toothpaste alternatives

found earthpaste and switched to that, contains Redmond clay and a couple benign ingredients. for bleedy or irritated gums look for a product called ozonated olive oil. comes in a small puck and looks like salve. tastes terrible, nothing like olive oil but it heals gums overnight. slime them up and go to bed, see what happens in the morning, aaaaamazing.

I find baking soda way to hard for brushing. It is good for tile scrubbing, but teeth are alive. If you want to use it, then melt it in water and use as a rinse.
I use sink irrigator, the one that attaches to the faucet first. Floss, if it didn't get everything. Then brush my teeth with my toothpaste made from bentonite clay, xylitol, and a few drops of spearmint oil, and just enough water to mix it. Then I usually dip my toothbrush into the herbal mix powder, which contains black walnut hull, cinnamon, cloves, white oak bark, coriander seed. I used to also add nettle, but I realized, that I am somewhat allergic to it after I used it a lot in juices and teas for two weeks and got eczema on my neck. I rinse with a few drops of myhr extract in water.
Oil pulling probably cleans teeth and mouth better than anything else, but I got lazy lately, and then wanted to do it once, when I had a cold, and found it impossible, as we need to breathe through the nose for oil pulling.

I have read that the titanium dioxide and various other ingredients in toothpaste is damaging to your microbiome. an alternative to toothpaste that i have found is diluting resin from douglus fir, maples,and cedars and brushing with it. the resin is especially good at removing sugars.

I have posted on the other thread on this topic. I have been using a combo of baking soda, coconut oil, mint, and I think a bit of olive oil. It had too much baking soda in it, so it was too salty. Also the mint leaves weren't ground up, so I think they may affect the drain in the sink when I spit them out. I am taking Doug Simon's advice that it should not contain glycerine, which TOm's of Maine and other commercial alternatives have. I am going to adjust my mix, but I will say that my teeth haven't felt sensitive about hot, cold or sour recently, which I take as a good sign that the enamel is getting stronger. I recommend Doug Simon's DVD. I have been using the horsetail and I think it works.
John S
PDX OR

I have read that the titanium dioxide and various other ingredients in toothpaste is damaging to your microbiome. an alternative to toothpaste that i have found is diluting resin from douglus fir, maples,and cedars and brushing with it. the resin is especially good at removing sugars.

For what it is worth I like Earthpaste. It only has 4 ingredients and clay is the main one. As weird as it seems the stuff really works and is quite satisfying.

http://www.earthpaste.com/

As for Tom's of Maine, I am thinking that it was bought out by some big corporation, but then again I could be all wrong. In any case I think it would be good to keep track of who owns who and who is still independent. I check this chart quite often.

http://www.cornucopia.org/who-owns-organic/

I use either a tooth powder made of baking soda or bentonite clay, xylitol, neem and charcoal or a tooth paste of clay, xylitol and coconut oil. However these are not things that I think I could grow in the future. Perhaps lard and clay if I could figure out how to just get the beneficial clay from soil? I also like to just chew on cinnamon sticks and use them like tooth pics.

An Edgar Cayce remedy that is great for oral health and healthy gums and teeth is I.P.S.A.B. tooth powder. You can get it at health food stores. The acronym stands for Iodine, Prickly Ash Bark, salt and Baking Soda. You can feel the circulation/tingling in your mouth after you use it the first few time. I avoided periodontal work using it.

Another Ayurvedic technique that has been around for hundreds of years is Oil Pulling (someone earlier mentioned "oil swishing") Learn all about it at oilpulling.com

This topic has some really good information.  I found these two posts to be very helpful.  I also thought that the information on oil swishing very helpful.  Thanks, everyone!

ronie dee wrote:I use white calcium carbonate powder (found in antacid)  instead of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). Baking soda has a lot of sodium and calcium seems better to use on teeth.

Crush generic Tums and use the powder to whiten teeth and freshen breath. Occasionally spritz a little hydrogen peroxide on the calcium carbonate powder (after putting the powder on teeth) for extra whitening hold in mouth for a couple minutes and rinse.

Baking soda and antacid powder are abrasive so that helps remove stains from teeth. As others have said, might not be a good idea to scrub teeth every day with abrasives. Then again you don't have to scrub heavy every time, just brush the powder on teeth and let it work, then rinse. The antacid usually has a mint flavor that leaves breath fresh. Toothpaste leaves my mouth feeling abused - I hate the after toothpaste taste in my mouth.

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:For regrowing gums (if they've receded)--take a few tsps of gelatin in fruit juice (or water and stevia, something to mask the gross flavor) daily for a few months.  Pure gelatin, no additives.  My gums regrew several millimeters when I did this.

For brushing, I just use hydrogen peroxide, but I might try switching to Dr. Bronner's or  a chewing stick, that sounds a lot nicer!

Between oil pulling (if you have any ayurvedic schools or doctors around you should see if they have any oil prepared for this purpose, it will usually be nicely herbed for maximum benefit), flossing, and using miswak or peelu sticks (which I get off amazon for about 80 cents a piece) I haven't touched toothpaste in almost 3 years. I have generally mediocre oral hygiene, brushing/flossing maybe 4 or 5 times a week and oil pulling every month or so, and yet when I went to the dentist to get a broken crown fixed they told me my teeth looked better than most people they see and that I should just try to remember to brush and floss everyday.
My partner recently discovered this source for natural healthcare Living Libations, I can't remember the name of the woman who runs it but I listened to a podcast with her and she seems very knowledgeable and reasonable. My partner is very happy with the oral care products she got, the regimen is basically a salt water rinse (home made), then brushing with a tooth powder and a drop of essential oil, flossing, and tongue scraping (weird bent copper that scrapes the gunk off your tongue). I'm not sure of all the details but the woman is a fountain of information about natural oral care, she even wrote a book about at home dentistry and sells some basic dental tools for those of us striving for complete self sufficiency.

Bleeding gums most likley has nothing to do with tooth paste but that you are getting lots of inflamation from bacteria in between your teeth. I don't use tooth paste, I use water and sometimes baking soda when I want to freshen my breath. My girl friend uses that Uncle Toms and it is strong stuff, numbs my mouth.

I’ve been going without toothpaste, and without any replacement for toothpaste for over a year now. I still get semiannual cleanings at the dentist with no fluoride involved. My dentist says my mouth is great and no new cavities which is a turn around from when I was using toothpaste. Before it seemed like every visit to the dentist it was another cavity. I won’t go back to using toothpaste. Going without has been good for my mouth, my wallet and the earth with my lowered landfill activity.

I do use an electric toothbrusheith water, a tongue scraper and floss regularly.

Such great info here! But some less helpful stuff, too, I feel, so I want to chime in.

Specifically, this idea that glycerine (glycerol) somehow "coats" your teeth and prevents mineral-rich saliva from doing its work on your enamel doesn't make sense. The reason is obvious to anyone who has ever worked with glycerine (which I have) - the stuff is *eminently* water-soluble and rinses *very* clean, very easily. It can be used to wash up hands or dishes, etc, and rinses off quicker, more easily, and more cleanly than any soap I've ever encountered. A drop of glycerine in warm water diffuses into the entire container almost instantly, even before stirring. Glycerine and other sugar alcohols (which includes Xylitol, I should mention, and it's extremely similar to glycerol) are not too different from simple soaps, anyway, and serve a very similar function in that they help make nonpolar oils and other compounds more soluble in water (aka, they clean stuff!). So assuming that you rinse your mouth after brushing (which I think everyone should), or even if you just rely on your own saliva, that glycerine is not going to be hanging around in any significant concentration unless your mouth is *incredibly* dry. A couple of swishes with plain water after brushing and your precious saliva's minerals will have no trouble at all reaching the enamel of your teeth.

I say this not just because "OMG someone is wrong on the internet," but especially because I feel that glycerine is a *perfect* base for many toothpastes! It's thick and gets nicely pasty when combined with baking soda, salt, herb powders, etc., and because it dissolves both polar and nonpolar compounds, makes a great base to extract the medicinal parts of any herbs involved. And of course, it also basically acts as soap, helping to clean the teeth and gums directly!

For my own mouth, after much experimenting, these days I use Weleda "Salt Toothpaste," which is the best I've found yet. I used to use the Auromere "foam-free" varieties (to avoid SLS) but I find the Weleda to be better (though different - perhaps the Auromere is better for gums and periodontal disease? The Auromere seems to leave my mouth feeling clean for a longer amount of time). Weleda products pretty consistently impress me with the appropriate herbs they use and the proper strengths that they're used in - the latter is especially rare in most mass-produced botanical products. Although in this specific case, that Salt Toothpaste has a lot of Horsechestnut and its extractives in it, which is a little scary due to the poisonings that that plant can cause, but I think those wiley Germans have established its safety, though I can't find much English-language research on the topic. The Salt Toothpaste also has myrrh and baking soda, which are great to have in there.

I really, really like baking soda as a tooth care ingredient because its high pH directly neutralizes the food and fermentation acids that are present in the mouth which cause tooth decay (cavities/caries) and contribute greatly to tooth erosion - especially from brushing! In acidic conditions, the enamel of your teeth is actually a lot physically softer than at other times, and this can mean that brushing can end up doing more harm than good (or at least more harm than it would in other conditions). That's why, these days, many dentists suggest that you don't brush right after meals, or at least rinse your mouth well before you do. By using baking soda directly when you brush (or perhaps a rinse beforehand, I suppose), the pH of the mouth is raised which makes the tooth enamel tougher and better able to hold up to the brushing.

One last thing I'll mention that I've found to be very helpful to me (and everyone I've recommended it to): The Dr. Collins "Perio" toothbrush. It isn't natural at all (sorry there), but it has a unique type of bristle that gets way, way in-between teeth and just clearly works much, much better than brushes I used before trying it. So give it a shot, if you get a chance, they're inexpensive and available in some regular drugstores and online. But yes, they are plastic.

Happy brushing, everyone!

Many integrative oral health specialists have mentioned that having acids in your mouth close to brushing time will wear away the enamel, so I can confirm at least that part of what you're saying.  I like the robust discussion and ability to increase our knowledge in many areas.
JohN S
PDX OR