How to Be Healthy: Eat Well and Grin
Putting on your best smile doesn’t mean using fancy dental products, says Pat Thomas, it’s achieved by what you eat.
There is much more going on in our mouths than of us know. Ads on TV and in glossy magazines suggest that gleaming white teeth and kissably fresh breath are the major goals where your mouth is concerned. But from a health perspective, your mouth is deeply connected to the rest of your body and your level of oral health both influences and reflects your overall physical wellbeing. Surprisingly, your toothbrush may be your best defence against a raft of life-threatening conditions.
Consider these facts: people with gum disease (known in its early stages as gingivitis) are almost twice as likely to develop atherosclerosis – narrowing of the arteries that supply blood to the heart. Indeed, your risk of developing heart disease is much higher if you have poor oral health than if you smoke or have high cholesterol. Middle-aged men with advanced gum disease (periodontitis) are four times more likely to have a stroke than those with healthier gums.
There are two possible reasons for this. One is that bacteria can migrate into the bloodstream from the gums and trigger an immune response that causes the artery walls to become inflamed. Another suggestion is that, once in the bloodstream, plaque forming bacteria attach themselves directly to the fatty deposits already present in a person’s arteries, causing further narrowing and increasing the odds of a stroke or heart attack.
People with gum disease are more likely to suffer reduced kidney function and even kidney failure. Among both smokers and non-smokers, gum disease raises the risk of pancreatic cancer up to threefold. Gum disease also increases the risk of premature labour by up to a factor of four. Severe gumdisease also appears to increase blood sugar levels thus putting diabetics at increased risk of complications.
The importance of diet
The connection between general levels of health and oral health is not new. In the 1920s and 30s, Dr Weston A Price, an American dentist, travelled the world studying and chronicling the links between diet, dental health and development.
Price studied native populations (including tribal Africans, Pacific Islanders, Eskimos, North and South American Indians and Australian Aborigines) and compared their teeth and general level of health to that of modern Americans. He concluded that straight, healthy teeth, strong bodies and resistance to disease, in the end all came down to diet.
Unlike the diets of modern cultures, what these native people ate and drank was invariably fresh, seasonally appropriate and ‘organic’. Indigenous diets, Price found, often included fermented foods such as cheese, cultured butter, yoghurt or fermented grain drinks. They were also high in fresh fish, fish roe, shellfish and seaweed and in animal fat, whether from game, eggs or insects. As a result, they were rich in fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D and E as well as tissue building B-complex and vitamin C and tooth-and bone-building minerals such as calcium. They were also abundant in enzymes that helped the digestive process to squeeze every ounce of nutrition out of available food.
If rates of gum disease have increased in spite of our apparently plentiful food supply, then it may be because of an interplay between environment and diet. What passes for food these days is often of very poor quality, too high in protein, sugar and fake fats (such as hydrogenated fats) and too low in raw seasonal hunter gatherer type foods such as nuts, seeds and berries, as well as fresh vegetables.
No single nutrient has been shown to have a greater influence on oral health than any other. This is because teeth and gums are made of different substances and require a wide range of different nutrients to stay healthy.
A chronically poor diet has a direct effect on the immune system, making it less effective under attack and so increasing your susceptibility to plaque-forming bacteria. Restrictive or faddy diets can also mean you are not getting the full complement of nutrients necessary to maintain good oral health. Studies show that long term dieters have more acidic saliva and are at increased risk of gingivitis.
Likewise, smoking suppresses the normal immune response to the accumulation of plaque. It is also associated with decreased saliva flow, and this may further explain smokers’ increased tendency to form plaque.
Holistic dentistry
Interest in Price’s work, as well as increasing knowledge of the potential harm caused by many of the things we put in our mouths, has led to a new discipline known as holistic dentistry.
Apart from the long-term problems already mentioned, holistic dentists have the ability to deal with many chronic problems that may at first appear to be unrelated to the mouth. For instance, someone who complains of chronic headaches or migraines may really have a problem with their jaws. An altered sense of taste may be due to a ‘coated’ tongue, which may be indicative of chronic gut problems.
Stress can also be addressed through the mouth. These days many of us adopt a ‘grit our teeth and get on with it’ attitude to life, and as a result can develop the habit of grinding our teeth (bruxism), which causes tension in many of the muscles around the mouth, resulting in jaw misalignment, headaches, migraines, tinnitus, earache, pain in the cheeks or temple areas and even the big toe!
The holistic dentist’s practice is invariably a mercury-free practice, not only because of the toxicity of mercury fillings but also because of the way that amalgam fillings can expand over time and cause the teeth to crack. Practitioners place a high degree of importance on nutrition as a way of preventing and treating tooth decay and gum disease, rather than by applying – or ask the patient to consume – substances such as fluoride.
Traditional dentistry has always stressed the importance of regular brushing and flossing to maintain dental health. These things are important. But for truly good oral health, we need to stop separating what goes on in our heads from what goes on in the rest of the body.
Sidebar: Chemical overload
Several ‘active’ ingredients in toothpaste may actually cause more problems than they solve:
Sodium lauryl sulphate (SLS) is a detergent and suspected gastrointestinal or liver toxicant. It can irritate and strip away the protective mucous membrane of the mouth, and thus may increase the incidence of mouth ulcers and may be implicated in an increased risk of oral cancer.
Triclosan, like SLS, is an irritant and there is evidence that the two can combine synergistically to become yet more irritant. Triclosan is also associated with a rise in superbugs, resistant to many antiseptics and antibiotics.
Alcohol-based mouthwashes increase the risk of throat and mouth cancers. This is because alcohol is drying, changes the pH of the mouth, and strips away the mouth and throat’s protective mucous membrane.
Silica, an abrasive common in toothpastes, can build up under the surface of the gums, causing granulomas – small nodules of inflamed tissue – that can mimic gingivitis and leave the gums more vulnerable to infection.
Fluoride is a systemic poison that accumulates in the body. There is little evidence to suggest that brushing with it is significantly protective for teeth. But studies do link fluoride with sensitivity/ allergic type reactions and a host of illnesses, including oral cancers, gastro-oesophageal reflux disease, bone problems, diabetes, thyroid malfunction, mental impairment and dental fluorisis, which mottles and discolours the teeth.
This article first appeared in the Ecologist May 2007 edition.
