A Prehistoric Diet Could Be Good For Your Teeth

In previous blog posts we talked about the strange dental practices of ancient cultures. But before we become too judgmental, perhaps we should look at the teeth of prehistoric man.

Prehistoric humans didn’t have dentists. They didn’t use toothbrushes, have floss or toothpaste, and they certainly didn’t fluoridate their water supply. But somehow they had healthy teeth, capable of chewing the toughest cuts of meat, and chomping down on raw vegetables.

How did they do this? Perhaps the issue isn’t when they lived, but what they ate. Call it the original Paleo Diet.

“Hunter-gatherers had really good teeth,” says Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA. “[But] as soon as you get to farming populations, you see this massive change. Huge amounts of gum disease, and cavities start cropping up.”

In a study published in the latest Nature Genetics, Cooper and his research team looked at calcified plaque on ancient teeth from 34 prehistoric human skeletons.

Good Bacteria / Bad Bacteria

They discovered that as our diets changed over time — shifting from meat, vegetables and nuts to carbohydrates and sugar — so too did the composition of bacteria in our mouths.

Not all oral bacteria are bad. In fact, many of these microbes help us by protecting against more dangerous pathogens.

However, the researchers found that as prehistoric humans transitioned from hunting and gathering to farming, certain types of disease-causing bacteria that were particularly efficient at using carbohydrates started to win out over other types of “friendly” bacteria in human mouths. The addition of processed flour and sugar during the Industrial Revolution only made matters worse.

“What you’ve really created is an ecosystem which is very low in diversity and full of opportunistic pathogens that have jumped in to utilize the resources which are now free,” Cooper says.

And that’s a problem, because the dominance of harmful bacteria means that our mouths are basically in a constant state of disease.

“You’re walking around with a permanent immune response, which is not a good thing,” says Cooper. “It causes problems all over the place.”

In addition to oral disease, those problems may include diabetes, obesity and even heart disease.

According to Cooper, bacteria make up approximately 90 percent of the cells in our bodies. He believes that we focus too much on ourselves and not enough on this so-called microbiome.

A Balanced Diet – 10,000 Years In The Making

“We brush our teeth and we floss, and we think that we’ve got good oral hygiene. But [we’re] completely failing to deal with the underlying problem,” he says. “Ten years from now, I think we’re going to find that the whole microbiome is a key part of what you get monitored for and treated for.”

As for right now, Cooper suggests that one way to help return your microbiome to a healthier, more balanced state might be to cut out all of those processed carbs and start eating like our ancestors.

Or if you can’t stand to live without sweets, perhaps you can indulge in the occasional Zollipop.

Uveneer is the invention of cosmetic dentist, Dr. Sigal Jacobson. Though only being launched since February of 2014, Dr. Jacobson’s patented design is already being touted as “groundbreaking” and “essential” by dentists worldwide. A native of Australia, Dr. Jacobson also runs her own practice  Jacobson Dental Group of Melbourne. To learn more about what Uveneer can do for you and your patients, visit our Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages!