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Rapid Gum Recession
Can anyone help me with ideas on how to stop rapidly receding gums?
Mine seem to have been getting worse really quickly in the past few weeks, to the point where I now have nerve sensitivities on almost all of my teeth and can visibly see the recession worsening every few days. It's really scaring me. I haven't changed my diet much since this started happening, but I suspect it has to do with supplementation and detoxing too hard.
My current diet is mostly leanish meat (maybe 85% lean on average) and 1-2 cooked cups of white sushi rice per day. The meat is primarily grass-finished local beef (maybe as 2/3 ground, 1/3 steaks), but at times I've had a good mixture of lamb, caribou, and rabbit, with a little bit of salmon and chicken I caught/raised myself. I've supplemented with small amounts of ascorbic acid here and there (100 mg 2-3 times per day) just in case I'm not getting enough from food. I've gone back and forth eating small amounts of strawberries, blueberries, lemon juice...it really doesn't seem like a Vitamin C issue though, because my gums don't bleed unless they get poked or hit by floss pretty hard and the recession/inflammation started happening so quickly.
I have supplemented with thiamine for stretches of time, as well as a B-complex. The onset of the recent gum recession seemed to have coincided with trying TTFD for several days in a row for the first time, but I hadn't noticed the same problem with Benfotiamine in the past, and I've still had worsening gums after stopping both TTFD and Benfotiamine.
I'm wondering if it could be related to zinc deficiency even though I should be getting plenty of zinc from all the meat I eat? The recent recession also generally coincided with trying out shredded coconut, which seems to have a fair bit of copper in it, and if copper is antagonistic to zinc and I still have a good deal of copper from liver and plant foods before starting a low VA carnivore-ish diet a year ago, maybe that extra copper is enough to cause problems in tandem with other nutrient supplementation driving up the use of zinc for detox?
I definitely feel like I've been detoxing too hard for a long time (I'm still getting a lot of burning yellow diarrhea), which I may have brought on by supplementing with thiamine and/or the B-complex. Magnesium supplements could also be contributing...I've been taking 400-1,000 mg of various forms for the past year in order to keep my bowels moving and to try to reduce chronic muscle twitching and cramps.
I'm still very curious why nobody else trying a carnivore or carnivore-ish version of low VA has encountered the diarrhea I have, which is often bright yellow and burns pretty bad when it is. Maybe magnesium is a major limiting factor to detox and I am driving my detox too hard by supplementing with it? And then supplementing with thiamine and other B-vitamins further ramps up the detox, which further drives other nutrients like zinc down?
I'm not sure how to slow the detox down without removing meat, which I'm extremely reluctant to do, because to me removing meat means I have to eat plant toxins instead, and I am loathe to risk getting oxalate damage or other problems resurface from plant foods. I would like to stop supplementing magnesium (and everything else), but it seems like I need it for my bowels to keep functioning at the moment.
Be careful with additives, they may contain toxic auxiliary substances such as talc, titanium dioxide, silicon dioxide, etc. These substances are very toxic (google).
In my opinion, almost all magnesium supplements are bad, because it is not rational to get 15 mg of ionic magnesium (3% RDA) and 30 mg of talc or something else from one tablet
By the way, I am interested in how predators cope with the problem of accumulation of heavy metals? As far as I know, they are mainly bound by fiber and excreted with bile.
Quote from Даниил on August 27, 2021, 2:48 amBe careful with additives, they may contain toxic auxiliary substances such as talc, titanium dioxide, silicon dioxide, etc. These substances are very toxic (google).
In my opinion, almost all magnesium supplements are bad, because it is not rational to get 15 mg of ionic magnesium (3% RDA) and 30 mg of talc or something else from one tablet
This may not seem serious to you. But here is a discussion of a study in which talc in a relatively small dosage causes diabetes. So do not underestimate such trifles.
By the way, I'm sure they do this on purpose. I have seen pills containing dozens of toxic "auxiliary substances". That makes no sense.
I have no idea as to why you are detoxing so severely. However, the rapid gum recession sounds like the classic symptoms of scurvy.
For a lot of reasons, I believe that scurvy is actually caused by vA toxicity. Here’s just one reason:
In 1757, the British began stocking their ships with a “portable soup.”[307] The “portable soup” consisted of “all the offals of oxen killed in London for use of the Navy” with salt and vegetables added in.[308] The soup, however, was dried so that it had the appearance of slabs of glue.[309] Although the “portable soup” was unappetizing, it was perfect for the navy because it had a shelf life of years.[310] In addition to the supplies stored at the beginning of each voyage, ships often traded for additional supplies in foreign ports and lands.[311] In particular, rice, wince and other hard alcohols were particularly valuable when trading.[312]
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8852139/Mayberry.html?sequence=2
This “portable” soup was an absolute staple among British Navy and merchant ships for about a century when the incidence rate of scurvy was at its worst.
I’ve been recently researching the history of the determination of the root cause of scurvy being a vitamin C deficiency. There is actually incredibly weak evidence supporting that concept.
However, it was generally and slowly agreed that lemon juice was an effective preventative and treatment for scurvy.. My preliminary thinking on it is that it wasn’t so much the vitamin C content of the lemon juice that was responsible for its effect, rather it may have been its citral content.
Regardless of the true mechanism, that of vitamin C or citral, I think it would be worth trying lemon juice. From its use in the 18th century it appears that two spoonfuls a day was the dose used. At that dose the effects were seen in about two weeks.
maybe the high protein is taxing the liver too much
your situation kind of reads like rabbit starvation
Im not sure that all you experience is just detox. But if it is then I would stop it for a few months until the problem with your gums goes away.
Maybe you tolerate fruit and the fiber will stop your diarrhea problem. But if you already have sensitive teeth to begin with (like me) then you should make fruit smoothies and drink them through a straw. You dont need to eat a ton of fruit just add raw honey for calories and add water if the smoothie is to sweet for your taste. For example I eat 300g of organic frozen berries and 300g of grapes a day. You dont need more.
I love all the info you are getting and I think I'm going to try the lemon idea. I just thought I'd add my current thoughts which as usual are more of a string of ideas...
When I go to my (somewhat holistic) dentist, she tells me that gum recession happens because the tooth is covered with little tiny crystals. Like if you looked at it with a microscope, it would be all crusty and not smooth. And the gum tries to adhere but its uncomfortable and hurts the gum. That is why they scrape your teeth while you squirm in the chair. (yikes)
When I hit middle age and my gums started receding I also noticed that food particles stick really badly everywhere. I'm guessing it's the same thing. Non-smooth teeth.
We know that VA toxicity does some pretty weird stuff with bones and tissues and everything. We also have Grant's example that over time his teeth became "easier to keep clean" and healthier.
I notice that my gums are the unhappiest next to teeth that are the yellow-ist. And that the places where they are the yellowist are also rough.
I sort of wonder if the model of plaque is sort of not the whole picture (suprise!) and that what is actually happening is that the bone of the teeth is becoming a bit rough because of VA toxicity in the tooth itself.
In my own mouth, recently, a sliver of yellow tooth just came right off the other day. I actually feel like the tooth is happier now. I have a bad bite , I suppose I might have injured the tooth because it met improperly with the tooth above.
My own gum recession problems might be somewhat better (from before lowered VA) but not all the way better. I'm on the slow boat because we aren't zero VA. I sort of wonder if renovation is happening. But it is slow.
Now, Tim has had benefits with stringent cleanliness, which I can't really do. I do like brushing my teeth often, and I use lots of tooth paste. But my intuition tells me my mouth needs gentle handling, and heroic methods usually backfire on me.
As a former WAPF'er I my brain also goes to vitamin K and vitamin D. Now, Price might have had Vitamin A wrong, but maybe he wasn't wrong about the need for these vities. (and E too?) He was all about teeth. It seems to me that hubs and I each have a hankering for some vitamin K foods and there is a thread about them being especially delish. 🙂
I wonder if vitamin K is depleted in meats that are dried. The sea farers thought that FRESH meat helped with scurvy. But maybe they just ate less "portable soup" when they had fresh meat.
Rabbit starvation would be a route to low vitamin K because it is a fat soluble vitie.
I hate the idea of all those extra things in pills, so I don't know if I'll continue with this, but... when I want to experiment with minerals now, I grind up the pill in a mortar and pestle and wet my finger and stick it in the powder and lick my finger. Mini micro dosing lol. But in my mind, micro doses often would be more like real life. 🙂 Me and mineral supplementation have never gotten along.