for a healthier smile - the truth about...

© No BS Water and NoBSWater.com

NOBSWATER

For A Healthier Smile

You have permission to post this e-Book, email it, print it and pass it along for free to anyone you like, as long as you make no changes or edits to its contents, layout, or digital format. In fact, you would be doing the world a favor if you’d make lots and lots of copies.

However, the right to bind this and sell it as a book is strictly reserved.

© No BS Water and NoBSWater.com © No BS Water and NoBSWater.com

A while ago I received some questions about some pretty serious dental issues.

This person (I’ll call her Jenny, which is not her real name) had been to her dentist who knew she had been using a special type of water as a mouth rinse to help the health of her mouth. She had severe loss of enamel on her upper front teeth he had documented with photos over 6 years.

The dentist had told her that her new dental problems were from using this very unique disinfecting water as a mouth rinse. He had also given some advice that I couldn’t totally agree with. Jenny and I had a couple of long conversations and I decided I had better use this e-Book to correct some serious misconceptions out there about teeth... especially as it relates to water. So here we are.

When I saw the series of photos, I knew there were some great lessons in there for every one of us. An e-Book was the best way I could think of to spread the message as far as it could go.

Mystery???

Severe Enamel Loss Over

6 Years From Inside Of Upper

Front Teeth

Can See More Yellowish Deeper Layer

Of Teeth


THIS IS IMPORTANT STUFF

This is about the health of your mouth. Oral hygiene. Gum disease. Cavities. Yuck. You may have heard that your mouth has more germs than your southernmost.... let’s just say “any other part of your body.” You get the picture. And what you were just thinking is true. The mouth does have more. Gross! We don’t even want to think about oral hygiene... but it’s a real problem for us all.

And how does water fit into this scenario? Let me count the ways. Hydration is important for your whole body, including your mouth. Your immune system has very special one-of-a-kind defenses built into your mouth because it’s your most active portal of bringing the outside world into your body.

It’s also the only part of your body where a hard material (your teeth) penetrates the “armor” of your skin or mucous membrane and allows bacteria to accumulate and actually penetrate into your body at this weak portal. That’s the basis of gum disease (which can lead to heart damage among other things). It’s the area where this very unique arrangement of your immune system occurs. Good hydration helps that defense system keep in great shape.

I want you to know about a very special type of water that can help in the oral hygiene battle. It’s the one Jenny has been using. It’s known as Electrolyzed Oxidizing Water or EO Water. All water is not the same. The EO water topic is so broad that we created a one-hour webinar about it, and still didn’t include everything we could have talked about. But for now let’s talk about its use in oral hygiene.

And I’ll add this little caveat. Not even all Electrolyzed Oxidizing Waters are the same. Quality matters here as well.

EO water is unique because it has been shown to kill, on contact, every microorganism against which it has ever been tested. That would be good if you’re trying to kill germs with a mouth rinse, right? On the flip side, it doesn’t seem to cause any detectable harm to us multi-cell organisms (that would be us). Your gums are safe from EO water. Your whole body is safe from EO water (it’s claimed). That would make EO water doubly good as a mouth rinse, right?

With a record of safety, people have been using EO water willy nilly as a mouth rinse to kill germs on contact. At least that’s how the thinking has gone up to this point in time. It’s what our friend Jenny was thinking when she used it as a mouth rinse for health reasons. Even self-proclaimed experts have said you could rinse your mouth with EO water to kill germs without any repercussions to the body...

... and they would be WRONG!

I hope I have your attention. This stuff matters to every one of us who owns a mouth.Let me set the record straight in this e-Book. I’m guessing that 99% of you reading this, including dentists, will learn something you’ve never known before about your teeth, gums, and oral health. We’re going to break this discussion down by talking about 5 different players in the human mouth and how they interact with each other.

1. Teeth 2. Bacteria (and their reduction by brushing, flossing, and anti-bacterial mouth rinses... this is where the EO water comes in) 3. Cavities (officially called caries) 4. Gums 5. Gum disease (officially called periodontal disease)


I’ve got to lay down a few features of these 5 players so you’ll understand how relevant this is for an e-Book about water. There will be far more left unsaid than said because every topic could have multiple books written about it (and they have). Also, these are not the only players on oral health, but let’s try and keep it as succinct as possible.

PLAYER 1 - TEETH

Fangs. Pearly Whites. Chiclets. Grill. Whatever you call your teeth, they’re important, but not vital for a healthy life. They affect how you speak, chew, and how you appear to others. If I asked 100 patients who came to my clinic what they wanted us to do for their mouth, 99 times I would hear just two words: whiter and straighter.

By survey, your teeth are generally in the top three things people notice about you on first impression (hair, teeth, overall face... and for the curious among you, the fourth would be clothing). Taking care of them would be in your best interest, right? But how? We’ll get to that when we introduce the rest of the players.

Most of your tooth is made of a very hard substance called Dentin, which is harder than bone. The part of the tooth above the gumline in a normal healthy mouth has the dentin covered with enamel.

This is the hardest substance in the body and will survive major catastrophes from drowning to fires. That’s why teeth are often used for forensic identification in disasters. Enamel has to be hard because

you grind teeth together thousands of times per day for almost 100 years if you live that long.


Tooth enamel is really tough stuff, even though it can be chipped, cracked, or broken due to trauma. It can be abraded away (think sandpaper) by grinding teeth together or using abrasive toothbrushes and/or toothpaste. [Aside: If you’re brushing directly with baking soda or salt or anything else like that... STOP! You’re abrading your teeth away] The first rule of teeth is the same rule as the medical Hippocratic oath: first do no harm.

But enamel has a very insidious, silent enemy and it’s called acid.

Because enamel and dentin are made of mineral, they are very easily dissolved by acid. Even children learn this at a very young age. Most dentists have been asked by one of their young patients if they can have any teeth that they have pulled out so the child can use them in a science experiment at school. Kids then put these human teeth in a certain brand of cola that rhymes with smoke -- as in “up in smoke” -- because that’s exactly what happens to the teeth. A few days in this cola and the teeth totally disappear as if by magic. It’s not magic. The whole tooth simply dissolves in the acid of this drink.

Acid is that bad for teeth.

You might be thinking to yourself, “But I don’t drink that “up in smoke” drink, so I must be safe.” Maybe. The same thing happens with most acidic substances when the pH around the tooth drops below 5.5. The enamel begins to dissolve away at pH 5.5.

If you think only Colas and soft drinks (all around pH 2.6-2.9) affect your teeth badly, you would be wrong. Even if you’re a strict vegetarian, you damage your teeth every time you eat any food with a pH below 5.5. Let me give you some approximate pH readings of different foods to make my point.

• Apple pH 3.3 to 3.9 • Apricots pH 3.3 to 4.8 • Blackberries pH 3.8 to 4.5 • Loganberries pH 2.7 to 3.5 • Orange juice pH 3.3 • Tomatoes pH 4.3 to 4.9

And for non-vegetarians, even things like broiled salmon can have a pH as low as 5.3. My point is that eating even the healthiest of foods can cause the mineral in your teeth to be dissolved. That will happen until the enamel surface rises back above 5.5 pH.

So why don’t our teeth just dissolve away forever? Good question.

Nature did something very special with the outer part of the enamel. The outer 100 microns (millionths of a meter) acts like a bank account for mineral. We lose a little mineral when the pH goes below 5.5 (almost every time we eat) and then the mineral is replenished from the saliva if we have enough time in between eating. A cavity is nothing more than an “overdrawn” bank account where more mineral was withdrawn than deposited back. We’ll get to cavities in a little bit.

The same happens for any acid applied to your tooth, whether it’s from lemons or from plaque bacteria or from EO water (which has a pH of 2.5 to 2.7). So you see the potential problem. And you see why Jenny’s dentist thought EO water had something to do with her very serious enamel loss problem.


PLAYER 2 - BACTERIA

There are more types of bugs than bacteria in the mouth, but it’s these little critters that play such an important role in our daily oral health so we’ll focus on them. It’s reported that in a clean mouth, each tooth surface can have from 1,000 to 100,000 bacteria living on them. Those that don’t brush and floss can have as many as 100 million up to 1 billion bacteria on each tooth. I’ve seen mouths so dirty that it took us 45 minutes of cleaning just to uncover all the teeth. Gross. Even worse, I’ve had people with such bad breath due to poor oral health that we had to spray out the entire office after the patient left. Gross squared.

How could that happen? Bacteria are like weeds. That’s how it could happen. They NEVER stop growing. There’s no such thing as a sterile mouth unless you actually live in a bubble. Babies are born with sterile mouths, but within hours pick up bacteria from the people who handle them most in the first few hours. These bacteria usually come from the mother, but studies have shown babies often picked up bacterial strains from the nurses who handled them most if mother wasn’t able to do so.

Which raises a weird question: should we be checking out the mouths of the doctors or nurses or midwives that are going to be handling our precious little newborns before we let them do so? It’s not as weird a question as you think when you understand how the strains of bacteria you carry throughout life can greatly influence your oral health.

My strictly medical doctor friends seem to focus on only strep throat or tonsillitis when they check a patient’s mouth. They often call me if there’s anything going on beyond those two things. But the bacteria that live on the soft tissues inside your mouth (cheeks, lips, throat, and that funny little punching bag called a uvula) are a little different than the ones that grow on hard surfaces such as teeth, crowns, retainers, or even dentures.

The mouth contains the only part of your body that doesn’t naturally shed its surface periodically and those would be called teeth. Therefore, bacteria can have a much longer ride on your teeth than anywhere else in the body. The bacteria that grows on hard objects we all know as plaque.

Plaque is really a biofilm made by bacteria trying to attach to your tooth (or filling, crown, veneer, retainer, implant, or denture). These bacteria want to colonize on your tooth and they create their own sticky substance in which to colonize (I wonder if they design flags and set up mini-governments?). If you let bacterial plaque sit undisturbed for about 7 days, you may get the beginning of cavities (Player 3 in this scenario). You also might have the beginnings of a nice case of gum disease (Player 5). We’ll talk more about those later.


But here is a major point to consider. Plaque has the consistency of a thick mayonnaise so it’s a bit sticky, but doesn’t take much effort at all to wipe off. It’s just not that difficult to remove.

Like I said before, plaque grows like weeds, NEVER stops growing, and it depends what you feed your plaque. Is your diet high in simple carbs that are easily broken down by bacteria? If you thought sugar was the only dietary culprit for dental problems, you would be wrong. Plaque bacteria love any simple carb (like ripe bananas and other fruit) and give off a by-product of acid.

Earlier I discussed how acid caused problems for teeth. It was also the alleged culprit (in the form of acidic EO water) of our friend Jenny losing around 40+ years of tooth structure in just 6 years. Hang tight and we’ll see if that’s the case or not.

So without going into hours and hours of info about microbiology (yawn), let’s just make a generalized blanket statement or two. Since plaque grows like weeds and usually causes disease if left undisturbed to colonize, we all know we need to remove it often, whether we actually do that or not.

Dental plaque should be disturbed and removed at least twice a day to prevent colonization and and its potential damage to both your teeth and gums (and heart). And the way you choose to disrupt the colonization can also cause great harm. So here are the two blanket statements.

1. Get the gunk off. 2. Don’t damage your mouth in the process.

The humble toothbrush. It’s with us to stay. Marketers keep coming up with different ways to sell the darn things... and some of them are hilarious. Angled heads, spinning, cross-angled bristles, vibrating, pulsating, diamond shape, bristles change colors when they’re worn out, spring-loaded handles.... these folks are pretty creative. Backed up by studies that show sometimes as little as a 2% increase in plaque removal... and very little of it relevant to your actual oral health.

Here’s what is relevant. It’s important to have SOFT bristles that will get as far into the nooks and crannies as possible, but without doing abrasion damage to the tooth (remember, you’re only trying to remove something that has the consistency of sticky mayonnaise). There should be lots and lots of small bristles and the ends of them should be polished so they are rounded. Really cheap toothbrushes (99 cent stores come to mind) often have bristles that are simply cut to length during manufacturing and leave sharp ends to abrade your teeth and gums.

The same goes for toothpastes. Some of them can be extremely abrasive, especially the cheap ones. Major brands tend to be safer because they have a multi-billion-dollar reputation to keep up.


But the worst things you can brush with are abrasive powders or crystals. I mean things like salt or baking soda. There are so many people who put baking soda or salt (or both) in the palm of their hand and then dab it with a wet toothbrush and start going to town on their teeth. You might as well use particles from sandpaper. Add a hard-bristle toothbrush and a back-and-forth sawing motion to the mix and you can literally cut your teeth right off. A picture is worth a thousand words. All that in an attempt to remove something like mayonnaise. It’s like using a sandblaster to wipe your kitchen counter rather than a soft cloth.

Then there’s floss, or dental tape, or other kinds of gizmos to get in between the teeth where the toothbrush can’t reach. Remember, the goal is to disturb the plaque so it can’t set up a good colony, and at the same time, NOT harm yourself in the process.

Mouth rinses are another way people attempt to keep down the levels of bacteria in your mouth. Many are laden with alcohol that dry out and damage the gums and mucous membranes in the mouth. There are many types of rinses to attempt to keep the plaque levels down. You’ll never kill all the bacteria because there are too many microscopic recesses in your mouth for them to hide.

Here’s a thought (and I’m ranting on this one). Have you seen those ads that say their mouth rinse will kill 99.9% of germs on contact? Sounds good, right? If there are 8 million bacteria in a milliliter of saliva (and there are), this could theoretically cut it down to just 8000 (and that’s still enough bacteria to do harm). But what TYPE of bacteria are remaining? These mouth rinses can’t kill all TYPES of bacteria.


So we finally come to the point about Electrolyzed Oxidizing water. EO water has killed every type of bacteria, virus, etc. against which it’s ever been tested. There are zero types of bacteria or viruses that escape it. That includes everything from Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) to Salmonella to E. coli to Hepatitis to Tuberculosis to HIV.

Do you see why people are tempted to rinse with EO water as an antiseptic mouth rinse? It seems to do no harm at all to skin, gums, mucous membranes, etc. Even the dangling uvula at the back of your mouth survives to dangle another day.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is the teeth themselves. EO water has a pH of 2.5 to 2.7 and will rapidly dissolve mineral from your teeth. But you may remember from earlier on that so do many foods dissolve mineral from your teeth. If the time of application of the acid isn’t very long, then mineral loss occurs only in the outer 100 microns that act as a mineral “bank account” for your tooth. If the pH of the tooth is raised back above 5.5, then mineral will be deposited back into the tooth from calcium and phosphate in your saliva. That’s the design and it works well. Otherwise we could never eat acidic foods.

The good news is the EO water has been shown to kill in 30 seconds all but some food poisoning bacterial types (a strain called Bacillus cereus took 2 minutes to kill, but aren’t relevant to your plaque bacteria).

So if you rinse with EO water and swish rapidly for 30 seconds, you’ve given yourself the best mouth rinse I know of. But then you should get the pH of the teeth back up above 5.5 A.S.A.P. That’s simple. Swish again for a few seconds with alkaline water that’s generated from the same device that created the EO water.

It’s a bonus that the alkaline water from a quality device also has anti-inflammatory properties for your gums and mucous membranes. Perfect for promotion of a healthy mouth.

But the BIG QUESTION IS...

Is EO water safe for YOU to use as a mouth rinse to keep your plaque levels down? And the mystery of our friend Jenny remains. Did the EO water she was using to rinse her mouth cause the serious loss of enamel shown in the pictures? Let’s continue

and we’ll find out.


PLAYER 3 - CAVITIES

If you get a small cavity, will it give you a tooth ache? Hardly. You probably won’t even know it’s there! Ask any parent who has ever been absolutely shocked when they took their child to the dentist for the very first time. They’re told their child has 8 cavities (more common than you might think). Cavities in children and adults just don’t tend to give any symptoms whatsoever until late in the process.

If you have teeth, the modern disease of dental cavities is surely something important to know about. These are holes in teeth that shouldn’t be there (not the only holes that can happen), but these have a bacterial cause. The longer they’re left untreated, the more the tooth becomes weakened, the closer you get to death of the tooth, possible root canal, and possible tooth pulling. (ouch... costly... often preventable... and leads to more potential problems than its worth).

This whole conversation started because a person I’m calling Jenny asked me some questions about severe loss of tooth structure her dentist documented over a brief 6 year period. Jenny’s dentist thought

it was because she was using Electrolyzed Oxidizing (EO) water as a mouth rinse. In spite of that, she still had a few cavities that can be seen in the photos.

Cavities are almost exclusively a modern dietary problem that didn’t show to up to this degree in ancient populations. We’re going to combine information about Player 1 (teeth) with Player 2

(bacteria) that we learned earlier. We want to see if teeth and bacteria can play nicely or not.

The word cavity refers to a hollow space in your tooth where it should otherwise be solid. Doesn’t sound good, and it’s not. It starts out as a very small cavity that often can’t be detected, even with the best of

technology and the sharpest of eyes. It’s commonly believed that only sugar causes cavities. I’ve had strict sugar-free vegetarian patients who were shocked when I showed them 8 cavities. Have you wondered yet why I’ve twice now referred to 8 cavities, once in regard to cavities in children, and now again in regard to adults?

Let me explain how cavities form and you’ll understand why 8 is such a common number of cavities to have. I could see 3 in the pictures that Jenny sent me. They’re easy to find if you know how a small cavity starts and then progresses. I could see Jenny’s cavities because I knew where

to look. You’ll know where to look in your own mouth too when we’re finished


Plaque bacteria are always involved in cavities in teeth. If you had a sterile mouth, theoretically you could eat anything at all and never worry about cavities. But plaque is a part of our world. The bacteria are microscopic in size so by the time you see the plaque, there are millions of bacteria involved.

In the image here you can easily see it because this person was horrible at taking care of their mouth. Various stages of cavities can be seen. But also notice the redness around the gums right next to the parts of the teeth covered in plaque. This is visible gum disease that is so easily preventable.

This type of plaque shown on the flat surfaces of teeth is easily removed with a soft toothbrush. If you’re out camping and forgot one, use a napkin or shirt sleeve if you have to. The stuff wipes right off. If you don’t do this a couple of times a day, you get cavities like this.

The next type of cavities have to do with the surfaces of teeth where they contact each other. These are the types of cavities shown in the image of Jenny’s teeth. Toothbrushing can’t help here because the bristles are too small to get between the teeth. This is where flossing comes in handy. If you can disturb the plaque colonies even once a day you can prevent these types of cavities.

These contact surface cavities can become extremely large before they are found. They can’t be seen at all in their small stage when normal enamel is present. The reason they’re showing in Jenny’s pictures so well is because the enamel is mostly gone. But for you, if you have normal enamel, the only way you find these when they are small cavities is by x-ray, especially on back teeth (bright light shining through can sometimes reveal the ones on the front teeth where the teeth are thinner).


Here is a picture of a moderate size cavity between teeth. The dentist drilled in from the biting surface because it’s the easiest access. This weakens the tooth structure, but is the best option. Obviously you want to catch these cavities before they get big. The only way to do that is periodically go to your dentist and make sure to have x-rays taken every year or two.

When you don’t catch them early, this is what it looks like. One thing to note here is that x-rays only pick up damage long after it’s already done. We almost never see very small cavities on x-rays. They’re usually moderate to large by the time we see them. Again, this is because the eye can’t see these at all until they become large cavities. This tooth I’m showing here has decay that goes all the way to the center of the tooth where the pulp (living soft tissue made of blood vessels, nerves, etc.) lives in the root canal. There’s a very high chance of the pulp dying sooner or later and this tooth needing a root canal procedure. Flossing would have been cheaper by a mile.


The final general type of cavity is the one you can’t prevent by brushing, flossing, or even rinsing. It’s caused by the anatomy of the teeth themselves. These cavities occur in the natural pits and grooves of teeth which are mostly on the biting surfaces of your teeth. If you’ve ever heard your dentist say something about the word “occlusal,” he or she is referring to the biting surface of your tooth. These pits and grooves are too small for the bristles of a toothbrush to get in and clean out the plaque as you can see here. Liquid also won’t penetrate to the depth of the pit and kill the plaque.

Looks can be deceiving here too. These can look so small and innocent on the surface, but if left untreated for several months, they can literally wipe out the center of the tooth. This all happens usually without cavity pain or any other sign or symptom to you. Cavities start by the smallest of holes in the enamel surface, but once inside the enamel they hit the softer dentin. Cavities spread laterally inside in all directions.

Now I’ll explain the mystery of the 8 cavities commonly found in children and adults. This is the number of big molar teeth we have at the back of the mouth for most people (I’m not including wisdom teeth here because most of us have those removed). Children have 8 molars and adults have 8 (or 12 if you leave the wisdom teeth in). Molars have the most natural pits and grooves of any of your teeth and so they easily get cavities, even if you’re the world champion brusher, flosser, and rinser. This is how strict vegetarians still get cavities, although typically much slower than others. Cavities happen over many years in some cases and it’s a matter of judgment when you should jump in and fix them. I’m a proponent of early intervention for the pure preservation of tooth structure.


So let’s bring this back to our friend Jenny. She obviously had 3 cavities that could be seen with the eye and they were the type that could have been prevented by perfect flossing. My experience is that most of us overestimate our “perfection” at oral hygiene. Jenny actually takes care of her mouth pretty well, and yet these cavities still happened.

Why didn’t the EO water she was rinsing with prevent these types of cavities? Because EO water kills ON CONTACT. It kills every bug on contact, but if it can’t get to a hidden pocket of bacteria, they will continue to thrive and possibly do damage.

You might be wondering what is the point, then, of using EO water as a mouth rinse to kill every bacteria or virus it contacts? It seems like really thorough brushing and flossing could do just as good of job on their own. They answer is... almost. EO water will definitely kill more plaque bacteria than brushing and flossing alone because of its ability to penetrate farther into the pits and grooves and contact points where bacteria can hide from the brush and floss. It’s definitely better to use EO water as a rinse than not to.

But we haven’t yet discussed the gums and gum disease. These last 2 Players (Gums and Gum Disease) will bring all this information together for you. Jenny’s mouth needs our further investigation and I guarantee what we learn will also apply to you.

PLAYER 4 - GUMS

Have you ever had your dentist suggest you need to come in frequently for periodontal maintenance? What does that even mean? It means stopping the progression of gum disease. The word “periodontal” literally means “around the tooth.”

In this e-Book we’re discovering how Electrolyzed Oxidizing or EO water can be used to influence the overall health of your mouth, for better or for worse, depending on how you use it. Our friend Jenny had a dentist who documented drastic negative changes in her mouth over about 6 years. He attributed it, in part, to the use of EO water as a daily mouth rinse. Yikes (if it’s true).

What we’re discovering affects almost every human being with teeth... that would be YOU.

When it comes to your gums, it’s necessary to understand and define healthy in order to understand disease.

If you’re reading this for educational purposes, you’ll probably like the part where I tell you the shocking truth that what you’re being told about gum disease by your dentist, most dental associations in the world, and commercials on TV... is ABSOLUTELY WRONG! I’ve even got a powerful research ally to back me up on that.

You may have heard that 85% of adults have some form of gum disease. Your dentist or hygienist will say that, and it’s all over the Internet, so it must be true, right?

I say that number is hogwash, horse pucky, bull, and poppycock (pick your animal analogy here). The number is drastically inflated,in my humble opinion, only because of the definition of gum disease.


Yep, I’m a lone wolf (almost) against most of the dental world when it comes to a major “fact” about gum disease. And I’ll bet many of you will actually agree with me when you hear what I have to say. Remember,

Stephen Covey reminded us that “every truly great breakthrough is a break-with an old way of thinking.” EO water is going to change the way you look at the health of your gums and teeth.

Let’s make some sense of this. I want to compare your teeth, which are anchored in bone, to a fence post buried in the ground. For most fence posts, the longer part of the post is above the ground with just enough buried underground to make the fence post stable against all forces applied against it. A little picket fence

installed just for appearance doesn’t have to be nearly as sturdy as a fence designed to keep in large animals such as horses that are known to lean and push on fences in order to get to food outside their area.

Just so you understand the analogy, the forces applied to your teeth are phenomenally powerful and so it’s more like requiring a fence that will contain the pushing force of an elephant. We need some seriously deep anchorage.

A typical tooth has somewhere around 25-35% of the tooth that you can see above the gum and the remaining 65-75% embedded in bone. Can you imagine a fence post with 75% of the post buried and only 25% above

the dirt? That’s a fence post that would stand up to the forces of an elephant pushing hard against it.

Your teeth have to withstand forces from around 150 up to 300 pounds or more! Certain people can bite much harder than that, especially grinding teeth during sleep. Do you see why they’re designed to be

anchored so well to the bone? That anchorage has everything to do with healthy gums, and the ligaments that attach the teeth to the jaw bones.


Using the fence post analogy, the ligament and bones around teeth are equivalent to the solid dirt around a deeply embedded fence post. As long as the ligament and bone are intact, your teeth

remain solidly supported and you can easily chew with very heavy forces.

The gums, in this analogy, are only a leathery covering ABOVE the bone attachment, much like grass that grows above the dirt AROUND a fence post. The health of the grass will have very little,

if anything, to do with the support of the fence post against pushing and pulling forces. Remember those elephant-like forces are very powerful and very real.


How powerful? I once had a patient who loved to eat chicken wings... bones and all (no kidding!). The ligament and bones around the roots of her teeth were so solid,

that she could do it with ease. Now THAT is some elephant-like force. (Aside: her teeth above the gums kept breaking and we had to put a lot of crowns on her teeth so she could keep up her bone-crushing habit...

NOT RECOMMENDED)

Now let’s discuss the hogwash claim that 85% of adults have gum disease. Look again at the picture with the inflamed gums (or the yellowing sickly grass). Do you see anything that weakens the supporting structure of

the tooth (or the fence post)?

NEITHER DO I... AND THAT’S THE POINT.


The gums are a covering and not really part of the attachment of tooth to bone. In their healthy state they are firm and tight and range in color from light pink to a plum-colored purple, depending upon your race. If they get inflamed (red, puffy, bleeding easily) then we call it GINGIVITIS. It literally means inflammation of the gingiva (gums).

Gingivitis causes no pain. It causes no damage. It causes no change to your lifestyle. It doesn’t stop you eating whatever you want (although it may stop people wanting to kiss you as it can be kind of stinky). It is a reaction to plaque bacteria that build up around the tooth where it’s near the gums.

The treatment?

Brush and floss the plaque away and the whole inflammatory condition (gingivitis) goes away in a day or two (and people may want to kiss you again). Would you really call that a disease?

Neither would I. I’d call it a “condition” because it’s so easily reversible.

But dentists, hygienists, dental associations (and don’t forget commercials) will all tell you that 85% of adults have some sort of gum disease because they include the “condition” of “gingivitis” in the mix. I say hogwash, horse pucky.... oh yeah, we already went through all that.

Real gum disease is called “periodontitis” and it means inflammation of the periodontium (the stuff around the tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth... sorry). Periodontitis is the REAL gum disease and it causes breakdown of the ligament and bone. It damages and weakens the supporting structure around the tooth.

And here’s where I get to reference my powerful ally to back up my “hogwash” belief.


According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and reported by the American Academy of Periodontology (the folks who REALLY know gum disease), the true level of American adults that have periodontitis is only 47.2% That’s a heck of a difference from 85%, wouldn’t you say?

But even these folks call periodontitis “the more advanced form of periodontal disease.” Even THEY consider gingivitis part of gum disease. You know what I think about that. So believe me or believe them about how large a percentage of people have gum disease.

But let’s make one one final comment as it relates to you (and let’s not forget Jenny). Both the inflammatory condition of gingivitis and the damaging disease of periodontitis are the result of your body’s fight against plaque bacteria. It involves your immune system trying to fight off these little invaders. The casualties of the war are your ligament and bone.

The reason we brush and floss is NOT to make our mouths have zero bacteria. That’s seems not to be possible on a practical level. Rather, we brush and floss in order to constantly reduce the AMOUNT of plaque bacteria that is constantly growing like weeds. This helps our immune system more easily win the battle. The rules are 1) get the plaque off, and 2) don’t do yourself any damage along the way.

Here’s where we get to the Electrolyzed Oxidizing or EO water as a mouth rinse. It will kill all the bacteria it can touch within about 30 seconds. Cool. The acidic nature of EO water won’t damage your teeth as long as you only apply it for this short 30 seconds and then raise the pH of the teeth back up above the damage zone of pH 5.5 by rinsing with any water more alkaline than that (I recommend at least 8.5 pH or above).

Jenny’s dentist said she had damage in her mouth caused in part by rinsing with EO water. Did it affect her teeth? Did it affect her gums? Will she need periodontal maintenance?


LET’S CONTINUE OUR QUEST AND FIND OUT. WE’LL GET TO THE ANSWERS AND SOLUTIONS.

PLAYER 5 - GUM DISEASE

We’re near the end of our journey. Let’s finish up our discussion about periodontitis, the real gum disease. The CDC says almost half (47.2%) of adults have some form of it. I’m also going to explain how to stop receding gums, or at least minimize the risk.

And finally, we’ll solve the mystery of why our friend Jenny’s teeth became rapidly damaged in just a few short years. I’ll offer some solutions for ALL the things we discussed and give home remedies for swollen gums, and we’ll talk about the best dentist recommended mouthwash I can think of. It’s called Electrolyzed Oxidizing Water or EO Water.

Here we go!

Plaque bacteria is always involved in gum disease, but doesn’t necessarily cause it. I know that sounds strange, but hear me out.

There are many people who don’t take care of their mouths well and they have a lot of plaque, but DON’T have damaging gum disease (or even cavities) as a result and simply get inflamed gums or gingivitis (I can hear you say “lucky them”).

On the flip side, there are plenty of people who take care of their mouths exceptionally well and have minimal plaque (and no gingivitis), yet they struggle all their lives against losing their teeth to gum disease. These are the people who require periodontal maintenance, sometimes as often as every two to three months.

This paradox is explained by the variability of each person’s immune system. It is the WAR between your immune system and plaque bacteria that causes the casualties (damage to the ligament and bone), not just the presence of plaque alone. It totally depends how YOUR body reacts to plaque and tartar (calcified mix of minerals and plaque, usually in those who have “hard saliva”).

But consider this: if there was no plaque at all, there would be no war.

That option isn’t realistic, but by minimizing the plaque, you help swing the battle in favor of your body winning. Hence we have brushing, flossing, and mouth rinses. And don’t forget the periodic trip to your dentist and hygienist to clear out the plaque and tartar hiding in recesses you often don’t reach well on your own.

Remember that your teeth are the only part of the human body where a hard substance protrudes through either your skin or mucous membrane. The relevance of that is that skin and mucous membranes slough off periodically and so bacteria can’t stay attached to them for a long time and form giant, undisturbed colonies.


On teeth, bacteria can and do build great colonies and there’s no natural system to disrupt them except for the food we chew that wipes off SOME areas of our teeth. Undisturbed plaque will create havoc if we don’t disrupt their colonization quite frequently. If left alone, plaque bacteria often will invade into the body and is associated with some types of heart disease. Now THAT’S what I call an invasion.

Let’s look at the various results of the war. In our analogy I compared a healthy tooth that is strongly anchored in bone to a strong fence post buried very deeply in solid dirt. The tooth has a covering of gums above it (while the solid dirt has a covering of grass above it). Both gums and grass protect the material that they cover, but really have nothing to do with direct structural support.


With gingivitis we only had inflammation of the gums, but without damage. Contrast that with periodontitis where we have inflammation, infection, and damage of the bone supporting the tooth, as well as the ligament that attaches the tooth to bone. Notice the damage caused to the SUPPORT structure of the tooth, but not the tooth itself. In our fence post analogy, it means the fence post is intact, but much of the dirt around it has gone away. You can see how much easier it would be for the fence post to move if pushed with the force an elephant would apply.

One of the things people notice when they have moderate or severe gum disease is that their teeth are moving or tipping from their normal position. Without bone support, they’re only held in by gums. Look at the x-rays as well as the photos and it’s easy to see why. (Image next page)

Depending on the depth of destruction, people sometimes label it as mild (or early), moderate, or severe periodontitis. There are several clinical names such as juvenile periodontitis or acute necrotizing ulcerative periodontitis or refractory periodontitis, but it’s beyond the scope of what we’re teaching here to explain all the differences. Your dentist will let you know if you have one of these unique types.

When damage to the ligament and bone become severe, the gums may or may not be receded. That’s the reason we use that little probe to find the true level of attachment. Think of that little probe as a dipstick, just like you use to check the oil level in your car. It tells a lot about what your eyes can’t see underneath.


Gum disease is about your immune system and how you either help it or not. Eating and drinking the best foods will certainly help your body’s immune system. Removing plaque from your teeth at least twice a day, to the best of your ability, will also help in that very unique part of your body where invaders can gather and set up camp. I say WIPE ‘EM OUT.

The best method is a soft, mechanical toothbrush if used well. If a tooth brush is used poorly, it can damage your teeth and gums. Flossing is another great way to remove plaque between teeth where your toothbrush can’t reach. Again, if you use it poorly, you can wreck your teeth and gums.

And last but not least, use a good mouthwash that will kill bacteria, but without doing harm. I mentioned EO water as the best dentist recommended mouthwash I can think of. I still haven’t changed my mind on that, and neither will you if you take up the practice. Many people have told me that at their next dental checkup after starting this practice that their dentists and hygienists have been pleasantly surprised at what they’ve seen. They always ask “What have you been doing to get such great results all of a sudden?”

So we’re lacking just two things to wrap up this e-Book. We need to summarize all the good things we’ve talked about... and we can’t forget the mystery of Jenny’s rapid damage to her mouth.

SUMMARY ANSWERS AND SOLUTIONS FOR YOU

• Tooth enamel is the hardest substance in your body, but it has two major enemies: abrasion and ACID. Solution: use a soft toothbrush, non-abrasive toothpaste, floss well, and use EO water correctly as your mouthwash. Avoid prolonged application of acid foods to your teeth.

• Pits and grooves in teeth are too small to clean with a toothbrush or floss. Solution: visit your dentist regularly to check for these small cavities and get them taken care of as early as possible. (Aside: many people believe sealants should be used to prevent these groove cavities before they start. Here’s a hint: they’ve been trying that since the 1950s and they still haven’t found a material strong enough to stand up to the biting forces without chipping and breaking out in just a few years. That’s another topic for another time).

• Gum disease affects almost half the adult population. Solution: Vigilance in plaque removal at least twice a day is the BEST way to fight off this invader. If you lose that battle, the supporting structure of your teeth will disappear, your teeth may start to drift and move, and you will have bad breath for a lifetime (and you won’t be very kissable). Solution: Get the plaque off and don’t do yourself any harm in the process from abrasion or erosion. Brush, floss, EO Water rinse... repeat. And say hi to your dentist now and then.

• Don’t practice bruxism. What? Aaahh, now we get to the solution to the Jenny mystery.


Mystery???

Severe Enamel Loss Over

6 Years From Inside Of Upper

Front Teeth

Can See More Yellowish Deeper Layer

Of Teeth

THE MYSTERY OF JENNY’S RAPID TOOTH DAMAGE SOLVED

Here’s Jenny’s original picture. Her dentist documented several decades worth of tooth damage in just 6 short years. He also attributed it to her use of EO water as a mouth rinse. I’m going to suggest otherwise. Let me point out a few features that will make sense to you now that you understand

all the things we’ve talked about. I wonder if some of these things might apply to you?

1. Jenny is better than average at keeping her mouth clean, but not perfect. She minimizes plaque and it shows, especially in relation to her gums. She has no visible inflammatory gingivitis OR periodontitis. SHE HAS NO GUM DISEASE. Her teeth are rock solid and the picture clearly shows that. There is no drifting of teeth at all.


2. Jenny has a small cavity or two. No big deal. Cavities happen. For her they occurred in between teeth where flossing might have helped. EO water would NOT help here because it doesn’t get in to those places where teeth contact each other. A quick few fillings and that will take care of her small cavity problem, but it’s NOT what I’d recommend here. You’ll understand in a minute.

3. Jenny has no sign of GENERALIZED erosion of her teeth, which is what would happen if the damage were caused by rinsing with acidic EO water incorrectly. She clearly has signs of LOCALIZED damage to her teeth, but acids don’t act selectively. They will dissolve any part of the teeth that they touch. Her use of EO water was a great idea as it killed plaque bacteria and did NOT do her any harm. It contributed to her exceptionally healthy gums. 4. The mystery of Jenny’s rapid damage to her teeth is knowing that her damage is caused by (drum roll please......) severe bruxism. There’s that crazy word again. Let me explain.

Bruxism is our fancy lah dee dah medical word for teeth grinding, especially grinding teeth in sleep. It happens subconsciously for a lot of people, but especially during sleep. The damage can be horrendous.

Let’s go back to our earlier example of a healthy tooth being anchored strongly within bone. Under these circumstances the teeth can withstand all of the forces applied to them during chewing, and even teeth grinding (which is a much higher force). I compared that to a strong fence post buried deeply in the ground, so much so that it would withstand forces equivalent to an elephant pushing on it. No problem. The post will stand.

But have you ever seen a big animal like an elephant continually rub against a fence post as a nervous habit? The fence post stands firm but gets abraded away. The elephants skin can heal itself as the damage is slow, but the fence post can’t. Over time, the sum total of the damage will be evident, just like in Jenny’s teeth (which also can’t heal themselves from abrasion).

I’m showing a cross section of the wooden post as another analogy. Let’s say the post is covered by a very hard layer of bark that takes a long time to get through. This could be compared to the enamel of the teeth. But with my fictitious fence post I want you to imagine that the wood inside the bark is about 7 times softer than the bark when it comes to the rubbing of the elephant against it. So once the elephant’s rubbing breaks through the bark, the damage to the fence post will be roughly 7 times faster.

This is the answer to the mystery of Jenny’s rapid tooth damage.

The dentin inside the tooth is about 7 times softer than the outer covering of enamel when it comes to abrasion. Once the enamel is worn through, bruxism damage happens F-A-S-T. In this case 6 years caused around 40 years of damage. YIKES.


See if you can see the specific wear facets created in her teeth by teeth grinding. I’ve highlighted a couple of areas where you can see very clear edges reflected. Edges mean abrasion damage, not generalized erosion due to acid. EO water is perfectly safe and is the best dentist recommended mouthwash I can think of.

What could Jenny have done to prevent all this? The solution for prevention is to wear what we call an occlusal guard or a night guard. It means you put something softer than teeth in between the upper and lower teeth. Sometimes that alone will stop the teeth grinding, but even if it doesn’t, it gives you something disposable that you can chew up and replace again in a few years.

I once made one for a big muscular wrestler dude and he chewed through that thing in about 6 months (which was a record), but his teeth were still undamaged. A night guard will usually last several years if made well. Don’t try to break his record

A better solution might be to do a reverse veneer or V-shaped one that would incorporate the cavities in the design. Dental materials have come so far that we can now bond oddly-shaped pieces of porcelain to your teeth without a lot of cutting or prep work (which causes more loss of tooth structure). Most dentists would simply put traditional crowns on these teeth (which DOES require a lot of prep work), My suggestion would be the equivalent of getting a new layer of enamel.

Jenny has had a mouthguard for several years, but clearly hasn’t been wearing it regularly. Now she has a much more severe problem as a result. One option would be to fix her small fillings and then make hera new night guard and encourage her to wear it every single night. That wouldn’t help all that exposed softer dentin to abrasion during the daytime though.


SO THERE YOU HAVE IT. MYSTERY SOLVED.

It’s been a long journey, but hopefully you learned something that you can apply to yourself or someone you love. We all know about brushing and flossing as part of good oral hygiene and periodontal maintenance. You likely didn’t know about EO water. To learn more, join us often on our blog and join us for one of our free educational water webinars. EO water is the best dentist recommended mouthwash I’ve ever seen.

I haven’t forgotten that early promise to deliver information that will be relevant to everyone. Here’s the last little piece for those who have been thinking “But I don’t have any teeth and all and I only wear dentures.” EO water is a killer of every microorganism it can get in contact with for long enough (from 30 seconds to 2 minutes). That means it will help clean your mouth if you have injuries or ulcers (common with dentures).

It also means you could BRIEFLY soak your denture in EO water to get it clean from bacteria like no other rinse or soaking product on the market.

CAUTION: Remember that EO water is very acidic. It will erode metals (used in some dentures) and porcelain (older dentures have porcelain teeth held to the denture by metal pins). If your denture has any metal clips on it for implants or any other purpose, DON’T SOAK YOUR DENTURES IN EO WATER. Unlike the outer 100 microns of enamel which can remineralize, the metal and porcelain parts of your devices can’t.

If you know for certain that your denture is made only of acrylic plastic, then you are safe to use EO water on your denture the same way I’ve described its use as a mouth wash. Apply for 30 seconds, then rinse vigorously for another 30 seconds with alkaline water.

These same cautions go for you who have retainers or partial dentures. If there is metal or porcelain that could be corroded by acid, don’t use EO water on these devices.

And if every mother, father, grandparent, and teacher in the world knew about the information written in this e-Book, how do you think that would affect the dental health of the next generation? I’d say it would be fantastic. Share the goodness and pass this e-Book along.

If you’d like to join us for any of our educational webinars, we’d love to have you.

Join us at NoBSWater.com

Here’s to your health!


notes____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________


notes__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________

for a healthier smile - the truth about...

Documents