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Microbes that cause cavities can form superorganisms able to ‘crawl’

penntoday.upenn.edu

131–140 of 157 posts

Re: Microbes that cause cavities can form superorganisms able to ‘crawl’

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sort of foods do you recommend? I've heard good things about yogurt, cottage cheese, and kimchi; but don't know for certain.

It appears that probiotic foods are beneficial in isolation, but my recent reading (no singular source) indicates that it’s far more effective when combined with a varied and high fibre diet. It seems like you can do great without the probiotics too, and only ensure you have a good quantity and diversity of high fibre foods in your diet. This seems to be the cornerstone of enriching and sustaining gut biodiversity. A…

I realize that this is a late comment, but what's your opinion of kefir (primarily homemade, not store bought) and its impact on gut health?

Re: Microbes that cause cavities can form superorganisms able to ‘crawl’

#132
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I don't use mouth wash I end up getting ulcers all over my mouth. It's strange, not sure why but my mouth can't handle living without it.

You're not rinsing your mouth out after brushing are you? For most spitting but not rinsing is as good as mouth wash.

Surely rinsing out the debris dislodged during the brushing process is preferrable to letting it remain in the mouth.

Re: Microbes that cause cavities can form superorganisms able to ‘crawl’

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure where that data is sourced from... Notice it's on the website of a dog food company, who I suspect has an incentive to tell owners that the veg in the dog food is 'natural'. I suspect if dogs do eat vegetables in the wild, it's only if they can't get enough meat, since their domestication has made them less good hunters. Their wild counterparts, grey wolves, don't seem to ever eat vegetation (except when…

Fair enough but I've heard this (wild dog herbivory) from several sources. I can't find better, sorry.

wolves in the wild's diets are usually around 40% plants but of course that can vary widely from area to area. I'm sure wild dogs are pretty similar

Re: Microbes that cause cavities can form superorganisms able to ‘crawl’

#134
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a very interesting field of inquiry into oral microbiota is a broad evolutionary approach. There was a study published in Nature Genetics[0] showing big changes in oral microbiota corresponding with Neolithic and Industrial dietary change. Modern oral microbiota are markedly less diverse than historic populations and the, much more developed, study of the gut microbiome shows us that very microbial diversity…

I went to an exhibit of an excavation of an old (4th/5th century) settlement in the Adriatic and it detailed every single skeleton pulled out of the different cemeteries. The interesting part for me was that almost every single one of them had bad teeth -- caries and periodontitis.

Yup makes sense. From what I've read, the switch to relying on more starch in our diets played a big role and that's a population that very much relied on a select few primary crops

It's important to remember that hunter gatherers had much more diverse diets than agriculturalists (and therefore also much better food stability). I would posit that any member of a primarily agricultural society had terrible teeth. But we generally see this less in non-agricultural diets

That being said, when you have Inuit people eating mostly meat with moss being a major plant source and Ryukyuan people turning an extremely poisonous plant (cycads) into everything from flour to alcohol, it's important to note that ANY generalization about human diets (and the health outcomes heavily affected by those diets) is hard to generalize

Re: Microbes that cause cavities can form superorganisms able to ‘crawl’

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dog food isn't very optimal for dogs... Most wild dogs would eat almost exclusively fresh raw meat. Whereas dog food tends to be dried meat with lots of corn as a filler. People wouldn't be able to afford 100% meat dogfood, because dogs eat a lot.

> Most wild dogs would eat almost exclusively fresh raw meat Is that right? I understood most wild dogs eat a fair proportion of roots/berries and other herby stuff. A quick dig around: "Unlike cats, dogs aren’t obligate carnivores. They can and do eat vegetable matter. Wild dogs will search for rotten fruit and will eat the semi-digested contents of their prey’s stomach. Some will dig up vegetables and eat grasses a…

Well, the coyote poop around here often has a lot of of berries in it.

And our dogs will actively eat grass sometimes, but that's probably more about upset stomachs.

Re: Microbes that cause cavities can form superorganisms able to ‘crawl’

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not rinsing your mouth out after brushing are you? For most spitting but not rinsing is as good as mouth wash.

Surely rinsing out the debris dislodged during the brushing process is preferrable to letting it remain in the mouth.

No, the current day advice really is to let whatever toothpaste is in your mouth after spitting just stay there.

Re: Microbes that cause cavities can form superorganisms able to ‘crawl’

#137

Years ago, I recall reading about a putative Cavity Vaccine which was a bateriophage which targeted the tiny fraction of species present in the mouth responsible for tooth decay. Supposedly, a one time inoculation would confer lifelong protection. It has been decades and I have not heard anything more about this. Big Dentist keeping the research down or was there some "in mice" kind of gotcha which limited the treatm…

I tracked down the guy who invented this, if this is the version you're thinking of, and wrote him. It wasn't a vaccine so much as it was a replacement of your oral flora and fauna with a non-cavity causing bacteria. This was maybe twelve years ago, but he said essentially that the FDA really really really didn't like the idea, and he had to sell off bits and pieces of the concept.

I couldn't find my original stuff but ...

Dr. Jeffrey Hillman, previously of Oragenics. Looks like he retired just after we corresponded, no surprise there. He had a version of strepococcus mutans that not only did not dump lactic acid (the mechanism behind dental caries), but also secreted MU1140, helping it out-compete the "bad" strepococcus mutans in your mouth. Well, it's still in the pipeline, maybe, at https://www.oragenics.com/news-media/press-releases/detail/3... ... but right now you can still get Probiora3, which is more of a probiotic for your mouth, kind of the more viable piece, since a one-time treatment replacing bacteria is a little scary to some.

Hope this helps.

Re: Microbes that cause cavities can form superorganisms able to ‘crawl’

#138

Anecdotally, I’m having one hell of a time with my 3yo and 5yo’s teeth. No juice. No soda. No bad snacks. Lots of dentist recommended foods and snacks. Full brushing and flossing regimen. Fluoride. Dentist applied special fluoride treatments. Trust me when I say we’re doing everything right. And yet they’re 3 and 5 and have had so many cavities. I asked my dad about it and he said my brothers and I had, frankly, poor…

What are the dentist recommended foods & snacks?

Re: Microbes that cause cavities can form superorganisms able to ‘crawl’

#139

Anecdotally, I’m having one hell of a time with my 3yo and 5yo’s teeth. No juice. No soda. No bad snacks. Lots of dentist recommended foods and snacks. Full brushing and flossing regimen. Fluoride. Dentist applied special fluoride treatments. Trust me when I say we’re doing everything right. And yet they’re 3 and 5 and have had so many cavities. I asked my dad about it and he said my brothers and I had, frankly, poor…

> But I cannot shake the feeling that something significant has changed in the last 30 years.

Anecdotal, of course, but I got my first cavity at age 30 several months after dramatically improving my oral hygiene.

Re: Microbes that cause cavities can form superorganisms able to ‘crawl’

#140
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I don't use mouth wash I end up getting ulcers all over my mouth. It's strange, not sure why but my mouth can't handle living without it.

You're not rinsing your mouth out after brushing are you? For most spitting but not rinsing is as good as mouth wash.

It's just my mouth not being able to handle even the good bacteria. My genes are weak.
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