We’ve done the science! Good-Gums has been formulated with clinically proven ingredients of the highest quality, potency and purity. Numerous peer review scientific studies confirm the power of these ingredients. Only Good-Gums brings them all together into one formula that you can use with confidence at home to supercharge your oral care and take care of your gums at home.
Certified as safe, effective and of high quality
by Health CanadaOfficially certified by The Government of Canada, Natural Product Number NPN80035767. Good-Gums has been assessed as being a safe, effective, high quality product which helps with the development and maintenance of gums and connective tissue formation and has been granted this NPN license by Health Canadian, the Canadian equivalent of the FDA.
Our manufacturing facility is certified by the Food And Drug Administration (FDA). Good-Gums is manufactured in full compliance with current FDA cGMP regulations and conforms to the United States Pharmacopeial Convention (USP).
After decades in the fields of natural healing and nutrition, Isabelle Dunkeson intuitively selected a blend of mineral, vitamin and herb ingredients to make a mixture that could soothe and support the healing of her gums. Little did she know, the creation she made up in her kitchen would become the basis of the formula now responsible for helping tens of thousands of people heal their gum problems and keep their whole mouth clean and healthy every day.
The result is the first and only natural oral product which is superior to toothpastes, mouthwashes, essential oils and balms at addressing compromised gums, at fighting bacteria, at soothing and helping to relieve sore or bleeding gums, and at addressing receding gums. It also has ingredients effective at loosening plaque so it can be gently cleared away before it can turn into tartar, leaving your whole mouth clean. Rich in nutrifying herbs and minerals, Good-Gums also packs a Vitamin C punch – essential to aid your body’s natural healing process. And because it’s a powder, the full potency of all the ingredients are sustained to activate the moment they effortlessly dissolve in your mouth. All the ingredients in Good-Gums are entirely natural, vegan, cruelty free, and contain no chemical or additives to interfere with natural healing and processes, such as tooth remineralization. Read more about the science that backs our unique formula.
Vitamin-C & citrus bioflavonoids
Vitamin C is without doubt the most essential vitamin for healthy gums, which is why people deficient in vitamin C will be at higher risk of developing gum disease.
Vitamin C is actually important for many processes throughout the body, and is even essential for survival. So when the body experiences any deficiency in vitamin C, its allocation is prioritized first to life-sustaining processes (such as the metabolism of neurotransmitters) at the expense of other functions, whose degradation will not prevent the body’s survival (though less than optimally) for an extended period of time. So, early signs of vitamin C deficiency are deteriorations that show up in the hair, nails, skin and the gums.
If you want to address your gum issues, you could try ingesting more vitamin C (which would be good for overall bodily health), but the allocation of vitamin C that’s absorbed via the intestines will still prioritize other demands ahead of restoring the gums, so you may not notice any improvement. A more targeted approach puts the vitamin C where it’s needed to support gum health.
Whenever the gums become compromised (whether by bacterial infection, or by chemical assault from smoking, or by the effects of our modern industrial diet), a generous amount of vitamin C within the gums is vital for gum healing. That’s because vitamin C within the gums is crucial for the production of collagen, the protein from which new cells of gum tissue are made. Vitamin C for the gums is the centerpiece of the Good-Gums formula.
But it’s not as simple as merely putting vitamin C in the formula. Its acidity has to be highly buffered to prevent its acidity from damaging enamel. We do that by the inclusion of the alkaline baking soda. And the formula also has to be carefully arranged to prevent reactions within the bottle between the acidic ingredient of vitamin C and the alkaline ingredients of the formula, so that the vitamin C will still be potent when absorbed by the gums to do its magic.
Vitamin C helps the lining of the gums (epithelium) stay healthy despite the bacteria that inhabit the mouth. Healthy gums insulate the roots of the teeth from oral bacteria despite their close proximity. When bacteria start to penetrate the gums, through tiny lesions or weakened lining, it is within the gums that the immune system fights to eradicate the harmful bacteria and to ensure the health of both the gums as well as of the underlying tooth-supporting ligaments and bone.
Vitamin C is absolutely key to the processes of cell growth, which is involved in the repair of gum tissue. It’s necessary for the production of collagen, the basic protein that makes up all connective tissue, including that of the gums and of the periodontal ligaments that help the gums stay tight to the teeth and the teeth to the jawbone.
A 14 week study at the University of California San Francisco showed that when vitamin C intake was decreased, gums bled more; when it was increased, gum bleeding decreased. In another study, people who got less than the minimum daily amount of vitamin C (RDA is 60 mg for an adult) had higher rates of periodontal disease than those who got the minimum, and they had three times the chance of gum disease than those who received three times the recommended amount of vitamin C.
Not only is there a strong connection between vitamin C and healthy gums, there’s also a strong connection between bioflavonoids and how well vitamin C is absorbed. Both are, of course, prominent ingredients of Good Gums powder.
Bioflavonoids have been found to significantly enhance the absorption of Vitamin C, and possibly to prolong the effectiveness when they are combined together. Like vitamin C, the bioflavonoid nutrient is not made by the human body and so has to be ingested. Unlike vitamin C, it’s not so critical a nutrient that people can die from lack of it. Its value almost always comes from working with vitamin C, although it has also been associated with maintaining the walls of blood vessels to prevent bruising and bleeding. Check out our blog “Vitamin C – you can’t live without it” for extra vitamin C factual nuggets that may interest you.
Vitamin C – You Can’t Live Without It!
We don’t synthesize glucose into Vitamin C like most mammals Some 60 million years ago, a mutation occurred in a gene of our human ancestors that prevents the synthesis of the active enzyme protein, L-gluconolactone oxidase (GLO). Therefore our liver doesn’t synthesize glucose into Vitamin C like most mammals. Humans, the apes, Old World and […]
Baking Soda
Baking soda is an excellent natural oral care ingredient and has for many decades been used for tooth care practices. It has been selected by Isabelle as an essential ingredient of Good-Gums, for its many wonderful oral health benefits.
It is also a naturally alkaline ingredient. This alkalinity is important two ways:
Crucially, it buffers the acidity of vitamin C, which, in isolation, is so acidic as to be detrimental to tooth enamel. With the addition of a generous amount of baking soda, the pH of the Good-Gums formula has greatly reduced acidity, alleviating that threat to your enamel.
The alkalinity of baking soda also reduces the acidity, not only against your enamel, but within the entire oral cavity (which arises from acidic foods that we eat and from acidic digestive juices). This is important because the plaque-forming bacteria that infect the gums thrive in an acidic environment, and are inhibited by an alkaline environment. So the reduction of acidity from the baking soda helps control these troublesome bacterial colonies.
Other virtues of baking soda (aside from neutralizing acids) are that it acts as a very good cleanser and deodorizer. Baking soda is nontoxic and mild enough for the soft tissues of the gums, tongue and mouth. It’s one of the least abrasive cleansers on tooth enamel, much less than the silicas or dicalcium phosphates that are common to many toothpastes.
Baking soda neutralizes odors, bad tastes, and Volatile Sulfur Compounds, which are primarily responsible for bad breath and are highly toxic. Clinical studies are underway to determine the involvement VSCs have related to gum health issues as they tend to congregate in the gum pockets, especially as pockets get deeper.
Another virtue of baking soda is that it helps remove stains on the surface and in the tiny crevices of teeth. So if you drink coffee, tea, wine or even smoke, baking soda may help improve your teeth’s appearance.
Want to know more about the benefits of baking soda?
5 Reasons Why Every Household NEEDS Baking Soda!
It may be one of the cheapest and most easily attainable items at the grocery store but this miracle-working household item has the ability to not only work wonders as part of your daily beauty regime but is responsible for helping cure a whole variety of health issues. Baking soda, also known as sodium bicarbonate […]
French Grey Sea Salt
Seawater and saltwater have been shown to have significant antimicrobial effects. One study says that salt water may be considered as effective as chlorhexidine (the “gold standard” for synthetic oral rinses) for dental plaque control. Another study found that a mechanism for saltwater’s antimicrobial action is that “water moves out of the cell by osmosis” and that “oral bacteria become dehydrated and eventually die within a minute.”
Salt water solutions are considered so supportive of healing that dental surgeons almost always recommend salt water rinses following tooth extractions or other oral surgery. And dentists often recommend a mixture of baking soda and salt for cleaning teeth. (This combination is a traditional tooth cleanser that has stood the test of time for over centuries.) But when you introduce products into your mouth (even if just to brush or deodorize), much more than just cleaning is going on. The gums are also absorbing whatever is in the mixture, whether it’s an artificial chemical or natural sea salt.
Now a lot of people think that all salt is the same. It’s not! When we select the salt (along with the other natural nutrients) that we use in Good-Gums, we specify a particular type of sea salt instead of, the least expensive refined table salt, which has been stripped of its mineral nutrients.
Mineral rich sea water is often considered the closest thing in nature to human blood (so much so that it was successfully used in emergency transfusions by Navy doctors in World War II when blood and plasma weren’t available.) If sea salt has not been refined, it can be reconstituted into its mineral rich solution by water or by the moisture of saliva or food. Ordinary table salt cannot. The producers of refined salt have processed it to extract many trace minerals from the salt and to sell the minerals as nutritional additives to the manufacturers of processed “fortified” foods, before selling the depleted salt. That’s one reason table salt is so inexpensive; it’s been reduced to being a byproduct that’s nearly-nutrient-free after having had up to 90 essential minerals extracted and sold separately, and then having aluminosilicate of sodium or yellow prussiate of soda added, as well as bleaches!
The resulting refined salt then winds up with an undesired higher sodium content than unrefined sea salt.
Dissolved sea salt – especially mineral rich sea salt – allows liquids to pass through the body’s membranes and blood vessels’ walls. The trace elements are required for cells to control their ion equilibrium, which is necessary for the cells’ functioning, growth and regeneration. Ordinary refined salt is impoverished of these trace element ions, leading to an imbalance between the inside and the outside of a cell membrane hampering the desired passage. With salt and its trace elements being so important, Good-Gums incorporates what we consider to be the best sea salt in the world as a natural oral care ingredient for Isabelle’s formula. It is a sea salt from the Celtic Sea, also known as grey sea salt, harvested from Brittany in France facing a section of the Atlantic Ocean that has been shown to be particularly clean. The sea water is introduced into shallow pools of mineral rich clay (and not into conventional cement-lined ponds). As the brine evaporates in the sun, salt crystals form about 6 inches below the surface, with a distinctive grey color from the healthful minerals and nutrients of the ocean and of the beds’ clay bottom. The resulting salt is so pure that no further processing is necessary to be certified organic by the French organization Nature et Progrès, which is one of the founding organizations of International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM).
If you’d like to read some weird and wonderful facts about salt, check out our article.
10 Fabulous Facts About Salt You Didn’t Know!
Every single cell in our body contains salt. It is vital for the functioning of our body and is essential in maintaining the right balance of bodily fluids. We need salt to survive but at the same time, too much salt can be fatal! On average every human body contains about 250g of salt, equivalent […]
Myrrh
Myrrh is widely considered by herbalists and practitioners of Chinese medicine to be one of the most effective substances for sore gums. Even in the west it is renowned for its astringent and antiseptic properties as well as for promoting healing.
Scientific studies have confirmed the medicinal importance of myrrh. A study that reviewed over 70 peer-reviewed papers found that the genus Commiphora (myrrh) is used successfully and safely as a natural drug to treat pain, inflammatory conditions and periodontal diseases, among other uses. It noted that in recent years recognition has been growing for myrrh’s significant anesthetic properties.
Modern science has also found that myrrh has a very unusual property: bacteria don’t develop resistance to it, even when a strain has been exposed to it for extended periods of time. Natural myrrh continues to be effective, even long after synthetic drugs would have lost much of their effectiveness due to microbes having developed resistance to the synthetic drugs.
In addition to its antiseptic, antimicrobial and astringent properties, it has been used by people wishing to stimulate circulation in mucous membrane tissue (which includes the gums). It has historically been used by itself for swollen or spongy gums as well as for canker sores, sore throats and sinus infections.
Even in antiquity, its antiseptic properties were employed (even before humanity had learned about microbes and the biological mechanisms of sepsis). It was used for embalming and mummifying Egyptian Pharaohs; ancient Greek soldiers carried it into battle to treat wounds and prevent gangrene. It was so valued as an astringent and healing agent, it was considered even more valuable than gold!
Myrrh is an Arabic word meaning bitter. A little bit goes a long way, so usable quantities could be carried by donkeys, camels and other pack animals along ancient trade routes that fanned out from the Middle East. Its healing powers made it prized by royalty, nobles and wealthier people from Greece to India. It’s famously cited in scripture as a highly prized gift of the Magi.
Myrrh is produced by trees in the Commiphora genus, especially Commiphora myrrha, which grows in Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Oman. Cultivation has extended its growth range, and it’s estimated that current stocks of the plants are enough to fill the world’s demand for myrrh.
Myrrh is unique among herbs, for its effectiveness, versatility, safety and avoidance of microbial resistance, making it extremely valuable for supporting oral health.
Peppermint
Peppermint has historically been considered a mild-acting herbal medicine (phytomedicine), and its leaves have been used as a folk remedy for centuries to relieve pain around a tooth and to improve swollen gums. It has a calming and numbing effect due to the high menthol content of its oil.
In the western hemisphere, peppermint is sometimes called the world’s oldest medicine. It inhibits the growth of various strains of bacteria as well as viruses. It is high in vitamin C and vitamin A, and contains numerous nutrient trace elements, such as iron, calcium, potassium, magnesium and copper.
A number of studies by modern researchers have tested peppermint and documented its “significant antibacterial and antiviral properties” against a range of microbial species, including those found in the mouth. Also noteworthy, peppermint has been found to be effective against biofilm formation. A review of the health benefits of peppermint confirmed its analgesic effects from in vivo studies in humans. Peppermint also has the remarkable ability to be absorbed by the skin, leading to many reports of pain relief from headaches and insect bites after topical application of its oil. Absorption takes place even more readily through the mucous membranes, such as the absorptive tissues of the gums, stomach and intestines. Historically peppermint leaf has been ingested for relief from irritable bowel syndrome and its vapors inhaled for nausea, indigestion and congestion. And of course, peppermint adds a touch of that fresh, minty flavor we like so much.
Cranberry
Cranberry has the amazing property of preventing the biological adhesion of microbes onto mucous membranes, such as the urinary tract, stomach, and of course, the gums. The anti-adhesion property of cranberries stem from its proanthocyanidins, a type of flavonoid with high antioxidant properties but with a rare structure not found in most other fruits and vegetables. It’s the bacterial anti-adhesion property that makes cranberry so effective against urinary tract infections and also against bacterial colonies in the mouth.
The precise biological mechanism that makes cranberry so effective against oral pathogens is that it “significantly decreases nonoscale adhesion forces” of the oral pathogenic bacteria. The bacteria have small, hair-like projections called fimbriae that reach out from each bacterium to latch onto victim epithelial cells (cells of the lining of tissue, such as of the gums or of the urinary tract). When enough bacterial cells adhere to epithelial cells, they cause an infection. In fact, the adhesion by the fimbriae is required for infection to take place. But exposing the cells to cranberry causes fimbriae of the bacteria to curl up, into a position in which they cannot grip epithelial cells. As more of a bacterium cell’s fimbriae curl up, the less that the bacterium can hold on to its “victim” tissue, so that the bacterium can be removed much more easily with much less force. For a urinary tract infection, just the flow of urine through the urinary tract is enough to dislodge many of the bacteria and to flush them out of the body, thereby shortening the time to achieving a recovery from the infection.
In the mouth, the grip of the plaque-forming bacteria can be loosened to the extent that vibrating the bristles of a toothbrush is enough to dislodge them. This is the mechanism employed by Good-Gums. We don’t subscribe to the conventional practice of tolerating the super-stickiness of oral bacteria, and then relying on abrasives (common to all tooth pastes and to other anti-plaque products) to grind them off (while also scratching enamel). We think that reducing the grip of bacteria so that it becomes much easier to brush away is a more effective approach, without the damaging side effects.
It’s not just the structure of cranberry’s antioxidants that’s unusual. Cranberries are also packed with unusually high levels of antioxidants, with five times the concentration found in broccoli and one of the highest among all other common fruits and vegetables.
When ingested by itself, the high level of antioxidants are thought to be beneficial for reductions in cholesterol, heart disease, and stroke. It has rightly been called a “super fruit” because of its high levels of antioxidants, vitamin C, and other trace elements. Scientists have discovered that the flavonoids quercetin and myricetin found in cranberries can stop the formation of dental plaque and tooth decay. Their natural antimicrobial actions are beneficial for overcoming gum infections; normally bacteria can attach themselves to teeth and gums, forming a biofilm that becomes dental plaque. Cranberry helps to keep such bacteria from sticking to surfaces in the first place. Trials have shown that daily use of a cranberry mouthwash for six weeks significantly reduces levels of harmful bacteria in saliva.
Please note: The Good Gums formula includes cranberry but does not include any sugar.
Cinnamon
Cinnamon is both antimicrobial and a modest pain reliever. The inner bark is the part of the plant from which either the powder or the more concentrated oil is derived, and is the part approved for use as a medicinal herb by the prestigious German Commission E (which gives scientific expertise for the approval of substances and products previously used in traditional, folk and herbal medicine).
Cinnamon has properties that are antimicrobial, antiviral, antifungal, and slightly anesthetic, which can be beneficial for sore tissues. The oil and bark have been traditional folk remedies for many years and have historically been used to numb teeth and gums, including the gums of teething infants.
Cinnamon is also considered one of the most concentrated sources of antioxidants.
Cinnamon is not only a natural ingredient for oral care, other traditional applications for cinnamon address the digestive process, including indigestion, loss of appetite, bloating, and flatulence. And of course cinnamon is widely known for improving taste and aroma.
WHY IS GOOD-GUMS A POWDER?
The ingredients of Good-Gums contain parts of plants (such as leaves, bark, fruit pulp, skins and sap) that can start to degrade over time in a moist environment. So Good-Gums is produced as a dry powder to help the ingredients retain their potency longer and stay fresh until it is used.