Stop Toothache and Root Canals! — How to Cure Tooth Ache & Bleeding Gums

My teeth are my weakest point. In 1988 I hit my 40’s with huge mineral deficiencies. Over the next five years I lost five teeth, and landed up with 2 implants and 3 root canals.

I spent excruciating hours in dentists’ chairs and wasted thousands of dollars.

Unbearable toothache kept me awake night-after-night. It motivated me to change my diet to living greens I grew myself at home. I literally ran out of money for dentists. I had no health insurance.

Amazingly, today I get an ALL-CLEAR from my dentist every year — no cavities, no infections! And no painful bleeding gums. I love it when Dr. van der Merwe says: “I can see you’re taking good care.” The reason is the OraMD drops I brush with every day (#ad).

OraMD cleared a truly bad infection under one root canal that was there for years, a dark patch on my x-rays. Today all you see is clear, clean tissue.

Stop Painful Tooth Ache

OraMD is the best on the web for healthy teeth and gums. It’s pure essential oils with NO synthetic chemicals, and free of insecticides & fungicides.

Prevention is the Cure, and OraMD actually kills the bacteria that make up plaque. My oral hygienist was amazed at how little plaque I had when I visited her 18 months after I began OraMD. With implants, I’m supposed to see a hygienist every 3 months! Carol told me my plaque is so minimal that 6 months is fine. I had no calculus at all (which is mineralized hard plaque build-up, also called tartar).

When there’s NO bacteria eating away at your enamel and gums, then there’s no receding gums and hence no loss of jawbone (common with implants). And of course no cavities and no loss of teeth.

It’s amazing for me to be given an all-clear by both my dentist and my oral hygienist after a lifetime of pain from my teeth.

A welcome side-effect of OraMD is that my teeth are no longer sensitive to cold water. My hygienist told me it’s because I have no plaque on the two top teeth with exposed roots. It was those bacteria clinging to the exposed roots that made it hurt when I rinsed in cold water. With OraMD keeping them off the root, the pain went away.

What Causes Toothache?

Did you know that dental caries (tooth decay and cavities) is the most common childhood disease? It’s five times more common than asthma!

Search the web and you’ll see the causes of tooth decay are:

• Acid foods — such as white sugar, soda (even sugar-free) and white flour. Because they lack minerals, the body has to steal minerals from your teeth and bones to digest these junk foods.
• Bacteria — they’re the fuzzy feeling on unbrushed teeth! Acid in their poop gives you cavities. They’re multiplying on the crumbs of that food you just ate, crawling all over your teeth and pooping. Talk about the party-poopers! OraMD is clinically proven to kill these bad bacteria.
• Excessive brushing with toothpaste — even natural toothpaste has abrasive calcium, which wears down the tooth’s enamel. This allows bacteria to get into the dentine below — a porous mineral-protein lattice that gets severe cavities (see image below).
• Nutrient deficiencies — such as a calcium-phosphorus imbalance, and not eating enough of the fat-soluble vitamins A, D3, and K2.

How to Stop Pain in Tooth

The solution is to:

• Eat balanced raw foods — ideally a Green Smoothie daily, and Seed Milk 3-4 days/week. This will give you the ideal calcium/phosphorus ratio of 10:4, that’s 2.5 times more calcium than phosphorus (calcium in greens, phosphorus in seeds).
• Brush with OraMD — to kill the bacteria.

Nancy Appleton in her book Lick the Sugar Habit: Sugar Addiction Upsets Your Whole Body Chemistry (#ad) reports that dentist Dr Melvin Page found that when he got a patient’s calcium/phosphorus ratio to be the optimum 10 to 4, the symptoms that lead to tooth decay and bone loss go away. Only raw foods give you minerals in balance. Minerals work in relation to one another. Factory foods like sugar throw this balance out of whack, e.g. sugar speeds up the rate at which you excrete calcium. In fact, tooth decay and osteoporosis go hand-in-hand.

Prevent Tooth Decay

OraMD’s all-natural ingredients are the natural enemies of mouth bacteria — 100% pure, essential oils of peppermint, spearmint and almond.

OraMD stops bacterial colonies from growing at the neck of each tooth. When you eliminate the cause, you end the disease, in this case gum disease (gingivitis) and cavities. Please STOP the decay process, by stopping the bacteria.

OraMD tastes delicious! My mouth feels so fresh when I use 2 drops on an ultra-soft toothbrush. Never use an electric toothbrush. It’s too abrasive on your enamel. Worse, it pushes your gums back so you end up with sensitive tooth necks (exposed dentinal tubules). See my other article Best Way to Heal Sensitive Teeth.

I never use toothpaste any more. Toothpaste looks like it’s crawling with microbes, compared to the purity of OraMD.

Most (if not all?) toothpastes contain glycerine which forms a thin film on teeth and hinders re-enameling. It’s not listed as an ingredient but if you call the company, you’ll find it’s there. Toothpaste tubes are made of non-degradable zinc-and-lead.

Sodium lauryl sulfate in toothpaste is the same compound they use for carwash and garage floor cleaners!

OraMD prevents cavities because it keeps your mouth spotlessly clean.

Cure Tooth Decay

Eat a high-calcium diet. You get this from blended and juiced living greens.

Green juice gives you pure water rich in angstrom-sized calcium. Its low molecular weight (angstrom) makes it easy for mouth tissues like mucus membranes and teeth, to absorb the calcium.

Prof. Sally Marshall (below) used calcium ions to remineralize teeth!

Our gums (gingiva) are covered in a thin fluid layer of skin known as mucus membrane. Calcum ions pass easily through this membrane, and through tooth enamel, to build healthy gums and teeth.

I’m sure you know the best way to take homeopathic tablets is to dissolve them under your tongue? They get absorbed through the mucus membrane directly into your blood stream, bypassing your digestive system.

This is one reason I chewed on dark green leaves during my lunch hour, when I was healing my teeth. It was excruciatingly painful, feeling the juices seep into my teeth and gums. But it worked! It’s just what Professor Marshall proved, calcium ions *will* rebuild some dentine.

I later learned that chewing your greens slowly (or holding green juice in your mouth) will transfer minerals to your saliva. I grew my own wheatgrass and juiced it with other leafy greens at least three times a week. I’d swish the green juice round in my mouth, and press it into my teeth and gums with my tongue.

Only leafy greens are high in calcium. Your fruits, nuts, seeds and Brassica greens (broccoli etc.) have more phosphorus than calcium. Remember you need a calcium/phosphorus ratio of 10/4.

Toothache at Night?

My critical tip for healing your teeth naturally is (other than the power of OraMD):

>> NEVER leave food particles in your mouth begging for bacteria!

These days I floss and rinse every time I eat something. If I’m at home, I add a little bicarbonate of soda to the rinse water. Often I’m eating fruit, and bicarb’s alkalinity neutralizes the fruit acids on your teeth.

I brush only morning and evening with an ultra-soft surgical toothbrush I buy from my dentist. Even the soft toothbrushes in the store are too hard. Excessive brushing causes gums to recede.

Never brush right after a meal. It can cause erosion because eating softens the enamel. Best to wait an hour before brushing, or do what I do, rinse and floss only.

I used to combine bicarb and salt for my rinse water, but no longer bother. You mix together in a large dry bowl 3 cups of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) with one cup of sea-salt. Store it in glass jars.

Baking soda alkalinizes your mouth, thus neutralizing the bacterial acids too. Saliva needs an alkaline environment to remineralize your tooth enamel (fix calcium and phosphorus ions into your enamel).

The benefit of salt is that it stimulates saliva production.

Spotlessly clean teeth and gums is the way to keep your teeth well into your 90s! Coupled with blended greens, green juices, and seed milks.

Oil Pulling for Healthy Teeth

You never rinse after OraMD. That’s why last thing at night, I use only OraMD. I floss and rinse first, then brush with OraMD.

Interestingly, OraMD is a form of oil-pulling. Have you read the ayurveda advice to swish oil, such as raw sesame oil, round in your mouth for 15 minutes? Then spit it out. Never swallow it. Reportedly it pulls out bacteria and hence strengthens your immune system. With OraMD I do that naturally, twice a day, morning & evening.

After brushing with OraMD, I don’t rinse. Instead I swish the remaining oil round with my tongue, pushing it between my teeth and along my gums. Then spit it out.

I tried actual oil pulling — a tablespoon of raw coconut oil and swished it round in my mouth. But it never worked for me. I couldn’t keep it up for the 15 minutes! I’d be swallowing it, which is a big no-no because it now has the bacteria sticking to the oil.

Last but not least, don’t forget Sunshine! I eat my lunch outside to get my 20 minutes a day of sunshine. Even in Manhattan, the heart of New York City, I’d find a little square where I could sit with the pigeons and eat out in the sun.

You need sunlight to make vitamin D, which helps to absorb calcium. No sunshine, no assimilation of calcium into your tooth structure.

Painful Tooth Enamel

Lucky for us, the way to rebuild enamel is exactly the same as the way we stop tooth decay.

Bacteria, gobbling up sugar and starch specks on your teeth, excrete lactic acid. This acid dissolves the calcium and phosphorus in your tooth enamel.

Saliva (which is alkaline) slowly neutralizes these acids. As soon as the pH of your mouth is alkaline enough, dissolved minerals in saliva get absorbed back into your enamel.

Saliva is unable to penetrate through plaque! Remember plaque is that biofilm of bacteria on your teeth, which OraMD removes. Brushing your teeth does not kill these bacteria. Nor does toothpaste.

So to re-enamelize your teeth, the protocol is:

• Keep plaque off your teeth with OraMD.
• Never leave food specks in your mouth, especially NO sucrose, fructose, and glucose.
• Floss and rinse with bicarb after you eat that fruit! Or any other food. Get that sugar off your teeth.
• Try not to snack continually. Give your saliva a chance to do its work. Four-hour break is the ideal.
• Eat raw leafy greens — one of the few foods richer in calcium than phosphorus (besides dairy, but that’s high in saturated fat).

Enamel is the hardest substance in your body — 96% of it is pure minerals! Enamel’s chief mineral is hydroxylapatite, a crystalline calcium phosphate. You see how we get the calcium/phosphorus ratio here too? Leafy greens in Green Smoothies and Sesame Seed Milk give you the best minerals for your teeth!

When I first began eating raw, I snacked on fruit, nuts and carrots throughout the day — all starch and sugar! My poor teeth! But it was a way to keep me off chocolate.

Today only once every few hours, I’ll eat fruit in season, or a fat like avocado or raw egg from a friend’s chickens — rather than continually snacking. In the evening I enjoy Green Smoothie or salad with a cup of cooked pulses as per Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s G-BOMBS — greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, seeds.

In my late 60’s I began eating raw eggs from chickens I know, and raw goats milk yogurt that I make at home (raw milk from goats that are free range in the mountains) for vitamins A, D, K2, and B12. The momma goats convert the K1 in grass into K2 for their kid’s bones. See my article: Vitamin K2 to Prevent & Heal Cavities in Teeth and Build Strong Bones.

Vitamins A, D, and K2 are critical for your teeth and bones. We convert nutrients in plant foods into these vitamins (such as the carotenes into vitamin A) but as we move past our mid-60’s, it’s tougher to do the conversions (ditto for children under-5).

Stop Periodontal Disease

Periodontitis is something you don’t want. It’s when the tissues around a tooth get inflamed. Again, it’s caused by bacteria growing on your teeth and gums. It can lead to such serious bone loss that your teeth begin to fall out.

If you have periodontal disease, you are more likely to have a heart attack! Those toxic bacteria enter your blood stream and trigger the liver to release CRP (C-reactive protein). CRP levels rise in your blood as a response to inflammation. They are a more accurate predictor of heart attack than cholesterol levels.

Raymond S. in London, England healed his gum disease with OraMD Extra Strength. He writes (in Trusted Health Products newsletter 11/12/09):

“For the first 9 months, results seemed painfully slow. Although my deepest periodontal pockets had gone down to 6 mm and my gums were a nice shade of pink, for the first time.

I continued to floss and use OraMD Extra Strength and after 24 months I was amazed that I no longer had ANY loose teeth. All puffiness of my gums was gone and my teeth seemed to actually fit my mouth properly due to the loss of inflammation in my gums.

After I used Ora MD Extra Strength for 3 years, my periodontist said: You have made a rare but remarkable recovery. Your deepest pockets are 2 mm and you no
longer have any loose teeth. Your gums have grown back, stronger, firmer and healthier than they have ever been. I predict that within a few months you will not need to visit me (a periodontist) anymore. You no longer have gum disease.

All this from the same person who, 3 years ago had said gum disease could NOT be cured or reversed. I am living proof to everyone that gum disease CAN be reversed.

Despite what all the so called dental “experts” tell you, the human body WILL heal itself naturally if you simply give it a chance. OraMD Extra Strength is so easy to use. It’s the key to reversing gum disease. You only have to try it to be convinced.”

Note that Raymond uses OraMD Extra Strength which is stronger than the regular OraMD which I use.

Teeth Care for Animals

I bet the main reason our animal companions don’t get the cavities we get is because they have a long break between meals. Their teeth have time to repair themselves.

Please don’t leave a bowl of food out all day. All the books say to take the plate away as soon as your pet has eaten.

Their main meal of the day should be natural whole foods, with a little green smoothie added. I give my cat and dog raw wild-caught buck meat, fish, and free-range chickens and chicken liver, even though I’m plant-strong. Cats go blind on a vegan diet.

Supplements for Toothache

In the rawfood world, we take supplements for brief emergency use only, not as a regular habit. They cause deficiencies and excesses in your metabolic pathways. I give details in Why Blending Is Essential.

Microcrystalline hydroxylapatite (MH) is touted as the most effective supplement for building strong bones and teeth. It’s more effective than calcium carbonate in slowing bone loss.

However, MH comes from bovine (cattle) bones so it’s not for vegans. Back in the 1980’s, bone meal calcium supplements were contaminated with heavy metals. For all we know, they still are.

From my personal experience, I’ll boldly say that you don’t need supplements if you start today on my program:

• Use OraMD — especially last thing at night with a soft toothbrush.
• Eat fresh raw plant foods that build healthy teeth.
• Floss & Rinse every time you eat.
• Enjoy the gift of warm Sunshine!

Quick Relief of Tooth Ache

If you have unbearable toothache, clove oil or tea tree oil are helpful. But the best of all is salt!

Think about it, what causes a sore tooth? The pulp tissue (see image below). Pulp swells up when it gets inflamed. But it’s trapped inside the dentine, so it can’t expand. Pressure builds up and squeezes your nerves inside the pulp. This gives you painful toothache. The pulp is commonly called “the nerve” of the tooth.

When you soak your tooth in a strong salt solution, the inflammation goes down. If only I’d known this tip all those times I convinced my dentist to prescribe antibiotics for my pain because I could not afford surgery.

Dissolve Himalayan crystal salt in warm water, to make a strong brine solution. Then vigorously and repeatedly swish the salty water around in your mouth. It will make you salivate, which is good. Alkaline saliva helps to remineralize teeth. You’ll find your pain subsiding within minutes.

Himalayan crystal salt is a living crystal, and highly alkaline. It’s the only salt that has all minerals in perfect balance. You’ll not only relieve your toothache, but also give your saliva and teeth a mineral boost.

Ibuprofen to Relieve Toothache?

Ibuprofen — used to relieve pain and inflammation — has severe side effects. In 2015, the FDA warned about the increased risk of heart attack or stroke with high use.

Other side effects are headache, diarrhea or constipation, nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and bloating, and intestinal pain.

I’ve had no medication in my home for decades. Once I began Reaching for Raw food, I no longer needed the toxic junk of Big Pharma. There’s not even aspirin or deodorant in my home. You really don’t need it.

Is Root Canal Needed?

The question is — can a raw vegan diet rebuild your teeth? Science can remineralize parts of the tooth, but it’s a few years away from growing back an entire tooth in humans.

Prof. Sally Marshall of the University of California was able to regrow some dentine in teeth by painting a solution of calcium ions onto the damaged dentine.

Her research is backed up by personal reports on the web that teeth can absorb nutrients from the mouth to repair themselves. Makes sense to me, they’re a living tissue!

Advice on the web is to pack vegetarian calcium powder round an infected tooth, and even inside the tooth.

My advice is, do it *after* you’ve thoroughly cleaned it with OraMD! I would not pack anything into a tooth that’s infected with microbes. OraMD is the only product I trust to clean out the critters.

Scientists are growing new teeth from stem cells. They extract from mouse embryos the two cell types that develop into a tooth, grow these cells into a tooth bud in a lab dish, then insert this bud into a cavity
in the mouth of an adult mouse. It grows into a new tooth with perfectly normal structure and composition, and a healthy blood supply, bone and nerve connections.

Around September 1992, I was diagnosed with yet another root canal, costing $1,200 at that time. I came out of my Russian dentist’s office in Brooklyn and said, “Okay Ann Wigmore, if your way cures cancer, let’s see it cure a hole in my tooth.”

I began to grow my own leafy greens and blend them into Green Smoothies — called Energy Soup back then.

A little over a year later in January 1994 when I went for the root canal, my dentist found that the main root (out of 3) had calcified up! So my body performed its own root canal. It wiped out the inflammation in the pulp. Then it plugged calcium into the holes in the dentine. My dentist was unable to stick a needle into that root. But this is a far cry from rebuilding a tooth!

Anyone who claims raw plant foods will rebuild teeth is possibly treading on thin ice? I don’t know. We can see science is getting there.

Perhaps the body is already there? Please let me know if you experience first-hand a tooth regenerating itself. Meanwhile science and web testimonies agree that we can remineralize little cavities, up to two millimeters deep.

All teeth will resist decay as long as you keep your mouth clean. I’ve proven this! Once I haunted dental clinics. Their bills cost me more than my car. Today I go once a year for an all-clear checkup. With OraMD, I never have a single tooth or gum problem.

Discount on OraMD

OraMD is cheaper than toothpaste! Taylor C writes (in Trusted Health Products newsletter):

“My dentist said my bottom center teeth were at risk of falling out because of my receding gums! I couldn’t believe it. I am young, my teeth are clean, I get compliments on my smile. I was facing my mid-twenties with my teeth falling out!

I tried OraMD, first thing I noticed was no more bad breath. It was incredible. But the best part was my gums, they became a healthy pink color and the receding gums stopped. This saved me a $5,000 procedure. I’ll never use toothpaste again.”

Discover More

• Best Way to Heal Sensitive Teeth & Exposed Tooth Root at Gumline — my sister article to this one.