How Stress Triggers Immune System, & Other News of Note

Study Shows How Stress Triggers Immune System (USA Today)

Shedding some light on why stress might be bad for you, a new study finds that parts of your immune system ramp up when you get into personal conflicts with others.

It’s not clear how this effect of stress may make you sick, but the activated parts of the immune system – which cause inflammation in the body – have been linked to conditions such as diabetes and cancer.

“The message is that the flotsam and jetsam of life predict changes in your underlying biology in ways that cumulatively could have a bad effect on health,” said study co-author Shelley Taylor, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. “What this tells me is that people should be investing in socially supportive relationships, and they should not court relationships that lead to a great deal of conflict”…MORE…

US to Tell Drugmakers to Disclose Payment to Doctors (San Jose Mercury News)

To head off medical conflicts of interest, the Obama administration is poised to require drug companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment.

Many researchers have found evidence that such payments can influence doctors’ treatment decisions and contribute to higher costs by encouraging the use of more expensive drugs and medical devices.

Consumer advocates and members of Congress say patients may benefit from the new standards, being issued by the government under the new health care law. Federal officials said the disclosures increased the likelihood that doctors would make decisions in the best interests of patients, without regard to the doctors’ financial interests…MORE…

Shortage of Research on When There’s Too Much Health Care (NPR)

Published research on overuse is in pretty short supply, so rooting out waste by looking at the existing studies can be a little like limiting your late-night search for lost car keys to the spots right under streetlights.

Still, you’ve got start somewhere.

And a group of researchers combed the literature, zeroing in on 172 papers (out of more than 114,000 relevant ones published between 1978 and 2009) to see where the evidence for overuse was strongest.

What did they find?…MORE…

Most Women Can Skip Frequent Bone Tests (Futurity.org)

Older women who receive normal bone mineral density scores may not need to be screened again for 10 years, new research shows.

Since 2002, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has recommended that women ages 65 and older be routinely screened for osteoporosis and has suggested that a two-year screening interval might be appropriate. However, what length the screening interval should be is a topic that remains undecided.

“If a woman’s bone density at age 67 is very good, then she doesn’t need to be re-screened in two years or three years, because we’re not likely to see much change,” says Margaret Gourlay, assistant professor of family medicine at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill…MORE…

Big Pharma Routinely Suppresses Data from Clinical Trials – but FDA Approves These Dangerous Drugs Anyway! (Alliance for Natural Health)

Drug research, even from clinical trials sponsored by the federal government, is routinely suppressed, according to a new study in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), an international peer-reviewed medical publication. The study found that less than half of all NIH-funded clinical drug trials were published in a medical journal within two and a half years of the trial’s completion—with fully one-third of trial results remaining unpublished even four years after the trial. Why? Because the drug manufacturers didn’t like the data…MORE…

Suffered an Injury? Omega 3 Fatty Acids Are Key (NY Daily News)

Omega-3 fatty acids are vital for the body’s normal growth and development. Because the body doesn’t produce omega-3 fatty acids naturally, they have to be consumed in foods such as oily fish or in supplements.

The new study, published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience, has found that omega-3 fatty acids could play a significant role in preventing and protecting nerves from injury…MORE…

A Different Kind of a (Dental Kind of) “Clip Joint”

Here’s a minor but attention-grabbing dental horror story: “A former dentist in Massachusetts has pleaded guilty to Medicaid fraud for using paper clips instead of stainless steel posts in root canals.”

Um. Okay.

Technically, though, posts aren’t used in root canals. But “Mass. dentist admits doing paper clip post and core restorations following root canal treatment” is kinda wordy. And it doesn’t sound quite so scary.

Root canal treatment basically involves gutting a deeply decayed tooth: taking out the diseased but living tissue and filling the empty space – the literal “root canal” – with gutta percha or similar material. Since so much tooth structure is lost, the dentist has to recreate some of it to provide stability for a crown. This recreation is called a “core.” Sometimes, a metal post will be placed alongside the root canal to help anchor the core to the tooth.

Suffice it to say, those posts aren’t normally made of paper clip sections – although, according to the AP, Massachussetts Attorney General and non-dentist Martha Coakley said that “paper clips can sometimes be used temporarily.”

Interestingly, posts may actually make a root canal tooth more vulnerable. One study – published in the European Journal of Medical Research in 2005 – found that while 6.6% of non-post root canal teeth had complications, more than 13% of post restorations did.

The Cox-Regression analysis showed that teeth restored with a post system had a statistically significant higher failure rate (p = 0.044) than those which had been restored without posts.

Considered from the standpoint of biological dental medicine, inserting metal into a root canal filled tooth is just adding fuel to a fire. Not only do you have a dead tooth in the mouth as an energetic block and potential source of focal infection; you also have inorganic material disrupting energy flow on the associated meridian, just like a dental implant. Even more, if other metals are in the mouth – say, a core made out of mercury amalgam – you have a trigger for oral galvanism. In short, you’ve effectively tripled the risk of developing dentally-related illness elsewhere in the body, far beyond the mouth.

Learn more about the health risks associated with root canal teeth.

As for the Massachussetts doc? He’s also pled guilty to assault and battery, illegally prescribing prescription drugs and witness intimidation. He’ll be sentenced next week.

Image by Louise de Cours, via Flickr

Health: An “Active & Deliberate Creation”

Last week, to absolutely no one’s surprise, cooking show personality Paula Deen announced that, yes, she has type 2 diabetes.

And what made her decide to go public now, three years after her diagnosis? As she told USA Today,

“I felt like I had nothing to offer anybody other than the announcement. I wasn’t armed with enough knowledge. I knew when it was time, it would be in God’s time.”

* * *

She says her delay in talking about the disease had nothing to do with fear about hurting her reputation. “That was not why. My knowledge about the disease was very limited. But now I’m coming with good information, something that can help and bring hope to other people. It may sound cliché, but it’s the God-honest truth.”

That “something” wouldn’t happen to be an endorsement deal with a drug company now, would it?

Of course it would.

So now she’s the star of a new website from Novo Nordisk, maker of the daily injectable Deen takes to “manage” her illness. While the site purports to be educational – a source of “recipes, lifestyle tips and support” – there’s only one lesson: Got diabetes? Inject Victoza! Hence, the FDA-required risk disclosure that appears toward the bottom of every page.

None of this is surprising. It’s PR, not news. And it reinforces a lot of ideas that can keep us from enjoying more optimum health and wellness.

Deen says that when she first heard she had the disease in 2008, she was surprised and “a little sad because I thought my whole life was going to have to change, and I like my life.”

But after a conversation with her own doctor “and Dr. Mehmet Oz, one of my precious friends, I realized you can live a full life.” Deen says her blood sugar “is good. It’s under control.”

Besides using the medication, Deen is walking a mile or more a day on the treadmill and no longer drinking sweet tea. “That’s a big trick for a little Southern girl. I calculated how much sugar I drank in empty calories, and it was staggering. I would start drinking tea at lunchtime and drank it all the way to bedtime.”

She hasn’t made a lot of other changes in how she eats and cooks….

In a way, how we are is who we are. We define ourselves by the way we live. Why would we want to change anything? Real change is hard. There’s comfort in the familiar. It’s easier to start taking a drug to “manage” symptoms than to replace illness-triggering and -spurring behaviors with health-promoting ones.

But even when we know that what we like is harming us, many of us still hang on fiercely to what we know. Consider results from a just-published study in Cancer. If there’s any time a smoker should quit, it’s after a cancer diagnosis, right? Yet tracking more than 5000 lung and colorectal cancer patients, the study found that about 1/3 of lung patients and nearly 2/3 of colorectal patients still kept up their habit 5 months later.

But we can look at this another way: about 2/3 of lung patients and 1/3 of colorectal patients did change. “Hard” is not a synonym of “impossible.” For each of us is agent of our own health and well-being.

In his book Confessions of a Medical Heretic, Dr. Robert Mendelsohn mentions one reason why some of us choose to be passive agents: alienation from our own “body and its natural processes.”

When you fear something, you avoid it. You ignore it. You shy away from it. You pretend it doesn’t exist. You let someone else worry about it. This is how the doctor takes over. We let him. We say: I don’t want to have anything to do with this, my body and its problems, doc. You take care of it, doc. Do what you have to do.

But the result isn’t health – just the semblance of it: an absence of symptoms. Health is bigger than this. And more dynamic.

Health is a large word. It embraces not the body only,
but the mind and spirit as well…and not today’s pain or pleasure alone,
but the whole being and outlook of a man. – James H. West

Health is also a choice.

Conscious health means choosing health. It means choosing health with understanding,
awareness, intention, and vision. Conscious health is the active and deliberate
creation of a vital body, mind, and spirit, with full knowledge, understanding, and belief.
We create our lives, and we have the power to re-create them. When we are
fully conscious, we can take responsibility for our own health. We can make
the necessary choices and decisions. We can determine our health destiny. – Ron Garner

Image by lucias_clay, via Flickr

An Implant Is an Implant Is an Implant

 

It’s easy to understand why dental implants appeal. Aesthetically and functionally, they seem the next best thing to natural teeth. You don’t have to take them out or use special tools to clean them, and they last a long time. Other types of restorations typically have a 75 – 85% survival rate (PDF) after 10 years – though one new study found a 93.5% survival rate for all-ceramic restorations.

Cases involving bruxism, nonvital teeth, and specific cementation agents created significantly increased rates of failure. Yet even when failures occurred, patients overwhelmingly reported “excellent” satisfaction.

In comparison, implant studies show success rates as high as 98%. (Interestingly, the rate drops more than 10% when “patient related” instead of “implant related.”)

But is longevity the best measure? Mercury amalgam lasts a long time, too, yet it’s been repeatedly shown to contribute to a wide array of illnesses. So, too, implants.

As we discussed before, there are three key problems when it comes to implants:

1. Placing an implant in the bone triggers an autoimmune response.
2. Each of your teeth sits on a particular energetic meridian along with several other organs, glands and other anatomical structures. Implants radically alter the energy flow along its meridian. This can affect the health and function of associated organs.
3. Once an implant is placed, it changes the balance of and relationships among the various oral flora, pathogenic or otherwise. This affects the health of the biological terrain, which is the key determinant of health and illness. (You can learn more about the terrain – what it is and what it does – by reading the articles listed here.)

In short, the body responds as though under attack. The implant is an invader that must be fought off. We experience the response as symptoms. And we call a collection of related symptoms “illness.”

Illnesses reported in the scientific record as being associated with implants include cancer, multiple sclerosis (MS), chronic fatigue (CFS), fibromyalgia and a range of autoimmune and neurological disorders.

There are some dentists who believe that only titanium and other metal implants cause problems. “Biocompatible” ceramic implants are deemed OK. Trouble is, regardless of the material, the implant still disrupts normal energy flow and creates disturbance in the biological terrain. As Dr. Verigin writes,

Biological Terrain Analysis (BTA) shows remarkable adverse changes in the rH2 values – a measure of oxidative stress. When these values are high, as we typically see in clients with implants, both cell and biological terrain functions take a hit. Nutrient uptake is inhibited, as is the delivery of hormone and energetic information. The body’s natural energy state is disturbed.

Lodging an implant into the jaw creates a scenario similar to what happens when you skip a flat stone across the surface of a lake. Think about how the ripples grow smaller and fainter as they continue across the lake and then bounce back. They may be too faint for us to observe with the naked eye, but the effect persists. This is a form of energetic resonance. Likewise, when an implant is placed, there is bioresonance through the extracellular fluid.

Implants also create disturbances along the meridians on which they’re placed. Meridians are your body’s energetic pathways, connecting multiple organs and bodily structures. Disturbances or blockages in one area can affect the other organs on the same meridian, setting the stage for illness or dysfunction at sites far from the mouth. Disturbances caused by implants may be worsened if other metals – such as mercury amalgam “silver” fillings – are present, due to the creation of galvanic currents.

In this regard, “biocompatible implant” is a bit of a misnomer.

Of course, take good care of your teeth and gums, and you may not need to think of dental implants at all.

Image by MartinSchweppe, via Wikimedia Commons

Healthy Hearts Don’t Need “Preventive” Aspirin, & Other News of Note

Healthy People Don’t Need Aspirin to Prevent Heart Disease (HuffPo)

Healthy people shouldn’t be taking aspirin to prevent heart disease, researchers say in a new report that casts doubt on recommendations from U.S. health officials.

* * *

[Dr. Kausik] Ray and his colleagues took a fresh look at nine previous trials of aspirin use in people who had never had chest pain or other symptoms of an ailing heart. They also looked for signs that the medication might stave off cancer, which some research has suggested.

Based on more than 100,000 men and women followed for an average of six years, there was no sign aspirin prevented fatal heart attacks. But it did cause a tiny drop in non-fatal heart attacks…MORE…

A Muffin Makeover: Dispelling the Low-Fat Is Healthy Myth (MedicalXpress)

“It’s time to end the low-fat myth,” said Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition and chair of the Department of Nutrition at HSPH. “Unfortunately, many well-motivated people have been led to believe that all fats are bad and that foods loaded with white flour and sugar are healthy choices. This has clearly contributed to the epidemic of diabetes we are experiencing and premature death for many. The lesson contained in these healthy muffins — that foods can be both tasty and good for you — can literally be life-saving”…MORE…

Slow Carbs Reduce Inflammation Markers (UPI)

A diet rich in slowly digested carbohydrates – whole grains, legumes, high-fiber foods – reduces inflammation in chronic disease, U.S. researchers say.

Lead author Marian Neuhouser, a member of the Cancer Prevention Program in the Public Health Sciences Division at the Hutchinson Center in Seattle, said such a “low-glycemic-load” diet, which does not cause blood-glucose levels to spike, increases a hormone that helps regulate the metabolism of fat and sugar.

The controlled, randomized feeding study, which involved 80 healthy Seattle-area men and women — half of normal weight and half overweight or obese — found that among overweight and obese study participants, a low-glycemic-load diet reduced a biomarker of inflammation called C-reactive protein by about 22 percent, Neuhouser said…MORE…

How Genetically Modified Foods Could Affect Our Health in Unexpected Ways (AlterNet)

Chinese researchers have found small pieces of rice ribonucleic acid (RNA) in the blood and organs of humans who eat rice. The Nanjing University-based team showed that this genetic material will bind to receptors in human liver cells and influence the uptake of cholesterol from the blood.

The type of RNA in question is called microRNA (abbreviated to miRNA) due to its small size. MiRNAs have been studied extensively since their discovery ten years ago, and have been implicated as players in several human diseases including cancer, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes. They usually function by turning down or shutting down certain genes. The Chinese research provides the first in vivo example of ingested plant miRNA surviving digestion and influencing human cell function in this way.

Should the research survive scientific scrutiny – a serious hurdle – it could prove a game changer in many fields. It would mean that we’re eating not just vitamins, protein, and fuel, but gene regulators as well…MORE…

Iron Builds a Better Brain (The Scientist)

Iron deficiency is a well-known cause of impaired cognitive, language, and motor development, but a report out today (January 9) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that even in apparently healthy young adults, variations in iron levels correlate with variations in brain structure integrity.

“[The researchers] make a very interesting connection between the issue of iron metabolism and the integrity of white matter, more specifically myelin”—the cellular sheath that enwraps and insulates neuronal axons—said George Bartzokis of the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study. “This would have been predicted by what is known about myelin, because it actually contains a lot of iron, so it is important that [they have] directly demonstrated this in humans with imaging”…MORE…

All That Stress Is Shrinking Your Brain, New Study Finds (MSNBC)

Simply feeling stressed-out was not linked to gray matter shrinkage. But feeling stressed-out combined with a history of stressful life events was. In particular, stress was linked to markedly less gray matter than expected in a part of the prefrontal cortex that regulates emotion and self-control, not to mention blood pressure and blood sugar.

That shrinkage might serve as a red flag about a greater risk of chronic diseases such as high blood pressure as well as psychiatric disorders, according to the researchers. And maybe it’s already affecting brain function in the healthy individuals she studied, Sinha [the Yale neurobiologist Rajita Sinha, senior author of the new report] says…MORE…

Disruption of Biological Clocks Can Lead to Neurodegeneration, Early Death, Study Says (ScienceDaily)

New research at Oregon State University provides evidence for the first time that disruption of circadian rhythms — the biological “clocks” found in many animals — can clearly cause accelerated neurodegeneration, loss of motor function and premature death.

The study was published in Neurobiology of Disease and done by researchers at OSU and Oregon Health and Science University. Prior to this, it wasn’t clear which came first – whether the disruption of biological clock mechanisms was the cause or the result of neurodegeneration…MORE…

Be Happy & Live Longer (HealthyImagination)

Scientific proof mounts: Be happy and live longer.

That’s what British researchers found when they asked nearly 4,000 people, aged 52 to 79, to spend a typical weekday recording their emotions and then checked back an average of five years later to find how many study participants were still alive. Those who had scored the highest “positive attitude” (PA) had a substantially longer survival rate.

Only 3.6 percent of the high-PA group had died, compared to 4.6 percent of the medium-PA and 7.3 percent of the low-PA. The group highest on happiness ended up with a 35 percent lower risk of dying…MORE…

On That Proverbial Spoonful of Sugar

First, there were the lollipops.

Then there were the mints.

Then came the gummy bears.

And now, presenting the next greatest cavity-fighter ever: ice cream!

Not just any old ice cream, though. Super special probiotic ice cream.

The researchers chose ice cream for this study because of its universal appeal, particularly among children. The probiotic ice cream used in the study was prepared by adding a freeze-dried culture of probiotic strains of Bifidobacterium lactis Bb-12 and Lactobacillus acidophilus La-5 and was manufactured by Amul, India, the authors explained. Both the probiotic ice cream and the control ice cream (no probiotic) had a vanilla flavor.

As ever, the basic idea: knock out or inhibit S. mutans and other pathogenic microbes involved in tooth decay. And did it work?

Well, just over 1/3 of the subjects showed a reduction of S. mutans in their saliva after eating the probiotic ice cream. But many with high bacterial counts got no effect. Maybe, speculated the authors, they needed a longer intervention or more “washout” time between eating the control and probiotic sample.

The full citation and abstract are available here.

Now, we understand the appeal of this kind of preventive approach. Most kids – and adults – are going to eat sweets no matter what. You have to help people by meeting them where they are, right?

And yet, where so many of us wind up is in a vicious cycle of unhealthy habits that fuel illness and dysfunction. We eat poorly. We take drugs to suppress symptoms yet don’t get to the root causes of illness. We’re sedentary, distracted, stressed. We reach for the quick fix, even if it makes us feel worse in the long run.

Some have said that addicts don’t so much crave their substance of choice as they crave the relief it will bring from withdrawal. Feeding their addiction, they perpetuate it.

Similarly, interventions like “decay-fighting sweets” may reinforce the kinds of behaviors that raise the risk of decay. Yes, it’s harder to change behaviors, but it’s a surer, longer-lasting means to good oral (and physical) health.

As one dentist put it in an article we cited in our previous post on S. mutans,

I’m always open to new research that may offer suggestions for patients to avoid dental decay, and everyone would like there to be an easier way (just drink this or eat that), but brush, floss, and see your dentist is still the best. It’s not sexy, but it works.

Images by stevendepolo & Caro Wallis, via Flickr

There will be no post on Monday.

The Evolution of FDA’s Mercury Amalgam Classification

Ever wonder how mercury amalgam came to be classified as as it is by the FDA?

Former FDA Advisor Mike Flemming, DDS (dental products panel 2006 & 2010) explains:

More on mercury policy and politics: “An Uncertain Risk and an Uncertain Future: Assessing the Legal Implications of Mercury Amalgam Fillings.”

Monday Morning Funny: Pawsing to Brush

Recently, one of our clients was telling us how much she enjoyed our newsletter and blog. A cat-lover, she then tucked her next appointment card into her wallet and said with a wink, “But you know, it could use more cats.”

Well, we knew we just had to address this cat lack immediately! After all, what’s a blog without cats?!

So, without further ado:

 

Click on image to see the full gallery.

 

Click on image to see the full gallery.

 

Click on image to see the full gallery.

 

Cats know: hygiene matters.

Via BuzzFeed

The Oral-Systemic Connection, & Other News of Note

Can Poor Dental Health Lead to Pneumonia? (Dental Education Blog)

Yale University says so.

The oral systemic health study, presented this past October at the Infectious Diseases Society of America annual meeting in Boston, was headed by Dr. Samit Joshi of Yale University School of Medicine.

Researchers found changes in bacteria in the mouth preceded the development of pneumonia…MORE…

If Your Teeth Could Talk… (WSJ)

The eyes may be the window to the soul, but the mouth provides an even better view of the body as a whole.

Some of the earliest signs of diabetes, cancer, pregnancy, immune disorders, hormone imbalances and drug issues show up in the gums, teeth and tongue—sometimes long before a patient knows anything is wrong.

There’s also growing evidence that oral health problems, particularly gum disease, can harm a patient’s general health as well…MORE…

Dried Licorice Root Rights the Bacteria That Cause Tooth Decay & Gum Disease (MedicalXpress)

Scientists are reporting identification of two substances in licorice — used extensively in Chinese traditional medicine — that kill the major bacteria responsible for tooth decay and gum disease, the leading causes of tooth loss in children and adults. In a study in ACS’ Journal of Natural Products, they say that these substances could have a role in treating and preventing tooth decay and gum disease…MORE…

Neck Pain Treatments Put to the Test (WebMD)

Spinal manipulation and at-home exercises may be better at relieving neck pain than relying on drugs.

But the best neck pain treatment may depend on the person.

A new study shows that spinal manipulation therapy from a chiropractor or home exercises provided by a therapist offered better neck pain relief than medication alone in people with neck pain of less than three months’ duration…MORE…

FDA to Decide This March Whether to Ban BPA (ChronRx Health Blog)

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration on Wednesday committed to decide by March 31, 2012, whether bisphenol-A, otherwise known as BPA, should be banned from use in packaging for food and drinks.

The decision to decide is part of a settlement agreement with the National Resources Defense Council. The FDA took three years — more precisely 41 months — to respond to the environmental group’s petition…MORE…

The 10 Most Important Health Freedom Stories of 2011 (Wake Up World)

2011 was an amazing year for the health freedom movement, with monumental victories against Monsanto, Merck and money-hungry pharmaceutical corporations as a whole. As the year comes to a close, it is important to look back on some of the most important stories that helped to propel the natural health movement into the mainstream spotlight…MORE…

Vegetarianism a Cause of Tooth Decay? Um, No. Not Exactly.

Did you hear the one about the “new” study finding “that vegetarians are much more likely to suffer from tooth decay, lower (more acidic) salivary pH levels, and lower stimulated saliva flow than control subjects that were matched by sex and age”?

We did (thank you, Google Alerts). Only the study’s not new. And that’s not exactly what its author found.

But at least the post included a link to the study (PDF) in question, originally published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition not last week or even in 2011 but in 1988.

The article – “Health Aspects of Vegetarian Diets” by Johanna T. Dwyer, DSc, of the New England Medical Center (now Tufts Medical Center) – is a literature review, not a dedicated study of the dental impact of a vegetarian diet. Of the nearly 350 citations it includes, just a handful focus on this issue. Looking at them as a whole, Dwyer found, “There is little evidence that vegetarians have better dental health than do nonvegetarians….Vegetarian diets do not provide any distinct dental advantage over nonvegetarian diets.”

No better dental health. No advantage.

So how do we get from there to the headline “New Study: Vegetarians Have More Tooth Decay” (emphasis added)?

One study Dwyer looked at did find a higher rate of “dental erosions on some tooth surfaces, lower salivary pH levels, and lower stimulated saliva flow” among lactovegetarians (i.e., vegetarians who eat dairy). Other studies noted how fruit juices and acidic foods can erode teeth, which is hardly news these days. Yet, according to another study Dwyer cites,

If acid fruits and vegetables are eaten in conjunction with or after other foods rather than frequently between meals and their consumption is coupled with good oral hygiene, they pose little danger to dental health….

To then conclude that vegetarianism in general increases tooth decay is quite a leap.

Bottom line: A vegan diet is neither inherently better or worse for your teeth than a diet that includes meat, dairy, fish and eggs. What matters is the specific composition of the diet – along with eating and hygiene habits, as we noted in our previous post on raw food diets and tooth decay:

We regularly see new clients who eat a raw food diet to enhance their health. Yet when we examine their teeth, it is not uncommon to find a lot of decay. This often comes as a surprise to the client. Indeed, it seems counterintuitive when you consider that a raw food diet forgoes all processed foods and is often rich in fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Why should these clients suffer dental problems?

Part of the cause can be dietary – such as a high sugar intake from an overabundance of fruits, especially in dried form. But part is also behavioral. In fact, there is one commonality we see amongst all raw foodists with tooth decay: a tendency to “graze,” eating small portions throughout the day. This habit – regardless of the type of diet one consumes – greatly increases the risk of developing tooth decay, especially around the gumline.

Why?

Carbohydrates tend to cling to tooth enamel more than fats and proteins do – especially around the base of the teeth, where food particles more easily can get stuck. There, they feed the oral microbes that form the biofilm often still called “plaque.” As these microbes colonize, their metabolic byproducts acidify the oral environment. Ideally saliva neutralizes it, but when biofilm covers the oral surfaces, it can’t do the job.

These acidic conditions peak for about 20 to 30 minutes, but if a person is grazing throughout the day, they’re effectively nursing the problem, ensuring that conditions remain acidic and the biofilm is allowed to proliferate. Together, these greatly increase the risk of cavity formation.

That grazing is an issue was pounded home to us a while back, when a woman brought her twin boys to us for their dental care. One of the boys had excellent teeth while the other had rampant caries (cavities). Yet both ate the same diet, which included a muffin a breakfast each morning. How each boy ate it made all the difference: the one with no caries ate his muffin all at once, while the other saved his to nibble from throughout the day.

Same diet. Different eating behaviors. Different outcomes.

[See also "Making the Good Look Bad (& the Worse Look Better)."]

Good dental health – like good systemic health – depends on eating a nutrient-rich and varied diet. All the nutrients most essential to dental health – antioxidants, calcium, magnesium, zinc, trace minerals, vitamin D and protein – can be found in both plant and animal sources. Both vegans and meat-eaters alike should control the amount of sugars, high-acid foods and sugars they eat. Both groups should, at minimum, brush and floss after meals and avoid grazing through the day.

The moral of the story? Read carefully. And with curiosity. Follow links. Learn more.

Image by Judy Baxter, via Flickr