Why is grain elimination good for oral health?

Scientific insights into the oral microbiome are yielding many new lessons for dental health: mouthwashes are actually dangerous, fluoridated drinking water does not prevent cavities, some toothpastes contain harmful additives. 

But the most important factor for dental health is often neglected: the role of eliminating grains. The amylopectin A of grains is a major factor in degrading dental health and the oral microbiome. 

Transcript

ral Microbes And Whole-Body Health

William Davis, MD 0:00

You know, the science on the oral microbiome and thereby dental health has progressed very rapidly in the last few years, which is great, right? Because we want to understand better. It's clear, of course, that the last several decades, the ideas on dental hygiene, many were wrong and may in fact have been harmful. And the dentistry community is coming to terms with all these issues. But it's become clear that the oral microbiome is a huge factor, not just dental health, but overall health. So for instance, if you looked at the brain tissue of somebody who died of dementia, you would find microbes like Porphyrimonus gingivalis, fusobacterium nucleatum, tenorella forsithia, and a number, and I sorry about these names that I don't make them up. These are signed by the microbiology community. Those are all oral microbes. So it's become pretty clear, I think, that the oral microbiome may be a factor in cognitive impairment and dementia. Now it's not quite clear whether it's a cause and effect relationship or just a benign accompaniment, but because the presence of those microbes is clearly inflammatory. Those are all pathogens in the oral cavity. It's a probable contributor, if not an outright cause, of dementia. It's a tough thing to prove, right? You'd have to actually give somebody, say, a microbe like porpheromonas in a capsule form versus placebo, and then watch them over, say, 10 or 20 years and see if they get dementia. Unethical, of course, no one's going to do that. It wouldn't be permitted. So we'll never have that absolutely settled. Though another approach would be to give somebody a broad antibiotic that penetrates into the brain and see if that improves dementia, measures of dementia, such as cognitive testing or imaging of the brain. So no one's done that yet. But it's looking like the oral microbiome plays a role in many aspects of health. How about colon cancer? Well, that one species I mentioned, Fusobacterium nucleotid, we know enters the bloodstream with any micro trauma to the teeth. It could be flossing, brushing, dental cleaning, anything. And that causes that microbe to enter the bloodstream. Some swallowed also, but enters the bloodstream and then is known to colonize the colon. Where the science is pretty solid, it's a major cause, major trigger for colon cancer. For instance, if you had some tissue from a resected colon cancer specimen, someone had colon cancer, it got removed surgically, and you studied it for the presence of fusobacterium, you would find hundreds of times more than you'd expect. It's crawling with fusobacterium. Once again, like in the brain, doesn't prove it caused the cancer, but it's strongly suggestive. And if you take that same microbe, fusobacterium nucleatum, and implant it into a mouse or rat's colon, it gets colon cancer. So it's pretty solid. Fusobacterium in the mouth is a contributor to colon cancer. And this is proving true in many conditions, that the oral microbiome plays a role in other conditions outside of the mouth. Breath breast cancer is another one, especially with fusobacterium. And so the dentistry community, little by little, is starting to change their ideas, their advice on how to best manage oral health. Some are, for instance, rejecting the idea of fluoridated drinking water, certainly of use of mouthwashes, because we know that mouthwashes kill, they're kind of indiscriminate, and they kill many microbes, good and bad. And one of the consequences of using mouthwashes is that it kills microbes that produced nitric oxide, which is a gas, but it's very brief, it's short-lived, it's transient. But when you have nitric oxide, it reduces blood pressure and improves the health of arteries, like coronary arteries or carotid arteries. When you use mouthwash, you kill all the nitric oxide-producing species, and blood pressure goes up, typically for hours and sometimes for days. So we avoid use of mouthwashes, and that's and the dentistry community is embracing this idea little by little. Fluoridated toothpaste is called into question, especially because of the additives in many commercial toothpastes, especially emulsifying or mixing agents like polysorbate AD and sodium laurel sulfate and carrageenin. Those are problems in food as food additives because they screw up the mucous barrier in the GI tract, but they also do so in the mouth. The mouth is a part of the GI tract, of course. But in this evolving conversation, one thing I fear is being lost, and that is the huge role of wheat and grains. The anthropology community has known for decades, literally decades, that when humans first turned to the consumption of wild wheat, this is about 12,000 years ago, they found a wild strain of wheat growing in the Middle East, in the Fertile Crescent, called Eincorn wheat, a wild-growing grass, a 14 chromosome wild-growing grass. Now, if you ever saw a wheat plant, you know this it's not intuitively something you'd hunger for or want to eat. But they did figure out how to make it into a food. They harvested the seeds, threw away the roots, stalk, husks, uh, but they isolated the seeds, let them dry in the sun, then pulverized them with a stone in a stone bowl, and then added water over a fire and made a porridge. So the first way that wheat was consumed as eincorn wheat was 12,000 years ago as a porridge. The idea of beer and bread didn't come for about another 8 or 9,000 years in the Egyptian Empire. And they figured out how to put the wheat to use. Now, what happened to those initial humans in the Fertile Crescent in what is now Syria, Lebanon, Israel? What happened to those first humans who consumed wild wheat as porridge? Well, there was an explosion in tooth decay, tooth abscess, tooth loss, misalignment of teeth. What's remarkable is prior to the consumption of wheat and grains, for the more than 300,000 years that our species has been on this planet, we did not consume. No one consumed wheat. No one knew how to isolate the seed and make that parge nor bread or anything else. And so for 99.6% of our species' time on this planet, we did not consume wheat or grains. And what was dental health like then? Well, tooth decay, tooth abscess, tooth loss, misalignment, all the problems that we're familiar with were almost nonexistent. It was very uncommon to have dental problems prior to the consumption of wheat and grains. Teeth, of course, is part of the fossil record. It's one of the few things that's preserved after soft tissues die. And we know with good confidence, good evidence, that of all teeth recovered prior to the consumption of wheat and grains, 1 to 3% showed some kind of abnormality, such as cavities or evidence for abscess or misalignment. With the consumption of wheat and grains, that increased to 16 to 49%, more towards the 49%. So tooth decay, tooth misalignment, abscess, all these problems became a real serious problem, very common. And people committed suicide over this. In fact, in current living hunter-gatherer societies, like in Tanzania or in the jungles of South America or in the jungles of New Guinea, those people who were not consuming grains and then started consuming grains because they traded with Western people, you know, this kind of a thing. I'll give you beer and cornbread if you give me some animal skins or spearheads or something like that. So these indigenous hunter-gatherer populations would start to consume Western grain-based foods, and they went from the same thing, as in the fossil record, they went from almost no tooth decay or tooth problems to explosive tooth decay, such that the number one cause for suicide in hunter-gatherer populations is tooth abscess. And that's because you develop serious infection from a rotten tooth, and then it erodes the surface and causes a hole in the face, and it's it's excruciatingly painful. And so people kill themselves because they ate wheat and grain, and sugars, also, candies and that kind of thing, cakes. Uh so over and over again, we've seen what happens when humans start to consume wheat and grains. If you want a vivid, colorful uh illustration of this, read Dr. Weston Price's book from the 1920s, so a century ago, called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. I think should be must-reading for all dentists, even though it's a century old. He did something extraordinary. He was practicing dentistry in Cleveland, Ohio, and he saw that children were coming to his office with mouths full of cavities. And back then, a century ago, the only treatment they had for cavities was to pull the teeth. So his day was filled morning till evening, pulling children's teeth. We start to ask, why is this happening? So he took his wife Florence and closed his practice and then literally traveled the world, went to virtually every continent except Antarctica, and documented dental health, mostly of indigenous hunter-gatherer or people living primitive lives, mostly without cultivation of wheat and grains, and sometimes without even any form of agriculture. And he saw over and over again people eating their natural indigenous diet had full mouths of teeth, no decay, no abscess, no misalignment, and fully formed bones, jaw bones, mandibles, and maxillary facial bones. Then he went even further. He documented the dental health of people in those societies who began to trade with Western people. And the same thing predictably occurred: explosive increase, dental decay, tooth loss, abscess, misalignment, and a change in facial structure. That's not it's not quite clear why that happens, but he documented this in literally thousands of photographs. He published this data in the dental journals, but also kind of collated, it combined it into that book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. So though it's a century old, it was a deep insight into what happens when people embrace a modern diet, but specifically wheat, grains, and sugars. There's some exceptions in there. There was a population, for instance, in Europe that consumed a crude form of oats and they didn't seem to have the same problem. But for the most part, consumption of wheat and grains led to an explosion and tooth decay. So as this conversation on dental health evolves and changes, and it's clear we need to eradicate some of those pathogens and restore beneficial microbes, we can't lose sight of the fact that we've known for a long, long time that the elimination of wheat and grains is a huge advantage. And I see this play out, by the way. People who read my wheat belly book from many years ago, for instance, where we talked about why we eliminate wheat and grains. People often say, oh, it's just a gluten fruit. No, no, no, no. It's about the amylopectin A carbohydrate. That's the thing that rots your teeth. And the reason for that is amylopectin A. So many things in wheat and grains are indigestible, literally indigestible. For instance, wheat germaglutin, a very toxic protein that you can't digest. You can ingest it, you cannot digest it. It goes in intact, several hundred amino acids long. It comes out in the toilet, fully intact. Though, in its passage from mouth to toilet, it's a very potent bowel toxin. And if you give it to a rat, for instance, in a small quantity that's purified, it will destroy its gastrointestinal. That's how toxic it is. Now, it doesn't destroy your gastrointestinal tract, it just irritates and inflames it because most people get about 18 to 19 milligrams of wheat germin gluten. But that's an example of an indigestible protein. The gliadin protein within gluten, another protein or peptide, that's not fully digestible. We can digest it down to about four or five amino acid long peptides, not two single amino acids like other proteins. So we're left with these four or five amino acid-long peptide fragments. Why is that important? Well, one, it's a known initiator of autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes. It also acts as an opioid in the brain, binding to opioid receptors, but if it doesn't make you high, it stimulates appetite. So gliden-derived opioid peptides are a very potent appetite stimulant. And you'll see this play out. When people go wheat and grain free, they say, well, it took about five days. I felt kind of weird, tired, and a little crabby. But after those initial five days, I was miraculously freed from hunger. That ravenous hunger I used to have, say, even when I was full, like after a bowl of pasta, went away. I find I'm in control of my appetite. I no longer succumb to temptation when I see, say, a plate of bagels or cupcakes or a slice of birthday cake, whatever, you're freed. That's from the elimination of gliden-drive opioid peptides. But I point this out because amylopectin A, the carbohydrate, unique to wheat and grains, is the exception. It isn't it is digestible. It's highly digestible. And the reason for that is there's an enzyme called amylase. It's both in the saliva and in the stomach. When you eat something made of wheat or grains, the amylopectin A starts to undergo immediate digestion in the mouth, so much so that if you took a bite, say of a sandwich or a bagel or pancake, whatever, and you chewed it, but did not swallow it, and you checked the blood glucose, finger stick blood glucose, just prior to consuming it, and then in the minutes afterwards, you're going to see a big rise in blood glucose. That's because the amylase enzyme in the mouth began the process of digestion of the amylopectin to glucose, and your blood glucose goes up. Of course, you swallow it, and then amylase in the stomach and other enzymes degrade it further, and that's why the amylopectin, that's why the glycemic index of wheat and grains is among the highest of all foods, higher than table sugar. You don't hear that part, right? If you take a look at any table of glycemic indexes, that is how high blood glucose goes after eating a food, you'll see that worst offenders from a glycemic index standpoint are wheat and grain products. And by the way, what foods are worse than sugar? Worse than wheat and grains? Cornstarch, tapioca starch, potato flour, and rice flour. The most common ingredients in gluten-free foods. So when my wheat belly book came out, I had to make clear to everybody this is not about being gluten-free and resorting to those horrible gluten-free foods. You know, a lot of people don't read, they just assume what the book is about and they started eating gluten-free foods. And they come to me and say, hey, I gained 18 pounds. I'm a type 2 diabetic. Now, no surprise. They were eating gluten-free foods. So it helps to think this through. And I hope read my book so you get the full story that this is not about being gluten-free. And those, by the way, those gluten-free replacement flowers are also flagrant causes of tooth decay. So, so anyway, back to the primary idea here. And that is if you're going to engage in a program of dental health and rebuilding dental microbiome, start by removing this extremely offensive thing that we know from the anthropological record, from the sociological record, and from modern science disrupts dental health. And by the way, change is the dental microbiome. We know that the dental microbiome has undergone change over the years that humans have been consuming wheat. There's been an enrichment, for instance, in species like Streptococcus mutans. That's the primary cause of dental decay cavities. And so we know that wheat and grains cultivates those unhealthy microbes such as Streptococcus mutants. Now, if you're stuck with some of those really nasty microbes like porphyrimonis or fusobacterium or tannarella, they don't go away with dental hygiene, unfortunately. So once you get them, thorough brushing, flossing, even going to the dentist for thorough cleaning does not get rid of those pathogens. And if the dentist is very progressive and does an oral microbiome test, they might give you an antibiotic. But I want to make you aware of something I created. I call it Monolain oral Rinse. It's dirt cheap to make. You can make it in your own home. And then you rinse with it. Hold it in your mouth for 10 minutes. It's just a combination of monolorin, which is a fatty acid coupled with glycerol, very benign. I add a little bit of peppermint extract to expand its antibacterial effect and to make a pleasant smell and taste. And in a vehicle of glycerol, which is sweet but does not rot your teeth. And you rinse with that only for a few days. So whether it's the mono my monolaurin oral rinse formulation or mouthwash, you're trying to get rid of pathogens, you don't want to use it for more than a few days because they're like antibiotics. They kill things, but they don't rebuild your oral microbiome. How do you do that? Well, that's a work in progress. And so stay tuned as we get smarter and smarter and we show you ways to restore, say, species like Lactobac salivaris, Bifitobacterium salivaris, lactobacillus rotorite, and the microbes that we believe are beneficial. Now, if this interests you, these kinds of conversations, I refer you to all my books: Wheatbelly about the diet, super gut about the microbiome, superbody, about the implications for body shape and composition. Of course, my blog, my thousands of blog posts, women davismd.com. Of course, my YouTube channel, my Define Health Podcast. And of course, if you want support and conversation, that's in my inner circle.drvisinfinite health.com.