Bleeding Gums Grimmak

One thing I've had since I can remember is bleeding gums. No dentist has ever told me I have gingivitis, and my gums are not receding, they just bleed every time I brush my teeth. I've tried everything - Listerine (which I heard can actually make things worse), flossing more regularly, using toothpastes for sensitive gums - to no avail.* I read a passage, though, in Gary Taubes' book (Good Calories, Bad Calories, which I showed y'all at the first paleo dinner) that describes a doctor who eliminated all carbs from his diet for a year to see if there were any ill effects - he found none, and he also strangely found that his gingivitis went away. This got me thinking. The more I research this, the more I am suspecting that the problem isn't in my mouth, it's somewhere else in my body. When your gums bleed, it means they're inflamed. If one tissue in your body is inflamed, it could indicate that tissues in other parts of your body are inflamed. Realizing this, I have been trying to pay close attention to my gums and how they change with the things I eat. I have found that when I eat generally low-carb, and I haven't been drinking that much, I bleed much less than when I've been eating things that irritate me and drinking more heavily. I also have found that when I eat sugar, and when I have high acidity in my body, the bleeding gets particularly bad. I am going to strive especially hard to not eat sugar, limit booze, and get my acid-base balance in order. Proper sleeping may also help, but I'm really not good at sleeping. Some people view eating as just something they have to do to stay alive, and if food came in pill form they'd eat it that way. I sort of feel that way about sleep. I do it because I need to, not because I love to. This is a problem, and may be wreaking havoc in my body.


*I think the common dental explanation for gum disease - that it is caused by plaque - is completely ludicrous. My bleeding gums persisted despite regular cleanings when I was still under my parents' insurance. I also don't brush very hard, and I generally use medium or soft toothbrushes.

Fourth Dinner

Tonight/last night was a great meal, as usual. A lot of good topics raised after we ate. I was particularly interested in Gina's comments on aerobic vs. anaerobic exercise. Exercise is important, but I don't think killing yourself at the gym is useful, and can even be highly damaging - as Gina pointed out, many people are doing way too much cardio, causing a stress response in the body, leading to some of the same issues we're trying to avoid by cutting out stress-inducing dietary things like sugar and gluten. Also, you can't work out to make up for a bad meal. Really, at the end of the day, you have to do what makes you feel good. Exercise can't be a chore, and it can't be a form of self-punishment for eating the wrong things. It has to be a pleasure, and I think healing the body through diet can help to make working out less laborious.

On another note, I found tonight's meal to be rather acidifying. After the meal I felt a bit of off, not necessarily tired, but my lips were tingling and my tongue felt very mildly sore around where it rubbed up against my teeth. My mother used to say this feeling was caused by hot qi, which I've found lines up nicely with western findings about acidity vs. alkalinity in the body. This meal actually had way more sugar than our usual fare. Dates, though unrefined, are very high glycemic (they spike the blood sugar very rapidly), and I put raisins and apples in the tongue salad. And though Victoria's smoothie was delicious and might have been great on its own between meals, when food is pureed, it increases its glycemic index (the sugars in it enter the bloodstream faster). There was also quite a bit of fruit in this meal, which could have been a problem. The tahini in the Katey's soup is also acidifying. Did anyone else feel anything?

Of course, this is not to say that the meal wasn't delicious. Thanks everyone!

For the next meal, I'd like to have more veggies, minimize the fruit and dairy, and basically have no sugar. If Edward's torts are successfully paleo friendly, this would be even more reason to minimize sugars in the rest of the meal, so that we can more fully appreciate his hard work. Meat. Veggies. That's the moral of the story.

Acid-Base Balance

Another reason to remove grains, legumes, and sugar from the diet is that that they are highly acid forming. Meat and protein are also acid-forming, but eliminating meat is not as effective as eliminating grains and legumes for lowering acidity because of the nature of how most people eat them - meat, for the average person, still represents a relatively small percentage of the food mass he or she intakes compared to how the average person eats grain. Additionally, meat is vital to nutrition in other ways - we need protein, we need the good fats from animals, and we need the minerals. Meat also doesn't contain anti-nutrients the way that grains do. That said, paleo really isn't a meat-based diet. Paleo recognizes the importance of meat, but it's really a vegetable-based diet. Most vegetables are alkalizing, meaning they lower acidity. So, if you eat a lot of vegetables and a little meat, you get a net alkaline effect on the body. This will alleviate such symptoms as yeast infections, cold sores, acne, fatigue, and susceptibility to colds.

So, to recap, if you are looking to reduce the acidity in your body:

EAT LOTS OF VEGETABLES

and greatly reduce your intake of GRAINS, LEGUMES, SUGAR, COFFEE, and BOOZE.

Things like apple cider vinegar and lemon juice actually LOWER your acidity.

For me, the coffee and the booze will be a bit difficult, but again, I don't eat sugar or grains, which I think are much bigger factors for acidity. I did recently have a mild cold sore, but it quickly went away when I ate a lot of sweet potatoes, which are alkalizing.

Here is a great list of foods and their affect on the acidity in your body.