Feb 18, 2020

Beyond Weight Loss: The Power of a Clean-Eating Diet For Your Mouth

oral probiotics Type the term “clean eating” into Google, and what happens? In 0.64 seconds flat, you have 982 million results at your fingertips for this trendy nutrition hot topic. The titles speak for themselves: Simple Ways to Start Clean Eating Now! and The Best Clean Eating Tips to Lose Weight top the list.

But what about the power of clean eating for your mouth? This connection is essential to your oral health and general wellbeing, even if those Google search results don’t recognize its significance.

The Importance of Clean Eating For Oral Health

Good health starts inside your mouth, but for most people, that's also where it ends. If your mouth isn’t healthy, the rest of your body doesn’t stand a chance. Fortunately, the answer is pretty easy: clean eating is an essential cornerstone of strong, lasting oral health.

Clean Eating Helps Saliva Work Harder

Saliva is one of the most underrated substances in the body. It’s time to stop shrugging saliva off as “spit” and start recognizing it for the workhorse that it is!

Saliva flows freely through your mouth to neutralize acids and maintain a safe, alkaline oral environment. In a perfectly healthy mouth, saliva performs this responsibility without opposition.

In reality, however, our eating habits often give saliva an uphill battle. Drinking soda and splurging on refined carbs coats the teeth, tongue, and gum tissue in sugar and ultimately creates overly acidic saliva. Obviously, acidic saliva can’t efficiently dilute other harmful acids in the mouth, leaving your teeth and gums vulnerable to erosion and decay.

Clean eating is the key. It makes an immediate difference by preventing an onslaught of sugars and acids in the mouth. Instead, healthy foods like yogurt and green tea restore saliva’s balanced pH so it can do its job more effectively.

Clean Eating Strengthens Your Teeth

Clean eating also has the power to strengthen your teeth by enriching saliva with minerals. The hard dentin and enamel of your teeth are naturally sustained by minerals like calcium and phosphate, but poor eating and brushing habits leach minerals from the teeth. When your teeth lose minerals faster than they gain, you'll notice unpleasant symptoms like sensitivity and decay.

By adopting a better diet of clean foods like lean protein and crunchy veggies, you help the remineralization process move faster than the demineralization process.

Clean eating favorites such as bone broth, squash, romaine lettuce, eggs, broccoli, and nuts are bursting with calcium, phosphorus, zinc, and other minerals your teeth crave. The more quality minerals that enter your mouth through food, the better your saliva can protect against cavities, sensitivity, and disease.

A Healthy Diet Improves What Passes From Mouth to Gut

Your mouth is the gateway to your entire body! Everything that you swallow, good and bad, travels through your digestive system and into your bloodstream. This means that the condition of your mouth directly influences your overall health.

Unless you implement a clean eating diet to address your imbalanced oral environment, you’ll continue to poison and compromise your body into poor health.

Consider this list of health issues that can be traced back to poor oral health:

Atherosclerosis
Diabetes
Alzheimer’s disease
Cancer
Arthritis
Preterm birth and low birth weight
Obesity

Simply put, when bad bacteria overtakes your mouth and destroys your oral biome, inflammation and infection pass through your digestive system to wreak havoc on the body.

If the food you eat cultivates dangerous bacteria in your mouth, you become vulnerable to serious digestive issues like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, irritable bowel, and malabsorption syndrome.

How to Choose the Right Foods For Oral Health

Don’t let the word “diet” fool you. A clean eating diet won't push you into near-starvation or force you to drink nasty powdered shakes twice a day. Clean eating simply helps you ditch the processed, artificial, and high-sugar foods that compromise your oral health (and general wellness!).

If you’re honest with yourself, you already know a dinner of broccoli, salmon, and sweet potato makes your body feel a whole heck of a lot better than a Whopper from Burger King or a frozen TV dinner. Every step you take to embrace clean eating choices doesn’t merely melt inches around the waistline; the right foods for oral health also protect your teeth, gums, and smile.

So what does clean eating look like for you? And what groceries need to land in your shopping cart to help you begin a clean eating diet for your dental health? Let's talk a look.

Lean Protein

The best lean protein for clean eating:

Wild caught fish
Organic free-range chicken
Pastured eggs
Organic pastured pork
Turkey
Beef
Pastured eggs

The healthiest sources of lean protein are rich in phosphorus, one of the most essential minerals needed to strengthen tooth enamel. Meat and poultry also contain zinc, iron, and B vitamins. Wild caught fish like salmon and mackerel are valuable for their high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, which help control inflammation.

Fresh Vegetables

You don’t need a reminder that veggies are healthy, but it may help to understand why they’re so important to your dental health. Fresh vegetables are chock-full of nutrient and minerals like calcium, zinc, antioxidants, folate, vitamins A, B, C, D, and E, and potassium.

The best fresh veggies for clean eating:

Spinach
Kale
Broccoli
Green beans
Mushrooms
Asparagus
Carrots
Peppers.

In other words, the simple decision to toss spinach into your favorite smoothie or add mushrooms and broccoli to your stir-fry can reduce inflammation of the gums, enhance enamel mineralization, regenerate oral tissues, and protect tooth structures. If you ask me, that's a big deal.

Fresh Fruit

Like veggies, you already know that fruit is a clean eating must. The fruits listed above are antioxidant superpowers that fight free radicals before they damage your teeth and gums. Fruits are also vitamin powerhouses that deliver the nutrients most critical to maintaining the integrity of your oral health.

Best fresh fruits for clean eating:

Citrus fruits
Berries
Avocado
Banana
Mango
Grapefruit
Kiwi
Kakadu plums
Cantaloupe.

Nuts and Seeds

Nuts and seeds are good for more than trail mix! Did you know that almonds, sunflower seeds, walnuts, and others are rich sources of phosphorus and calcium, the two minerals that strong tooth enamel must have?

Nuts and seeds are also brimming with omega-3 fats that fight inflammation found in periodontal disease. Research shows that diets rich in omega-3's can reduce the prevalence of gum disease, so snack on!

A few of the best sources of nuts and seeds include:

Almonds
Flaxseed
Chia seeds
Sesame seeds
Pumpkin seeds
Sunflower seeds
Hemp seeds
Walnuts

Dairy

The Best Dairy for Clean Eating:

Greek yogurt
Milk
Cheese

Cheese, milk, and yogurt promote excellent oral health because they balance the pH of your oral biome, fight the accumulation of plaque, and help remineralize enamel with high calcium and phosphorus content. In fact, research suggests that high dairy intake can reduce your risk of periodontitis by 20%!

Be sure to select unprocessed dairy choices that are low in sugar. Even yogurts that boast "99% fat free" or "low fat" on their labels are often packed with over 25 grams of carbohydrates and more than 10 grams of sugar. That's equivalent to three Oreo cookies! Stick to unprocessed Greek yogurt which is rich in protein, potassium, and calcium instead of dripping in sugar.

Did you notice that none of the suggestions in all of those lists of clean eating foods were unfamiliar? Clean eating is all about getting back to the basics and sticking to the food choices that existed on Earth long before the mass food industry undermined our eating habits.

Can You Correct the Damage To Your Oral Health?

Luckily, your oral health is resilient. Even brittle teeth and inflamed gums can heal when you take positive action. It’s all about converting the environment in your mouth from acidic to alkaline. If you can turn the tables, better oral health can be yours!

Start By Ditching Fluoride Toothpaste

You know what I call fluoride toothpaste, right?

Toxi-paste, because it’s a far more accurate description of a formula stuffed with chemicals and toxins.

These “normal” toothpaste brands hang their hats on their ability to kill bacteria in the mouth, but they don’t distinguish between good and bad bacteria.

The true purpose of brushing should be to remineralize your mouth and nurture the formation of healthy oral bacteria. Enhancing the overall health of your mouth, minimizing inflammation, and fighting harmful bacteria creates an environment where plaque and tartar can’t thrive. Bu toxi-paste can’t do any of that!

This is why it’s smart to pair your clean eating diet with a switch from fluoride toothpaste to a natural clay-based tooth powder.

The main ingredient in Dirty Mouth Toothpowder, bentonite clay, is a mild adhesive that gently scrubs and polishes the teeth. It works like an astringent by helping to remove tartar and clean the gums. As soon as bentonite clay comes in contact with the bad bacteria and toxins in your mouth, it absorbs them and replaces them with vital minerals instead.

Swap Mouthwash For Gum Serum

Commercial mouthwash products are praised for eradicating dangerous bacteria in the mouth, but they cause more damage than they prevent. Just like toxi-paste, the harsh ingredients in mouthwash destroy all the bacteria in your mouth — even the bacteria you need.

Restore your oral health with the ultimate triple play: a clean eating diet, tooth powder, and gum serum. By replacing your mouthwash with essential oil-rich gum serum, you can target the toxins, impurities, and inflammation currently compromising your dental wellness.

Boost Gum Serum unleashes a potent combination of tea tree, peppermint, spearmint, lemon, eucalyptus, clove bud, lavender, myrrh, cinnamon, chamomile, and cypress oils that don’t have time to tolerate pesky bacteria, sugar, or acid.

Apply your gum serum two to three times per day for best results. The healing powers of so many organic essential oils will quickly rejuvenate your gum tissue and eliminate the conditions that cause cavities to form.

Long-Term Benefits of Protecting Your Mouth

You can’t maintain your overall health and longevity without strong oral health. The relationship between your mouth and body is a two-way street; if one’s in trouble, so is the other.

This is exactly why protecting your mouth with a clean-eating diet and natural oral care products leads to such powerful results throughout the body.

Here are just a few of the many problems you can avoid with a strong, revitalized oral environment:

Gastrointestinal dysfunction
Heart disease
Diabetes
Gum disease
Chronic bad breath
Tooth loss
Frequent sinus infections

Think of it like this: would you rather spend the next 50 years eating well and using the best oral care techniques, or would you rather spend that time and money on doctor's appointments and prescriptions you could have prevented?

Other Easy Ways to Improve Your Oral Health

Once you’ve mastered the art of clean eating, continue to protect and enhance your oral health with these two quick, simple, and brilliant techniques.

LED Light Therapy

Here’s a trick your dentist probably won’t tell you: LED light therapy is an oral care goldmine, especially when combined with a powerful natural whitening gel. These techniques are powerful apart and unstoppable together.

On its own, LED light supports oral health in a few distinct ways. Blue light kills bacteria that causes gingivitis, which keeps the mouth and gums healthier and stronger. Red light accelerates the healing of gum tissue by increasing blood flow and decreasing inflammation in tissues.

The power of red and blue light multiplies exponentially with the application of Real White Teeth Whitening Gel, an oil-based gel with natural, potent ingredients:

Extra Virgin Olive Oil to nourish and protect gum tissue
Bentonite Clay to enrich tooth enamel with minerals lost over time, while gently scrubbing away stains
Essential oils like peppermint, tea tree, wintergreen, cinnamon, roman chamomile, and lavender help this natural whitening gel smell and taste incredible and deliver antibacterial and anti-inflammatory benefits too
Activated Charcoal quickly absorbs plaque and other unwanted compounds that stain your teeth

The best news of all? You only need 20 minutes a day, two or three times a week, to achieve impressive results.

Take Oral Probiotics

You already know that certain bacterias don’t deserve their bad reputation, especially since they’re critical to maintaining a balanced oral environment. So it may not come as a shock that live bacterial microorganisms known as probiotics may hold the key to optimal wellness.

Probiotics are best known for their ability to strengthen the immune system and balance gut flora to manage gastrointestinal disorders. They exist naturally in fermented foods like kombucha and yogurt, which explains why they’re touted as teeth-friendly, clean eating choices.

Oral probiotic supplements are also available to provide a carefully measured daily dose of healthy bacteria straight into your gut. While the benefits of probiotics for gut health are well-document, the connection between probiotics and oral health doesn’t always receive the attention it deserves.

Adding an oral probiotic into your routine may protect your smile by creating a protective lining that shields gum tissue from disease. As a result, oral probiotics offer powerful benefits:

Reduce dangerous oral pathogens
Prevent cavities and decay
Inhibit growth of pathogens that cause gum disease
Maintain balanced biome to limits volatile sulfur compounds that cause halitosis

The bottom line? Oral probiotics stimulate the immune system in your mouth to nurture the good bacteria needed to protect and optimize your oral environment.

Make Clean Eating an Integral Part of Your Life

Remember, there’s an enormous difference between dieting and eating clean. Dieting is unsustainable, unrealistic, and usually miserable. Clean eating, on the other hand, is a lifestyle change, a satisfying way to embrace the best foods for your mouth and body.

Even the smallest action, like switching your breakfast routine from pancakes to eggs and Greek yogurt, has the power to improve the condition of your teeth and gums.

When you combine the progress made through clean eating with the healing properties of tooth powder, gum serum, and oral probiotics, nothing can stand in the way of your radiant smile.

Resources

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