Your teeth are composed of four main substances: Enamel, dentin, pulp, and cementum.
Enamel: This is the hard layer on the outside of the crown portion of the tooth. It’s the hardest substance in the body, which is necessary to handle all of the chewing we do every day.
It is believed in modern dentistry that tooth enamel isn’t able to resist acid, which eats holes through it if left unchecked.
Dentin: This layer is just below the enamel and is similar to bone. Its softer composition allows it to distribute the pressure of each bite.
Pulp: This is the innermost layer of the tooth. It’s the soft substance which houses the nerves and provides nutrients to the rest of the tooth. When a tooth is decayed, the pulp has begun to rot away.
Cementum: This is located around the root of the tooth and attaches the tooth to the bone.
When the body becomes satiated with the proper level of fat-soluble vitamins and minerals, it will send the necessary nutrients to the pulp of the teeth, which will then supply the enamel, dentin, and cementum with what they need to strengthen and heal. This process is called remineralization.
The Right Diet For Your Teeth: Best Approach
Bone Broth
Bone broth isn’t as gory as it may sound. It is simply a broth made from slow-cooking the bones from free-range, grass-fed animals; or whole fish or crustacean carcasses.
Bone broths contain a high quantity of vital minerals including calcium, phosphorous, magnesium, sulfur, fluoride, sodium and potassium.
These minerals, especially phosphorous, are essential for rebuilding the mineral structure of the teeth.
In order to attack cavities from the inside out, we suggest eating or drinking 2 – 3 cups of bone broth per day.
You can use it to make a hearty stew, or simply drink it from a mug. Either way, the gelatin, fat-soluble vitamins and minerals are getting into your body to help the rebuilding process.
To make bone broth, simply place the bones or entire carcass of a free-range fowl, a bovine marrowbone, or fish carcass into the slow cooker with a splash of vinegar.
Fill to the top with fresh water and sea salt (optional). Set the slow cooker to low, replace the lid, and let simmer for 24 – 48 hours.
Real bone broth will become gelatinous when refrigerated, and makes very good thick soups and gravies as well as bases for traditional soups like chicken and vegetable or beef-mushroom.
Remember to steer clear of noodles or other grains in your soups, but adding diced vegetables is absolutely okay.
Cod Liver Oil
Fermented cod-liver oil is like a liquid dentist —only much less frightening. (Seriously, who doesn’t cringe a bit when the dentist gets out that scraper?) Full of highly concentrated fat-soluble vitamins A & D, just ½ teaspoon 2 – 3 times a day can immediately alleviate tooth pain.
Why? Because you’re sending a rush of nutrients to your teeth that are an integral part of structural repair.
Don’t go running to your health food store or hop on Amazon to buy a bottle of cod liver oil just yet. It’s crucial to remember that not all cod liver oil is created equal.
Fermented cod liver oil is not exposed to the high heats often used when processing commercial oils.
Heat processing completely obliterates naturally occurring vitamin D, which has to then be added back in synthetic form—which is essentially not absorbable by the human body.
See also: How to Cure Gum Disease Without a Dentist: Best 10 Ways
Grass-Fed Butter or Ghee
Remember when butter was the bad guy? Well, delicious, creamy, fatty butter isn’t totally off the hook.
Those hunks of pale butter found in most grocers’ refrigerators are NOT going to help heal your teeth.
Factory-farmed dairy can’t even nourish a calf, let alone a human being.
Commercial butter is made from milk that is pumped from grain-fed, confined cows that are generally treated with hormones and antibiotics.
This grass-fed butter is a deep yellow color and is full of fat-soluble vitamins A, K, and E. It’s got a great balance of Omega-6 to Omega-3 fatty acids.
According to Dr. Price’s research, “Many children have tooth decay even while using whole milk, in part because the milk is too low in vitamin content, due to the inadequacy of the food given the cows.”
He also explains that rapidly-growing grass-fed “butter is usually several times as high in fat-soluble activators including vitamins A and D as butter produced from stall fed cattle or cattle on poorer pasturage.”
He found that people who ate a diet including plenty of grass-fed butter were very healthy with almost no cavities, and that the rate of dental caries decreases during the spring and summer when butter is made from the milk of cows grazing on young green grasses.
This is because the deep yellow pastured dairy contains a component that activates the body’s ability to absorb minerals. Better mineral absorption means greater tooth mineralization.
If you have lactose intolerance, you can use ghee instead of butter.
Ghee is simply butter that has been clarified by heating it up and skimming off the water and milk solids. It’s free of lactose and casein, and it really adds delicious flavor to your foods. PLUS, it increases essential vitamin absorption.
Remember to only use ghee that is organic and grass-fed, which can be found at most health food stores.
Or you can make your own ghee from pastured butter: Place a pound of organic, pastured butter (such as Kerrigold) into a Dutch oven or another oven-safe dish.
Turn oven to 250˚F and bake for about an hour. At this point, check on the ghee—it should be very bubbly and browning on the bottom. Continue baking for about another 30 minutes until slightly toasted on the bottom, but not burned.
Remove from the oven and let the ghee cool slightly so it’s easier to handle. Line a fine mesh sieve with a couple layers of cheesecloth or a clean muslin cloth and set it over a large bowl. Gently pour the ghee clear liquid ghee into a clean Mason jar and store in a cool, dry place.
Fermented Foods
Eating raw vegetables isn’t necessarily nutritionally superior. Just because you can chow down on raw broccoli doesn’t mean you’re healthier, it just means you can really chew.
It might be a good idea to replace that raw broccoli slaw, which is a bit difficult to digest, with sauerkraut. Fermented foods such as raw milk kefir and yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, and kombucha contain enzymes that have already started the process of breaking food down before it even hits your mouth.
This is important because fermentation eases the absorption of nutrients into the body.
The active cultures in real, traditionally-fermented foods are considered probiotics, promoting the growth of healthy bacteria in the gut and thus increasing the absorption of vital nutrients such as the B vitamins, which we already know are essential for tooth remineralization.