Tooth Decay and Gum Disease

Webster's dictionary defines the word "decay" as "an act of passing gradually from a sound or prosperous state to one of less perfection; to be gradually impaired; to deteriorate, or to become rotten." Webster defines the word "disease" as "a particular destructive process in the body with a specific cause and effect; an uneasiness; a distress, or any departure from the healthy condition." With these definitions, one understands the dentist when she or he says the tooth has decay and the diseased cavity needs a filling, or the gum has a diseased pocket formed around the tooth, and the space needs a deep cleaning. Unfortunately, these definitions for "decay" and "disease" do not answer the questions as to "why" the tooth cavity and the gum pocket developed in the first place. This article will help comprehend the answers to why these treatments in the dental chair from a dentist are necessary.

Animal teeth, specifically the enamel, which covers the outer oral surfaces of the teeth, are the hardest structures ever to develop in the animal's body. It has Nature's design and Nature intended the teeth of any animal to last the animal's lifetime, including lasting the lifetime for human animals too. To observe this natural longevity, go any natural history museum. Find many kinds of animal skeletons, including some of the hominid ancestors, which are on the same branch of Nature's family tree as modern humans. Find in some museums intact skeletons of dinosaurs 65 million years old. These dinosaur skulls have all their teeth without any tooth decay or gum disease. These dinosaur skulls also show healthy bone surrounding their teeth, which indicate they had healthy gums. These observations support the contention; the teeth of animals must last an animal's lifetime because without them, how could they live, survive and eat? From skeletons, science can acquire a great amount of knowledge in the lives of animals from the past, even more knowledge comparing them with the wild animals of the present day. In fact, animals of all kinds, living in the past as well as living in the wild today, continue to exhibit the same disease free mouths as those skeletons displayed and seen in natural history museums.

At archaeological sites all over the world, scientists are finding intact hominid skeletons millions of years old. In archeological studies, teeth serve an important function, similar to the use of modern fingerprints in criminology. Archaeologists will use these ancient teeth for identifying particular species of animals and hominids of a prehistoric past. Archeologists will confirm animal teeth, and their tooth enamel is the most durable biological substance known to science. They will confirm teeth are more likely than bones to survive the ravages of evolutionary time. Also, it has been said; animal teeth are almost indestructible; just witness a wild carnivore using its teeth for crushing bones while eating. These observations of teeth being almost indestructible and disease free in 65 million-year-old dinosaurs, disease free in millions of year old hominids and other animal skeletons in natural history museums and disease free in the wild animals living today, begs another question. Why do modern humans have so many dental problems with tooth decay and gum disease? The one thing all these past animals and the wild ones living today have in common, which modern humans have overlooked, is the fact that the past wild animals did not and the present wild animals do not eat cooked foods. They only ate and eat from Nature's food supply, which are the seasonal environmental foods of planet Earth, which animals are genetically programmed to consume. Another fact is; none of these past and present wild animals ever cleaned their teeth. They never used a toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash or floss, yet their teeth and gums remained disease free throughout their lives.

To understand this natural phenomenon, one needs to know about the healthy balance that exists in all of Nature's animal mouths. This natural balance involves three physical areas. First, know and understand the tissues, which include the teeth, tongue, gums and other oral soft tissues, the jawbones and jaw joints, head and neck muscles, taste buds and the salivary glands with their alkalizing protective and digesting fluids. Second, know and understand the microorganisms that naturally live in the animal mouth. Third, know and understand the evolutionary planetary foods consumed by the animals of evolutionary time to this present day. The animal's five physical senses are the biggest part to this balancing picture for Nature's living creatures. These natural senses for living pay strict attention to the sound, sight, touch, smell and taste the animals use in the discovery of their foods. These experiences of the senses turn on many contributing physiological functions everywhere in the body. These senses direct and assist in the consumption processes of foods, which will continue the animal's life. These senses gather the foods to eat, digest, assimilate, as well as package and store the energy and nutrients from the foods eaten for later use. The energy and nutrients are used for immediate or future use, allowing the cells of an animal body, their living experiences.

During meals, the mouth masticates the food, using all the soft and hard tissues of the head and neck in an amazing coordinated effort in chewing and in swallowing the food. The taste buds on the tongue evaluate the food, sending messages to the brain so that the brain can communicate and direct many other functioning tissues of the body to prepare for the food's arrival. The salivary fluids start digesting the foods in the mouth while chewing and play the role of main protector of the oral environment and its tissues with its immunity. As the protector of the body and oral tissues, the salivary fluids carry the advanced guard of the immune system within its liquid aqueous composition, ready to process and defend the body from any non-nutritive intruder that may enter through the mouth while eating. All the naturally present minerals supplied by the salivary fluids, when resting or while chewing food, support daily the re-mineralization process of the tooth's enamel so that the enamel stays healthy and strong all through life. The salivary fluids also maintain proper chemical balance, the pH balance in the mouth, to protect the oral tissues from acids that come from the always-present microorganisms, which live in the mouth with their acidic waste products. The salivary fluids also protect the mouth from any acidic foods or drinks modern humans consume, during and in between meals, if the saliva is of a healthy composition.

At the end of masticating a meal, while salivary fluids continue to be pumped into the mouth by muscle movements of the lower jaw, the tongue will swipe and wipe the tooth surfaces clean. Nature's foods also aid in the cleaning process of the teeth and gums because most of Nature's uncooked planetary foods from plant sources are moist and have a fibrous texture that naturally brushes the tooth surfaces while chewing. These natural fibrous textures of foods affect the gums by physically stimulating them, increasing the flow of blood to these tissues during mastication in chewing and with the swallowing movements. Foods that come from plant sources have fiber; all animal food sources do not have fiber. There is one exception, eat the intestines of an herbivore, complete with its contents, and there will be plant-based fibers inside the intestines that were being digested before the animal died. Carnivores will eat the freshly killed contents of the abdominal cavity of an herbivore, including the intestines, and will get some indigestible plant fibers that way.

Once finished with the meal, and the tongue goes back to rest after cleaning the surfaces of the teeth, and the microorganisms in the mouth are there to finish the job of cleaning the oral environment. They clean the oral environment by cleansing the teeth and all the other soft tissue surfaces of the mouth. Food debris left in the mouth after chewing a meal, found between the teeth and just along and under the gum line, gets its final process of digestion from the microorganisms that naturally live in the animal mouth. This final process of microscopic digestion done by bacteria restores the mouth to its clean and food-free state. This microbial activity dissolves or digests any remaining food debris left anywhere in the mouth. The microorganisms in the mouth produce and eliminate acid waste products, which can be a harmful effect, while they are working, eating the foods in their environment. Their job is to eat the dead and decaying biochemical food matter remaining, which are the remnants of foods from the animal's meal. Bacterial cellular elimination means bacterial cellular defecation, and this happens in an animal's mouth after a meal. However, throughout evolutionary time, the animal's saliva and its alkaline biochemical nature neutralize this bacterial acidic waste defecation, washing it away during and in between meals. It is the alkaline rich salivary fluids, abundant in minerals, which keeps the mouths of animals from the past, and the wild ones living today, free of tooth decay and gum disease. Being on a planetary unprocessed natural diet supports the health of the teeth and the other oral tissues because processed and refined foods will increase bacterial populations artificially.

Animal teeth in general do experience some wear over a lifetime but not enough to prevent them from lasting a lifetime under evolutionary conditions. Scientists in the future, when looking back at these contemporary times, will have to create yet another new branch in the evolutionary tree of wildlife for Homo sapiens. It will be for this new hominid sub-specie from these modern recent histories. These scientists in the future when comparing human skeletons from today with Homo sapiens skeletons from the last 125 thousand years will have to call this new sub-specie, Homo sapiens idioticus. The reason for this could be summed up into one word. That word is stress, or it is better defined as modern unnatural civilizing stress. This modern stress, mental and physical, is new to the evolutionary scene, and it has had a unique effect on human minds and human bodies. The skeletons of today's civilizing animals are experiencing unnatural and non-evolutionary type stresses that have never been seen before in the Earth's history. Striking examples are not difficult to find, physiologically and psychologically speaking.

Dr. Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Biology at Stanford University and the author of "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" has been for several decades studying wild baboons in Kenya. When he began his research decades ago the tourist industry did not exist, and the wild baboons lived as baboons had always lived everywhere throughout evolutionary time. As tourism developed over the years, trash and garbage from the many new hotels in the area became a problem. A landfill dump was the solution for all this human garbage, and a group of baboons discovered the dump. These baboons saw the dump as a free lunch and began hanging out there rather than foraging for their food naturally. These animals compared to the baboons still living, roaming and eating in their natural environments, in time, developed some very interesting adaptive behaviors. They would sleep until late in the morning, waking with the arrival of garbage trucks. No longer sharing their food, they fought over tidbits of processed garbage, especially the males. In short order, they developed many of the same diseases humans suffer from today.

After a number of years of being "garbage eaters" this baboon group ate some tainted bacterial infected garbage, and many got very sick. In fact, the ones that died from a bacterial infection were the ones who were the most aggressive and the least social of the group. They were the male animals whose immune systems had been weakened to an even higher degree than just being "garbage eaters." Their anti-social aggressive behaviors were probably the variables, the last straw to compromise their immune system and cause their death. This behavior Dr. Sapolsky observed in his Keekoorok troupe of baboons was not the natural wild lifestyle that baboons have experienced throughout evolutionary time. The natural wild lifestyle of eating unprocessed, unrefined, uncooked and locally available seasonal foods, which have nourished and still nourish all wild living animals even today. This Keekoorok troupe of baboons for some unknown reason changed their wild lifestyle to what can be called a more modern human lifestyle of eating cooked and processed foods, which were decaying in landfill dumps. Another very interesting observation Dr. Sapolsky made after the dying off of all the aggressive and least social male animals in this Keekoorok troupe was, the entire group transformed in new generations to a more peaceful society on the whole in a very short period.

Cooking plant matter changes the properties of Nature's evolutionary foods for any animal. One change is in the moist and rough qualities in texture of the natural foods. Cooking will change the fibers in the vegetable foods, making them soft. These fibers will no longer act like a hard brush to clean the entire gastrointestinal tract, starting at the teeth. The microorganisms inherent along the gastrointestinal tract will now grow at an accelerated rate on this cooked, processed food. This accelerated rate of growth causes the effect of composting larger quantities of their acidic cellular waste as compared to their growing on uncooked foods. This increasing growth of microorganisms on the cooked food travels down into and through the gastrointestinal tract. The accelerated bacterial growth taxes the neutralizing abilities of the salivary fluids. It taxes the immune system in general all through in the intestinal tract. The immune response to this accelerated rate of bacterial growth is call digestive leucocytosis. Bacterial acidic wastes, not neutralized in the mouth, will de-mineralize the tooth's enamel, resulting in tooth decay over times of repeated exposures. Heat used to cook plant matter also causes many elements in the food to change such as fluoride. Heat will cause the fluoride ions in the food to escape into the air as fluorine gas. With less or no fluoride ions available to the body's blood stream, the blood, the body and consequently the salivary tissues and their fluids become inadequate in supply of fluoride ions. Decreased fluoride ions will cause a deficiency for the entire body as well as causing the teeth to weaken over time. Salivary fluid fluorides re-mineralize teeth daily throughout an animal's life, insuring them to last a lifetime if the diet is complete.

In the mouth when the tissues and their cells are deficient in energy and nutrients, the salivary glands and their fluids will not have sufficient materials to feed the teeth daily and keep them healthy. As the acid-neutralizing power of the salivary fluids weakens, the salivary fluids themselves may even become acidic instead of alkaline in chemical pH due to the unnatural acidic lifestyle and other contributing modern factors. Microorganisms and their effects, when no longer controlled, will overpopulate in large numbers and irritate the gums in the mouth, causing bleeding in the gums around a tooth. This effect causes the body's immune response to the infected area. The body's bleeding, around the tooth, tries physically to wash the area of the local bacterial irritants. The blood's immune cells also go into action, digesting the increasing bacterial population. Eventually this periodontal, around a tooth, irritation will decrease the bone support because the body recedes away from this building, and growing microscopic city called bacterial plaque. The teeth over time will become loose, and when enough bone has been decreased, around a tooth, it will eventually be lost. A habit of grinding and clenching of the teeth, a non-functional physiological and psychological habit, will only increase this process of bone loss. One clever adaptation to increase resistance to the microbial effects of eating cooked food left in the mouth is grooming the teeth. Some mammals have discovered this grooming of the teeth, including humans. By removing all the food debris from the mouth, after each meal, microorganisms in the mouth will have nothing to eat and that means no de-mineralizing acidic bacterial waste or bacterial plaque production. The oral tissues will benefit by this proactive protection from brushing and flossing the teeth after each meal. Tooth decay and gum disease can be largely prevented by perfect oral hygiene habits after every meal, provided, of course, the body's resting salivary fluids, resting means when not eating foods, are not acidic.

There are many physical stressors that occur to the body. These are the non-nutritive intruders that get into the body through the skin-protected barriers. From breathing, drinking and eating, and from the body's trillions of cells, which also produce a cellular acidic waste products, all acidic waste has to be removed from the body. Health is a dynamic balancing act, between the consumption of energy and nutrients, and the elimination of the body's cellular acidic waste and other non-nutritive materials. The body's chemical balance is determined by what the body breathes, drinks and eats in consumption and by the effects of moving, resting and the sun in the elimination of waste products. However, the biggest stressor to the body's chemical balance, the one that does the most harm to the body is the mind, which is a metaphysical stressor. In the mouth when the mind reacts to some negative thought, creating a reactive emotion, the teeth clench together with severe force, caused by muscle contractions in the head and neck. All the surrounding tissues, including the shoulders and maybe even further down the spine, will get physically stressed out and all because of the mind's reaction to something experienced or thought. This mental and emotional stress can cause an acidic condition to the salivary fluids in the mouth as well and can be easily checked with pH paper. The teeth are meant to touch but infrequently and with little pressure because in swallowing, the teeth touch lightly, and no tissues are being stressed. When eating, there is food between the upper and lower teeth so there is no stress there when eating. However, when clenching the jaws and teeth in reaction to mental and emotional stress, which can occur during the day as well as during dreams at night, it causes damage to all the oral tissues, physically and chemically. This clenching and grinding of the teeth also stresses the tooth's nerve and can result in cracked and broken teeth, severe tooth wear over time, periodontal bone support loss with gum recession, to name a few signs and symptoms of dental problems.

In the prehistoric past and the wild today, stressors were short lived. The bodies of animals have conscious and subconscious physical functioning mechanisms to prompt the fright, freeze, fight or flight reflexes. A bear confronting another bear might fight; a raccoon with a bear had better run like mad. In a few moments, the bear and a raccoon, now far apart, will be back to a better and calmer state, which are the responses back into relaxation for continued living. Today, surviving under these modern conditions, humans are being chased by a rabid bear. It is called modern civilizing surviving. This rabid bear is modern stress, and it is persistent all day long and all night long too. Modern humans are suffering for it in mind and body. In the midst of today's challenges, humans need to nourish their bodies and minds with the best materials so that one can better cope, mentally and physically, with these rapidly changing civilizing surviving environments. To be healthy and to reverse these modern stressing diseases from the teeth and gums to elsewhere in the body, the human animal needs to accept, adapt and surrender to the planet's successful and intended lifestyle to live. Alternatively, continue the modern civilizing path towards mental and physical self-destruction is another choice.

If one has a compromised chewing system, it is important to restore it to its natural function. Restore it with the materials, which will last a lifetime. Herbivores need good teeth to chew Nature's fibrous foods. Most modern humans are very acidic chemically, and modern societies need to begin to transform those civilizing surviving unhealthy habits back to a more natural way. Be very aware, that the acidic detoxifying process can greatly injure teeth. Many individuals get numerous new cavities while cleansing their minds and bodies of the past unhealthy conditions. These new cavities, caused by their own acid when leaving the body, during these detoxifying eliminating cleansing processes, take much time. Acidic salivary fluids can be checked and monitored very easily with pH paper, which will determine the need for rinsing the mouth often with sea salt water. Sea salt water is one pound of uncooked sea salt added to one gallon of distilled water and is the best mouthwash and tooth cleaner to use for brushing the teeth. The sea salt water will neutralize acidic salivary fluids and bacterial waste products to protect the teeth and other oral tissues. Check the oral pH often for acidic saliva. Check when getting up in the morning, before and after meals, when mentally stressed or angry and before going to bed, to discover more about life's mind/body experience.

Lastly, remember an automobile gets energy from gasoline. No one burns his or her automobile's fuel before putting it into the car's gas tank. The same concept applies to the mind/body of any animal living wild all around the world. The human animal needs a variety of Nature's uncooked, unrefined and unprocessed seasonal energy and nutrient foods grown from the best fertile ground to be healthy. Just look at the skeletons of prehistoric animals as well as the wild animals living in their natural habitats today. Maintaining a quiet and peaceful mind, a non-reactive mind, will also conserve much needed energy and nutrients for the body's well-being. Having a healthy mind means, "heal-thy" mind and having a healthy body means, "heal-thy" body. The word "healthy" is an action word. It is a verb in the English language. For many of the humans living today, this healthy path in life is a choice, which only an individual can make. Now is the time to make the most important choice in life. Hope this article helps deciding for a "heal-thy" lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle is a healthier and happier living experience, surviving on this beautiful planet called Mother Earth. Just remember, everything will be OK in the end. If it is not, it means, it is not the end.

Stress Awareness: The First Step Towards Health

Hans Selye M.D. Ph.D. is the author of 20 or more books. Two of them are "The Stress of Life," published 1956, and "Stress in Health and Disease," published 1976. He is the father of and has written textbooks on the medical science of Endocrinology. He is recognized by the scientific community as the first medical scientist in the 20th century to understand the disease process. In his monumental paper entitled the "General Adaptation Syndrome," Dr. Selye defined stress as the non-specific response of the body to any mental or physical demand. These responses cause certain positive or negative changes in the structures and chemical compositions of the body. Dr. Selye described these stages of physical changes in the disease process as: 1) the alarm reaction stage, 2) the resistance or adaptation stage, and 3) the stage of exhaustion when irreversible bodily tissue damage occurs. An example of the first stage of disease can be easily seen when a teenager takes their introductory puff from a burning cigarette. Upon inhaling their first mouthful to lungful drag of smoky air, the teenager's body rejects it violently with an evolutionary and genetic reflex that's a physical reaction. The teenager will cough repetitively during this physical rejection of the heated poisonous, carcinogenic gaseous matter till their face turns red. This teenager may even get queasy from the experience and may even vomit their stomach's contents because of this toxic breathing experience. Dr. Selye is describing the "alarm reaction stage," which is the body's genetic evolutionary reflex to an environmental, physical stressor. This physical reaction is the first stage in the disease process.

Because the teenager had friends with derogatory comments, which made fun of her or his childish violent reaction to smoking for the first time, or maybe this teenager, has some disturbed mental images. Mental images were coming from the subliminal tricks of an outsider's particular interest. These special interests are financial, and they want to influence youth to want to smoke. Maybe from a billboard, relating smoking as something she or he must do. Whatever the reason, the teenager will try to smoke again. The teenager's next attempt to the smoking experience is different. Maybe because the teenager undertakes smoking with a little more caution and does not inhale much of the cigarette's smoke. Alternatively, maybe she or he does not intake the smoke too deeply into their lungs. Whatever the reason is, it is surely not going to be a good one. Now the teenager's body is experiencing this poisonous heated carcinogenic vapor for the second time. So what should this teenager's body do? The smoke is still a poison to the body. With this repeated experience, the body's immune system from this second exposure starts to combat these poisons with all its natural powers, producing more antibodies. Antibodies are proteins generated by all the immune system's cells in reaction to these foreign noxious substances found in this smoky clouded air. The brain and the immune system recognize the fiery smoke from before, and they still know it is not healthy for the body's living tissues and processes. Dr. Selye describes the "resistance or adaptation stage" where the intelligence of the body recognizes a life threatening material substance for a second time. The body now needs to further arm itself, and its immune system, for any more future encounters with these antigens in order to stay functioning and physically chemically balanced to remain healthy. An "antigen" is another word for an "allergen", and when the immune system is overworked and stretched thin from too much stress-producing foreign bodies in the bloodstream, we call the condition an allergy.

For a teenager or any person lacking enough energy and nutrients, the main chemical in the leaves of the tobacco plant smoked is nicotine, which is classified pharmacologically, a stimulant. This nicotine drug can give a person a false feeling of alertness, or energy, similar to the chemical caffeine, roasted, pressed and filtered from the beans of the coffee plant. Nicotine and caffeine belong to the same chemical family and are vasoconstrictors, which means when consumed the body's blood vessels contract to a smaller diameter and size. This vasoconstriction of the vascular circulatory blood system by these chemicals causes the heart to work harder, pump harder, in order to get the same amount of blood to the body's tissues and cells for consuming energy and nutrients and for eliminating the cell's waste in order to live. The nicotine, if it were not present in the blood would not constrict the vessels, and the heart would not have to work harder. This effect of repeated stimulation from smoking over time could create a mental and physical dependence. Some need this stimulation upon waking in the morning and throughout the day because they lack physical energy and mental clarity. Lacking physical energy and mental clarity daily are the truths and consequences of an unhealthy lifestyle.

For anyone, if their smoking experiment continues and becomes a subconscious or unconscious mind and body dependent habit, she or he will find it very hard to function daily without a certain number of cigarettes. The number of cigarettes will depend upon the different moment-to-moment needs of every individual for physical power and mental clarity. In order for the body to survive these exposures with these repeated stressors, the immune system's "resistance phase" will need extra energy and nutrients for the production of needed additional antibodies. The higher levels of antibodies in the blood will attempt to control the chemical nicotine and the array of other carcinogens and foreign bodies that come into the body with the nicotine infused smoke. The body will also need and use more energy and nutrients to complete elimination of these substances from the body's blood and tissues because they are non-nutritive and physically inhibiting. This "resistance phase" will eventually evolve to the "adaptation phase" in the "resistance or adaptation stage" of Dr. Selye's description of the disease process in his "General Adaptation Syndrome" medical journal paper. The body is evolutionarily programmed to adapt to any mental or physical condition on Earth, positive or negative, in order to continue its living processes at all costs. Animals can live long periods of time, including the human animal, in the most unlivable conditions and still remain alive and functioning to some limited capacity. The body will tolerate all kinds of stressors to its immune system and to life itself, coping with amazing mental and physical abilities because of the millions of years of learning that keeps evolving its genetically control adaptive mental and physical survival mechanisms.

As long as the mind and body operate within the parameters of the "resistance or adaptation stage" of the "General Adaptation Syndrome" according to Dr. Selye, it will survive and remain alive. It is a daily surviving operation for the lungs and for the body to breathe air, but it is an impaired limiting function, mentally and physically, breathing polluted air because this is not a healthy condition. The body, when adapting to these stressors in cigarette smoking, will cope and coexist with them and even experience pleasure from the habit over time. The mind and body will get used to their presence in the bloodstream in the process of adaptation. When a particular concentration of these tolerated substances and their effects gets low in the blood stream, the brain or the mind's interpretation of the feelings of the brain will say, have another cigarette to bring back the overall effects of nicotine's stimulation. It is called a craving, and its satisfaction is not a good feeling physically because it is still a poison; yet there is a perverted mental sense of gratification that the individual gets in their repeated fixes of nicotine smoke. The important thing to know is an addicted smoker could be diagnosed with emphysema from years of chronic smoking and then be convinced to stop. Within five to seven years the lungs could have again the appearance and function of a non-smoker's lungs depicted on an x-ray because of the self-healing changes in the lung's environment of cells and tissues over time. The body will heal itself given the appropriate mind/body healing conditions along with the discontinuance of the immune stressor. Healing is what's so miraculous about life and how the mind/body experiences riding on Nature's dynamic pendulum. A dynamic pendulum is swinging back and forth between the daily consumptions and eliminations, maintaining the living balance and their joyous effects of health. Even with a disease, Nature has programmed the body to heal itself and all one has to do is, cooperate with Nature and stop smoking. That, of course, is the first step of many steps towards being healthy again.

Dr. Selye's "exhaustion stage" is the third and final stage in the disease process of his "General Adaptation Syndrome." Just from the name of this stage alone, it is not a stunning picture. This "exhaustion stage" represents irreversible tissue and cell damage that will not heal itself because the cells, and their instructing programs of DNA are finally dead. Death of some cells does not mean, the remaining living parts of the body, in general, will not benefit by the elimination of the smoking cigarette habit if the person stops in this stage. It just means cells have been lost and no longer live so tissues like the lungs now have a decreased number of cells now struggling to function. The lungs from a chronic smoking habit in this "exhaustion stage" will have fewer cells to absorb oxygen from the air and fewer cells to expel carbon dioxide from the blood. Carbon dioxide is a body waste product produced from every working cell in the body. The lung cells are designed to eliminate and dispose of carbon dioxide outside of the body and into the air. A chronic smoker suffocates and kills their own fire of life by inhibiting consumption and decreasing their own oxygen supply and by inhibiting elimination and increasing their own blood concentration of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a cellular waste product, and when its concentration in the blood increases due to incomplete respiratory elimination, it will stress the body's physiological aqueous pH chemistry and cause acidosis. This acidosis is an entire body experience occurring over all the tissues supplied by the blood stream. It is a supersaturated acid condition of carbon dioxide. It is not a healthy experience because the body's chemistry wants to be alkaline. The body's aqueous pH chemistry on the average is 7.4 on the pH acid and base chemistry scale, whose measurements are 0-14, where seven is neutral.

The three stages of the "General Adaptation Syndrome" apply to any non-nutritive foreign bodies and pollutants entering the mind/body experience through the protective skin barriers of the body, which are the respiratory tract, the gastrointestinal tract and the integument, the outer skin. These non-nutritive foreign bodies include the thoughts as well because there are studies showing how negative emotions, like anger and positive emotions like laughter, affect the immunity and normal physiological pH alkaline chemistry. The immune system will be the first to be "alarmed" by these many disturbing substances in the internal bodily environment. Then the body's evolutionary programmed balancing mechanisms will "adapt" for an extended period to any recurrent environmental stressful condition, until the point of physical "exhaustion" when it looses its ability to cope within these tissues affected by these stressors. Not being able to physically and mentally cope for many mind/body reasons, the tissues die from suffocation, which is inherently due to deficiencies and excesses. Deficiencies in energy and nutrients and residues in cell waste and other pollutants, which get past the physical barriers and into the body, are the last will to tissue destruction and cell death if not prevented and controlled. These persistent abuses of licit and illicit immune reactive substances are not nutritive, and they need to be removed from the body continuously. They include all kinds of ingested and bodily manifested gases, liquids and solid materials, some of them called food in the modern senses of the word. These internal and external indigestible materials are not from Nature, altered from the natural sources. Even the chronic use of allopathic prescription drugs stress the immune system and the body does not like being whipped by them. What is an immune suppression drug? Find out how they work on the body's physiology and immune system. Then do everything in one's power to create health and prevent ever needing a prescription for any one of them.

The nervous system, which is the brain with its hundreds of billions of nerves and other cells and its thousand trillion synaptic connections with its spinal cord, along with the peripheral nerves, maintain a constant mindful watch over the whole body. The brain's language communicates with each peripheral nerve everywhere in the body, and the peripheral nerve endings in everyplace in the body monitor homeostasis. These nerve endings monitor the entire body's aqueous environments, the environments that surround every cell, evaluating their chemical composition that's a pH balance. These nerve endings send regular status reports back to the brain for examination and consideration. The brain then orchestrates all the commanding responses to keep all the trillions of different functioning body cells happy. Powers to direct their food supply to their interstitial fluid, the aqueous fluid ocean that the cells live in, and commands to direct cleaning by moving their cell waste away for elimination. Life is breathing, drinking, eating, sunning, moving, resting and "minding", the mental activity. All have their effects, positive or negative, on the feeling states of consciousness, which have an effect also on the chemical homeostatic balance. The individual cells of all the tissues are the main players or citizens of the body, and every cell has a say concerning its happiness, which they communicate to the brain through the nervous system. The cells will communicate to the brain by reacting and responding to their surrounding interstitial fluid, the aqueous environments. Because of this vast network of nerves that communicate information from the cells of the body to the brain, the brain knows all and can direct appropriate actions when there is any need of the cells and cellular activity anywhere in the body. Needs, which may arise for a cell or a group of cells, for extra food and extra cleansing of their environment, so they are free to do their job efficiently on demand, to remain vital and stay healthy. Healthy cells everywhere in the body will keep the physical brain and its metaphysical mind in a state of happiness. Isn't that what life all wants?

Healthy cells in the body want to be thoroughly nourished. Healthy cells in the body want to perform the job they were evolutionarily designed to perform for the body because their fellow citizen cells of the body depend on it. Moreover, healthy cells of the body want their cell waste from the work they do to be removed and eliminated, so their environment is kept clean. Does anyone want her or his city's garbage collection services stop from taking the garbage put in front of the houses every week? No, of course not, and neither do the cells in the body like the garbage, their cell waste and other pollutants, to accumulate in their surrounding environments either. The body's cells are in a constant process of adaptation to their demanding environments and as long as all the cells are able to do the body's work altogether, health is an experience, and disease prevented. For cells collectively, living is great when balance is functioning in their environments of consumption and elimination. This all depends upon the mind, working as a good provider, by making sure all the cells get their evolutionarily designed supply of energy and nutrients, their food, and provided the cell's environment is kept clean. Kept clean by picking up the trash around the cells and taking it away to the tissues of elimination, which are the kidneys, the lungs, the large intestines and to the skin. The brain does all this work on energy and nutrients too, because the brain is also cells. Of all the tissues of the body, the brain uses the most amounts of energy and nutrients, more than any other tissue in the entire body. Intelligence is the providing work of the brain, whose physical observations of its body, is funneled through the interpretations of the mind, to create cravings for air, water, food, sunshine, movement and the nightly cleansing rest. All we have to do to be healthy is know what is "real" for the mind and body experience, evolutionarily speaking, and know what is not real. "What is health" is a 64 million dollar question these days for everyone living in any of these modern societies on the planet. Today's health means, figure it out and answer the questions of what's real for living. What's real is health because diseases are unreal, evolutionarily speaking. Experience health, test everything and by all means use the senses. Observe if the mind/body accepts or rejects anything consumed for energy and nutrients. That is a good evolutionary place to start and to discover what's good and what's not so good.

A healthy mouth is an excellent example of Nature's evolutionary balancing act. Understand this process that's acting between ease and die-ease, which occurs "moment to moment" in every day of any animal's life. Know it will always be about consumption and elimination. The mouth is one small niche of an act in balance that's part of a greater dynamic process, which is the same in the rest of life's many different environments of Nature. Wild animals do not need dentists, and when one looks into their mouths, find them free of tooth decay and free of gum disease, no matter what their age. Animals need teeth to eat in order to live because Nature intends them to live and healthy mouths have occurred all throughout evolutionary time. Life for mammals is somewhere around 65 million years. Mammals and their natural mouths from the time of the dinosaurs did not ever use toothbrushes, toothpastes, toothpicks, dental floss or even mouthwashes. These natural mouths did not even flinch with any concerns that there are microorganisms, like bacteria, present in their mouths. All these animal mouths throughout time, these healthy evolutionary natural mouths of Earth's history, experienced what's known to many as "wholeness." This wholeness created and maintained, of course, by Nature.

There are three individual components participating in balancing healthy wholeness to consider when understanding this disease free oral environment of wild animals in the past and living today. First, it is the tissues, which are the teeth with their bones supports. Then the periodontal gums are around each tooth, and the hinge jaw joints for voicing and chewing movements caused by the opening and closing muscles. The tongue muscle with taste buds and the salivary glands with aqueous alkaline fluids included. Second, it is the plethoric multitudes of microorganisms in the mouth, which constantly labor in the role of keepers of the harmony in Nature. Microorganisms process all the dead and decaying organic matter of plants and animals after their life ends everywhere, including in the animal mouth. If microorganisms did not process this biological dead and decaying matter of plants and animals, it would all be still piling up, all around every day. Science declares there are a hundred thousand microorganisms to every clean square inch of surface, and if it is not clean, see a mold forming on the organic debris allowing the multiplying microorganisms to grow into multiples of trillions. Third, to recognize and understand are the food animals consume every day while experiencing this wholeness of balanced living, which is probably the most enjoyable part. Food, even the thought of it, can stimulate many responses administered by the brain to many parts of the animal body. The sight, sound, touch, smell and taste of food sends nerve impulses to the brain. The brain's responses, to the nerves, signal the bodily juices to start flowing to process, assimilate, package and store the energy and nutrients from the foods consumed for present and later used by the body's cells.

The mouth starts to masticate the food bitten while the taste buds evaluate it and communicate to the brain relevant information. The salivary gland juices start to digest the food while the brain continually coordinates the movements of the muscles and the tongue to keep putting the food between the closing together of the teeth. The salivary gland juices also neutralize any acidic matter to protect the body and its oral tissues. The continual presence of the immune system within the salivary juices also protects the body against any intruder. Intruders may enter and disturb the peace and harmony of this dynamic system, which includes after swallowing as the food travels down and through the gastrointestinal tract. After the completed meal, the microorganisms in the mouth finish the job of eating to clean the oral environment. Uncooked plant food, produced by Mother Nature, has lots of fibers in it and naturally will brush clean the surfaces of the teeth while chewing. After eating the tongue will, for some time, swipe and wipe the tooth surfaces clean as well, helping to recreate a clean oral environment too. The microorganisms always present in the mouth then process food debris left after eating a meal, and found mostly between the teeth and just under and along the gum line. The microorganisms act as garbage collectors and eat the remaining food where the tongue cannot reach to remove it, furthering the process for assimilation by the body. This microbial process continues throughout the entire gastrointestinal tract. In fact, fecal matter by weight when expelling it in a bowel movement is 50% microorganisms of all kinds. The body benefits nutritionally from these microorganisms in the gastrointestinal tract, including in the assimilation of nutrients, which microorganisms are responsible while processing different parts of the consumed meals.

Microorganisms belong, but their presence in the mouth is not, entirely stressed free. Like all of animal life, microorganisms have an acid excremental habit too. A debris problem if unchecked that can accumulate in the mouth, and a problem that's directly proportional to the population of microorganisms in the mouth. This acidic microbial excrement needs controlling. In fact, a healthy mouth, evolutionarily speaking, cultivates its microorganisms like a farmer does with their crops. When it is time to harvest they are there, both happy and ready for a challenging work. All work, though, will produce waste products and in the mouth this microbial activity and its production of acidic waste products is continually checked and neutralized by the alkaline mineral rich salivary fluids. Alkaline salivary fluids, produced by the salivary glands while chewing foods or at rest when not eating, protect the tissues of the mouth from any acidic insult so that any animal can eat with their teeth for life. Microorganisms play an important role in the consumption, digestion, nutrition, assimilation and elimination of the foods consumed by any animal's body. Without microorganisms, life on this planet could not exist because their job of processing wasting organic debris completes the circle of rolling organic life into inorganic matter so it can be recycled back again into organic life. Life is 3.5 billion years old on Earth according to the latest scientific biological understanding, and recycling has been a big part of life that continues today with all the many different microorganisms that grow on the ever-present decaying matter. Microorganisms assist, processing the decaying organic matter inside the gastrointestinal tract and everywhere else one finds the living and dying process of Nature.

Most of the animals on the planet have experienced dental health because it is a physical natural balancing act. A balancing act exists between the masticatory tissues and the always-present microorganisms, which process together the foods of Nature's evolving seasons presented to them. The benefits animals receive from this evolutionary adaptive balancing act are healthy oral tissues that last a lifetime. This balancing activity has occurred throughout the evolutionary past and all the way up to this present day. This physical balancing act, this eternal now in harmony between consumption and elimination, exists continually and is ongoing. This natural wholeness in balance appears today, it appeared in the past, and it appears, based upon the evolutionary timelines of billions of years. It will continue in the future for billions of years to come. What about the animal specie known as humankind? What about this human animal that's living today? Is this human animal, one of many animals on this planet, getting the same benefits as the rest of the animal kingdom? Are these human animals experiencing healthy teeth and gums as the rest of Nature's creatures, today or from the past? The balancing act, even for the human planetary organisms of today, still continues as always, but there are some new stressors that pose interesting challenges for today's civilized surviving human animals. These stressors are unseen in 99.999999% of the evolutionary past.

One example of a modern stressor only seen in the human animal today as compared to the wild animals of the past and the present is the cooking of the foods they eat. Wild herbivores and carnivores of the past and present consume their foods unprocessed and straight from the source in a fresh or the near raw state. The cooking of plant matter changes the properties of the food and the fiber. For example, fiber no longer acts as a brush, to clean the surfaces of the teeth and massage the gums, as well as the rest of the gastrointestinal tract. The microorganisms in the mouth will grow at an accelerated rate on cooked food debris left between the teeth and along and just under the gum line. The cooking of the planetary food has accelerated the decaying process of the plant matter allowing simpler cleanup that can be done faster by the microorganisms. This accelerated growth of microorganisms composts larger quantities of their acidic cell waste and taxes the ability of the salivary glands to produce enough alkaline fluids to control and neutralize it. These increases in rapid population explosions and their cell wastes become an excremental problem for the mouth's tissues. The control mechanisms, which have been evolutionarily and genetically determined over millions of years and programmed by Nature's wholeness, are now being stressed. This uncontrolled and unchecked microbial acidic waste de-mineralizes the tooth surfaces, locally in and around the tooth's gumline where the cooked food debris remains, which cannot be reached by the tongue.

Microorganisms, now growing and molding to larger and larger unnatural numbers, irritate the gums by building cities to live in called plaque that stick to the teeth. This irritation to the gums communicates and stimulates the brain to initiate directive commands for the gums to bleed by increasing the blood pressure there. Bleeding is another line of defense to counter the imbalance numbers of bacteria, created by the cooked food debris left in the gumline. Bleeding, which also carries the immune system's cells, combat the microbial infestation as well, while the increased flow of blood helps to wash the irritated areas clean. Bleeding is a balancing corrective directive response by the brain to reverse, control and prevent tissue damage to the gums. If the brain's response is a one-time occurrence, an alarm to a non-evolutionary stressor, the tissues will not be harmed. However, a chronic habit will cause the mind/body to adapt continually. Possibly, this is why humans have become aware of oral hygiene over time and have seen the need to help and assist in the body's balancing process of cleaning the mouth and its oral tissues.

Preparing the foods eaten, evolutionarily speaking, affects the energy and the nutrients that are present in the uncooked food prior to the heating or the cooking. Deficiencies of energy and nutrients from cooking causes cellular deficiencies of energy and nutrients to the whole body, which will alter cellular functions, depending on the energy and nutrients to power their work. Decreased energy and nutrients also affect the brain and the body's ability to keep all its many tissues and their environments clean, which affect body chemistry going towards the acidic and away from the physiological norm of being alkaline.  When one suppresses the evolutionary experiences and deviate from the way, Nature's Way, one causes the body to experience Dr. Selye's alarm reaction. The heart rate will increase, and the blood flow will increase. The immune cells will grow in numbers, and if it is a major stressor to life, one may vomit, experience diarrhea, or have some other symptoms like fever. The allopath will blame these symptoms on some "so-called" unhealthy microorganism; microorganisms made these problems and will treat these symptoms with some anti-life drug. Would it not be better to remove the immune stressors and give the immune system a break by giving it more energy and nutrients, so it can do its job with less stress? In the midst of today's challenges, one needs to nourish the body and mind with the best materials available. Be aware of all the alarms that ring inside the body and mind. Recognize them and change those behaviors. Accept the planetary destiny by accepting Nature. Adapt and live the lifestyle the planet intended for all its life. A healthier body and mind is more adaptive and resistant to the diseases of imbalances and to these modern challenges never seen in evolutionary time. This vehicle, called the mind/body and its experiences, was meant to last a lifetime. Do not cut life short with diseases, exhausting the body's natural functions. These capacities to live have been adapting to this natural world all through time. Natural life lives a healthy life, like all of the wildlife with bodies intact for an entire lifetime.

Remember, an automobile gets its power from unburned gasoline; no one burns the gasoline before she or he puts it into an automobile's tank. Also, no one would deliberately crash or exhaust their vehicle, especially if one enjoys driving it. The same is true for the mind/body vehicle and how it runs. The mind/body does its work of living on raw energy and nutrients for fuel, the working materials, which come from Nature, and not on the burnt and expelled stuff that's convenient and easily available in these modern societies. Maintaining a quiet and peaceful mind will also conserve energy and generate more harmony in the tissues. With less mental contractive thinking to manifest bodily physical alarm reactions, one guarantees an easier time of balancing in the tissues. The blood will flow unrestricted to the tissues for better consumption and elimination by the cells and its experienced effect of health and balance. Create the health! Know that having a healthy body and a healthy mind means what the word "healthy" implies, "heal-thy body" and "heal-thy mind." Healthy is a predicate word in the English language, a verb, which is an action word. It is a choice, which is an intended action. It is a choice, an action, and all one has to do is choose it. Want to be healthy like the rest of the wild animals on the planet, and as the animals from the past. If the dinosaurs can have healthy mouths and bodies one hundred million years ago, trust that the same laws of Nature still apply today, which means do it too. It just takes some real energy and some real nutrients for this challenging mind/body work. Everything one needs to learn and unlearn about health comes from the experiences of the senses, and they originate from right there inside of mind/body life. The mental and physical senses, evolutionarily, genetically and environmentally, know what's real. Take them for a ride down memory lane, Nature's memory lane. It is one's own private school. Why not enroll and see where one might end up? Maybe get a master's degree in living and loving. Won't that be nice? It is the inner journey; explore that path. One will never know what one will discover on that journey until one chooses to go there.

NATURAL OR UNNATURAL: YOUR CHOICE 

If someone were to enter a time machine to find her or himself suddenly standing next to the prehistoric man, the first observation might be the changes humans have made. Cataloging these changes, one might overlook the fact, modern humans are quite similar, if not identical, to prehistoric man in body functions. Like prehistoric man, the current modern human body shares basic needs, living for air, water, food, sunshine, exercise and rest.

Humans today, just like in the historical past, need to shop to obtain food to live. Comparing today's shopping, with prehistoric shopping, reveals a change in the pattern. Prehistoric shoppers had Nature as a supermarket. However, in the past few centuries, Nature been getting some very stiff competition. Today, overly refined processed foodstuffs, and unnatural synthetic laboratory products have flooded the world markets, and they are all too available for human consumption.

The United States Department of Agriculture many decades ago stated, "living under the conditions of modern life, it is important to bear in mind that the preparation and refinement of food products either entirely eliminates or in part destroys the vital elements in the original material." For a disease free and robust life these vital elements are of the utmost necessity for the body's health.

Fiber is one example, and prehistoric peoples ate 300-400 grams per day. Cancer of the colon is the second leading cause of cancer deaths. In modern constipated colons, because of the low amount of fiber, the stool passes very slowly through the intestines. Is this healthy? In third-world countries, where diets still consist of whole natural foods, full of fiber, bowel cancer is almost nonexistent. A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) years ago concluded, "Many of the diseases of western civilization have appeared only in the last century (1800's). We believe that they owe their origin, at least in part, to the removal of fiber from our diets." More examples are food enzymes, food vitamins and food minerals, which are destroyed by heat in the cooking process.

Food gathering was difficult even before the advent of supermarkets and processed foods. Finding good, ripe, natural planetary food today is also difficult. In today's society, rather than pure, complete and natural foodstuffs that once nourished the population, there is an ever-increasing progression of artificial, devitalized and over-processed, energy-less, non-nutritive food substitutes, concocted by a food technology that has lost all touch with Nature. The solution lies in choosing and eating mostly, if not entirely natural fresh whole, ripe, seasonal foods, grown in rich fertile soils as Nature intended. Hard to find, one might say? Very true, but once enough people create the demand the supply will follow. "Whole foods for whole people" is the cry and motto for all of us who want to be healthy.

REMEMBER: Health is not everything, but without good health, everything else is nothing.

WELL-BEING: IT IS A CHOICE

In becoming physically and mentally well, whole and healthy, there is one crucial process that all human animals need to understand. That process is "change." In fact, nothing in this life is permanent except change. Whatever the experience, the evidence that life and its circumstances change is always present. Without a change, life, mind, body, health, well-being, will always be the same. So if one wants to take charge of the quality of one's life and the quality of one's health, do something different, take charge of the process of change.

How well the body eliminates what doesn't belong in them and how well the body acquires Nature's evolutionary designed essentials, such as fresh air, pure water, nourishing food, sunshine, exercise, rest and mental calm, determines the degree of physical and mental health. Keeping the tissues and fluids in the body clean is one of the body's chief functions. Chemical filtration of the cell's waste and all other non-nutritive materials from the body's tissues and fluids is the most important contributor to bodily health. Maintaining a balance between consumption and elimination and the healthier one will be.

Everyone knows that too much of any stress, whether one is aware of it or not, be it positive or negative, can be detrimental to the body's well-being. For example, too much exercise can be as stressful as no exercise at all. Do not resist Nature and its balancing processes. Resist and prevent an energetic, enjoyable and stress-free healthy life.

Nature intended all its creatures, including humankind, to be healthy. Subjected to non-supporting, non-nutritive and unnatural materials, which must be processed, using energy and eliminated, does not make any sense. One is not physiologically economical when consuming any artificial substances that are stressful to the body; one is not psychologically economical when consuming artificial thoughts that are stressful to the mind. All this body and mind stress needs disposal, which uses valuable energy. If these mental and physical irritants left unprocessed and eliminated, the body and the mind would store these waste materials and like a landfill, will become a problem later in life.

Become aware of life and one's health and how one causes its quality. Past choices affect living today. One's chosen experiences today will affect life in the future. Change these surviving choices, those bad habits, and see that the effects change in time. One will become healthy and free of diseases. Include the correct healthy conditions in life and the body and mind are self-healing and self-repairing. That too can be a function of the process of change.

Remember: One is not changing the world, just oneself.

PEACEFUL MIND: IT IS A PRACTICE

Natural intelligence has mastered living here on this planet. Its natural tendency is to give every life form, plant and animal, the necessary knowledge to reproduce in order to continue that line of biological life. Natural intelligence has survived all these millions of years successfully. Life born has a history of successful living, imprinted in the DNA of cells. These cells are becoming and developing in the body, growing to maturity. Look, see for oneself the living proof. Life on the planet has perfected designs.

To be physically healthy and free of disease, one needs to control what enters the body, creating constructive habits over time to support the life of breathing, drinking, eating, sunning, moving and resting. To be mentally healthy and free of disease, the same is true, one needs to control what enters the mind, creating constructive habits over time to support a life that's breathing, drinking, eating, sunning, moving and resting, while thinking, observing and witnessing this natural world.

The mind, like the body, is both about consumption and elimination. The body consumes the creative edibles of planetary design and then eliminates waste to compost and fertilize the ground. The mind consumes the receptive thoughts of heartfelt design, coming from within programming consciously this natural practice, which produces successful living here on this planet called Earth.

The brain works by recording the experiences of the senses. If they are real experiences, life responds by learning something useful that helps life to live. Knowledge put to good use is then stored in long-term memory. Experiences, like where to find clean drinking water or where to find nourishing food, are ingrained in the DNA of cells. One knows what's good; one knows what's not good naturally. Healthy minds ignore thoughts that don't support life, realizing the experience is not worth repeating.

Bad experiences are valuable because that is how one learns, and then the memory is stored in the subconscious. Useful information is shared to help future generations live. Natural thoughts are about growing the life that's inside that is changing. Artificial thoughts are producing images that do not change. Living today, it appears, only wild plants and wild animals are creating a life with any real natural intelligence.

Thoughts travel in one of two directions: up a heartfelt autonomic nervous system parasympathetic response or down a knee-jerk "fight or flight" autonomic nervous system sympathetic reaction. Physical consequences of heartfelt responses have a long history, so accept natural life and surrender to the planet's proven way. Artificial consequences with fearful reactions confuse thinking that the material life is the way to live. Conscious breathing, feeling the in and out air temperature at the tip of the nose, is one way to control unwanted thoughts.

REMEMBER:  One destroys life from lack of knowledge, so use the brain wisely. Natural intelligence and wisdom are everywhere, and it is programming life for living from within this planet experience.

DENTAL HEALTH

To understand dental health, one needs to know bacteria are small forms of life and found everywhere. Like all existing forms of life, they need to eat to live. What most people do not know is, the bacteria living in the mouth eat only leftover food debris from meals and not the body's teeth or gums. Also, what most people do not know is, bacteria culture and multiply faster on processed refined foods than on the raw, uncooked planetary foods of Nature. This growing mold in the mouth is called plaque.

The harm that affects the teeth comes from bacterial excrement; it comes from their cellular waste. This microscopic bacterial debris, produced while the bacteria eat, is an acid that will remove minerals from the teeth. With continuous exposure, this acid, over time, dissolves microscopic holes, becoming cavities in the teeth, which is called tooth decay. The gums are also harmed by the bacterial growth because the actual physical multiplication of this growing plaque stresses the gums. Food left between the teeth and just under the gum line causes this bacterial growth. With continuous exposure, this exploding bacterial population irritates the gums, and if not stopped, the effect is bleeding gums and gum tissue destruction, which is called gum disease.

Bacterial growth in the mouth is a living process and for millions of years all animal teeth were disease free because they were maintained by the brushing affects of Nature's fibrous foods. Also, the mineral rich alkaline saliva of these healthy animals neutralized the excreted bacterial acid. Today the modern human animal has weak saliva that does not protect the mouth. Also, the poor hygiene habits leave food debris from those processed, cooked meals packed between the teeth and in the gums. The overall effects of these problems are tissue destruction to the teeth and gums. The solutions to these problems are a good source of minerals in the diet, like seaweeds, and removal of the food debris after every meal. Bacteria that have nothing to eat can't grow and can't eliminate their acid waste.

The best method for cleaning the teeth and gums is one that works after every meal. Brushing the teeth is as easy as chewing raw carrot or celery sticks at the end of a meal, if a toothbrush is not available. Cleaning out food debris left between the teeth and along the gum line can be done effectively by tracing these areas with a contoured fitting toothpick, if floss is not available or appropriate. The teeth were meant to last a lifetime, and when the dentist restores them, it pays to invest in superior materials and craftsmanship. Quality dental restorations, properly taken care of will not break and again the teeth will last a lifetime. Taking care of the teeth is an investment one will never regret.

REMEMBER: Be true to the teeth and gums or they will become false. Just one of many choices one has in life. Be true to oneself or become false is another.

CHEWING

No matter what one eats, it serves the body to chew the food until it is creamy. It is not what one eats that count, but what one assimilates into the blood and lymph systems, so the cells will utilize the energy and nutrients. The purpose of eating is cell nutrition, and even the most balanced diets are useless if nutrients cannot reach the blood stream and get to the cells. Digestion and assimilation begin in the mouth. Good chewing triggers many mechanisms within the digestive system that prepares to receive, digest and process the nutritious foods. So do life a favor and chew, chew, chew! Not only will one be healthier physically, but also one will benefit mentally, slowing down to enjoy the meals. If one cannot chew well do too a poor dental condition or false teeth, see a good dentist and improve one's chewing ability.

HEALTH ENHANCING ADDITION TO YOUR DIET

Fruits: Eat ripe, raw and organic fruits with the skin. Choose locally grown and in season. Fruits are rich in vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates (energy), food enzymes and protein. They are an excellent source of fiber and the best source of water because it is filtered by the plant or tree.

Vegetables: Eat young and ripe, raw and organic vegetables with the skin that's locally grown and in season. They are rich in vitamins, minerals, food enzymes and protein. They are an excellent source of fiber and pure water. Steaming is the best method of heating, if one needs to warm their food, but don't cook because that will destroy their living properties.

Sprouts: The best are from organic seeds. The raw seed soaked in water has started to become a vegetable, whether in a jar or the soil. They are easier to digest, rich in vitamins, minerals, food enzymes and protein.

Wild Algae: These raw plants from the ocean and fresh water lakes are rich in trace minerals, food enzymes, vitamins, high in protein and fiber. Dulse and nori from the ocean are two of many humans have eaten and blue-green algae from Klamath Lake, Oregon, are another example from a pure water source.

Drink Clean Water: Steamed-distilled or purified is best.

Classic Health Books To Read

"Mucusless Diet Healing System" by Arnold Ehret Ph.D.

"Enzyme Nutrition" by Edward Howell Ph.D.

"Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" by Weston Price D.D.S.

"Toxemia Explained" by John Tilden M.D.

"A Cancer Therapy" by Max Gerson M.D.

"Vibrant Health" by Norman Walker Ph.D.

"Hippocrates Diet" by Ann Wigmore D.D.

Bruxism: Clenching and Grinding the Teeth

Imagine for a moment a desert tortoise, gorging on its favorite succulent plant. The sun is approaching its zenith, and it is now crawling around on the hot sand, looking for some shade to nap and rest from the blistering heat of a summer's day. Suddenly from behind a gigantic rock, wily coyote vaults towards the tortoise. Its mouth is wide open, displaying its pearly white fangs. This wily coyote is hungry and wants to snap off the tail, leg or even the tortoise's head. What does this tortoise do?

Being a tortoise or any other creature on planet Earth, understand Nature equips all life with an arsenal of natural reflexes. These natural reflexes are the mental and physical "startle withdrawal reflexes." As soon as the tortoise saw the wily coyote coming, these reflexes instantly recoiled the tortoise's body. Without thinking, the tortoise contracted its exposed extremities back into the safe impenetrable space of its tortoise shell. After struggling with the shell for a while, this baffled wily coyote leaves the tortoise alone to seek easier prey. Realizing the coast is clear, or the desert is safe from predators, the tortoise resumes its daily tortoise activities. The tortoise, surviving a stressful encounter with a predator, then goes on with the daily business of living.

Nature's pleasuring experiences are the beautiful sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings of life, which the Earth offers any natural thinking intelligent wild being. For a tortoise in the desert, living wild is pretty fantastic, until the next brief encounter with stress, a hostile predator, which will again trigger the autonomic sympathetic nervous system of fright reflexes for freeze, fight or flight responses. Living with Nature's protective reflexes, it is truly amazing these experiences life has, existing on this garden planet of Eden.

Every animal on Earth is biologically genetically unique in appearance, including Homo sapiens. All have a look and set of fingerprints; all are very similar in that mind thinks and body functions. All have similarities in living and surviving experiences. A human smile is universal all over this planet, and everybody's blood is red. These are only two resemblances among the many other facts, depicting Nature's similarities among plant and animal beings. So in sixty plus years of being alive in this modern world, a conclusion is, modern humans are all distressed turtles. All are walking around under the tension umbrella of a constant threat. All are turtles being burdened and weighted down, affected by the pressures of this modern way of existing. Living is with foul air, unclean water, unsatisfying non-nourishing food, inactive, not being rested and afraid of the sun with one negative emotion arising after another. All are chronically contracted, mentally and physically, surviving in shells with iron-barred windows, even afraid to look out. Wily coyote does not ever leave anyone alone. The coast is never clear because stress is always there. The mental and physical strains are inside and outside of modern existence. They are here 24 hours a day, when awake or while sleeping.

Stress has evolved from a chance encounter with a predator to a life of constant surviving in ignorance. Ignorance is a bliss mentality for some, falling into the limbo existence of another day and another dollar. For a few others though, living is like a window that gets dirty. It just needs to be cleaned up regularly in order to experience the warming rays of the sun that will shine through the clean window. This article is for those turtles basking in the sun, as well as for those turtles constantly dueling with wily coyote. It is about the reflexes of living and how they can affect parts of the body, like the tooth functions. It is about the reactions and the responses to everyday life with its many different kinds of emotional states and how the choices in dealing with them affect life's mind/body health and well-being.

Here is a typical story from one patient. The theme of this article is stress and stress is the same for all. Her name is not Nadia, but let's call her that. She calls and on the phone says she has pain in her teeth. It's a non-specific pain, generalized in one area of her mouth. Cold and crunchy foods cause her discomfort. Swallowing is not a problem. There is no swelling anywhere in the area. Sweet and warm drinks and meals are ok, and the pain came up suddenly overnight. After hearing her symptoms, I asked her, "How has the stress levels been lately?" The answers usually get in these situations from persons vary, usually unexplainable, or they will say, their stress is like everyone else's. Nadia's answer was in the neighborhood of overwhelming. On the phone suggested grinding and clenching of the teeth while sleeping, which are reactions to daily stressors have probably caused the pain. We made an appointment for a consultation.

At that appointment informed Nadia that the teeth are not supposed to touch, except lightly while swallowing. When speaking, the teeth might come close together, and may even slightly come in contact, but that would not cause any pain. Teeth would also not touch when eating Nature's juicy and fibrous foods, and could not be the cause of the pain. Even eating cooked, and over-processed soft foods would not cause any discomfort because the muscles of chewing are designed to bring the jaws with their teeth close together, but not bang together with any traumatizing results. When relaxed, the muscles tonicity causes the lower jaw to hang loose and down. The tongue relaxes behind the lower teeth. The tongue's tip lightly touches the roof of the mouth with the upper and lower lips kiss softly together. All this relaxation of the tissues will not cause any physical pain. By the process of eliminating possibilities, including an x-ray showing nothing obvious in the area to cause pain, suggested to Nadia her mind was the cause of the pain and her body, specifically the pain in the teeth and related head and neck tissues were the effects. These physical effects include excessive tooth wear, cracked teeth, broken teeth, bone loss around teeth, gum recession, loose teeth, muscle pains, headaches, neck aches, TMJ joint pain and general oral cavity weakness to microorganisms. Having a chronically stressed out mind will produce an acidic pH for the salivary fluid, and that will not support bodily oral health.

Informed Nadia she was not crazy and asked her to listen and to not take this the wrong way. This behavioral experience is universal; all patients clench and grind their teeth. Explained to Nadia, the pain results from her mind reacting to stress. This stress was unique to her and her alone. The body, when mentally stressed, automatically, contracts muscles, just like a turtle will, protecting itself from a wily coyote. This contractive reaction can affect the speaking and chewing system as well as the entire body. With severe stress to process in a life threatening moment, the body can contract so hard that it will retake the fetal position. With the hands close-fisted, and the head and neck muscles all contracted, animals clamp down on the jaws and teeth, clenching and grinding with severe force. The result is physical trauma to the tissues with pain, discover when awake. This reactive and destructive behavioral habit can last for long periods of time while sleeping. Upon waking, many parts of the body may ache. Tissues do not get their rest at night and instead of feeling recharged for another day of activities, the experience feels ignoble with pain and not rested.

Clenching and grinding habits occur to children and to adults too. They may go on for years and even a lifetime. The damage done by a severe grinding habit is easy to spot in anyone because all the teeth will appear flat in one plane. When a person grinds the flat edges of their upper teeth against the flat surfaces of their lower teeth, they will seem to mesh together just like the two-cut halves of an orange. Moving the cut halves of the orange side-to-side together, then back to the original position, the orange halves or upper and lower teeth, fit perfectly together. The upper and lower teeth in a severe grinder will mimic this same precision of fit when moving them side-to-side. The teeth were meant to last a lifetime and this nonfunctional destructive clenching and grinding habit from an out of control stressed out mind does not support the teeth's preservation. When any animal looses its teeth in the wild, it will die. Losing the teeth is not a design of Nature. See in museums 65 million-year old dinosaurs and other animal skeletons, past and present, with all their teeth. They had stress too but probably did not have the kind and the amount of stress modern humans experience today.

I recommended to Nadia a protective mouth guard to wear over her teeth. It can be worn on upper or lower teeth while sleeping during the night or the day. The mouth guard is designed to turn off the closing muscles, contracting when the teeth grind together, during the times of sleep with mental, emotional and physical stress. Dentists who know, technically, call this kind of therapeutic mouth guard design an "anterior discluding splint." For persons who just clench, the mouth guard will distribute the physical forces of the contracting muscles evenly throughout the mouth, head, neck and shoulders. Some patients have to or choose to wear their mouth guards even when awake. With time, the mouth guard will communicate to the dentist, as well as to the patient, the levels of stress a person is experiencing while sleeping by making teeth marks onto the surfaces of the guard. The mouth guard can only help by protecting Nadia's tissues. The mouth guard will not stop Nadia from clenching and grinding. That she will have to do herself.

Suggested to Nadia to keep a daily written journal of when her teeth touch. Not from talking, swallowing or from eating, only when she notices her upper and lower teeth together at any other time. The journal will help her keep track of those thoughts occurring, during and just prior to noticing her upper and lower teeth touching together. It is important to write down the name of anyone she is with as well as any noticeable objects in the environment in those same moments. With time, patterns of stress reactions and their surrounding circumstances will appear. Once these patterns become known, she will be equipped to protect herself in the future by controlling the reactive mental nature of the addiction while consciously keeping her teeth apart, thereby protecting them and the surrounding tissues. Instead of "reacting" to an unknown pressure, she will now "respond" to a known stress appropriately. The appropriate response at the moment of experiencing the stress is a disciplined command to the ego mind from the heart to stop that behavior, whatever it is and relax. Being responsible is a life sentence while living here on Earth. New constructive habits are just as hard to create as it is in the elimination of old destructive ones. Have the intention to become consciously aware, to stop destructive behaviors and practices, observe the teeth when they touch. If one does not practice, one cannot change any unhealthy mind/body habits and improve one's well-being. It is a new practice in life for preserving the body's tissues and their health.

Because good psychotherapy is about behavioral changes, dentists recommend it. Another avenue used with patients is the Bach Flower Remedies, found in most health food stores, Bach Flower Remedies help deal with the negative emotional states of life. They can help bring up old thought patterns or programs stressful to examine. These thought programs are buried deep down in the hard drives of the mind found in the ego. These learned programs cause reaction to the present situations in a similar way acted the first time they happened. Know what was put there in the mind, through the experiences as infants, children, teenagers and adults up till this present moment. Lust, envy, greed, gluttony, sloth, pride, anger and vanity are all sinister activities learned. Delete these unbalancing stresses through awareness of them; recognize them and their unhealthy effects. They do not serve life anymore if they ever did. Changing one's behavior is the goal, and it will be an unlearning process. The first step is an awareness of the mind/body condition, and the direction will be looking inward to change by listening to the heart side of the mind.

Awareness of mind and body is nothing new to history and the process of Self-inquiry. It is in all the classical religious literature. Buddha said, "Be a lamp to yourself. Be your own confidence. Hold the truth within yourself as the only truth." Muhammad said, "Whoever knows himself knows God." In the Old Testament, Psalms 46:10, God said, "Be still and know that I am God." In the New Testament, Jesus in Luke 17:21 said, "The kingdom of God is within you." The Hindu prayer to their God "Ganesa" is, "I bow down to the God within, which is Who I Am." My favorite line from spiritual literature comes from Stephen Mitchell's version of Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" which says, "Stop thinking and end your problems." When one stops ego thinking, only one's heart remains to communicate by listening through the software of the mind. One can stop thinking by practicing keeping the source of the ego mind in its home, which is the heart part of the mind. When the mind is home, it is surrounded by love, and there isn't much stress in that environment. When the ego mind is out of its home, its thoughts are from reactions, thinking of the past or imagining the future. When the mind is home, experience heart, moment to moment, through the senses. It just takes much committed practice to keep the mind at home. Realize life is not the past and future in mind thoughts and its physical conditioning. Life becomes very different, experiencing the present moments with the heart-mind through the senses. You and everyone around you will benefit from this enlightening change.

Unfortunately, Nadia could not afford services for a mouth guard at that moment and didn't hear from her for some time. She again called and said another dentist had recommended a root canal. Heard her story again and gave her the same opinion. Thought her clenching and grinding of her teeth while sleeping caused the pain. Several weeks went by, she called again. She said she had a root canal, and the pain did not go away and last night the tooth broke in half. Asked Nadia if there was anything else she could say about the tooth. She said some time ago she had a dream about breaking a tooth. At her appointment explained to her, in order to save the tooth, she would need to see a gum specialist, a periodontist. The fractured root canalled tooth broke below the gumline, and the root, bone and gum relationships need correction.

Made an appointment with a periodontist. The next day the periodontist called to change the date. Called Nadia and during the conversation she said last night she had a dream of losing a tooth. I asked for more details about the dream. The only question to her was, "How is the relationship with your father?" To shorten a long story, Nadia said, several weeks ago she mailed a letter to her father in Germany. The theme of this letter was for him to find a high bridge and to do her a big favor, jump off it. It was after this letter she saw a dentist who did the root canal, and now the tooth broke. Shared with Nadia some stuff with parents and suggested she treat her father like a new acquaintance, with no history. Hard to do but it would be better than bringing up her life story with him all the time.

For many parents were never friends. Also, they will never be able to live up to the expectations of what to think they should have been. Suggested to Nadia the broken tooth and the related symptoms were the results of breaking off the relationship with her father. And last night's dream was about complete loss. This mental and emotional stress caused the body to contract just like the coyote stressed tortoise in the desert, and since Nadia's stress did not go away, it resulted in chronic trauma with pain to her tissues. The body's experience with clenching and grinding of her teeth was the direct result of the decision her ego mind made about her father. This decision goes against what her heart-mind knows and the love the expressed if listening. In a short time working with Nadia, an opinion of her is that she has been and is a sweetheart. She composed another letter and sent it to her father in Germany. This letter's origin and theme were more of that sweetheart. She informed her father she loved her performing artist lifestyle in San Francisco with her struggling jazz guitarist husband, and all his money and threats of disowning could not change that. It would be healthier for him to surrender to these facts and accept that his 30-year-old daughter was all grown up now and not his little girl anymore. The bottom line was that she still and will always respect and hopefully love him.

Remembering when twelve years of age and my mother started allowing me to drive a car. Got good at driving all around town, doing errands for her like shopping and other things. Driving was something enjoyed very much at that age. At seventeen, after a fantastic test-drive in the Hollywood hills, found and bought a four-year-old Porsche. Before driving the car home, had to get insurance. What a shock? Disappointed about the cost of the insurance as a teenager in Los Angeles, asked myself, "Why the hell did I want to buy this damn car in the first place?" At that moment, recalled what a close friend once said a few years earlier. He said, "A Porsche is the best car on the road!" It was that thought given by a friend that turned into a mental program, which made me think to buy this sports car years later.

Thoughts are very powerful, and one needs to protect oneself from those unwanted stressful past ones buried deep down in the hard drives of the mind. Also, need to be more selective of the many ideas that are always coming in every moment from everyplace we turn. A dentist cannot change Nadia, or her habits from plans and programs learned from childhood until now. Can only point in the direction, from experience, what one can do to decrease mental reactivity and increase awareness of the mental and physical stressors of life. The investigative knowledge into the mind will expose the subconscious doings of the mind so that change can take place.

Observing animals in the wild, one sees life is about satisfying one's needs to live. There are predators around, but it is not a constant threat. In fact, predators miss their prey most of the time. Predators and their prey, like modern humans, have their fright, freeze, fight or flight mind/body reflexes to respond to life. When an animal reacts with its mind to stress, the autonomic sympathetic nervous system turns on, and the blood pressure and related physiology goes up. When an animal responds with the heart, which is what happens after any threat is over, the autonomic parasympathetic nervous system turns on, and the blood pressure and related physiology goes down. Love comebacks to life again, living to satisfy the basic needs until the next threat happens. Modern humans may not have any predator, but everything one does was learned. Unlearn this behavior, find out it is stressful or not. Want to have a "healthy mind" and "healthy body," do what the words are saying, heal-thy mind and heal-thy body. It is the only choice to be healthy.

Let's Talk About pH

For anyone, pH is one of the two most important factors one can know about the body when trying to understand mental and physical health. Another factor is percent (%) body fat. In chemistry, the pH value is a measurement of the acidity or basicity of an aqueous solution. An aqueous solution is a solution that is mostly water. Pure water is neutral with a pH value of 7.0, which is right in the middle of the pH chemical scale, which has numerical values from 0-14. Aqueous solutions with the pH numbers below seven denote increasing acidity and aqueous solutions with the pH numbers greater than seven denote increasing alkalinity. There are numerous pH values in the different cellular compartments of the body, as the pH in the stomach or the pH in body fluids, like excreted urine. However, know this, the entire body with all of its cells and organ systems is bathed in the aqueous fluid ocean that is called the extra-cellular fluid. The brain tightly regulates this extra-cellular fluid. A controlled process called acid-base homeostasis, where excesses in cellular waste products (acid) and deficiencies in evolutionary life nutrients (base), can affect the pH of the entire mind/body's chemistry. This brain process of acid-base homeostasis maintains a slight alkalinity to the overall mind/body chemical pH to maintain balance. An imbalance in mind/body pH chemistry could easily cause a sickness or even death if a pH change occurs gradually or even suddenly to the internal aqueous living mental, physical environment.

The extra-cellular fluids define all bodily fluids outside the cells of the body's tissues. These fluids are the plasma, which is the blood without its many different cells, the interstitial fluids, which are the fluids surrounding the cells of all the body's tissues and the trans-cellular fluids, which are the fluids like the cerebrospinal fluids. Intra-cellular fluids define the fluids inside the estimated 10-100 trillion-body cells. The pH of the blood is usually slightly basic with a value or range of pH 7.35 to pH 7.45, which means normal blood is slightly alkaline. This value is often referred to as the physiological pH in biology and in medicine and all other fluids in the body that surround the cells and tissues regulate themselves from this physiological pH. The human body, any animal body, saturates and surrounds their trillions of cells in an ocean of fluid, whose pH is 7.4 in alkalinity on the average. The intra-cellular fluids inside of the body's cells have a physiological pH of seven, which is neutral. Every healthy cell in the body has a job to do and works for a living. This cellular work produces a waste product like any combustion process will, which is slightly acidic and will be excreted by the cell into its interstitial space all around the cell for elimination. Some of the waste gathered and concentrated by the body, eliminates in the urine. Excreted urine can have a pH value of 6, slightly acidic.

Plaque or the bacterial cell populations in the mouth help to keep the teeth clean from the foods left between the teeth and along the gumline after eating. However, growing plaque can create a local acidic environment in the mouth caused by their excrement if not controlled. Bacterial cell waste, like any animal's cell waste, is slightly acidic. An uncontrolled bacterial cell population in the oral cavity, the mouth, can result in tooth decay and gum disease. It is a demineralization process of the tooth surface by the bacterial cell acidic waste. Healthy saliva produced by a healthy body is slightly alkaline, and it has evolutionarily neutralized and controlled bacterial cell populations in the mouths of all animals throughout time, until recently in modern humans. Look at 65 million-year old dinosaur skeletons with all their teeth. They never used a toothbrush and never got tooth decay. One can see the same thing in hominid skeletons of the past and wild primates living today as well as any wild animal.

Enzymes and other proteins produced and injected into the extra-cellular fluid space by certain cells of the body will have an optimum pH functioning range. They can become activated, inactivated or denatured outside their functional working pH ranges in the body, for example, in the space of the stomach or small and large intestines. The digestion of the foods is very much controlled by the pH of the food's environment, traversing along in the space of the gastrointestinal track. Digestive enzymes are very much pH dependent for their function. In fact, the space in the stomach and intestines is outside the body. Like the skin being the surface of the body, the gastrointestinal skin is a barrier too. Until something, put on the skin or into the intestines, reaches the blood stream, that something substance is still considered to be outside the body. If one puts olive juice, olive oil, on the skin, it will be absorbed into the body. The same is true for foods and drinks in the gastrointestinal track. The foods and drinks may be in the intestinal space. However, until absorbed through the gastrointestinal skin, also a protective barrier, it will not be technically in the body, until it enters the blood and lymphatic circulatory systems, which is inside the body.

The most common human physical disorder in acid-base homeostasis is acidosis, which means there is an acid overload occurring to the entire body, generally defined by the pH falling below 7.35 when speaking about the human body's blood. Acidosis can also be observed by testing the saliva with pH paper. How does this acidosis happen? There are seven life variables that affect the aqueous solutions of the body. They are breathing, drinking, eating, sunning, moving, resting and the minding (thinking). All these variables individually, and collectively working together, can affect the acid-base homeostasis of mind/body balance; where balance is a dynamic interplay between the processes of consumption and the processes of elimination, mentally as well as physically. Dynamic balance means the experiences of health and life. Here are some real life stories of patients witnessed over time to illustrate this dynamic mind/body balance in pH body chemistry. It is important to understand why a patient needs dentistry and in the very first visit, the patient gets lots of questions. The purpose of these questions is to determine what the patient knows of the health and disease process in life, filling in the blanks for completing an understanding of their responsibilities for their teeth and their whole body. This knowledge with complete understanding is important to them because that is why they came to see a dentist.

The one thing all animals have in common is, all have a body to take care of, and all the seven variables of life affect the body's extra-cellular fluids, which is the micro-ocean fluid surrounding every cell of an animal's body. These seven variables breathing, drinking, eating, sunning, moving, resting and the minding, all affect the composition of the physical body and the body's functions in life. No one has a concept or even idea of evolutionary time and of what it took for DNA to evolve to this present experience as a living being. Just think of a variety of life on the planet and each life with a different DNA program in appearance. The DNA functions in consuming and eliminating are the same for all life. As a living being everything affects the body's chemistry. Everything one breathes enters the bloodstream, becomes the body. Everything one drinks enters the bloodstream, becomes the body. Everything one eats enters the bloodstream, becomes the body. The sun on the skin converts cholesterol into vitamin D along with many other sun reactions that affect the body. Muscle movement produces a local cell waste product around a cell's environment, called lactic acid, and needs to be collectively eliminated constantly to maintain acid-base homeostasis, keeping the body alkaline. Proper daily rest is needed for both mind and for body to catch up with daily maintenance and is natural to all animal species. Breakfast is the first meal of the day, which breaks the fast of the daily elimination cycle, called sleeping at night, with benefits to both mind and to body balance. Moreover, there are the dreams that come in the night. Could they be messages from the soul for the mind's maintenance, its balance?

An acupuncturist patient, a vegetarian Buddhist patient on the first-consultation appointment, tested acidic on pH paper to her saliva. The patient's mouth was very clean from good oral hygiene habits, but the oral environment was acidic, being bathed in its own saliva. Tested own saliva, the pH paper shown to the patient and asked, why was my salivary pH alkaline and hers acid? Explaining bacteria in the mouth eat leftover food debris from meals, when the mouth is clean, the bacteria's acid cell waste is not a big variable. The resting salivary fluid pH in the mouth is alkaline in healthy situations. Asking where her saliva came from, ended up talking about how the body makes itself. The body duplicates itself over time, through the seven variables of life, which goes on daily. One lives to acquire the raw materials to make the body every day and with the energy acquired, using it to function in this mind/body experience. The answer for why her saliva was acid? The patient gave a Chinese Medicine answer, and her constitution was to blame. It is genetic, and she had no control over it.

No animal in Nature is destined to lose their teeth in their lifetime, and that is just an evolutionary fact. The modern human animals, living today, create conditions that were not resonating with all the rest of life in Nature, especially when it comes to cooking their food. Well to make a long story short, the patient took the uncooked planetary food plan to heart and in less that six month her resting salivary oral pH evolved to being a healthy alkaline chemistry. Resting alkaline salivary fluids keep the bacteria under control in the mouths, day and night, and in all wild animals throughout evolutionary time to the present, it has occurred. Saliva has evolved with many functions. Saliva supplies minerals to the teeth, like fluoride ions. Saliva is the first line of defense because saliva contains the immune system. Saliva has an alkaline pH to neutralize bacterial cell waste that's an acid. Salivary glands increase production of their alkaline fluids when eating, which triggers all the other functions of digestion and assimilation of food while chewing. The uncooked planetary food plan works especially well when one eats seaweeds daily as part of this uncooked plan. Seaweeds are the best sources for all the needed minerals and trace elements, which poor soils are deficient in, making them harder to acquire just from the soil and the foods grown in those soils.

By word of mouth, my practice attracted a lot of holistic types, including many who were already living on the uncooked planetary food plan. One particular fellow to remember wanted all his mercury-silver fillings replaced with a high noble gold, which is a dental gold alloy in the 80-90% pure gold range. His resting salivary pH was alkaline, and he was an athlete, so he was in great shape for a guy in his fifties. Information how the body and mind maintain acid-base homeostasis and how to clean the teeth after every meal, helping the body maintain the well-being of its mouth was easy for him to understand. He was very knowledgeable and had read a lot of Herbert Shelton's books and other books on Natural Hygiene. Common to Shelton devotees is, they are not interested in eating seaweeds but this patient saw the light, giving him some good sources for these herbs. Finished his dental restorations after some time, but within ten years he was getting new and recurrent decay, which was almost impossible because he was cleaning his teeth after every meal while having a healthy alkaline resting salivary pH. What I discovered about this patient was very interesting. It turns out this patient was extremely competitive in sports, even in a friendly card game. He would get so upset about what didn't go his way. When testing his saliva, during these bouts with his reactive mind, his saliva would turn acid. Saw him at a competitive contest he was participating in volleyball. When he was very angry after losing, pulled out some pH paper, his saliva tested acidic. He learned valuable lessons on that occasion, seeing his pH turn acidic, and only caused by his thoughts. Remember the mind and its thinking in life can also influence the body's acid-base homeostasis, the body's chemistry. Take responsibility for the negative emotional experiences, those negative thoughts. They are acidic and can affect the immune system and the acid-base homeostasis, which are very important when trying to heal diseases.

Another fellow comes to mind from a health presentation. His comment was he tried a raw food's lifestyle for some time. When he went to his dentist in his mid-twenty's he had 20 new cavities. Asked him what influenced his decision to eat raw foods. He mentioned some books and authors, and then asked him about his oral hygiene habits before going on raw foods. He brushed and regularly flossed but after going on raw foods, he stopped brushing and flossing because animals did not do that. He thought he did not need to either because he was on raw foods. To understand why this fellow got so many new cavities in his teeth is very important. Everyone's acidic and there are very few who are not. Modern humans do not live like the wild animals of Nature. Modern living is sedentary surviving, breathing bad air, drinking unnatural liquids, eating no energy artificially man-made foods, being indoors, not moving naturally anymore, and resting at night with an alarm clock, instead of the sun and the moon. This lifestyle is an acidic lifestyle. Then think of what the mind is full of, and all those images are not very green. This guy did not understand how acidic he was when starting on raw foods. The first thing the body is going to do with all that new and abundant energy it will get by eating uncooked planetary foods is, eliminate all the stored acid accumulated over the years and isolated into adipose tissue (fat cells). If the body cannot keep its daily balance with consumption and elimination, it will store whatever it cannot eliminate in fat tissue.

Have you ever heard of "flashback" that someone has experienced? A flashback is an LSD trip that happens 30 years later, after, from the original experience. The body, 30 years ago, was processing the LSD chemical but was incomplete in doing so, ending up storing some of it somewhere in the body's fat. Thirty years later the elimination process catches up, cleaning out old fat cells, and there goes LSD back into the bloodstream and to the brain for round two. The same thing will happen when one goes on the uncooked planetary food plan. The body, with all the new energized nutrients and abundant energy, will clean for some time. One will have some interesting things coming out of the body as well as the mind, during the detoxifying process experience. Testing the saliva and its pH often, will help one understand the healing, the cleansing process, which the uncooked planetary food plan will cause. One needs to protect the teeth from accumulated acid being eliminated, during the transition from a civilized lifestyle to a more natural one. During this lifestyle change, one may find the saliva constantly acidic, so one will need to rinse the mouth often with salt water, preventing what happened to the person who experienced twenty new cavities.

One favorite bit of knowledge comes from physical therapy. A study presented in a medical journal many years ago showed the body, and the mind functions the same, no matter what the age. Some physical therapists went into a nursing home and put a group of elderly bed-ridden individuals on resistance exercises. They found out even bed-ridden persons benefit from daily exercise to the point they were able to build muscles like anybody else. Some were so successful getting stronger; they got out of bed and walked again. So age does not matter when it comes to improving one's well-being, moving towards a healthier and more natural lifestyle. Read about the 80-year old women, some years back, who wanted to run a marathon. She started out walking in the beginning, and eight years later she finished her first marathon. Intentions are very important and "will" will overpower a lazy mind if one is persistent. Recently been sharing health information with a retired nurse, who is also in her 80's. She is the kind of person who thought doctors were "gods" back in the days when she was working as a nurse. Today she looks up every medicine prescribed to her, especially wanting to find out about the side effects. Since meeting her, the doctor has taken her off Coumadin, a blood thinner she was taking for some time. The other day she asked how much seaweed I was eating per day. When she found out, all she said was that she was going to double her seaweed consumption.

Why doesn't everybody double their seaweed consumption? It is the best sources for all the minerals in any uncooked planetary food plan, which humans have evolved eating over time. No matter what the age, the body and mind experience works as it always has, and any improvement to any of the seven variables in life will only improve the quality of life. Isn't that the reason everyone is here on Earth to enjoy this quality of life? The only thing left now is to choose, and no one can do that for you. Start by purchasing some pH paper, found in most health food stores and pharmacies. Learn about the body and mind experience. Test the saliva upon waking in the morning. Test the saliva before and after meals. Test the saliva during the day, when stopped in rush hour traffic. Test the saliva before going to bed. Learn a great deal about life, testing the saliva.

Eating Not Dieting

"Life is suffering" is what a great teacher of the past said over 2000 years ago and in my sixty plus years studying health, life is suffering if you do not have a nutritional philosophy for life. As a health professional, first realize the word "doctor" from its Greek etymological origin of the word means "teacher." So doctors are supposed to be teachers. Today most medical doctors are disease professionals, prescribing for the drug companies, who have done much research in allopathic medicines. Modern allopathic doctors, in general, do not seem to teach their patients anything about healing. Would it not be better if taught about the causes of disease and how to heal them, instead of taking a drug that may just cover up the problems and symptoms? Is that a good solution? There are many philosophies in treating mind/body diseases, historically speaking, just know allopathic medicine is one recent philosophy. There are others, homeopathy, naturopathy, herbal medicine, which have older healing histories still practiced today. Does that say something about the effectiveness of these older philosophies? An opinion, one needs to understand physiology and biochemistry like all doctors. Then teach health to their patients, so that they could make their choices about health wisely.

Most of the pharmaceutical research is done on animals in laboratories because all animals speak the same language of cellular DNA and function the same when it comes to living. However, has anyone looked at how these animals live in the wild? Do these animals in the wild get the diseases modern humans seem to be suffering from, surviving their civilized lifestyles? Understand how the mind/body works, and then health is natural, if choosing it, because healthy animals have evolved and made it through all of this evolutionary time to today. What is the meaning of this statement? Below is some information, based on physiology and biochemistry, basic information from the natural sciences. This knowledge of a nutritional philosophy and its practice will give the mind and body the energy and all the other nutrients to be healthy and to heal most modern diseases, which take much energy and many nutrients for the body to heal itself. Any disease is just an imbalance, needing lots of energy and lots of nutrients for the mind and body's immune system to perform its normal job healing. It cannot function normally because of the modern human interferences, physically, from a modern polluting lifestyle inside the body and outside the body as well.  The same thing can be said about the mind pollution of today too. Modern mind pollution is where all the suffering starts before it materializes in the body as a disease.

Here is a health and eating tip on how the brain keeps healthy because that is where hunger is satisfied. When hungry it means the mind and body need something, but first answer this question. How does the brain know when the mind/body is nutritionally satisfied, including its own cerebral thinking tissues? When the brain and consequently the mind/body are energy and nutritionally satisfied, it means the mind/body has enough combustion material. Satisfaction includes all the other genetically and evolutionary required nutrients to perform all the brain's duties for living each day. Satisfaction means healing any imbalances too in order to stay healthy. Life is always based on the living needs to be satisfied daily. What is the balance? There are several answers to this question; first there is a balance between the mind, metaphysically speaking, and the body, physically speaking. Within the mind, there is also a balance between the consumption and the elimination of good and evil thoughts, and within the body there is also a balance between the consumption and the elimination of good and bad physical matter. To be alive means, working and playing with seven variables, and they are breathing, drinking, eating, sunning, and moving, resting and mental activity. All seven of these variables required for life, no matter if a plant or animal. The use of the word "evil" is based on the spelling of the word. Life is about the predicate action "to live" and when you spell the word "live" backwards, get the word evil. Evil is anything that does not support living and the actions of "to live" in life and be healthy.

The brain and its nervous system evolved over a long period to maintain the mind and the body's balance in order to survive in life. Also know, the brain uses the most energy of all the tissues of the body for conscious thinking and all the unconscious and subconscious work done by it too. Evolutionary developments of the brain and spinal cord's survival, the mind and body's survival, are expressed in the duality functions of its autonomic nervous system. These are the hard-wired programs called the autonomic parasympathetic and the autonomic sympathetic nervous systems, which are antagonists. The autonomic sympathetic nervous system deals with the freeze or fright, fight or flight reactions. The autonomic parasympathetic nervous system deals with its opposite experience, the calm mode of arousal and interest for the digestion of life, which is the consumption and elimination of life's matter and for procreating life responses. The autonomic nervous system deals with all the systems of the mind/body with no conscious controls. These two systems cannot run at the same time. The parasympathetic half, in general, deals with all the systems of the mind/body that "hope and love" for life in everyday living. The sympathetic half deals with the systems of the mind/body that "fears" death, producing adrenalin to do amazing physical feats for saving one's life. Here is an illustration.

Asked by a significant other to dinner and all week long she shared in conversations how wonderful the food was at her new favorite restaurant, not been to yet. At the planned evening, the atmosphere was wonderful. Being a guest and agreeing, the sights, sounds and smells made for a beautiful dining experience. The menu had too many choices; a decision chaotically made. After the waiter had left with the choices for dinner, the conversation was, what to have for desert? She motioned to come closer, and then whispered into the ear. After dinner, when getting back to her place, she said with a smile, for desert have anything desired. Physiologically at this moment all the bodily juices are flowing at open throttle; the parasympathetic half of the autonomic nervous system is in control. Anticipating the food, the body is getting ready for the experience of consumption. The mouth with its excited salivary glands, water excessively, and start to produce more digestive saliva. The stomach does the same and the intestines increase activity to make room, pushing things along while increasing its production of digestive juices too. All the valves of the gastrointestinal tract are open. The liver, pancreas, lymphatic, cardiovascular system and immune system are put on high alert in anticipation to consume, examine, digest, assimilate, process and store the new "to live" materials, which is food for life hopefully. The mind part of the brain experience is also consuming extra large amounts of energy. Between the words said and listened to, thinking of what's in store for dessert in its imaginary fantasyland, are thoughts about later after dinner. Life is great; this is the parasympathetic nervous system, turned on and functioning normally.

Then out of the corner of the room, copious amounts of dark black smoke billow out from the doors leading to the kitchen area of the restaurant, fuming and filling the restaurant's ceiling air. The person sitting at the closest table to the kitchen doors stands up, knocking their table over, and yells at the top of their voice, "FIRE!" Pandemonium, the capital of hell, descends on the restaurant diners and the autonomic sympathetic nervous system reacts into action. Forget about food, forget about sex, lighten the load of excess luggage in the bladder and the rectum and run to save a life. Most do not have any control over this when adrenaline runs high in the blood stream, making the body do amazing things. The autonomic sympathetic nervous system is at its best and functioning normally. In a paradise lost society, this Pandemonium lifestyle is chronically charged, never turns off. The sympathetic nervous system exhausts the brain and its ability to live in balance and be healthy. Today it is called modern stress, especially when knowing the body does not get enough energy to function normally. The body struggles to cope with modern surviving and all its modern unnatural stress.

Now what does this have to do with the brain, health and food needed to live? Diet is about evolutionary planetary foods. It is all about getting energy and other nutrients so life can function, so life can be healthy. Life breathes, drinks, eats, suns, moves, rests and uses the mind to satisfy needs to live in life daily. If the autonomic sympathetic nervous system is turned on, one cannot digest food and in this society with all the antacids; it is a wonder if anyone can get any real nourishment. Many modern humans are chronically sympathetically charged because of this exceedingly modern stressful lifestyle. So the adage of eating when calm and not stressed is very important. The brain has feelers everywhere in the body, and it knows where any imbalances exist. Imbalances in excesses and imbalances in deficiencies, the brain can correct these imbalances and maintain balance between consumption and elimination everywhere in the body. If hungry or thirsty for anything, mentally or physically, count on it, the brain is saying something. Many don't listen to the body and don't listen to the voice inside, and life's intuition lost and does not know where to turn. Confused by all this modern materialism, the evolutionary DNA and its controls do not recognize normal and natural functioning.

Now 65 years old feels like the 20's to 30's range, still a teenager when it comes to mental and physical feelings with tons of energy. The secret is living and being "wild" meaning, accepting and practicing the "wild lifestyle" since a teenager, way before I became a doctor. Right away many may have lots of images to what "wild" means, especially because of the 1960's. The "wild lifestyle" is how wild animals live on Earth. The civilized human animal survives in a complete opposite environment and direction. Wild animals do not have the mental and physical problems modern humans have. Whether, talking about stress levels, weight, tooth decay, heart disease, colon cancer, wild animals are free from modern human degenerative diseases. Look at a herd of zebras in Africa, are they all different sizes and weight? Do some have cancer, do some of them have painful arthritis, or any of the other many human ailments that are called degenerative diseases by modern medicine? No, because they do not live the modern human lifestyle. The seven variables of life, which all animals and plants experience, breathing, drinking, eating, sunning, moving, resting and minding, are pretty much the same for that herd of zebras. All life forms practice these variables to some degree and the higher on the food chain, the more they become alike in living lifestyles. Mammals are one group, and modern humans belong to this group. For all mammals, mother's milk is their first food. Genetically and environmentally speaking at birth, mammals are meant to seek and consume mother's milk. It is the perfect food for their offspring, and this food has evolved over millions of years to every mammal's success.

Let's look at human mother's milk, it is 87% water, 7% lactose (energy), 4% fat, 1-2% protein and less than 1/2% minerals. Mother's milk is 94% sweet energy water. The mother's baby will, on only milk for months to years, develop their brain and nervous system as well as all the other tissues of the body, growing and developing just on mother's milk. The baby doubles to triples its weight in a few months, only on mother's milk. That developing brain in that infant is being programmed to love this nourishing and nurturing sweet energy water mother's milk diet. That brain is programmed for life, even if the baby was not breast-feed because it is genetic the way mammals eat. Human beings have a sweet tooth because that is Nature's way, genetically, evolutionarily and environmentally. The sweet tooth makes sure the human animal knows what to eat and what will nourish the body, while living on this planet. This life and living, Nature's way, have been going on for millions of years.

Experts in nutrition talk so much about protein but look at mother's milk. It seems Mother Nature does not think much of protein. Energy is the most important nutrient, and when consuming a variety of planetary foods having plenty of energy, it is easy to get all the other nutrients. The minerals and trace elements need special attention because soils growing food in today's world is not that good anymore. However, here is the Catch 22. A car runs on gasoline, and it also needs a lot of other things to make it work. The car could be brand spanking new but if there is no gas in the tank, no one is going anywhere. The other problem is, does anyone burn their gasoline before putting the gas into the car's tank? No, of course not, burning the gasoline before it goes into the car's tank is insane. The energy, the gasoline has, will be lost in the chemical reactions of combustion. Animals are also combustion burning machines at the cellular level as an analogy, needing a variety of uncooked planetary energy foods. Animals are evolved to eat and are genetically designed for these combustion foods of Nature in every cell of their bodies, including the brain cells. The big problem is, modern humans just don't get enough energy to run their bodies and minds and its healing balancing functions, and it shows, look at what has been going on in this society over the last many decades. Modern humans are not eating the same as just a few generations ago. Adding to the fact modern societies do not seem to understand the human animal runs on a variety of seasonal uncooked planetary energy foods, like all wild animals, living from Nature. These foods are better known as seasonal uncooked planetary foods, designed for the human animal, which have been feeding life for millions of years. Having no energy is not good for the immune system and all the other systems of the mind/body, especially trying to heal from any of the many diseases modern humans suffer from these days.

Let's look at exercise, that herd of zebras, do they sit in a classroom or office all day? No, they get to run around all day in the sunshine, breathing deeply into their lungs. The fact they get to run means, their muscles get to contract and eliminate their cell's waste products, which is how the lymphatic elimination works via muscle contraction. Sedentary humans are weak in their elimination, carrying around un-eliminated waste matter, together with no fiber in their processed unnatural cooked food choices. Deficiencies in fiber will not keep the colon clean and healthy. That herd of zebras does not drink acid liquids and eat acid foods either. Know, the mind/body when healthy is alkaline, eating and drinking acids is not very good for any animal body. All artificial, unnatural processed foods and all cooked foods are acids. If one wants to be healthy like a wild animal, herbivore or carnivore, mimic the planet's wild lifestyle. Live with very little stress, eating and drinking uncooked, unprocessed, seasonal planetary energy foods and drinks, evolutionarily designed and perfected by Mother Nature. That lifestyle will heal mental depression and most other modern human mind/body diseases. The mind/body needs energy, more energy than it ever needed, historically speaking, especially in these times with all the "evil" in the world. All the mind and body evil is, collectively called modern stress.

Mineral rich foods, next to the seasonal uncooked ripe planetary energy foods, are the second most important foods to eat for the brain, mind, body and health. Know about cooking, its acidic effect, combined with the fact about deficient soils for growing plants. Know unripe fruits and vegetables are also deficient in many minerals. Eat seaweeds because the ocean is still the most fertile ground on the planet, full of minerals. Minerals are catalysts and catalysts make combustion reactions, all chemical bodily reactions go fast, especially the needed healing reactions of the immune system. Minerals are the "rate limiting" steps or variables in all bodily chemical reactions. "Rate limiting" means, if there is a deficiency in anyone of the evolutionary nutrients, especially trace minerals, it affects biochemical balance. Everything from the immune system to the endocrine system will be affected with incomplete mental and physical functioning. Animals consume to digest nutrients from foods, producing waste that needs to eliminate, all of which takes energy and nutrients to run. The fact is, the body is programmed from way back in time to be alkaline, and modern societies breathe, drink and eat acids, unnatural matter, which is not food. These man-made foodstuffs are without energy and without nutrients. No animal in evolutionary time has ever eaten such junk, human or otherwise. Most of the mind/body diseases are excess acidic conditions. They need a lifestyle to heal that is alkaline for the mind/body to heal itself.

One of the first things all medical doctors learn in their training is the body is self-healing. They just never learn what environment, what mental and physical environment, is needed to allow this self-healing to happen. They were never exposed to that knowledge and understanding and maybe they assume patients do not want to change their lifestyles that cause their imbalances. Many have challenged this flawed medical theory that nutrition and exercise has nothing to do with disease. Learn more about "the wild lifestyle" to further understand the choices for mind/body health. Nature and her seasons have been keeping all the animals and plants on Earth throughout time satisfied, or life would not be here today. Why don't modern humans accept Mother Nature's planetary lifestyle and heal modern society from all these diseases? The question everyone needs to answer? If society changes and obeys the laws of Nature, all will be happy, peaceful and fulfilled. Modern societies need education and healthcare reform, first change a personally. Then know who the teachers are, and that, of course, is Father God (the Creator) for an intelligent mind and Mother Nature (the planet Earth) for the sensible body.