Guest Post: Dr. Laraway talks 5 Do’s & 5 Don’ts for Nutrition {Have Healthier Teeth!}

Good nutrition is the best foundation to insure a healthy body. So much has been written on this topic that I find its best to shorten and simplify. If you want to live a long, healthy life and never be sick here are some tips that may help you stay on the right path:
DO’s
1.Drink at least half of your body weight in ounces per day. Not chlorinated and not from a reverse osmosis filter therefore lacking minerals. Preferably water which is alkaline in ph 8.3 or 8.7.2. Keep the content of your diet in 85% plant and 15% animal protein. There is a reason for that and it has everything to do with your teeth. Humans have 32 teeth. The breakdown is as follows: 2 pairs of incisors for biting off plants (top and bottom), 1 pair of canines well suited  for ripping the meat off the bones and 5 pairs of molars for grinding up the plant food. Thus, in humans the ratio is 1 canine to 2 incisors to 5 molars. That is ratio of 1:7 and that is how we arrive at 85% animal food to 15% plant based food. This can be confirmed by looking at the diet of our closest cousins the chimpanzees. Their diet is 95.6% vegetarian and the animal protein they eat comes primarily from insects-excellent source of amino acids.

3. Eat fish since insects may not sound to appealing and we do need the essential amino acids (ones our bodies cannot synthesize) Preferably white type of fish, not red like tuna or bonito. The red colour comes from proteins called myoglobins which oxidize immediately after the fish are filleted and may also contain high levels of neurotoxic mercury. One good thing about red meat fish is the high content of antioxidants like EPA , DHA and iron. Fat in fish does not clog arteries like the fat in warm blooded animals (chicken,beef,pork).

4. Eat unrefined whole grains such as brown rice, rolled barley, millet, buckwheat, guinoa, amaranth, oatmeal, whole oats, bulgar. You must cook them because they contain trypsin inhibitors  (prevents the seed from germinating on its own). It takes a large amount of digestive enzymes to neutralize these without cooking them.

5. Chew each bite at least 30 times and fast once a week. Our intestinal walls can absorb substances up to 0.015 mm in size. So anything bigger than that will be excreted. You might say that would be a good way to loose weight then, but its not, and this is why: Decomposition of inadequately chewed up food gives rise to toxins. Those in turn occupy the liver so much that we are not able to process fat properly and gain weight.

DONT’S
1. Don’t cook your food. Raw food contains live enzymes crucial for  proper metabolism and vitality. We seem to have forgotten it especially when we feed our pets dead (enzyme -free) dry pellets. This concepts is very apparent in nature. The carnivorous animals eat only herbivorous ones to have access to plant food and the herbivore’s digestive enzymes. After they capture their herbivore prey they first eat the intestines (containing plants and live enzymes of the herbivore). A good example of what happens when we violate this law of nature is Mad Cow’s Disease. Common missconcept in nutrition is that white rice and dairy are good for you while they are dead food which lacks in enzymes and should be avoided entirely. More about how milk causes osteoporosis (soft bones) and induces asthma in children in my March blog post.

2. Don’t eat wheat. For info on why not I would like to refer you to a great book called “Wheat Belly”. It’s author will be a guest speaker at The Woodlands Marriott in March!

3. Don’t eat man made chemicals like preservatives (nitrites,nitrates,MSG) or antibiotics and  anti acids. AND OF COURSE DO NOT SMOKE. As far as alcohol-it is a poison in any amount but a glass of RED wine is the least of the evil things we can do. 🙂 When it comes to coffee -the “life giving best thing about waking up” – its good, but only for enemas!! Green tea-contains flavonoids which bind to vitamins depriving us of them. That’s perhaps how we have learned to drink it for weight loss. Black tea-contains tannins – good for processing fur and drying out the extraction site after you had a tooth removed but not for maintaining a healthy gastrointestinal tract.

4. Don’t eat meat. Not a popular theme here in Texas but nevertheless true. We all have heard of saturated fatty acids and how they promote plaque accumulation inside our arteries. That of course leads to strokes and heart attacks. More importantly however since our gut is not made to digest meat it  tends to sit in our large intestine for a lot too long causing chronic inflammation which eventually leads to bowel cancer – #2 killer after heart disease.

5. DO NOT EAT 5 hours before bedtime. That’s a tough one, but true especially for those of us who snore. More on that in my April blog post on Snoring and sleep apnea.

I realize that all this may be difficult to stick to, especially that healthy food is expensive. One solution: grow your own. Look at the Singapore’s sky scrapers; they look like green hairy beasts-all growing food that lives. OR as Tiffany suggests, coupon for toiletries and use the money you save from that to boost your food budget! In the long run saving you money on dental bills as well!

I will include a recipe for  one of my favourite lunch foods:

P.S. If you have ANY dental questions. I talked Dr. Laraway into checking the comments today to answer any questions. Or if you don’t want to ask them “out loud” you can ALWAYS call them and ask. 

Check out all the FREE Services Laraway Dentistry offers!