121–130 of 158 posts
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Teeth are an abomination and your body works hard to reject them, purifying your mouth and your soul so you can die appropriately shriven of your sin. Big Dentistry is trying to keep you from heaven!
Reject luxury bones.
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The idea that primates get cavities less frequently than modern humans is a bit outdated and not terribly supported by recent studies. The main difference is in the location of the cavities, not frequency – apes tend to get cavities in their front teeth, humans tend to get cavities in the molars.
Oh interesting. I didn't realize. Are there theories on what causes that difference? Is it diet?
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From the article, the claim is that this strain of S mutans variant produces mutacin-1140 which allows it to outcompete other strains of S mutans and other Gram-positive bacteria. I have no particular opinion about whether this claim is plausible or true, but you don't address this at all in your comment even though it's directly relevant. For example, if this strain's production of mutacin-1140 allows it to kill oth…
> if this strain's production of mutacin-1140 allows it to kill other bacteria ... Wonder if it could in a different direction, giving rise to other oral bacteria also unaffected by mutacin-1140?
However it is likely that, since this one strain managed to evolve this trait, that others have as well.
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The article gives this as the explanation of how it is supposed to work: BCS3-LI has four main genetic modifications: It produces a weak antibiotic, mutacin-1140, which kills competing oral bacteria. It’s immune to mutacin-1140, so it doesn’t kill itself. It metabolizes sugar through a different chemical pathway that ends in alcohol instead of lactic acid. It lacks a peptide that its species usually uses to arrange g…
> It metabolizes sugar through a different chemical pathway that ends in alcohol instead of lactic acid. It'd be quite funny to live in a future where cavities don't exist, but breathalysers are useless. (without rinsing your mouth out first, I guess) Hopefully it doesn't dry out gums and cause gum disease.
Anecdote time: My great grandmother lived to be 102 and never had a cavity. Kept all her teeth to the end. One time, an orderly who thought she was just being senile tried to reach into her mouth to take out her teeth (thinking she had dentures). My great grandmother bit that person; hope they learned not all old people are senile! I’m 40% of the way there. No cavities and rave reviews from my dentist. I brush—-best…
How's your breath? Frequently you either have a mouth microbiome that ends up acidic and prone to cavities, or you end up with a high pH mouth which lends itself to tartar buildup and halitosis. Of course if your teeth are decaying due to cavities and this is left untreated, halitosis is also a common result.
Maybe it’s the balance of regular coffee intake for lowering pH but a naturally higher pH?
This story has been around for far too long and evidence is unbelievably weak, and the claims border on fraudulent. 1. The claim that this strain outcompetes the same S mutans from occupying the same niche cannot be true unless this strain is also capable of creating and tolerating environments with low pH. By definition if it creates acid to the same degree it will also cause cavities. 2. Single applications are ins…
Now, to be fair, what I would have _liked_ to see is actually percent prevalense of the various cavity causing bacteria for that year, since that's the thing we really care about (in case this bacteria _isn't_ succesfully killing those strains).
But it certainly appears that they have succesfully engineered a strain that can persist in your mouth after a single application (although they admittedly claim that this application needs to follow a special cleaning procedure to remove most of the existing bacteria)
Your comment seems to really not address any of the specific information provided in the article and seems to be a generic response to the idea.
I love hearing from experts who disagree with an article, it's important to hear those views. But this would have been a much more valuable comment if it could have responded more specifically to the claims and information in the article rather than the general idea.
It's insane to voluntarily colonize your body with a virtually untested genetically engineered bacteria. The article claims it occurs naturally but they have no good data on its natural prevalence and they added two additional mutations to the natural strain they found. Even if it's safe, is it effective? The only way to tell is to enroll the people who are colonized in a long-running study. Are they doing that?
I'm not about to give it a go in my mouth.
So, in order to bypass the FDA, you plan to produce a bacterium, export it, go somewhere outside the US, pass it to people and then everybody returns to the US? what happens if someone, ahem, takes a dim view of the process and denies entry on biosecurity grounds?
https://www.aclunc.org/our-work/know-your-rights/know-your-r...
Anecdote time: My great grandmother lived to be 102 and never had a cavity. Kept all her teeth to the end. One time, an orderly who thought she was just being senile tried to reach into her mouth to take out her teeth (thinking she had dentures). My great grandmother bit that person; hope they learned not all old people are senile! I’m 40% of the way there. No cavities and rave reviews from my dentist. I brush—-best…
How's your breath? Frequently you either have a mouth microbiome that ends up acidic and prone to cavities, or you end up with a high pH mouth which lends itself to tartar buildup and halitosis. Of course if your teeth are decaying due to cavities and this is left untreated, halitosis is also a common result.
Also, anecdotally, from people I've spoken to, it seems they get either caries or tartar. It's a decent sample size, more than a dozen.
Yet the last time I went to a dentist, 2010 or so, she claimed to have never heard of this, and I couldn't find any good studies either. Do you know of any?