Dentin

The primary agents of dentin damage are heavy metals and industrially produced toxic compounds. Aajonus named mercury, lead, thallium, and aluminum specifically and repeatedly. He described these as coming from vaccines, amalgam fillings draining through the gums, environmental industrial pollution, canned foods, food additives, food coloring, preservatives, pesticides, herbicides, and pharmaceutical drugs including tetracycline and cocaine. He stated that tetracycline and similar antibiotics turn teeth gray from the inside out by depositing metals through the nerve into the tooth. Cocaine absorbed through the nasal passages reaches the brain, descends the nerve, and causes the tooth to turn gray with metals and rot from the inside out.

He was explicit that one molecule of mercury is capable of destroying approximately 5,000 healthy cells. Applying that to the dentin context, even small amounts of mercury passing against dentin without adequate mineral buffering will cause rapid, deep destruction. The longer any of these heavy metals remain in contact with the dentin surface, the deeper the damage goes.

The key mechanism is this: toxic acidic metals emerging through the gum tissue would destroy dentin immediately if the body were not attempting to buffer them. The body uses alkalinizing minerals, specifically calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, and potassium, to bind with these metals and create plaque. That plaque physically intercepts the toxic metals and prevents or delays direct contact with the dentin. However, the buffering capacity is severely limited because all four of those alkalinizing minerals, when obtained from cooked food sources, are cauterized and largely inactive. Phosphorus begins losing its alkalinizing ability at 98 degrees Fahrenheit and becomes transformed around 105 degrees. This means the plaque being formed by the body in response to toxic metal discharge is built substantially from nutritionally compromised minerals with reduced capacity to neutralize acid.

The ratio problem compounds this. It takes approximately 100 to 200 times more calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and potassium to create plaque adequate to neutralize and contain a relatively small quantity of heavy metals such as mercury, thallium, or lead. Even when the body manages to form plaque around these metals, that plaque is not an indefinite barrier. The toxic acidic metals work through the plaque over hours or days, exhausting the alkalinity of the bound minerals, and then reach the dentin surface and begin breaking it down. Once dentin cells are damaged, bacteria develop in response to consume the damaged cellular material. This is the janitor function. The bacteria are eating dead and decayed dentin cells so that the body can replace them with fresh tissue. They do not initiate the damage.

Plaque in the Primal Diet framework is not the enemy it is treated as in conventional dentistry. It is the body's protective response to heavy metals discharging through the gums. Without plaque, the metals would pass directly against the dentin and cause immediate damage. With plaque, there is at least some buffering, even if incomplete. However, plaque cannot be left indefinitely, because the metals will eventually work through it. This creates a situation where regular removal of plaque is necessary not because plaque itself is harmful but because plaque that has been on the teeth long enough allows the metals embedded in it to work through and damage the dentin beneath.

Aajonus recommended brushing with a mixture of clay, coconut cream, and apple cider vinegar. He described clay combined with coconut cream as functioning like a jeweler's rouge, physically removing plaque without abrading the dentin itself. The fat in the coconut cream is essential to this process because fat buffers the abrasive quality of the clay and prevents it from sanding away dentin surface while still cleaning effectively. Without the fat component, the clay would function too aggressively and risk dentine damage from the brushing itself.

Vinegar was used cautiously and specifically. He recommended adding a few drops of apple cider vinegar to the clay and coconut cream mixture approximately once every ten days to dissolve plaque that had built up deep under the gum line. He was explicit that vinegar used more frequently than that can eat into the dentin, so the once-per-week or once-per-ten-days frequency was a ceiling, not a starting point.

Gerolsteiner mineral water was mentioned as useful for dissolving plaque in the gums when combined with a little vinegar and lemon juice in a water pick used over about ten days. He flagged that Gerolsteiner is exceptionally high in carbon dioxide, so high that it exports excess gas to Perrier and similar waters whose carbonation is lower. The carbon dioxide content is relevant because it helps dissolve calcified plaque.

Oil pulling was described as another means of extracting metals and reducing the burden on dentin. Swishing oil in the mouth for ten, fifteen, or up to thirty minutes and then expectorating it dumps a significant load of toxic material for the day. Without this, metals gradually coat the teeth and build up into plaque that, if not removed, works through to the dentin.

Aajonus was completely unambiguous that bacteria are not the cause of cavities and cannot be the cause of cavities. His laboratory demonstrations established this empirically in his view. He described bacteria in the context of dentin damage using the metaphor of a janitor. When hotel guests throw a destructive party and cause damage, the janitors who show up afterward to clean are not blamed for the damage; the guests who caused it are. Bacteria appearing at a site of dentin damage are the janitors. The party guests are the heavy metals.

He criticized the mouthwash industry directly for exploiting bacterial misdirection. A mouthwash that claims to destroy all bacteria for twenty-four hours simultaneously destroys the bacterial component of saliva that initiates digestion in the mouth. When food is then eaten, it mixes with residual mouthwash chemicals instead of beneficial bacteria, and digestion is impaired from the first contact with food. This reduces overall nutrient absorption and contributes to worse health outcomes over time.

When bacteria do eat damaged dentin, including extending into the tubules if the damage goes deep enough, the body's intention is to clear the damaged tissue so regeneration can occur. The problem in most people is that they do not eat in a way that supports regeneration, so the holes created by bacterial cleanup of heavy-metal-damaged dentin simply become sites for further metal deposition, and the cavities expand. This is why people who continue eating cooked and industrial foods experience worsening cavities rather than healing ones, not because bacteria are multiplying aggressively but because the source of the original damage continues and the conditions for tissue repair are absent.

Aajonus considered dentin and the tubules to be among the hardest tissues in the body to regenerate, harder than most soft tissues because of the constant presence of heavy metals discharging from the brain. He said it would take approximately forty years on a perfect diet to clear all the heavy metals accumulated in the brain from a lifetime of toxic exposure, meaning the source of dentin damage persists for decades even after transitioning to the Primal Diet.

He stated clearly that he had only ever observed regeneration of tubules and dentin in people under twenty-five years old, and specifically in people under twenty-five who were eating large quantities of dairy that had not been refrigerated. Refrigeration degrades some of the mineral activity in raw milk in his framework, so the condition of the dairy matters, not only its raw status.

For himself, he described a process that took thirty-one years on raw food before his body began to regrow tubules and dentin in unfilled cavities. He described noticing approximately ten years before one discussion that facial fillings were growing outward, meaning new tooth material was forming behind the old filling and pushing it forward. The new cavity, meaning the space after regrowth had begun filling in, was smaller than the original space the filling occupied. The filling was therefore sitting proud of the surrounding tooth surface. Eventually fillings pushed out entirely.

His protocol when fillings pushed out was to avoid allowing the dentist to re-drill. He instructed his dentist to scrape off only material that had turned very black, then glue new material over the same spot without drilling into any new tooth substance. This preserved the newly forming tubule and dentin beneath. Over a ten-year period following this approach, he observed that three cavities that had been filled had closed. The tooth had regrown and filled in those former cavity spaces completely.

He also reported having new cavities appear and choosing to leave them open rather than have them refilled, specifically to observe how fast the tooth would grow on its own.

For people under twenty-two, he held that cavities could regenerate and close on the Primal Diet. He was asked about a young daughter with eight cavities, one of which was a permanent tooth, and stated that children he had seen under twenty-two years old can regenerate cavities on the diet, meaning the holes would heal.

The primary dietary support for protecting dentin against ongoing heavy metal discharge is dairy, specifically raw dairy consumed frequently and in quantity. Aajonus recommended sipping milk often and eating cheese with a little butter every hour when the brain is actively detoxifying and sending toxins through the gums. The minerals in the dairy, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, and potassium, bind with the toxic metals being eliminated through the gum tissue before those metals can contact the dentin directly. This is the same mechanism the body uses to form plaque, but supporting it with constant dietary mineral input gives the body more material to work with.

He phrased the recommendation in a consultation letter as: minerals in the dairy will bind with the toxins being eliminated through the gums that damage dentin. Brushing once daily with the clay, vinegar, and coconut cream mixture was paired with the dietary dairy protocol.

He was explicit that eating enough dairy to maintain this protective buffering is the reason to eat more cheese and drink more dairy if plaque is forming, because the formation of plaque is itself a sign that the body is discharging heavy metals, and those metals are not adequately bound. If there is not enough mineral to isolate the metals, they will damage the dentin directly.

Beyond vaccine-derived mercury and other pharmaceutical metals, Aajonus identified industrial pollution as the primary driver of dentin damage in the modern population. He stated explicitly that all of the following damage dentin by dumping metals and toxic compounds into the system that eventually discharge through the gums: canned foods, food coloring, preservatives, pesticides, herbicides, and environmental industrial contamination in air and water.

He pointed to the historical emergence of dental caries in populations that adopted processed foods. Among the Eskimo tribes living on traditional raw diets, the first documented case of dental caries appeared in 1886 among those who had been exposed to British and German colonial foods including sugars and cakes for roughly forty to eighty years. In the wild tribes still eating native raw foods, he reported no cavities at all, even without any teeth brushing. He made the same observation about African pastoral tribes including the Maasai, Fulani, and Samburu, who ate raw dairy and minimally cooked meats and had no dental caries. The Ugandan youth in one newsletter comparison had three times better dental health than their counterparts consuming processed foods.

He was clear that the problem is not sugar per se but the toxic compounds in industrially produced foods that accumulate in the body and eventually discharge as brain waste through the gum-tooth interface where they attack dentin.

Aajonus rejected the claim that fluoride protects teeth or prevents dentin damage. He described the original municipal water fluoridation study as flawed and the conclusions as unsupported. Fluoride does not help dental decay in his framework. Because dentin damage comes from heavy metals, not bacterial action, a substance directed at microbial populations or marketed as mineralizing enamel addresses neither the source of damage nor the mechanism of it.

Root canals, in his framework, fail to address dentin and tubule damage because they attempt to treat bacterial presence while leaving intact the source of the problem, which is the ongoing discharge of toxic metals from the brain through the bone and nerve tissue into the tooth. Bacteria found in dentin tubules adjacent to root canal teeth are not causing the infection; they are responding to heavy metal toxicity in that tissue. Drilling out the periodontal ligament and surrounding bone as some holistic dentists recommended following the work of Weston Price and George Meinig was something Aajonus considered unnecessary from his framework, because the biological problem is the metal discharge, not the bacteria or the ligament tissue per se.

Amalgam fillings damage dentin by releasing mercury that absorbs into the surrounding tooth material. He described having a tooth with the largest silver filling he had seen, with all that mercury absorbed into the tooth, and confirmed that mercury locking onto tooth tissue is a direct dentin-damaging mechanism distinct from the brain-discharge pathway.

When fillings are needed, he recommended porcelain or ceramic inlays as the best filling material. He later revised this toward composite plastic fillings because porcelain inlays, he observed, were cracking teeth too often due to the precision required in fitting them. A composite filling allows some degree of tooth healing around it in a way that a rigid porcelain inlay may not.

For crowns and bridges, he recommended those reinforced with gold, because gold-reinforced crowns allow more of the natural tooth structure to remain. Crowns made only from ceramic or porcelain require the tooth to be ground down severely to a small post, and that post may break within one to five years, forcing a root canal or an implant drilled into the jaw. He observed that he lost all three teeth whose crowns he allowed to pop out naturally and did not replace, losing them within nine years of the crowns coming off.

Aajonus described a mechanism by which toxicity can come not only from outside the tooth surface through gum discharge but from inside the tooth itself. When the detoxifying brain pushes metals down the nerve pathways that run through the interior of the tooth, the dentin can be damaged from the inside outward. He described this as toxicity coming from the inside out. When a cavity is filled, the body can no longer use that surface as a detox exit point, so it begins discharging out the other side of the tooth instead. This is why he recommended letting the body choose its own path rather than aggressively plugging every cavity, especially in people whose bodies are clearly in active heavy metal detoxification.

The white coating on the tongue is the same type of material as plaque on teeth: toxic metals bound with alkalinizing minerals being discharged from the body. The tongue is described as the second worst site after the gums for this discharge. This coating is protective in the same way plaque is protective. It represents the body successfully binding toxic material that would otherwise be damaging tissue directly. The same source of this discharge, the brain dumping via nerves and salivary pathways, is what creates the conditions for dentin damage when that discharge travels through the gum tissue instead.