Recently, one of my relatives who has extremely bad teeth, tried Ekadashi fasting. He had a terrible toothache for past few days and there was no dentist to treat his condition because of corona lock-down. Every night, his tooth would pain terribly.
So, he decided to give a break to eating and went for Ekadashi zero food, zero water fasting this month on 18th (18th May 2020).
Very surprising, the toothache stopped. And he did not take any pain killer or any other medicines. He also did not make any other kind of dietary or lifestyle change. We can attribute it to not eating anything the whole day. And so there was no food stuck in his cavities that might cause pain. However, the tooth did not ache even the next day when he started eating food, and for few days after that. It started aching again on 23rd May 2020.
And this got me to think about our dental problems in a different way. probably, our digestive system is the source of all our disorders, even the dental ones.
Digestive system is the source of all the body fluids, including the saliva. And saliva is the fluid that creates the oral environment. Now, we know that all body fluids share some basic features. For example, if the digested juice is acidic in nature , everything right from blood to urine will turn more acidic. No wonder, what goes inside, makes the body.
And wrong food can turn all the body fluids slightly more acidic than normal. And we can imagine what can happen if our saliva is slightly more acidic than normal on a regular basis.
Normally, the food stuck in teeth gets softened and slips out after some time, along with saliva. Tongue also helps to clean the teeth. However, what if the environment around teeth is not healthy?
Acidic environment in the oral cavity can weaken the gums, cause mouth ulcers, help the germs to thrive and thus trigger rapid tooth decay. And probably that’s why we see that some people rapidly develop tooth problems, whereas many others do well even without a strict dental hygiene.
A few decades back, a lot of Indian had bright white teeth,without use of any tooth brush or tooth paste. However, they used to fast regularly, used neem twig as brush(and this twig provided both natural bristles and a bitter tooth cleaning solution). Besides, the overall quantity of sugar in the food was very low.
Sugar in our food does not affect our teeth that much by getting stuck on them. I personally believe that what sugar does to the overall body fluids is more important. It creates a rapid sugar surge that takes some effort on body’s part to control. Very frequent sugar surges tire out the pancreas and promote rapid decay across the body, including the teeth. Probably, that’s why dental problems are far more severe in case of diabetics!
If all of the above logic is correct teeth health is directly related to gut health. Probably, it is impossible to have healthy teeth , if your gut is not healthy. And therefore a dentist should also prescribe a healthy diet and lifestyle to keep the digestion healthy, because that’s the root of all dental problems.
Most of the women experience rapid tooth decay during pregnancy. Probably, it is because they eat all kinds of things, that too in a huge amount. This abnormal diet puts an extra pressure on the digestive system. And it gets derailed. The toxins thus produced due to under-digested food alter the composition of saliva and thus accelerate tooth decay.
So, now I believe that dry fasting for 24 hours can actually bring back not only your digestion, but also all body fluids to a completely balanced state. It definitely helps to remove excess sugar from all the body fluids, but also deep cleanse the body tissues and rejuvenate them! And if we do not spoil its effects by random eating afterwards, monthly Ekadashi dry fasting can extrapolate and multiply the health benefits exponentially.
The above explanation looks logical. However, I have no experimental proof for the above hypotheses. Anyways, I look forward to conduct some experiments on this concept in future. If you already have similar experiences or are doing some kind of related research I will be more than happy to know about it, please share!
May all of us achieve the ultimate aim of human life through shared wisdom!
Leave a Reply