Anthropologists will tell you that, of all body parts preserved in the fossil record, going back thousand or even millions of years, teeth are the best preserved, even better than bone. And teeth are, of course, the entryway into the gastrointestinal tract, the first exposure to whatever food you are ingesting or chewing.
We often think of teeth as these inert things, but they are not. They are biologically responsive influenced by many factors, but especially the composition of diet. So, in this episode of Defiant Health, let’s consider what teeth can tell us about the human diet: how to eat, how not to eat, how teeth can instruct us on what and how the human body is adapted to the components of diet, and how a simple practice can make or break the difference in dental health.
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Get your 15% Paleovalley discount on fermented grass-fed beef sticks, Bone Broth Collagen, low-carb snack bars and other high-quality organic foods here.
For $20 off every box of grass-fed and pasture-raised meats from Wild Pastures, go here.
*Dr. Davis and his organization are financially compensated for supporting Paleovalley and their products.
_________________________________________________________________________________
For BiotiQuest probiotics, go here.
A 15% discount is available for Defiant Health podcast listeners by entering discount code UNDOC15 (case-sensitive) at checkout.*
*Dr. Davis and his organization are financially compensated for supporting these products.
Books:
Super Gut: The 4-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight
Books:
Super Gut: The 4-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight
Anthropologists will tell you that, of all body parts preserved in the fossil record, going back thousand or even millions of years, teeth are the best preserved, even better than bone. And teeth are, of course, the entryway into the gastrointestinal tract, the first exposure to whatever food you are ingesting or chewing.
We often think of teeth as these inert things, but they are not. They are biologically responsive influenced by many factors, but especially the composition of diet. So, in this episode of Defiant Health, let’s consider what teeth can tell us about the human diet: how to eat, how not to eat, how teeth can instruct us on what and how the human body is adapted to the components of diet, and how a simple practice can make or break the difference in dental health.
________________________________________________________________________________
Get your 15% Paleovalley discount on fermented grass-fed beef sticks, Bone Broth Collagen, low-carb snack bars and other high-quality organic foods here.
For $20 off every box of grass-fed and pasture-raised meats from Wild Pastures, go here.
*Dr. Davis and his organization are financially compensated for supporting Paleovalley and their products.
_________________________________________________________________________________
For BiotiQuest probiotics, go here.
A 15% discount is available for Defiant Health podcast listeners by entering discount code UNDOC15 (case-sensitive) at checkout.*
*Dr. Davis and his organization are financially compensated for supporting these products.
Books:
Super Gut: The 4-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight
Books:
Super Gut: The 4-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight
Anthropologists will tell you that, of all body parts preserved in the fossil record going back thousands or even millions of years, teeth are the best preserved, even better than bone. And teeth are, of course, the entryway into the gastrointestinal tract, the first exposure to whatever food you are ingesting or chewing. We often think of teeth as these inert things, but they're not. They are biologically responsive, influenced by many factors, but especially the composition of diet. So in this episode of Defiant Health, let's consider what teeth can tell us about the human diet, how to eat, how not to eat, how teeth can instruct us on what and how the human body is adapted to the components of diet, and how a simple practice can make or break the difference in dental health. Later in the podcast let's talk about Defiant Health's sponsors. That include Paleo Valley, who provide fermented grass-fed beef sticks, bone broth, protein rich in collagen, organic super greens and low-carb super food bars, and now 100% grass-fed and finished pastured meats. And our newest sponsor, BiotiQuest, who provides unique probiotics such as sugar shift to support healthy blood sugars and simple slumber to assist in obtaining healthy sleep, probiotics crafted with the unique property of combining synergistic microbes.
William Davis, MD:People are often surprised to learn that, for the first 2.5 to 3 million years of human life on this planet Earth, there was almost no tooth decay recovered in the fossil record of teeth, that is, of the teeth recovered, only about 1 to 3% of all teeth showed evidence of decay, abscess formation, infection or misalignment. And this is remarkable. Think about it. This was a time in human adaptation to the life on this planet. There was no toothbrushes, no fluoridated water, no fluoridated toothpaste, no dental floss, no dentists, yet little to no tooth decay. In other words, humans were originally well adapted to their environment and did not have mouths full of rotting teeth. Most people throughout the world lived their lives having a full mouth of teeth.
William Davis, MD:Some people say, well, people died young. That's actually a fiction. There was a skewed bival curve in that infants' babies did not survive. There was a high attrition, high mortality rate in children. But once you live past about 48 years, you are going to have a long life. It's not uncommon to find people who are 50, 60, 70, or even older in, for instance, hunter-gatherer populations that persist even to this day.
William Davis, MD:So what changed? What caused tooth decay to become rampant and the actual structure of the mouth to change? This all changed with the advent of agriculture. Agricultural life meant staying in one place, building a house, being someplace you can stay, with your own land, your own livestock and your own gardens or farm, like hunter-gatherers, which tended to be nomadic and would move around, find new territories that had not been depleted of animal life. So agriculture meant a family stayed in one place, more or less, and it also led to specialization of occupation. This is when you start to have people who are farmers yes, some remaining hunter-gatherers, but also teachers or medicine men, and the specialization of occupation. This is the birth of civilization, but it also meant a dramatic shrinkage in the variety of foods that humans consumed. We no longer dug in the dirt as much. Four roots and tubers didn't gather wild berries as much did not gather wild fruit and did, of course, kill all the variety of different animals Instead relied on livestock that we raised.
William Davis, MD:Now, among the crops that humans learned to cultivate was wheat In the Middle East, first iron corn, then emmer, the ancestral forms of wheat Maze in Central America, the forerunner of what we think of today as corn and millet in East Africa. Well, these are grains, of course, and grains are rich in a carbohydrate called amylopectin, specifically amylopectin A, which has a unique structure, but it's a structure. It's a branching structure, a long polymer or chain of glucose molecules. So the amylopectin A of grains is a chain of sugars. And you have, humans have in their mouths abundant quantities of an enzyme called amylase, and amylase very quickly breaks down that amylopectin into sugar. And so when humans consumed grains they were in fact consuming large quantities of sugar, and that's when we saw an explosion in tooth decay. That's where we converted from almost no tooth decay to explosive amounts of tooth decay, as well as misalignment, tooth abscess and shrinkage or reduction size of the maxillary bone that houses the upper teeth and the mandible that houses the lower teeth. So agriculture and the introduction of amylopectin A containing grains was a disaster for dental health about 10,000 years ago.
William Davis, MD:Now think about other animals that eat, the wild animals like wolves or bears or crocodiles and, of course, many other creatures. They don't have tooth decay to speak of Now. Our pets do, because we're feeding them human the human concept of dog or cat food, right, but animals living in their wild environment do not develop the kind of tooth decay that humans do. So the explosion in tooth decay among modern humans reflects how we've drifted away from the sort of diet that we are adapted to and that kept our mouths free of disease. Now, of course, in the modern world, we compensate for all this with all sorts of strategies to maintain dental health Strategies such as fluoridated water, fluoridated toothpaste, mouth washes, whitening agents, implants, crowns, dentures, amalgams, lasers and other tools used by dentists and orthodontists. But it's compensating for this mistake we made in diet, and this is why, all throughout human recorded history Roman Empire, greek Empire, ancient Egypt, middle ages people struggled with dental health. It was not uncommon to reach age 20 or age 30 with a mouth with no teeth or very few remaining healthy teeth.
William Davis, MD:Let's now take a few moments to hear about Defiant Health's sponsors. The Defiant Health podcast is sponsored by Paleo Valley makers of delicious grass-fed beef sticks, healthy snack bars and other products. We are very picky around here and insist that any product we consider has no junk ingredients like maltodextrin, carrageenan, carboxymethylcellulose, superlose and, of course, no-edged sugars. And all Paleo Valley products contain no gluten nor grains. In fact, i find Paleo Valley products among the cleanest of any in their category, and they're truly delicious.
William Davis, MD:One of the habits I urge everyone to get into is to include a fermented food product at least once, if not several times per day in their lifestyles. Unlike nearly all other beef sticks available, the Paleo Valley grass-fed beef sticks are all naturally fermented, meaning they contain probiotic bacterial species. And now Paleo Valley is expanding their Wild Pastures program that provides 100% grass-fed, grass-finished pastured beef and pastured chicken and pork raised without herbicides or pesticides and raised in the USA. And they've just added wild-caught seafood caught from the waters of Bristol Bay, alaska. They're now offering a 20% lifetime discount in every order for a limited time. I'll post the web address in the Defiant Health show notes. Your shipping for Paleo Valley products is free for orders of $75 or more. To order, just go to paleovalleycom./ Defiant Health, no coupon code required. The 15% discount will be automatically applied. The web address is also listed in the Defiant Health show notes that accompany this podcast.
William Davis, MD:And be sure to take a look at their other products, such as their organic super greens rich with phytonutrients, and their super food bars that come in dark chocolate chip, apple cinnamon and lemon meringue. They're low carb, of course, with 8 grams net carbs per bar. The folks at Paleo Valley have lately been busy recently adding some interesting new products, including pasture raised fermented pork sticks, chocolate flavored grass-fed bone broth protein, grass-fed organ complex in capsule form, pumpkin spice super food bars with grass-fed bone broth protein and new essential electrolytes in powder form to add to the potassium and magnesium intake of your lifestyle, available in orange, lemon and melon flavors. And I'd also like to welcome Defiant Health's newest sponsor, BiotiQuest. I've had numerous conversations with BiotiQuest founders Martha Carlin, an academic microbiologist, dr Raul Cano. They have formulated unique synergistic probiotic products that incorporate what are called collaborative or guild effects, that is, groups of microbes that collaborate with each other via specific metabolites, potentially providing synergistic benefits. They have designed their sugar shift probiotic to support healthy blood sugars. Simply slumber to support sleep. Ideal immunity to support a healthy immune response. Heart centered that supports several aspects of heart health. And antibiotic antidote designed to support recovery of your gastrointestinal microbiome after a course of antibiotics. Biodicwest probiotics are, i believe, among the most effective among all probiotic choices for specific health effects. Enter the discount code UNDOC15 for a 15% discount for Defiant Health listeners. Now let's get back to our discussion.
William Davis, MD:Another interesting illustration of the power of diet in creating dental health is the experience of 20th century dentist Dr Weston Price. So Dr Price was working in Cleveland, ohio, in the early 20th century when he noticed that children were showing up with mouths full of rotten teeth, and he spent his day pulling tooth after tooth in these children. So he started to ask the question why is this happening? So it seems like kids are eating a lot more sugary foods. Could that be the cause? So he took his wife, florence, and literally took 10 years to travel the world with his camera and chronicled the dental health, the teeth formations of people who were mostly hunter-gatherers. And he saw that these people, who followed their traditional hunter-gatherer diets without refined or processed foods, had full mouths of teeth, fully aligned, no cavities, no tooth loss, no abscess, with fully formed jaws and maxillary bones, that is, the bones that house the teeth. And most of these populations, much like the ancient people, had no practices of dental hygiene. There was no toothbrushes, floored toothpaste, dental floss, etc. And yet almost no tooth decay. He took it further, though. He looked at the people in these cultures who were trading with the Western people trading, say, skins, animal skins or spears or something else for breads, other baked foods, beer and other Western-type foods, and he watched these people develop explosive tooth decay. It wasn't uncommon to see young people with few remaining teeth or mouth full of rotten teeth, filled with cavities and abscess. In fact, the number one cause for suicide in these populations newly exposed to Western food was tooth abscess that eroded to the surface and caused a hole in the cheek. So Dr Price showed in graphic fashion just how dramatic and how rapid the shift from perfect dental health to corrosive and crippling dental health could occur with the adoption of Western foods, especially grains and sugars.
William Davis, MD:Functional dentist and my friend Dr Debbie Ozment in Oklahoma City, oklahoma, has an interesting experience, highlighting all something very interesting and very helpful to our understanding of dental health. She would go once a year to the Peruvian Highlands in South America where she'd provide, without cost, dental care to the people in these remote villages. These villages were so remote that some people took a two-day donkey ride to get to the American dentist. When they arrived she'd see that they all had mouths full of rotten teeth because they all chewed on sugarcane, and so she spent her day in Peru pulling people's teeth. Well, once in every while she would see somebody who comes to her with a full mouth of healthy, intact teeth And she'd ask them do you also chew sugarcane? They say yes, i do. So she asked them what are you doing differently? And she said that these people the few people who had full, healthy mouths of teeth despite chewing sugarcane would use twigs to clean out their teeth in between each tooth, and she interprets this as meaning that they are breaking the biofilm, that is, the bacterial biofilm that causes cavities, because if you have bacteria in your mouth that are plifthreading, they produce acids from the sugar and that erodes the enamel of teeth and causes rot and abscess, etc.
William Davis, MD:It's also been established by recent science that the oral microbiome that is, the microbes living in the mouth, when we first start to consume grains change the composition of the oral microbiome, favoring proliferation of species such as streptococcus, mutans that cause tooth decay. In other words, the conversion from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle of eating organs and meats, fish and shellfish, the occasional fruit and roots that they dig up, converting from that diet to a grain-containing diet or a grain-dominated diet changed the mouth microbiome to favor tooth decay. So let's review the human experience, in which we converted from a hunter-gatherer diet to a diet that contained or was even dominated by wheat and grains led to an explosion in tooth decay, something that had not been seen previous times And, in fact, attributable to the amylopectin carbohydrate of wheat and grains that is highly digestible in the mouth because we have the amylase enzyme in the mouth that breaks those amylopectins down into sugar in the mouth. But if we revert back to our diet that we're adapted to, we would be just like wolves and bears and other creatures have no tooth decay or virtually no tooth decay, and we have the experiences of people like Dr Weston Price, who chronicled the explosion of tooth decay as Americans in the early 20th century added more sugar as well as grains to their diet and saw tooth decay become rampant. So lessons to take from all this?
William Davis, MD:Well, i think you can see it's clear that humans are not adapted to consuming wheat and grains. And if you do, you need to compensate by an extreme effort in dental hygiene. And even if you do that, one in four Americans end up in their older years without any teeth edentulous, and so even those efforts at dental hygiene are not perfect. So a better solution Eat none of the foods that contain amylopectin that converts to sugars in your mouth, and of course avoid sugars, except maybe for the minor quantity of sugars in small servings of fruit. And lastly, make it a habit to break the biofilm, just as Dr Ozment's observations have illustrated. It could be floss, it could be some of those dental picks, it could be a toothpick. Whatever you choose, break the biofilm every day to keep those bacteria from creating a biofilm and then leading to calculus formation as black and calculus formation.
William Davis, MD:So there's many important lessons to learn from the observations made in teeth if we go back 10,000, 12,000, 100,000 years. And you can't help but avoid the conclusion that a lot of the things we do nowadays mouth washes, fluoridated toothpaste, amalgams, fillings, crowns, etc. Are really not necessary if you address the factors that cause tooth decay and dental disease. Now, if you've learned something through this episode of Defiant Health, i invite you to subscribe through your favorite podcast directory. Post a review, post a comment and help us grow this community of like-minded people who are interested in restoring genuine health that does not rely on the healthcare system. Thanks for listening.