Do I have to be the family dentist now too?!

Well, today I had a miserable experience at the dentist. I was so stressed and mad, I had to go tour a Lowes nursery and eat at a buffet before going home. I find that I need to put myself in nature, and nature in myself, before I can feel better. (It's my form of meditation.) My chiropractor tells me I have stress induced adrenal fatigue as it is right now, so while not wanting to make it worse, I've just got to tell what happened today!

Remember when I blogged on what happened to my son's teeth because of Prednisone, a drug I briefly took while nursing him? (I blogged on it here .) Well, as the damaged teeth came in more, I could see how weak they looked at the roots, but wasn't sure what we should do about it, and when. He isn't even 2, and to think of him in a hospital setting getting knocked out to get fillings, just didn't seem right! So until they seemed to bother him, I was kind of just hoping to rebuild his enamel and hold off until he was at least able to understand better, so he wouldn't be so traumatized. Well, due to a little accident, of someone lightly popping him in the mouth, (we won't name names) it broke in half one of those 4 damaged teeth. (The fact that it hit the lip, and there was no blood tells you just how tiny and fragile a tooth it was.)

So we felt forced to do something. . .So I called around to find the first dentist who would take a two year old, and found out that in our city we don't have much for choices. So I got an appointment for the next day and hoped for the best.

So the next day I went in there for the first time ever and found this old dentist who immediately made my son cry. He didn't even talk to him or smile, just wanted me to drop him down by himself and be examined. I finally coaxed him into being brave, and letting the dentist have a good look. The dentist, without so much as poking the "stains" to see if there was any decay, pronounced, "I think it's all decay." Then he asked if I breastfed him. (In my mind, I was thinking, he's going to say how at least I gave his teeth the best possible start through good nutrition, but no. . .) To which I proudly replied, "I'm still nursing him." Then he asked, "do you nurse at night and nap times?" To which I replied back "yeees. . ." (Getting suspicious now that he wasn't going to pat me on the back for nursing my son.) Then he dropped the bomb: "You have ruined your boy's teeth by nursing him like that." So I went on to explain to him some facts of how the nations and peoples who have the best teeth worldwide, (many while hardly brushing their teeth,) all nurse their children "Biologically". (Long, on demand, and without any other pacifier use.) So what sense did that make when we are the country with not only a bad diet, (Which is usually the real cause for bad teeth) but rampant use of drugs. Most of which drugs woman aren't warned about avoiding with a baby in the womb, much less a nursing baby!
Furthermore I said to him that all sorts of people online have had the same issue of enamel erosion, and we know effects of drugs on children is always worse, and that most things go through the milk, so why wouldn't it have been the drug that caused the lacking enamel? I told him how a 6 month old just doesn't have teeth rot from milk in any normal circumstances, and how my other kids teeth were practically perfect. He told me that he was the authority, and this would be the first case he'd ever heard of for drug induced bad teeth, and he's sure that it's just too much nursing that causes ruined baby teeth. He was also convinced that there was no point in covering the teeth to protect them with a veneer, as I suggested, as in his opinion they were already full of decay. (Which he admitted that he had no proof of without an x-ray.) So he wanted to take away more tooth, and put almost a cap on all 4 teeth, while my son was knocked out. . .which would be a very invasive, expensive procedure in the hospital.

Is it just me, or is that really stupid?

Numerous fallacies are involved in that dentist's reasoning: one I believe is that bacteria is the cause of tooth decay.
This is on par with believing that fevers and cholesterol are bad, because they are found at "the scene of the crime". Yes, there is a bacteria that is at the site of unhealthy teeth, and live milk bacteria is likely there too, but that by no means tells us that it is the culprit of the decay. We only need to experiment on other cultures to see if that diagnosis holds up to testing. . .it doesn't. The theory of a bad bacteria causing decay (that passes from mother to kids and her husband because of sharing food and kissing) has issues though.  Like how can they differentiate what she passes to them genetically or through her germs, from what she feeds them, or how she taught them to eat? Unless a woman with bad teeth (the bad bacteria)gives up her newborn baby for adoption to a family with perfect teeth, and then the kid has horrible teeth later in life, I don't see an easy test for that problem. . .

What we do see is the harm of eating grains, (especially whole ones), that have not been soaked, sprouted, or traditionally soured with a natural yeast starter for 8 hours. When I met my husband he had perfect teeth, and mine were horrible. . .like the rest of my family's teeth. He ate sugars and white everything, and I was a health nut. When we got married though I started cooking all the whole grains for him and not only did he have some GI issues start, but he got his first cavities. Of course he blamed my "germs", and threatened to stop kissing me:) That was the start of my suspicions on the real cause of cavities. . .

Later I read that cultures that switched to a man made yeast for quicker breads, instead of the "long ferment" with a natural or wild yeast, (around 1980) started having a host of health issues start up because of it. . .including teeth decay! Cultures that didn't, still have great teeth, even when they have sugar! As a matter of fact, I have a personal testimony about that: My Mother in law was once a very young inexperienced mother, and regularly filled her babies bottles with pop. (Thankfully they were also nursed long.) If any baby should have had rotten teeth, her first should have had. . .They were perfect though. Along came her second baby, and she got smarter and gave him less pop if anything, but instead of his teeth being perfect too, his were in an identical pattern of discolored, and crumbled enamel in a perfect line on the top 4 teeth only, just as my baby's teeth were, and they showed up at about the same age.  Was it the sugar, or something else? (All 4 of her boys ate lots of sugar, and no whole grains, and otherwise had perfect teeth)Well, she claims that it was a drug she took while nursing that destroyed his teeth as well. This one was called Tetracycline though. It too had the common effect of bone loss on the individual taking it, which is likely going to cross over into developing teeth of your nursing child. If she had've gone to a dentist like me though, she probably would have been told that it was because she nursed her son too long as well. It makes me wonder how many woman have been kept from exposing a drug for it's side effects to babies simply because the drug companies, and their puppets the dentists, are telling everyone that the nursing women are to blame for not wiping or brushing the sugars of the milk off of the gums and teeth of their babies after every nursing? It seems to me that nursing woman have become the unwitting scapegoats of the pharmaceutical company.  Doesn't that discourage long nursing, further discouraging good health of the future generations? Is it possible that some people want a sick nation, because there's no money in good health? Just a thought. Whatever the case, I'm not going to a dentist again (except for a cleaning) anytime soon.