How does a person who religiously brushes their teeth and eats a healthy, organic diet end up with cavities? My knowledge of pediatric dentistry was admittedly limited, but I was shocked and disappointed to find that my three year old baby girl had penetrating tooth decay on both of her front teeth. As far as I knew, I had been doing all of the right things. Lily was eating a diet of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, had her teeth brushed twice a day, and had very limited exposure to sugary treats and juices. She had been diagnosed with a food allergy to dairy and soy protein a year before, and I had diligently researched alternatives that allowed her to eat a healthy, whole food diet. Still, she was sitting in the office of a dentist who was telling me that her little teeth required fillings and caps. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had failed her, and being a rather non-interventionist sort of parent, an expensive and traumatic surgical procedure didn’t sit sit right with me. I smiled and nodded for a few minutes and told him that I would be in touch. I knew that I should do something to treat the tooth decay, but his treatment plan seemed like a band-aid fix and that we would be filling Lily’s teeth for her entire life.
Our next stop was a second dentist who specialized in pediatrics and had, in recent years, seen hundreds of children just like Lily–food allergy kids who suffered from secondary tooth decay and struggled with nutrient absoprtion. She did not recommend caps on baby teeth for a variety of safety reasons, and suggested making lifestyle changes for Lily while we monitored her teeth. Then, she patiently sat with me and discussed the dynamics of something neither my previous dentist, GI specialist, or nutrition expert had explained: poor nutrition and tooth decay are inextricably linked. In spite of the changes we had made to feed Lily a diet within the boundaries of her food allergies, her body was obviously still deficient in some vitamins and minerals required to sustain her teeth. The cavities between her teeth were her body’s signal that it needed something, and by infusing her diet with what it was lacking, her health and her tooth decay, would improve. (Another part of Lily’s issue was that we had been giving her sweetened vanilla Almond milk since it was the only milk alternative she had any interest in drinking. We were advised to stop that right away. She surprised us by switching to plain, unsweetened Almond milk without a bat of her eyelashes.)
Having been raised with the understanding that bacteria caused tooth decay and that brushing and flossing would prevent dental caries, it was hard to wrap my head around the fact that there was a bigger picture to tooth decay. I still remember the school nurse bringing tiny Dixie cups full of fluoride mouthwash into our classroom every Wednesday throughout elementary school. Conventional wisdom says that if you keep your teeth clean, they stay healthy. Forget to brush your teeth, and the “sugar bugs” will eat holes in them. It’s the same story I have been preaching to my kids for seven years. It makes so much more sense that the teeth are part of the body, and like every other body part, require adequate nutrient support for optimum performance. I had been diligently researching nutrition and the ramifications of vitamin deficiency on health–it just hadn’t ocurred to me that dental health started on the inside, and that external cleanings were not sufficient.
Not long after deciding on the wait and see approach to treating Lily’s tooth decay, a health problem that I now know was a direct result of her food allergies, I came across Ramiel Nagel’s popular book, Cure Tooth Decay. Ramiel Nagel’s theory and collection of research studies struck a chord with me because of all that I had experienced with my daughter. The most exciting piece of information I gleaned from reading his book was that his plan not only stopped tooth decay from continuing, but people following the nutrition protocol could reportedly cure tooth decay.
Next week, I will publish the second and third part of this series, a review of Ramiel Nagel’s Cure Tooth Decay and a resource guide for whole food supplements I recommended to implement the Cure Tooth Decay protocol. Stay tuned!

by Colleen Russell