natural remedies for gum disease?

[prairiechild]

DH recently was diagnosed with gum disease. We are seeing a holistic dentist and he found it. He is doing some kind of laser treatments.

I bought a neem based mouthwash, an herbal toothpaste, and plan to buy oregano oil and have him put a few drops on his toothbrush. I think I'll see if I can get him to take oregano capsules too. Of course, he is brushing and flossing twice daily.

He has 8 mercury fillings that we plan to gradually replace over the next few years as we can afford it. Our dentist does porcelain onlays at $950 a tooth, so it will be slow.

Any other ideas to treat this?

[mom22y]

Hello,

My dh just came home with the same news He has lots of metal fillings also, and the more I've read the more it seems that until those go away he'll be suffering from gum disease. I understand the cost though, it will also take us awhile to clean up his mouth too and our current dentist (the closest holistic dentist is 300 miles away) wants him to put a flouride treatment on his gums every day. :

Anyway, so I've been doing some research into this too and came across something called "oil pulling." Have you heard of it? It's an old remedy, that looks like it might be of some relief until all the fillings are out.

Just thought I'd throw it out there to see if anyone else has heard anything about it and the pros and cons.

Take care and good luck with your dh's mouth!

[prairiechild]

Thanks for the reply. I have heard of oil pulling but am not even going to bring it up with DH just because I don't think he'll do it. I consider myself lucky if he'll take oregano capsules and brush with the oil.

In December, he had four metal fillings taken out by a regular dentist and got exposed to a horrible amount of mercury. I was wondering if this had anything to do with the gum disease.

I'll be so happy to get all the metal out, but it's going to be a while, I have two months before we are eligible for dental insurance through my work and even then it probably won't cover much.

I only had a few and we did those first. Basically because we want to TTC later on and I needed to get detoxed.

[mavery]

What has REALLY helped both me and dh is a WaterPik.

http://www.waterpik.com/dentalcare/

There's a bunch of models, the basic ones are pretty cheap, like $30ish at Target. If your dh has deep gum pockets, then it would be worth getting one that includes the special super-fine head for cleaning them out.

Dh and I have been using one for the last 6 or 8 months and it has made a huge difference. My one complaint is that the machine is not fabulously made: a couple of things have deteriorated (a button gets stuck, getting the heads to fit on has got harder) but overall it was $50 very well spent for us.

[SleeplessMommy]

Originally Posted by prairiechild

He has 8 mercury fillings that we plan to gradually replace over the next few years as we can afford it. Our dentist does porcelain onlays at $950 a tooth, so it will be slow.

If you can find a dentist you like in Mexico, you could probably get the inlays at a much lower cost. You can even try to negotiate on the prices with your dentist - they are making a huge profit on each inlay.

I am having my amalgam replaced with composite. The most involved tooth cost $220 ... and insurance covers most of this. [Yes, I know about the Bis Phenol A. And I will take BPA over mercury any day]