prevention

The Dental Diet: Nutritional Tactics for Healthy Teeth

Quick Tips

Dental health is highly impacted by the food that we eat.

Again, what we eat plays an important role in the upkeep of our dental health.

Unfortunately, not many of us fully grasp how much food impacts not just the aesthetic appeal of our smile, but also our ability to chew (assuming you lose teeth or experience pain) and early signals of systemic problems such as:

  • Cardiovascular disease
  • Celiac disease
  • Diabetes
  • Sinus infection
  • Alcoholism
  • …etc

To quote a phenomenal article from Precision Nutrition,

“If the eyes are a window to the soul, our teeth and gums are a window to our bodies”.

Pretty powerful statement actually, because keeping your mouth happy is important.  A happy mouth could increase the chances that you have a healthy body.

It’s funny how many warning signals the body gives us before complete self-destruction.

If we over-extend current physical limits or over-do high impact exercise, we often end up aches/pains or even limping to prevent further damage.  Or take the Iron Man competitor who’s body shuts down prior to experiencing internal damage from “system-overload” physical exertion.

The body knows when enough is enough, and it appears that the mouth provides another source of warning signals to keep us in check.

If you’re not giving your body the vitamins and minerals that it needs, or possibly consuming excess sugary or highly process foods, cavities and periodontal disease can be the result.  But I think we all know this right?

Sure, basic tooth care like brushing and flossing is essential to combat any mouth damage, this should go without saying.

So what role do nutrients play in establishing a solid foundation of mouth health (teeth and gums)?

Here is a kick ass chart created that I borrowed from Precision Nutrition:

credit: Precision Nutrition

Credit: Precision Nutrition

You’re probably thinking, “Great, another chart sharing nutrients, but what in the hell do I actually have to eat to leverage the benefits of the above nutrients?”

Well, the answer (minus the jargon) is whole food.  That may come as a disappointment to my readers, but its the hard truth.

Something similar to this picture:

… that plus lean protein.

A diet heavy in veggies and lean protein is the “secret”. (Yes I used the word “secret”).

There are no secrets.  Only information that you know or you don’t know, and actions you take or you don’t take.  Secrets are what people use to lure you into throwing $$$ at products.  But we’ve covered this extensively in other posts haven’t we?

I wouldn’t want to beat a dead horse now, noOOOOOoooooo. 🙂

Referencing the same “Dental Diet” article from Precision Nutrition, author Ryan Andrews goes on to share some of bonus tactics to promote a healthy mouth, which include:

  • Probiotics
  • Cranberries (interesting)
  • Green tea
  • Chewing gum with pycnogenol
  • Soy (I would avoid at this point)
  • Arginine
  • CoQ10
  • Echinacea
  • Fluoride (prevents decalcification)
  • Whole foods

As Ryan comments, it is important to first seek all of the above nutrients from whole foods first.  Supplements should be treated as an addition to the whole.  In other words, supplements can be extremely beneficial for filling any nutritional gaps left by your current diet.  Supplements are plan B when plan A (your diet) isn’t enough.

Ok?

One point from the article that peaked my interest was that certain studies have shown “that the sheer amount of sugar we eat may be less harmful to dental health than the the frequency of consumption”.

So, drinking those 2-3 Mountain Dews daily is giving your teeth an sugary injection that is taking it’s toll on your tooth health.  Too many refined and processed carbohydrate-type foods and you’re heading for tooth decay and gingival inflammation.

Not good.

So what’s the game plan?

  • Brush!
  • Floss!
  • No smoking
  • Sip some tea
  • Whole foods baby
  • Eat raw, crunchy fruits and veggies daily!
  • Limit your sugar intake, especially added sugars.
  • Stay lean… excess body fat can promote poor health
  • Exercise!  (a great defense against periodontal disease)

Good game plan uh?  Notice that this game plan is essentially the same game plan used to help with hundreds of other ailments.  Healthy eating is healthy eating.  You can tailor it to promote dental health, but chances are quite high that the same diet that is going to save your teeth is also going to reduce your body fat, lose unwanted weight and fuel your body during performance based endeavors.

Eating is eating.

If you’re not executing the fundamentals, you’re missing out.  If you don’t know what the fundamentals are, I suggest you hire out and get some solid support to get your understanding of meal timing, essential vitamins and minerals and eating for performance and bodily leanness up to speed.

It’s more simple than you think but it takes practice to become habitual.

 

 

Cheers to the dietary tactics that can preserve and prevent your teeth!

KG

(I reference a lot of information found in this post that came from this article)

My Hero: Gray Cook + Movement Pattern Stretching/Mobility

How-To, Injury Prevention

Gray Cook is an icon in the movement and physical therapy realm.

Quite honestly, he is one of my heroes and has been since I first pick up his book “Athletic Body in Balance”.

Gray sees things years before they are fully adopted by the mainstream.  His landmark body of work, The Functional Movement Screen is the best assessment system being used in gyms across the world.

Movement pattern training is here to stay, and will be the future of quality movement and performance for years to come.  It really is landmark work.

As I often mention on a couple of my Facebook pages related to personal growth and success, it is so important to submerge yourself into networks of people who make you feel uncomfortable.  This feeling of being uncomfortable often causes an acceleration in positive change in your own life.  It motivates a person to be better at what they do.  I feel this way whenever I read Gray Cook’s work.

I would say that a lot of professionals feel this when they read or watch Gray speak.  He is on another level when it comes to professionalism and pioneering methods for improving or assessing human movement.  He really is world-class.

Let’s get into it…

 

Mobility in the thoracic spine…

The thoracic spine needs mobility.  It needs mobility in all three planes of movement, and is often one of the main culprits for influencing poor movement.  When the T-Spine’s mobility is limited, other areas of the body begin to pick up the slack and move.  This is rarely a good thing.  Think low back pain here.  The lumbar spine (lower spine) begins to over-compensate due to the lack of mobility in the T-Spine.  Shoulder range of motion goes to hell and then everything snow balls.

Just like smoking increases your risk of lung cancer, inadequate mid-spine mobility increases your risk of injury.  It’s a slow death in a lot of cases.  It may not be a situation where injury happens over night, but rather a cascade of events that lead to the grand explosion.  Your body will inevitably reach it’s breaking point and then…  boom.  Injury.

Everyone could use a little more thoracic mobility it seems.  This is a generalized statement, but we often see more people will thoracic restrictions than we do people with adequate motion at the T-Spine.  Another generalization, but sitting is toxic to spine health, especially core activation and T-Spine mobility.  Keeping a crunched posture all day leaves does little for your movement quality.

Take a proactive approach to regaining some motion.  Your body will thank you for it.

 

A quick word about joints…

The joint by joint approach is still methodology that I follow.  I think that the thought process of acknowledging that some joints in the body need stability and some need mobility is genius.  Obviously, this is a simplification, but simple is effect.  Simple can get results because we are avoiding the ever common over-complication of things.

In my experience, when things get complicated, little to no action is typically taken.  But when things are clear-cut and made simple, there is little confusion as to what needs to get done to see results.  This is what the joint by joint approach means to me.  Simple and effective.

So, in my continual effort to avoid re-inventing the wheel, I give you an extremely valuable video of Gray Cook teaching and explaining the Brettzel and the Brettzel 2.0.  I always figure that if someone else can say it better than I can, all credit to that person.  Whatever gives my reading audience the greatest return is the route that I will take every single time.

Here are two fantastic movements for not just improving thoracic spine mobility, but movement pattern range of motion.

 

 

 

Watch the video a few times and follow along.  I can assure you that you will get something out of these drills should you be diligent about implementing them.