R ight now I encourage you to take the first step toward healing gum disease. And that step is to make the choice to heal. I want you to heal, and so I align with this purpose. If you will, take a moment and align with your own personal goal for healing gum disease. Imagine your teeth feeling strong and firmly implanted in healthy gums. Imagine yourself enjoying life and feeling good and nourished. Start healing gum disease by changing how you think and imagining a better future for yourself. Do this now!
By working with people to heal their gum disease I have found that success is determined before you begin. For those of you who align with and open yourselves to a positive energy stream, a good vibration, or a deep soul current toward health, will be the ones to succeed. For those of you who feel closed, resistant, doubtful, and unwilling to do the work that it takes to heal, you will be the ones who usually fail. But don’t worry if you are a habitual skeptic, or disbeliever. I am skeptical, too. Skepticism can be healthy. And if you’ve been burned too many times by false hopes and painful treatments, then naturally it is hard to be optimistic. But if your skepticism is a tool of resistance and stagnation which blocks you from taking positive action, then your skepticism will be a hindrance on your path to recovery.
In order for you to succeed and understand gum disease, I urge you to give yourself the time you need and deserve to understand gum disease thoroughly. If your goal is simply to rush past the slow and deliberate decay of your body, then your odds of successfully healing this condition decrease quite a bit. You cannot succeed if you hurriedly try to eliminate the disease from your mind, so that you can move on to the next “more important” thing. Your goal if you want to succeed must be to face your reality, so you can do something about it.
Readers who merely skim through this book will miss out on understanding the thought process behind the recommendations, and as a result will end up confused and unsure of themselves. The purpose here is to educate and encourage an inner change of awareness about health for the reader. The aim is for you to begin to ask the right questions and become an authority and an advocate for your own health.
This book is meant to bring you closer to the rules of the natural world so you can understand how the effect of gum disease was created. I want you to find your own inner wisdom and authority when it comes to gum health. The words and message here are not meant to squash, suppress, or replace what you know and feel to be true. This is not meant to supplant your own wisdom, but rather to enhance it.
Do not take what I write here on faith; that is not my goal. Review the evidence and allow it to help you draw your own conclusions as to the real nature of gum disease and how to treat it. I believe that when you see some of the facts that have been hidden and not shared, that you will more easily be able to come to your own educated decision about what is best for you.
A brief anatomy review is important to help define and clarify the condition of gum disease. Gum disease is caused by a deficiency of nutrients in your body which for some people results in inflammation and bone loss in your periodontium .
Gingival means pertaining to the gums and itis means inflammation. Gingivitis means inflammation of the gum tissues without loss of connective tissue attachment. The true cause of this condition is a nutritional deficiency resulting in tissue inflammation.
Gingivitis Symptoms
Periodontitis (also called gum disease, periodontal disease, and formerly known as pyorrhea)
Peri means around, odont means tooth, and itis means inflammation. Periodontitis means inflammation of the area around your tooth. Periodontitis is the progressive loss of the alveolar bone around the teeth. Periodontitis involves gum tissue inflammation at sites where there has been a consistent detachment of connective tissue from the cementum, the base of the gum has migrated away from its apex, and bone loss can be detected by X-ray. Periodontitis also involves the presence of bleeding on probing, deep pockets, recession, and tooth mobility 2 . Its real cause is demineralization of tissues and bones from nutritional deficiencies and the resulting infection and loss of the maxilla and mandible bones.
Gum Disease: This general term can refer to any condition of inflammation or deterioration of the gum tissue or surrounding tissue or bone.
Plaque: A biofilm that adheres to tooth surfaces and contains bacteria, saliva, calcium and phosphorous, fat and proteins. 5 Plaque and not calculus has been correlated with gum disease. 6
Calculus: Dental calculus is calcified dental plaque, composed primarily of calcium phosphate mineral salts. 7
Moderate periodontal disease is defined as having at least two teeth with inter-proximal (in between teeth) attachment loss of four millimeters or more OR at least two teeth with five millimeters or more of pocket depth at interproximal sites. The prevalence of moderate periodontitis in the U.S. is 30 percent of adults. The prevalence of moderate periodontitis increases with age with those over sixty-five years the most affected. 4
Severe periodontal disease is defined as having at least two teeth with inter-proximal (in between teeth) attachment loss of six millimeters or more AND at least one tooth with five millimeters or more of pocket depth at interproximal sites. Severe periodontitis was estimated to occur in 8.5 percent of U.S. adults over thirty years of age; that’s more than twenty million people.
The healing process begins when you fully own, or embody your suffering. Loose teeth, inflammation of oral tissues, pain from biting and chewing food, and losing teeth, is suffering. Not knowing what to do about this disease as it progresses and worsens compounds the suffering. Take a moment right now to notice how you feel about your experience of gum disease.
As a further step of acknowledgment of your health situation, I would encourage you to look at your gums in the mirror and to take some pictures of your gum recession, inflammation, or loose teeth with your digital camera. It’s important to look at, see, and really feel what your body is doing. In fact, your life depends on it as gum disease is a precursor to more serious illnesses.
Before the 1970s, there was a variety of opinions as to what caused gum disease, and as a result, patients would receive widely different treatments from the different dentists they visited.
Since the 1970s, a unified message has been taught to and by the dental profession: that bacterial plaque causes periodontal disease and that regular plaque removal is the best way to prevent and treat the disease. 8
The American Academy of Periodontology website offers this explanation for gum disease:
Gingivitis is often caused by inadequate oral hygiene. Gingivitis is reversible with professional treatment and good oral home care. . . . Untreated gingivitis can advance to periodontitis. With time, plaque can spread and grow below the gum line. Toxins produced by the bacteria in plaque irritate the gums. The toxins stimulate a chronic inflammatory response in which the body in essence turns on itself, and the tissues and bone that support the teeth are broken down and destroyed. Gums separate from the teeth, forming pockets (spaces between the teeth and gums) that become infected. 9
Summary on Currently Believed Gum Disease Theory
Poor oral hygiene → Gingivitis
Untreated gingivitis → Excess bacterial toxins in plaque
Excess bacterial toxins over time → Gum disease (periodontitis)
All of us who have been in a dental chair have been told that mantra so often that most of us believe it to be true. But the truth is that there is no consensus about bacteria as the cause of gum disease.
A 1997 article in the Journal of the American Academy of Periodontology states there are more than three hundred types of bacteria in the mouth, but “very few of these bacteria cause systemic infection in healthy individuals.” Furthermore our “innate host defense system,” constantly monitors, and “prevents bacterial intrusion.” 10 What this means is that there is always a variety of bacteria in our mouth, and our body usually prevents the few “bad” bacteria from becoming too prevalent.
The concept of a “host defense system”—meaning our body’s ability to monitor and control bacterial infections—is also well accepted in the field of periodontology. In 2005 the American Academy of Periodontology concluded that only 20 percent of periodontal disease can be attributed to bacteria and cited host response as the key factor in gum disease. 11
This conclusion matters because the concept of our body’s ability to protect itself and maintain health, what the literature refers to as host response, is the key variable which determines why some people have gum disease and others do not. Periodontal researchers have acknowledged and accepted that periodontal disease is a systemic disease focused on the body’s reaction to bacteria, and is therefore a “multifactorial, complex disease.” 12
What’s more, researchers have documented the episodic and periodic nature of gum disease. With chronic periodontitis, periods of “rapid progression” are followed by long periods of “remission.” 13 This simply would seem to acknowledge that gum disease can go into remission by itself, although the modern dental industry does not seem to know why. The systemic nature of gum disease is further illustrated by aggressive periodontitis, the term for fast acting gum recession that occurs primarily in young people during times of rapid growth. This is not caused by bacteria, but by the rapid depletion of vitamins and minerals caused by growth spurts.
The currently accepted theory of the cause of gum disease holds that untreated gingivitis always leads to periodontal disease. However, scientific evidence does not support that claim. Indeed, an American Academy of Periodontology position paper cites research dating back to the 1980s that proves “relatively few sites with gingivitis go on to develop periodontitis.” 14
A three-year study on gingivitis also found no obvious signs that gingivitis progressed to periodontal disease and went so far as to say, “the subjects were relatively resistant to periodontitis.” 15 Furthermore, receiving professional dental cleanings every six months did not eliminate gingivitis. 16 Gingivitis has also been found without the presence of plaque and without a greater than normal bacterial presence. 17 While the research says that gingival sites do not go on to develop into full periodontal disease, there is a correlation between the illnesses. As we will see in Chapter 3, they have a similar underlying cause.
During 2009–2010, a large government survey showed how widespread gum disease is, and 45 percent of adults aged 45–64 had moderate and severe gum disease. 18
As people age, they succumb to more and more gum disease. As we age we also lose more teeth. Not including wisdom teeth the average 20 to 39-year-old is missing 1 tooth, the average 40 to 49-year-old 3.5 teeth, and those aged 60 and over are missing 8 teeth primarily as a result of gum disease.
In 2010, the authoritative Periodontal Disease and Overall Health: A Clinician’s Guide written by dental professors and researchers published a more accurate picture on the cause of gum disease:
Now as a result of extensive research, it has been shown that periodontal disease is initiated by plaque, but the severity and progression of the disease is determined by the host response to the bacterial biofilm. 19
In the book, they go on to state that people with gingivitis might have severe plaque and calculus deposits, but that this won’t necessarily lead to gum disease. Meanwhile, some people have excellent oral hygiene, without any of the obvious plaque or calculus deposits, and despite this they have severe gum disease with large pockets, loose teeth, and loss of teeth.20 They conclude based on these observations that, “the host response to the bacterial challenge, presented by subgingival plaque, is the important determinant of disease severity.”21 (Emphasis added.)
These are two very different concepts about gum disease. The currently purported theory focuses on oral hygiene and bacterial toxins, while a more accurate and scientifically verified theory is that gum disease is primarily about the host response and how the body reacts to certain conditions. These two very different models about gum disease might and do lead to very different treatment approaches and results.
Our body’s response to the presence of plaque determines if we develop gum disease.
Positive host response with no plaque or calculus → Healthy gum
s
Positive host response with severe plaque and calculus → Gingivitis but not gum diseas
e
Negative host response even with good hygiene → Severe gum diseas
e
Compare this more accurate theory with what the dental associations and dentists are teaching us today:
Summary on Currently Believed Gum Disease Theory
Poor oral hygiene → Gingivitis
Untreated gingivitis → Excess bacterial toxins in plaque
Excess bacterial toxins over time → Gum disease (periodontitis)
Are we to believe that the 38.5 percent of the adult population with moderate to severe gum disease does not take adequate care of their teeth and gums? Or should we ask what other factors might influence our body, its response to bacteria, its production of plaque, and the development of this disease?
Let’s start with a focused look at a primary determinant of your body’s response to bacteria—the food we eat.