When it comes to the topic of healing cavities, most people will roll their eyes, say it’s impossible and go on their merry ways. I don’t blame them.
I would’ve done the same thing until I saw for myself that it truly is possible to heal cavities and remineralize teeth. It’s just not something most of us are ever made aware of, and run-of-the-mill dentists aren’t really privy to this process either.
I was blessed with strong teeth and never really had to worry about cavities when I was growing up. I only have two cavities which I ended up getting when I was 10 years old and my parents and I lived with my grandmother. She always kept a large jar of hard candy on her dresser, and was very generous with her offerings.
I think I may have eaten my weight in butterscotch candies and Jolly Ranchers that year….but I digress. Because I had good teeth, I didn’t think for a second that my progeny wouldn’t. It’s not that he has bad teeth, but my son is more prone to cavities, like his dad. My daughter, however, inherited my strong horse teeth. While good oral hygiene is key, there is definitely a genetic component to this and if your genetics call for weaker teeth…then tweaking your diet can make a huge difference.
When my son was little, he loved eating fruit, and fruit leather, and I would give him organic gummy vitamins. So, even though he didn’t eat processed sugars or candies, and I brushed his gnashers thoroughly twice a day, his teeth still got a little too much acidity via the fruit.
This resulted in his getting 4 cavities by the time he was 6. I felt like a horrible mother when the dentist told me my kid had little pinprick holes in his pearly whites. I thought I had been doing everything right, but apparently I wasn’t doing enough. Enter major mom guilt…..God, do we ever feel like we do enough??
The dentist recommended the cavities get filled as soon as possible, and due to his age, my son would have to undergo sedation for the procedure. That’s when I pumped the brakes. Hard.
I was already in the process of detoxing my kid from a routine childhood medication that he had had an adverse reaction to, and I wasn’t about to blindly put anything else into his body. Once again, I thanked the professional, smiled, and left the office promising to call in and make an appointment for a later date.
Then I sat in front of the computer and researched.
I knew I didn’t want my kid to be sedated. He was neurosensitive and putting him under with the use of anesthesia could’ve wreaked havoc on his nervous system. It might not have….but I was done taking blind risks. I also wanted to see what exactly was in the composite fillings…..as I wasn’t going to allow for the use of amalgams.
There was enough information available from reputable dental websites and dental practices that said there were small amounts of BPA found in many of the most widely used composite fillings. The amount was supposed to be negligible, but once you see your kid go through what mine went through, you just aren’t open to taking chances.
As I researched, I started finding link after link about remineralizing teeth and healing tooth decay. This kind of stuff was right up my alley. I became fixated with finding a holistic solution. By this time, I was already well aware that our bodies can do miraculous things when allowed to work as they are supposed to and when given the appropriate foods and supplements for support.
I found the book, Cure Tooth Decay, by Ramiel Nagel. Then I found several websites dedicated to this book, its author and the many, many people who have had success with the protocol. I also spent hours pouring over the Weston A. Price website and reading about the correlation between diet and oral health…..and how our Western diet had all but created a panoply of weak teeth and poor oral structure.
It all made sense.
I won’t go too deep into everything I learned in order to keep this blog post from turning into The Great American Novel…..but I will tell you what I did and what the outcome was for my kids. I also want to preface that the steps I took, and what was recommended, are not vegan-friendly. My family is not vegetarian so I was able to do what was necessary without finding alternatives, which there may be….I’m just not aware of them.
From all of the research I did, I put together a modified approach to healing my kids’ cavities. My son had the four I mentioned, and my daughter had none, but had some calcification spots on her front teeth that the dentist wanted to keep his eye on.
I wanted to see if I could reverse the damage using some of the knowledge I had, but I also didn’t want my kids to starve….we all know how littles can be about food! What I did was cut out grains except for rice and doubled down on my no-refined sugar clause. Cow’s milk was substituted for full fat goat’s milk (which is much closer in composition to human milk and therefore easier to digest), and I added fermented cod liver oil, high quality probiotics, and grass fed butter to the kids’ diets.
I also made my own recipe for gelatin and raw honey gummy treats. Lastly, I found a line of dental products that promised (and delivered) to alkalize the oral biome called Uncle Harry’s. Their remineralization kit was a God-send.
Changing the food a bit wasn’t really a big deal, I just had to get a little more creative with meals, but the kids didn’t seem to mind or notice. The fermented cod liver oil and grass fed butter were a different story. While I could use the butter in food, they needed a bit more of a concentrated dose, and eating a slab of butter isn’t always fun.
Luckily, I was able to find the butter oil in capsule form, and eventually the fish oil as well. While they still protested taking the stuff, I’ve never been the mom to give options when it comes to healthy stuff. Mama knows best, and that’s that…..so they’d take it.
I kept this up for a year. We had our 6 month follow up cleaning and the dentist was chomping at the bit, but I told him to hold off. The kids’ teeth looked clean, no visible decay which means the cavities were not getting bigger, but no x-rays would be taken until the following visit in another 6 months.
That’s when things got interesting.
Not only did the calcification in my daughter’s teeth go away completely, but my son’s 4 cavities which were showing up as pinpricks on his original x-ray were COMPLETELY GONE. I watched the dentist look from one x-ray to the other again and again. He was all but scratching his head then looked up at me quizzically.
I told him what I had done…..and he said he had never seen anything like this in all of his years of practicing pediatric dentistry. He said it was certainly not common knowledge that this could happen…..but praised me for taking things into my own hands and finding an alternative that was better for my children.
I felt like I had won an Oscar that day. Not all the hard work you put into parenting pays off so quickly…but this did, and I was elated.
My son is 13 now and has had 2 cavities filled. He was 12 when he got them, and didn’t need sedation. I felt more comfortable with the composite filling at this point because he was older, and I knew that at his age I just had to deal with the fact that his oral hygiene wasn’t going to be what it was when he was little and I was still wielding the toothbrush.
I also can’t control what he eats at school or when out with friends. My daughter is 11 and has zero cavities. Her teeth are so perfect that the dentist at the last visit took a picture of her and put it up on the bulletin board. He said he has never seen a child her age with such clean teeth and healthy gums. He is one of the most popular pediatric dentists in our part of LA, so he has no shortage of patients to compare her to.
I, unfortunately, had to stop using the fermented cod liver oil and butter oil capsules after one year because they are a bit high in price and it wasn’t long after that I was going to have to start functioning on a single mom budget. If I could still give those to them I would.
Instead they still get probiotics daily as well as a good fish oil, and I cook with grass fed butter. I also give them desiccated beef liver capsules. Organ meats are huge for oral health and development according to all of the research done by Weston A. Price. I grew up eating organs meats and am sure that helped with my oral health and overall condition of my jaw and teeth.
I’m adding links below to the book and supplements I used, but mostly just welcome you to go down the same rabbit hole of research that I did if this is a topic that interests you.
I don’t think conventional dentistry is a bad thing, just as I don’t think conventional medicine is either….I just think that it’s good to know the alternatives and to understand that our bodies aren’t these weak useless shells….if we give our bodies what they need, then they’ll respond in kind.
Kind of like fueling your Lambo with the best stuff possible….wouldn’t just throw soy oil in the engine, would ya? 😉
header photo by Karolina Grabowska @pexels
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