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  • 2016-10-15 (xsd:date)
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  • Reverse Cavities and Heal Tooth Decay with Vitamin D (en)
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  • David Avocado Wolfe, an alternative health guru/meme generator who believes, among other things, that chocolate is an octave of masculine solar energy, authored a widely shared post titled Reverse Cavities and Heal Tooth Decay with THESE 5 Steps! While the meat of his post was a list of five dietary suggestions of varying scientific validity aimed at cavity prevention, he opened his article with this questionable statement about reversing tooth decay through the use of Vitamin D: The claims of reversing tooth decay were misrepresented with before-and-after photographs of a tooth exhibiting a deep cavity that was seemingly restored to its original pristine state, which were also used as the featured image when the post was shared on social media: The study Wolfe cited was published in a 1932 issue of the British Medical Journal under the title Remarks on the Influence of a Cereal-Free Diet Rich in Vitamin D and Calcium on Dental Caries in Children, and its actual conclusions were outlined well by the three points included in its summary: Wolfe claimed that this study showed it was possible to regenerate the material lost to cavities (or dental caries), but it does not. Instead, it reported that children with previously documented cases of thin or deficient (i.e., hypoplastic) enamel displayed signs that the progress of their tooth decay slowed or almost halted when they were put on a vitamin D-rich diet that also restricted cereal, thus preventing additional cavities from forming. Affecting the processes that regulate tooth enamel through diet is not a new or groundbreaking concept. Enamel — a mineral not composed of living cells — is constantly being destroyed or remineralized based on the ecology of one's mouth, as described in a review paper published in the Journal of the American Dental Association: Claims that vitamin D can aid in the remineralization part of that process are not universally accepted, however. A 2013 meta-analysis of clinical studies investigating links between vitamin D and cavities made the (qualified) suggestion that vitamin D might play a role in the prevention of cavities, but this finding has been challenged by more recent research. Regardless, creating or repairing dentin — the deeper but still primarily mineralized portion of your tooth whose decay necessitates a filling — is an entirely different beast. Of the three different kinds of dentin (primary, secondary, and tertiary), tertiary is the only kind that does anything close to regrow, and this new material acts only to slow or stop the growth of a cavity, not reverse it. Even if it could refill the area degraded by a cavity (which it can't), that replacement material would be weaker than the material it replaced. Finally, to actually generate anything close to a natural dentin filling, you would have to generate new dental pulp cells, the living tissue that leads to the creation of dentin. Food — vitamin D notwithstanding — doesn’t spontaneously turn into living dental pulp cells, nor does it facilitate the spontaneous generation of them. Unless your diet consists of a healthy serving of human stem cells and has the benefit of an extremely precise set of laboratory-regulated conditions, the food you eat will not produce new ones. (en)
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