Living teeth need living food is the foundation of my approach to healing teeth and gum.

This sets the teeth healing diet apart from many systems of eating for health.

It’s more common to label different categories of food as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ on the basis of what nutrients are present or absent in that type of food.

Some of us go gluten-free or vegan. We are ‘naughty’ when we eat chocolate. We are ‘good’ when we drink green juice.

I’m less interested in whether food is good or bad, than I am in the energy that a food brings into your body, and particularly how that energy can support that teeth.

Healthy teeth are constantly being nourished by what we eat.

I think you can eat almost any category of food, as long as the food is nutrient dense, high quality, fresh and prepared appropriately.

That generally means seeking out un-processed organic ingredients to cook yourself.

Sadly, our industrialized food system has so depleted the quality of most retailed food that eating this way is much harder to achieve than it should be.

I know that in many parts of the world, including some communities in the USA, it can be difficult to find (and afford) high quality fresh food, and so supplementing your diet with pills and powders is the next best solution.

It is normal after all, to take to pills and powders to supply particular nutrients that our symptoms suggest we need.

Our society is so medicalised and pharmaceuticalized (did I just make up a word?) that we routinely pop vitamins, minerals and probiotics instead of being able to trust our meals keep us healthy.

The approach to a teeth healing that I advocate involves getting nutrients in their original context, from eating real food.

The isolated nutrients in supplements, especially when synthesised rather than extracted, lack the complex synergies and the activating qualities available only in whole foods and combinations of foods.

These synergies and activating qualities enable our bodies to turn the nutrients we eat into the hormones and proteins that teeth and gums need to be strong and healthy.

Whole fresh, nutrient-dense, organic food is what your teeth and gums (and the rest of your body) really need to be healthy.

That is not to say that healing your teeth is impossible if you can’t access good food, it is just more complicated.

The holistic teeth healing toolkit that I work with includes a dozen or so different kinds of strategies of which diet is just one.

When your diet can’t heal your teeth effectively, then nutritional supplements come into play, supported by mental, muscular, care, cleaning, dental, emotional and environmental strategies.