is visible there for an entire hour.

Tooth Self defence

Steinmann also discovered that this fluid protects the tooth in two ways.

Firstly it protects the tooth from acids and bacteria that invade the tooth because the fluid runs from the inside of the tooth to the outside and it has an alkaline pH of 7.4 which buffers acids and works as a constant self -cleaning mechanism.

Secondly, this constant fluid works as a continuous transport mechanism to bring nutrients into and through the tooth.

This is the perfect self defence mechanism.

This self-defence works as long as it is not interrupted, stopped or interfered with, or in the worst case, reversed.

If the tooth’s self-defence is interrupted, stopped or reversed, then this tooth becomes susceptible to decay and only then can bacteria invade the tooth.

This means bacteria just abuse the reduced defence capability of the tooth and exploit the weakness of the tooth to their advantage. It’s like in real life.

This is evidence that the bacteria are NOT the primary cause of tooth decay but benefit from the tooth’s weakness in an opportunistic way!

Microbe or environment?

This reminds me of Louis Pasteur, the famous French Chemist and Microbiologist. Pasteur claimed during his entire life that it is the microbe that causes the problem.

For Pasteur, the environment was secondary. Only on his death bed, he supposedly admitted that it is the environment and not the microbe that causes the disease. Pasteur thereby admitting that his decade long adversary Antoine Beauchamp, was actually correct.

And if you think about it, we are full of bacteria in our whole body. We wouldn’t even exist without bacteria. And in normal times, bacteria and our other cells live in harmony. ONLY if this balance is disturbed the body gets out of balance.

That is why we have to ask ourselves:

What can interfere, stop or in the worst case reverse this fluid flow inside the tooth?

Steinmann and Leonora found different reasons why this can happen.

Too high sugar consumption can reverse the fluid flow.
Stress in any form whether it is trauma, illness or emotional can interrupt or reverse it.
Lack of exercise.
Lack of nutrients.
Medication.
Circulation disturbances as they happen with some diseases.

From experience I would add any interferes with the energy flow of this tooth, its meridian and the connected organs, joints, muscles, vertebrae and so on and too little sleep.

We see this happening again and again, we hear about it and most of us have experienced it themselves, Our lifestyle has a huge impact on our health.

Yes, we get the genes from our parents – they load the gun – but it is the epigenetics, what we do with and about it that pulls the trigger

Tooth decay and overall Health

If there are signs of reduced health in your outer body and I count the teeth in that part, then it is very likely that it looks as bad on the inside of your body or perhaps even worse.

In my opinion tooth decay is NOT a localised problem, it doesn’t strike at random. It is a clear symptom of a systemic disbalance of your entire body.

Now let us look:

How can you benefit from this knowledge?

I guess it is obvious to say that reducing and minimising your sugar consumption must be a no brainer.

Reducing your stress levels as much as possible is similarly obvious.

And don’t eat when you are highly stressed.

Exercise regularly and where possible get a minimum of 20 minutes sunlight every day.

Eat a healthy, nutritious diet with a lot of fresh, untreated food and take plant-based supplements where possible because even if you buy organic food, the soil unfortunately is often depleted with minerals.

Is tooth decay a one way street?

Now, the question is, once tooth decay has hit you, can you stop or reverse it?

The University of Sydney discovered already back in 1960 that tooth decay isn’t just a progressive decay of the tooth but a dynamic ailment with stages of stop, progression and re-mineralisation.

This means that in many cases the approach of watch and wait could be implemented to see if the tooth decay actually is progressing. The advantage of this approach is that we give the tooth the chance to go through life un-drilled and un-filled.

And because nothing lasts forever, once the tooth is drilled and filled this process has to be repeated over and over again, even if the filling lasts for 10 years or more.

Every time a filling has to be replaced more of the tooth will be lost due to the process and the more frequently this has to be done the bigger the hole will become and the less of your own tooth is left.

So the destiny of the tooth could initially be just a tiny filling which progresses to a bigger filling and then to an even bigger filling and eventually the tooth has to be crowned and further on the tooth might even need a root canal.

As an aside, it is important to know what kind of filling material your dentist uses because there are different ones on offer. It is questionable whether a filling needs hormone influencing substances such as BISGMA or toxic ingredients such as fluoride. As always there are better and healthier options.

How to prevent tooth decay and even reverse it

The late Ramiel Nagel, in his book “Cure Tooth Decay”, describes how he came across reversing tooth decay because his daughter was suffering from a lot of tooth decay and he didn’t want her to have any fluorides or any fillings with fluoride in.

He believed there must be more to it and that he should be able to cure it and he recommends on top of eliminating sugar to also reducing the intake of beans, nuts and grains because they have a high concentration of phytic acid which are known to strip the body of minerals.

Whether or not you can reverse tooth decay or not depends in my experience primarily on the extend of the decay. As long as the decay is still in the enamel chances to remineralise the tooth are pretty good.

However, as soon as the decay has reached the dentine chances to get away without drill and fill decrease rapidly.

Dr Weston A Price

There is a bright horizon ahead, however at present dentistry is still mainly a repair rather than preventative profession.

Dr Western Price, the famous dentist from Cleveland in the US, did a lot of research into this topic.

He travelled the world and visited people who were living remotely, not being in contact with the Western civilisation, where degenerative diseases or tooth decay were not known. They often didn’t even have a word for it.

He made his findings public in his ground-breaking book “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration”.

Western Price (1870 – 1948) found that those indigenous people who had not been in contact with the western diet consumed high concentrations of fat soluble vitamins A, D and K.

He also discovered that if they came into contact with the westernised diet that they would rapidly develop tooth decay and degenerative diseases.

Western Price recommended for patients to have quarter of a teaspoon of fermented cod liver oil and a quarter teaspoon of butter oil and it had to come from grass fed cows. He also recommended abstaining from white flour products, milk products and only having raw unpasteurised milk as well as no sugar or other artificial sweeteners.

German Dentist nominated for Nobel Price

Even before Western Price published his book in 1939 a German dentist by the Name of Carl Röse contributed to the studies of tooth decay.

Carl Röse (1864 – 1947) was also the first dentist nominated for the Nobel Price.

In his research “On the Development of Human Teeth” which was published in 1891 he objects to sugar-rich white bread and argued against conventional mouthwashes because they aim solely to kill bacteria.

Röse developed nutritional recommendations, advocated proper chewing as well as breastfeeding and adding mineral salts to the diet.

Röse claimed that calcium was much more important for the prevention of tooth decay than fluoride He even feared that fluoride would have negative effects on tooth development.

An good indicator to your health is the pH of your saliva and your urine.

The pH is a figure expressing the acidity or alkalinity of a solution on a scale on which 7 is neutral, lower values are more acid and higher levels are more alkaline.

You can purchase pH indicator paper at your local pharmacy and test saliva and urine every morning straight after getting up. Do this for about ten days. Ideally the saliva level is around seven and the urine slightly below.

Oh, and if you wondered why I haven’t mentioned Fluoride in this episode that is because I dedicated the entire episode 005 to this topic.

Just like your eyes are the mirror to your soul, your mouth is the mirror to your overall health.

I trust you gained some new insights from this episode, and I’d love to hear from you.

Now, here is why you want to listen to next week’s episode.

Because we talk about an ever increasing disease that affects people at all ages from the very young to the very old.

We are not talking about the flu, cancer not even the overrated Covid-19, Corona.

We are talking about gum disease.

Why gum disease doesn’t strike at random

What are the symptoms of gum disease?

How to prevent

How to treat

What are contributing factors

And you will discover a fascinating mouth cleaning technique that can prevent, treat and cure gum disease

This is Elmar’s Tooth Talk – The missing Link To Total Health

See you next time

Bye for now.