I help you to understand why your dental problems keep coming back, despite regular dental visits and oral hygiene at home.
Why dental health is not exclusive to the mouth
Gum disease, dental cavities and bad breath are not health issues that are isolated to the mouth. Imagine that your teeth and gums are alive and must have a healthy habitat in which to live.
When the habitat is suffering, the teeth and gums will suffer too.
Most people with gum disease or chronic dental issues will also experience health conditions such as insulin resistance or diabetes, heart disease, digestive issues, significant stress or immune system difficulties such as autoimmune disease or allergies. These are predominantly inflammatory issues. Inflammation in the mouth will worsen inflammatory conditions elsewhere in the body and vice versa.
This is why you can diligently brush or floss, only for your dental problems to keep coming back, or get worse.
Dentists treat the teeth directly. Naturopaths treat the rest.
Regular dental care from a dental professional is essential. Mechanical cleaning, fillings, scale and root planes are all vital tools for “landscaping” the environment in which your teeth and gums live.
Dentists are professionals at treating the teeth. However they are not trained in the management of the health conditions that determine whether your body is a healthy home for your teeth and gums to live within.
This can be frustrating as even the most thorough dental care can be sabotaged by poorly managed inflammation, blood sugar levels, chronic infections, nutritional deficiencies and stress.
As a naturopath, I do not treat the teeth. I treat all the other factors that determine whether or not dental care is successful in the long term.
I work best with people who are curious and ask “but why?’
I work with people who are doing all the right things - seeing their dentist, cleaning their teeth diligently at home - but who are not seeing satisfactory improvements in their teeth and gums.
People who have asked their dentist why their condition is happening to them, even though they floss and brush.
Why do some people develop severe periodontitis at thirty and others never go to the dentist (or floss) and have no problem?
I work best with people who are curious about how other areas of their health are affecting their mouth and who are willing to explore nutrition, lifestyle, herbal and micro-biome medicine.
I offer an obligation free discovery call to those clients who are new to naturopathy and would like to discuss their situation before committing to treatment. Book through the ‘book now’ button above.
While living abroad and mothering my first baby, I was told that I had a small amount of gum recession from brushing too hard. I didn’t think much of it - continued to floss and brush (lightly) twice a day. When I returned to Australia six months later, my dental hygienist asked “has anyone spoken to you about your gum disease?” Excuse me, my what!?
My periodontal chart showed gum pockets ranging from 4-8mm in depth. My dentist showed me a swab of my gum pocket under her microscope and it showed an overgrowth of bacteria and parasites. I was devastated.
My story of periodontitis and combination treatment
By completing an oral microbiome profile I learned which bacteria were colonising my mouth and how they had been fuelled by pregnancy hormonal changes, the medication I took for pregnancy vomiting and how the periodontitis had rapidly progressed due to systemic inflammation as a result of insulin resistance and chronic sleep deprivation.
After 6 weeks of a strict naturopathic home care regime, many of my gum pockets had reduced to normal depths and my sample viewed under the microscope had improved drastically.
This was before I had my scale and root plane to mechanically clear the infection from my gum pockets.
Continued…
