Why I changed to Tooth Power ….!

Hi all,

We all know that we need to keep our teeth clean in order to maintain oral hygiene. This has been a practice done by our previous generations, hence no debate on whether to keep our teeth clean or not. Now the question becomes how/what to use in order keep out teeth clean?
I recollect during my childhood days (1980’s), we used tooth power (Gopal palpodi , Kalighat, Pyorrhea 1431) for a longer period of time. These tooth power are locally made and sold, not big brands as such, made low budget radio advertisements that is all. We
never got tooth ache or sensitiveness, also never recollect our parents making dental appointments during those days …Also occasionally, we used to clean our tooth using ashes mixed with salt (Sambal palpodi), sometimes used the lemon to clean it, they
are like detox to the teeth, not done on a daily basis.

Then there was a gradual shift, new flavored tooth powders and big brands came in, like Colgate tooth power and vicco Vajdradanti tooth power, of the two vicco is still considered as a healthy tooth powder.

After that came the era of pastes (late 80’s or early 90’s), cibaca, binaca, close up, colgate, pepsodent etc .. flooded markets with their flavored and colorful pastes, and each had different prices. This made psychological impact on people, because now they have to choose from so many that is available in the market, invariably the larger group began using what their neighbor’s used or the ones had fancy advertisements… Few thoughtful people opted for pastes that was lower in the prices (higher costs are due to the advertising and branding, so opted for pastes that are not marketed / advertised) .. Few real intellectual people, stuck on to their tooth powders and never changed. So we all are using the tooth paste religiously since 90’s, we may change the brands, colors, flavors based on many factors which are individual specific, but we can agree on that everyone we know are using tooth pastes since then.
At the age of 40, my mom went for her first tooth extraction. It was really hard to find a dentist in Chennai at that time, in a 30 kms radius you will find one or two dental clinics at the most. And the medicine that is used by the dentists are less powerful and did not have advanced tools, x rays for tooth was never heard off, it’s all guess work / professional judgment of the dentist. As a result, after the extraction the patient face looks bulged, they cannot speak for few days, routines get affected etc.
Now if i take a 1 km walk in ECR or OMR road or any main road, i see at least 5 dental clinics at reach, and you cannot get a walk-in appointment, every other dental clinic have flooded appointments and long waiting times. Why does so many people need to go to dental clinics, it everyone is using the tooth paste, which is considered as an healthier option? All clinics practice now with latest technologies, they take x rays, they give you sedative / numbness injections that acts quickly, extraction is not painful … but they advise against extraction and suggest you for root canal procedure not because they
are caring, because it is the expensive treatment with greater profit margins…
Have you looked at these dental clinics, Ac rooms, latest machines, cool/comfort chairs, post extraction/filling pain meds etc. , all this cannot be managed if they are dealing with extraction and dental filling alone, they need to do root canals, fit screws, put caps, etc .. (better brands such as Zirconia caps/crowns which are priced at premium.)

So my inference from the above is, lesser dental clinics when we were using tooth powder, and more dental clinics when we began to use the paste. Which means introduction of the tooth paste has not led to betterment of the public at large unless you own a dental clinic! OR we are not using tooth paste correctly!
I am not saying that, paste is clearly causing the issue here. My theory is that paste does not seem to help at all, but still we are convinced that it is the only thing that needs to be used to maintain our oral hygiene….

Keeping aside the above background, lets shift towards a personal experience from my family :

My son’s school conducted a general dental checkup camp for all the kids, and we found that almost 5-6 of his tooth had decay and needs a filling. We could not understand how it happened, my son was never fond of ice creams, had very few chocolates than any
other kid would have had for his age. He does not drink milk, however he does eat panneer, curd, greens etc …so his calcium intake was always there. He had decay in one of his teeth last year, for which we took him to dentist for a checkup, they found and
told it is normal, would be cleared off in brushing itself and advised us to use Cheerio paste which is a fluoride based one.
My son had difficulty to goggle or blow or spit initially when we began the habit of brushing his teeth, due to ASD. Sometimes he would not co-operate enough for us to have a complete brushing. Later he got used to it, and now co-operates well during brushing.
To encourage spitting, our therapy center advised to use an adult paste that is not tasty, so it would force the habit. Also they tried with neem leaves to develop the habit. Once he began spitting, we were back to his Cheerio Fluoride paste advised by his
pediatrician and also the dentist. We also used battery motor brush for his oral sensation.
I convinced myself that due to his initial struggles in brushing, he might have developed a tooth decay. But when things that never happened earlier, begins to happen my thought process began to reexamine whether the current practices followed are correct or needs to be changed …Began googling, on the role of tooth paste in protecting the teeth. We have been using Cheerio paste for a longer time, hence i wanted to check out more about the paste and found the below information:

Objective of the paste:
Cheerio Gel containing the active ingredient sodium monofluorophosphate is a medicated fluoride oral gel. The toothpaste is used to remove plaque, protect tooth enamel from attack by bacteria that cause dental cavities and remineralize the areas of the tooth that have been attacked by acids from bacteria.

Side effects of swallowing Fluoride gel are:
1) Ingestion of fluoride causes stomach problems and nausea
2) Skin irritation / Skin rash
3) Allergy
4) Gastrointestinal irritation
5) Hypersensitivity reactions
6) Acute toxicity
7) Cheerio Toothpaste may also cause side-effects not listed here.
(I saw a suggestion in some website, cheerio toothpaste should not be used to Children less than six years of age as well)

Symptoms of overdose may include:
1) Burning in the mouth
2) Sore tongue
3) Nausea
4) Vomiting
5) Diarrhea
6) Increased saliva
7) Stomach pain/cramping
8) Muscle weakness
9) Shaking
10) Seizures.

Internet also suggest the below thing:
1) Dentist now advises parents to use fluoride free toothpaste for kids who has not developed the habit of spitting, as there is no harm in swallowing the fluoride free toothpaste
2) Opt for non-fluoride toothpaste up to 3 years, then toothpaste having less than 500 ppm fluoride for kids up to 6 years.
3) Start with rice grain size toothpaste up to 3 years then gradually increase it to pea size toothpaste and the amount of toothpaste will be a smear layer over the bristles, like cheese spreading over bread
4) Always go through contents of paste, other factors like brand, trade name does not matter.
After reading all the above, i understand that there are Fluoride pastes and Non Fluoride pastes. Fluoride paste contains chemical which should not be swallowed, but that chemical is needed to protect your teeth. Non Fluoride pastes can be swallowed, but it does not contain the chemical required to protect our teeth. (Not sure, what is the need to invent / use Non Fluoride pastes at all, as Fluoride is the only big selling factor on a tooth paste)

Fluoride is good or bad is the next question….? Internet provides the following data on this (mostly related to united states):

1) In US in the past five years, 74 cities have voted to remove fluoride from their drinking water, despite thousands of studies showing it prevents cavities. “Anti-fluoridationists” — a small but vocal minority — are disputing long-established science to say that fluoride added to tap water lowers IQ and causes everything from acne to anemia to Alzheimer’s.
2) The persistence of fluoride conspiracy theories — which emerged in the 1950s with claims that fluoridation was a communist plot to dumb down Americans — is alarming public health officials, including the American Dental Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, who say fluoride is a safe, inexpensive way to boost children’s oral health. Some argue that the government uses fluoride as a form of mind control
3) Reddit users claim fluoride kills gut bacteria. And on Twitter, fluoride is regularly called a cancer-causing neurotoxin.
4) Mayor Betty Erhard has said for years that fluoride is a toxin and a waste of taxpayer money
5) It’s true that too much fluoride can be dangerous — one complication is skeletal fluorosis, which causes stiffening and pain of the joints and bones or abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting — but those effects only occur with prolonged exposure to a far higher level of fluoride than is found in public water systems in the U.S., experts say. In this country, the only common side effect of fluoridation is fluorosis of the teeth — minor staining that is often only visible to a dentist.
6) Extremely high levels of fluoride are known to cause neurotoxicity in adults, and negative impacts on memory and learning have
been reported in rodent studies, but little is known about the substance’s impact on children’s neurodevelopment. In a meta- analysis, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and China Medical University in Shenyang for the first time
combined 27 studies and found strong indications that fluoride may adversely affect cognitive development in children. “Fluoride seems to fit in with lead, mercury, and other poisons that cause chemical brain drain,” Grandjean says. “The effect of each toxicant may seem small, but the combined damage on a population scale can be serious, especially because the brain power of the next generation is crucial to all of us.” The research appears to support claims made repeatedly by some neuroscientists since the 1990’s, but which until now have probably been dismissed through lack of funding for research, lack of interest, and the acceptance of pro-fluoride arguments and logic.

Thinking back, whether is it common for a kid to have a dental filling at this stage (5 years old), I could never recollect making a dental appointment until i turned 30 years old …. (that too was part of grooming preparation for my marriage, not due to decay). Could not believe what went wrong here…. Can’t simply put a blame of change in environment, food, life style, quality of food /raw materials made available to us etc …. i kept thinking on areas that might have caused this, i have researched all the theories, but nothing seems to be conclusive and concrete.

I am ok with Fluoride being a good thing for Teeth, but i am not ok when it is going to be forced upon every human being. Whenever we are forced to consume anything be it a food or medicine or vaccination, etc .., we can be rest assured it is not good for an
individual as such, it is only to increase the profits of the corporates. Also whenever such controversies arise against products delivered by big corporates, there is no lab results, no definitive claims, and no proofs to support either (favorable and against) of the claims. From common sense, we can infer that there is no smoke without fire, and when the corporates defend them by bullying the opposition instead of providing concrete evidence, there is something fishy …

I decided not to use the toothpaste again, as using it religiously till date did not give any positive results. We now shifted to herbal tooth powder since few months.

Sithar Karuvapattai tooth powder is the one which you find in Nattu marunthu kadai nearby. The bottle costs 50 rs. The ingredients are: Sukku (Dry Ginger), Milagu (Pepper), Thippili (long pepper), lavangam (cloves), indu uppu (rock salt), karuvela pattai (mesquite tree or Indian gum arabic tree ) etc …It took couple of days for my son to get used to it, now he is happy with the tooth power. I am now relaxed since even if parts of the tooth power is swallowed, it can do far lesser harm than the paste, infact on the contrary it can make good based on the ingredients.

Now the shift from paste to power is not for my son alone, we as an entire family have now switched to the tooth power. The pastes are kept aside for guests, if any one needs to use it.

Now by reading this, if any of you thinks not all pastes cause harms, and you use an ayurvedic paste that contains all herbs and good things as equivalent to an herbal tooth power, and hence it will not cause any damage to me. You can be totally wrong, as i
heard from a siddha doctor, one cannot make a healthy tooth paste, it can only be made as a powder. The moment you want to make it as a paste, the additional ingredients overrule the good components.

Please watch below clip of Dr.Selva Shanmugam time frame 20:05 time onwards in tamil:

(He advises not to use tooth paste, and asks us to use tooth power using thiripala sooranam (kadukai, nellikai, thandrikai ), 10gm
krambu, 5 gm sea salt – it will be a kaya kalpa for your body)

Also please watch the below clip of Ben Fuchs:

I am not expecting everyone to change anything, i am sharing this because it is extremely difficult to perform dental work on a special child, due to their anxiety levels, too much attention to them, restricted body movements, noise of tools used by dentist
.. can be overwhelming and increase a sensory overload causing an outbreak/meltdown.
Think for yourself, Ask Questions for Yourself, Decide based on known facts, perform trial and error experiments if required data is not available

References were taken from below articles:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/science-says-fluoride-water-good-kids-so-why-are-these-n920851

Impact of fluoride on neurological development in children

Fluoridation: Worsening the Lead Crisis in Flint, and Beyond

Harvard Says Fluoridated Water is Causing Cognitive Disorders

http://www.a4.org.au/node/160
Regards,
Saranya and karthik
karthiksaranyaparents@gmail.com