So, in an effort to try new things that can both save my family money, and be beneficial to their health, I’m tackling toothpaste!
You might be saying to yourself, “How can that be important?” Well, without a healthy mouth, you have a harder time digesting your food, because your digestion starts by chewing the food with your teeth. There’s also the pesky problem of cavities, plaque, and gum disease that can make you either suffer greatly, or pay a dentist a small fortune.
So in looking through the internet, I found so many recipes I could use for toothpaste that I couldn’t even begin to try them all thoroughly. I have, however, attempted to try the most frugal methods I found.
The first method that was mentioned a lot was to just use baking soda. Wet your toothbrush, dip it into baking soda, and scrub. This method does help to keep your mouth in the alkaline balance that it needs to be to be healthy, and it most definitely gets your teeth clean. The only thing I worry about with using only baking soda is that it might be too abrasive on its own for everyday use, and I found that my mouth seemed to dry out while brushing.
A different method was to combine 3 tablespoons of baking soda, 1 tablespoon of table salt, 1 teaspoon of glycerin, then add water to get it to the paste-like consistency of your choice. This works as well as the baking soda on its own, but it’s not as dry. It also tastes salty (naturally), but I’m not that fond of salt, so I won’t use this very often. The glycerin adds a sweetness to the toothpaste, but it’s hard to say how much it might help your teeth. In my research about glycerin, some scientists believe it coats your teeth, and that this can prevent your teeth from remineralization (basically it prevents them from healing), but others believe that it is fine to use.
The final toothpaste recipe that I tried was made up of 2 tablespoons of coconut oil, 3 tablespoons of baking soda, a half packet of stevia powder, and 20-30 drops of peppermint oil. Mix it together with a fork, and it has the look and feel of store-bought toothpaste! It also worked well at cleaning my teeth and making them feel smooth like the commercial stuff.
The next batch I make, I’ll be changing the recipe a little. I will be using 2 tablespoons of Xylitol for the sweetener instead of the stevia. I will be also be using 10 drops of cinnamon oil, 5 drops of orange oil, and 3 drops of clove oil.
Why will I be making these changes? Clove oil has long been considered an herbal help for toothaches, but it has a VERY strong flavour, so the cinnamon is to help mask a bit of that flavour. The orange oil is to also help alleviate the strong flavours, but it is also a bit of an anti-inflammatory and has antiseptic properties.
Coconut oil is thought to be able to combat tooth decay, which surprisingly was in a CBC news article in September ("Coconut oil can combat tooth decay, study suggests”). It also helps prevent yeast overgrowth known as Candidus Albcans, and encourages calcium absorption into the body.
The reason I will be using Xylitol as a sweetener in place of stevia is that it has been proven to help fight plaque and yeast growth. In fact, many sources have suggested that 6 grams a day is needed for the best dental health! As for storage, all you need is an airtight container. I use small, glass, baby food jars — they are the perfect size for the amount the recipes make.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Been a while
I know it's been a long while since my last post, but it's been a very hard couple of weeks. I took my family to get Vega testing done, and our world has spiraled out of control since then! OK, so I exaggerate but it has been hard to learn new ways to eat! What is Vega testing you ask? Well, it is a machine that reads what your body needs more of, or what your body can no longer tolerate. It's very easy to do, and requires no needles (a prerequisite for my youngest son), all you do is hold a wand like end in your right hand, while the person running the machine gently presses what looks like an embossing needle (rounded tipped metal thing with a plastic handle) to one of two pressure points on two of your left fingers. Seems strange, and unreal, but sometimes it is dead on to what you already know is true that you know it works! (For more info on what it is and what it does, look here: http://www.wholisticresearch.com/info/artshow.php3?artid=80 ).
We are very lucky to have a person in Williams Lake that does the testing, or we may never have gotten it done (time travel and planning are sometimes too hard when you include four peoples schedules)! Body Connection by Joe offers a wide range of holistic therapies, and help. Our tests for the four of us took just under two hours, and told us some things we did not expect! First being that we all suffered from an overgrowth of Candida (Candidiasis), which is an overgrowth of the yeast bacteria that naturally occur in your stomach and throughout your intestines. When it really gets out of control you can get what is called "Leaky Gut Syndrome", which is where that candida is VERY overgrown, and is growing THROUGH the intestinal wall. Then the Candida can "leak" undigested foods and toxins into your bloodstream, thereby causing your body a multitude of symptoms and stressing your body. (for more info on this, check here: http://www.holistichelp.net/candida.html ).
How can something that your body produces on it's own to protect your body become overgrown? Sadly the answer is simple: the american diet combined with antibiotics. You may say "Wait a minute, I'm not American, so why would I have it?" Well, the American diet is a generalized statement of the over processed and high in sugar diet that is become more prevalent in North America. Believe me...I LOVE the taste, and instant gratification of the American diet, so having to give up quite a few things and do a "diet" hurts me, especially since I have lived my life opposed to "dieting" having seen first hand the stupidity of yo-yo dieting. Most of the time people wind up right back where they were BEFORE they started the diet if they were lucky, others wound up WORSE for it! Either ill because of improper diet that starved their body of vital nutrients, or wound up heavier because they had not fed their body enough food so when they WERE off the diet their body screamed "Keep excess fat for emergencies!".
I know, I am trying to lead a greener life, but giving up wheat is REALLY hard for me! I often would have an artisan flat bread for a lunch meal, with other things, but the exciting part was ALWAYS the bread for me. With the testing my family also found that wheat was in our body's does not need more of list, along with nuts, and cows milk. So we have had to make alot of changes in our diet. Eating local is still important to us, so we are still buying our meat and milk locally, our produce locally as much as possible, but now we have had to get more inventive for other things. Now we are looking at wheat free, yeast free, starch free, sugar free, and cow's milk free. At least goat's milk is ok, in small quantities, and my youngest would die if we hadn't found goats milk cheeses, and tofu cheese slices! Bread is now buying Squirelly bread (made from sprouted grains, making it ok to eat), while I figure out how in the heck to bake in this style.
It used to be that I could make something out of the "nothing" that my kids and hubby saw in the cupboards, now I am wrestling with it myself. We have so far spent two weeks slowly getting rid of foods that our bodys cannot take anymore of, and now we are trying to be on the strict diet section of the candida diet. Nothing that can promote yeast growth. So most fruit is out the window, and what little we can have is limited because fruit has sugars that can help the candida live. Potatoes have starch in them, carrots have sugar! >_<
You get what I'm saying, we have been busy learning about this, and I've been searching for recipes for snacks and treats so my kids have some when they go to school. I think the best thing to come out of this is that now my kids are learning how important it is to read the labelled ingredients on all food, and that the choices we used to make were not very healthy to begin with. So what started out as a change in our mindset on garbage and how to dispose of it, and the costs of buying things outside of our community actually cost more for the environment has now turned into an even bigger lifestyle change. I guess that when I make changes in my life it winds up being "go big, or go home"! :)
We are very lucky to have a person in Williams Lake that does the testing, or we may never have gotten it done (time travel and planning are sometimes too hard when you include four peoples schedules)! Body Connection by Joe offers a wide range of holistic therapies, and help. Our tests for the four of us took just under two hours, and told us some things we did not expect! First being that we all suffered from an overgrowth of Candida (Candidiasis), which is an overgrowth of the yeast bacteria that naturally occur in your stomach and throughout your intestines. When it really gets out of control you can get what is called "Leaky Gut Syndrome", which is where that candida is VERY overgrown, and is growing THROUGH the intestinal wall. Then the Candida can "leak" undigested foods and toxins into your bloodstream, thereby causing your body a multitude of symptoms and stressing your body. (for more info on this, check here: http://www.holistichelp.net/candida.html ).
How can something that your body produces on it's own to protect your body become overgrown? Sadly the answer is simple: the american diet combined with antibiotics. You may say "Wait a minute, I'm not American, so why would I have it?" Well, the American diet is a generalized statement of the over processed and high in sugar diet that is become more prevalent in North America. Believe me...I LOVE the taste, and instant gratification of the American diet, so having to give up quite a few things and do a "diet" hurts me, especially since I have lived my life opposed to "dieting" having seen first hand the stupidity of yo-yo dieting. Most of the time people wind up right back where they were BEFORE they started the diet if they were lucky, others wound up WORSE for it! Either ill because of improper diet that starved their body of vital nutrients, or wound up heavier because they had not fed their body enough food so when they WERE off the diet their body screamed "Keep excess fat for emergencies!".
I know, I am trying to lead a greener life, but giving up wheat is REALLY hard for me! I often would have an artisan flat bread for a lunch meal, with other things, but the exciting part was ALWAYS the bread for me. With the testing my family also found that wheat was in our body's does not need more of list, along with nuts, and cows milk. So we have had to make alot of changes in our diet. Eating local is still important to us, so we are still buying our meat and milk locally, our produce locally as much as possible, but now we have had to get more inventive for other things. Now we are looking at wheat free, yeast free, starch free, sugar free, and cow's milk free. At least goat's milk is ok, in small quantities, and my youngest would die if we hadn't found goats milk cheeses, and tofu cheese slices! Bread is now buying Squirelly bread (made from sprouted grains, making it ok to eat), while I figure out how in the heck to bake in this style.
It used to be that I could make something out of the "nothing" that my kids and hubby saw in the cupboards, now I am wrestling with it myself. We have so far spent two weeks slowly getting rid of foods that our bodys cannot take anymore of, and now we are trying to be on the strict diet section of the candida diet. Nothing that can promote yeast growth. So most fruit is out the window, and what little we can have is limited because fruit has sugars that can help the candida live. Potatoes have starch in them, carrots have sugar! >_<
You get what I'm saying, we have been busy learning about this, and I've been searching for recipes for snacks and treats so my kids have some when they go to school. I think the best thing to come out of this is that now my kids are learning how important it is to read the labelled ingredients on all food, and that the choices we used to make were not very healthy to begin with. So what started out as a change in our mindset on garbage and how to dispose of it, and the costs of buying things outside of our community actually cost more for the environment has now turned into an even bigger lifestyle change. I guess that when I make changes in my life it winds up being "go big, or go home"! :)
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