This past week I took all of the kids in for their six month dental check ups. After my 5 yo was checked, the dentist told me that he’s been doing a good job brushing since everything looked good. I smiled and said that was nice to hear. Then the 9 yo was checked, and she told me the same thing. At that, I had to tell her the truth – that it was more a credit to their diet than to their diligent toothbrushing.
The horrifying truth is, the 5 yo hardly ever brushes, and the 9 yo isn’t much better. Yeah, they’re supposed to brush their teeth every night (that’s what I tell them to do after dinner when I send them upstairs to put on their pajamas and get ready for bed- and until very recently I thought that’s what they did), but a few nights before the trip to the dentist, my 9 yo son informed me that it had been weeks since he brushed his teeth. I’d like to think he has a poor sense of time and meant days, but in the best of scenarios, it wasn’t too regular.
The dentist couldn’t believe it. She told me that she can generally tell who brushes well and who doesn’t by the kind of teeth they have, and that she never could have guessed that they don’t brush regularly. My kids were just totally contradicting her experience.
Then she checked my 13 yo daughter, who is really responsible about everything, and when it comes to toothbrushing, she never misses a day. Even when her braces were taken off, all of her teeth were perfectly white – most kids have yellowish marks around the whiter area of the teeth where the braces were. Anyway, here’s the big irony – she had a cavity. Miss Perfect Brusher. Okay, so it was between the teeth and the bracket from her braces kept her from being able to get in there. But still. So much for regular brushing being the answer to cavities. I’m not saying it doesn’t help – but there’s more to dental health than how often you brush. Think about it – in traditional societies, people never brushed, and in cultures throughout the world, tooth decay was minimal.
So I told the dentist that my recent research on dental health has led me to believe that this child will always be the most vulnerable of all my kids to cavities. Why? Of all my kids, she’s the one with the worst teeth and is not coincidentally the one with whom I was vegan for part of my pregnancy with her. She’s also the one who had very crooked teeth (prior to her braces – her teeth are perfect now) and has hypoplasia on one back molar (this is caused by a malfunction in utero of the formation of dental enamel – you don’t see the results until the teeth emerge but that’s when the quality of it is determined). I didn’t understand how she needed a root canal at the age of three when I only gave them a teaspoon of sugar daily in their breakfast oatmeal and minimal sweets once a week, otherwise had lots of veggies and whole grains (very little animal protein – just chicken once a week), only gave her water to drink (no soda or juice) – now I know. She didn’t get the minerals she needed in utero at the crucial time to build strong teeth. Apparently this is very common to vegetarians and children of vegetarian. Kids need minerals that they don’t get in sufficient quantity in a vegan diet to develop strong teeth.
So while I wouldn’t tell my kids not to brush their teeth, it’s certainly overrated, and the role of superior nutrition is virtually never heard about – but it’s the nutrition that makes the real difference!
Avivah
I’ll vouch for this one…my three kids with the worst teeth are the ones whose pregnancies were totally vegetarian. Sigh. And I thought I was being so healthy!
I know, Wendy, I hate it that I thought I was doing something so good and it was sooo wrong. Since it’s been a couple of years since I touched on this topic, I’ve been meaning to post about it – I feel like I have to warn vegetarians and help parents take steps now to avoid problems later on. I wish I had this info years ago!
Well this is interesting, and something I will have to look in to. I was predominately vegetarian during my pregnancy with my daughter, due to necessary dietary adjustments for my husband. Of course I don’t know how this will affect her teeth, since she is just 8 months and has cut her first 2 in the past month. 😉 We are eating meat again, so if I get pregnant again now, we will see in years to come how the second child’s teeth are!
Hi, Mercy, welcome! Three of my kids had the misfortune to be born/very young when I was eating vegan/vegetarian – the first two, and then my sixth. It’s interesting to see the teeth of all of them are the most crooked; the three in the middle aren’t. That defies the logic that the kids born later on have worse teeth than those born sooner. I plan to address this more in depth in another post; it’s a big concern. But regardless of what you ate when you were pregnant with her, you can reverse that since she’s so long. I didn’t learn about all of this until I my kids were past the point of being able to improve their jaw structure with nutrition.
Can you explain crookedness and nutrition? Isn’t crooked teeth genetic? My cousin and sister and I all had really really overlapping roots and that’s why we needed braces (my cousin didnt have braces and all his teeth fell out by age 15). Wouldn’t that make it appear to be genetic as opposed to based on diet?
It’s not genetic, I’ll post on it at some time.
Ever since I found your blog a few weeks ago I’ve been reading the old posts almost every day, thank you for sharing such great information about nutrition. I have a question about your daughter who had a cavity, did she end up getting it filled or were you able to remineralize it with proper nutrition? My 6 year old has 5 cavities in her baby teeth and I’m debating what to do, four of them are between her molar teeth and the next because they’re too close together.
Hi, Chani, welcome! We were just talking about this a few days ago! I chose not to fill the cavity at the time since it was minor and I trusted that we could heal it. Her tooth that had hyperplasia has since remineralized/hardened and hasn’t been a problem at all.
If your child has cavities and especially in the baby teeth (which will be falling out soon anyway!), I’d suggest improving her nutrition instead of having the cavities filled. There are several problems with filling cavities; one glaring one is the use of amalgam as a filling since it’s a toxin that leaches poison into the body for years. A less obvious one is the way a tooth is filled can affect the way her teeth meet which then affects underlying structural things in the skull! Generally, though, little nutritional improvements aren’t enough to help cavities. Look at my post in the dental health category for things you can do if you decide to go this route. Good luck!
Thanks very much! Bascially you’re saying it’s all or nothing with the cod liver oil etc, I do limit sweets to once a week, no sugary drinks at all (we drink only water) but this particular child of mine is very very hard to give ‘different’ foods to…
I’m not actually saying cod liver oil is the must have – I’d make the focus on increasing nutrient dense foods and particularly work on minimizing phytic acid (which means limiting even properly prepared grains).
I know this is an older post but do you do dental x-rays?
Well, I don’t like xrays and never have but have felt obligated for the kids to have them in the past when cavities were suspected; I didn’t and still don’t know what the option is. However, since we’ve shifted our diet in this way cavities aren’t really much of a concern anymore and I no longer take the kids for regular dental check-ups.
When researching vaccines, I came across some interesting proof that lack of Vitamin C and D is what causes tooth decay.
Hi, Rochel, welcome! If you have links to share regarding that information, I’d love to see it.