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Brush your teeth – postpone Alzheimer's

eurekalert.org

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Re: Brush your teeth – postpone Alzheimer's

#71

Post by awfully »

germinalphrase wrote: post #38
awfully wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t. You spit it out and go about your day.

Is this common advice? I would find having my mouth coated with toothpaste residue to be extremely off putting. You would also end up swallowing quite a bit, yes?

It’s common advice from all the dentists and hygienists I’ve ever seen, and it’s not something that comes up in conversation among my friends here but from personal experience I wanna say all or most of my partners I’ve ever seen brush their teeth they do the same. If it helps, this is in Europe, so we (as in dentists here) may have differing guidelines as you.

From what I know, the gist is that fluoride is mineralized into enamel which strengthens it (not sure if this is the correct phrasing). Whatever the correct phrase is, it works by direct prolonged contact. Not rinsing is a way to guarantee this contact, but even if you do there’s still fluoride in your saliva to do some good.

I imagine the taste depends on your toothpaste. I use a plain one (Elmex) that doesn’t really have a taste, and the taste goes away fast enough that I don’t notice it.

As far as swallowing goes, not really. Most of it gets spat out. Besides, (some) astronauts in space just swallow it all instead of spitting cause it’s cleaner :)

https://www.quora.com/International-Space-Station-Is-it-ok-t...

Yes I know fluoride can be toxic but the amount you’d swallow (a small pea sized dab is all you need, all those pictures of the entire brush covered by toothpaste is advertisement to get you to think you need that much) is probably not going to have any effect.

Re: Brush your teeth – postpone Alzheimer's

#72

Post by awfully »

edmundsauto wrote: post #32
martinpw wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, my dentist told me he didn't care if his patients brushed their teeth or not, as long as they flossed.

My dentist always said, "brushing is for you, flossing is for me." (He meant that brushing is to remove the bad taste teeth fuzz, but flossing is what keeps my teeth and gums healthy.)

I’ve heard the saying “you only need to floss between the teeth you want to keep” in response to the question “do I really need to floss?”

Re: Brush your teeth – postpone Alzheimer's

#73

Post by AstralStorm »

dgacmu wrote: post #68
d0mine wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are whole countries where flossing is not a thing. Fluoridated water protects your teeth. The rest may be just culture.

Almost all cultures have some mechanism of cleaning larger food particles between teeth, particularly back teeth. But, more to the point -- absence of evidence is not evidence of absence: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/tossing-flossing-2016081...

Ultimately, absence of evidence when we have actual trials testing it is some evidence of absence.

Re: Brush your teeth – postpone Alzheimer's

#74

Post by AstralStorm »

stevesimmons wrote: post #63
d0mine wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are whole countries where flossing is not a thing. Fluoridated water protects your teeth. The rest may be just culture.

Fluoride protects teeth, not gums!

Healthy teeth project gums, or rather, unhealthy teeth lead to gum problems in the long run.

Re: Brush your teeth – postpone Alzheimer's

#75

Post by AstralStorm »

athenot wrote: post #24
smileysteve wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

related concept Probiotics for your mouth https://probiorahealth.com/?msclkid=3bfa04734b5c1067a58a5885...

I would like to see more research in this area. It seems that the main school of thought is to focus removing as much bacteria from the mouth as possible, but I'm interested in the possibility of outcompeting the undesireable bacteria with probiotics.

By probiotics you mean introducing carefully selected bacterial strains into the mouth?

See, the problem with that is that P. gingivitis is extremely competitive and prolific. This is why it's so common, and why it is so hard to outcompete.

Re: Brush your teeth – postpone Alzheimer's

#76

Post by AstralStorm »

js2 wrote: post #62

I shared this with a biostatistician friend and he replied: There has been epidemiologic evidence of associations between periodontal disease and several diseases/outcomes, including heart attacks, strokes and (in pregnant women) premature and/or low birthweight babies. Clinical trials of treatments for periodontal disease have thus far not shown any benefit in terms of these outcomes. For example: https://www.ncbi.n…

What is his idea of the true instrumental variable? Immune system? Different genetics in collagen or lipids?

Re: Brush your teeth – postpone Alzheimer's

#77

Post by AstralStorm »

axl wrote: post #61

A lot of brain diseases are proving difficult to treat due to the “blood-brain barrier”[1]. Could this bacteria be genetically modified to achieve this purpose? If so, the bacteria, when absorbed through the gums could be used benevolently to provide treatment for all sorts of brain diseases. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood–brain_barrier

Yes, because giving people meningitis or worse is an excellent way of treating them. To death.

There are many ways to pass BBB but few of them are actually safe. This one is not.

Re: Brush your teeth – postpone Alzheimer's

#78

Post by rhombocombus »

tashoecraft wrote: post #18
fooey wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twice a day of brush, floss, and rinse is the bare minimum to keep healthy teeth and gums I bought a nice electric toothbrush and water flosser, so I feel like I get a better job done faster (Sonicare and Waterpik)

From what my dentist told me, while a water flosser is nice, it doesn't replace flossing. It basically does half of what normal flossing does.

Me and thousands of dollars in periodontal treatments are a living anecdotal testimony to that fact. mechanical disruption of the biofilms in the interdental space is the only known efficacious prophylaxis for gum disease that I know of. The water pik feels great but just doesn't do the job.

Re: Brush your teeth – postpone Alzheimer's

#79

Post by stevesimmons »

AstralStorm wrote: post #74
stevesimmons wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fluoride protects teeth, not gums!

Healthy teeth project gums, or rather, unhealthy teeth lead to gum problems in the long run.

... and food stuck between teeth leads to gum problems in the short run!

Re: Brush your teeth – postpone Alzheimer's

#80

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

analpaint wrote: post #19
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #4

This is going to sound like a shill but I have to recommend the new Gum Detoxify toothpaste from Crest and thought I'd share it with other Hacker News readers. It has stannous fluoride and that is supposed to work better and actually kill bacteria around your gums. The reviews for it seemed crazy positive so I thought I would try it and it has been a product that actually does what it says. I have to say, I wake up w…

Stannous flouride (ie tin) in toothpaste is nothing new. Nice that Crest has figured out some shiny new marketing, but ironically the original bog standard original Crest in 1954 was tin fluoride until they moved over to monoflurophosphate for cost reasons.

The original stannous fluoride formulas stained your teeth, it's not just marketing.
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