is sweet and beautiful to me, but it has certainly been scarred by the tooth decay that we have been dealing with for about a year now.Good news! Owen's teeth have remineralized!
What does this mean for us? Well, Owen's teeth are still not perfect, of course, and we are still keeping up the same home care routine. His lateral incisors are almost invisible, but they are healthy and strong for the time being. We must keep a close watch on them because the protective enamel and dentin covers over the roots are much less than on healthy teeth. Hopefully, they will remain stable until they are ready to come out on their own to make room for his permanent teeth.
I have copied below a post that I made to the nutrition and kids dental email lists that have helped us along the way.
We noticed that my son's (now almost 28 months old) tooth decay about a year ago. It progressed very quickly, and within about a month's time, his upper lateral incisors went from whole teeth to nubs near the gum line. He also developed decay in his upper central incisors and on his first molars (which came in with yellow spots after that time). We initially tried working on his absorption using the GAPS protocol, including lots of stock while we were dairy free and 1/2 -1 t. HVCLO daily for him and 1 1/4 t. FCLO for me. We started 2x daily brushing with xylitol as well as rinsing with xylitol water after nursing to sleep and gum/mints after meals. We continued to see slow but steady progress in his tooth decay. We saw one holisitic dentist last August who wanted us to keep coming back but didn't have any ideas to change home care and didn't have any plans to do anything to my son's teeth in the office - just keep looking at them every 6 weeks. At a bit over 6 months from our last visit there, we saw another holistic dentist who agreed that my son did needed more that he could offer in his office. He recommended crowns and caps for his problem teeth and possible extraction of the almost gone later incisors. He referred us to a pediatric dentist who wanted to do 4 crowns, 2 caps, 2 extractions, and some root canals under GA ASAP. We were uncomfortable with the experience with her all around. Six weeks ago (only a few days after we saw the ped. dentist) we saw Dr. Hollander, who is just over an hour away from us (fortunately!). He did an exam, scraped some of the decayed material from the teeth, ozone treatment on 8 teeth, a Fl varnish, and filled the spots on some teeth that were collecting food and hard to keep clean with a temp. filling material. We added MI paste (no Fl) and Squiggle toothpaste (with Fl) to our home care routine. We went back for a follow-up visit Monday, and my son's teeth are hard! Yay! I wish we had known to look for O3 treatment a year ago. I think it took me a long time to decide we needed to use Fl. It is certainly a drug and ought to be respected as one. I'm not sure anyone could have convinced me a year ago to use it topically on my son's teeth. I *think* that everything we have done has played a part in getting Owen's teeth stable, but I really think O3 probably played the biggest role. S. mutans is just a really aggressive buggar. So, if any of you are on the fence about dealing with ECC, I would definitely suggest looking in that direction. Oh, and my son still nurses to sleep each and every nap and bed time. Afterwards, I rinse his mouth with a bit of xylitol dissolved in water. He puckers up and slurps and sleeps right through it. So we seem to have come out on the other side with our nursing relationship intact.
