Skip to main content

Another Cavity Healing Diet Update; Another Liver Recipe

It's been a year since I started the cavity healing diet. Last week, I went back to the dentist for a routine cleaning and exam. Results:
  • Dr. Michelangelo (not his real name) still wanted to fill the small cavities he found last year. I had this done today. I don't think the fillings will hurt anything, and having them should prevent crud from finding a place to settle for the day. And I don't think he's given to drilling and filling for the sake of it: he never gave my best friend a filling while he was her dentist, and back in February when one of my wisdom teeth hurt, he said the tooth was fine and diagnosed a sinus infection. (Infection can raise your blood sugar, which probably didn't help my teeth over the last six months.)
  • After he was finished, Dr. Michelangelo said the cavity had probably been forming for years.I know the groove on my lower tooth was there for years.
  • He remarked that how white my teeth were, down to the roots (he used A2 colored fillings for my upper teeth; it looks dark against the white background, but it's a light tooth color). Even before I started the cavity healing diet, they started getting whiter.
  • Both the dentist and one of his hygienists recommended avoiding sugar and starch. They all but came out and said "Atkins!" They also recommended a Sonicare electric toothbrush. I replaced my broken one last weekend and was pleasantly surprised that starting it again didn't hurt my gums as it did years ago when I first got one. (My experience is that it also makes your teeth whiter.)

On one hand, some small cavities did continue to form (but stayed small) while on the cavity healing diet. OTOH, since starting a LC diet, my teeth are whiter than before, my TMJ problems and tooth grinding are gone, my teeth and gums aren't very sensitive (something Dr. M. remarked on the last time) and no new cavities have formed in the past year. While I haven't had perfect results, there's been a lot of improvement.

Dr. Michelangelo and I started talking about diet (I mentioned Drs. Price and Mellanby). He told me how he fixed liver, and I made a variation on it tonight.

Liver Curry
1/4 pound of liver
1 T coconut oil
1 small clove of garlic, finely chopped
1/2 c coconut milk
1 T tomato paste
1/2 t cumin
1/2 t curry powder

Heat the coconut oil on medium low heat. Cook the liver for five to ten minutes, just until it's no longer bloody. Place on a plate. Add the garlic and saute for a few minutes. Add the coconut milk and tomato paste; stir well, and bring to medium heat. Add the spices, stir well, let simmer for a few minutes and spoon over the liver. Serves one.
Labels:

Comments

andy said…
Children should learn to take care of their teeth while they still have their milk teeth. In this way, they will know how to avoid teeth cavities and gum diseases when they have their permanent teeth. It is important to have a dental exam and dental cleaning at least once per year. Regular visits to the dentist will help to identify and correct problems at an early stage.
April 10, 2012
Anonymous said…
oh. A little disappointing that your cavity healing diet wasn`t totally effective. I tried my own, after losing a small filling.I also used toothpaste with Novamin and several other variations of "enamel repair" mouthwashes. The cavity didn`t get any worse as far as I can tell,the rough edges have smoothed over and that`s over a year on. Also, my teeth seem more firm with smaller gaps between which makes me believe that the gum recession has re-grown. My dentist said it wouldn`t, and just kept on scraping away under the gum line.It appeared to make it worse. I just thought there had to be a better way.I previously had several extractions on the trot, two of which I believed were really down to a sinus infection. UK dentists are deservedly known to be quite poor.... at least most of the ones I`ve ever been to see have just been interested in pulling teeth and filling the rest. I read your blog with interest. Great job.
April 12, 2012
Lori Miller said…
Thanks--I'm glad to hear your teeth are doing so much better. You probably saved some of your teeth if they weren't firmly in place before. (The dentist who gave me a root canal said that the bone that your teeth sit in does grow back.) But unnecessary tooth extractions--wow, that's terrible.

The groove on my bottom tooth didn't smooth out, but it didn't seem to get any worse, either.
April 12, 2012
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too.  Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr...
24 comments
Read more

We Hate the ADA; Why does the Perfect Health Diet Get a Pass?

Some people keep touting the Perfect Health Diet as low-carb, but carb levels that are mostly in the triple digits aren't generally regarded as low-carb; in fact, one of the authors says low-carb diets are unhealthy. A lot of us hate the  American Diabetes Association's advice for diabetics: start with 45g to 60g of carbohydrate per meal and go higher or lower from there. That's 135g to 180g of carb. Perfect Health Diet advice for diabetics: eat 20% to 30% of your diet as carbohydrate. On 2,000 calories, that's 100g to 150g of carb. On 1,700 calories, that's 85 to 128g; on 2,200 calories, that's 112 to 168g. Depending on your carb and calorie intake, carbs would be 85g to 168g per day. That's not a mile off from the ADA's recommendations. Paul Jaminet, one of the authors of the Perfect Health Diet, says, "the basic biology here is that the body's physiology is optimized for a carbohydrate intake of about 30%." He warns against a ...
14 comments
Read more

Palpitations Gone with Iron

Thanks to my internet friend Larcana, who alerted me to the connection between iron deficiency and palpitations, I doubled down on my iron supplements and, for good measure, washed them down with Emergen-C. It's a cold medicine with a mega-dose of vitamin C, plus B vitamins and minerals. I don't think vitamin C does anything for a cold (a friend bought the stuff and left it at my house the last time she visited), but vitamin C does help iron absorption. After doubling up on iron in the last three days, I feel back to normal. (I'd already been taking quite a bit of magnesium and potassium, so I probably had sufficient levels of those.) How did I get so low on iron? Maybe it was too many Quest bars instead of red meat when I had odd cravings during my dental infection recently. Maybe because it's too hard to find liver at the grocery store and I haven't eaten much of it lately. Maybe the antibiotics damaged my intestines . And apparently, I'm a heavy bleeder . ...
18 comments
Read more

My Long-Term Experience Eating Safe (and Other) Starches

Years ago, before the Perfect Health Diet came out, I followed a program that involved eating quite a bit "safe starch." It was called Body for Life. It involved eating six small servings of carbohydrate along with six small servings of protein, plus two servings of fibrous vegetables per day. (A serving was the size of your fist or the palm of your hand.) There were six workouts a week (three weightlifting, three cardio) and one free day every week where you ate whatever you wanted and didn't exercise. In all fairness, these two programs are different: BFL allows certain grains, legumes and low-fat dairy and discourages fat. It doesn't call for a wheelbarrow full of vegetation. Nevertheless, my experience eating lots of fruit and lots of starch is relevant to the PHD because the amount and type of digestible carbohydrates are similar, and for the first few years, I didn't eat wheat except on free days. At first on BFL, I felt great. Before, I was continually...
17 comments
Read more

This Just In: Yogurt Doesn't Improve Health

A recent study from Spain finds "In comparison with people that did not eat yogurt, those who ate this dairy product regularly did not display any significant improvement in their score on the physical component of quality of life, and although there was a slight improvement mentally, this was not statistically significant," states López-García. Most yogurt is pretty much pudding with a little bacteria . Pudding is a sugar bomb. Hard to believe the stuff doesn't improve health outcomes, isn't it? But as usual, researchers are calling for...more research. "For future research more specific instruments must be used which may increase the probability of finding a potential benefit of this food."
23 comments
Read more