What Your Mouth Speaks About Your Health!

Did you know that your mouth reveals whether you are "over-carbing," and indicates risk of certain disease states? Here's how:
All carbohydrates (refined or complex) break down into glucose or blood sugar. If you "over-carb," i.e. eat refined carbohydrates, or simply too many carbohydrates for your body, there is a wild rush of glucose into your blood steam or a "blood sugar spike." Your body uses some of this glucose for energy, and stores some of it as fat in your fat cells. Glucose can be metabolized aerobically (meaning with oxygen) or anaerobically (without oxygen). When there is an overabundance of glucose in your blood stream, your biochemistry dictates that most of it is burned anaerobically. The byproduct of the anaerobic energy system is lactic acid, which is produced in every one of your trillions of cells. This causes your body and your mouth to become very acidic, technically known as acidosis.

So how does this impact on your health?
Your body is a very complex and mysterious creature. One of the more interesting things is how it regulates its pH levels. The pH of your blood is the most tightly regulated of your body's fluids, at a slightly alkaline pH of 7.4. So when you load up on processed carbohydrates or too many carbohydrates, and your cells start producing acid, your body has several ways in which it buffers that acid to ensure the blood maintains its healthy pH. One of the methods of neutralizing or buffering acid is with free calcium.

Where does the calcium come from?
It is taken from the most obvious source-your bones. This free calcium, once drawn into your blood stream to alkalinize your blood, eventually deposits in different parts of your body including on your teeth, in your cells, on your arterial walls. Free calcium is a well-documented cause of tartar formation on your teeth, as well as heart disease and cancer. An acidic body can also begin to show signs of insulin resistance. It appears that insulin needs to have an alkaline medium to be effective, or the receptor sites fail to completely recognize its presence. This means an acidic body lacking the alkaline minerals of vegetables, fruits, calcium-magnesium supplements, and proper food combining may lead to diabetes type 2, and/or hypoglycemia

The acidic environment makes the perfect breeding ground for anaerobic bacteria (yeast, fungus and parasites)-the bad guys. This also means the destruction of aerobic bacteria-the good guys. They simply can't survive in such an acidic environment. The bacteria that causes gum disease and caries thrives in the anaerobic environment, but cannot live in an alkaline environment. Fossil records of our ancestors clearly show the absence of dental caries, confirming that caries are a lifestyle-dependent disease caused by the excessive consumption of carbohydrates. Cancer cells are another type of cell that thrive in an anaerobic environment but cannot survive in an alkaline environment. Another interesting fact: most Type 2 diabetes patients also have poor dental health.

You can begin to see a destructive, disease-producing spiral that starts with the typical American breakfast of pop tarts and orange juice!

How do you know when you are in an acidic state?
It's quite simple-simple enough to test you and your family at home. All you need to do is test your saliva pH levels. Why? Your saliva is a direct reflection of the state of your blood and circulatory system. Keep in mind that when your saliva pH dips below 5.5, technically known as "critical pH" (see Steadman's Medical Dictionary) your teeth start to de-mineralize or dissolve. Needless to say, this you want to avoid!

The best time to test your saliva is 1 hour after a meal. There are two tools you need to carry out this test: a plastic spoon and litmus paper (range 5.5 - 8.0). Litmus paper is available from EnergyFirst.

Deposit a good amount of saliva into the plastic spoon, dip the litmus paper into the saliva, then remove the paper. After no more than 3 seconds compare the color of the litmus paper to the color chart that comes with it. Yellow indicates very acid saliva. Dark green to blue indicates a neutral to slightly alkaline or basic saliva. Your aim is to always test neutral or slightly alkaline i.e. pH 7 to 7.5.

Dr. Dan Rosen D.D.S., C.C.N., formerly of Austin Texas, started this research linking over-carbing to salivary pH. One day he took his youngest child's class on a field trip to his dental office. At around 10 am he dispensed plastic spoons and litmus paper to the children, asked them to spit and then dip the paper in their saliva. All of the children's litmus paper, bar Dr Rosen's children, was bright yellow indicating extremely acid saliva with a pH around 5.0. Dr Rosen's children displayed dark green litmus paper indicating a pH of 7.4-perfect saliva! A discussion ensued about what each child had eaten for breakfast. The children whose saliva tested acid had eaten breakfast comprising nothing but carbohydrates-orange juice, pop tarts, breakfast cereal, toast-typical "over-carbing" which supports an anaerobic breakdown of the food and acidic or disease producing pH. In stark contrast, Dr. Rosen's children had eaten a omelet, avocado, and sprouted barley toast with butter and a glass of water-a healthy balance of lean complete protein, good fats and foods-as-grown carbohydrates which supports an aerobic metabolism and alkaline or healthy pH.

The moral of this story: There is a direct correlation between what you eat, your dental health, and your risk of disease. If you follow the EnergyFirst program, you can significantly lower the risk of dental infection and disease, and the risk of major degenerative diseases.