Can You Really Heal Your Child’s Teeth With Food?

Growing up, my dad was very adamant about keeping my teeth healthy. When he was growing up, there wasn’t money to go to the dentist to get your teeth checked and fixed very often. If there was a cavity, it just had to wait. Eventually that tooth may need to be pulled, but that was the way it was. No one talked about healing teeth with food.

So when I was little, I brushed my teeth twice a day with kid approved toothpaste, I took my fluoride pills daily, and I had cleanings every 6 months at the dentist… even though it meant that my dad would be working extra just to pay for the dental insurance. Strong, healthy teeth were important to him, and rightly so.

Thankfully, I did have healthy teeth. I never once had a cavity after I got my permanent teeth and started doing all of these measures to keep them healthy. That is until college. What happened then, I’m not exactly sure, but I started to get a cavity here and there. Small, no big deal cavities, but it was decay none-the-less. I was still following the healthy oral care practices my dad and dentist had instilled in me, minus the fluoride pills, but it didn’t seem to matter. It seemed like every time I went for a 6 month appointment I had another small cavity. The only thing that had really changed was my diet and my stress level. Again, there was never any talk about healing teeth with food or anything else for that matter.

For me, cavities were a bummer, but I knew you couldn’t do anything about them but get them filled quickly with non-mercury fillings since they were bad… or so I’d been told. I knew that you didn’t want to let the cavity get bigger than it already was, so filling it quickly was the best bet, and that’s exactly what I did… for years… until my eyes were opened to the link between nutrition and healthy teeth.

Remineralizing Teeth?

When I had my first baby, I’d learned enough about natural health to know that fluoride was a poison and that it was not going into my baby. That meant filtered water, none of that baby water the stores sell that has fluoride added to it, and that meant no fluoride toothpaste when started using toothpaste. But that was about the extent of my knowledge when it came to holistic dental care.

It wasn’t until very recently that I started learning about healing teeth with food. I’d heard about this great book called, CureTooth Decay by Ramiel Nagel. It was all about how to prevent and health cavities and tooth decay with nutrition.

It seemed so simple that I just wasn’t sure. I mean, if this was the answer, why did the experts not know about it or tell anyone about it. I’d always been taught that you had so much enamel and that if bacteria ate through it or it was chipped, that was that. There was no more.

After listening to stories of other people who have healed their children’s teeth using the principles in Cure Tooth Decay, I realized that was simply not true. Enamel can and does remineralize. Today, many dentists are starting to become aware of this very fact.

Here’s a story from Sarah Pope of The Healthy Home Economist about how she healed her child’s cavity using food, and another one from Heather Dessinger of Mommypotamus about healing her daughters teeth from decay.

Our Bodies Are Designed To Heal Themselves

When we get sick, our bodies immediately take action to overcome whatever it is that’s causing us to get sick. That’s how our bodies were designed to function. We don’t have one shot at getting everything right, thankfully.

If we make bad decisions like hanging out with someone who has the flu… we get sick. Luckily that’s not the end of us, and we can overcome it. Our bodies can do it on their own… since they were designed to do that, but most times it helps to give our bodies the extra resources it needs to do the job quicker and easier than leaving it to itself. Simple things like body building foods and immune stimulating herbs will do wonders for helping the body to get better.

It’s the same thing with teeth. Our teeth or our children’s teeth.

Teeth are bones. Bones need certain things to be healthy like nutrients and minerals. Where do we get nutrients and minerals? From FOOD.

We can’t expect to feed ourselves or our children crap and have our bodies or our children’s bodies to flourish and thrive. Foods void of health will result in a body void of health. You reap what you sow, right?

Putting The Pieces Together

When I realized this, it was like a light bulb went off in my head. How basic! How simple! It made perfect sense.

When I was young, I may have been doing things that helped my teeth stay clean, but the real key was that I was eating home-cooked meals that were nutritious to my body. It wasn’t until college that I started eating packaged, processed foods, eating out, and eating more junk. Hence, less nutrition in my body = less healthy body = less healthy teeth.

As I said, this has been a more recent discovery, and I’m not going to rehash all the goodness that the book Cure Tooth Decay has to offer, but I can tell you that it’s opened my eyes and helped me to understand the subject more. I highly suggest that you buy it and read it for yourself.

The basis of the book is that people who ate nourishing, traditional diets like those supported by the Weston A. Price foundation had no dental decay and that we would be doing ourselves a favor by implementing this in our own lives.

Now I totally get that a WAP diet isn’t the best fit for everyone, but the general rule is to eat nutrient-dense foods that are high in vitamins and minerals and to get plenty of vitamin D. Read this post on understanding the importance of vitamin d to see how this vital nutrient plays a huge role in the health of our teeth. If you don’t live in an area where you get lots of vitamin d or your lifestyle doesn’t allow you to get out in the sun often, consider taking supplements like Green Pasture’s Fermented Cod Liver Oil and High Vitamin Butter Oil, both of which help strengthen teeth and heal then from decay.

Choose Your Path

I want to leave you with this question… “What path will you take when it comes to your and your family’s dental health?”

Will you follow along with what most dentists tell you — that cavities are caused by bacteria and that there’s nothing you can do about it besides use fluoride, brush your teeth more, and use antibacterial mouthwashes.

Or, will you choose to learn about how bones stay strong and how nutrition plays a vital role in preventing tooth decay? That high vitamin foods and the sun are not only beneficial to your overall health, but to your oral health as well. Healthy bodies resist sickness better than sick, run-down bodies just like healthy teeth resist decay better than weak teeth do.

Will you choose to heal your child’s teeth with food?

Find a healthy, natural coconut oil toothpaste recipe here and an herbal remineralizing tooth powder/paste recipe here.

Do you have thoughts or questions about this topic? If so, leave them in the comments below! I love hearing from you!