Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

mcgill.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 169 posts

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#131

Post by SkyPuncher »

jtc331 wrote: post #76
mishu2 wrote: post #43

It may still take us some time to reach that goal, but the good news is that we have an effective solution available right now: keeping good oral hygiene is known to prevent both caries and gum disease, and takes less than 10 minutes a day for the average person. If you need more information, we recently developed a free website to get you started: https://lifelongsmiles.hk/

My wife seems to be basically immune to cavities; I get them easily. I brush very carefully; she brushes only quickly. Our diets are the same — if anything she probably gets more sugar. We have the same water source. Etc. Clearly there’s a lot more to this than what you’re claiming. Unless you’d propose that all of my current problems are due to conditions while I was child or similar.

My wife and I are the same way. Wife maintains very good hygiene and has much more cavitities than I do.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#132

Post by gamblor956 »

mapt wrote: post #73
zenexer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the participants could very easily spread it to other people. This wouldn’t just affect them. That’s why the trial was ultimately required to take place under quarantine. It’s not even a question of whether it would spread, but whether it might spread. There’s a reasonable chance that this bacterium would, in fact, spread, and nobody has proven otherwise. The FDA is doing its job here: it’s protecting the mas…

The FDA, however, is not regulating the spread of the 800 other known species of oral bacteria as well as presumably numerous unknown ones, which do cause some known harm. The extreme suspicion of commercially introduced anthropogenic agents seems a bit ridiculous in both natural ecology and the human microbiome. Prove this compound conclusively safe, but not these other ten million compounds we're just going to allo…

All of those other oral probiotics are based on published research about naturally occurring bacterial strains already present in the environment, and in some cases have the evidentiary support of human trials.

Lumina is a genetically modified bacteria. It has no research supporting its effectiveness because the original inventors never bothered to conduct a human trial; they just said that it probably works based on testing in a petri dish. (Note: lots of drugs work in petri dishes and laboratory animals. Very few go on to have success in humans.)

Notably, the founder of the current company selling it has does not have a background in dentistry or microbiology and does not understand how his company's product actually works.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#133

Post by Salgat »

mishu2 wrote: post #43

It may still take us some time to reach that goal, but the good news is that we have an effective solution available right now: keeping good oral hygiene is known to prevent both caries and gum disease, and takes less than 10 minutes a day for the average person. If you need more information, we recently developed a free website to get you started: https://lifelongsmiles.hk/

What's interesting is that there is no strong proof that flossing actually helps. The U.S. Health department had to take down their recommendation to floss because they couldn't produce evidence of its efficacy.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#134

Post by gamblor956 »

xvector wrote: post #47

Wow, the FDA is worse than useless. So much regulatory red tape. These guys had every single reasonable safeguard in place and the FDA kept putting requirement on top of requirement until literally no one would qualify for the study. 20-30 years later and humanity has had precisely zero benefit because of the FDA's simply absurd, technically impossible level of overcaution in this scenario. It is incredible how much…

Left out of this rant against the FDA is that the original product failed because it wasn't effective enough in rats to justify the expenses of a human trial.

There was a slight, statistically significant decrease in cavities. That's meaningful at the population level, but at the individual level you're better off just using mouthwash or flouridated toothpaste.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#135

Post by SkyPuncher »

j_bum wrote: post #33
vigneshwaraya wrote: post #28

Or, just use oil pulling with coconut oil. simple, natural and easiest way to reverse and prevent cavities. keeping the oil in the mouth for 20 minutes (before spitting out into the sink) is also a great way to maintain silence, and develop awareness of oral process, as you can't swallow. More generally, am highly skeptical of this whole genetic modification drive for replacement of undesirable creatures like mosquit…

What’s your evidence or rationale for the oil routine? Serious question, not trolling

It probably works, but it probably doesn’t work any better than using water or some other pH neutral liquid.

There’s a good chance all it’s doing is rinsing away or diluting existing acid.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#136

Post by gamblor956 »

culi wrote: post #117
radlad wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you'll still want to brush your teeth for reasons besides cavities.

A simple salt water rinse is enough to deal with halitosis. Much easier and the effects seem to last longer than prescription mouthwashes at a sufficient concentration. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266714762...

The study you cited actually shows that salt water was only effective for 3 hours, vs 5 hours or more for the prescription mouthwashes. Furthermore, all concentrations of the prescription mouthwashes showed significantly reduced bacterial populations with continued usage (meaning, they got more effective over time.) while the salt water rinse did not.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#137

Post by asdff »

jtc331 wrote: post #76
mishu2 wrote: post #43

It may still take us some time to reach that goal, but the good news is that we have an effective solution available right now: keeping good oral hygiene is known to prevent both caries and gum disease, and takes less than 10 minutes a day for the average person. If you need more information, we recently developed a free website to get you started: https://lifelongsmiles.hk/

My wife seems to be basically immune to cavities; I get them easily. I brush very carefully; she brushes only quickly. Our diets are the same — if anything she probably gets more sugar. We have the same water source. Etc. Clearly there’s a lot more to this than what you’re claiming. Unless you’d propose that all of my current problems are due to conditions while I was child or similar.

You both probably have different mouth topologies. Maybe the wife's teeth spacing are such that the bristles in the toothbrush get in more effectively under the gumline, whereas yours need more work to reach the same nooks and crannies. it depends on how much enamel you have left as well.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#138

Post by asdff »

ccppurcell wrote: post #62
mishu2 wrote: post #43

It may still take us some time to reach that goal, but the good news is that we have an effective solution available right now: keeping good oral hygiene is known to prevent both caries and gum disease, and takes less than 10 minutes a day for the average person. If you need more information, we recently developed a free website to get you started: https://lifelongsmiles.hk/

My parents both have fillings in almost every tooth, my sister and I have none. Neither of us did anything particularly special, my parents were quite strict about sugar (for the UK in the 80s/90s) and we brushed our teeth twice a day. I never flossed regularly, though I have started doing it more in the last few years.

Kids ate like crap in the 60s and 70s. Everyone in my family from that generation has dental issues. Both sides of the family. Just from drinking soda like its water.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#139

Post by PawgerZ »

j_bum wrote: post #42
hackernewds wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I googled and got multiple results that I couldn't tie with your comment. what do you reference with Prospers?

As referenced in the article, Próspera [0]. It’s a private city/private economic zone in Honduras. The NYT actually just released a great Sunday Read podcast on the city this weekend [1]. [0] https://www.prospera.co/en/visit [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/15/podcasts/the-daily/prospe...

The article: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/magazine/prospera-hondura...

Archive: https://archive.is/fwjcD

Post reply on HN