Are you concerned about tooth decay and looking for natural ways to protect your teeth? Good habits like brushing and flossing are essential, but they are the clean-up crew. The decay starts earlier, at the table.
Tooth decay occurs when acids produced by bacteria in your mouth erode your tooth enamel. Over time, this can lead to cavities, pain and even tooth loss. The bacteria make that acid from what we feed them, and for most of human history they got far less sugar and flour than they get now.
So the best natural remedy is not a rinse. It is a change in what reaches the bacteria, and how often. The popular remedies come after that, and some of them are better than others.
A disease of the modern plate
The cause took a long time to find. A Sumerian text from 5000 BC blames a "tooth worm", and the same belief turns up in India, Egypt, Japan and China. Not until the 1890s did W. D. Miller show that bacteria in the mouth make acid from sugars and starches, and that the acid dissolves teeth.
Plaque that is never brushed away hardens into tartar, and tartar keeps. On old skeletons, it holds a record of the bacteria that lived in the mouth.
When researchers read that record on 34 early European skeletons, they found two turning points. The first came with farming. As hunter-gatherers became farmers and grain filled the diet, the mouth's bacteria shifted towards a mix that goes with disease.
The second came much later. The bacteria that cause decay, now found in almost every mouth, took over around the Industrial Revolution, when processed flour and sugar became everyday food. The bacteria did not change their habits. They got a better menu.
Sugar reached the rich first, and their teeth showed it. Elizabeth I loved sweets, and late in her reign her teeth were badly decayed and many were gone. The French ambassador André Hurault de Maisse found them "very yellow and unequal", with so many missing that she was hard to follow when she spoke quickly. England was trading arms for Moroccan sugar at the time. Guns out, sugar in. Her teeth paid the duty.
Then it reached everyone. Decay rose sharply in the 19th century, when refined sugar and flour became cheap, and the diet of the new English industrial working class came to centre on bread, jam and sweetened tea.
In 1939, Weston Price published after travelling the world to study peoples still eating their traditional diets. He concluded that white flour, sugar and processed vegetable fats lay behind much of the dental disease of the modern world. The book got mixed reviews, and it is still argued over. Its central point, that the decay arrived with the new food, matches what the old plaque shows.
He also worried about crowded teeth, and old bones back him up on part of that. In 292 people from 21 ancient populations, farmers had smaller, reshaped jaws and smaller teeth. In hunter-gatherers, jaws and teeth still matched in size. In farmers that match was gone, which may be where crowded teeth began.
Modern mouths also carry fewer kinds of bacteria than old ones did. Our food is softer, sweeter and starchier, and the bacteria have moved in to match.
How often, not just how much
The sugar link was proved in a way no one would allow today.
From 1945, at Vipeholm, a hospital for people with intellectual disabilities in Lund, Sweden, 660 patients took part in experiments on diet and teeth, paid for partly by the sugar industry. For two years their diet was low in sugar. Then some groups were given sweet bread with their meals, and others were given toffees and caramels between meals, some made specially to stick to the teeth.
The sweet bread at mealtimes did little harm. The sweets between meals did the damage, and by 1949 about fifty of the patients had lost the use of their teeth entirely. The sugar industry did not like the results, and they were not published until 1953. The study is now held up as a lesson in what research must never do.
It left one practical lesson. Swedish children were better off eating their sweets once a week than spreading a smaller amount over every day, and the custom of lördagsgodis, Saturday sweets, is still kept in Sweden. One day of sweets, six days of peace for the enamel.
Every time sugar reaches the teeth, the bacteria make acid, and the enamel loses minerals for a while before saliva helps put them back. A day of snacks is a day without that recovery. Every snack restarts the clock. So reduce sugar, and starve the bacteria, but cut the number of hits first. Keep sweet things, if you have them, to mealtimes, and stop eating between meals. Why Snacking and Small Meals Can Sabotage Your Weight Loss has why two or three meals without snacks do better than six.
Saliva does the repair, so a dry mouth changes the odds. Without its protection, decay can move much faster and reach parts of the tooth it normally spares. Dry mouth is a common side effect of many medicines, and it is more common in older people and in those who breathe through the mouth. If your mouth is often dry, it is worth finding out why.
Small children need the same care. Decay at that age used to be called baby bottle tooth decay, or night bottle mouth, and the names tell you how it happens. A bottle of anything sweet at bedtime keeps sugar on the teeth all night.
10 Eye-Opening Benefits of Cutting Out Sugar, linked below, has how strongly sugar and decay go together across the world's studies. The Hidden Cost of Your Daily Sugary Drink, also linked below, has what one or two sugary drinks a day did to Finnish adults' teeth, and why the acid in drinks dissolves enamel even without the sugar.
Feed the teeth
Your diet plays a significant role in your oral health. Enamel and the bone that holds your teeth are built from calcium, phosphorus and magnesium, and vitamin D helps the body use them.
A century ago, May Mellanby, an English researcher, came to the same conclusion. She began studying diet and teeth for the Medical Research Council in 1918, and she came to recommend a diet high in vitamin D and low in cereals to help teeth resist decay.
When 24 controlled trials of vitamin D in 2,827 children were pooled, the children given vitamin D had about half as much new decay. Most of the trials were old, from before modern trial design, and the review called the evidence low certainty. It is a promising lead, not a closed case.
The foods that carry vitamin D are the ones a meat-first plate is built on: oily fish, egg yolks and liver. The plate that feeds you best feeds your teeth as well. Pairing these foods with calcium-rich ones helps the calcium do its job. Milk and the soft bones in tinned sardines carry calcium, and meat and fish bring the phosphorus. 7 Surprising Sources of Vitamin D3 You Need to Know for Better Health has the rest, and the one catch with liver.
Brush with something that protects
Food comes first, but brushing still matters, and what is on the brush matters too.
Good Hygiene: The Everyday Habits That Matter Most has the two toothpastes with the best record against decay: fluoride, or hydroxyapatite, the mineral that enamel is built from. A made with hydroxyapatite covers the second. A homemade paste of baking soda and coconut oil cleans gently and freshens the mouth, but it brings neither.
Practical Tips for Good Personal Hygiene Using Natural Products has the history of toothpaste, from ox-hoof ash to the jar, and why charcoal is the one natural ingredient to leave out.
Oil pulling, honestly
Oil pulling is an old Ayurvedic practice, in which you swish a spoonful of oil, often coconut or sesame, around the mouth and spit it out.
The claim is that the oil pulls toxins out of the teeth and gums. There is no evidence for that. When the trials were reviewed, there were five small ones, with 160 people between them, lasting from ten days to six weeks. Against ordinary brushing, a placebo or an antiseptic mouthwash, oil pulling did about as well as the comparison, and no better, but the trials were too small and too short to say much.
It seems harmless, though, and it costs little. If you do it, spit the oil into the bin, not the sink, because it can solidify and clog the pipes. Just do not let it replace the brush. Swish if you like. Brush regardless.
Rinses
Clove oil has the longest history. It is mostly eugenol, and in the late 1800s and early 1900s it was a common ingredient in European toothache remedies. A little on a sore tooth may ease the pain for a while. The evidence is thin, and a toothache means the tooth needs looking at, not just numbing.
Tea tree oil is the rinse to skip. Practical Tips for Good Personal Hygiene, linked above, has why: it is poisonous by mouth, and a rinse is easily swallowed. A mouthwash should not need a poison warning.
Strong antiseptic mouthwash is no better a habit. Good Hygiene has the people whose blood pressure rose within a day of using it twice daily, because it wipes out the mouth bacteria that help keep pressure down.
Two swaps to skip
Xylitol is often sold as the tooth-friendly sweetener, in gum and mints. The bacteria cannot feed on it, which is true, though the evidence for the gum itself is thin. 10 Eye-Opening Benefits of Cutting Out Sugar also has the people with the most xylitol in their blood, who had more heart attacks and strokes over the following years. That is a link, not proof, and it is enough to leave the gum on the shelf. Kind to the teeth and hard on the heart is no bargain. If you want saliva flowing, chew your food properly. A meal you have to chew does the job at the table.
Green tea gets a lot of credit for teeth. It also carries caffeine, and caffeine is a habit that is easy to start and hard to stop. Water is the better drink for your teeth, and it needs no help.
The gut and the mouth
The mouth is the first stretch of the gut, and the bacteria in it are part of the same story. Fermented foods such as and kefir bring live bacteria, and they come without added sugar. You do not need a supplement for this. You need fewer sugar hits, and food that nourishes you rather than the bacteria.
Starve the bacteria, feed the teeth
Preventing tooth decay doesn't have to rely solely on commercial dental products. The bacteria in those ancient mouths changed when the food changed. Yours answer to your food too.
Eat at mealtimes and stop between them. Build the plate on meat, fish and eggs. Brush with a toothpaste that protects. Keep the rinses simple, and skip the ones that do harm.
This week, keep anything sweet to mealtimes only, and notice how your mouth feels by the weekend.
Wondering what else sugar is doing? 10 Eye-Opening Benefits of Cutting Out Sugar and Choosing Healthier Sweeteners — ten things that get better, the "healthier" sweeteners one by one, and how to cut back.
Still drinking your sugar? The Hidden Cost of Your Daily Sugary Drink — what it does to your teeth, liver and face, the drinks with a halo, whether diet is the answer, and how to stop.
Know someone who keeps a bag of sweets on the desk? Send them this, and move the bag.
Disclaimer: This article is general information. For advice about your own health, talk to a qualified health professional.
Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, All For Life earns from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. We only link to products we would recommend without the commission.
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