Full Transcript Diet and Dental Health Overview 0:00 Do you eat clean, avoid sugar, brush and floss twice a day, and still have cavities or gum disease or other tooth problems? 0:11 It can be so frustrating, but I want to tell you that the answer might actually be found on your plate. 0:18 There's an enormous connection between diet and dental health, And interestingly enough, all the talk about dental health, 0:26 about why you get cavities and how to prevent them, largely has to do with brushing and flossing your teeth, correct? 0:33 This is what your mom has told you for forever. 0:35 For some reason, we've forgotten that teeth are actually living organisms. 0:39 And just like every other structure and organ in your body, they need nutrients and those things pass in and out. 0:47 Not only that, but they're connected to the rest of the body. 0:50 So if your body needs those really important minerals that keep teeth healthy and strong and not sensitive, if the body needs those minerals elsewhere, 0:59 it will pull them elsewhere. 1:01 This is a connected system head to toe. 1:05 your teeth cannot be healthy without the rest of you being healthy and vice versa. 1:10 So diet is really important in tooth health, just like it's really important in overall health. 1:17 We all talk about, oh, I didn't eat well yesterday, that's why I don't feel well, or that's why I broke out, or whatever it might be. 1:24 But we don't often say, Those two cavities my dentist just told me I have, I bet it's because of the way I've been eating. 1:32 We usually just blame it on, well, I just haven't been flossing as good as I should or maybe I need to try a new toothbrush or a new toothpaste or powder.
Five Foods That Support Healthy Teeth 1:41 Let's look at diet. 1:43 So I want to go through a couple of different things for you. 1:46 First we're going to talk about five foods that are very good for your teeth that you should make sure you're implementing and incorporating into your diet. 1:53 Then we're going to talk about five foods that are really damaging for your teeth and likely you already know about them. 2:01 Then we're going to tackle five sneaky foods that you think are in the health category but actually are damaging to your teeth. 2:09 So let's get into this just a little bit. 2:10 First of all, what are the five that you should always be incorporating? 2:14 One is dairy and cheeses. 2:26 The next one is leafy greens. 2:28 These leafy greens are full of minerals. 2:31 They're full of all the things that your teeth need. 2:33 They also are very alkalizing. 2:36 So they help to balance the acidity in the mouth. 2:38 One thing to be careful of, however, is oxalates. 2:42 Oxalates are just part of what those greens have. 2:45 They also bind up minerals. 2:47 So if you're cooking them, no worry. 2:49 If you're eating them raw, I like to add either calcium containing foods like some dairy in there or If you're doing something like a green smoothie, 2:58 I drop a calcium tablet in. 3:00 What it does is it binds those oxalates right away and makes everything that's in those greens that's so good for you available to you. 3:08 The next one is fatty fish. 3:09 That fatty fish has a lot of vitamin D3 in it, which is so essential for taking in those minerals that you need. 3:17 Another one is bone broth. 3:19 Bone broth is full of collagen and minerals and really nourishing things for both teeth and gums. 3:27 The last one of the five is raw fruits and vegetables. 3:32 Of course, this isn't anything new, but you may not have realized that those fruits and vegetables bring needed minerals and vitamins with them, 3:39 but they also clean your teeth. 3:40 They do a really good job of scrubbing things clean and they stimulate saliva. 3:46 So if you want healthy teeth, make sure you're incorporating those five things in. 3:50 Now, what are the bad guys? 3:52 What things are going to really damage your teeth? 3:55 These probably aren't going to be real surprising to you, but let's go through them.
Foods That Damage Teeth 3:58 The first one is sugary foods and candies. 4:03 Why do they damage your teeth? 4:04 Well, sugar does a couple of things. 4:06 First of all, it feeds the bacteria in your mouth, and those bacteria love sugar, the bad bacteria, they love sugar, they excrete acid. 4:14 That acid dissolves the minerals in the teeth. 4:16 So the more sugar there is, the more acid in the mouth, the more minerals get dissolved. 4:21 So sugar has a big impact on tooth decay on cavities, and we all know this. 4:26 We've been told it numerous times. 4:28 But there's some other sources of sugar you might not have thought about, things like dried fruit. 4:32 Why is dried fruit problematic? 4:34 Because it's so sticky and it gets into the crevices and the nooks and crannies in the teeth and it stays there. 4:41 So then it continues to feed the bacteria in the mouth. 4:44 Another one is white foods. 4:47 So white bread, white crackers, even things like goldfish crackers have kind of been on the chopping block lately. 4:53 Why? 4:54 Well, those foods are high in what are called simple carbohydrates, sugars. 5:00 We don't call them sugar because we don't think of them as a candy but they are simple sugars and those things are also kind of gummy and get into the 5:07 teeth and do nothing good for the body really as simple sugars but they do feed those bacteria and again you get an increase in acid in the mouth. 5:16 Now speaking of acid, another real common source of acid in the mouth is drinks. 5:20 So this is sodas, this is energy drinks. 5:23 The problem with acid in the mouth is it just simply dissolves minerals out of the tooth, making them more porous. 5:30 Bacteria crawl in, they create more acid, they crawl in further. 5:34 This is the starting point of tooth decay, is acid. 5:38 so if you're drinking a lot of soda and this is including diet soda why it's not just the sugar and the soda that's the problem it's the acid and every 5:47 single kind of soda has acid either carbonic acid or phosphoric acid or citric acid or some of all of the above energy drinks are particularly acidic and 5:58 particularly damaging to the teeth as well I'm not saying you can't drink them ever. 6:01 I'm saying don't drink them all day long. 6:04 If you're going to have one can, drink it and be done with it. 6:08 Rinse your mouth with water and get the acid out of the mouth. 6:11 And the other implicator with this acid is citrus fruits and vinegar based foods. 6:17 So the same thing goes for those things. 6:20 Lemon juice is great in the morning, but not if you drink it all day long. 6:23 It's going to be very damaging. 6:24 It's simply dissolving the teeth. 6:26 So really, It just comes down to what do these things do in the mouth? 6:31 If they increase acid levels, they're going to increase that dissolving of minerals, which makes the teeth more porous.
Sneaky Healthy Foods That Can Harm Teeth 6:39 You're going to have sensitivity. 6:40 You're going to have a high potential for tooth decay. 6:44 Make sense? 6:45 So that's what we're trying to battle. 6:46 So let's talk about some of the healthy foods in quotations that may actually be damaging to your teeth if not used correctly. 6:54 The first one is that citrus fruit that I just talked about. 6:57 A lot of people recommend drinking, you know, warm water with some lemon juice in the morning. 7:02 I also recommend the exact same thing. 7:04 So some people say, well, if it's good in the morning, it's good all day long too. 7:07 I'm going to just add a lemon to all of my water that I drink throughout the day. 7:11 that can be particularly damaging because it's constantly exposing your teeth to that high acid level. 7:17 And citrus fruit is right on the same level of acidity as battery acid. 7:21 This can be extremely damaging to the teeth. 7:23 Make sure when you're doing it, you're doing it first thing in the morning and then you're done with it. 7:26 And don't brush directly after drinking that citrus fruit beverage. 7:30 You need to brush before or give your mouth about 20 to 30 minutes to regulate and let that acid go away before you brush. 7:37 Otherwise, your teeth are literally soft. 7:39 after that acid exposure. 7:41 The next one is smoothies. 7:42 A lot of smoothies have a lot of fruit in them that may also be acidic. 7:46 So same rules go there. 7:48 You should not be drinking fruit smoothies all day long and you should not brush directly after them because your teeth are going to be softer. 7:55 Fruit, same thing. 7:57 So fruit is great. 7:58 I love fruit. 7:59 Fruit is full of antioxidants and minerals and vitamins and all the things we love. 8:03 But it should not be something that you're snacking on all day long. 8:07 Every single time you put food into your mouth, no matter what the food is, it's going to drop the acid level. 8:12 So basically your mouth will become more acidic. 8:15 your teeth will become softer. 8:17 They will be more prone to dissolving and those minerals dissolving. 8:20 So fruit all day long is constantly dropping that acid level. 8:24 Everything is becoming more acidic and you're going to dissolve your teeth. 8:28 Same thing goes with healthy bars like healthy granolas, dried fruit, all those things. 8:33 When they're in your mouth, they're gonna create a sticky, sugary environment, even granola, that's a sugar. 8:40 And if you do it constantly, just constantly tossing a few in your mouth, you're never giving your mouth a chance to recover from that acid sugar attack, 8:49 and you are going to get more tooth decay. 8:51 The last one is kombucha and other vinegary-based things. 8:54 I love kombucha myself. 8:56 There's a lot of other ferments that are actually acidic as well. 9:00 Same rules go. 9:02 These are fine for you, but not nonstop throughout the day, constantly sipping, constantly snacking. 9:08 It's the frequency that's the problem. 9:10 So to minimize damage with these foods, what are you going to do? 9:13 You're going to give your mouth a break. 9:14 Use a straw to get it past your teeth if you're sipping them. 9:18 give your mouth a chance to recover we really should be taking 30 minutes to an hour to two hours between snacking to let that acid level come back up 9:28 again basically so your mouth becomes more alkaline more basic teeth are able to pull more minerals in and everything equalizes.
How to Protect Teeth and Remineralize 9:35 It's just about frequency. 9:38 Avoid the things that are particularly damaging and just don't do them all the time, even for those health foods. 9:44 There are some things you can do from a proactive standpoint to help make your teeth even a little bit more acid resistant, 9:50 and that is to build up the mineral layers and the mineral levels in the teeth. 9:55 How do you do that? 9:56 With remineralizing products. 9:58 So you're gonna use hydroxyapatite products when you're brushing your teeth, so toothpaste, tooth powder, mouthwash, all of those things, 10:05 as well as mints. 10:06 You might, if you're going to, you know, pop a mint in your mouth, pop in a hydroxy appetite one. 10:11 What is it going to do? 10:12 It's going to rebuild the teeth while you're snacking. 10:15 What a novel concept. 10:17 So really making your teeth strong and resistant is also going to help during those times when obviously we have to eat food. 10:25 So this is really important just to make your teeth cavity proof. 10:28 How about when diet isn't enough? 10:30 What if you're still getting cavities? 10:32 Well, this is when it's time to visit the dentist and a biologic or holistic dentist is the best because we look at it and we say, 10:38 you're still getting cavities. 10:39 Talk to me about what you're eating. 10:40 Talk to me about what you're drinking. 10:42 We try to find holes or missing pieces that you may not have identified. 10:46 We take care of the decay that's there currently or the disease that's there currently. 10:50 And then we work with you to never have to get back to that spot again. 10:54 So I want you now to look at your diet and think, How am I snacking? 10:59 What am I snacking on? 11:00 What are my go-tos? 11:01 Are any of these things on the do not list? 11:04 Have I been adding things that are on the do list? 11:06 How can I strengthen my teeth from the inside out through diet? 11:10 If you want a free guide with all the do's and don'ts that I've discussed in this video, go to the link in the comments, 11:15 grab our free guide if you want that printable list. 11:18 And please, if you like the information that we're sharing, make sure to like this, subscribe, lots of information coming out every single week. 11:26 because my mission is to simply help you live well and that includes being able to keep your mouth and teeth healthy.
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