Nearly 80 years ago, Weston Price showed how oral health and development both suffered when traditional diets were replaced with Western ones, loaded with refined sugar and flour. For most of those 80 years, mainstream dentistry dismissed those findings, accusing Price of shoddy research methods and fitting evidence to preconceived conclusions. All the while, other […]
Caries / Tooth Decay
Not Just the Sugars but the Refined Starches, Too
We’ve all heard that sugar rots your teeth. But believe it or don’t, there may be something even worse: sugar and starch together. At least, that’s the case with root decay, according to a study just published in Caries Research. For it, researchers created typical dental biofilms – plaque – on slabs of root dentin. […]
Before You Drink That Orange Juice to “Protect Against the Flu”…
Not a day passes that you don’t see one news story or another about just how terrible this flu season is, stirring up a lot of anxiety. According to recent reports, this has more Americans reaching out for orange juice “in a frantic effort to avoid the illness.” Sales of the drink rose by 0.9%, […]
When Baby Teeth Decay
You know you live in a sugar-saturated environment when nearly half of all kids experience decay in their primary (baby) teeth by the age of 11. Yet even if you strive to eat healthfully and help your kids practice good hygiene at home, problems can arise. This is one reason why regular dental checkups and […]
The Consequences of Fluoridation
Despite the confident tone of organizations like the ADA and CDC, there’s actually precious little evidence that fluoridation does much to prevent caries – a point reinforced by recent research out of Chile. Chile, note the authors of a paper published earlier this year in the Medical Journal of Chile, “is a pioneer in the […]
It Starts with Quitting the Sugar
We’ve said it before: If you want to keep your teeth healthy and whole for a lifetime, you’ve got to limit the sugar. It’s as simple as that. As one 2015 paper put it, Without sugars, the chain of causation is broken, so the disease does not occur. So a new study in the Journal […]
A Whole Lot of Infection Going On…
In our office, sterilization is a very big deal – so big, we devote a whole page of this site to how we protect against harmful bacteria, viruses, and other microbes in our day-to-day work. It’s a basic part of supporting your overall health and well-being. The importance of this was underscored last week by […]
It’s Beyond Time to Address the Root Cause of Tooth Decay
At their recent meeting, the ADA made a big to-do over the 70th anniversary of fluoridation. “This is the most effective weapon in dentistry, I believe, to prevent not only tooth decay but mouth disease in general and overall health,” stated Raymond Gist, DDS, past ADA president, in a press release. Quite a claim about […]