…as you know it, anyway. That’s right, as well as going shampoo-free and not using conventional deodorant, I’ve ditched the toothpaste you find in the shops and I’ve made a couple of observations after a year of using natural toothpaste.
A little background
In my research for going no ‘poo I came across a few articles by people who had also ditched normal toothpaste.
As always, I’m not big on the science, but word has it that fluoride is actually bloody awful for our health and besides that most conventional toothpastes are loaded with SLS, a cheap and nasty foaming agent and known skin irritant.
One of the quickest and easiest ways to switch to a natural toothpaste is to mix equal amounts of coconut oil with bicarb of soda and use that instead, so being too impatient to order anything else I tried it out the next morning.
Besides a very salty taste and no foam, one instant, bloody incredible thing happened to me:
I didn’t nearly choke myself to death coughing up phlegm.
For years I had hacked up untold horrors straight after brushing my teeth every single day, sometimes even throwing up from the heaving and gagging, and I had always figured it must just be the way I was.
Go figure that the ingredients in “normal” toothpaste had been aggravating my throat all that time.
Obviously I haven’t looked back since, but I got sick of making my own toothpaste. They did keep my mouth feeling clean and my breath smelled of basically nothing after brushing, but the bicarb can get a little abrasive and it could all be a bit of a faff.
I also had one disaster with a remineralising toothpaste concoction that tasted like how our bin smells after a few days in summer. Not that you shouldn’t give making one for yourself a go or buying one - I told you I’m no scientist. Or chef, it would appear.
Buy ALL the natural toothpaste
So I started buying up all the natural toothpastes I could find. Some I bought only to discover they still contained nasties I was trying to avoid, while others had these crazy herbal tastes that neither of us could stomach.
We’re still going through a lot of tubes to find a brand we really like. It looks like Go & Home’s herbal mint toothpaste might be a winner for us which you can get from Big Green Smile, and I also really like the JĀSÖN ones which are widely available.
Wanting to cut down on plastic packaging, I now get remineralising clay tooth powders in glass pots from the gorgeous Ariel at Clean Living Collection - my favourite flavour is the peppermint and eucalyptus, and I love that the frankincense and myrrh one literally tastes like Christmas. They stain your toothbrush yellow but don’t worry, the tooth powders are whitening.
The second amazing thing I noticed
So I’m a horror for going to the dentist. I didn’t go for about nine years after I left school and I only started going again in the last two years.
Not out of fear, but I never had any toothache and I had this general mistrust of how you never seem to need any fillings until you hit 18 when you start paying for your dental visits on the NHS.
Sure enough, when I first went two years ago I needed work.
After nine years, I’m bound to need something doing, right?
One tiny filling (stay away from mercury fillings - look it up and maybe compare your symptoms with mercury leaching…), a caution that I had another cavity starting to form, and off I went…
Okay, so for all my health problems I got pretty lucky with my teeth. I say lucky - I don’t smoke or drink tea/coffee/fizzy drinks/alcohol and I make most of my food from scratch so I wasn’t consuming a lot of sugar.
But to still have a couple of cavities forming was obviously blamed by the dentist on the fact that I don’t floss.
Between that first visit and my most recent one, I changed two major things:
- My diet, where I cut out all processed food, refined sugar, limited carbs and started eating mostly vegetables, clean protein and fats, and only really drinking water/lemon and ginger tea/rooibos
- Switching to natural toothpaste
I also continued to not floss.
Want to guess what happened at my last trip to the dentist?
The cavity that had started to form was gone.
I actually went to a private dentist whose newfangled equipment is more advanced and accurate than what you get on the NHS, so I’m fairly confident that nothing was missed. In fact, my new dentist put me on a yearly recall instead of six months.
Now, I’m not saying that a natural toothpaste will solve all your problems or that you don’t need to floss; it’s also just my opinion that the food you’re putting in your mouth is what’s most important.
I’m actually trying to get into better habits with flossing, especially after I eat naughty foods, which incidentally are the only times I get morning breath, furry teeth/tongue and dry mouth, along with a host of other symptoms. Sugar is the devil, I tell ye!
I don’t use mouthwash but I do practice oil pulling when I feel like I need to - like the morning after a sugar binge. Some people like to oil pull every day but my diet is usually so clean that I just don’t feel the need.
Not convinced by all my hippy mumbo jumbo? I’ll just leave you with one parting question: If brushing our teeth, using mouthwash and flossing twice a day using products recommended by your dentist/television/supermarket shelves promotes healthy teeth and gums, why do we still need so many fillings, root canals and tooth extractions?
There ain’t no dolla dolla for Big Pharma in us having healthy teeth.
Disclaimer
• Your life and health are your own responsibility.
• Your decisions to act (or not act) based on information or advice anyone provides you—including me—are your own responsibility.
