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Biological Dentistry Continued
Price wanted to find HEALTHY people, find out what made
them so, and see if there were any patterns among these
people. During his nine years of journeys, Price did indeed
come across groups of primitives who were having problems
for various reasons. Price noted these groups down, what
appeared to be their difficulty, and then passed them over.
Again, he was not interested in sick people. Price often
found that the health problems were caused by food shortages
(especially a lack of animal products), droughts, things
people living off the land must face from time to time, or
contact with white European civilization. Dr. Price and his
wife went just about everywhere in their journeys. Price
visited with fourteen groups of native peoples. After
gaining the trust of the village elders in the various
places, Price did what came naturally: he counted cavities
and physically examined them. Imagine his surprise to find,
on average, less than 1% of tooth decay in all the peoples
he visited! He also found that these people's teeth were
perfectly straight and white, with high dental arches and
well-formed facial features. And there was something more
astonishing: none of the peoples Price examined practiced
any sort of dental hygiene; not one of his subjects had ever
used a toothbrush! |
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Dear Farid,
In this issue I discuss the final aspect of Biological
dentistry namely Nutrition and Physical Degeneration
In the 1930's, numerous commentators were proffering all
sorts of unlikely explanations for the alarming rise in
tooth decay, including the alleged 'soiling' of racial stock
by interbreeding. Accomplished dentist Weston A. Price had
long suspected faulty nutrition. To find out just whether
inter-racial marriages or substandard diets were to blame,
Price decided to visit isolated communities around the
world. He reasoned that if genetics were the sole
explanation, then native peoples would have the same
incidence of tooth decay regardless of whether they ate
traditional diets or imported Western foods.
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About Dr.
Weston A. Price
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Dr. Weston A. Price, a Cleveland dentist, has been called
the "Charles Darwin of Nutrition." In his search for the
causes of dental decay and physical degeneration that he
observed in his dental practice, he turned from test tubes
and microscopes to unstudied evidence among human beings.
Dr. Price sought the factors responsible for fine teeth
among the people who had them- the isolated "primitives."
The world became his laboratory. As he traveled, his
findings led him to the belief that dental caries and
deformed dental arches resulting in crowded, crooked teeth
and unattractive appearance were merely a sign of physical
degeneration, resulting from what he had
suspected-nutritional deficiencies. |
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Read on... |
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Dr.
Price's Nutrition Studies
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Price noticed that his patients were suffering more and more
chronic and degenerative diseases. He also noticed that his
younger patients had increasingly deformed dental arches,
crooked teeth, and cavities. This definitely concerned him:
he had not seen such things just ten or fifteen years ago.
Why was it happening now? Price also noticed a strong
correlation between dental health and physical health: a
mouth full of cavities went hand in hand with a body either
full of disease, or generalized weakness and susceptibility
to disease. In Price's time, tuberculosis was the major
infectious illness, the White Scourge. He noticed that
children were increasingly affected, the ones with the lousy
teeth. |
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Seminole
Girls
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The photographs of Dr. Weston Price illustrate the
difference in facial structure between those on native diets
and those whose parents had adopted the "civilized" diets of
devitalized processed foods. The "primitive" Seminole girl
(right) has a wide, handsome face with plenty of room for
the dental arches. The "modernized" Seminole girl (above)
born to parents who had abandoned their traditional diets,
has a narrowed face, crowded teeth, and a reduced immunity
to disease. |
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