So, a number of years ago, I was drinking a lot of coffee, wine, and tea. I kept my teeth clean, but they were getting more and more yellow. One night a friend of mine asked me about it. Okay, he was poking fun at me in front of a bunch of our friends. This guy had the perfect set of teeth too. A Colgate smile. He never had braces growing up — he was one of the lucky ones with perfectly straight white teeth. So maybe he had room to poke at me. Well, after giving me grief about mine, he decided to reveal his secret, and it wasn’t whitening strips, visits to the dentist, nor any elaborate pastes on the internet…
Brush your teeth with cake soap! That’s it!
I imagined it. Gross! Well, turned out that brushing his teeth 3 or 4 times a week with soap is how he baffles all his dentists with perfectly white clean teeth. It cleans teeth better than most toothpaste. He said that one dentist told him he didn’t even need a cleaning but still gave him one anyway. He told us he learned about it from someone he knew who figured it out while in prison. (Necessity is the mother of all invention?) It made perfect sense, but it’s something I doubt I would’ve never thought of it myself.
Anyway, I went home and decided to try it out. Now, back then I didn’t consider what was IN the soap. I just went for the kind he recommended. Plain white soap. He said it’s the stronger detergents that remove stains so well. I decided to find an unscented brand so it wouldn’t taste as bad and began brushing 4 to 5 times a week.
Sure enough, about a week in, I started noticing a difference. Yes, that fast. Three weeks in, it was very noticeable. By the end of the second month, I was getting feedback from others who noticed. My teeth kept getting brighter and brighter. Guess which kind of soap I found works the best…
…the little bars of soap at Motel 6. LOL! I’m telling you, their unscented white bars are strong!
Okay, okay, I know what some of you might be thinking. Isn’t industrially mass-produced soap the worst stuff you could put in your mouth, especially since it could get right into your blood stream? Yes, it is. I agree. So I’ll flash forward a bit and tell you what I do now that works even better.
About 6 months after brushing this way, I met Katya. As we talked more about health, I realized I was very ignorant about many (if not all) of the ingredients found in many everyday items. She (and her mother) warned me about lists of toxins, additives, and all the other horrible stuff you can’t pronounce.
So I set off to find a natural soap replacement. I searched high and low online and decided to try Dr. Bonners Unscented Castile Soap. Soon after, I found a very informative book by Dr. Gerard Judd who taught that any glycerines are very bad to put on your teeth. Basically all toothpaste and most soap on the market have glycerin. It coats your enamel and prevents your teeth from remineralising themselves (see Wiki). Supposedly, glycerin is very hard to wash off the teeth once it’s on.
Well, I soon learned most hotel soaps are non-glycerin, so I went back to using Motel 6 soaps! ARGH!! The whole time I couldn’t shake imagining all the nasty ingredients I was still putting in my body. I kept looking for a “natural” non-glycerin soap, which proved very difficult. There are some out there, and they clean okay, but they aren’t strong enough to whiten teeth.
Flash forward again. During January 2011 I had braces put on for a year and three months. Finally got them off last month. : ) During that time, my teeth became yellow and stained again. Now that they are off, I’ve been challenged with the whitening/cleaning task again. But I didn’t want to use soap this time, and I didn’t want to spend any extra money on this excellent product my sister swears by: “Tooth Brightener”. I haven’t tried that yet, but every review I’ve read is excellent. If you give it a try, please let me know how you like it.
Let’s skip to the bottom line. My new found solution dawned on me while watching Katya cleaning one day. She uses sodium bicarbonate. Not 409, not Windex, not Simple Green or Tilex. Just water, baking soda and sea salt. Then it clicked. If it can clean soap scum and make tiles super white, maybe it can do the same for the tiles in my mouth! I looked the idea up online and found many people were getting great results! Also, the product my sister uses has sodium bicarbonate in it as well. After much searching I came across Ray G. Behm’s information that validated the use of baking soda and salt.
Okay, here’s my Whiten Your Teeth For Free formula:
Mix 3 parts baking soda (pharmaceutical grade if you have it, if not Arm&Hammer will work as well) with 1 part pink himalayan salt in a container. (I’m assuming you have these items in the kitchen)
Both soda and salt have excellent anti bacterial/germ properties. Plus, I have receding gums – especially noticed it after the braces were removed — and I’m noticing my gums tighten up around my teeth again. So cool.
Now mix it all up and seal the container. When you are ready, dip your toothbrush bristles into some hydrogen peroxide (if you have “food grade” peroxide, all the better), then pour/sprinkle the soda & salt mixture onto the bristles. Then brush your teeth using very small motions. Use soft bristle brushes, never medium or firm. I learned that all gums are very sensitive. It doesn’t taste the greatest, but it works fantastic and your teeth should be white in no time!!
I haven’t tried it yet with my Sonicare but when I do I’ll post an update. Katya and I will also be posting a how-to video to the bottom of this article soon.
Try it out for yourself. It’s beyond simple and super effective! However, if you’re looking into other dental treatments beyond simple teeth whitening, then visit sites like durhamdental.net/services/neuromuscular-dentures/.
Good luck, and let us know what you think.
Matt & Katya
