It doesn’t look like much, but here is a close up of the gold inlay filling that just “fell” out of my mouth.  It was put in about 20 years ago.

I’ve been losing parts of my teeth over the years.  I used to have quite a reaction to this.  I’d get all worried and desperate.  This time after only a moment’s perturbation, I wondered if it fell out because my teeth were beginning to regenerate and no longer needed it.  I was quite pleased with the thought.

Here is a picture of the space left behind.  Doesn’t look like much, but it feels like a huge gap.  The low area has a sharp ridge to it that I keep running my tongue across.  You can see that next to the hole where the gold inlay was is a mercury amalgam filling from my childhood.

I Space in tooth left behind when gold inlay fell out. (November 1, 2014) Notice an older mercury amalgam filling remains in the tooth.

So what am I going to do?  I decided right then that I was going to stop and reverse any tooth decay. This motivated me into action. I immediately went online and googled “How to heal a broken tooth naturally”.  That lead me to a blog site and then to this book: Cure Tooth Decay: Heal and Prevent Cavities with Nutrition. I’m still studying the problem and solution, but it seems that what I need to do is eliminate phytic acid from my diet. There are a lot of testimonials on Amazon about how effective this diet is.

The book also goes into the rationale behind the diet and talks about holistic dentistry.  I was especially interested in the author’s opinion regarding mercury fillings since I have several from childhood.  Actually, the author is not opinionated at all.  He gives the facts, explores the pros and cons, and lets the reader decide on a course of action.  I’m still in a wait mode when it comes to removing the fillings.  I think I have a mercury resilient phenotype.

My diet is pretty close already to the one recommended. In addition, I was already gearing up to eliminate my favorite sugar source, dried fruit, because I thought they might be causing cravings.  However, dietary changes can be challenging, so I decided to call my mom to fortify my motivation.

I asked her, “Mom, how much have you spent on dental work in the last couple years?”  Well, last year she bit into a dried mango and the tooth her bridge was attached to broke.  That was $5,000 to repair.  The year before she had gotten extensive restoration work done to the tune of $12,000.

$17,000.  That was good enough for me.  I do not want to spend $17,000 on my teeth.  She also has osteoporosis, a condition that would also benefit from the dietary changes I was considering.  Further, changing my diet is alignment with my idea that I should eat to live, not live to eat.