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Toothpaste made with keratin may protect and repair damaged teeth: study

kcl.ac.uk

11–20 of 225 posts

Re: Toothpaste made with keratin may protect and repair damaged teeth: study

#11
post #8
post #4

Was thinking about oddities of language recently (happens a lot since moving to Germany), specifically how "toothpaste" isn't made from teeth and "tomato paste" isn't something you rub onto a tomato. So anyway, should we be calling this "hairpaste for teeth", or "toothpaste from hair"?

“Toothpaste” is the commonly accepted English word (in most English dialects, as far as I’m aware) for that paste which we use to clean our teeth with a brush. So I expect we’ll call it “toothpaste” regardless of the exact chemical composition. If keratin is the active ingredient, I would suspect the exact source doesn’t really matter.

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Re: Toothpaste made with keratin may protect and repair damaged teeth: study

#12
post #8
post #4

Was thinking about oddities of language recently (happens a lot since moving to Germany), specifically how "toothpaste" isn't made from teeth and "tomato paste" isn't something you rub onto a tomato. So anyway, should we be calling this "hairpaste for teeth", or "toothpaste from hair"?

“Toothpaste” is the commonly accepted English word (in most English dialects, as far as I’m aware) for that paste which we use to clean our teeth with a brush. So I expect we’ll call it “toothpaste” regardless of the exact chemical composition. If keratin is the active ingredient, I would suspect the exact source doesn’t really matter.

I agree that the source won't be a reason for not calling it toothpaste, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's not called toothpaste anyway - that's a term they're using now as it makes it easy for people to imagine what they're talking about, but dentists don't call every type of gel/stuff that they apply to teeth "toothpaste", and as this will be about targeting repair rather than daily cleaning I suspect it will get a new name.

Re: Toothpaste made with keratin may protect and repair damaged teeth: study

#14

So, chewing on beetle exoskeletons would repair teeth enamel? Wonder if there is archaeological evidence of humans doing that. Edit: there seems to be plenty of evidence of eating insects but any dental association is probably incidental (pun not intended). Maybe we just haven’t been looking into the enamel for these structures.

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Re: Toothpaste made with keratin may protect and repair damaged teeth: study

#16

So, chewing on beetle exoskeletons would repair teeth enamel? Wonder if there is archaeological evidence of humans doing that. Edit: there seems to be plenty of evidence of eating insects but any dental association is probably incidental (pun not intended). Maybe we just haven’t been looking into the enamel for these structures.

Exoskeletons are usually made of chitin and not keratin. But maybe it works the same way

Re: Toothpaste made with keratin may protect and repair damaged teeth: study

#18
post #4

Was thinking about oddities of language recently (happens a lot since moving to Germany), specifically how "toothpaste" isn't made from teeth and "tomato paste" isn't something you rub onto a tomato. So anyway, should we be calling this "hairpaste for teeth", or "toothpaste from hair"?

Indeed.

We expect olive oil to be made from real olives, but not baby oil…

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