🦷 To keep your teeth...
10 Oral Health Tips to Keep Your
Teeth:
1. Snacking: Each instance of carbohydrate consumption creates an acid attack which can take 30-60 minutes to neutralize. If you're going to snack, choose carb-free options.
2. Brushing: If your meal contains carbs, wait 30-60 minutes
before brushing. Brushing before bed is the most important time.
3. Flossing: Use PFAS-free floss. Do it before brushing (floss loosens the
plaque and food trapped between your teeth, brushing sweeps it away)
4. Mouthwash: Most do more harm than good. If you're struggling with bad breath, it's likely your diet that is causing oral-gut dysbiosis. Fix your diet.
5. Toothpaste: There's no perfect option. nano-HA agglutinates
but micro/non-nano HA is less effective. Charcoal is very abrasive. SLS, broad antimicrobials (triclosan, CPC, essential oils), and whitening agents can disrupt microbiome. Fluoride has significant issues (neurologic,
endocrine, skeletal) especially for children. Luckily, with a good diet, toothpaste is not even necessary. The point is plaque debridement. Saliva is your primary remineralization agent. See next point.
6. Mouth closed: Breathe through your nose. Mouth breathing will dry out your mouth, cause dysbiosis, and wreck your teeth. It will also impair proper craniofacial development. Use a
lip shield (better than mouth tape) to stop mouth breathing at night.
(fyi - most medications also cause dry mouth)
7. Tongue: It should rest on the roof of your mouth. Proper oral posture (lips sealed, tongue on palate), makes sure you're breathing through your
nose (filtering, humidifying, nitric oxide producing) and facilitates proper craniofacial development. It also helps keep the airway open to prevent snoring and apnea.
8. Diet: Meat-based
diet (meat, seafood, eggs, dairy) and single ingredient whole foods as tolerated.
9. Sun: Vitamin D is essential for calcium metabolism and healthy teeth.
10. Extras: lots of "extra" preventative things you can do (xylitol, baking soda, etc.) and lots of extra stuff I could write about each of the above points, but caries risk and gum disease is mostly due to improper diet and mouth breathing. Not your genetics.
Fix your diet and breathing, and the teeth fix themselves.
