Vitamins for Healthy Gums

Next to regular brushing, flossing, and dental care, vitamins have the closest relationship to healthy gums.

Vitamin A stimulates the gums to make keratin, the same protein that makes the skin just "tough enough" to resist wounds and infection. Vitamin A is especially important for protecting the gums against those irritated sores caused by bacterial infection. Various metabolites of this vitamin are necessary for the cells lining the gums to differentiate into new, growing cells to maintain and repair the protective outer membrane.

Vitamin A also stimulates the differentiation of cells in bone into white blood cells that fight infection. And it stimulates the production of growth hormone.

Not very many foods contain vitamin A. Cod liver oil, egg yolks, whole milk, and butter head the list. Your body, however, can make vitamin A from beta-carotene, found in abundance in orange and yellow vegetables, such as carrots, squash, and pumpkin, and also in kale, collards, mango, broccoli, and sweet potato. The process of making vitamin A from beta-carotene is most efficient in people who have the least body fat, but anyone can avoid vitamin A deficiency by eating just one serving of a yellow or orange vegetable every day.

Gum disease is a classic symptom of scurvy, the vitamin C deficiency disease. Scurvy even occurs today, in people who consume very high dosages of the vitamin and then stop.

For instance, a Swedish man drank 8 to 10 glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice on his vacation in Florida, but stopped drinking orange juice when he returned to Sweden. A month later, he had lesions on the gums characteristic of scurvy. And in my own experience, a woman who had been taking 3,000 mg of vitamin C every day to complement her cancer treatment had both gum and skin sores when she stopped.

Many natural therapists also recommend vitamin E for healthy gums. There is some laboratory evidence that vitamin E counteracts the effects of mercury amalgams, although there is no proven relationship between old-style silver-mercury fillings and increased risk of gum disease.

For vitamin E, "natural" is better. Vitamin E is not one but eight related chemical compounds, and a mixture of all eight, even at a lower dose is more effective. Take one capsule of "mixed tocopherols" a day, or if you can only find alpha-tocopherol, eat vitamin E-rich foods, especially those richest in gamma-tocopherol (using a tablespoon of soybean, corn, or canola oil, all rich in gamma-tocopherol, in cooking every day, or eating an ounce of peanuts or three ounces of almonds every day).