Really late comer. I recently found a toothpaste without fluoride - Spry. In my opinion fluorinating the public drinking water in unconscienceable. When I mentioned not using fluoride to my dentist, he was dead set against it. Course, he has put mercury in my and hundreds of other mouths plus been in favor of fluoride. So it would be quite a thing for him to change thinking on these things at this time in his career. Also he didn't know about the positive things for tooth and other health of xylitol. That really makes me wonder.

I'm with Oakley - I don't think its that rare either. I think its something that isn't widely talked about because one might think its contagious. I've never been one to share drinks or lip gloss or whatever, but I do make sure that if my mouth is broken out, I keep my drinks away where my Grandson can't reach it. His parents share drinks with him so he just assumes others will. So many things pop up when you go through menopause, like the Frozen Shoulders I mentioned before. I had a total hysterectomy when I was 36 but stayed on HRT until 10 years ago - a couple years later, these strange things started happening. I know this sounds - weird - but I had to have a tooth pulled a couple years ago and this oral surgeon mentioned that he had read an article about something similiar and it was thought that the constant irritation could be brought about when a person has alot of metal in the mouth from fillings and crowns(gold). There could be a small electrical current going on which would keep the lining of the mouth sensitive, especially if the body chemistry is off - I think he said low potassium, magnesium, and perhaps zinc. I have several gold crowns, and a gold bridge, plus old fillings that contained some metal. I know at one time when I was having issues, my potassium level was low and the doctor started me on a supplement. I still take it daily. Let us know how the allergy tests go - no fun there.

His dentist recommended it for him & it is a prescription though I think there may now be a similar generic out now also.

I have to agree about the misguided info on raw diets, however the other stuff seems accurate. I think you have to look at what's species-appropriate and a most likely scenario in the wild - that's where dairy sounds questionable, but if it works for your pet, more power to you. You don't see many dogs and cats milking cows or goats. It 'works' for us (and many argue we shouldn't really have dairy either) because of a much longer history of genetic tolerance, I guess in dairy-heavy cultures, if you got IBS or other sorts of reactions from dairy, you weren't so likely to breed... I firmly believe one of the reasons vets are so opposed to raw diets is the level of funding the pet food industry puts into vet training and resources etc. It would appear to be something of a conflict of interest, and it's documented in the below link. I should also point out that outside of North America, eg Australia, the BARF diet for dogs (raw food) is looked upon very favourably by many vets. I think if you feed your pet garbage, then yes, it may make them sick. The commercial raw food I feed our dog, I would be (not gonna try it though) confident would be fit for humans (if you like ground up bone and organ meat with your chicken) because it's prepared hygienically. Remember also dogs have a much shorted gi tract than us and can eat stuff that really would make us sick, it passes through dogs much more quickly. I hate to admit we started our dog on kibble and didn't change til she developed some big gastric problems, I knew it wasn't the best thing for her, but it was cheap. I don't know if the Kirkland food was implicated in the melamine scandal, but I'm glad we changed - I don't think she would have survived on kibble anyway. If non-cooked food really wigs you out, then your own home-cooked pet food is almost certainly better than commercial dry or wet food, especially the larger scale stuff. Some of those ingredients are just not species appropriate, and some are blaming the increase in carbohydrates in dogs' diets for the higher incidence of diabetes.. Avocados, though, I didn't know about. We did give ours some the other day. A dog in the wild would definitely eat fallen fruit, which was my reasoning. I don't see any prohibition on bananas, which seem to be one of her favourite things.... http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/health/rawdogfood/index.html