Mouth care

Unfortunately, cavities and braces are now so common, many have accepted them as an inevitable part of the modern human experience.  Many of us don’t expect to get through an entire lifetime without a single cavity, right?! As I’ll illustrate below, only 8% of us do. Yet, our teeth are not designed to decay. Let us not confuse what is common with what is natural. Natural is defined as being in accordance with or determined by nature. When we look at animals in their natural habitat, eating their natural diets, they don’t have cavities or crooked teeth.  That is true of a lion, and true of a human being as well.

Cavities

On the topic of cavities, or dental caries, the Centers for Disease Control reports that 42% of children ages 2 to 11 have had cavities in baby teeth; 21% of those ages 6 to 11 have had cavities in permanent teeth. According to the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, dental disease is the number 1 chronic childhood illness in America. I just wanted add that 92% of adults ages 20 to 64 have had dental caries in their permanent teeth.

Keep in mind that Dr. Weston A. Price, DDS, describes in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration how he lined up groups of children and adults around the world eating various traditional diets who had never seen a tooth brush, let alone a dentist, and had less than 1% tooth decay.

While we aren’t suggesting people refrain from brushing their teeth or seeing a dentist, we do recommend that everyone avoid fluoride in their water and toothpaste. To avoid cavities, we recommend you follow our dietary recommendations, based on the findings of Dr. Weston A. Price. If you or your children already have cavities, we recommend you follow the healing protocol outlined by Rami Nagel in his best selling book Cure Tooth Decay.

Orthodontics

In regard to orthodonture, from what I can gather, the consensus is that 70% to 75% of all kids and teens have some type of problem when their adult teeth grown in, typically between the ages of 10 to 13. Some teeth may be crooked, or too crowded, or have too much space between them.  Or, they may have an overbite or underbite, as well as other types of malocclusion, which means a bad bite, ranging from minor to severe. More than 3.5 million children and teens begin orthodontic treatment, usually braces, each year in America.

Folks, we were designed for all 32 adult teeth to come in perfectly straight. That is natural. Dr. Price discovered that wherever he traveled, when people ate a traditional diet replete with nutrient dense animal foods and devoid of any industrially produced processed food, they had all 32 teeth come in as “white and straight as piano keys”. As Dr. Suzan Hahn, a San Francisco dentist, explains: “When the jaw bone has enough nutrient density during development, it forms as a wide flat plane and all 32 teeth can come in unobstructed. When nutrients are lacking during the formative period, the bone bows and then the teeth come in crowded, crooked, with under bites, over bites or spaces.” Please read our article, How The  Teeth Tell The Tale, which is at the heart of our educational initiative. Please know that even if you have had crocked teeth, your children aren’t necesarily destined to! To nourish a wide smile in the next generation, again, we recommend you follow our dietary recommendations, and our recommendations for pregnant and nursing mothers, which can be started during preconception.

I received permission to share the testimonial that Jenny McGruther posted a couple of days ago on Facebook. Jenny is the author of Nourished Kitchen and Broth and Stock from the Nourished Kitchen.

Many of you know that we adhere to a traditional foods diet (informed largely by the work of Dr. Weston A. Price who found that people adhering to a traditional diet not only have well-formed teeth and palates with little need for orthodontics, but that they also suffer from far fewer cavities than people who eat processed, modern foods, despite their lack of dental care, cleanings and even toothbrushing). It’s things like grass-fed meats, raw dairy, wild-caught fish, sourdoughs and sprouted grains, with minimal sweeteners. We don’t adhere to that diet 100%, but it’s mostly how we eat.

We went to the dentist today and not only is my 11-year-old son still cavity-free, but he will have no need for orthodontics because his palate is wide, his teeth are straight and once his final molars come in, they’ll seal up any gaps. This is in stark contrast to both Kevin’s and my history.

It’s nice to see directly how Dr. Price’s research and studies have benefited my family. It works.

Nourishing Our Children is a good resource, for what its worth! Sandrine Perez, you do good work.

I asked other community members if they have had similar experiences to report! Leah responded: “Cavities are what led us to a more nourishing diet. Since we started almost two years ago, there have been no more cavities.” Here is another testimonial from Meg Dickey, a former Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader and active community member in our Facebook groups. Both Meg and her husband had braces, and have also had cavities:

I think the best part of our story isn’t that my children are ‘free from cavities’, but that my oldest had cavities, and extreme tooth decay, and we reversed it by following a traditional foods diet – even including grains (soaked/sprouted/soured). He was nearly 3 when we found the Weston A. Price Foundation, while searching for answers to my then 1-year-old’s severe eczema. A friend handed me Nourishing Traditions, and said, “Here, there’s a recipe for formula in here.” It turned into a complete paradigm shift for us. We bought raw milk from Organic Pastures, and then my husband started working for them, and I became a chapter leader, all within 6 months! We saw amazing results with just adding raw milk, bone broth, and Fermented Cod Liver Oil – within a month! I was sold. I followed the Weston A. Price Foundation’s recommendations for pregnancy and nursing with my 3 youngest, and they have perfectly straight teeth, with plenty of room to grow in their palates. I’m so thankful for finding real answers in traditional food!

 
Monica Corrado of Simply Being Well, who is also a Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader, writes:

I have been eating according to the dietary recommendations made by the Weston A. Price Foundation style since 1998, ever since I met Sally Fallon Morell and read Nourishing Traditions. During my pregnancy with Bodhi, I ate lots of delicious raw cream and drank raw milk … ate pastured butter and grass-fed meat and pastured poultry and lots of eggs. I loved homemade egg nog. I had a very easy pregnancy, no medical problems, no worries. Bodhi was born 10 pounds, 4 ounces. He nursed for 2 years and 10 months, while I ate a nutrient-dense diet. He has been drinking raw milk ever since then, as well as eating homemade yogurt and kefir, soaked oats and grains, and lots of meat stock and bone broth. Body is now 11, and he has a beautiful wide smile, gorgeous white teeth, and has never had a single cavity. He is also strong and sturdy, and the tallest boy in his fifth grade class. I am sure his good health has much to do with the way we eat and prepare our foods.

Monica also noted that while she didn’t have braces, they were recommend to her because her teeth aren’t perfectly straight, and her husband doesn’t have a wide palette, but a relatively narrow one, unlike their son. Amanda Blakenship of Lazy B Ranch shared:

I had lots of cavities early in life, age 5 to 14. Luckily, I switched my diet in my early 20s, due to autoimmune reactions, and I have had no cavities since. My kids, ages 6 and 7, have no cavities and I hope to keep it that way. We eat all of our pastured animals and fats, avoid sugars, GMOs and processed foods.

Melissa Ann reports: “My son is 6 and has never had a cavity. I think me taking Fermented Cod Liver Oil and Concentrated Butter Oil along with drinking raw milk while pregnant helped. He drinks raw milk, I think that helps too. We eat mostly organic and avoid fluoride. I had cavities as a kid so I hope he continues to be cavity free.” I could continue with more testimonials than many of you may be interest in, so I’ll end with this one provided by James Smith:

My children, now 5 and 8, have not had any cavities, although there was one spot a dentist wanted to keep an eye on. That dentist gave my youngest a flouride treatment without my knowledge or consent and is consequently no longer our dentist. While we have not been exclusively following the recommendations made by the Weston A. Price Foundation since their birth, we’ve been very intentional about getting nutrition according to the guidelines since discovering it. While others around us are having to have dental work done, we’ve still not had any and continue to feed our children good quality food and fats and teach them accordingly so that they understand why we do it. I’m guessing we starting following these dietary recommendations when they were about 2 and 4, although our diet was already fairly good. It was the change in knowledge and attitude of saturated fats that required the most change in diet.

I also recommend our articles The Tale of Two Brothers and Reverse the Trend.

If you have more testimonials, we’d love to read them in the comments!

Disclosures