What Causes Cavities? Why Most Dentists Get It Wrong

Introduction to Cavities and Misconceptions 0:00

Over 90% of adults have had a cavity, but what if the way we treat them is all wrong? Think it's all about sugar? Well, you may think again. Let's get into this a little bit. Today I'm going to talk about what the real cause of cavities is, and sugar may be part of it, who discovered this, what we can learn from him, and what we do today to prevent tooth decay from a whole bunch of different directions. So first of all let's talk about really how this whole concept of what causes cavities how it came to be.

There was a big consortium of a bunch of researchers that got together in the 1930s 1940s and they wanted to decide once and for all what cavities were from what caused cavities. So three different researchers came and presented what they'd found. Number one, the first doctor talked about cavities being from acid in the mouth.

How Cavities Were Defined in Early Research 0:52

Bacteria eat sugar, they create acid, and it creates a cavity. The second one was a doctor named Dr. Weston Price, and he had researched how nutrition affected tooth health. And the third was a Dr. Melvin Page that talked about how hormone levels affected tooth health. And the vote went to the first one, that bacteria eating sugar create acid, which leads to cavities. And that's the one you know about. That's the one we all know about, right? If you eat sugar, you get cavities. Well, How about these other two stories?

Let's talk about those a little bit. You know, this really hits home for me when I'm visiting with patients that have a clean mouth and still they have cavities and they're so frustrated. They say literally every time I go to the dentist, I have another couple of cavities and I don't know why. And I look in their mouth and I don't know why because their mouths are clean. They do take care of their teeth. So one particularly poignant example was a young girl. She was 17 years old. She actually had gone to college early.

She was brilliant, had gone to college a year early. So she'd been living away from home. And at college, she'd gone to visit a dentist there. And they told her that she had 16 cavities. Mom was absolutely livid, furious, said, oh my gosh, I can't believe that this dentist would be taking advantage of my daughter,

Why Clean Teeth Can Still Develop Cavities 2:12

telling her she has all of these cavities. So she brought her to me, we took x-rays, and guess what I found? She actually didn't have 16 cavities, she had 17. Both she and her daughter were completely devastated. What are you talking about? Why? What is going on? Well, this story really combines both Dr. Price and Dr. Page together and explains why you can have clean teeth and still get tooth decay. We'll also get into how to prevent it, how to prevent all of these things. So Dr. Price, he started studying Indigenous societies, which are basically places that still were eating the diet of their ancestors.

And he started traveling around the world. He spent 10 years doing this. And he would study what were people eating and what was their health like, not only their mouth health, but their overall health. and he cataloged all of this information and said, okay, can I put my finger on what leads to good health? Not only just tooth health, but overall health. And he found that those that had better mouth, tooth and overall health were eating 10 times the amount of fat soluble vitamins than people were in the

Weston Price and Nutritional Tooth Health 3:25

United States at that time. This was in the 1930s. So what are fat soluble vitamins? They're vitamins A, D3, K2 and E. Now, he didn't know what vitamin K2 was called. At that time, there was no name for it, so he called it Factor X. It's actually vitamin K2. He found that people were eating 10 times the amount of these vitamins. And what did it show up as? Better health. Better mouth health. Better overall health. It was incredible. So he came back and honestly, his findings have been populating a lot of the nutrition advice and functional medicine since the 1930s because what he found hasn't been disputed.

He was right. So there is absolutely a nutritional component to keeping your teeth well. He also found that people were eating many more minerals. So minerals combined with these fat soluble vitamins. And what science has continued to now find is that particularly vitamin D3 grabs these minerals out of circulation and vitamin K2 puts them into the cell where they belong. So without those two vitamins in particular, teeth have a much harder time staying mineralized. and staying well. So that's factor number one.

Factor number two is that the body is very much a collaborative environment. So every organ is talking to other organ systems and saying, I need this over here. I need this over here. I'm deficient over here. So if the body is deficient in minerals in particular to do things that are essential to life like beating the heart, having the brain fire correctly,

Minerals, Hormones, and Tooth Decay 5:00

all of these things. If the body is deficient in minerals, it will go and find them. Especially if the gut isn't working properly and it's not absorbing enough or if honestly the diet just doesn't have enough minerals to begin with. The body will go seek them out. guess what a great source of minerals is? Your teeth and your bones, both. So if the body doesn't have enough to take care of its essential functions, it will go and steal minerals from the teeth and the bones. So now let's plug this into Dr.

Melvin Page's research and say, does this have anything to do with the hormone connection? And I believe the answer is absolutely yes, because let's go back to the 17 year old little girl. What was happening at 17 years old in her body? she'd gone through puberty which was a huge hormonal shift she was also still growing and most likely because she's 17 and in college she was probably stressed out not eating as well as she had been at home not sleeping as well as she had been at home all of these things probably not providing her body with the things that need it so body's still growing hormones are all over the place And she's not really giving her body what it needs to take care of itself through this time.

So her body's saying, all right, my hormones are telling me I've got to grow bones, but I don't have the minerals necessary to do it. So what am I going to do? I'm going to go find them. Where did it find them? in her teeth, thus 17 cavities, literally 17 cavities because her body needed the minerals that her teeth held. This is the reason the hormone change often leads to increase in tooth decay. Pregnancy, it's another time where so many moms will say, well, this crown right here was from this child and this root canal was from this child.

And they can literally name their crowns and the root canals from their children because during pregnancy, the mom's growing a baby.

Remineralization Strategies Inside and Outside the Body 7:00

It has teeth, it has bones, it has a high need for minerals. Again, if mom doesn't have enough, what's gonna happen? Body's gonna go find minerals wherever it can find them and the teeth are a great source of this. So hormone change times often line up with high mineral demand times. So we're gonna see increase in tooth decay when there's higher minerals in demand. puberty, pregnancy, sometimes older age as well. This is really important to understand. Cavities aren't just because of sugar. They're because your body's not getting what it needs.

So how do you figure out what it needs and if this is the case? Well, you're going to go and test your gut function. You're going to go and increase your vitamin and mineral levels. You're going to see if this makes a difference. So I have an entire remineralization kit just for this. It's vitamin D3 and K2 combined with tooth specific minerals that help to build teeth and bones. These two things are minerals on the inside. you then add minerals on the outside. This is with our hydroxyapatite tooth care products.

Whether it is the tooth powder, the toothpaste, the mouthwash, the mints, all of them have hydroxyapatite in them. Minerals on the outside, minerals on the inside with a remineralization kit. This should overcome demands that the body has for minerals that you're not supplying. So if this is you. If you've always had cavities, even if you brush your teeth, even if your teeth are clean, even if you're doing everything you possibly know to do at home, then this is a mineral problem. Pay attention to Dr.

Price and Dr. Page. This means your body does not have enough of what it needs. So what can you do? you're going to do what I just said you're going to add minerals on the inside you're going to add minerals on the outside and so many of my patients have come back sometimes in tears and said this is the first exam that I've ever had without a cavity or I don't remember a time since I was 13 when I didn't have a cavity and I came from my cleaning this can be you too cavities aren't all about sugar they're about what your body needs so provide your body what

Practical Takeaways for Preventing Cavities 9:00

it needs and it will keep you well. This is how our bodies work. They're pretty miraculous when we do our part as well. If this is information you're interested in, please subscribe. Make sure to keep coming back here. I will share how all your cells work and how you can keep your body well head to toe. And if you're interested in these products, check them out at livingwellofdrmichelle.com. Thank you. Let's keep you cavity free.