You Are What You Eat
by Jimmy Kilimitzoglou, DDS
Habits can help you or destroy you. What you eat can cure you or kill you.
I recently came back from a humanitarian mission at Lomé, Togo, in West Africa. It was a short trip: 48 hours in the country. I treated 30 patients between the ages of 4 and 84, performed 20 extractions of hopeless teeth, 17 fillings, and treated 6 infections. It was life-changing. What I learned is that habits and diet manifest the pattern of disease. Soda, candy, processed food, and junk food are available, but it is extremely expensive. Most people are poor and cannot afford it. They eat rice, chicken, fish, and local farm-grown vegetables, which are readily available, fresh, organic, sustainable, and, might I add, delicious.
There is no diabetes, obesity, alcoholism, or substance abuse. The pattern of decay was so different than anything I have seen. Front teeth were rarely affected. Oral hygiene was fair to poor. Back molars, which are difficult to clean, would trap food, decay, break, and then cause pain. Some patients were in pain for two years. It was so rewarding to help these people who were in poverty and had no access to care.
I have been to Pine Ridge, South Dakota, multiple times on outreach missions. It is the poorest Native American reservation in the nation. Organic foods are available but too expensive. There is a government-funded warehouse that carries essentials for the residents. These commodities are soda, junk foods, processed white bread, highly processed cheese, canned vegetables, and meat. Even though it is a “dry reservation,” there is alcohol available. Drugs are rampant. They are at the top of the list for obesity, diabetes, cirrhosis, alcoholism, and drug abuse. Traditionally, they would eat only what they would hunt or gather, and they had none of these diseases.
The pattern of tooth decay: cavities on all teeth. You see, carbohydrates like starches and sugars, when left on teeth and not washed or brushed away, will cause cavities. Proteins and fats will not.
The key is oral hygiene and frequency of consumption. If there is time between meals, your tongue, lips, and saliva will work together to clean, buffer, and stabilize the oral cavity. When you give a child a sip cup with milk or juice, they bathe their teeth with sugar, and they get bottle rot on the front upper teeth as the lower teeth are protected by the tongue. When someone succumbs to methamphetamines, all they care about is getting high. They crave junk food and don’t think about brushing. They end up with “meth mouth.” Every tooth in the mouth is ravaged by decay.
When these cavities become painful, people avoid healthy foods because they are hard, crunchy, or chewy, so they resort to soft, mushy, processed food that is not nutrient-dense. That, in turn, affects overall health and leads to disease.
Picture a small, remote village in a third-world country. The water is balanced with electrolytes and minerals. People eat once or twice per day, whatever is available: if you can peel it, hunt it, catch it, grow it … you eat it. Unbeknownst to them, they are doing intermittent fasting; they eat organic meat, superfoods, and nutrient-dense vegetables. Their teeth are strong and highly mineralized. Their bones are dense, and their hearts are strong. No cavities. No disease. No infections. It’s all about your habits and what you eat.
