let’s talk oral care 😁🪥✨
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Did you know we can heal a cavity? I certainly did not, but when I got my first cavity a couple years ago, I had a gut feeling something was amiss and was stunned the deeper I dove down the oral care rabbit hole…🫣😰😬 and now, I personally feel a strong resonance with being a holistic oral care ambassador. None of us want to deal with any avoidable oral care nightmares! Especially ones that have additional implications linked to our overall health…
As is true with maintaining whole body health, where it’s all about protecting our microbiome, the balance of our oral health is dependent on the state of our oral ecology, aka our ORAL microbiome. In order to maintain or improve the brilliant symphony of our oral health, we need to avoid the laundry list of modern chemicals that kill off the beautiful, and inherently critical, balance of our mouth. My mind was blown upon reading Nadine Artemis’ book, Holistic Dental Care: The Complete Guide to Healthy Teeth and Gums, where she references how we need to ultimately focus our efforts to “feed our teeth and gums”. Ms. Artemis is the leader in both holistic dental care, as well as all things holistic beauty, including being the founder and owner of my absolute favorite renegade beauty brand, Living Libations. Naturally, she also penned the quintessential book on oral health, one that quickly shook all of my preconceived notions around dental care. Please do not punish yourself with any guilt over having maintained a routine that has employed the golden standards of a “modern medicine” with a oral health regime up to this point that included brushing daily with Crest toothpaste and flossing with Glide, while still managing to experience a sprinkling of dental faux paux fas. It’s not your fault. It’s marketing, deeply embedded in our dental and pharmaceutical system, and “we did the best we could without knowing the whole story” — as quoted from Artemis’ book in this fabulous article and oral care breakdown by The Fullest founder and likeminded wellness enthusiast, Nikki Bostick. With an open mind, you can have your world rocked, your teeth shining daily like you-just-left-the-dentist level clean, and your overall health immediately elevated (as per the school of biological dentistry, all disease is believed to begin in the mouth) upon diving into Artemis’ wisdom. I’d encourage rereading and/or replaying sections of the book multiple times. It’s dense with truly radical and liberating beams of information that are virtually impossible to absorb in one fell skim.
The following are just 5 of my takeaways:
1️⃣ TREAT THE SYMPTOM NOT SOURCE: Artemis beautifully describes this cycle best and mic drops a terrifying statistic I certainly want to avoid as follows: “The system of treating symptoms creates a perpetual loop of appointments, medications, surgeries, scaling, bridges, crowns, and fillings that never question or fix the core underlying causes of the imbalance. Treating the decay instead of correcting the sources may explain the statistic that 90% of 60 year olds have 63% of their teeth missing, filled, or decayed.”
2️⃣ OUR TEETH ARE ALIVE: There is a constant microbial flow that runs through our teeth, beginning at our intestines, which Artemis refers to as vital “dental fluid.”
3️⃣ ORAL MERIDIANS: Our mouth is an ecosystem with pathways linked to each organs within our bodies. The mouth is not only not separate from the body, it provides a map to the whole body, reinforcing the notion that we can’t simply treat symptoms, we really must determine the root cause…🦷 Again from Holistic Dental Care: The Complete Guide to Healthy Teeth and Gums, “Dr. Reinhard Voll estimated that 80% of all illness is related to decay in the mouth….He reasons that since teeth are connected to every organ and gland within the bloodstream, anything the mouth harbors affects our overall health.” There is even a clear brain-mouth connection!
4️⃣ FLUORIDE: There are shocking links to a plethora of problems, including fluoride taking the place of calcium in bones and teeth, possibly reducing IQ and even osteoarthritis. As per the Living Libations May Be Harmful If Swallowed write up on their site: “1. Contrary to marketing madness, tooth decay is not caused by fluoride deficiency! The United States EPA has fluoride on its "substantial evidence of neurotoxicity" list. Fluoride appears to interfere with critical, bodily chemistry; damaging gums, disrupting collagen production and reducing enzyme activity. Studies have found that fluoride accumulates in the body, especially in the pineal gland, lowers IQ, forms deposits in the brain related to Alzheimer’s, promotes early-onset puberty, and the list goes on and on.”
5️⃣ SALIVA: Our saliva is so vital because it re-enamelizes our teeth. Artemis refers to it as “the invisible toothbrush” and balancing the perfect ph of our saliva enables this.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES I FOUND HELPFUL ⬇️
✅ The 8 Steps to successful self-dentistry: HERE you can watch a quick and awesomely informative video with Canadian nutritionist, Joy, who talks about the oral microbiome, chemicals to avoid and products she recommends.
And in case you haven’t already realized, I am a massive fan of Nadine Artemis’ work. She’s unquestionably eccentric, but the best always are and she’s simply the greatest wealth of holistic dental knowledge. Get to know her a bit more via the following:
➡️ A cool, older video with the Bulletproof founder, Dave Asprey, and Nadine Artemis…talking about ozone, how our mouth breeds bacteria when oral microbiome (aka “the soil of our mouths”…which I just love) is unbalanced, how we hurt our enamel, and also have a reference to why we maybe we wouldn’t want titanium implanted in our body…”the marriage of microbes in metal” and the impact on our white blood cells…https://youtu.be/2PRvFluEG0I?feature=shared
➡️ Another interesting video with Ms Artemis, you can jump to 17:50…talking root cause, biofilms inhibit teeth, how glycerine coats teeth and blocks saliva from doing its job, why “minty fresh” doesn’t deal with anything, tongue scraping importance…https://youtu.be/v1ISHObwKYw?feature=shared
➡️ And finally, a quick blurb on who Nadine Artemis is and a high level look at the LL products (I also love the Frankincense Toothpaste for Sensitive Teeth)… https://www.rootandbones.com/blogs/news/renegade-beauty-holistic-oral-health
3 awesome additional resources from Living Libations:
1️⃣ https://livinglibations.com/pages/optimized-oral-care
2️⃣ https://livinglibations.com/pages/the-mouth-s-microbial-menagerie-biotic-oral-care
3️⃣ https://livinglibations.com/pages/may-be-harmful-if-swallowed
And below you’ll find some products I swear by! ⬇️🤩😁
IMAGE 1: LIVING LIBATIONS TRIPLE MINT TOOTHPASTE + HAPPY GUM DROPS
IMAGE 2: COCOFLOSS DENTAL FLOSS
IMAGE 3: RISEWELL BALANCING MOUTHWASH
IMAGE 4: LIVING LIBATIONS FRANKINCENSE SENSITIVE TOOTHPASTE
IMAGE 5: RISEWELL MINERAL TOOTHPASTE
IMAGE 6: RISEWELL BAMBOO TOOTHBRUSH (great for travel, toss all those plastic brushes for anything aside from cleaning the shower) + STAINLESS STEEL TOUNGE SCRAPER (I know there’s a school that loves copper, but I try to avoid overdoing the copper myself and find the stainless steel easiest to maintain)
IMAGE 7: BOKA TOOTHPASTE
IMAGE 8 (last but not least, perhaps my favorite product!): LIVING LIBATIONS HAPPY GUM DROPS SWISHING OIL (for oil pulling)
NOT PICTURED BUT AMAZING: LIVING LIBATIONS SONIC SHINE TOOTHBRUSH (which I swear is a level up from my Sonicare) and their OZONATED GUM GEL (which can be used in place of the HAPPY GUM DROPS) 🏆🌟
CLICK PHOTO ON FAR RIGHT TO SEE ADDITIONAL IMAGES >
