If we accept the premise that decay is caused by a miss-match between what we eat and what we are genetically adapted to eat, it becomes clear that teeth may serve as the body’s “early warning system” that if they start to decay you should make a few changes before things go from bad to worse.  Tooth decay belongs to a family of diseases called non-contagious chronic diseases or NCCD for short.  This includes all the diseases that are not infectious or in other words, the diseases you cannot catch from breathing the same air or sharing needles.  Other examples of these diseases include most cancers, obesity, hypertension diabetes, and gout.  This begs the question, what do these diseases have in common and is not shared with communicable disease?  The answer is that they are caused by CHRONIC INFLAMMATION, even tooth decay.

Early Man was adapted to his environment.  This is not a surprise but you must understand some of the major differences between then and now.  Our body plan evolved what is called a “fight or flight” response to stress.  It has evolved to be short acting. This means that if a lion is chasing you or you are chasing after your next meal your adrenal hormones are going to help you move faster than you normally could in the short term.  This is called acute stress.  Sitting in a traffic jam, waiting around for a flight to be cancelled, and staying up late all lead to chronic stress.  Your adrenal hormones such as cortisol dump into your system at inappropriate times raise blood pressure, causing chronic stress and inflammation.  It is like running your automobile in second gear.  You will get where you want to go but will burn out the engine much sooner than if you let it go all the way to its top gear

Getting back to early Man, we know they did not suffer from tooth decay.  While we are left with only bones as soft tissue does not preserve but we can speculate based on current indigenous populations that he did not suffer from any of the NCCD.  It is true that our life spans are longer but this has more to do with our (temporary) victory over infectious disease. Does this mean that if you don’t have tooth decay that you will be immune from these other diseases? The answer is no.

Every individual is different.  We each have a unique DNA, environmental exposure, stress coping, and thus immune response.  It can get very complicated very quickly but the common thread among the NCCD is chronic inflammation. If it shuts down your parotid flow, you may get tooth decay.  If it affects your joints you may have gout or arthritis.  Inflammation attacking other parts of the will cause other NCCD, even to the point where an attack on certain parts of the immune system will cause cancer.  Learning to let go of stress will not only extend your life but it just may save your teeth, too.