The first time I made my own toothpaste, I woke up in the middle of the night to realize that my mouth still felt wonderful. I had brushed my teeth that night at around eleven and I awoke around two or three to find that my mouth felt just as fresh as it had right after brushing. I was so excited I lay awake for the next hour just swishing my tongue around my mouth.

Why would I make my own toothpaste? It all started when I started making my own soap. I though it would be cheaper, and it was. Then I started looking at the ingredients of soaps and wondering what they were all used for. All I needed was two ingredients (Lye and Oil), why did commercial soaps need so many? (Some of those ingredients were even carcinogenic) So I decided to take make my own soap with only a few safe ingredients.

I then looked at my tube of toothpaste and though I could save money making that myself too. The only ingredient I was second guessing was the Fluoride. While Flouride has some helpful qualities like making our teeth strong, there do seem to be some drawbacks, such as possibly weekening hip bones later on in life. Of course this mainly applies to people with plaque-resistant teeth. I’m one of those people, so I decided I should make my own non-flourinated toothpaste. I told my dentist about this and he didn’t seem too thrilled that I was making my own toothpaste. Although his only problem was that I wasn’t brushing with Fluoride. I asked if fluoridated water was enough, and he said it wouldn’t be wise to take the chance.

Shortly after making my own toothpaste, I looked at my bottle of Tom’s of Maine Mouthwash and though “Hey, I could make that myself too, it’s mostly water, right? So I just looked at the ingredients list and made up my own batch. It turned out there was an ingredient processed from natural gas and oil: Poloxamer 335. I normally try to stay away from ingredients with numbers, especially food dyes, so I figured home-made mouthwash was a good idea too. I simply combined the main ingredients I saw from Tom’s, excluded those I wasn’t sure of, and came up with the recipe below. If anyone has a better recipe or solution, I’d love to hear it.

2 Tbsp Calcium Carbonate: This is the abrasive that scrapes the gunk off your teeth. It’s Basically just chalk. I found a pottery supply store that sells it. One point cost only $1.25! However, if you for some reason can’t find calcium carbonate anywhere you can try substituting crushed up tums or any other antacid pill. I’d recommend getting the unflavored kind since flavored ones usually contain sugar and it doesn’t make much sense to brush your teeth with sugar!

1 Tbsp Baking Soda: This is the cleaning agent. It’s easily obtainable at any grocery store for real cheap.

1-2 tsp Glycerin: To be honest, I’m not quite sure what purpose the glycerin serves, but it gives the paste a creamy consistency like the store-bought pastes. It might be kind of hard to find. I managed to track some down at a locally owned drug store. I think it was like $3.50 for an 8 oz. bottle. Not that glycerin is not vegan, however "vegetable glycerin" is.

� tsp Peppermint Extract: This is to give your paste a bit of flavor so your paste doesn’t just taste like chalky baking soda. It should be easy to find at any grocery store for a couple dollars. You can also try fennel or cinnamon or anything else.

A small bit of water: this is just to moisten your paste a bit. Be careful not to put too much or your paste will be all runny.

So just mix all this stuff together and get to brushing. Remember, for optimal dental health brush three times a day for 2.5 minutes each time and floss daily. For storing your paste you can cut the end off an old toothpaste tube, spoon your paste in, roll it up a bit and staple it or clip it somehow.

When I ran out of Tom's of Maine Mouthwash, I reused the bottle and mixed together the following:

2 Cups Water: for consistency
1 Tblsp Glycerin: for flavor/body
1.5 tsp Sodium Bicarbonate (baking soda): for cleansing
1.5 tsp peppermint oil: for flavor

Shake in bottle, rinse mouth, spit.