10 Easy Natural Teeth Whitening Tips to Brighten Your Smile

 

Click HERE to Discover these 80 Keto-Friendly and Healthy Slow Cooker Recipes

What makes a good impression? The Academy of General Dentistry reports that 40% of people notice your teeth first. So to help you put your best foot and smile forward, here are ten natural teeth whitening tips to try now.

While new technology has led us to discover how to safely bleach teeth, many people over-bleach their teeth which can lead to things like gum irritation, receding gum lines, bluish enamel, and tooth sensitivity.

Your teeth are made up of layers, with the outermost layer being your enamel. Even though your enamel is the hardest and most mineralized tissue in your body, it is still prone to decay.

So how do you get a nice healthy white smile without the risk of over-bleaching or damage from whitening strips or trays?

Besides the obvious, like cutting back on things like smoking, drinking coffee and other things that tend to stain your teeth, you can use one of the natural teeth whiteners below:

Tip 1 – Activated charcoal

This one might sound like some crazy black magic and it may look a little terrifying, but give it a try and see for yourself. Now we’re not talking about using the charcoal that brings us delicious smoky Paleo grilled eats, we’re talking about activated charcoal.

You can find it in stores next to your other vitamins and supplements. It comes in capsule form and is usually taken for stomach pains (like diarrhea and stomach ulcers), food poisoning, and to help your body cleanse out toxins via your bowel movements (this includes deodorizing smells!). Another purpose for this miracle black pill is teeth whitening. You have a few options when it comes to using this dark powder on your teeth:

1. Charcoal Powder

Open a capsule into some kind of container, like a cup. Take a toothbrush (definitely get a separate toothbrush for this kind of brushing), apply toothpaste to the head of the brush, and then dip the head of the brush into the pile of the activated charcoal powder so the toothpaste is completely covered. Gently brush your teeth to avoid any potential damage to your enamel. Then rinse with just water.

2. Charcoal Powder + Water

Open 1-2 capsules into a cup and add enough water to the cup to make a paste out of the activated charcoal powder. Use a toothbrush to apply the paste onto your teeth and wait 3 minutes. Rinse with water.

Tip 2 – Baking Soda & Hydrogen Peroxide Paste

Take 2-3 tablespoons of baking soda and mix enough hydrogen peroxide with the powder to create a paste. A runnier paste is better than a chalkier paste, try slowly adding in more liquid if you are unsure what a good ratio is.

Baking soda is a bit gritty so be careful not to scrub your teeth too hard with this paste so that you don’t wear down your enamel.

Apply this to your teeth the in the same way that we described with the previous tip. Hydrogen peroxide has great antibacterial properties so it is a great agent for keeping your mouth and gums clean.

Tip 3 – Coconut Oil Pulling

Coconut oil is basically the hottest go-to multipurpose food item on the market. There are even memes about how ridiculously awesome coconut oil is for your health. Coconut oil benefits your skin, your hair, and even cold sores — and it can also benefit your dental health.

Take a tablespoon of coconut oil and swish it around in your mouth for 10-20 minutes. This is long enough for the oil to pick up toxins and prevent tooth decay, reduce gum inflammation, and to whiten your teeth.

Believe it or not, electric toothbrushes and floss were non-existent at one point, while oil pulling for dental health has been around for at least 10,000 years!

You’ll want to avoid swallowing the coconut oil at this point because it not contains all the bad stuff you want to remove from your body. Make sure to spit out the coconut oil in the trash and not in the sink. This is because coconut oil has such a high melting point that you run the risk of clogging up your pipes if it gets trapped and turns solid before it can drain.

Tip 4 – Turmeric

Turmeric is usually a cooking spice, so using it as a paste may not be the best-tasting home remedy for teeth whitening, but it does work nonetheless. Just like with the other powders on this list, you want to make a paste with turmeric.

This is yellow magic that will wash away and leave your teeth looking brighter, but be careful not to get any on your clothes or skin (or even surfaces like a light-colored countertop) because turmeric can stain. 

You can use either water or melted coconut oil to make your turmeric paste. Apply it to your teeth and let it sit for 3 minutes. Rinse your mouth with water and follow up with a brush using your normal toothpaste.

Tip 5 – Apple Cider Vinegar

Vinegar is highly acidic and will hurt your tooth enamel, so be sure to dilute apple cider vinegar before using it for teeth whitening. Also avoid using this method more than once a day for the same reason.

Add half a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar to a cup of water. Gargle the solution in your mouth for a few seconds like you would with mouthwash and then dispose of the waste in the sink.

Tip 6 – Strawberry Salt and Baking Soda

For a more pleasant taste, try making a strawberry paste. Take 1-3 strawberries and ½ teaspoon of baking soda and muddle together in a cup. Use a designated toothbrush to apply the mixture to your teeth and let it sit for 5 minutes.

This method needs special care afterwards, so be sure to brush and floss like you normally would after using strawberry paste. This is because strawberries have tiny seeds that can get stuck between your teeth, which is not good for your dental health. Abstain from using this method more than once a week.

Tip 7 – Avoid Dark Pigmented Foods

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Try focusing on your daily habits and see what you are consuming that has the most color. While it may not be bad to consume these things on a moderate basis, chronic consumption might be what is causing your teeth to stain. These foods may include things like coffee, marinara sauce, soy sauce, or anything with artificial coloring.

Tip 8 – Eat Raw, Crunchy Fruits and Veggies

Getting foods that are crunchy and raw into your diet is great for teeth whitening, because they help scrub your teeth while you chew. They also typically have higher water content than other fruits and veggies, which can help to eliminate sugars and stimulate your saliva flow to further wash away food particles to protect against damage. Crunchy fruits and vegetables include things like apples, celery, and carrots.

Tip 9 – Limit Your Acidic Food/Drink Intake

In much the same way that you will want to avoid overeating dark-colored foods, you’ll want to steer clear of getting hooked on consuming things that are acidic, because they have the power to break down your enamel. This includes things like soda, energy drinks, and wine (both white and red can lead to staining).

Rinse your mouth with a swig of water after drinking or eating something acidic to help prevent the acids from wearing your teeth out. Using a straw to drink acidic beverages is also a good option to avoid as much tooth-to-acid contact as possible.

Tip 10 – Fruit Rinds

Believe it or not, these are not useless. Specifically, banana peels can be used to help whiten teeth. Just rub a banana peel on your teeth for about 2 minutes.

Active ingredients in banana peels include manganese, magnesium, and potassium. Rinse with water and brush with toothpaste afterward. Orange peels work too, their active ingredient is limonene. 

Watch this video – 10 Natural Ways to Whiten Teeth at Home

Written by Liz Lang

Author Bio:

Liz Lang is a Clinical Research Coordinator with the Southern California Institute for Research and Education in the field of Gastroenterology. Liz graduated from the University of California, Irvine with a degree in Public Health Sciences.

Liz has an insatiable thirst to learn how the human body works in order to keep people healthy. When Liz isn’t in the clinic, she enjoys exploring nature, yoga, and trying new things (especially food!).

A lot of people have gotten results from the Keto diet, and enjoyed the foods that it has to offer. However, many of the people who are following this diet have a hard time finding the recipes that they need, especially ones that are quick and easy to complete.

Fortunately, Kelsey Ale, noticed this problem, and decided to do something about it. She’s found that making recipes in a slow cooker gives you meals which are not only delicious, but also take very little time to make. Mostly you just put a few simple ingredients in the slow cooker, and let it do the rest.

To find out more, click on – Keto Slow Cooker Cookbook

Why Your Portable Water Filter Isn’t 100% Safe Enough?

 

Click HERE to Discover these 80 Keto-Friendly and Healthy Slow Cooker Recipes

You can eat right, exercise, and do everything you can to live a healthy life…

But it’s easy to sabotage a lot of that hard work without even knowing it.

How?

A lot of it comes down to the water you drink.

Most of us don’t think much about this stuff. We don’t know exactly where our drinking water comes from. We just fill up our glasses whenever we get thirsty and carry on with our day.

Maybe we’ve heard a few news reports about potential dangers in municipal water supplies over the years. So we pick up one of those portable water filters at the store – like Brita filters – and figure that will take care of any issues.

Your drinking water – and all the chemicals inside it – are more complicated than you thought. Without the right precautions, it can cause some serious health complications.

It’s time for the truth.

Drinking Water: Contaminated by Thousands of Chemicals

When you think of perfect drinking water, your mind might wander to a pristine mountain stream.

But most of us don’t have access to those resources. The majority of us get our drinking water from cities, municipalities, and other public sources.

This can make it tricky to pinpoint the journey your water makes before it reaches your tap. Everyone wants pure water, but most public sources contain dangerous chemicals you don’t want anywhere near your drinking glass.

Many of these chemicals are known carcinogens (cancer-causing substances). Over 2,100 chemical compounds have been found in drinking water in the United States.

That’s why not paying enough attention to your water supply could be one of your biggest health obstacles. Eating well and working out is great, but polluting your body with dangerous toxins undermines those benefits from the inside out.

There’s a huge range of substances, added on purpose and accidentally, to our water supply. Over 2,100 chemical compounds have been found in drinking water in the United States. Many of them are contaminating it and causing serious health issues.

And here’s the really scary part: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has only established enforceable safety standards for 87 of these compounds. That’s less than five percent of the total amount!

Water quality varies depending on where you live, but contamination is a widespread issue. The Environmental Working Group analyzed over 200 municipal water systems across 43 states in the U.S. Their report found “probable human carcinogens” in every single water system they tested.

The Most Dangerous Drinking Water Chemicals

Of all the chemicals found in drinking water today, a few stand out above the rest as especially dangerous for your health:

Chlorine

Water suppliers use chlorine to disinfect public water sources by reducing the level of harmful bacteria. This has been going for decades because chlorine has been proven to effectively remove pathogens…

But there are plenty of unintended consequences.

Depending on your sensitivity, drinking too much chlorinated water can cause health problems. Multiple studies have linked the free radicals in chlorinated water to a weakened immune system, liver malfunction, and damages to arteries.

When chlorine mixes with natural organic particles, it creates hundreds of toxic by-products. Chlorine can cause problems all by itself, but it gets much worse when it reacts with other particles in the water supply.

When chlorine mixes with natural organic particles, it creates hundreds of toxic by-products which aren’t regulated or even monitored by government agencies or water suppliers.

These toxic by-products are called “disinfection by-products” (or DBPs). According to Renee Sharp, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group, we know about more than 600… with plenty more yet to be identified.

Chlorine by-products are much more toxic than chlorine itself. Some by-products, like trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs), may cause reproductive problems and even cancer.

Even the EPA admits that long-term exposure to THMs and HAAs can cause kidney, liver, and nervous system problems… as well as an increased cancer risk.

Chloramines

Chloramines are another type of disinfectant made by combining chlorine with ammonia. More and more municipal water districts are turning to this chemical to either replace or supplement chlorine use.

Unfortunately, chloramines are just as dangerous as good old chlorine. These chemicals are harsh enough to dissolve the inside of water pipes and fixtures. But they don’t just stop at property damage.

Chloramines leach heavy metals (like copper and lead) from pipes during their journey to your drinking glass. As a result, traces of these metals ends up in your water.

Chloramines have become more popular because they produce lower levels of toxic disinfection by-products (DBPs) regulated by the EPA. They still produce these harmful by-products – just at slightly lower levels than chlorine.

But just because chloramines produce less regulated DBPs doesn’t make them safe.

Some evidence suggests that chloramines produce even more unregulated disinfection by-products than chlorine, chemicals whose health risks aren’t even fully understood yet.

Fluoride

Of all the chemicals in our water supply, fluoride is probably the most controversial.

This debate picked up steam over the past few years. But it’s been going on for decades now – almost ever since water suppliers began fluoridation shortly after World War Two.

Over 90 percent of the fluoride found in the American water supply comes from “hydrofluorosilicic acid” – a waste product produced when phosphate fertilizer is made.

Fluoridated water is supposed to help us prevent cavities and strengthen our teeth. Yet plenty of scientific studies cast serious doubts about its effectiveness. So fluoride might not work as well as advertised. Besides that, it’s also been linked to some serious health problems.

It helps to understand where fluoride comes from. Many people assume the fluoride in their water is pharmaceutical-grade sodium fluoride. But in reality, over 90 percent of the fluoride found in the American water supply comes from “hydrofluorosilicic acid”. This substance is a waste product produced when phosphate fertilizer is made.

Fluoride accumulates in different parts of your body over time, which can create consequences after a lifetime of exposure. One study found that ingesting fluoride had a huge impact on rats’ brains and changed their behavior.

British researchers found that thousands of people experience hypothyroidism because they drank too much fluoridated drinking water. The risk of hypothyroidism increased when higher concentrations of fluoride were found where the people lived.

Fluoride also affects your teeth… but not necessarily in a good way. One study found that about 40 percent of American teenagers have dental fluorosis, a condition in which your teeth become mottled due to changes in your tooth enamel. This rate is as high as 70 to 80 percent in certain areas!

Finally, adding fluoride to drinking water raises plenty of ethical and practical issues. The dose is imprecise: no one can know who ingests it or monitor how much water people have each day. There’s also zero consent. The fluoride is there – and medicating you – whether you agree to it or not.

Arsenic, Hexavalent Chromium, Lead, and Other Heavy Metals

Drinking water is also full of heavy metals, which can be toxic at high enough amounts.

An Environmental Working Group analysis took a look at the hexavalent chromium in drinking water across the United States. They sampled water from 35 different cities, finding hexavalent chromium in a whopping 31 of them. This was the first national analysis of a problem that might be much bigger than we thought.

Scientists have known about hexavalent chromium’s carcinogenic properties for a long time. But they thought that was only if you inhaled it.

Now, studies revealed hexavalent chromium can cause cancer in animals even when it’s ingested. The National Toxicology Program found increased tumors in mice and rats in the small intestine and oral cavity.

Arsenic has also been linked to increased risk of several types of cancer. Back in 2001, the EPA lowered the maximum levels of arsenic allowed in drinking later from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion… but this probably isn’t enough.

The Natural Resources Defense Council estimated that 56 million Americans (across 25 states) drink water with unsafe levels of arsenic. One Texas study, where the groundwater was estimated to have even less arsenic than the median federal drinking-water standard, still found that exposure was linked to poor memory and language scores, as well as decreased brain function.

Besides drinking all these harmful chemicals, we also absorb them through our skin in the shower or bath, which is why…

Why Portable Water Filters Aren’t Enough to Keep You Safe

Your skin is the largest organ in your body. This means it can absorb a lot of nutrients, and also a lot of toxins.

Even if you filter your drinking water, you’re still exposing yourself to toxins whenever you take a shower or bath. The dangerous chemicals slip in through a combination of inhalation and skin absorption.

You inhale chloroform, a chlorine by-product, whenever you take a hot shower or bath. Chloroform has been linked to liver dysfunction, central nervous system issues, and even depression.

Warm water also opens your pores, so that combines with the chlorine gas you’re already inhaling to make things even worse. A study at the University of Pittsburgh found that you get less chemical exposure from drinking chlorinated water than from showering or washing your clothes in it.

Drinking-water filters are a huge step forward, but not enough to avoid all the dangerous toxins. Whenever we shower or bathe in the same water, these chemicals get into our bloodstreams.

This is especially dangerous for children. Children have a greater surface area to body weight ratio than adults, which can increase absorption of toxins through the skin.

Blood also flows faster through children’s circulatory systems, which can make them more vulnerable to toxins. Despite all that, most data used to set limits is based on exposures for adults.

Your Clean Water Solution

Worried about the substances lurking in your water?

It’s time to take action. There are solutions available which can help you avoid the toxins, keep the healthy minerals, and give you the clean water (and peace of mind) you deserve.

The first step:

Getting an accurate picture of your current situation and connecting with a Water Expert.

Start by taking Radiant Life’s FREE water assessment.

Everyone’s drinking water situation is different. This short survey will help you pinpoint any problem areas where toxic chemicals are slipping in.

Once you have a better understanding of your unique circumstances, it’s easier to move forward and change them.

A point-of-use system is a must. These systems, which usually go in your kitchen cabinet, remove chlorine, chloramines, fluoride, and other contaminants from your drinking water. They’re even more effective when you combine them with a point-of-entry system.

Point-of-entry systems usually go in your basement, garage, or water closet. They keep all the dangerous chemicals from entering your showers, washing machines, and any other places where you use water.

Clean drinking water is a basic necessity.

It’s time to take that back.

Go here to find out more.

Watch these 2 videos –

DIY: Make Swamp Water Drinkable! King Of Random Dives Into

 How To Make A Homemade DIY Water Filter

Top 10 Best Portable Water Filters & Purifiers for Backpacking & Survival

Written by Corey Pemberton

Author Bio:

Corey Pemberton is a freelance writer, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioner, and Paleo health enthusiast. Ever since he discovered the ancestral health movement five years ago, he has explored different ways to incorporate ancestral wisdom into his nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle at large. One of his favorite topics is challenging long-held nutrition myths. Feel free to stop by his website or say hello on Twitter.

A lot of people have gotten results from the Keto diet, and enjoyed the foods that it has to offer. However, many of the people who are following this diet have a hard time finding the recipes that they need, especially ones that are quick and easy to complete.

Fortunately, Kelsey Ale, noticed this problem, and decided to do something about it. She’s found that making recipes in a slow cooker gives you meals which are not only delicious, but also take very little time to make. Mostly you just put a few simple ingredients in the slow cooker, and let it do the rest.

To find out more, click on – Keto Slow Cooker Cookbook