When I was a kid I absolutely loved sugar like nothing else! I was eating candy often and I vow to say that a sizeable portion of my allowance went to wine gums, chocolate and licorice.
But as I grew up I started to get more and more critical of all the sugar added to virtually all the foods we eat today. It has gotten to a point where you specifically have to look to find foods without added sugar. And from what we can gather most alternatives to sugar aren't any better: Many of the non-calorie sweeteners mess with our body and taste nowhere as good as some plain refined sugar does.
Worst of all: Sugar seems to be really bad for our teeth, something that most people (even within alternative health circles) seem to agree with.
So what are we going to do? Give up sweets forever to save our dental health?
What if I told you that there is a substance with all the upsides to plain old sugar but with none of its downsides? Let's talk about Xylitol!
What on Earth is Xylitol?
What sounds like a flammable and highly hazardous chemical-waste-byproduct is actually a fancy name for the sugar of the birch tree or chemically speaking a sugar alcohol. It naturally occurs in a wide variety of plants and organisms (our own body produces Xylitol as well) but it is often harvested from the bark of Birch trees.
So what about this stuff then?
Well, despite an oddly familiar blanket of silence about this stuff there have been studies and a lot of people experimenting with Xylitol as a sugar substitute and found it to work wonders for their dental health. Xylitol is exceptionally good for your teeth because malignant bacteria confuse it with regular sugars as their "fuel". The difference is that Xylitol cannot be metabolized by caries bacteria meaning it "plugs them up" until they burst, rendering them unable to multiply.
I have since started to actually put some Xylitol on my teeth and gums before I go to sleep. You know, the very opposite of what we should do with sugar.
There have been several studies on the effects of Xylitol and let's just say the industry has done its best to shield the public from the knowledge about its beneficial effects. Or have you ever heard of Xylitol until today? I hadn't.
Needless to say with the realization that this stuff greatly helps and that a natural substance like this cannot be patented, its popularity has been kept low for a long time. Chewing gums and candies with Xylitol exist but are often filled with other more problematic sugars and ingredients one may not want to chew on after all.
So I can recommend just buying some Xylitol online, preferrably from a source that is doing its best to maintain the birch forests of Finland and other countries where Xylitol is harvested, and to simply try it out in the place of sugar or simply with a spoon before going to bed.
Preliminary study results have been promising to say the least and in connection with the aforementioned "Oil Pulling with Coconut Oil Morning Routine" we already have two great agents in our hands to take back control over our dental health, allowing the saliva to remineralize our teeth and not be held up by acids and an overwhelming onslaught of caries bacteria.
I figure it's a great combination letting Xylitol blast the rows of caries bacteria over night and then sweeping the "corpses" up with coconut oil in the morning. Seems like a fairly big weight has already been lifted of our organism to maintain its optimal health.
If you consider using it it is always wise to read up on it more and don't just trust what you read here. There have been warnings about dogs consuming it as it is allegedly toxic to them, and of course the usual system pundits will try to tell you how there is nothing to see here and it's all just wishful thinking where you'd be best served to shut up and return to flouride toothpaste and trust the experts... You make up your own mind yes?
If you want to dig a little deeper here is a rather good starting point I came across in my studies:
By the way, Xylitol also carries significantly less calories than conventional sugar and it can even be used by diabetics, I mean wow, right? Anybody still wonder why we have never heard of this stuff? <3
To be continued...
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