Saliva pH Testing to Validate Claims of Weston A. Price, DDS
People who follow my blog and Facebook account know that I am a huge fan of Weston A. Price and know that I believe that he discovered principles of nutrition which – among other things – would render our entire modern dental industry unnecessary by keeping our teeth healthy and strong without toothpaste, toothbrushes, sealants, annual cleanings and plaque removal, etc. One of the claims which Price makes is
If it [nutrition] has been sufficiently improved, [acid producing] bacterial growth will not only be inhibited, but the leathery decayed dentine will become mineralized from the saliva by a process similar to petrification. LINK
One of the scientists I interact with on a science forum has proposed a test of Price’s claim by checking my saliva pH at various times after rinsing with some sugary food (or raw milk). She has stated
Your pH will drop, I’m pretty damn certain, because I simply don’t believe Price was correct when he claimed his diet would CHECK THE GROWTH AND ACTIVITY OF ACID-SECRETING BACTERIA.
There may be some people around who are lucky enough to have mouth flora that don’t include them, but I don’t think you are, because you already have cavities. And everyone else’s pH drops after a sugar rinse. Note, the pH drops after the sugar has been in your mouth – it doesn’t have to get to your stomach, and your blood in order to cause the pH drop. First of all the effect is really fast, second, it happens even if you don’t swallow the sugar.
In other words, sugar in the mouth affects the pH of your mouth, because it feeds acid-secreting bacteria, and that acid then eats away at your teeth causing caries.
But let’s see if Price’s diet has mesmerised your acid-secreting bacteria into not growing and not eating sugar and pissing acid afterwards. LINK
Another scientist did his own test (non-Price diet as far as I can tell) … his posts on this topic begin here … LINK … Post #341.
Well, my initial results are in and photo documentation is below … The scientist quoted above said this in response to my experiment
Well, that’s very interesting.
Looks as though your diet (or something else in your diet) may have indeed CHECKED THE GROWTH AND ACTIVITY OF ACID-SECRETING BACTERIA in your mouth.
Excellent.
It still, of course, doesn’t make Price (or you) correct that sugar in the mouth doesn’t cause tooth-eroding acid (we know that it does, and damitall just demonstrated that it does). But it does suggest that your diet may suppress the acid-producing bacteria.
Or that you aren’t doing the test properly (it happens). LINK
I started testing at about noon on 2/2/2015. My typical diet is about 3 – 4 gallons of Amish raw milk per week, 1 – 2 eggs per day plus a small sausage patty for breakfast with a glass of milk, then I usually eat some kind of meat for lunch with another glass of milk plus maybe some veggies, then for dinner I usually eat a bowl of cold cereal, and perhaps have another glass of milk with a cookie sometime throughout the day. Today as I began my test, it had been about 3.5 hours since I ate breakfast and my baseline pH test appears above on the left …
I then drank about 1/4 cup of Amish raw milk and swished it around throughly, then swallowed it, then tested again 10 minutes later. That picture appears below …
I tested again at the 30 minute point after swallowing …
So initial indications for my milk test are that Price was right.
How about syrup? I don’t have any at the moment, but I do have candy – chocolate candy with whit minty center … Mmmmm! Here’s the pics from that test …
I got delayed with a phone call and could not do the last test at the 30 minute point.
After that I had a not-very-Weston-Pricish lunch except for some raw milk and tested again a 3pm and got a pH of 6.0 Also, last night I attended a Superbowl party and ate quite a bit of junk food as well as a bowl of chili. I am thinking that if I follow a Weston Price diet religiously, my saliva would probably test at 6.5 always or maybe even 7.0. But if I deviate a bit, I might see a low of 6.0
So again, it appears that Price was right.
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Maple syrup testing …
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And, lest you think my pH paper is not working …
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A helpful link on Mellanby’s work along these lines http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2520490/pdf/brmedj07379-0001.pdf
Dental Caries Control Within Our Reach (1940s paper)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002817743190033
History of the discovery of vitamin D (Sir Edward Mellanby involved)
http://www.nature.com/bonekeyreports/2014/140108/bonekey2013213/full/bonekey2013213.html
Oral Manifestations of Nutritional Disorders-A Review (2010)
http://www.indianjournals.com/ijor.aspx?target=ijor:johs&volume=1&issue=2&article=009