Dear Parents,
My 21-month-old child has been subject to early childhood tooth decay for close to 8 months. As a parent, this can be a frustrating experience. One feels helpless and powerless over Nature’s immutable laws.
So I offer for you, the cause and possible cure of this difficult problem.
Tooth decay is not a mystery, especially when it comes to young children. Tooth decay is caused by a deficiency of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients in the body needed to build healthy teeth. “Daily, the calcium and phosphate of the enamel is migrating out of the teeth to the bones, heart, brain and other places where it is needed. This is called by dentists demineralization.”1 Re-enamelization (teeth growing back) of enamel requires several factors, including enough minerals such as calcium, phosphate, magnesium, and the variety of enzymes needed to regrow tooth enamel such as adenosine diphophatase.2 Dr. Weston Price was a dentist who traveled around the world in the 1930’s and 1940’s studying the diet’s of primitive people’s isolated from the modern world. Weston Price found that he could eliminate or greatly reduce bad bacteria’s in the mouth which fuel the tooth degeneration process through diet. “These data are typical of clinical cases in which dental caries has been reduced apparently to zero, as indicated by both x-ray and instrumental examination.” 3
Reverse Cavities Naturally
Tooth decay begins many generations back. “The weakness of calcium deficiency is passed from parent to child. By following the same paternal pattern of ‘poor food selection,’ each new crop of babies becomes weaker. ‘The sins of the parents are passed on to the third and fourth generation.’”4 The weakness is caused not just by a lack of calcium, but by a lack of fat soluble & water soluble vitamins. “When Dr. Price analyzed the foods used by isolated primitive peoples he found that they provided at least four times the water soluble vitamins, calcium and other minerals, and at least TEN times the fat soluble vitamins from animal foods such as butter, fish eggs, shellfish and organ meats… Many tribes required a period of premarital nutrition, and children were spaced to permit the mother to maintain her full health and strength, thus assuring subsequent offspring of physical excellence.” 5 Many primitive groups Dr. Price studied had a tooth cavity rate close to 0. Weston Price also noticed in groups following their traditional diet that decayed teeth either fell out painlessly, or they covered themselves over with a hardened layer of enamel. Weston Price treated many cases of cavities with a success rate of over 90%. At the end of this article is a copy of Dr. Price’s tooth decay controlling diet for children. On my website I’ve scanned an x-ray image showing how Price’s tooth decay controlling diet healed a girls teeth which had two cavities per tooth, which full dentures where recommended. 6
The importance of breastfeeding cannot be underestimated. During breastfeeding the mother passes vital nutrients to her child. It is also a source of warmth and physical and emotional contact for the child. Breastfeeding should be carried on as long as the child desires, which can be anywhere from two years to four and a half years in length. The breast milk of a mother who is charged with vitamins, minerals and nutrients, will delay or even prevent childhood tooth decay. Dr. Brian Palmer has extensively studied the question of whether infant dental decay is related to breast feeding. The answer is clearly, NO. 7 The worse thing you could do for your child with cavities is to stop breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is one of the main cures to childhood infant caries. It is possible to breastfeed and still have a child with cavities because either the child cannot absorb enough nutrients from food, or the mother does not have enough nutrients in her milk, or both. A breast-feeding mother should make every effort to increase her level of health through nutrition to help prevent cavities in her child. She can also follow Weston Prices tooth decay prevention diet.
Some children also have an inability to absorb certain nutrients. Even if a decent diet is maintained this may not be enough for such a child. This type of child needs highly absorbable forms of nutrients. The best sources are copious amounts of dark leafy green cooked vegetables, High Vitamin Butter Oil, and High Vitamin Cod Liver Oil.
How to Stop Tooth Decay
Processed sugar consumption is the cause of bone loss and dental decay. “Dr. Melvin Page, a Florida dentist, demonstrated in numerous studies that sugar consumption causes phosphorus levels to drop and calcium to rise. Calcium rises because it is pulled from the teeth and the bones… Thus, sugar consumption causes tooth decay not because it promotes bacterial growth in the mouth, as most dentist believe, but because it alters the internal body chemistry.” 8 In addition to sugar, the other main forces that contribute to tooth decay are flour products and acids on the teeth. “The thing most people don’t know is that [acids] also dissolve the teeth and bones.”9
White Sugar, evaporated Cane Juice, Corn Syrup, and Organic Cane Sugar – White Sugar is a skeletonized product, in order to have a long shelf life, all of it’s main constituents are removed.
Scientific evidence against sugar has been mounting for decades. As early as 1933 research showed that increased consumption of sugar caused an increase in various disease conditions in school children. Sugar, especially fructose, has been shown to shorten life in numerous animal experiments. In the 1950’s British researcher Yudkin published persuasive findings that excessive use of sugar was associated with the following conditions: release of free fatty acids in the aorta, increase in blood insulin levels, increase in blood corticosteroid levels, increase in gastric acidity, shrinkage of the pancreas and enlargement of the liver and adrenal glands. Numerous subsequent studies have positively correlated sugar consumption with heart disease… A survey of medical journals in the 1970s produced findings implicating sugar as a causative factor in kidney disease, liver disease, shortened life span, increased desire for coffee and tobacco, arteriosclerosis and coronary heart disease. 10 Finally sugar consumption was proved by Dr. Melvin Page to leech calcium out of our bones. 11 This is how sugar contributes to tooth decay, it has little to do with sugar resting on the surface of the tooth.
The vitamins and minerals needed to properly digest sugar are removed from sugar by various chemical processes. The purpose of removing these essential nutrients, is that with these nutrients removed, sugar has an almost limitless shelf life. It is used commonly in our food to mask foul flavors from chemical processing, and to preserve factory made foods. I believe that the denatured sugar which we eat, adheres to the law of balance. After having been sucked dry of all it’s life force, it enters the body and attempts to create it’s own homeostasis. The body, consisting of more life force than sugar, transfer’s it’s nutrients to the sugar, to bring it back into balance.
White Flour and Flour products - White flour has had it’s vitamin and mineral content removed to do it’s high level of rancidity. Freshly ground flour seldom stays good for more than two weeks even when it is refrigerated. To solve this problem, food manufacturer’s remove the vitamins and minerals from the flour to prevent it from going rancid. This was done with the selfish motive of profit for the food company, not in harmony with nature’s law of balance. “[I]n the production of refined white flour approximately eighty percent or four-fifths of the phosphorous and calcium content are usually removed, together with the vitamins and minerals provided in the embryo or germ. The evidence indicates that a very important factor in the lowering of the reproductive efficiency of womanhood is directly related to the removal of vitamin E in the processing of wheat.” 12 Because the vitamins in the flour create a synergistic effect on the body, there’s little chance that any of the phosphorous in the devitalized flour is absorbable.
Low cost Vegetable Oils and Hydrogenated Oil – It is important to understand that, of all substances ingested by the body, it is polyunsaturated oils that are rendered most dangerous by food processing, especially unstable omega-3 linolenic acid. In the old days oil was extracted with slow moving stone presses. In large factories seeds are heated to 230 degrees farenheit. The oil is then squeezed out at pressures from 10 to 20 tons per inch. In order to extract oil from the final pulp, chemicals are added such as hexane. The solvent is boiled but up to 100 part per million remain in the oil. The solvent is toxic, and it also bonds to toxic pesticides in the seeds. The high temperature processing causes the weak carbon bonds of the unsaturated fatty acids to break apart, thereby creating dangerous free radicals. The normal antioxidants to clean up the free radicals have been destroyed by the high temperature processing. And finally BHT and BHA, both suspected of causing cancer and brain damage are added to the oils to replace the lost natural preservatives which where destroyed by the heat processing. 13Any cheap oil, such as soy, corn, cottonseed, canola, ect. falls under this category. Still want to eat this oil?
Partially hydrogenated margarines and shortening are even worse for you than the highly refined vegetable oils from which they are made because of chemical changes that occur during the hydrogenation process. Man made trans fats are toxins to the body, but unfortunately your digestive system does not recognize them as such. Instead of eliminating them, your body incorporates the trans fats into the cell membranes as though they where naturally occurring fats called cis fats. Your cell actually become partially hydrogenated. This interferes with cellular metabolism because it changes the normal chemical reactions which take place in the cell. 14
Iodized Salt – Normal table salt is highly refined. Salt is the product of a chemical and high temperature industrial process that removes all the valuable magnesium salts as well as trace minerals naturally occurring in the sea. To keep salt dry, salt refiners adulterate this “pure” product with several harmful additives, including aluminum compounds. To replace the natural iodine salts that are removed during processing, potassium iodide is added in amounts that can be toxic. To stabilize the volatile iodide compounds, the processors add dextrose which turns the iodized salt a purplish color. A bleaching agent is then necessary to restore whiteness to the salt. Far different than natural sea salt, refined salt can lead to sodium starvation as well as an over stimulation of the glandular system contributing to a host of degenerative diseases. 15
Pasteurized Milk & powdered Milk – The milk sold in the supermarket is bad for everybody. The modern milk cow is a mutant cow which produces three to four times as much milk as a standard cow. This mutant cow has been selectively bred from cows who have active pituitary glands, and is then fed an excessively high protein diet. These overactive pituitary glands produce growth hormones, which are present in today’s milk supply. While small amounts of hormones in cows milk is okay, excessive pituitary hormones are also associated with tumor formation, and some studies link milk consumption with cancer. The freak pituitary cow is prone to many diseases. She almost always secretes pus into her milk and needs frequent doses of antibiotics. The high protein feed these cows eat is made from soy beans. This is not the cows natural diet, and there is no scientific information as to the quality of the protein in the soy fed milk. Pasteurizing milk is no guarantee of cleanliness. There was a salmonella outbreak in 1985 in Illinois affecting 14,000 people. Pasteurization destroys the helpful organisms found in raw milk, leaving the finished product devoid of any protective mechanism should undesirable bacteria inadvertently contaminate the supply. Heat alters the milk’s amino acids, it promotes rancidity of unsaturated fatty acids and destruction of vitamins. Vitamin C loss exceeds 50%, and other vitamin loss runs as high as 80%. Vitamin B-12 is totally destroyed. Milk comes with enzymes which help the body digest the milk. Pasteurization kills all of these enzymes. After pasteurization synthetic vitamin D-2 may be added which has been linked to heart disease. Because milk is devoid of its enzyme content, it puts an enormous strain on the body’s digestive mechanism. In the elderly, and those with milk intolerance or weak digestion, the milk passes through not fully digested and can build up around the tiny villi of the small intestine preventing the absorption of the vital nutrients and promoting the uptake of toxic substances.16
Soy Milk, Soy Meat, Soy Protein, Soy Formula and Tofu – Soy protein powder is high in mineral-blocking phytates, thyroid depressing phytoestrogens and potent enzyme inhibitors that depress growth and cause cancer. Phytates are substances that block the absorption of minerals in the body. Soybeans are high in phytates and contain potent enzyme inhibitors that are only deactiviated by fermentation and not by ordinary cooking. These inhibitors can lead to protein assimilation problems in those who consume unfermented soy product frequently. Soy milk often substituted for cow’s milk, also has a high phyatate content and can lead to mineral dieficiences. Phytoestrogens found in soy foods, although touted as panaceas for heart disease, cancer and osteoporosis, are potent endocrine disrupters as well as goitrogens – substances that depress thyroid function. 17
Unsoaked Grains and Nuts, including Cereal, Granola, Peanut Butter, Bread, and Pasta, Cracker’s and Cookies – Phosphorus in the bran of whole grains is tied up in a substance called phytic acid. Phytic acid combines with iron, calcium, magnesium, copper and zinc in the intestinal tract, blocking their absorption. Whole grains also contain enzyme inhibitors that can interfere with digestion. Whole grains that have been processed by high heat and pressure to produce puffed wheat, oats, and rice are actually quite toxic and have caused rapid death in test animals. Breakfast cerals can have more adverse effects on blood sugar then refined sugar and white flour because they have been processed at high temperatures and pressures to make their shapes. This process leaves phytic acid intact but destroys phytase, an enzyme that breaks down some of the phytic acid in the digestive tract. Most grains and legume available in supermarkets have been treated numerous times with pesticides and other sprays that inhibit mold and vermin. 18 I used to eat organic breakfast cereal, sometimes made with puffed wheat. These grain cereals did not have pesticides and other harmful chemical additives, as they where organic. However, being organic just meant that my toxic puffed oats where free of other possibly dangerous substances. Good thing I used organic! J
Non-Pasture Fed Meat & Eggs – The meat, milk, and eggs in our supermarkets are highly contaminated and vastly inferior in nutritional quality to those available to our ancestors just a few decades ago. Modern cattle-raising techniques include the use of steroids to make meat more tender and antibiotics that allow cattle to survive in crowded feedlots. Diseased animals routinely pass inspection and find their way into the food supply. Chicken are raised in crowded pens, often under artificial light both night and day and fed on substandard food. Their eggs are inferior in nutritional qualities to those of free-range, properly nourished hens. According to renowned cancer specialist Virginia Livingston-Wheeler, most chicken and nearly half the beef consumed in America today is cancerous and pathogenic. Her research has convinced her that these cancers are transmissible to man. 19
Curing Tooth Decay:
Tooth decay and tooth healing happens through two mechanisms. #1 From within the tooth from a toxic blood supply or a deficient blood supply to the tooth. #2 Defective saliva within the mouth. “I feel perfectly confident that both inside the tooth and outside on the surface new construction is occurring constantly, even if at a slow rate.” 20 “Nearly all tooth decay comes from the blood stream, saliva, and the inside of the teeth, not only from the external surface. The teeth deteriorate but it is from the toxic blood stream and the enamel-destroying toxic saliva which is the result of an impure blood stream.” 21
Germs are a secondary factor in child hood tooth decay. So even if the child’s teeth and mouth are totally clean and void of bacteria’s, the tooth will still decay. The tooth will still decay because there are not enough minerals in the body, primarily Calcium, Magnesium, and Phosphorus, to create a new tooth surface. This also means if your child has tooth problems, that their overall body is both weak and depleted as the minerals are moving from the teeth to other more important parts.
In seemingly stopping the progress of cavities in my daughter’s teeth, the most helpful items have been: a daily supply of organic dark leafy green vegetables, like Kale (steamed/boiled with liquid ingested as well), naturally dehydrated Kombu (seaweed or Kelp), Activator X High Vitamin Butter Oil 22 mixed with High Vitamin Cod Liver Oil 23. *(Please consult your physician as to the proper amounts of Butter Oil and Cod Liver oil for your child. Too much of these substances can be dangerous as they have very high levels of fat soluble vitamins. Extreme care should be used with children under two years of age. )
Other important foods for the mother and child, which contain extremely high amounts of nutrients:
- Extra Virgin Coconut Oil
- Raw Butter from Grass Fed Cows
- Raw Milk from pasture fed Goats and or Cows
- Organ meets from Pasture Fed Animals
- Farm Raised Eggs, especially the yolks
- Oily fish, like salmon, sardines, herring, mackerel and anchovies
- Fish eggs; fish liver oils, Fish Organs; Shellfish
Brush the child’s teeth often if possible. Absolutely do not use fluoride or give your child fluoride treatments. While these have some short term temporary benefits, fluoride changes the chemical structure of the tooth making it extra brittle. Fluoride is highly poisonous and most tubes of toothpaste contain a lethal amount of fluoride. It takes about ½ teaspoon of fluoride to kill a 100 lb. person. Dr. Dean Burk was a highly respected chemist who worked for the National Cancer institute. He testified before congress that he believed water fluoridation to have caused about 1/10 th of all cancer deaths. That’s 61,000 people per year. 24 Instead of toothpaste use tooth powder or tooth herbs or sea salt to brush your child’s teeth. Regular tooth paste contains glycerin which coats the teeth with a layer of goop that prevents the teeth from remineralizing. You can also use small amounts of soap on the child’s tooth brush to clean their teeth. This should not create any bad taste in the child’s mouth. The soap also kills bacteria’s. Herbal mouthwashes or herbal gum treatments can be helpful as well provided they are not swallowed.
In conclusion, you can brush your child’s teeth and subject your child to dental treatments. These are not cures, but simply treatments of the symptoms of childhood nutritional deficiency. In examining the diet of the mother and father before conception, and the mother during pregnancy and breastfeeding, you will likely find a history of a diet high in the foods which where to be avoided, and low in the foods containing the highest amounts of vitamins. The US RDA (recommended daily allowances) for food are the minimum requirements for survival. Weston Price found that people following primitive diets consume between four and ten times the amount of vitamins than the RDA. Four – Ten times recommended is what is required for a cavity free, healthy child. (Between 30-70% of America falls below the RDA) It is quite possible that most childhood illnesses, in addition to tooth decay, such as colicky babies are caused by nutritional deficiencies.
Take responsibility for your child’s health and feed them properly. Rebuilding bones can take up to one year, so don’t expect immediate results other than a more fulfilled, happier, smarter and more peaceful child. These changes go against the grain of society, and you might be tempted to only follow some. It’s much easier to ignore the true causes of illness, than to treat them. It’s hard work to make these changes, but it’s worth it. Please, do it for your family. I personally decided to not do any dental treatments to my child’s teeth. They don’t bother her and hopefully they’ll last at least another year until she’s old enough to receive normal dental treatments if they do start hurting her.
Please refer to my web site for more health information. and also the web site of the public health organization formed by Weston Price, http://www.westonaprice.org
Consider reading Nourishing Traditions By Sally Fallon.
I am praying that you and your child recover their health.
Ramiel Nagel
Concerned Citizen
Weston Price’s Controlling Tooth Decay Diet
** This was a meal for children given once a day for children of approximately 8-14 years old, please modify accordingly for younger children and adults. Please consult a physician before giving cod liver oil or high vitamin butter oil to young children or infants as too high a dose of those vitamins can be toxic **4 ounces of tomato juice or orange juice and a teaspoonful of a mixture of equal parts of a very high vitamin, natural cod-liver oil (1/2 tsp), and especially high vitamin butter oil (1/2 tsp) was given at the beginning of the meal. The child received a bowl containing a pint of very rich vegetable and meat stew made largely from bone marrow and fine cuts of tender meat. Plenty of yellow carrots in where in this soup. Cooked fruit with very little sweetening and rolls made from freshly ground whole wheat and spread with high vitamin butter. The wheat for the rolls where ground fresh every day in a motor driven coffee mill. Each child was given also 2 glasses of fresh whole milk. The menu was varied from day to day by substituting the meat stew for fish chowder or organs of animals. This one meal contained an entire days supply of Calcium, and double the normal supply of phosphorus. 25
Foods that remove minerals from body and cause tooth decay and general depletion.
- Almost every kind of sugar, even organic, especially fruit juices
- Bread, wheat, cookies, crackers, cereals, grains, nuts, seeds, pasta’s
- Peanut Butter
- Any processed baby food
- Soy or soy formula
- Pasteurized milk
- Dried Fruit
- Iodized salt – cheap processed salt.
- Non-organic animal products such as eggs, meat, chicken ect.
- Feed your child every meal a soup of blended greens or softly cooked vegetables.
- Key Vegetables for soup:
- Kales (and lots of dark greens), Zucchini, Celery, Green Beans, Potatoes
- Add copious amounts of seaweed when the broth is done and the soup is cooler.
- Never discard the vegetable liquid, it contains numerous vitamins.
- Raw Grass Fed Butter
- Organic and raw yogurt, and kefir
- Raw Grass fed Goat and Cow Milk.
- Cod Liver Oil (must be taken with the raw butter)
- Lacto-Fermented Foods and Beverages to enhance digestion and assimilation
- Finely mashed up proteins from - Eggs, Fish, Organ Meets, or other meets (grass fed only please!)
- Bone broth such as fish or chicken soup broth
- Fresh or cooked fruits
- Soaked, and sprouted nuts finely ground
- Really Raw Honey (may be okay)
- Sprouted/ fermented grains, (only for children over 1.5 years)
- There are many herbs that can be cautiously used to provide minerals to the teeth,
- These include Horsetail, lemon grass, red raspberry leaf, nettle’s, lemon balm.
- Judd, Gerard Good Teeth Birth to Death. Glendale: Research Publications, 1997. Page 18
- Ibid. Referenced from page 19
- Price, Weston. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Los Angeles: Keats Publishing, 1939. Page 436
- .Christopher. John Herbal Home Health Care. Springville: Christopher Publications, 1976. Page 113
- http://www.westonaprice.org/nutritiongreats/price.html
- http://www.yourreturn.org/Treatments/Teeth/index.htm
- Fallon, Sally. Nourishing Traditions. Washington, DC: New Trends, 1999. Page 24
- Judd, Gerard Good Teeth Birth to Death. Glendale: Research Publications, 1997. Page 25
- Fallon, Sally. Nourishing Traditions. Washington, DC: New Trends, 1999. Page 23,24
- Ibid. page 24
- Price, Weston. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Los Angeles: Keats Publishing, 1939. Page 493
- Fallon, Sally. Nourishing Traditions. Washington, DC: New Trends, 1999. summarized from pages 13 and14
- Ibid., summarized from page 15
- Ibid., summarized from page 48
- Ibid., summarized pages 34 and 35
- Nourishing Traditions, summarized from page 62
- Nourishing traditions, summarized from page 25
- Nourishing Traditions, summarized from page 41
- Ibid. page 24
- Christopher. John Herbal Home Health Care. Springville: Christopher Publications, 1976. Page
- Judd, Gerard Good Teeth Birth to Death. Glendale: Research Publications, 1997. Page, 39
- Price, Weston. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Los Angeles: Keats Publishing, 1939. Page 429
Copyright© Ramiel Nagel 2012
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