I’ve had quite a few requests for a tooth powder recipe (Megan, Stefanie, Christina, Cristina, and Kristen—thanks!). Some referenced a particular store bought product, while others just wanted my take on natural tooth care. This Peppermint Tooth Powder is what I came up with.
I actually devised this before heading to Costa Rica for a month earlier this year. I was trying to fly carry-on only, and one of the best ways to do that is to drop all liquids from your bag. This inspired both my powdered acidic hair rinse and this tooth powder.
For research I perused a wide variety of different toothpaste/powder recipes, compiled a master list of ingredients that I could use, threw in some extra for good measure, and then pared it down to seven pretty simple ingredients.
The bulk of the tooth powder is cleansing clay. I went for a blend of detoxifying bentonite and gentle kaolin. I did a batch that was entirely bentonite, and I found it to be a bit irritating (though my mouth is on the more sensitive side).
Up next is a bit of baking soda (USA / Canada), some highly absorbent activated charcoal, and some calcium carbonate for a bit of gentle scrubbing power. I kept the amount of baking soda (USA / Canada) low as I’ve heard some dentists don’t recommend baking soda (USA / Canada) anymore as it can be too abrasive. Feel free to drop it if you like. In the past I’ve made calcium carbonate by grinding up clean egg shells, but I don’t recommend that here. I can never get egg shells ground finely enough to use in tooth powder, so unless you love the sensation of rubbing sand across your gums, I recommend using a store bought tablet or powder instead.
For flavour, I’ve added a bit of ground cinnamon (tastes good and has antibacterial properties!) and some sweetening stevia powder.
The final tooth powder tastes salty (thanks to the baking soda (USA / Canada)) and slightly cinnamony. Brushing with it isn’t like using toothpaste—it’s rather powdery (duh, haha) and scrubby. You’ll be spitting black from the activated charcoal, but your teeth will feel wonderfully clean. I will admit that I still alternate in my store bought toothpaste as I’m afraid my toothpaste is missing something I really need for good oral hygiene, and I don’t really want to take my chances given the price of dental care.
I no longer recommend using this formula; I am concerned it could damage tooth enamel as bentonite clay is harder than enamel.
Peppermint Tooth Powder
1 tbsp bentonite clay
1 tbsp white kaolin clay (USA / Canada)
1 tsp baking soda (USA / Canada)
2 tsp activated charcoal
2 tsp calcium carbonate
½ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp powdered stevia leaf (my powder is green—use far less if yours is a refined version)
10 drops peppermint essential oil (USA / Canada)Pop all the powdered ingredients into your DIY coffee grinder and blitz everything to a fine powder (you may need to do this in batches, depending on the size of your grinder). To incorporate the peppermint essential oil (USA / Canada), scatter the drops over the top of some powder in your coffee grinder and blend the drops into the powder.
If the inside of your grinder is metal, I recommend leaving the bentonite clay out of the grind and stirring it in afterwards as you want to avoid bentonite clay coming into contact with metal to keep it as effective as possible.
Store the powder in a glass or plastic container (avoid metal because of the bentonite).
To use, wet your toothbrush, dip it into the powder, and brush as usual. Rinse thoroughly and enjoy those clean chompers!
If you want to swap out the peppermint essential oil (USA / Canada) for something else, feel free, but take care not to use anything that’s toxic or highly irritating. Examples of essential oils to avoid include tea tree and wintergreen.
This is great! Plus, I have the same old Krups coffee grinder as yours! It was my grandma’s, still have its original box, LOL!
Nice! I got mine used on Kijiji and it’s still going strong 🙂
Hello, great recipe! I too use a powdered toothpaste, similar to yours but minus the charcoal, and round out the dental hygiene with this mouth wash recipe. Sometimes I even brush with the mouth wash just cause it feels so nice. I just had a dentist visit after 3 years (eeek), and the hygienist was so impressed with the health of my gums/teeth she barely had to clean… that was enough to convince me this regimen is effective :).
MOUTH WASH
1 tsp himalayan/real salt
2 Tbls witch hazel
2 Tbls hydrogen peroxide
1/2 dropperfull each eucalyptus and echinacea tincture
3 drops each peppermint, tea tree, and birch eo
fill rest of glass, tinted container with tap water
(I use an old olive oil bottle with a narrow top and just swig from it)
Optional:
½ C aloe: ONLY perfectly pure aloe, or it will taste horrible
Cool, thanks for sharing, Anna! I may just have to make my own mouthwash, I’ve sort of missed it since going natural 🙂
It is worth noting that tea tree oil is toxic, though. I know it’s in small quantities here, but I wouldn’t put it in anything that goes in my mouth.
I have also been told by a couple of aromatherapists that birch eo should not be used in anything that goes in your mouth, as it is just as strong as wintergreen. Tea Tree as well, but I saw you already said that. I do like the idea of homemade mouthwash though, I’ll have to do some experimenting!
Thanks, LuAnn!
Thanks for this, I have been using LUSH toothy tabs every time I travel and this will be a great alternative. Any ideas on what I can do to make this into tablets instead of a powder?
You’d basically need to get it wet enough to make a stiff paste/dough, and then make that dough into wee balls/tablets and let them dry back out 🙂 Sort of like these!
Hi, with the added water wouldn’t it need a prservative? What shelf life would the tablets have if unpreserved. Thanks in advance.
Good evening Raquel!
Marie has come a long way in the past almost five years from this type of recipe! Have you read this post?
Marie- I make my own Remineralizing Tooth paste and powder (initially inspired by WellMama) but majorly tailored the recipe. Love, love, love everything you share, make, concoct, etc… Thanks for all you do… and your beauty is inspiring to me and my daughter. Natural CLEARLY is the way to go to preserve beauty… (altho I’m betting your genes have a great impact.) You are just beautiful, inside and out.. God bless! Hugs
Kim
Thank you so much, Kimberly 🙂 Thanks for DIYing with me and reading!
What a great recipe!
Thanks for the great idea, I will definitely try this out. Will be great for travelling.
Anna
Thanks, Anna! Enjoy 🙂
Love this formula, it has everything I’ve always wanted in a natural toothpaste/powder! Thanks for posting ♥♥♥♥♥
Enjoy & thanks for reading!
I have made my own tooth powder for a long time…but DUH….I never buzzed it in the food processor! This is a MUCH better idea…no gritty charcoal chunks. lol
Great minds must think alike, because our ingredient list is very similar. I also add black walnut hull, sub the peppermint in some batches for Thieves blend and when I have it, a few drops of Myrrh EO which is great for teeth.
I would think that for a tablet, you might find success in mixing in just a teeny tiny bit of Vodka to make it ‘packable’ and then packing it tightly into a tiny mould and leaving it to evaporate off all the alcohol. I should maybe give that a shot!
How funny! I fell hard and fast for my DIY coffee grinder when I got it, it’s one of the only things I have that I can’t use for non-DIY purposes and I’m 100% ok with that. It’s essential to good make-up as well 🙂 At this point pretty much anything I do that has powder in it ends up in the coffee grinder haha.
The vodka would probably work, but I bet plain ‘ol water would as well—it would just take a bit longer to dry out 🙂
Talk to your trustworthy dentist! Mine told me that fluoride is the only thing you need alongside good brushing and flossing (I know fluoride is a controversial issue..but like you, I trust the science on sun-protection and dental health). The dentist told me brushing with just water is as efficient as brushing with toothpaste. I’m still on the search for the best fluoride rinse without all the other additives though!
P.S. For sun protection, I like SPF clothes best. Beats all the products!
Thanks, Heather!
(I have a hefty collection of merino wool, which has great natural SPF 😉 )
Cool 🙂
🙂
Neat! I totally want to try this! I’ve been eyeballing some recipes for a while and after I finally finish the move I’m in the middle of I’m going to give this a shot.
Something I was wondering about that I saw online is the addition of coconut oil (cooled so that it solidifies) so that it takes down the abrasion factor even more. What are your thoughts on this? Maybe it will spoil quicker?
Love your site!
Hi Lauren! I rather like the idea of adding the coconut oil—you’d just want to take care not to mix water into the pot, or you’ll definitely be looking at faster spoilage 🙂
Nice! Just when I thought to ask you if you DIY your oral/dental care!
😀 Enjoy!
a while ago I decided to brush my teeth with plain bentonite clay powder and oh boy… it was so absorbent every droplet of saliva was instantly absorbed. my cheeks were sticking to my gums, that’s how dry it was inside my mouth. I resolved to always wet my clay first before brushing, haha.
how does this feel when you brush with it? drying? manageable?
Yikes! Bentonite does have a tendency to do that, eh? 😛 This powder dilutes the clay enough that you’ll find that’s not a problem 🙂
originally I set out to recreate this https://www.google.com/#q=earthpaste&tbm=shop
and then I decided I was too lazy to mix it up, that’s how I was brushing with plain bentonite.
It’s a little odd that there is no mention of a preservative in the ingredients… I’ve bought this brand and never seen any mold or other gross things. not completely sure how that worked out, perhaps the essential oils were helping prevent spoilage? idk.
Hmm, that no preservatives thing is weird. Perhaps there’s enough salt in there to do the trick? I feel like that’s probably not true, though :/ EO’s definitely aren’t preservatives. It does concern me that they put tea tree oil (which is toxic if consumed orally) in toothpaste.
If baking soda, which dissolves in water, is too abrasive, how is clay, which doesn’t, not?
Solubility isn’t everything 🙂 Bentonite clay has a really interesting texture when it gets wet—it goes all jelly like (try getting a wee dusting on your fingers and rinse it off to see how it feels). It’s really neat! Kaolin clay is very fine and smooth—like white flour—much smoother than baking soda. Neither is as gritty as baking soda.
I made this two days ago! Well, a variation of it. Instead of Stevia I used Xylitol (1tbsp), and EO spearmint and lemon.
I like it, and somehow I even enjoy my scary black grin in the mirror :).
Yay! I’m so glad 🙂 Enjoy your grimy mid-brush grin 😉
Hi, I know that things in the natural world change constantly. I was wondering if you still use this powder or if you have found something better?
Hey Vanessa! Whether or not I still use something isn’t really a great measure of whether or not a recipe is good as I’m always making and trying new things… with over 800 recipes online I’m sure you can imagine many do not get re-made, and that’s no fault of the recipe! This is still a great tooth powder that leaves my teeth feeling squeaky clean 🙂
If you get mouth irritation, you may want to try leaving out the cinnamon. It is a common irritant to mucous membranes. I leave it out because I’m allergic, but I love the rest of the recipe.
I like to use powdered, dried mint leaves instead of the essential oil because I have peppermint in my backyard and the EO is a little strong for my taste buds. 🙂
Thanks for the tips and for DIYing with me! 🙂
Hey Marie,
I happened to have “Calcium and Magnesium citrate powder”. Do you think it can substitute the calcium carbonate? I read somewhere that magnesium is good for teeth and therefore added to mineral washes (but I must admit that I didn’t research the subject).
Eh… maybe? Try it and find out? I have never worked with it so I don’t know.
Love this. I didn’t have the calcium carbonate but my mouth feels clean!
Wahoo! Happy tooth scrubbing 😉
Ok, so I found calcium carbonate in powder form and added it in….I really love this concoction, thank you. I find that doing a fluoride rinse twice a month gives me some flouride, but don’t have to be bombarded with the flouride….you all know that flouride is a neurotoxin right? Thus the poison control verbiage on toothpaste ingestion warning that if you swallow more than a pea sized amount of toothpaste warrants a call to poison control!!! I also make a rinse with tea tree oil, not for the faint of heart as it makes you want to gag until you fully rinse it out, but by gum, it is fabulous for your gums!!! Just don’t swallow any, as to should NEVER BE INGESTED! I can say that my dentist loves my gums and said to “keep doing whatever you are doing”. Thanks Marie, you rock!
Very cool! Sounds like you have a very happy mouth 😀 Thanks for sharing!
Marie, I have made this and used it as you do along with my natural store bought toothpaste. But I have 4 gold crowns in my mouth. No silver fillings. You mentioned that the bentonite clay reacts with metal, so will my very expensive caps be destroyed? This is my only concern and I still use it halving the amount of bentonite. Please let me know your thoughts, thanks
Ok, so. This is all a bit debatable because the vast majority of the “OMG no metal with bentonite!” sources are completely unsubstantiated blogs that also tend to be anti-chemical and pro eating essential oils. I’ve been trying to learn more about what the risk actually is. Thing one I’ve learned: the clay must be wet. Thing two: the metal must already be oxidized. So, honestly, I’m beginning to think that in general, this may be a thing we don’t have to be too worried about. Gold is a very nonreactive metal (a huge part of the reason we use it in things like fillings), so I think it would be fine, but you might as well call your dentist and check. Hope that helps!
Nice recipe. I make my own toothpowder whose ingredients are calcium carbonate, bentonite clay, kaolin clay, rock salt, baking soda, pomegranate peel powder, babul bark powder, myrhh gel, spearmint eo, neem eo, cinnamon eo, clove eo, fennel seed eo, tea tree eo. My 5 yr old kiddo too uses it and so far it has yielded good results.
Nice! Thanks for sharing 🙂