A Dental Regimen that Works for Me; Maybe It will for You, Too

Now for something different from my usual cultural, social, psychological, and political criticism. Today I'll describe my morning and evening dental regimen.
A friend posting an article with the title "We may finally know what causes Alzheimer’s – and how to stop it" has inspired my sharing of this regimen. Suffice to say, the linked article remains tentative on its conclusion. Nonetheless, practicing good dental hygiene, no matter what, can only provide someone benefits.

My motivation for finding a good dental regimen started about ten years ago. I had gone to the dentist for the first time in many years because work finally provided dental insurance. At the end of that initial consult, the dentist said that I needed about $3,200 in dental work because my teeth had gotten so bad. That cost reduced down to about $2,100 after the dental insurance manipulated the cost and provided benefits.

I vowed that I would never face that kind of dental bill again for preventable problems. I also wanted to avoid heart problems that come with bad dental health and want to keep my teeth as long as I can. An implant before 2006 cost about $2,000, which I had to get for unavoidable genetic reasons. I have another unavoidable genetic space on the opposite side of my mouth that could use an implant, but $2,500 or so exceeds how much I can throw around these days. If I have to get another implant, I want a good one that will stay in my mouth for awhile, but I much rather avoid getting implants in the future.

Another factor: I learned to hate the build up of plaque on my teeth. Before I really learned about plaque, I thought that biofilm was unavoidable without the help of a dentist. Since I found out about my regimen and started getting into using it, my teeth feel like I've just gotten out of a dentist appointment every time I finish the regimen. Since I've gotten good with the regimen, my dentist has given me good grades on my dental hygiene every appointment. . .and that's generally as long as I've been OK with keeping to the regimen for the most part then get perfect with it for about two weeks before my routine cleaning.

You could easily do a search online for plaque to find out that it's a biofilm of saliva, bacteria, and other life forms that can exist in your mouth and glom onto your teeth. We can't avoid developing plaque throughout the day. It just happens. Sure, you can reduce the build up by cutting down on sugars and carbohydrates, but I like my sugars, carbohydrates, and acids in moderation. Second, you REALLY don't need to cut out eating sugars, carbohydrates, and acids on a reasonable basis for the sake of your mouth.

I've only encountered one food that I've decided to avoid regular eating on the basis of dental health: pineapple. I love pineapple and it provides some great dietary enzymes. The big problem with pineapple comes from those dietary enzymes. One of the enzymes has the chemical makeup of breaking down meat proteins. People use pineapple and that enyzme (forgetting the name of it) to tenderize meat before cooking the meat. That enzyme, whether ingested by biting into pineapple, drinking pineapple juice, or even drinking pineapple juice from a straw, attempting for it to go straight into your throat, that enzyme will break down your gums if ingested on a daily basis. I highly discourage eating or drinking pineapple on a regular basis.

Back to plaque, teeth, and gums and how these factors go into developing my regimen: Once again, plaque build up is inevitable. Fortunately, our body has a defense against that plaque build up. Our saliva should have a good concentration of the minerals that make up teeth: calcium, phosphorous, and some other minerals in smaller ratios such as carbon, magnesium, and others. This matrix of minerals that make up our teeth is called Hydroxyapatite.

Another factor about plaque build up: the bacteria in your plaque generates acids to break down your enamel and dentin for the bacteria to eat. The more acidic our mouths, the more our teeth break down, the more that our mouth becomes a friendly habitat to the bacteria that generate acid to break down, which then compound together onto your teeth until you have a $2,500 dental bill in a few years because of too many cavities and your gums receding.

Our body tries to create saliva, with the minerals that help build up our teeth and with a base pH balance. Seven is a neutral pH balance. Lower than seven is acidic and higher than seven is base. So it all comes down to a battle of pH balance and providing minerals to build up our teeth. Our teeth are continually demineralizing because of the acidic plaque biofilm and remineralizing from our hopefully base saliva along with any aid that our dental hygiene can provide (one interesting fact: apparently, tannins can aid in dental health and so can black tea). If plaque generates more of an acid environment in a day, our teeth breakdown in a net loss. If we generate a more base environment, our teeth build up as a net gain.

DISCLAIMER BEFORE GETTING INTO REGIMEN DETAILS: I'm not a dentist, a scientist, or any kind of guru. I'm just some guy with the ability to search the Internet, read, and perform analysis from multiple sources to evaluate claims made. This regimen works for me, and I don't know how well each step/ingredient of it works other than I have subjective negative experience when an aspect of the regimen is taken out for a period of time. While doing my research, my two main principles were:

1. How well does the step or ingredient fit into the cohesive and coherent body of information that I've built up about teeth, gums, and oral ecology?
2. Could this step or ingredient cause harm or how much harm could it cause if used wrong?

At this point, my regimen has remained cohesive, coherent, and pretty harmless except for maybe my wallet. This isn't an inexpensive dental hygiene approach. In the end, it may cost as much as getting a lot of restorative work done by the dentist. The regimen avoids a bit of trauma, avoids inconvenience, and avoids the degradation of the overall integrity of my teeth and gums, but it still costs money. This way of dealing with dental health probably helps the wallet because I can better predict and plan costs rather than suddenly end up with this huge bill from the dentist. Nonetheless, it costs money.

Also, I introduce product brand names and such, but I'm not giving them any official endorsement. No brands or companies are paying me for introducing these products. They work for me. Maybe you know of a better product.

EDIT at 5:12 PM 1/28/2019: Like building up your teeth, base materials like calcium and magnesium hydroxide might cause build up on the pipes after going down the drain. I periodically need to request that my building manager come to fix the clog. But there are other mitigating factors: old building from the 1930's and I have long hair. People in other units generally have to call the maintenance man to request declogging services and the shower drain clogs regularly, too.

All that said, let's start with the regimen:

1. Rinse with a mixture of a tablespoon of food-grade 1.5% Hydrogren Peroxide (H₂O₂) and tap water to fill the rest of the small cup. When in short supply of 1.5% H₂O₂, I've used 3% and was fine. I advise against that, though. I have the feeling if you ingest enough of that, bad things can happen.
   
   Rinsing with H₂O₂ seems counter intuitive. It's an acid. Don't we want to fight the aggregate acid environment in our mouth with the opposite, base? H₂O₂ is antiseptic. It kills indiscriminately. But apparently it's weak enough to not cause lasting damage to your teeth. I read somewhere that some scientist or engineer compared washing plumbing pipes with H₂O₂ versus other acidic antiseptics, H₂O₂ caused the least damage to the structural integrity of the pipes. I picked my dentist because he advertised his H₂O₂ method for treating gums and whitening teeth. I haven't opted for that treatment yet because it's EXPENSIVE, but knowing that H₂O₂ can help dental health is useful.
   
   I like to think of using H₂O₂ as a first round of attack. It will kill off some amount of the bacteria in my mouth, which will give me more surface area to mount my attack and restorative properties. Fighting plaque is as much about disrupting the matrix it creates as it is about fighting the acid the plaque creates. Aim for both the cause and effect.
   
   Repeat rinsing with that cup until the mixture of H₂O and H₂O₂ is gone.
   
   Make sure to switch out the rinsing cup every week to cut down on the build up of bacteria on the cup. If not disposed of correctly, you could acquire strep throat or something else.
   
   
2. Make a new rinsing salve in the same cup using the following steps:
   
   1. Put enough baking soda (base) that covers the middle of the bottom of the cup but allows you to see the outer edges of the bottom of the cup
   2. Put a good sized spoonful of xylitol into the cup (unclear how it works, but a fair amount of studies have demonstrated that the more xylitol in your mouth, the less bacteria you have on your teeth)
   3. Fill up the rest of the cup with tap water
   4. Stir with spoon
   5. Put 3 drops of Eucalyptus essential oil into the cup (antibiotic)
   6. Put 2 drops of Clove essential oil into the cup (contains tannins and eugenol, another anti-septic and a minor topical painkiller -- good for when you have recessed gums) - I only put in two drops because clove tastes STRONG!
   7. Put 3 drops of Chamomille essential oil diluted myself by tapwater because of strong taste into cup (chamomille is an astringent, like tannins, anti-inflammatory, and might have some antibiotic characteristics - this one definitely fits into the "can't hurt" category)
   8. Put 10 drops of Calendula essential oil into cup (antiseptic and anti-inflammatory)
   9. Stir with spoon (experiment on your own with how much essential oils to put into the salve or how much to dilute the oils before putting into the salve; potency of essential oils can vary and you may have different tolerances to taste and such than me)
3. Floss with dental tape, rinsing your mouth with salve after flossing both the top and after the bottom. Make sure to use dental tape, not floss, as dental tape has more surface area and won't inadvertently cause harm to your gums if you get rough.
   
   [insert graphic of dental tape]
   
   
4. Poke through the gaps between your teeth with a plastic RotaPoint from the front and the back (you'd be surprised how the different angle gets new stuff out from the gaps between your teeth). Rinse your mouth with the salve after poking the gaps for both the top and after the bottom.
   
   Make sure to switch out RotaPoints every one or two weeks to cut down on bacteria and avoid getting sick.
   
   
5. Poke through the gaps between your teeth with an interdental brush. Rinse your mouth with the salve after poking the gaps for both the top and after the bottom.
   
   
6. Scrape your tongue with a tongue scraper. Rinse your mouth with the salve.
   
   I rinse my tongue scraper in 3% H₂O₂ for a day in the rinsing cup after all is said and done for a day once a week.
   
   
7. Brush your teeth with a soft toothbrush and toothpaste. When brushing the chewing surface of your teeth, feel free to go side to side and be rough.
   
   Be VERY gentle on the back and front of your teeth. Your goal is just to disrupt the biofilm matrix on your teeth, not to polish your teeth. All the chemical and physical treatment of your teeth so far in the regimen will have weakened the grip of the biofilm on your teeth. If you're rough with your teeth, you can scrape away enamel AND also injure your gums. At all costs, avoid injuring your gums. Once your gums start receding, the biofilm can start causing REAL damage to your teeth.
   
   When brushing the fronts and backs of your teeth, place the brush on the top of a section of your top teeth and brush down. Do a section the size of your toothbrush at a time. Do not brush side to side. Do the opposite with your bottom teeth. Place the brush on the bottom of a section of your bottom teeth and brush up. Do a section the size of your toothbrush at a time.
   
   You'll be fine if your barely feel the bristles on your teeth. Gentle is key. You're just disrupting the biofilm, not polishing. I can't stress this enough.
   
   Start at the top and move to the bottom. Don't rinse with the salve until you're done brushing.
   
   For toothpaste, I use Epic Fluoride & Xylitol toothpaste. I know some people don't care for fluoride, but per both my dentist's insistence and my experience, fluoride does a good job on adult teeth and in children's teeth, in moderation (children have to be wary of getting fluorisis, but that's a problem of too much fluoride in drinking water than a moderate amount of fluoride). As I understand it, fluoride actually replaces degraded enamel with minerals stronger than the original enamel. Fluoride can play a vital part in keeping your teeth healthy and strong.
   
   
8. Rinse for 60 seconds with Dessert Essence Tea Tree Oil Mouthwash. Tea tree oil is antibiotic, maybe antiseptic, too. This product also contains witch hazel, which purportedly has astringent properties along with some anti-infllammatory characteristics.
   
   
9. Rinse for 60 seconds with Milk of Magnesia (I just buy the generic stuff off the shelf at Walgreens). That's right, this anti-constipation mixture can work great for building up teeth because it's a solution of base liquid. Honestly, if anyone ever looked at my shopping records for the last five years, I wonder what they would think about my eating habits and stomach issues that I don't have!
   
   
10. Chew and rinse for 60 seconds with calcium carbonate chewables or TUMS. I just use generic TUMS from Walgreens. If you can, use sugar free chewables. Don't worry if you can only purchase chewables with sweeteners, though. I usually chew and rinse with two at a time. These are a combination of base solution and putting calcium into your saliva.
    
    
11. Rinse for 60 seconds with the salve of baking soda, xylitol, and essential oils that you made earlier.
    
    
12. Rinse for 60 seconds with a mouth rinse that has fluoride in it. I used to use Tom's Children's Rinse with Fluoride, but I haven't been able to find it lately. Nowadays I'm using their Fresh Mint with Fluoride.
    

This regiment works great for me. I swear by it for myself. As I said above, though, I'm not a dentist, scientist, or guru. I also am not being paid to endorse any of the products that I mention in this essay. It's just gotten time for me to share with the world something that's worked for keeping my teeth healthy, and maybe it can work for you. If it doesn't, that's fine, too. You know your teeth and body better than I do.

Maybe someday I'll team up with a dentist or scientist to figure out how effective all this is and market it to the world. As things stand for now, though, the effectiveness and veracity of all the above is up to us to figure out for ourselves.

Good luck!

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