There are more and more dentists, more dental clinics, more sophisticated dentifrices, more design brushes, electric, rotating, jet brushes … And there are more and more cavities !
Despite professional advice there is no way to avoid cavities. We have no choice but to sit in the dentist’s chair to drill and fill. And do it again a few years later, until the piece does not give more of itself and fall or have to extract it.
As in other cases, this nonsense of conventional medicine is based on a wrong conception, that teeth cannot cope with the voracious bacteria , which are what form the dental plaque that destroys enamel and causes tooth decay.
This was the hypothesis of the American dentist Willoughby D. Miller more than a century ago: “Our body does not have its own defense mechanisms, it is not able to recover health without the help of a medical professional”.
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Oral hygiene is not enough
Years after this hypothesis of Miller, several doctors and dentists, tired of feeling powerless before the inexorable appearance of new caries in their patients, no matter how brushed newspapers were made, discovered that the members of many towns, that never brushed the teeth and did not go to the dentist, they had perfect dentures , with exceptional decayed pieces that even the oldest preserved.
After many observations and studies they came to the conclusion that their excellent dental health was related to their natural diet ; that is, with a diet without sugar or refined flours, or any other food processed industrially.
Moreover, they found that when these people adopted our typical western and modern foods, with abundant sweets and refined carbohydrates , their teeth were filled with decay and began to lose parts!
Unanswered questions of science
At the same time, as the knowledge of biology, biochemistry and immunology progressed , the theory that our teeth are like pieces of dead tissue at the mercy of the bacteria in the mouth was becoming increasingly ridiculous.
If our body has an efficient immune system that protects us from the most virulent pathogenic microorganisms, how is it possible that our teeth, made of the hardest material in our body, can be pierced by ordinary bacteria? How is it explained that archaeologists find teeth in perfect condition of our hominid ancestors, buried millions of years ago, and in our mouth do not last for more than a few years?
The scientific progress made it increasingly evident, on the other hand, that the oral microbiome is extremely complex and is formed above all by millions of beneficial bacteria and antibiotic, anti-inflammatory, protective and remineralizing substances contained in our saliva.
However, we had to wait until the end of the 20th century to find answers: several scientists began to glimpse the true physiological mechanisms that keep our teeth in perfect health.
How do cavities originate?
In the 1990s, doctors Ralph R. Steinman , Professor of Oral Medicine, and John Leonora , an endocrinologist, both from Loma Linda University in California, identified the hormone cascade that controls the health of teeth.
Hormones control the functioning of all the organs of our body and most of them do so through a cascade of reactions that usually originate in the hypothalamus, a brain gland that secretes hormones, such as vasopressin or oxytocin.
The process begins with the parotid hormone that secretes the hypothalamus and, when it reaches the parotid glands of our oral cavity, stimulates them to secrete a new hormone: parotin.
The parotin is responsible for stimulating the odontoblasts of the outer edge of the dental pulp, so that they secrete the dentinal fluid that circulates through the tubules of the dentins. It is also responsible for keeping the teeth alive , mineralized and rich in immune cells that protect the dental tissue from potential pathogens, to keep them safe from caries.
But Steinman and Leonora observed that, in the presence of an excess of glucose in the blood , the secretion of the parotid hormone from the hypothalamus is blocked.
When not receiving this hormone, the parotid glands stop secreting the parotin hormone, which inhibits the secretion of dentinal fluid from the odontoblasts. The dentine, without its supply of nutrients, begins to denaturalize and devitalize. If the process is prolonged, the dentinal tissue begins to become necrotic and becomes a dead tissue where the bacteria go to metabolize it. It is what causes tooth decay.
Hence, the excessive intake of sugar and products made with refined flours cause the appearance of caries. It is because of the interruption of the hormonal cascade and not because it fattens the bacteria of the dental plaque.
The teeth are not a dead inorganic tissue vulnerable to the voracious bacteria, but, like the bones, they constitute a living organic tissue, in constant renewal and through which circulates a nutrient fluid derived from the blood plasma. It is the one that reaches the dental pulp.
