Ramiel Nagel's Book page

[Lewis]

I mean Cure Tooth Decay: Heal and Prevent Cavities with Nutrition:

Amazon.com: Cure Tooth Decay: Heal and Prevent Cavities with Nutrition, Second Edition (9780982021309): Ramiel Nagel, D.D.S. Timothy Gallagher: Books

My copy just arrived. Has anyone else read this and got any thoughts?

I haven't really touched it yet. I've just flicked through.

There's probably far more interesting stuff in there, but I was interested to see that he says the Loetschental Valley Swiss actually removed most of the bran and germ from their rye flour.

So, if he's right (and I bet he is) not what Price had thought. It's seems to me that the text of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration sometimes indicates a kind of quasi-religious attitude towards Nature (and, I guess, its "author"). I'm not knocking that at all—just saying that it seems to be the case. So I think Price is inclined to conclude that food in its most "natural" state must be best—just as its left Nature's hands. I think sometimes he was inclined to think that was always what he was seeing with his "healthy primitives" even when sometimes much more was going on.

I knew the Swiss were sourdough fermenting their bread—in fact, you must with rye, because yeast won't raise it. But I did not know they were removing most of the bran. According to Nagel, their bread after baking was aged for a really lengthy time, too. In Price's time, he says they baked once a month. Rather further back in time Nagel says the Swiss baked once a year—and hung the bread on the wall to age for months.

Anything else in the book that interested anyone?

[Lewis]

In case it's of interest —

Nagel notes that Australian Aborigines ate, according to Weston Price, 4.6 times as much calcium as Americans of the day, 6.2 times as much phosphorus, and ten times as much the amount of fat-soluble vitamins.

If you haven't got raw milk from grass-fed animals (and dairy products made from that), he says you'll need to get these nutrients from seafood, including the organs, heads, brains, eyes, and eggs of fish and shellfish, and from the the organs of land animals. The native Australians would have done that.

Nagel seems very down on cereal grains. He says what Price couldn't have known about in the 1930s were antinutrients like phytates. These seem to have a major role in tooth decay. It's not that you can't eat these and still have cavity-free teeth (as the Swiss, Hebridean Islanders, and the Dinka demonstrate); it's that, if you do, by golly do they take some careful preparation. (c.f. the note above on the Swiss rye bread.)

He also claims you need to avoid raw nuts because of antinutrients, and he says cocoa is high in phytic acid (as well as usually accompanied by a lot of sugar), which I hadn't known.

There's more on calcium and phosphorus. He says it's been shown by a dentist called Melvin Page that it's the calcium–phosphorus balance in the blood that's important. You need sufficient supplies of both minerals in the diet (and of fat-soluble vitamins for them to be utilized). However, there's more to it that that—for example, blood sugar fluctuations can cause the balance to fluctuate, which he says can be bad news:

A ratio fo 8.75 mg of calcium per 100 ml of blood, and 3.75 mg ... with normal blood sugar levels creates immunity to tooth decay. ...

When there are blood sugar spikes, minerals like calcium are pulled from our bones. When the amounts of calcium or phosphorus deviate from these levels ... minerals are withdrawn from the teeth ... resulting in tooth decay or gum disease or both

[Gadsie]

I just ordered this.
I can't get raw milk or seafood organs. I can however get grassfed land-animal organs.would this do? I filled in a bunch of nutritious stuff (eggs, liver, meat, kale etc.) 3000+ calories worth but I still don't have all my vitamins and minerals covered.
Also, should you limit fruit and other high carb foods?

[janie]

I just started reading it. The calcium/phosphorus balance info is interesting, but how would we know if we were routinely in balance? So many high phosphorus foods listed in the data base link he gave are so not primal (lots of cereals, for example).

[Lewis]

I just started reading it. The calcium/phosphorus balance info is interesting, but how would we know if we were routinely in balance? So many high phosphorus foods listed in the data base link he gave are so not primal (lots of cereals, for example).

It's a long time since I read it -- that's a 2011 post. And even if I've understood him right, he (or Melvyn Page, or whoever) may be mistaken ...

But I don't think you should see the balance between these minerals in the blood as being solely determined by the percentages available in the diet. That's to say, that (within reasonable parameters) your biological system can work this all out -- it can dump what it doesn't need in urine. This might go astray if you're getting most of your calories from nutrient-depleted sources -- e.g. sodas:

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You might also get in trouble if blood-sugar fluctuations affect that balance.

But if you're just eating natural wholefoods (though possibly not, pace Weston Price, all wholefoods but only wholefoods humankind has long lived with) then it'll work itself out. We can manage within a wide margin of error; we don't have to consciously "balance" things; we don't even have to think about it. We just can't do so well when our food is nothing like what we've lived with over millennia.

[janie]

Thanks, Lewis. All natural whole foods here, including organic/grass fed/pastured/raw dairy. I did order one of the recommended tooth powders from the book as I'm ditching my toothpaste.