How to make a DIY remineralizing tooth powder (that really works)

Good news, DIY fans–we’ve heard your requests loud and clear! 🙂

In this article, we’ll explore how to make your own DIY remineralizing tooth powder.

We’ll also introduce you to our newest offering, bulk bags of MCHA, to help you make your own tooth powder at home. This is the ‘secret sauce’ behind the remineralization benefits of our OraWellness Shine.

Start from a high level view…

The first step to creating a really helpful tooth powder recipe is to establish what you want it to do for you.  

For example…

Depending on what you want to accomplish, you may be able to use fewer ingredients than the list that we’ll be sharing with you here.  

After you check out our sample tooth powder recipe, we invite you to keep scrolling down and read through the ‘why’ behind each ingredient.

Finally, we’ll explore how to fine-tune your tooth powder based on how it feels for you. That way, you can tailor the recipe to give you the specific support that you seek.

And of course, if you enjoy convenience, you can still just buy our own ‘carefully formulated’ blend that has worked so well for many other folks (and is the result of our multi-year dive into researching remineralization pathways), here’s a link to OraWellness Shine.

DIY Tooth Powder Recipe

A good starting point is to use equal parts of the four main ingredients below.  Then add some HealThy Mouth Blend (or safely diluted essential oils) and/or (powdered) salt and give it a try

Suggested Ingredients:

• 2 TBSP (30ml) OraWellness MCHA (Function: to help teeth remineralize)
• 2 TBSP (30ml) Birch-based Powdered Xylitol (Function: to support oral flora & to help teeth remineralize) (Here’s a good one on Amazon)
• 2 TBSP (30ml) White Kaolin Clay (Function: to help polish teeth – here’s a link to one on Amazon)
• 2 TBSP (30ml) Baking Soda (Function: to help polish teeth)
• 20 drops of HealThy Mouth Blend (or less if using full-strength essential oils–remember to do your homework and dilute them properly! Function: to help balance oral flora)
• 1/4 tsp Sea Salt or Himalayan Salt (Function: to help balance oral flora)

Directions:

Mix all ingredients and store in a jar with a well-fitting lid (so the tooth powder stays dry).

How to use:

We learned the hard way that it’s best to avoid introducing moisture to the powder by dipping a wet brush into the jar (yup, doing this can create a clumpy or gooey mess).

Now our preferred way to use our Shine tooth powder is to put a scoop of it into the palm of our hand.

Then we can brush our teeth in sections and dip our toothbrush into the remineralizing powder multiple times to reapply it without having to dip into the jar.

If this doesn’t work for you or feels, well, too gross, you can use a small bowl to hold your single-use scoop of powder and dip your toothbrush bristles into that.

Here’s a quick reference table to help you evaluate your ingredient options:

The ‘why’ behind each ingredient…

Before we jump into each individual ingredient, let’s quickly look at two principles that are important to consider when we’re trying to decide what’s ok to include in an oral hygiene product.

Principle 1: Do no harm

We’re holistically minded, so we want to make sure that the ingredients we consider won’t do any harm directly in the mouth or ‘downstream’ from the mouth.  

This means that we need to choose tooth powder ingredients that won’t undermine the health of our digestive or immune systems.

For a deeper dive on this premise, check out our articles titled, “How to Tell if Your Oral Hygiene Products are Holistic or Not” and “How to Determine if a Toothpaste Ingredient is Safe to Use in the Mouth“.

Principle 2:  Balance oral flora (oral microbiome)

Next, let’s make sure that the ingredients we use actually help us balance our oral flora and be a ‘good conductor’ of the symphony of microbes in our mouths.

Our mouths are home to many communities of microbes, most of which are helpful. Many of them actually perform critical functions that help us thrive (the majority of our immune system is not truly ‘us’ but microbes living in and on our bodies).

And yes, some microbes really don’t help and actually undermine our health.  We call these ‘thug bugs’ because when they increase their numbers, they can cause trouble.

So, we want to help create a balanced oral environment where the health-giving microbial species are thriving and the thug bugs are kept in check.

Let’s dive into some ingredient options that honor these two principles.

Ingredient options for balancing oral flora

Essential Oils

Essential oils can help suppress thug bug activity without disrupting the health-giving species in our mouths.  

In our article, “Are essential oils safe to use in the mouth?“, we explore the ecological plaque hypothesis.  We also explain how using essential oils in oral hygiene products provides us with a very helpful and safe method to be a good conductor in our mouths.

You’ll want to make sure that you use a safe essential oil dilution ratio in your tooth powder recipe because full-strength essential oils can harm our sensitive cheek and gum tissue.  If you feel unsure about this or don’t want to do the research for it, the simple fix is to just add some of our HealThy Mouth Blend to your recipe (the blend has already been diluted for you).

Salt

Salt is naturally antimicrobial, and if you use a quality sea salt or Himalayan salt, it also provides trace minerals.

Baking Soda

Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) helps to establish a more alkaline environment in the mouth.

It can also act as a gentle abrasive to help remove food/drink stains and stubborn plaque.

Since one of the main strategies we use to balance our oral flora is to maintain thin biofilms (plaque), using some gentle abrasive can help.

If you’d like to read more of our thoughts on baking soda, here’s a link to our article, “Is Baking Soda Safe to Brush With?“.

Xylitol

While some online resources make arguments against xylitol, given the scientific research we’ve read, we do choose to use xylitol in our tooth powder.  

Xylitol can help us balance our oral flora.  Over time, using xylitol in the mouth makes the main tooth-decay-related thug bugs less aggressive.  It also alkalinizes the mouth, increases saliva, and thins biofilms.

For us, the benefits of brushing with xylitol far outweigh any potential risks.

Also, although we’re not consuming the xylitol, research suggests that ‘downstream’ in the body, xylitol can even create a healthier microbial balance in our gut biome.

However, to avoid GMO exposure, we do want to make sure our xylitol is sourced from birch (not corn).  Here’s a link to our article, “Is Xylitol Safe to Brush with?“.

Coconut Oil

As we mentioned, if you want to make your tooth powder into a paste, use coconut oil.

Coconut oil is antimicrobial and antifungal.  It tastes great, it’s good for us, and it even suppresses the main thug bug that’s implicated with tooth decay.

Ok, so now that we’ve discussed some ingredient options to help us balance our oral flora, next, let’s explore how to remineralize our pearly whites.

Ingredient options for remineralization

These days, the internet is abuzz with strategies to remineralize teeth, but there’s lots of misinformation out there. So, we have to stay on top of what science really has to offer regarding remineralizing our teeth and stopping tooth decay.

We took nearly 4 years to study the body’s various mechanisms for remineralizing our teeth.  This formed the basis for OraWellness Shine, our remineralizing tooth whitening powder.

To remineralize our teeth, we have to provide the exact minerals that our teeth are made of, in a tiny particle size, right where our teeth need them.

We also need a delivery system to get these minerals (in the right particle size) to the right location.

We provide more information on this in our video that explains how Shine works and in our article, “Putting together the pieces to reverse tooth decay and remineralize cavities“.

To learn simple strategies anyone can apply to optimize their body’s natural remineralization pathways, download our free ebook, ‘How to stop tooth decay and remineralize your teeth’.

MCHA

The best material we have found to help remineralize teeth is microcrystalline hydroxyapatite, or ‘MCHA’ for short.

Let’s break down the name so it’s not so intimidating.

‘Microcrystalline’ refers to tiny particles in a crystalline structure.  

‘Hydroxyapatite’ is just the chemical name for a molecule that’s comprised mostly of calcium and phosphorus in the right ratio for our teeth.

Hydroxyapatite is the exact same material our teeth are made of (which makes it the perfect ingredient to help support stronger, healthier teeth that can resist decay).

To ensure that our OraWellness MCHA is as clean as it gets, we sourced it from the bones of grass-fed, pasture-raised cattle from New Zealand.  Our food-grade MCHA is produced by a pharmaceutical company that creates it for nutritional supplements. You can learn more about how MCHA works here.

We’re excited to offer bulk bags of this pure MCHA. Get OraWellness MCHA bulk bags here.

Now let’s explore how to get the MCHA to where it’s needed…

Xylitol

In addition to helping us balance our oral flora, xylitol also helps us get MCHA into areas of tooth decay.

The thug bugs implicated with tooth decay like sugars, and they view xylitol as a source of food (even though it doesn’t work well for them).

When we mix MCHA and xylitol and allow the combination to go into solution with our saliva, we trick these thug bugs into carrying the MCHA/xylitol solution into the zones that they’ve been actively working to demineralize.

Using this ‘microbial Trojan Horse’ tactic, we’re able to deliver the remineralizing benefit of MCHA precisely to where it’s most needed.

So, like a good Traditional Chinese Medicine herbal formula, using MCHA and xylitol together provides better remineralization benefit than using them separately.

However, if you are averse to using either MCHA or xylitol, using one without the other will still help (just not as much as the synergy they create together).

If you choose to use xylitol, again, make sure it’s birch-based, and powder it first to help it to better blend with the other tooth powder ingredients.

“What about using clay to remineralize my teeth?”

Clays are great for providing a gentle abrasive action to assist with whitening (more on this further below).

However, contrary to the misinformation you may have seen circulating online, clay does not help with remineralization.

Let’s take a look at the common chemical composition for clays like bentonite and montmorillonite: sodium calcium aluminium magnesium silicate hydroxide (with some iron commonly found in there, too).

Per one analysis, here’s a breakdown of the amounts of each:

• Calcium: 1%
• Magnesium: 2%
• Potassium: 1%
• Sodium: 3%
• Aluminum: 20%
• Silica: 59%
• Iron: 3.5%

As you can see, there’s no phosphorus in clay, and while there is some calcium in the compound, there’s not that much.  

Also, even if clay contained phosphorus and adequate amounts of calcium, they wouldn’t be in the exact molecular structure that’s needed in order to make remineralization possible.

So, to sum up our thoughts on clay:

• Is clay absorbent? Yes
• Does clay help to reduce plaque and remove food/drink stains by gently polishing teeth?  Yes
• Can clay help detoxify the body?  Yes
• Will clay help remineralize our teeth?  No, not really.

We hope this helps to clarify some of clay’s potential benefits as well as its limitations when it comes to providing tooth remineralization support.

Ingredient options for teeth whitening (via gentle abrasion)

When it comes to choosing whether or not to include a whitening component in your tooth powder, it can be helpful to understand some natural whitening options.

There are safe ways to go about whitening your teeth.  There are also lots of whitening techniques that we consider to be unsafe.  

Here’s a free ebook that explains ‘How to naturally whiten your teeth (without destroying your enamel)’.

The takeaway for safe whitening is to go slowly and gently.

White Kaolin Clay

Research clearly points to one ingredient that provides the safest whitening benefit without risking damage to tooth enamel: white kaolin clay.

Generally speaking, the more abrasive an ingredient, the more whitening ‘benefit’ it provides.  But at what cost? Do we really want whiter teeth that are more sensitive?

As we discuss in our article, “What’s the Safest and Most Effective Abrasive for Naturally Whiter Teeth?“, white kaolin clay is the only ingredient that provides more whitening without being more abrasive.

If you have reservations about the health risks of using clays, this research paper may help dispel your concerns.

Baking Soda

For years, baking soda has been used in toothpastes as a gentle abrasive.

Some may argue that baking soda is too abrasive, but on the dental hygiene product abrasivity scale, baking soda is WAY over towards the less abrasive side of the list.

While we’re here talking about abrasivity, we had OraWellness Shine tested by a lab for abrasiveness vs. its ability to clean. Here are the results of that lab test.

“What about charcoal to whiten teeth?”

Another hot topic on the internet these days is using activated charcoal to whiten teeth.

While charcoal does help whiten teeth, we chose to not use charcoal in any of our products.  Here’s why…

If we go back to principle 1 up above, we are firmly rooted in the idea of ‘do no harm’.

And while we don’t have data on the dangers of regularly brushing with charcoal, we are concerned that charcoal may inhibit some remineralization pathways.

If you think about it, what do we use activated charcoal for?  

Charcoal binds up ‘stuff’ and helps to move it out of our systems, which is why we sometimes take 1 or 2 capsules to help with food poisoning or some type of contamination.  It can also bind up minerals, which is why we never take charcoal anytime close to any supplements.

So, as a precaution, until we know for sure that charcoal does not bind up minerals in our saliva that are there to help remineralize our teeth, we choose to avoid including charcoal in our oral health products.

“Can I make this into a paste?”

Absolutely! To make a paste from your tooth powder, you can just add a little water until you get your desired consistency.

We do recommend that you make this paste in very small batches to use it quickly and avoid any spoilage.  

Another option is to make a paste by adding some organic coconut oil or MCT oil to your powder.  Again, to avoid spoilage, it’s best to make this in small batches.

Fine-tuning your formula

Now that you have a general plan, you can have some fun and fine-tune your remineralizing tooth powder to suit your needs.

For example, if you have more sensitivity, increase the MCHA and decrease the baking soda.

If you want more whitening benefit, increase the white kaolin clay and baking soda, and decrease the MCHA.

If it tastes too salty, decrease the baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and/or salt, and adjust the other ingredients to compensate.

In this way, you can modify your tooth powder to be the perfect blend just for you

Wrapping up…

There are lots of other ingredients you can use in your DIY oral hygiene product recipes.  We hope this article helps you establish a strong baseline understanding of how to make a remineralizing tooth powder for your family.

What about you?  What’s been your experience with DIY oral hygiene products? If you use any different ingredients or have questions about the ingredient options we discussed, please share in the comments below.  We can learn so much from each other’s experiences!

Helpful, Related Resources:

OraWellness MCHA [product solution]
HealThy Mouth Blend [product solution]
Shine Remineralizing Tooth Whitening Powder [product solution]
How to Tell if Your Oral Hygiene Products are Holistic or Not [article]
How to determine if a toothpaste ingredient is safe to use in the mouth? [article]
How to Balance Your Oral Flora [article]
Essential oils – Are essential oils safe to use in the mouth? [article]
Can some plaques actually help our teeth stay healthy? [article]
Is Baking Soda Safe to Brush With? [article]
Is Xylitol Safe to Brush with? [article]
How Shine Works
Putting together the pieces to reverse tooth decay and remineralize cavities [article]
How to Stop Tooth Decay and Remineralize Your Teeth ebook [free resource]
How to whiten your teeth naturally e-book [free resource]
What’s the Safest and Most Effective Abrasive for Naturally Whiter Teeth? [article]
Toothpaste Abrasion Chart [free resource]
Tooth whitening without abrasive toothpaste – Independent lab test results [article]

Other Resources:

Non-GMO birch xylitol on Amazon
White Kaolin Clay for sale on Amazon
Bentonite Clay Composition
Bentonite Clay as a Natural Remedy: A Brief Review