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Microrobots can brush and floss teeth in a proof-of-concept study

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101–110 of 224 posts

Re: Microrobots can brush and floss teeth in a proof-of-concept study

#101

Can anyone recommend an electric toothbrush? I have always used a regular manual one, but lots of people including a dentist have recommended an electric one. Wanna see what the hype is about.

I've used regular $10-$25 electric tooth brush for a decade and assumed they're good enough. I've gotten Phillips Sonicare for holiday, and understanding that this is anecdotal evidence, I am shocked at its increased ability to dislodge food from the crevices. I could swear that sometimes the vibration it puts on the tooth, dislodges food from places it's not yet directly touching, just through the vibration through…

> Phillips Sonicare

Which of them? There are many models, right?

Re: Microrobots can brush and floss teeth in a proof-of-concept study

#102

Can anyone recommend an electric toothbrush? I have always used a regular manual one, but lots of people including a dentist have recommended an electric one. Wanna see what the hype is about.

Oral-B Pro 1000, don't even look at the more "premium" versions, all it has is extra bells-and-whistles like bluetooth that really don't anything to its basic function.

Re: Microrobots can brush and floss teeth in a proof-of-concept study

#103
post #20

If you're young, don't laugh. Once I turned 40 my dental hygienists really spent a lot of time educating me on how to properly brush my teeth. It really requires delicate care. (Remember, most of our ancestors didn't live to be old enough to need delicate dental hygiene.) If something like this works, it'll be wonderful. Carefully cleaning my teeth when I'm half asleep is not fun.

> most of our ancestors didn't live to be old enough to need delicate dental hygiene

They also didn't consume so much tooth-destroying garbage as we do.

Re: Microrobots can brush and floss teeth in a proof-of-concept study

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used regular $10-$25 electric tooth brush for a decade and assumed they're good enough. I've gotten Phillips Sonicare for holiday, and understanding that this is anecdotal evidence, I am shocked at its increased ability to dislodge food from the crevices. I could swear that sometimes the vibration it puts on the tooth, dislodges food from places it's not yet directly touching, just through the vibration through…

> Phillips Sonicare Which of them? There are many models, right?

Most of them operate the same way when you consider just the vibrating on the tooth part. They differentiate the models with extra features like timers and Bluetooth or NFC brush heads and whatnot

Re: Microrobots can brush and floss teeth in a proof-of-concept study

#107
post #46
post #20

If you're young, don't laugh. Once I turned 40 my dental hygienists really spent a lot of time educating me on how to properly brush my teeth. It really requires delicate care. (Remember, most of our ancestors didn't live to be old enough to need delicate dental hygiene.) If something like this works, it'll be wonderful. Carefully cleaning my teeth when I'm half asleep is not fun.

>Remember, most of our ancestors didn't live to be old enough to need delicate dental hygiene.) Really low historical life expectancy figures are mostly due to extremely high infant and childhood mortality as well as higher mortality in childbirth. It's not like adults were elderly at 40.

Yep, if you lived til 16 you could easily and not surprisingly live to 60, after that it goes down hill pretty fast for most people without modern medicine...They didn't have a lot of retirement plans back then unless you were lucky enough to have some kids that wanted to keep grandpa around.

Re: Microrobots can brush and floss teeth in a proof-of-concept study

#108
post #20

If you're young, don't laugh. Once I turned 40 my dental hygienists really spent a lot of time educating me on how to properly brush my teeth. It really requires delicate care. (Remember, most of our ancestors didn't live to be old enough to need delicate dental hygiene.) If something like this works, it'll be wonderful. Carefully cleaning my teeth when I'm half asleep is not fun.

> most of our ancestors didn't live to be old enough to need delicate dental hygiene They also didn't consume so much tooth-destroying garbage as we do.

I think we consume 10-20 times as much sugar as people even 100 years ago. It's pretty crazy, although white bread isn't great for your teeth either since it's only one step away from sugar.

Re: Microrobots can brush and floss teeth in a proof-of-concept study

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you need to do is visit the dentistry reddit sub and look at threads like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dentistry/comments/vnv25a/how_is_he... . They all operate on "production" because billing is top priority.

I don’t doubt that money is their highest priority, as that is the case for most people when it comes to their job. But the implication that they are sabotaging our teeth or giving bad advice in order to be able to bill us for bigger procedures down the line is a much bigger claim.

It happens. From https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/the-tro... :

> Year after year, Lund had performed certain procedures at extraordinarily high rates. Whereas a typical dentist might perform root canals on previously crowned teeth in only 3 to 7 percent of cases, Lund was performing them in 90 percent of cases. As Zeidler later alleged in court documents, Lund had performed invasive, costly, and seemingly unnecessary procedures on dozens and dozens of patients, some of whom he had been seeing for decades. Terry Mitchell and Joyce Cordi were far from alone. In fact, they had not even endured the worst of it.

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