Understanding the root cause of tooth decay and gum disease

You aren’t satisfied with the generally-recognized-as-true stories from our culture like,

“I get cavities because I don’t brush and floss enough”

Like us, you don’t settle for the ‘official’ story, and instead seek to find the root cause.

When you really take a close look at the research, the root cause that provokes the breakdown in oral health and leads to tooth decay and gum disease tends to be an imbalance of the oral micro biome, what we call the ‘oral flora’.

Along this line, recent articles on ‘How to Balance Your Oral Flora’ and “Do Some Plaques Actually Help Our Teeth Stay Healthy?” created quite a stir in our readers.

So, continuing along this path, today let’s explore how we can cause harm in our mouths if we approach our oral health strictly from a chemistry-based strategy and forget that the mouth is first and foremost a biological community.

 

How studying soil science helped shape OraWellness

Before OraWellness was ‘born’, I spent a number of years studying soil science.

In particular, I was fascinated with the work of Dr Elaine Ingham, a soil scientist who had devoted her life to understanding the complex world of soil biology.

I was amazed how we could care for the needs of the organisms in the soil to make massive positive impact in the health of the plants growing in that soil.

Two gems stand out from my studies of soil science:

1. The soil is a medium, a terrain that is a complex of chemistry and biology.

2. When seeking which is of primary importance, chemistry or biology, biology trumps every time.

Yeah, chemistry in the soil is important, but the research overwhelmingly shows that biology controls the chemistry in an environment like soil.

 

The shortcomings of a ‘chemistry first’ approach…

It’s interesting to note that after 60 years of our culture being sold the wonders of ‘better living through chemistry’ (and the resulting soup of pesticides and herbicides on our food that we have to contend with now), science is now coming to realize that we’ve been treating the soil (which is a biological matrix) as only a chemical medium.

Approaching agriculture through the mindset of only chemistry has proven shortsighted as much of the chemistry used in agriculture disrupts healthy biology in the soil.

The problem is if we treat a biological terrain only as a chemical matrix, we overlook the primary importance that biology plays in creating and maintaining a healthy environment.

Oftentimes, this results in sacrificing long term health for short term gains.

 

Waking up to the biology of the mouth…

Several years ago, I had an epiphany.

It dawned on me that the mouth is ‘just’ another terrain like soil.

I realized that we could be ‘a conductor for the symphony in our mouths’ just like we can be a conductor for the symphony in the soil.  I had accidentally stumbled upon what we now know as the various micro biomes of the human body.

From this epiphany, I shifted my research to the premise that we can create optimal oral health if we:

1. Support a healthy balance of biology in the mouth

2. Provide the chemistry necessary to optimally support the system

To illustrate how biology trumps chemistry, let’s take a look at a very common oral health issue and a common strategy used to address the issue.

 

How biology trumps chemistry in the mouth…

One of the major ‘problems’ identified by modern dentistry are mature plaque formations, what we know as tartar or calculus.

Like we explained in a previous article on plaque, as plaque matures, the species of microbes (biology) change from good bugs to an environment dominated by microbes that really don’t have any good place in a healthy mouth.  At the risk of being overly simplistic, we call these microbes in mature plaque formations ‘thug bugs’.

Part of what these mature plaque colonies do is build ‘fortresses’ to protect themselves from being disrupted and disorganized by us!

And what do the thug bugs use to build their protective fortresses?

Minerals from our saliva.

These thug bugs steal minerals from our saliva to build their fortresses.

It’s important to realize that these minerals are in our saliva to provide the necessary minerals to remineralize any decaying surface enamel.

And with one easy move, the unhealthy biology in our mouths does double damage.  They stop minerals from being used to remineralize our teeth while they build fortresses to protect their efforts to undermine our health.

Biology trumps chemistry.

 

What happens if we approach this biological imbalance from a chemistry-only standpoint?

Well, a customer/friend, Jonathan, recently emailed us about one such ingredient used in many commercial oral hygiene products (in the spirit of keeping ‘solution oriented’, we have chosen to not call out this ingredient).  The strategy and logic behind using this ingredient looks to reduce plaque formation on teeth by making the minerals in our saliva unavailable.

That way, the thug bugs don’t have the raw materials to build their fortresses.

Of course, making the minerals unavailable for thug bugs also means that the minerals aren’t available to repair surface remineralization, too.

This is what happens when we treat a biological/chemical complex strictly with a chemical strategy; we end up throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Bottom line, to have a healthy mouth and be rid of tooth decay and gum disease, we must keep well aware that the mouth is alive, host to a diverse community of organisms.

To create lasting change, we must approach balancing our oral flora with the awareness of the biological nature of the oral micro biome.

 

That’s why we like our HealThy Mouth Blend so much

Formulated from the awareness that the mouth is a living community, the HealThy Mouth Blend looks to help restore balance in an oral micro biome that’s overrun with ‘hoodlum’ microbes by specifically targeting certain pathogenic microbes.  That’s why, for example, our blend helps so much to stop bleeding gums, a very common sign of gum disease.

Another helpful strategy that the HealThy Mouth Blend utilizes is a special function called ‘adhesion inhibition’.

Adhesion inhibition means that using our HealThy Mouth Blend makes it more difficult for mature plaque formations to form on our teeth.  Helping to keep early plaque formations from growing into mature tartar is critically important to win the long game in oral health.

A third important benefit of our blend is an increase of saliva production.

Increased saliva not only provides plenty of minerals to remineralize surface decay and fight thug bugs, more saliva also provides the environment for ample healthy biology to colonize the mouth.

That’s being a good conductor of the symphony in our mouths…

Helping to establish a balanced oral flora, inhibiting the thug bugs’ ability to adhere to our teeth and build their fortresses while providing an increase in saliva to restore and support the robust ecosystem that our mouths are.

So, be a kind conductor of the symphony in your mouth.  Stop the chemical warfare approach.  Start treating the mouth as the critically important ‘gateway to the whole body’ that it is by balancing your oral flora.

Was this helpful for you?  Please let us know in the comments below.

To gain a complete understanding how to stop tooth decay and reverse cavities, feel free to download our FREE resource guide, “How to Remineralize Your Teeth”.

And, if you have active periodontal disease and you’d like to learn about a kit that can help you address periodontal-disease-causing microbes from the comfort of your own home, you can read about our HealThy Mouth System here.

Helpful, Related Resources:

5 Steps to a Healthy Mouth [free video tutorial series]
How to Balance Your Oral Flora [article]
Can Some Plaques Actually Help Our Teeth Stay Healthy? [article]
HealThy Mouth Blend [product solution]
HealThy Mouth System [product solution]