Many people are aware of the controversy surrounding fluoride. Fluoride in water is one prong, the other prong is the topical applications. Brushing our teeth is something we've been doing since before we can remember; I remember learning to ride a bicycle but I don't remember learning to brush my teeth, for instance. So much of what we believe about oral health care is 'overlearned', it's from so far back we don't even question it, but we should.

The history of the dental industry in the United States and 'western world' is fascinating, and something I only got into since 2012, when we created information at Lumigrate and a new organization called SWIG, for Safe Water is Great. Initially we were wanting to educate people via Lumigrate and in person about fluoride realities in terms of what is added to municipal treatment plants, primarily, but people also wanted to know about their oral care.

Then when I was studying in 2013 extensively about geoengineering, and the controversy and alleged conspiracies involved, I would find more information about the history of the dental industry relative to 'tooth powder' and then 'tooth paste' and 'mouthwash' and things that I just hadn't really thought about as, well, as I said, they were things that were just part of my life since the first days my eyes were able to send images to my brain. (A brain that, thankfully, was being given well water with only the naturally-occurring fluoride. My father had science at the core of his abilities and education, and when the general dentist prescribed fluoride tablets and we dutifully went and got a BIT bottle of it filled at the pharmacy in the little mountain town where we traveled to for medical care from our more remote home, he dissuaded us from taking them.) 

More recently, I learned about 'oil pulling' from Lulu Langford, a holistic health care provider who was one of the first to write from outside the US on Lumigrate, way back in our first year. Then I saw more and more about it on social media, and decided to incorporate it into my self-care routine midway after my last cleaning (in order to let some plaque build up first). Well, I was expecting to be somewhat impressed and satisfied, but --- it's just remarkable! "Why haven't we all known about this all along?" I thought, until I realized I was contemplating unscheduling myself for my next appointment because -- everything was just GOOD, my teeth felt like I'd just come from the dentist EVERY DAY! I'd also worked more on some supplementation / nutrition things that plague me, and thankfully a symptom I now recognize is my gums having issues. Issues show up in the tissues. 

So I wanted to provide a very general thread/topic on Lumigrate about outside the box sources that are valid and perhaps what you'd not find sometimes otherwise. Such as this one that I'm kicking off with, which is a Colorado non-profit started in the bedroom community outside of Fort Collins, Colorado, where I lived when my health derailed twice in my 'college years' (which extended for 18 years, most of which I was working and half of which I was taking a class or going full time, as I did at the end when I graduated as an occupational therapist, finally, at age 36). I left the area in 1996 and FAIM was started in 1998 by what appears to be someone who perhaps retired to the area. You can see in the About information, they added 'integrative' to their name and morphed from being a foundation about 'alternative' at about the same time I was across the state near the Utah border in Grand Junction working with a wonderfully creative assistant and brainstorming how to get 'integrate' into a unique, brandable, word. InteGreat was my previous business for local therapy service providion and that couldn't be used as there's a medical software company with that spelling. So we ended up finding Lumigrate, with "lighting the path to health and well-being" then became the slogan. 

There's MUCH about vitamin D rising in the awareness of people, and you'll see that this article has information about it as it relates to oral health and cavities. I was plagued by many cavities in my first set of teeth, and things were better for my second, but there were faults in the enamel but otherwise pretty good. I used to joke that despite all the perplexing and difficult things my body has had, at least I could grow teeth and hair well. Now aging with them, we'll see how that goes! I hope this information really helps those who are responsible for others who aren't yet able to find their way to sources like Lumigrate and take charge of their health. Parents are in there with the child, or whomever their guardians or advocates are, when one looks at the YOU! Model. 

  My model has a general dentist and a holistic dentist, and in the future, I have been so inspired recently by speaking with the hygienist at a biological dentists' office, I think it's time to make the drive just as I have chosen to do for qualified optometrists who know how to look at how the brain perceives information and prescribe filtering, prisming, and proper advise about frames, etc. (I have things life-long that make me perceive things as if I've had a brain injury, which makes sense with the delivery by forceps so the doctor could make his golf game in 1960, April, Denver --- warm day he had his priorities. And then I had many learning disabilities -- hence the 18 years to graduate as they finally were teased out, brought to my awareness, treatments sought and compliance with treatment done.)  I found out the biological dentist can, for only $19, see evidence of Lyme in microscopy of plaque scraping. Imagine if I'd had THAT in the 1960s, and they'd known how to treat it as 'outside the box' knows now.... how different life would be! SO, I provide what I know and hope that it will help YOUsers of Lumigrate.

Please go to the link: www.faim.org/dentistry/what-really-causes-cavities.html [1]

In order to encourage you to 'go see the sites', as YOUsers know, I provide an appetizer / example so you can see what the article's about, and who it's by, etc. Here's what you'll find at the FAIM website by their dentistry expert on what really causes cavities: 

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What Really Causes Cavities?

by Patrick Earvolino

Originally published in Milk and Honey, a newsletter from Selene River Press.

Even a peek at the early days of nutrition research makes one fact plain: In many cases, disease is not so much the result of attack by germs but rather the inability of the body to resist such attack. And the chief determining factor of this resistance is one's nutritional status.

Just as this basic truth applies for the person who rarely gets the sniffles, so it goes for folks who avoid the drill at the dentist's office. "Diseases of the teeth," wrote Dr. John Gunther, "are related primarily to deficient food factors which predispose the dental tissues to invasion by microorganisms." Gunther, both a physician and a dentist, wrote these words in a 1942 article titled Nutritional Aspect of Dental Disease in the journal Philadelphia Medicine.

By contrast, some will say – and by some we mean mainstream modern dentistry – that cavities are merely caused by excessive sugary and starchy foods on the teeth. Bacteria convert these famous culprits into acids, which then attack and degrade the teeth's enamel and underlying tissues.

Yet if the mere presence of sticky carbohydrates dooms teeth, Gunther wonders, why, then, did a study show that children in New York regularly experience more cavities in late winter and spring than in summer and fall? It's unlikely that the consumption of starchy and sugary foods follows such a seasonal pattern.

Something that does follow such a pattern in New York, on the other hand, is the availability of the type of sunlight necessary for the body to make vitamin D, a key player in the maintenance of human teeth. ........ SO GO TO THE LINK TO KEEP GOING.......... 

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Live and learn. Learn and live better! ~ Mardy