Consumer Health Organization of Canada

Consumer Health Newsletter

VOL. 8 NOs. 3 & 4 - April / May, 1987

How To Enjoy Healthy Teeth & Gums In Spite Of Your Dentist

ROBERT O. NARA, D.D.S. Speaking at Total Health '87
The dental profession has the public pretty well boondoggled into thinking that we have
to go to the dentist and get our teeth cleaned and checked every six months and we've
been conditioned to believe that somehow or other this has something to do with our
having healthy teeth and gums. I don't particularly believe that that's true. In fact, I
believe that you could very easily live out an entire lifetime and never see a dentist.
Every time you have your teeth cleaned, about 2 to 3 microns of your enamel goes
away. It's a very abrating kind of process, this business of having your teeth cleaned. In
fact, I believe that there are a lot of detrimental things that happen in the cleaning
process and the scraping of the roots. Even in dental professional literature, they state
that there is probably some damage to the root surfaces when they scrape with these
scalers.

CALCULUS OR TARTAR:
I want you to think about another thing. At some time or other you've had a tea kettle or
some kind of a pot on your stove that boils water and, over a period of time, a scale
forms on the bottom. If you've ever looked carefully at that scale, you will find that it's
kind of dark brown in colour, kind of brittle looking and, in fact if you scrape at it a
little bit, some of it may come off in chunks. If you look inside your mouth and you
have a large number of deposits on your teeth, what dentists call calculus or tartar, you'll
find that it's going to look just about the same as that stuff that collects on the bottom of
your tea kettle. The reason that it looks like it's the same stuff, is because it is the same
stuff.
Now, once every six months or so you could scrape the bottom of the tea kettle and try
to get that stuff off, which would be a tough job as you can appreciate, or you could put
a little bit of vinegar in your tea kettle and the calcium hydroxide salts that are stuck on
the bottom of your tea kettle would go back into solution, because the acetic acid from
the vinegar, working with the calcium hydroxide, which is a base, neutralize each other
and you can dissolve the deposits. So if I suggested that, instead of having all that
scraping all the time that we just dissolve the tartar off of the teeth, that would make a
whole lot of sense, wouldn't it?

STRUCTURE OF THE TOOTH:

Now, let's take a look at the tooth structure. The hard structure of a tooth is the enamel
and the dentin is underneath it. What is the tooth made of? Well, it's primarily made of
calcium and phosphorus, the same stuff our bones are made of except there is a little
more calcium and phosphorus in the teeth than there is in the bones. That's why they are
harder. If you fall down and break a leg and the doctor puts the two pieces of the bone
back together and puts a cast over the whole affair so that it can't move; in about six
weeks your leg is healed. How did it heal? Did the Doctor put some super glue in
there? No, you grew some brand new bone. In order for the bone to heal, for the two
pieces to heal back together, you grew brand new bone. If you have a cavity, why don't
we grow some brand new enamel? Now, there is no reason to believe that if we can
grow new bone, that we can't grow new tooth structure. There's no reason to believe
that if a substance comes out of solution and deposits on your teeth, that it can't go back
into solution and get off of your teeth.

BIOLOGICAL BALANCE IN THE MOUTH:

I would like to talk to you about a hypothetical situation which can take place inside of
a person's mouth, let's call it biologic balance. Let's pretend that we have a condition
inside of your mouth which is identical to the first few hours after you were born. Now,
when you were first born, your body was completely sterile - there was no bacteria
anywhere in your system. All the bacteria that your body takes on, where do you get it
from?
Your body gets it from your environment. But, at the time that you were first born, you
had saliva in your mouth. There was no bacteria in your mouth. The saliva at that time
was, for all practical purposes, for several days or even longer, sterile. No bacteria. The
saliva has a high concentration of calcium and phosphorus ions, the same stuff our teeth
are made of. Our blood also has a high concentration of calcium and phosphorus ions
floating around in it. So you see, the basic building blocks of the body are all around.
They're in the blood, they're in the saliva, and if you have something going wrong later
on, there is no reason that these building blocks are not available. They're there and
they can work for you. But only under the right conditions. Saliva is a very good firstaid type fluid that helps us. It has very beneficial effects. It also contains calcium and
phosphorus ions which are available at any time. If you have a decent diet, you will
have a pretty high concentration of these calcium and phosphorus ions in your saliva. If
your diet is not good, you're going to have a lower concentration of them. So obviously,
diet is very important to good dental health. Diet is important to all health. If we don't
eat right, we're not going to be healthy no matter what.

BACTERIA CAUSES DECAY!

The dental profession has been telling us all these years that sugar is the thing that raises
all the ruckus with our teeth. Most people that I have talked to have said that they have
a friend, or relative, who seldom brushed, didn't clean their teeth very well and ate
candy bars till they were coming out of their ears, and never got a single cavity. How
come? The environment wasn't right. That particular person was immune to the types
of bacteria that cause decay. And, there are about 3 or 4 main decay-producing types of
bacteria, the two primary ones really are the strep-mutanes, which are the big ones and
then after that comes lacto-bacillus. These bacteria, the 3 or 4 main types which attack
our teeth do it by producing toxic waste products in the form of acids that literally eats

holes in the enamel. If you want to stop that process, the first thing you have to do is
get rid of the infection.
You all know what appendicitis is. That's inflammation or infection of the appendix.
You may also have "molaritis" or "bicuspiditis", infection of the tooth. Dentists just
refer to these things as cavities to be filled. If you're a dentist every cavity looks like a
filling, not a healing, but a filling.
My wife and I have 3 children, the oldest one is a dentist, the next oldest one is a
medical doctor and the next daughter is a physical therapist. None of our children have
ever had a cavity. They never will, any more than there's every going to be grass
growing in this room; because the environment is not right. Now, you can create this. It
takes a little effort.

REMINERALIZATION OF CAVITIES:
Modern research has shown in the past several years that almost every human being
walking around today, even people whose mouths are in good condition, has on the
average about 20 cavities in their mouth at all times. And these cavities are either
getting bigger or getting smaller, and the availability of the calcium and phosphorus
ions from our saliva depositing in these areas is the thing that keeps the teeth healthy
enough. Now, if the deposits are coming back onto the tooth structure about as fast as
they are leaving, then your teeth stay healthy. If the reverse is true, then a hole starts to
develop. People have asked me what they can do about some of these things? Well, let
me offer just one idea about this business of speeding up the remineralization of
cavities. If you have a hole in the tooth, it's nothing more than soft tooth structure;
earlier it had more calcium and phosphorus ions in it. If you want to strengthen it and
harden it, there is a mouth spray called Zero-lube. Zero-lube was originally designed
and produced by a laboratory in the United States called Scheer Labs, in Dallas, Texas.
This product is very unique. It was designed originally for people who had severe
radiation of the head and neck regions. What radiation does is atrophies the saliva
glands in the floor of the mouth and on the side of the cheeks. And as these saliva
glands atrophy, they don't produce saliva anymore and, if they do, it's a very small
amount. The average human being produces about a litre of saliva every day. (Ed. - We
are not able to locate this product. However, a good replacement is Biotene Rinse,
available at most any pharmacy.)
Without it, however, people have a very dry condition because their salivary glands
have atrophied and any dentist will tell you that the roots of the teeth, the root surfaces,
the gum areas that protect the roots, deteriorate at an extremely rapid rate. So, this
product was originally designed to help these people who had had excessive radiation
and didn't have enough of their own saliva to even keep their teeth wet. All you have to
do is spray with this stuff a few times a day and you are adding a very high
concentration of the calcium and phosphate ions in your mouth, and if you swish with it
for several minutes before you spit it out, you are actually helping to heal these areas
that have softened up. Your saliva contains these same ions on its own and, if your
teeth are perfectly clean and your mouth is in biologic balance, you do not need this
product. In fact, when you achieve biologic balance you'll need hardly any products
except just a toothbrush, some dental floss and maybe an irrigator.
(See also: Demineralization and Remineralization)

GUM AND NECK OF THE TOOTH PROBLEMS: (both this and the next
subject cover oral irrigation)
Now, most of the people in this room are already doing a pretty good job with a
toothbrush and with floss or tape, but the serious problem that exists today is gum tissue
problems. Once they have started, there is a little space down between the neck of the
tooth and the tooth itself. For all practical purposes, let's call it the neck of the tooth
disease. This is the area of the biggest amount of problem, and it seldom gets cleaned
properly because food and bacteria collect in this space, on the outside of the tooth and
on the tongue side, and we don't really clean there very well. The dental floss is
designed to clean in between the teeth, and the brush cleans the outside, the biting
surface and the inside, but this little space between tooth and gum, unfortunately does
not get cleaned, or in most places not very well. Now, if you are using a brush in a very
unique manner, and if you are young and you have used that solculus brushing method
very carefully, you can probably get by without every using an oral irrigator. But, if you
have any dental problems, or any amount of disease or any amount of dental recession,
then it is highly advisable that you use some form of irrigation to clean around the neck
of the tooth. The pattern of gum tissue disease is that it is basically a problem of not
getting the neck of the tooth clean, and that is why the disease process starts marching
down the tooth.
From the time I graduated from dental college I had figured out that the oral
irrigator was a pretty handy device, because you could remove a lot of debris from the
mouth with it. In fact, the people that we have on irrigators, especially with the special
(cannula) tips to flush out pockets, tell me, all of them, that after their evening mean
they brush well, they use their dental floss, they clean very well, they do everything
right. Then they use the irrigator with the special tip, with their head in the sink in the
bathroom, and the food and the debris and the particles that come out is unbelievable to
them. They say, "Wow, no wonder I have been having these problems." So about
twenty-some years ago, with the help of my dental staff, my wife and a couple of other
people, we took the conventional irrigator tip, which is kind of like a shotgun tip, it just
squirts water in every direction, it's not very directional. We made it very directional by
adding a section of stainless steel surgical tubing, so that instead of it squirting in every
which direction, it would squirt in a very specific place. It's kind of like a garden hose
with a blunt end on it, that just squirts all over the place and if you put a nozzle on it and
tighten it down and it squirts in a specific place, you can get more pressure and you can
get a better cleansing action, and you can flush out dental pockets.
Pockets are nothing more than the same little space we started off with earlier which
was normal, and which has now gotten deeper and this is called a periodontal pocket.
It's nothing more than a space between the tooth and the gum, and the deeper they get,
the more food and the more bacteria pack down in there. And the deeper it gets, the
more it ruins the attaching fibers.
If you want to know how your gum tissue sticks to your teeth and bone, all I want you
to do is think about the Velcro that we have on clothing and wallets, because that is how
your gum tissue sticks. There are little attaching fibers, and the minute that there is
some irritation in the depth of that first crevice which is only about a millimetre deep
when we are a young child and a millimetre or two deep when we get to be a teenager.
If it starts to get to three or four millimetres you have a pocket and you cannot clean the
depth of that pocket. So, this little space that keeps getting deeper and deeper, you can't
clean it with a toothbrush, you can't clean it with dental floss, you can go to the dentist

and have it scraped out and, generally speaking, the dentist is going to tell you that
instead of coming back every six months for a scraping, to come back
every three months for a scraping. I call it "Scrapeodontics." And after it gets very bad
they might tell you to come back every one or two months for a scraping. This isn't
doing any good.
The net result is that, not only is it not stopping the cause, but it is damaging the roots of
the teeth besides. So it is up to you to decide which way you want to go, if you want to
pay a little attention and put on a little effort, you can enjoy a state of what is called
biologic balance in your mouth. And if the depth of the pocket is not enjoying the same
state of biologic balance, then that "neck of the tooth disease" is marching way down
the neck of the tooth headed right for the tip of the tooth and, by the time it gets about
two-thirds of the way down there, your teeth are going to start wobbling around. There
is not enough bone left to hold the teeth in place. But, you can grow new bone, and
grow it right back up the neck of the tooth again.
In October, 1977, the Journal of the American Academy of Dentists, tells all about the
bone growing right back up the necks of the teeth.
When my wife and I were young and met at Michigan State University, her mother had,
at that time, five teeth in her mouth, two on the bottom and three on the top. She had
suffered a lot of gum disease over the years and dentists had done all of the things
which they could do. These five teeth were so wobbly that you could move them
around with your fingers, in fact, she was already scheduled to have those removed and
have upper and lower dentures made. Her soon to be son-in-law dentist said, now wait
a minute. At least those five teeth will help stabilize partial dentures. It is better to have
partial dentures than a full denture. And these teeth were so loose that they were
practically ready to come out on their own. We put her on the program of cleaning the
neck of the tooth. We eliminated the "neck of the tooth disease" in her mouth and the
bone grew back. My wife and I will celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary this
summer, and her mother still has the five teeth. So, when dentists tell me that you
can't do these things, I just say, "Well, Doctor, it is kind of like if you believe that
you can't do them, then you can't."
VIADENT:
A company in Switzerland by the name of Viadent, who consulted with me by the way,
built some special tips for their unit which is similar to the Water-Pik. It is different in
several ways and the Viadent (now ViaJet) unit comes with four tips, two conventional
tips which are good for young people, particularly small children because it will flush
away the food and bacteria that collects below the neck of the tooth, and the other two
(sulcus-type) tips that come with it are designed to flush out pockets. Now, those of you
who heard Reverend Willhelm, heard him tell you just how effective hydrogen peroxide
was in killing bacteria.
If you want to get hydrogen peroxide down into the space between the tooth and the
gum, if you just rinse your mouth with it that is partially beneficial, but if you have
pockets and spaces down along the necks of the teeth and someone has recommended
surgery for you or whatever, then I would highly advise you to get a unit like this and
use it initially two or three times per day and squirt the hydrogen peroxide or salt water
or salt and soda or a variety of other rinses that are mentioned in that Issue No. 9. The
Gum Tissue Issue of the No. 9 (People's Dental Association) newsletter has a whole

page on rinses and the different variety of rinses that are available. If you are going

to stop your own gum disease, you have to stop the bacteria.
So, I just want you to think about these things. They're your teeth. They're going to be
either with you or not with you for the rest of your life. The person that is in control is
you. You are in charge of your own dental destiny. The more you rely on the dentist and
the less you rely on yourself, the more likely you will wind up with teeth at a ripe old
age. You're going to have to do a little homework, you're going to have to study a little
bit, you're going to have to change your frame of reference, and you're going to have to
say, well maybe there is a better way.

THE PEOPLE'S DENTAL ASSOCIATION:

The biggest problem that this whole situation faces is the lack of knowledge. In the first
place, the public does not have this knowledge, but that's not really where the problem
lies. An organization in the United States called Opinion Research Corporation did a
very extensive study to find out just why it is that prevention and the knowledge that
has been produced in the past 20, 30, 40, 50 years, is not being practised. Dentists
practise with drills, doctors practise with forceps, they don't practise with knowledge.
And Opinion Research Corporation set out to figure out why. Why is this existing
knowledge not being put to use? Why is it not being taught to the public? Opinion
Research found out that the dentists don't know. There is a big block and no
communication between the scientific world of dentistry and the delivery system of
dentistry out in the field. Also, the practicing dentist today is not practising much
different than the dentist practised 25 years ago or even 50 years ago. I graduated, in
essence, number one in my class from the University of Michigan in 1959 and my son
graduated from the same University with the same position in his class 25 years later,
and the courses were all the same. There wasn't one course that had been appreciably
changed in the 25 years between the time that I had left there and the time my son left
there. Nothing has been changed. They are taught the same old mechanics. So, you
have a choice, you people that are the public can decide. Your dentist that you have
seen in the past, or even in the future, if they choose to think in the old way, I guess
there is not much we can do about that. But you can certainly choose to think in a new
way. That is your decision to make. I think that it is very possible to live for a lifetime
without seeing a dentist, as long as you have this knowledge and you break up the
bacterial colonies that collect around the teeth and gums.
If you don't believe that these things can work, if you don't want to understand how they
work, if you're not willing to deal with an open mind and learn that there may be some
other ways to think about this, well then your best bet is to just continue what dentists
have been preaching for a long time; see your dentist twice a year, brush your teeth
twice a day, and don't eat sweets. You will then have a typical pattern of a lot of cavities
and gum problems and root canals and all diffent kinds of things.
I guess there is not a whole lot I can do to change the profession anymore, because I
spent about 15 years of my life travelling around the Dental Schools teaching these
same concepts. These same things I am presenting to you, I have presented to over
15,000 dentists in a period of several years' time. I wrote a thick textbook about it
published by Prentice Hall in the United States, and sold all kinds of them. I'm sure the
dentists, at least some of them read it, but I can assure you none of them practise it. Or
if so, very, very few. And that's unfortunate. I finally decided instead of talking to
dentists and trying to reason with them, I turned it all into a program which can be done

directly for the public, either in the form of lectures like this and even more effectively
through the mail.
Everything which I am saying to you about learning and doing is included, and there are
about 15 or 20 different modern day products listed that will help you, in addition to
some old ones, like salt and soda and peroxide and all of these things. There is no one
exact answer for any given person. So, we reduce the whole thing down to a four-page
description which is now published in a newsletter called "The People's Dental
Association Network News" Issue No. 7. Issue No. 7 is an overview of everything I
am saying to you here this evening. It is a synopsis of the entire Oramedics Program
that has been developed by myself and other people, to bring people's mouths back to a
state of biologic balance.
Now, if you have gum tissue problems, then there is another issue which is a
condensation of about 450 research articles, all put into a four page newsletter called
"Issue No. 9" which has to do with gum disease. I see part of my job on the face of this
earth these days as answering the problem that Opinion Research Corporation found
out; that the scientific world and the dental practitioner world don't communicate. So I
see my role as being a source. I can't expect you all to go out and read a half dozen
different dental journals each month and analyze what they say and try to figure what
that means to the health of your mouth. So, I have assumed that responsibility. I read
the Journals and determine what I think is important for the public to know, and
periodically we condense it into an issue of a newsletter and we mail it out to the people
that belong to this organization called "The People's Dental Association".
We do issues of the Network News when we have something important to say, if there is
a breakthrough in the field of dentistry or the health of the mouth, we will come out
with a special issue and it will be off the presses in a matter of days. We have tried to
design this whole process so that you can conquer your own dental disease, at home
without the benefit of a dentist. I used to worry about the fact that dentists are not going
to practise prevention, at least probably for the rest of my life, but I don't worry about
that anymore, because by condensing these important preventive types of knowledge
into books and pamphlets, materials and tapes and everything else we have under the
label of "Oramedics" available through the "People's Dental Association" which is an
inexpensive way of self-help and learn at home to conquer your own dental problems.

QUESTIONS:
Q: Will irrigation with the appropriate solution remove the calculus that builds up
around the teeth?
A: Well, let's reverse that question, because if you were doing this already, no calculus
would build up around the teeth. Now, if you do have calculus there, and if it is large
deposits, you might think about going one last time to the dentist and have them scraped
off. If they are really big deposits I would suggest that you do that. You could dissolve
it all, but it would probably take you a better part of a year.
Q: Can anything be done to reverse gum recession?
A: What causes recession in the first place? If there has been recession, anywhere in
the mouth, I can pretty much assure you that it's there because there was an episode in
which the "neck of the tooth disease" went on there earlier. If there is bacteria of any

kind in your mouth, whether it's in the bone or around the neck of the tooth or below the
gum tissue or whatever, I know of no way to get it out of there without squirting it out.
You cannot get it out with a toothbrush and you can't get it out with dental floss. My
morning's program covered about six different research projects or research papers that I
quoted from, that prove to me and I think anybody who will listen, that surgery is not
the answer.