Why does Peanut Butter rot your teeth?
When I was broke in London and living in dingy squats, I tried to stay alive on a diet of wholegrain bread and peanut butter. They were both easy to obtain, didn't need any form of heat to prepare, and didn't go off too quickly. You'll have realised in a flash that I didn't have a cooker or a fridge, smart people that you are.
It wasn't my complete diet, just breakfast and supper. I would splash out on a sandwich or burger and chips for lunch. What other spare money I had went on tobacco, and coffee, two things I couldn't live without.
After a few weeks I started developing tooth problems. I cracked a filling on the wholegrain bread when some of the grains just wouldn't give in. I also had another filling come loose due to the suction effect of chewing too much peanut butter with too little bread.
I didn't have a proper address so I couldn't register with any of the NHS dentists, but London had the free dental surgery near Leicester Square, where you can go and be practiced on by foreign dental students. I went there once, to get the two fillings replaced, and swore I would never go back again. One of the teeth, the one that I had sucked the filling out of, was declared too bad to be repaired, and the student tried to extract it. It was a big tooth, and he got most of it out, but broke off two of the roots and wasn't happy about having another go at getting them out. I wasn't happy about it either, and decided enough was enough.
After another couple of weeks I realised I also had an abscess under a tooth. I knew from bitter experience that no dentist will do anything until the abscess has subsided, so I went back to the Dr Mengele Institute for Dental Surgery and asked if they would give me a prescription for penicillin. No, they wouldn't, they would only perform surgery.
It was the spur I needed to get myself out of the squats and stupid dead-end jobs. I smartened up, got temporary jobs in offices, and after a few weeks could afford to rent a room in a house with an actual legal address. Then I could afford to go and see a proper dentist. The abscess had healed by itself, and the dentist could find no reason for it having formed in the first place. He pulled out the two roots and patched up a couple of other problems.
I had managed to improve my diet, and had gravitated from peanut butter and bread to kebabs and fish and chips.
A few weeks ago, as part of my diet experiments, I went onto a high-fat diet. The logic was simple, since I wanted to get my body to start burning up the pounds of stored fat I had accumulated, why not teach it to digest only fat for a while? As part of that diet, I was eating peanut butter spread into the hollow of celery sticks. When spreading it into the celery became too tedious I started eating it direct from the jar, straight from the spoon. Celery does that to some people.
Two weeks later, I had that old familiar feeling somehwere on the right-hand side of my mouth. Sensitive to heat, sensitive to cold, sensitive to pressure. I took things easy on that side for a while , and dropped the high-fat diet. The abscess went away on its own. The tooth in question doesn't seem to have anything obviously wrong with it, no cracked filling or other reason for the problem to have started.
So what can it be about peanut butter or a restricted diet that causes this? Is it a type of scurvy? Should peanut butter carry a health-warning on the jar?
It's a shame, because I love it. It's something that makes celery bearable, I don't know how I could go on without it.
It wasn't my complete diet, just breakfast and supper. I would splash out on a sandwich or burger and chips for lunch. What other spare money I had went on tobacco, and coffee, two things I couldn't live without.
After a few weeks I started developing tooth problems. I cracked a filling on the wholegrain bread when some of the grains just wouldn't give in. I also had another filling come loose due to the suction effect of chewing too much peanut butter with too little bread.
I didn't have a proper address so I couldn't register with any of the NHS dentists, but London had the free dental surgery near Leicester Square, where you can go and be practiced on by foreign dental students. I went there once, to get the two fillings replaced, and swore I would never go back again. One of the teeth, the one that I had sucked the filling out of, was declared too bad to be repaired, and the student tried to extract it. It was a big tooth, and he got most of it out, but broke off two of the roots and wasn't happy about having another go at getting them out. I wasn't happy about it either, and decided enough was enough.
After another couple of weeks I realised I also had an abscess under a tooth. I knew from bitter experience that no dentist will do anything until the abscess has subsided, so I went back to the Dr Mengele Institute for Dental Surgery and asked if they would give me a prescription for penicillin. No, they wouldn't, they would only perform surgery.
It was the spur I needed to get myself out of the squats and stupid dead-end jobs. I smartened up, got temporary jobs in offices, and after a few weeks could afford to rent a room in a house with an actual legal address. Then I could afford to go and see a proper dentist. The abscess had healed by itself, and the dentist could find no reason for it having formed in the first place. He pulled out the two roots and patched up a couple of other problems.
I had managed to improve my diet, and had gravitated from peanut butter and bread to kebabs and fish and chips.
A few weeks ago, as part of my diet experiments, I went onto a high-fat diet. The logic was simple, since I wanted to get my body to start burning up the pounds of stored fat I had accumulated, why not teach it to digest only fat for a while? As part of that diet, I was eating peanut butter spread into the hollow of celery sticks. When spreading it into the celery became too tedious I started eating it direct from the jar, straight from the spoon. Celery does that to some people.
Two weeks later, I had that old familiar feeling somehwere on the right-hand side of my mouth. Sensitive to heat, sensitive to cold, sensitive to pressure. I took things easy on that side for a while , and dropped the high-fat diet. The abscess went away on its own. The tooth in question doesn't seem to have anything obviously wrong with it, no cracked filling or other reason for the problem to have started.
So what can it be about peanut butter or a restricted diet that causes this? Is it a type of scurvy? Should peanut butter carry a health-warning on the jar?
It's a shame, because I love it. It's something that makes celery bearable, I don't know how I could go on without it.
posted by Sopwith-Camel | 9:06 pm
1 Comments:
Was it crunchy peanut butter? It could justa been a bit of peanut that got stuck somewhere you couldn't get by just brushing. If food gets stuck it ages and can cause minor infection - eventually the food breaks down completely and, if you're lucky, then infection goes away. That's what you get, children, if you don't brush your teeth a wire brush.
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