Most Amish people do go to the dentist, but their relationship with dental care looks quite different from mainstream American culture. Visits tend to be infrequent, driven by pain rather than prevention, and the procedures they choose often lean heavily toward extraction and dentures rather than fillings, root canals, or cosmetic work.
How Amish Communities Approach Dental Care
The Amish do not have a religious prohibition against dentistry. Nothing in their faith forbids seeing a licensed dentist, and many communities have relationships with local dental practices or mobile clinics that serve rural areas. However, several practical and cultural factors shape how and when they seek care.
The Amish pay for all medical and dental expenses out of pocket. They don’t carry health insurance, relying instead on personal savings and community mutual aid funds. This means dental visits are weighed carefully as a financial decision, especially for large families. A single extraction is far cheaper than a root canal followed by a crown, which can cost several hundred dollars per tooth. When a tooth is causing problems, pulling it is often the most straightforward and affordable solution.
Transportation adds another layer of difficulty. Many Amish communities use horse and buggy as their primary transportation, making a trip to a dentist’s office in town a significant commitment of time. Some communities hire drivers for medical appointments, but this adds cost. The result is that dental visits tend to happen when there’s an urgent problem, not for routine checkups or cleanings.
Extractions and Dentures Are Common
One of the most striking aspects of Amish dental culture is the widespread acceptance of full dentures, often at a young age. Clinicians working with Amish communities report providing many permanent tooth extractions and dentures for teenage patients. As one Amish girl told researchers in a study published in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Dentistry: “My mom and my sisters had a denture when they were teenagers. Many Amish lost their teeth when they were young.”
This isn’t seen as a tragedy within the community the way it might be in mainstream culture. Dentures are viewed as a practical, one-time solution. Rather than spending years and thousands of dollars on fillings, crowns, and repeated dental work, having teeth pulled and replaced with a set of dentures can seem like the more sensible long-term investment. There’s no social stigma attached to wearing dentures, even for a young person. The Amish generally place little value on cosmetic appearance, so orthodontics, teeth whitening, and veneers are virtually unheard of.
Home Remedies for Toothaches
Before seeking professional care, many Amish families turn to traditional home remedies passed down through generations. For toothaches, common treatments include crushing white oak bark, marshmallow root, and black walnut hulls together and applying the mixture directly to the affected tooth. Whiskey used as a mouth rinse is another widely known remedy. For gum infections, burdock root is used for its natural antibacterial properties.
These remedies can provide temporary pain relief, but they don’t address underlying decay or infection. In some cases, reliance on home treatments delays professional care until a tooth is beyond saving, which reinforces the cycle of extraction over restoration.
Amish Diet and Tooth Decay
Here’s where the story gets interesting. Despite infrequent dental visits and limited preventive care, Amish children actually show lower levels of tooth decay than the general population. Research published in the Journal of Public Health Dentistry found that this advantage comes down to diet and eating patterns, not genetics or fluoride exposure. Testing of well water in Amish communities revealed low fluoride levels, ruling that out as a protective factor.
The key difference is how the Amish eat. Their meals are largely homegrown and home-prepared, without the processed, prepackaged foods that dominate most American kitchens. This matters because roughly 80 percent of sugar consumed in developed countries comes in hidden form, tucked into packaged bread, sauces, cereals, and snack foods. The Amish largely avoid these products. They do eat dessert, and their meals often include generous amounts of sugar, but the sugar is consumed at mealtimes rather than through constant snacking throughout the day. This pattern of eating sugar only during meals, rather than grazing on sugary snacks for hours, significantly reduces the amount of time teeth are exposed to acid-producing bacteria. The finding aligns with the landmark Vipeholm study, one of the foundational pieces of research linking sugar frequency (not just sugar quantity) to cavity formation.
So Amish children often start out with healthier teeth than their non-Amish peers. The problems tend to accumulate in adolescence and adulthood, when years without professional cleanings, fluoride treatments, or early intervention allow small issues to become large ones.
Variation Between Communities
It’s worth noting that “the Amish” are not a single uniform group. There are dozens of distinct affiliations ranging from very conservative (Old Order) to more progressive groups that permit greater interaction with the outside world. More conservative communities are less likely to seek professional dental care, while progressive groups may visit dentists more regularly and be open to restorative procedures like fillings and crowns. Geography matters too. Communities located closer to towns with dental offices or those served by outreach clinics tend to have better access and higher utilization rates than those in more isolated rural areas.
Some dental professionals and public health organizations have developed outreach programs specifically designed for Amish communities, offering services at reduced cost or bringing mobile dental units directly to rural areas. These programs have had success in building trust and providing care that fits within the community’s practical and cultural framework.