Oral Hygiene, I was wrong..

When it comes to oral hygiene, I have never really questioned any of my dentists, my mother, teachers or toothpaste companies. Apparently everything I thought I knew about tooth and mouth health is/was wrong. I have more than a dozen fillings and I got most of them when I was a child and when I was pregnant. I was always told that if I brushed my teeth twice a day and flossed once a day or more that I would have good oral hygiene.  They also warned me about eating and leaving sweets on my teeth. Although that wasn't the reason for my problems as I really have never had a sweet tooth.

After many hours of research I have read many different opinions about oral health and have come to the conclusion that I have to come to my own conclusion, lol.  I have learned a lot and now believe that we are more in control of our teeth than we are taught that we do. I have learned that there are some bad things in commercial tooth paste, Fluoride, Glycerin, Sodium Laurel Sulfate and Saccharin. So I have started making my own tooth paste. We are also starting to change our diet to help remineralize our teeth. Yes, that is right! You can actually put minerals back into your teeth to make the enamel strong again and heel and prevent decay with your diet. No more sugar, soda, grains or dairy. These all have carbs and sugar that helps the growth of tooth decay.  smartealtahealth.com says;

"There are several steps you will need to take the reverse the enamel loss. First you need to ensure the teeth are clean on the surface. The saliva coats the teeth and adds minerals from the trace minerals in your saliva. Avoid anything that leads to a dry mouth - smoking, alcohol etc. or reduces the amount of saliva, won't help. You want to encourage your salivary glands, and keep your teeth very clean. Throw away your Fluoride based toothpaste and make your own. Important to get saliva to release the minerals back into the enamel. You have to add minerals back into your diet." (http://www.smartahealth.com/remineralization.html)

We also have made our teeth care more environmentally friendly. We now have tooth brushes where only the head is replaceable and recyclable! You snap in new bristles, it's so easy just! I think these are so cool. You can find these at your local natural food stores. I got the toothpaste recipe from http://www.keeperofthehome.org . She has done a lot of research on this. This post is the reason I started looking into oral hygiene and diet. There were many different recipes, I like this one the most because it has more than just cleaning the teeth, there are minerals in this recipe. Also it taste good! The only change I made is I added orange essential oil so I have peppermint orange flavor.