Ads for Merfluan toothpaste make some wild claims about remineralization. Comments?

Merfluan and minerals, eh? I'm currently buying the opinion that we need to hire a plant to convert inorganic minerals to the organic, usable form and therefore those in Merfluan are not useful for remineralizing teeth. OPINION ONLY!! I don't know. Some 25 years of reading promo material on products such as Merfluan has activated my "crap detector" to such a degree that I no longer spend much time jumping at those magic bullets.

Reviewing the Merfluan promotional material, I've conclude that it's probably not very harmful and probably not very beneficial. Enamel remineralization occurs if the composition of the saliva is optimal, causes of dental diseases have been removed, and fluid flow through the dentinal tubules is healthy. How to do that? Healthful living. NH lifestyle's probably our best shot.

I can't drop this line of questioning before asking about Peelu Toothpaste? Can it stop erosion as some people claim?

I don't know. Many of our clients use it, and their mouths tend to be healthier than "normal" mouths. I suspect that's more because the folks who study and seek out things like Peelu Toothpaste are the more health-conscious and thus healthier people. I don't know what you're trying to accomplish from Peelu. Eliminating gum disease and cavities? Answers to all that without specifics could take pages. Depending what you mean by "erosion" and precisely which area of which teeth are eroded, the causes can be quite varied and they don't include the "toothbrush abrasion" as we were taught in dental school. To prevent dental diseases, live the NH way, learn to "blot" and floss the teeth as part of cleaning the rest of the outside of your body.

To prevent "erosion" keep the teeth apart, lips together, teeth apart, lips together, teeth apart, lips together. The only time the upper teeth touch the lower teeth naturally is about two thousand times a day when you swallow and another thousand times at night. They don't normally actually touch when we're chewing and the erosion is caused by clamping down and exerting lateral forces, usually during sleep as a result of internalizing the stresses of coping with people who don't understand NH while you're trying to make NH part of your life.

If one uses an Interplak daily and a WaterPik more than once a day and brush daily manually, is flossing necessary?

Simple question (if I knew "necessary for WHAT?" and some info about that "once": lifestyle, food intake, patterns of activity and rest, how close together the teeth are, alveolar bone level, health of gums and teeth, types of restorations present, age of the teeth and gums, etc. I don't know any of that stuff without examining the mouth. If I assume (a dangerous practice) that the "for what" is "optimum dental health" and that the lifestyle is NH and has been since birth and that there are no restorations of teeth and the mouth's in ideal health with no periodontal pockets over 3mm deep, then perhaps brushing and flossing aren't necessary at all in order to maintain optimum dental health. Very few other species of critters brush and floss and the ones that don't live near humans have excellent dental health.

If I assume that the owner of the mouth is fifty years old, has been living semi-NH for five years and has a mouthful of bridges, crowns, mercury fillings, etc. and has lost a bit of bone around the teeth from previous gum disease and abuses herself with lack of adequate rest, then there's a reason for brushing and flossing to accomplish health. The reason is removal of the sticky bacterial colonies that dump the toxins on your gums that initiate the body's disease responses (the body normally expels toxins; if those toxins are stuck on the teeth, as plaque is, the body eventually expels the teeth. It takes a mechanical (rubbing) action to remove sticky plaque.

While WaterPik removes the most active, dangerous, loose surface plaque, it doesn't remove the deeper 80% and no brush reaches between the teeth as well as floss does unless the teeth are so loose the brush pushes em out of the way. So it's back to "necessary for what.".

I've seen one person maintain a healthy, heavily restored mouth without brushing or flossing at all on a NH lifestyle for a few years. I suspect that if one used manual brush, electric brush, and WaterPik daily and consumed only real unprocessed, uncooked food and did not already have advanced gum or tooth disease, s/he could maintain excellent dental health without floss. I floss and have since 1971 (after dental school -- was never taught why floss in dental school!)

How safe or unsafe are dental x-rays? Are they necessary for routine exams?

I don't know how safe they are & suspect NO ONE knows. X-radiation is cumulative & carcinogenic. The establishment position, apparently backed by substantial data, says a full series of 18-21 dental x-rays (which we've not used since our panoramic unit arrived in '72) deliver about the same quantity of X radiation as you'd receive from mid-day sun in about 20 minutes. But this is the same medical/dental establishment that claims mercury amalgam's safe as long as it's stored in patients' teeth or in a sealed container in the dental office. As a general rule, for people with dental problems, I'd accept the damage that will be done by x-rays in exchange for the excellent chance that you'll discover and thus be able to prevent progression of dental problems to needing root canal treatment, extraction, bridges, implants or other rather non-hygienic excitement.

As for exams, no life form I know of needs routine dental exams at all except humans and the few "domesticated life forms", like pets & livestock, that humans have pre-disposed to dental diseases. Humans should not need dental exams either, as long as they've lived NH since birth and were born of ancestors who lived NH for the last several generations. For those OTHER humans who DO need dental exams in order to detect dental diseases (cavities and bone loss) those rays ARE the most effective means of determining what's going on within the teeth. New technology may soon be available to reduce or eliminate the x-ray threat. TV and the Enquirer will probably inform you before my 23 dental journals inform me.

"Regular 6 month checkups" were invented by Amos 'n Andy to sell Ipana toothpaste. Intervals between x-ray zaps should be carefully evaluated by you and your dentist based on your personal history of dental health and your present lifestyle. We still see a fraction of a percentage of people for whom I recommend a pair of "bite-wing" (caries-detection) films at three-month intervals. There is an increasing number of folks I'm content to radiate at 5-8-year intervals. You gotta weigh the known/unknown risks of the radiation against the known/unknown risks of allowing the carious process to march down your dentinal tubules to your pulp and introduce you to the tall dark handsome endodontist for root canal treatment or to the short fat periodontist for gum gardening, or to the halitosed oral surgeon for tooth removal, all of which result in LESS ability to live hygienically.

Any comments on helping our children grow up with healthy mouths?

YES. THAT's where to start!! I recently placed a few NH kid-raising books in our reception room 'cause we see so many orthodontic and jaw-development problems, as well as cavities and gum diseases, that could have been prevented if the owners of the mouths had led a NH lifestyle as children. I've pasted this note inside the front cover of each book:

"As a result of studying mouths, kids, growth and development and health since the early 60's, I've come to believe that close to 95% of the need for my care could have been prevented if the owners of all those mouths had known about a healthier lifestyle as kids. Nearly ALL cavities, gum disease and MOST orthodontic problems could have been prevented with radical lifestyle changes, notably in food intake. Probably most crooked/crowded tooth problems are caused by faulty growth/development of the jaw structures as a result of faulty tongue position and breathing patterns resulting from swollen membranes in the breathing passages as result of allergies to "foods" ingested that are not compatible with human anatomy, biochemistry and physiology. The radical changes in food intake that could facilitate health involve helping kids pig out on real food that they're biologically adapted to digest, assimilate and eliminate (whole, unprocessed, uncooked fruits vegetables, nuts and seeds). Pig out so thoroughly there's no room left for destructive drugs like sucrose, caffeine, ethanol, salt and the heated fats, processed junk and animal products toxic to human organisms.

Note: Do NOT expect support from friends, relatives or the medical establishment on implementing the radical ideas in this book. Popular ideas on lifestyle ARE changing in a positive direction, but WAY too slowly to help your kids while they're still kids. Alternatives--Yes we DO offer conventional dental care, it's what we provide all day long, seven days a week. If you choose, as do 99+% of normal Americans, to NOT help your child make radical, immensely inconvenient and often even painful changes in lifestyle, then the conventional approach remains imperative. We prefer "secondary prevention" when "primary prevention" (radical lifestyle improvement) is impractical. We recommend early and frequent continuing care examinations to intercept and suppress symptoms as early as possible (blot and floss rather than deal with disease symptoms, sealants rather than "fillings," small bonded restorations rather than crowns, bonded "onlays" rather than root canal treatment, Soft Tissue Management Programs rather than periodontal surgery, extractions, bridges, implants or dentures, early functional orthodontic with removable appliances rather than involved bands, braces, extractions later, etc.)." CONTINUE