Natural Toothpaste

GrannyMayOz

I've been using this recipe as my toothpaste for a little over 3 years now and for the first time in my sugar-filled life the dentist always comments how clean my teeth are.

It's equal portions of the first 3 ingredients so when I say '1 tablespoon' you can do '1 cup' instead, or whatever you please as long as you do the same for all three items.

In a small container, preferably one with a lid to put on afterwards, stir together...

1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 tablespoon xylitol
1 tablespoon bicarbonate of soda (I think that's baking soda, you may like to check)

Add a few drops of peppermint essence to taste and stir that in too. Put the lid on, keep it where you keep your toothpaste, and enjoy a more natural teeth cleaning experience. It may taste slightly salty until you get used to it, but I'd rather that than all the chemicals, *sugar*, and who knows what in manufactured toothpaste.

I've noticed that it also performs a minor 'oil pulling' because it often reintroduces the flavour of whatever I last ate, particularly where that flavour was strong.

I love a toothpaste that I could swallow with no harm done. Not that I do!

My understanding is that coconut oil helps prevent bacteria, xylitol has a healing effect on tooth enamel (or so I read 3 years ago) and bicarb whitens your teeth, but I'll leave you to do your own research if you please.

totaloblivia

i already use a bicarb toothpaste, so my try this - thanks

Dragonwolf

I need to xylitol and get off my butt and make it again. The recipe I use also adds in bentonite clay, which helps draw out toxins and crap in general (seriously, bentonite clay is crazy stuff). I've done clove and cinnamon essential oil, but I've got a whole slew of other essential oils now that I can't wait to try out.

KnitOrMiss

Awesome. The first recipe is super simple. I don't have access to xylitol at the moment. How bad would it be to leave it out at first? I remember my mom brushing with only soda (and yes, bicarb is baking soda to US folks) growing up and have done it myself. I personally cannot stand that minty feeling in my mouth, so I've always used cinnamon toothpaste. I think this could be awesome as my tube is getting low.

GrannyMayOz

@totaloblivia You're welcome!

@Dragonwolf Bentonite *clay* doesn't sound very yummy but I'll watch out for that thank you. Do you just mix the same quantity of that in as the other ingredients? Cinnamon oil sounds good and I know that cloves are helpful for toothaches.

@Knit I don't see a problem at all with leaving out the xylitol, it's the bicarb that does most of the cleaning, the xylitol presumably just changes the taste as well as adding the enamel healing properties.

Dragonwolf

@GrannyMayOz‌ As I recall, yes, or you can do a half-part. It comes in powder form and in toothpaste, it doesn't really have a "clay"-y taste (it actually takes quite a bit of water and mixing to reconstitute it into what more resembles pottery clay, and coconut oil doesn't count).

GrannyMayOz

LOL Sounds encouraging Dragon, thank you.

mebeep

Sounds interesting , I think I'll try this......BTW, whee can I buy xylitol?

shadesofidaho

Hummm and now I know what to do with the big bag of Xylitol.
I bought mine at a health food store. It is not expensive.

@grannyMay. Do you worry about the coconut oil going down the drain and plugging it up or do you spit it out in the trash.

Forgot Thanks for sharing this.

Bukawww

I make a tooth 'dust' and 'mud' that I sell through my little online shop. Its a mixture of Bentonite, French green, and sea clays (sometimes activated charcoal as well), baking soda, xylitol, magnesium citrate powder, and then coconut oil for the 'mud' part, with peppermint/tea tree/lavender EOs.

I spit out in a jar...its a little weird to get used to, but does an excellent job IMO of cleaning.

Bukawww

When adding your Bentonite, be careful not to allow metal near it (spoon or jar, etc) - it 'deactivates' some of its beneficial properties.

GrannyMayOz

mebeep wrote: »

Sounds interesting , I think I'll try this......BTW, whee can I buy xylitol?

I get mine from a health food shop. Be sure to check that there's no sugar added to the brand before you buy it. I know, right? Xylitol is a natural product, the bark of a birch tree, but I've heard of brands they actually add sugar to.

shadesofidaho wrote: »

Do you worry about the coconut oil going down the drain and plugging it up or do you spit it out in the trash.
Forgot Thanks for sharing this.

I don't worry, but coconut oil is liquid (here) for 9 months of the year, it's only mid-winter that it solidifies and I always clean my teeth with warm water in the winter anyway. And you're welcome, I thought everyone here would prefer natural substances where they can.

Bukawww wrote: »

When adding your Bentonite, be careful not to allow metal near it (spoon or jar, etc) - it 'deactivates' some of its beneficial properties.

Thank you so much for sharing and it's lovely to hear of a store selling such natural products, I hope you do really well.

glossbones

Ooh this looks great, thank you for sharing!

I just defeated my pack rat ways and threw out some containers yesterday that would have been perfect for storing a custom paste. Figures!

GrannyMayOz

You're welcome octobubbles and yes, I know that feeling. You can keep something for 2,000 years, throw it out, and the next day you'll want it.

Twibbly

I'm lazy, I use Earthpaste. Ingredients: http://www.earthpaste.com/about-earthpaste/

The lemon is lovely.

Mistizoom

Twibbly wrote: »

I'm lazy, I use Earthpaste. Ingredients: http://www.earthpaste.com/about-earthpaste/

The lemon is lovely.

I use Earthpaste as well. I love the lemon flavor also. Did not like the wintergreen. I have the other flavors in my cabinet but haven't tried them yet.

GrannyMayOz

Twibbly wrote: »

I'm lazy, I use Earthpaste. Ingredients: http://www.earthpaste.com/about-earthpaste/

The lemon is lovely.

I'm 'cheap' and make my own LOL I've looked at the site though and it looks wonderful. Knowing Australian Customs I very much doubt I'd be allowed to import it here. I've had natural products refused at Customs before and wasted my money on the purchase. Suppliers have been good about refunding the purchase price but I've had to pay the postage fees for nothing.

KnitOrMiss

@GrannyMayOz That's frugal...we're frugal. I say jokingly all the time that "I'm a cheap *kitten*..." My fiance finds this particularly amusing...

GrannyMayOz

KnitOrMiss wrote: »

@GrannyMayOz That's frugal...we're frugal. I say jokingly all the time that "I'm a cheap *kitten*..." My fiance finds this particularly amusing...

I find my man easily amused too. Or is it just that we know how to pull the right strings?

KnitOrMiss

GrannyMayOz wrote: »

KnitOrMiss wrote: »

@GrannyMayOz That's frugal...we're frugal. I say jokingly all the time that "I'm a cheap *kitten*..." My fiance finds this particularly amusing...

I find my man easily amused too. Or is it just that we know how to pull the right strings?

I can neither confirm or deny anything... Interesting that it censored b a s t a r d out. though... LOL

GrannyMayOz

Ha ha.

KetoCutie

I'm totally going to try this. Thank you!

KnitOrMiss

I got lectured at my dentist's office today about fluoride, making my own toothpaste. Thoughts?

nicsflyingcircus

I full admit that I love this:

Twibbly

KnitOrMiss wrote: »

I got lectured at my dentist's office today about fluoride, making my own toothpaste. Thoughts?

Fluoride is a toxin that makes me throw up when it's in mouthwash, why would I want it in my toothpaste? Plus, my teeth are no longer sensitive and I'm not getting any cavities since I started using toothpaste made from real ingredients.

glossbones

It was suggested to me by a science teacher once that, with all the flouride that is added to so many different things we consume, supplementing flouride is no longer necessary.

Take that for what it's worth (hear-say, would not hold up in court).

Dragonwolf

KnitOrMiss wrote: »

I got lectured at my dentist's office today about fluoride, making my own toothpaste. Thoughts?

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Diet matters far more than fluoride, in my opinion. If anything about brushing matters most, it's the technique used. It's great fun having the right technique, being horrible about brushing habit, and being told by the dentist that I "sure know [my] way around a toothbrush."

Check out the Bass brushing technique. Does wonders.

GrannyMayOz

As octobubbles said, this won't hold up in court, but I was told that flouride was a byproduct of something used in the war and they were getting stacks of it so some bright spark decided to say that it was good for your teeth and sold it to the water companies to add to the water we drink. And I've heard repeatedly that it's a toxin, as Twibbly said. I allow the dentist to choke me with the mega dose of it twice a year because I'm too stupid to tell him I don't want it and have a fight on my hands. But since I've been making my own toothpaste is the only time in my life that a dentist has told me 'good cleaning!'. Not eating sugar has got to help too - though I'd been 3 years of dental visits before I gave up sugar so I've yet to see what he says this time.

gsp90x

Note: I know this is long and it is in no-way meant as a lecture. I just find this very, very interesting!

Actually, adding fluoride to water stems from the research of a dentist named Frederick McKay. He spent about 30 years studying what was then known as the Colorodo Brown stain. Trying to find out why these people as a population had brown mottled teet but yet had not cavities. Long story short, the amount of fluoride in their ground water (which of course was also their drinking water) had elevated levels of fluoride. So, many moons ago, it was well meaning.

I asked my dentist about it a while back as I also have a business making and selling natural products and I had been wanting to sell the natural tooth powder I had been using for eons. (Note: I am not advocating for fluoride in the drinking water and make my own tooth paste similar to the recipes above that do not have fluoride). In his opinion (and he is very open minded) fluoride is extremely necessary for the formation of the teeth and bones (so kids) and supplementation regimes as a society would rarely be followed. So drinking water is the surest way. But as octobubbles pointed out, perhaps (likely) we should really be revisiting the likely hood that people are now getting enough fluoride in their diet naturally as the average North American Diet has changed, though I have my suspensions as fluoride is seen now as the devil incarnate. That being said, once you are an adult, this is not necessary and even harmful as in *some* cases can lead to brittleness in the bones when internal levels are too high. But this also depends on other factors, like how much you naturally get from your diet. Fact being too much fluoride (whatever that may be) can lead to those effects. What is helpful is topical application. Throughout your life topical application (in toothpaste or at the dentist or rinses from the drugstore) has been shown to help to strengthen teeth (he had a really long explanation of why and how) without negatively effecting the internal levels leading to undesired situations.

But my take.... did you know you get radiation in your daily food? Especially bananas (which most people here probably don't eat a lot of) Do you know that an engineer at a nuclear facility gets exposed to less radiation in years of working there than you would from one x-ray? But we don't question the safety of an x-ray. We're all different and you have to decide what feels right for you.

Don't have problems now? Don't use fluoride now? Don't worry. Don't start. Haven't ever had problems and want to stop fluoride? I'd first stop drinking your tap water rather than worry about your tooth paste. And of course that being said, I personally make my fluoride free tooth paste #1 because I like the taste better, #2 my teeth feel cleaner. BUT I do get that goopy fluoride treatment whenever I'm at the dentist, AND my dentist has also commended me on how white my teeth are and how little plaque build up I have each visit. But I do have "soft" teeth that still get cavities in weird spots. Like in the front of my front tooth! As if! (That's what the dentist said too) So I do use a flouride rinse once a week and it actually is reducing the size of the cavity. We spotted it 4 years ago. Not bad enough to warrant tampering with as long as we kept an eye on it. 4 years later, He's pretty sure it is getting smaller. He's still not eager to tamper. (Love my dentist). So there ya go. For what it's worth.

NB- I researched the crap outta this before I started selling my tooth powder as there is sooooo much info out there from each side. Balance. Balance.

GrannyMayOz

Thank you so much gsp90x that was really interesting and helpful.

For myself, I have a whole-of-house water filter and then a finer grade one on the kitchen sink for drinking water. We use the generally filtered water to cook in, but don't boil a whole lot of food these days. The brown sludge that comes out of the whole-of-house filter each year is enough to make you feel ill. And I'm in a relatively new suburb of Perth (the Australian Perth) so the water delivery pipes are in fairly good condition.

So enduring my dentist's weird goop in the trays that make me gag in the most unladylike way are OK. What a blob!

gsp90x

Oh Whew! thank you Granny May. I really meant my post to be helpful, not otherwise.

but yeah, that goop is awful isn't it? Last time I went they gave me Pina Colada flavour. Afterwards she asked me how it was. I told her it was the worst Pina Colada I'd ever had!