The Shocking Truth About Cavities: Why Brushing Isn’t Enough (and How to Stop Tooth Decay Naturally)

Why Cavities Keep Coming Back 0:00

Have you ever felt like you keep getting cavities no matter how much you brush your floss? Well, you're not alone in this frustration. And the reason why may actually be surprising. Rampant tooth decay or getting more than one cavity at once is really a whole body problem, and some of the answers may be much deeper than you ever thought. Have you ever had more than one cavity when you go to the dentist? Tell us in the comments about it. What answers did they have for you? Most likely, not a lot, because brushing and flossing is all we've been told contributes to cavities.

Let's talk about this. So rampant tooth decay, that's when you get more than one cavity at a time. Tooth decay happens when the pH in your mouth or the acid level in your mouth drops below level 5.5. Neutral is seven. Anything lower than that is more acidic. So this is an acidic pH. Well, how does the mouth get that way? One way is through the foods and the drinks that we drink. So if you're drinking a lot of very acidic sodas or energy drinks, your mouth is going to be naturally more acidic.

How Acid and Strep Mutans Cause Decay 1:12

but a lot of the time this is due to bacteria in the mouth. So one of the most cavity causing bacteria is called strep mutans. Now strep mutans, it is really great at causing cavities for a few different reasons. First of all, it loves sugar so what it does is it can consume all different kinds of sugar glucose sucrose fructose all the different kinds of sugars it loves them and it metabolizes it very quickly once it eats sugar this bacteria excretes acid So, it eats the sugar, it excretes acid, now your mouth is more acidic.

But here's some of its other superpowers. It creates a very sticky plaque on the teeth, especially after it's eaten sugar. It creates this real sticky, almost gelatin material that stays in place on the tooth. That's one reason it's great. Another reason it's great at causing cavities is because it can survive in really acidic situations. So it's creating all this acid and it can keep doing it. Whereas sometimes that acid will kill off other bacteria. It's also really competitive. So it pushes other bacteria out.

In fact, some of the bacteria that help to neutralize the pH Strep mutans can battle it out with them. The last thing it does is it actually can survive really well deeper into the layers of the tooth, which is why often rapidly progressing cavities have a large amount of strep mutans, because it can actually crawl into what are called the dentinal tubules and can survive there, still eat the sugar, still create acid. So what happens with this acid? What it does is once it drops below 5.5, it starts to dissolve hydroxyapatite.

What is hydroxyapatite? That's simply the mineral complex that your teeth are made of. So when you smile, You're looking at hydroxyapatite. It starts to break it down. Magnesium and calcium ions start coming out of these complexes and they start to be dissolved in the saliva down the hatch they go. So now you have very porous teeth and then the bacteria crawl in. They keep the process going.

Microbiome, Diet, and Saliva Factors 3:36

So the solution is not just brushing more. Now, sure, that's going to help some, right? It's going to help get off that sticky plaque. But this acid is really the bigger issue. And that acid could be contributed by so many different things in the body. So let's go through this a little bit. Research shows that there are multiple things that contribute to your teeth actually staying strong, resisting the acid attack, or dissolving and leading to tooth decay. The first one is the microbiome. That's what we've been discussing.

So which bugs are actually living in your mouth? And what can you do about it? Obviously, brushing is very important, but also the products you use is very important. So one of the things you might want to look for is a prebiotic that actually feeds the good bacteria, the ones that are going to manage the acid levels and starves off the strep mutans. There are prebiotics. We have a couple of products. Actually, I developed a couple of products that have a prebiotic that do exactly this. Now you see why that's so important.

You also don't want to use products that have high alcohol content, triclosan, things like that that are going to kill off every bacteria. Why? Because if everything's dead, what's going to come back first and start to thrive? Strep mutans. So the more you're using some of those alcohol containing or disinfectant containing products, the more you're going to allow strep mutans to flourish. It's really an interesting balance that you have to keep in mind. Some of the sweeteners in foods but also dental products also can contribute.

This is why we use xylitol. Xylitol, strep mutans can't eat it, so they start to starve. Whereas others can, they can do better in the environment with xylitol. So other reasons to think about which bugs are growing there. Your diet is so important. We also talked about things like sodas and energy drinks and even things like Gatorade are very, very acidic. Remember, if your mouth stays acidic, that hydroxyapatite starts to dissolve. Now your body has an inborn mechanism to help balance this out and it's called your saliva.

If your saliva has minerals in it to deliver, it can also dilute out the acid in the mouth. So it's really important that you have good saliva flow. There's things, unfortunately, that really do affect the saliva flow, medications, different, just even stressors in your life can affect this. But also it's important that there's minerals in the body for the saliva to deliver to the tooth. So that's why gut health and nutrients are so important, because how do we get those minerals into the saliva?

Well, it has to come through us, through the food that we eat, into the gut. The gut has to actually be working in a way that those nutrients can be absorbed from the gut, put into the bloodstream, to then make it back to the tooth, to the saliva. So gut health is incredibly important for keeping the teeth healthy. If you don't have good tooth health, This is a warning sign that you probably don't have good gut health also. The last thing is systemic health. This systemic health piece is going to affect you both directions.

So the first is that if you are really struggling with things like diabetes, that's going to affect your saliva flow.

Pregnancy Story and Remineralization Plan 7:00

If you are struggling with things like gut health, it's going to affect whether you get enough nutrients in. Can you see the connections between mouth health and systemic health. It also goes the other way. So, oftentimes if your mouth isn't healthy, it can lead to gut health issues. If you have an overgrowth of bad bacteria in the mouth, it can contribute to an overgrowth of those same things in the gut. That then is going to get into the bloodstream, which is then going to get to the organs. This is the organs, the joints, this is where chronic inflammation comes from and how it's related to the mouth.

So can you see how there's so many different things that go into taking care of your teeth that actually have nothing to do with brushing? Now it can get a little overwhelming. So we're going to go through step-by-step how to tackle this, but let me share a little story with you first. So Sarah was one of my very first babysitters that we had that took care of my kids. She was so much fun my kids absolutely loved her but she was really embarrassed when she found out i was a dentist because she said i have the worst teeth like literally the worst teeth she had actually been really interested in having a baby of her own she was newly married and wanted to have a baby but she said i've heard that when women are pregnant, it really takes a toll on their teeth.

And she said, my teeth are already so bad. I don't know how this is gonna work for me. That's a systemic thing we didn't even talk about. Oftentimes, if the body isn't getting enough nutrients through the gut, there's not enough nutrients for the baby to grow and for the teeth to stay healthy. So oftentimes we'll see worsening tooth decay in pregnant or nursing women. simply because there's not enough to go around. So we knew for Sarah that we needed to fix these issues before she thought about getting pregnant.

So we started working on things, started working on her gut health, started working on her diet. She already knew a lot about that, but started changing just a few little things like lemon water. She heard lemon water was great. She was drinking it all day long. It's very acidic, literally down into the 2.0 pH. Remember 5.5 and lower is where tooth decay happens. Lemon water is way over here. So you cannot be bathing your teeth in those kinds of acidic things and not expect that you're going to get tooth decay.

You are. But there were other things she was working so hard to keep her teeth clean. So we knew this was gut related and nutrient based. So I started teaching her how to put minerals back into her teeth and how to neutralize those acids. A couple of things we started adding was hydroxyapatite. Remember, we use those words. That is the mineral that's dissolving at 5.5 and under. you can put it back. When it dissolves, we need to add those minerals right back into the tooth. So I like to do minerals on the outside, which is a hydroxyapatite containing product, either a tooth powder, a toothpaste, a mouthwash, a mint.

I have all of these things that can add it on the outside and then on the inside. Remember, it has to go through the gut as well. To be able to really metabolize things well or these minerals well, you have to have vitamin D3 and vitamin K2. So we started her supplementing vitamin D3, vitamin K2, along with my tooth bone formula, which has calcium, magnesium, all of these things that teeth need to be healthy. Now here's one of the cool things. If she started supplementing early before pregnancy, she was going to have enough in her system to take care of the baby, ensure that the baby's development is good, as well as herself.

And it can make a difference. And this is what we found in her. So I saw her for an exam. She had three or four cavities, devastated again. She said, literally, I've never been to the dentist without a cavity. I said, next time, next time it's gonna happen. I can feel this for you. So she said, I don't believe it. I don't think it's possible. She went home, she started trying everything we taught. She was supplementing with vitamin D3K2. She was doing the tooth bone formula. She started using hydroxyapatite products on the outside.

She started being really conscious about her acid intake and when she was brushing all of these things. She came back in six months and she was just kind of, you know, holding her breath the whole time we did the exam. And I sat her up and I said, no new cavities. And I wasn't even making it up, you know, just for her sake. I said, no, really, really there are no new cavities. And she started to cry.

Preventing Cavities with pH, Minerals, and Checkups 11:24

She said, this is the first exam I've ever had where I've heard those words before. And she's continued even through, I think she's had three babies by now, even through pregnancies, she's been able to maintain because she finally understood the keys. And what are they? Let's go back through them. Diet is so incredibly important. diet thinking about two things we want mineral rich foods but we also want to limit the acidic foods and this is something that's really important when you drink something acidic or even let's say you throw up and it's very very acidic sometimes pregnant ladies have this happening the worst time to brush is after that acidic food so if you drink lemon water in the morning the worst time to brush is right after why because that acid has started to dissolve the minerals in the hydroxyapatite remember this now your toothbrush comes across and brushes them away It's actually not a great idea to brush right after a meal.

Why? Because when you've eaten, it has lowered the pH in the mouth, dropped it down to this level because those bacteria are consuming the food in the mouth, saliva levels are decreasing. You need to give your mouth about 30 minutes to neutralize again, to balance again, let the saliva levels come up again, remineralize before you're brushing. So she started incorporating some of these things. But diet is really important. You've got to get the minerals in. if your body expects to remineralize and put them back in.

Nutrients. You actually have to have the correct nutrients. Again, it's the vitamin D3K2 and those minerals. There's no way we can rebuild a tooth unless we have the things that a tooth is made of. It's just common sense when you start to think about it. The third is pH and saliva. We've talked a lot about that. How do we make sure that we're managing that? Well, the first is let's not eat a lot of sucrose, glucose, and fructose. Those are all the sugars that strep mutans loves. That's a huge one and we all know it, right?

Our moms told us this, but it's also important to think about what's in your tooth care products. What's in the mints maybe that you're popping in your mouth for fresh breath, all those kinds of things. Xylitol is actually the preferred one in that because it's going to starve out the strep mutans. They're not going to be able to flourish if they don't have their preferred food. pH, make sure you're watching things like acidic drinks. How often are you drinking them? I tell people, you know what?

Drink it first thing in the morning and be done with it. If you're doing lemon water, don't keep sipping on it throughout the day. Every time you sip, you drop the pH again and you get down into this danger zone every single time. You've got to make sure there's enough time for the saliva to balance things out. There are also alkaline foods that you can have. even alkaline water that you can use. So these are things to maintain pH and saliva levels. Remineralize, we've talked about that. That's all about the hydroxyapatite on the outside, minerals and vitamins on the inside, and then checkups.

Come to visit us at the dentist. People joke all the time. They say, oh, if you eradicate tooth decay, if you get rid of it completely, you're going to be out of a job. I say, no, there's plenty to do even if there's no tooth decay. My dream is that we do eradicate tooth decay. and understanding what causes it is the first step to this. So hopefully you've learned some things and you feel empowered to actually take charge of your own oral health. to be able to stop tooth decay, be able to stop this cycle of rampant tooth decay, to be able to get that dental exam that you've always dreamed of of, no cavities.

It's possible and it's wonderful when it happens. So if you've learned something that you didn't know about before, please share this video, give us a like, subscribe. This is the kind of information that I am here sharing every single week, week in and week out. And I am so glad you're here because Your oral health doesn't just affect your teeth. It affects all of you head to toe and you cannot be completely healthy if your mouth isn't healthy. So let's work to get our mouths healthy so that we can be healthy head to toe.

We're here just to help you have better health top to bottom.