I’ve been making my own tooth powder (actually only baking soda with some Peppermint EO mixed in) for quite some time. It worked fine but just didn’t quite make my teeth feel squeaky-clean and I didn’t really enjoy waiting for all the powder to dissolve in my mouth. A few months ago, this recipe popped onto my radar. Ooh, a paste! I like that!
I don’t have any Xylitol, didn’t really see why I had to add something to sweeten it and finding really natural Xylitol is difficult. (Most of it is processed from corn with all sorts of manmade chemicals. Ick.) A comment on that blog said that Xylitol is a necessary ingredient because of its antibacterial properties. Well…do some research. There are plenty of other alternatives there! I added a half-part of powdered Sage leaves to the recipe for its antimicrobial & teeth-whitening properties.
I also didn’t want to go to the expense of buying a half-pound of powdered calcium for an experiment. Threw a few calcium tablets into my handy-dandy coffee grinder and voilà! Powdered calcium.
So, I made up a small batch, sans Xylitol, and tried it. Not bad! Made my teeth feel clean. After a few uses, I could see a slight whitening effect. Remineralization? Not so much but then again, I still do all the stuff bad for your teeth – smoke, drink coffee, cola, wine… I also didn’t change a damned thing in my diet as the blog suggested. Okay, maybe a little remineralization happened. One spot in my mouth that I can’t see because I don’t have any fancy dental tools was sensitive to sweets. It’s not anymore. I’ll know more when I go for my semi-annual checkup in a couple of months.
When making the second batch, I forgot the Peppermint essential oil. It still didn’t taste bad – just bland.
So, it works. I only have one quibble with this recipe & it has nothing to do with its efficacy:
Because it’s made with coconut oil, it’s oily (duh). I’m not the neatest brusher in the world & the oil dripping along with my saliva makes the toothbrush slippery. The same oily saliva dripping into the sink isn’t easy to clean up. It just doesn’t rinse well, y’know? It means I have to actually clean my sink on a daily basis. Being a lazy-but-neat-freak somebody, this doesn’t make me happy. But not unhappy enough to stop using it.