Evolving and Optimizing A Do-It-Yourself Dental Health and Hygiene Strategy TPS-0115

This is just an update on the status of this off grid, off road desert homesteading lifestyle.

I have been avoiding going into any professional medical clinical environment for a number of years for various reasons that I've explained in the past.

But I'm not the only one who, for various reasons, is avoiding those settings more than ever in these times.

For a lot of people, and for all I know, including me, that could be very ill advised, no pun intended.

Because if you have symptoms that you're trying to ignore and you're kicking the can on things, then it would only get worse and be better to know as much as you can, intervene as early as possible.

That's just a little bit of a disclaimer. Certainly nothing that I say about what I'm doing should be taken as advice.

It's just reporting back from my lifestyle experiment, but it is apt for long term isolation, long term expedition survival, disaster preparedness, all that kind of stuff.

The lifestyle of wanting to understand what you encounter, what you have to deal with when there is no doctor present and you become your own first responder.

So this is just a bit of a med theme show. I want to address something I've probably covered to a degree in the past but I just wanna give it its own episode because it's fresh on my mind.

Having completed another cycle of what I would call, do it yourself, basic dental hygiene routines, beyond brushing and flossing and beyond what would be a daily routine.

I'm just gonna say that I feel blessed that the very poor dental hygiene habits I had for most of my life just being an urban dweller and being poor and having a relatively poor diet, even though I thought it was healthy, it was still filled with all kinds of carbs and sugars and calories, even if I thought they were organic or thought they were healthier, more natural, or more whole food based, there was still a lot of slowly growing cavities and just just poor oral health because of not having done a lot of research and application of do it yourself strategies and certainly not having insurance and not having the financial means to do routine care.

To put it mildly, the epidemiological conditions were less alarming in earlier stages in life, but I have no one to blame but myself.

It would behoove anyone to not take all forms of medicine into their own hands but certainly to be as educated as possible so that you make smart decisions, sometimes doing whatever the doctor tells you also is not the wisest choice.

So the more educated you are, the better. That's the the PSA for now.

But what has worked for me to manage and to sort of stabilize those cavities to prevent toothaches and, basically through some mixture of science and miracle and luck and skill, I've been able to stabilize those cavities.

I have relatively, what I would imagine to be decent breath and, and probably a average, if not slightly above average gum health relative to the sort inevitability of gingivitis to some degree or another.

So my strategy has been brushing with coconut oil as a sort of experimental hybrid of oil pulling and brushing with a natural substance other than highly chemically fortified, whatever the hell goes into toothpaste.

So I'm post toothpaste, and I have been relying on a method of anytime I consume anything very acidic or anything with a lot of sugar, which feeds acid producing bacteria in the mouth, I will brush.

Depending on the time of year, it's either gonna be a congealed little chunk of coconut oil that I'll mash up in my mouth to get it warm enough to be liquid or if it's a warmer time of year, then I will just dip the toothbrush in the oil and make the rounds thoroughly brushing without going to excess.

Interestingly, this strategy has stopped any of what I used to take for granted, which was gums bleeding every time I brush my teeth. I remember it being that way even in the times when I brushed most frequently so paradoxically if you don't brush it's reasonable to expect that if you brush after a while of not brushing, your gums would bleed because they're more diseased and just weaker.

I don't know exactly what the science is behind whether or not they would get toughened up. But for me, it was a normal thing.

If I brushed my teeth, my gums would bleed, not profusely, but there would just be blood in the spit.

The coconut oil brushing has made for no bleeding whatsoever.

The only time I will see any blood is if I don't floss every day when I do floss there's maybe a couple of points where there'll be a bit of blood and I don't have the straightest or prettiest teeth. There are points at which some of the teeth are more tangled than I wish they were.

That's where typically more plaque builds up, and a little more blood can occur from just very careful and very methodical flossing.

But I'm pleased to say that my I attribute my pretty miraculous blessed state of no major signs of disease. There's some mild reddening of the guns, some recession that I think is unavoidable. Luckily, it's not exposing anything that's very shocking to look at.

It's not creating a lot of foul smells, and it's not creating pain.

So the sort of scales of maintenance that I do between brushing at least twice a day with that method and not overdoing it, and kind of gauging that appropriateness by the fact that there's no bleeding, but that it's thorough enough.

Then over time, I will notice that plaque is building up.

I have a dental tool kit that has the plaque scraper and the hook and the flat scraper and the mirror.

It's not the, the biggest dental tool kit, and there's plenty of advisement against using such a kit without having professional dental training and I get that and so I use It sparingly and cautiously and I would prefer not to use it but I got it because of the fact that I knew I was gonna have to be reliant on it and I was gonna have to roll the dice.

There would be a trade off. I take my oral health and my life into my own hands by separating myself from the system where professionals could be providing that service for me.

I don't recommend that. It's part of that disclaimer of saying, you know, if you have access to it, you're comfortable...

I'm happy to say, the World Health Network, which is an organization that advocates for public health activists who are not in the pocket of whatever conspiratorial cabal you could blame for the abysmal state of public health and epidemiological official responses.

I don't wanna go into that at all. I've gone into it at length in the past, but to this day, my paradigm shifted.

The People's CDC and the World Health Network are two of the digests that I get in my news feed, my inbox to be able to stay current with what they're publishing and what they're studying and researching.

The World Health Network, did a series on clinical environments where they've established new protocols for ventilation and masking and various other mitigations that they're sustaining and investing in and iterating upon and I would say, not just in response to the COVID 19 pandemic, but as a result of the lessons, the ongoing lessons of COVID 19, which I think exposed a lot of inequalities, systemic inequalities, disparities in who is most at risk of being victimized by a very hubristic, public where public health has become a source of conspiratorial thinking.

I'm glad TO know that the opportunities do exist few and far between where if you wanted to be very cautious and go into a medical environment and say, Hey, I'm immuno-compromised, or I live with immuno-compromised people, it's very important that if I go to the dentist, the office has these mitigations in place. They're not gonna go away just because covid hospitalizations are down.

They're gonna stay in place because it's an appropriate way to think about what you're doing.

You're concentrating people in a clinical medical environment, you have a perfect storm of dominoes already wobbling ready to fall over and just a stiff breeze is gonna knock them over so anything that can be done to at least make those environments more strategic, I endorse that. There's a long way to go.

There's that adage, hospitals are where you go to die, people that will resist it to the bitter end.

I'm not an extremist in that sense. But again, I'm just kind of reiterating the importance and the value of people evolving their tactics.

It's a tactical situation. I have been relying on this do it yourself, dental hygiene maintenance routine.

Every time I get the inkling that it's time to break out that dental hygiene kit, I'm white knuckling it because while I have very steady hands, it's very awkward trying to get used to using mirrors.

I've even put on head lamps, and used one of those mirrors that you hold up in your hand, and then it's very awkward to try to orient yourself without a lot of experience.

If you're not doing this every day, you weren't trained to do it, you only do it once in a while...

I'm very cautious and very concerned, and it's very stressful. Not that there aren't techniques to relax into it as much as possible, but takes a lot of care and concentration to not gash oneself.

Dentist offices have an air suction tube that removes blood and whatever the broken off pieces of plaque are, just continually as they're moving along there.

They're keeping a well lit, well drained environment so that they're able to maintain a precise use in targeting of those tools whereas for me without that there's saliva, there's blood I'm trying to manage that.

Luckily, I've been able to use those tools, effectively sparingly, to remove the the major buildup of plaque at the base of the teeth.

The concentration being on the inside of the teeth, kind of under the tongue, areas where it's awkward to get light and a mirror reflection of.

But to be able to use that hook, to very carefully pick, inevitably, there's blood, but luckily, it's very superficial and goes away quickly.

But in the process of it, you're breaking off those chunks of plaque on the inside, lower teeth where it tends to build up the most.

I've looked around on the other parts of the inside, and really there's not much buildup, on the top or bottom on the inside.

There would tend to be just typical small amounts of build up around the gums on the outside and discoloration on the outside.

I'm limiting myself to just doing a very basic, very careful effort just get the plaque and tartar.

Very gently and sparingly, I've been able to remove stains as they build. I wouldn't consider them necessary to be the most medically threatening.

The plaque and the tartar that are gonna facilitate progression of disease states, but it's nice to feel like I've got some pearly whites, even if they're, getting older and getting a little more translucent, if I can get rid of at least the most superficial of stains with a light touch...

The method that I use, most recently to avoid expensive or more chemical based or high tech teeth whitening techniques.

I use on the scraper tool and add just a dab not even a pinch but just but just dip that scraper tool in the tiniest amount of Himalayan salt to get a bit of an abrasive effect on the outer, sort of biofilm, kind of plaque stain layer.

Not brushing with salt everyday, not brushing with anything abrasive on a daily basis. But a once in a while routine to do the whitening, in addition to scraping and picking out the plaque and then just sort of gently, not even scraping with the scraper. I wouldn't call it brushing or scraping, just kind of pushing, is more like using the scraper to gently push the softer material off the tooth. I wipe that on a clean paper towel.

It's not recommended to use abrasives in toothpaste so that you're basically just sanding them down and making them even more vulnerable to disease.

So if I can get away with it the way I have, it's a bare minimum strategy.

And yes, I would love to have, in this survival experiment a medically trained staff, or even just an individual, where we would train to perform these tasks on each other in a far more clinical and safe manner.

But for now, it's just me taking care of myself.

There's no methodology or secret that I'm trying to share, I'm just saying, for me it's an accomplishment that my teeth are not loose. They're not falling out, the the cavities that were growing for all of my life up until when I started to get more serious about this, they've been stabilized, and they've been stabilized for at least ten years.

It's been ten years since I started first oil pulling, and then about maybe four years that I've been brushing with coconut oil, and then doing this cyclical, DIY deep cleaning.

After that sometimes, it's counter intuitive that I would use turmeric after cleaning my teeth, because then it just stains them orange. But, well, I like the idea of doing some natural antiseptic mouthwash.

Even if just doing the more standard oil pulling, where you take a tablespoon and swish it around for between five to 20 minutes.

I wanna head off bacteria taking advantage of any of those openings in the skin. But so far so good. I may have not had any ill effects, even of taking that risk of, okay, I'm using these tools. I could be damaging the teeth or damaging the gums and this is when I would be most vulnerable to infection.

It would be most ironic and paradoxical if by using these means and measures to prevent having to go to the dentist, I put myself in a worse state of needing clinical care because of that effort.

I sometimes I say to myself, maybe you should just leave it alone and just hope and pray and wait, and eventually you'll get back to where you go to one of these World Health Network endorsed clinical settings where they take extra precautions and they're being smart about epidemiology.

That would be a luxury at this point. I definitely do not have the means to have that luxurious experience.

Therefore, every so often I'm at that crossroads.

Do I risk damage and infection and do this procedure knowing that just because I got lucky before, it doesn't mean I'm gonna get lucky again.

So far so good. I keep pushing through. One advancement I would say I've made in the last iteration was that I got outside and got into the sunlight and used one of my vehicles, just sort of crouched so that I could get well positioned in front of the side mirror with the right time of day, the right sun angle, that much blasting sunlight.

Luckily, it's cool enough still, to where I could get away with it without being burnt, although I was breaking a sweat.

But to have that much sunlight, it's just a total game changer from having to try to do this with lighting in an indoor space and sort of in the shade.

So I'm gonna make sure to remember, take advantage of those days where you get sunlight and it's not too hot, and sometimes that means just doing it very early in the day.

But that was a game changer. I got really good sunlight, and I was able to just open wide and get a good visual angle into where that plaque builds up, able to safely scrape it out without gashing or poking or jabbing into anywhere in my gums that I wasn't intending to reach.

Wherever I was at the intersection of the gums, I was able to be very gentle and careful.

So my strategy is simple, though this is not a recommendation.

It's just a report. It's just a captain's log. It's just been that, between brushing with coconut oil daily and this cyclical between brushing with coconut oil daily, flossing not necessarily daily, but flossing more often than breaking out the tool kit and then using that tool kit very carefully, and just the tiniest bit.

Not even a fraction of a teaspoon, ultimately, but it was just a few dabs to get a few grains of salt, just on the most stubborn stained areas, which is really just a couple of patches here and there.

I don't drink coffee, I only drink green tea. But it's unavoidable, you're gonna have the stains. It's just the way it is. So that works. Tiniest of tiny bits of salt, very sparing, very careful, very gentle, very minimal, very careful strokes with the scraper to kind of biofilm layer.

Just remove that gunk that the stain is building up, and once you're at where the real tooth is, really backing off. That is what I've been doing, I feel great.

There are people who will say that, and I'm one of them, that the cleaner your teeth are, the better your overall health and mental health are.

Some people really draw connection between oral hygiene and your sense of well being, emotionally, psychologically, it has a mental effect.

I don't think is metaphysical. I think it is biological.

Just the healthier, more robust, the less war fronts that your immune system has to fight on, the more energy you have, the more resources you have to fight bigger enemies, hopefully, things like fighting all the cancer cells that we all have at all times.

The emergent property of a tumor is the failure of the immune system to effectively remove and discard cancerous growth.

That's my understanding. So minimal no sugar added, only natural and mostly fruit, and not high carb sugar intake.

Then removing that from the teeth, just reducing the feed in the bloodstream for candida, all these ways to tactically advantage the immune system so that it can focus on the real enemies.

I remember on the Survival Medicine hour show with Doctor Bones and Nurse Amy, where I think he did say that in at least one of the wars, where there were records kept, something like 50% of of sick calls, meaning soldiers going into the medical tents with an issue, 50% were dental issues.

God knows what meals ready to eat across the ages in times of deployment and battlefields, god knows what kind of horrendous damage is done dentally with that kind of diet.

What's in those meal packets and what kind of oral hygiene protocols the soldiers were trained to do and what they actually maintained.

It's pretty scary. I mean, they say, the things that would hold you back from a space mission or a hiking expedition...

You really gotta know whether or not you got ticking time bombs in your mouth, because those are the things that will ruin your plans as much as a broken ankle or hypothermia or anything else that you would have to be concerned about.

So I'm very glad to know for myself that there seems to be no indication that I've got ticking time bombs of the teeth coming in that would result in needing to be extracted and pulled.

Everything seems to be finding its balance.

As long as I continue to be proactive, in a perfect world, there would be more World Health Network kind of endorsed places to go, to feel safer and within that perfect world, it would also be a situation where, if you were an off grider, you were living in austerity, in some sense, that you and your team, if you had the luxury of a team, your unit would be skilled and trained and using these tools so that it wouldn't be such a tough call to do it yourself or at least you had the training to do it yourself.

I certainly wish that when times were simpler earlier in life, not only would I had better oral hygiene proactively, but I would have maybe gone somewhere to learn some of these techniques, if not going to a full on actual accreditation training academy for dentistry.

If there is an Achilles heel of survivalism and austerity and off grid, it's definitely oral health.

It's easy when it's not causing you throbbing, aching pain, and you're not obviously looking yourself in the mirror. I almost never look at myself in the mirror anymore. It's easy under those circumstances, to kind of let things go and lose track. That's why I'm trying to be diligent about it, but I will admit, I'll kind of put it off if there are other environmental factors that make me say, you know if it's the dead middle of the summer, I don't wanna risk anything going wrong, because trying to get out of here in that heat could be a death sentence on its own.

So if I'm gonna take the gamble, better do it now, like I just did, get it out of the way. I can make it through the hot summer without even taking the risk of jabbing myself with one of these tools.

But perfect world, we wouldn't be so alone. We would develop better practices earlier in life. And then when we need to do this, and and we have access to clinical care, we could afford it, and it would be safe.

When we don't have that, we would ourselves, within a team or a unit, be able to provide this basic care and maintenance for each other.

It will be interesting to see if there is a point when I have the luxury to get a normal checkup and they could be mortified and tell me I need help right now, it's gonna cost you more than it ever would have if you would have just gone on a regular basis.

Either they're gonna say that or something between that and them saying, well, for not having gone to a real dentist for this many years, you've managed to at least prevent worsening of conditions, you stabilized them and you've made relatively light work for us because you've done a bit, done enough, done what you could on your own and that is impressive, because most people don't do anything, or they do things in a way that is damaging.

So we'll see. But for now, I'm pretty shy about my smile. I have been for a long time. But at least at the very least, I feel relatively secure and confident that I'm gonna make it and continue to do all right with mainly diet being probably the most important determining factor.

Because I know for myself, if I had a poor diet, I was gonna make my oral hygiene a nightmare.

So by improving my diet drastically, essentially being Paleo, no sugar added, paleo, avoiding high sugar, avoiding even naturally high sugar foods, not completely, but being sparing with dried fruits and whatnot, and being sparing with juices mainly which would concentrate natural sugars without adding them.

Being very careful with diet, and then being very careful with the strategy.

It's worked so far, wish me luck.

Hopefully listening to this makes you either go out and get the clinical care that you can afford and that you're comfortable with, or whatever you do, don't neglect it.

It creeps up, and like anything else, the longer you wait to address it, the more expensive, more deadly, more catastrophic, it can be.

I don't have a lot of visitors, whoever endeavors to come out here and visit me, which there are some folks who wanna do intensive permaculture, boot camp type training with me out here, which is what this place is for.

The first thing we're gonna do is hardcore, intensive first aid kind of skills.

I wanna make it a tradition that if we're off grid and remote, off road like this, that the first module we do is at least introductory but comprehensive survival medicine, off grid, wilderness first aid, type course work.

Do that first, and then feel more confident as we're doing other types of training.

We'll have done a refresher on our first aid, a refresher on all this med stuff, and maybe we do a bit of practical application training, like let's spot each other to do some of the medical maintenance work that we may have been putting off and get that out of the way and feel better about it. So we can minimize those risk factors. It would be great to say, now that there's somebody here other than me who can spot me and watch my back, maybe I'll do some things that I've been too afraid to do just because if I messed up, I wouldn't be able to haul myself out of here.

There are certain tasks I'd be like, well, there's a dangerous task that needs to get done, but I'm for damn sure not gonna do it unless somebody is here to haul me out of here if I get injured doing it. So that's teamwork.