Kiss Your Dentist Goodbye!
Do you have sensitive teeth or cavities?
Do your gums bleed or hurt?
Do you have gum pockets?
Do you grind your teeth at night?
Dr. Ellie Phillips is the author of Kiss Your Dentist Goodbye and Mouth Health Comes Clean. She has practiced dentistry for fifty years in England, Switzerland, and The United States, and has treated children as well as patients in nursing homes.
Dr. Phillips states in her books that there are two causes for cavities and gum disease:
1. Acidity
2. Dry mouth
When your saliva is acidic due to your diet, pregnancy, hormonal changes, medications, or stress, it creates an ideal environment for calcium and phosphates to leach out of your teeth to demineralize. This can also happen when you eat or drink foods that are acidic, such as coffee, tea, carbonated drinks, fruit juices, and so on.
What helps to put calcium and phosphates back into your teeth to mineralize them is a mineral-rich saliva in a non-acidic environment. She argues that oral health is not so much about removing food particles from your teeth with brushing and flossing but more about your mouth’s environment.
Through her many years of experience, using the latest research in oral health, she has developed a home care system that can reverse many types of dental and gum disease.
Her "Complete Mouth Care System" uses common oral care products applied in a specific way to eliminate oral pathogens without harming the good bacteria. Her system eliminates gum pockets, make gums healthier with her special brushing technique, and remineralize teeth by increasing absorption of calcium and phosphates. She also provides advice on mineral-rich and alkalizing foods that support oral health.
There is only one issue with her system that all health-conscious readers will face: some of the products she recommends, such as Crest toothpaste, have artificial colors, flavors, and other chemicals that we would not want to put in our mouths. And as a health-conscious dentist herself, she acknowledges that it is an issue. However, Dr. Phillips argues that if you have a serious dental or gum disease, these products with their specific formulation work effectively to help you avoid fillings and surgery. And she is absolutely correct. I have seen how quickly her system has helped me and those I know improve the health of our teeth and gums, including one who improved so much she avoided several fillings.
Dr. Phillips is absolutely against fluoridation of drinking water but as the last step in her "Complete Mouth Care System," she recommends a very dilute (0.05%) fluoride rinse. She argues that rinsing for a few seconds with this dilute fluoride rinse creates a charge on the protein biofilm--speeding absorption of minerals from salvia into the tooth--to the point where the enamel is fully mineralized for faster healing of dental caries and cavities.
You can learn more at https://drellie.com
I highly recommend Dr. Phillips’s Oral Health Bootcamp. It is a great addition to her books. You can preview the first two videos of her Oral Health Bootcamp for free https://drelliephillips.teachable.com/p/oral-health-bootcamp/
My Experience
About seven years ago my dentist found a couple of cavities behind my old fillings. I was shocked because I had been on a low-carb diet, brushed and flossed regularly, and took very good care of my teeth. Clearly, this approach was not working. I did a lot of research then and learned that an acidic mouth environment allows tooth enamel to lose calcium and phosphorous (demineralize) and cause teeth to become soft. Once tooth enamel becomes soft it becomes vulnerable to developing cavities. A mouth with a neutral or slightly higher than 7.0 pH protects teeth from demineralizing. I also learned that good and bad oral bacteria can feed on xylitol (a sugar alcohol) but the bad bacteria cannot metabolize it and die off while the good bacteria thrive.
As a result of checking my saliva pH daily with a pH test strip, keeping my mouth environment alkaline with dilute baking soda solution, and chewing xylitol-containing gums after each meal, I have not had a new cavity for the past seven years.
Still, I was interested to try Dr. Phillips's system and see if it would make a positive difference in my oral health.
1. To measure the effectiveness of her system, my wife and I chewed disclosing dye tablets that color the plaque red so we could easily locate them on our teeth. We both noticed several teeth with plaque buildup. After two weeks of using her system, we checked again. No trace of any plaque on our teeth.
2. Instead of brushing my teeth with a soft toothbrush and my gums at a 45-degree angle, I started brushing my gums with Dr. Plotka’s Mouth Watchers toothbrush, as Dr. Phillips instructs in her first video of her Oral Health Bootcamp. Although it is labeled soft Mouth Watchers toothbrush has very firm bristles. At first, I felt my molars moving in place as I brushed. My teeth felt loose and wobbly. After a few days, my bite felt different. When I asked Dr. Phillips, she replied that my gums were becoming tighter and placing my teeth in their right position. My teeth are now firmly in place no matter how hard I brush over them. No more wobble!
3. Dr. Phillips recommends taking 6-10 grams of xylitol daily as mints, gums, or in powder form. In addition to eliminating the bad bacteria over several weeks or months, it alkalizes the mouth and increases saliva production, which is important for remineralizing teeth. When I started taking more xylitol my teeth became sensitive to cold drinks. I asked Dr. Phillips why was that happening and her reply was that my teeth were porous. As I continued to follow her system, my teeth became stronger, and the sensitivity went away. She has her own brand of xylitol called Zellie’s.
4. One thing that always irritated my gums and teeth had been elderberry throat lozenges. They contain sugar and vitamin C (ascorbic acid). I am not sure if it’s the sugar or the acidity but the irritation was 8 out of 10. Last week I felt a tickle in my throat, so took one of those lozenges and I barely experienced any irritation at all.
This system works!
Stay informed. Stay well.
