Health has been very much on my mind lately. Last week, Joy got thrush and this week we have a doctor appointment where I know her tooth decay will be mentioned again in the context of suggesting I stop night nursing.
I chose to treat the thrush with homeopathy, diet change and probiotics instead of going to her doctor to get anti-fungals. This was a hard decision for me, but one I felt and still feel very strongly about. So many Western Medicine treatments only throw the body further off-balance, creating more and more future health problems. I would like to avoid this chain reaction, so I abstained from the easier way of doing things. We changed our entire diet in one day and pursued unconventional treatments in the face of intense skepticism. In the process, I had to learn more about standing in my own truth. Difficult, but a valuable learning experience.
Now, Joy seems to have recovered fully from her thrush, but we have the trickier issue of her teeth. Interestingly, too many refined carbs is a culprit in both of these issues, hence the diet change is so important.
I’ve been doing a lot of research this week and found that science backs me up in my belief that breastmilk does not cause tooth decay. In fact, it has healthy bacteria which fight tooth decay. Cow milk would have the same makeup except for the pasteurization process.
Turns out, many factors go into tooth decay. Diet, bacteria, genetics, and in kid’s teeth, gestation. One thing that can cause tooth decay like this is stress during pregnancy (and boy was I stressed), or illness (I had a wicked flu second trimester).
The good news is that we might be able to stop the decay. Diet change is huge, and we are doing that. Homeopathy can help, and we are doing that too. Probiotics, ditto. Interesting that the treatments are the same for both these issues. That falls in line with the concept in Natural Medicine that an illness is just one symptom of the bodies overall imbalance, and that multiple illnesses can be treated by the same single method because it treats the core imbalance.
There are other methods which I plan discussing with the dentist when we see him in a little over a week, icludong essential oils and also more conventional treatments (like sealants). The sad thing is, this whole “nighttime breastfeeding is bad” mantra is not only untrue, it also distracts from other types of problem solving. I think I’ve found a dentist who is a little more savvy, and hopefully he can help me navigate these waters.
It’s really interesting to me how false ideas about health, bearing little substantive evidence, enter the mainstream and become conventionally considered fact.
Take flouridated water. While flouride can help teeth, it is also a very dangerous chemical. It’s put into our water but it actually has not been proven to benefit our oral or overall health when taken this way. Actually, it’s a toxin, considered slightly more toxic than lead, and yet is used in much greater quantities than lead is safe at. Flouride overdose has been linked to many cancers and other illnesses including Alzheimers. Why do we put it in our drinking water?
How about lice treatment? Remember getting lice in kindergarten, and having to use that awful shampoo? The toxic chemical smell, the burn on your skin. Did you know that olive oil kills lice even more effectively than that crap? Load your hair with olive oil, don a shower cap, and let it sit for an hour. All the lice and nits will be dead!
In my opinion, a lot of this comes down to greed and corruption again. People want to make money, so they invent ridiculous crap and then convince the public we need it. I’ve heard the whole Flouride thing was an industrial cover-up by industries that didn’t want to have to pay legal consequences of their actions, as they were facing numerous lawsuits for health damages done to people downstream of plants that were dumping Flouride. Instead, they created a giant spin campaign to convince the public that Flouride in drinking water is good. Then, instead of spending money to dispose of toxic waste, they get paid money to dump it into the drinking water. Messed up, huh? I don’t know if this story is true or not, but if you know, please tell me! Makes me want to buy a reverse-osmosis water filtering system, but they run about $300!
Alas, it’s so much effort and money to stay ahead of all the toxic crap being shoved at us, and so hard and scary to defy convention in pursuit of healthier healing. Push those edges too far, and get treated like a freak. Avoid pushing, and become complicit in your own pharmaceuticalized (sure, its a word) destruction. It’s oh, so easy to fall for the lines. It’s so easy to not see the harm. I know. I get hypnotized by it sometimes, too. But, I continue to fight this toxic culture. Because it’s who I am and what I am here for.
Glad to be back! Smoooooooooch!!!!