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Wellness Wednesday for October 26, 2022

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Is there any truth to this remineralization stuff, like this thread: https://twitter.com/Helios_Movement/status/1585623324482506752 ?

Seems to say:

  • avoid Phytic acid and oxalic acid - aka avoid "Mainly vegetables that are not cooked in animal fats, grains that are not sprouted and no nuts or seeds (and obviously no nut butter or nut “milks”"

  • avoid Sodium fluoride - filter drinking water if fluoride is added, use toothpaste without fluoride, etc

  • avoid phosphoric acid - cokes, etc

  • "Avoid the consumption of too many acidic foods and beverages that are not naturally carbonated."

  • eat things high in calcium - "Foods high in calcium both neutralize the acid that harms enamel and can help add minerals back into tooth surfaces."

Any truth to this theory at all? Obviously cokes probably aren't good for you, but avoiding veggies not cooked in animal fats? Avoid nuts (I thought one of the reasons why we all need braces nowadays is because the foods we eat are too soft, which hard nuts would counteract).

Also fluoride was added to the water for teeth health, but actually works against teeth health? is that possible?

Cavity remineralization is a well-documented phenomenon, though fluoride assists in this process, rather than inhibiting it. Note that it's a fairly limited process; if you have substantial enamel loss, you can't rebuild it through remineralization.

Excessive fluoride intake can result in skeletal fluorosis, which can be severely debilitating in extreme cases, but it requires levels far in excess of those found in fluoridated water. The evidence that it prevents tooth decay is fairly strong, but if you're doing everything else right, you don't really need it.

The other advice is mostly okay, if excessive. The main things I would recommend are limiting refined carbohydrates and acidic drinks, brushing and flossing, and getting enough vitamin D and K2. Sugar is particularly bad; you know that sour taste you get in your mouth when you eat too much sugar? That's the acid produced by oral bacteria metabolizing the sugar.

Those anti nutrients absolutely reduce the absorption of nutrients, sometimes by 50% or more, but the foods that have them usually contain more of the nutrients anyway. Eating potatoes and spinach is still better than many alternatives. Vitamin C, garlic, and fermentation will enhance absorption. The only ones that substantively decrease absorption I think are some legumes that aren’t fermented or washed but don’t quote me on that.

Phosphoric acid and acidic foods leech calcium from the bones and are associated with worse bone health, and bone health is associated with things you wouldn’t think, like flight or fight reactions.

You probably only want calcium from natural sources because high artificial calcium intake may hurt your cardiovascular health, eg “Lactose and calcium in conjunction with homocysteine from consumption of
 non-fat milk may also contribute to calcification of the arteries (Grant
 1998)”. Notably, you want a calcium to magnesium ratio of around 1.6 to 2.0. High calcium in one sitting cannot be absorbed well, this is more than 400mg in an hour.

Fluoride negates the conversation of nitrates in vegetables into nitric oxide, which only occurs on the tongue. Studies have found mouthwash also to negate this conversion. This harms BP and general cardiovascular health. The amount in toothpaste would not have an effect.

I think avoiding acidic foods and drinks is probably a good idea. As far as I understand the reason that eg. sugar is bad for your teeth is that it feeds oral bacteria that produce an acidic waste product, and that is what harms your teeth. So consuming acidic food is basically skipping the middle man, although the acid from bacteria might adhere and stay on your teeth more than food that's washed out by some water. It would stand to reason that basic foods would then have the opposite effect, although I'm not sure being high in calcium makes something inherently basic.

Generally I find opposition to fluoride to be associated with kooks; maybe there is some shadows of doubt to be cast on it's safety for the rest of the body but as far as I can tell the dental benefits of (normal amounts of) fluoride are pretty firmly positive or at the very least not negative, so the fact that they're recommending to not consume fluoride seems like a red flag.

Similarly, I don't see what the point of delineating between "naturally" carbonated and "unnaturally" carbonated is if their main thesis is that acids are bad for your teeth. Seems like a sort of appeal to nature fallacy and indicates they aren't thinking entirely clearly about their prescriptions.

So, the thrust of the idea (avoid acid) seems good, but I'd take most of their points with a grain of salt.

This is backward - sugar is food for the bacteria, acid isn't. Acidic drink in itself doesn't do much. Combine it with sugar..

sugar is food for the bacteria

And bacteria is bad for your teeth because it creates acid... in addition to forming plaque which has the added effect of keeping the acid stuck to your teeth. From what I understand the dominant strains of bacteria that cause cavities also thrive in an acidic environment so acid would help them grow more too. Maybe consuming acidic food is too transitory to have an effect, but considering that's the same method of delivery as sugar I think it's likely it could; I'm having trouble finding the right keywords to find experimental data on that however and what articles I can find seem to just follow the same reasoning I've given.