Volume 9 • 2022 • Issue 2

Is There An Optimal Diet for Oral Health? New science shows that some foods can improve oral health directly by changing the biome of the mouth and indirectly by decreasing inflammation in the body. Inspired by these findings, a team of researchers tested a diet optimized for oral health. W hen Dr. Johan Peter Wölber started working as a dentist at the clinic at the University of Freiburg in Germany, he primarily emphasized brushing, flossing, and fluoride use to his patients, like his colleagues did. During his breaks, he’d often eat a strudel or a chocolate to keep his energy up. After a few years, he realized that he had gained weight while working full time and eating convenience foods. He’d read studies about the relationship between sugar and gingivitis. He began to worry that he was only addressing the symptoms and not the root cause of his patients’ dental problems; brushing and fluoride mitigate the effect of dental plaques, but diet was the root cause. Then, he read a study that influenced the course of his career and transformed how he ate. In 2007, a Swiss television show had a group of people live for four weeks in an anthropologist-designed environment that replicated the Stone Age. Researchers from the University of Bern and the University of Zurich were invited to monitor the participants’ health as they lived in huts, used stone tools, and ate a diet restricted to foods that were grown, hunted and foraged between 4000 and 3500 BC. 1 “These people didn’t brush their teeth during the four weeks,” says Dr. Wölber. “And yet, they had no periodontitis. They had more plaque on their teeth, but their mouths were healthier. Bleeding on probing decreased in a statistically significant manner and so did probing depth.” The Stone Age diet included whole grains such as barley, wheat and spelt, fresh meat from goats and hens, foraged berries, fish and edible plants. Participants had no access to refined sugars. Dr. Wölber and his colleague, Dr. Christian Tennert, decided to make themselves their own first test subjects. They stopped eating refined sugar and followed a low- carbohydrate, whole food diet. “The first two or three months were hard,” Dr. Wölber says. “I had headaches, bad moods, and sugar cravings. I realized that I had been caught Dr. Johan Peter Wölber 34 | 2022 | Issue 2