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Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

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

#61

Post by alt227 »

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…

As somebody else pointed out above, the FDA is doing its job here. Putting random bacteria into peoples mouths could easily escape and contaminate other members of the population. With no guarantee of what this bacteria could potentially do in the wild, there is need to be cautious.

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

#62

Post by ccppurcell »

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.

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

#63

Post by johnyzee »

cubefox wrote: post #60

> We are thus left with a product, Lumina, that cannot guarantee the prevention of future caries "Guarantees" are not strictly needed. What matters most is whether there is a substantial reduction of future caries, not whether it makes you totally immune to it. Say, if Lumina/BCS3-L1 "only" reduces cavities by 50%, it is already half as good (arguably) as a drug which prevented 100%. This would already be large progr…

The tone of the article is for some reason very dismissive and derisive of alternatives to plain dental hygiene. As you point out, if a simple supplement in the form of harmless bacteria could improve caries reduction by even a small amount, it seems it would be a valuable option.

There is an existing 'probiotic' that has been around for years and works the same way, and promises the same benefits, as the one described in the article, it is called Streptococcus salivarius M18, there are quite a few studies that indicate it does work to some extent [1]. You get them in the form of lozenges that you put in the mouth while sleeping and they dissolve by themselves, so not a very invasive treatment if one wanted to use it.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=Streptococcus+salivarius+M18

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

#64

Post by bjourne »

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.

Fluoridated drinking water may explain the difference.

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

#65

Post by ifwinterco »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #40
pdabbadabba wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you bring up fluoride—does anyone know the state of the literature on the effectiveness of fluoride treatments? I’ve been getting them for years. But with the recent trends towards PE owned dental practices and efforts to juice their profitability, I’m more and more skeptical of anything my dentist tries to sell me on.

You can get high fluoride tooth paste (i.e. ~2% fluoride vs the 0.25% found in normal toothpaste) just by asking from most dentists. Costs about the same per bottle too. Been doing this for years and have nearly perfect teeth due to it, flossing, and non alcohol based anti-gingivitis/anti-plaque mouth washing. Also, people who think fluoride is bad for you or think it's not effective for teeth are exactly the kind of…

There's a big difference between applying a high concentration of fluoride to teeth where it's needed and then spitting the excess out vs swallowing a low concentration of flouride in drinking water and having most of it go where it isn't needed.

The issue is people (rightly imo) oppose the latter and throw the baby out with the bathwater

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

#66

Post by bcoates »

zenexer wrote: post #59
derektank wrote: post #50

It seems like FDA restrictions on clinical trials have really shot us all in the foot by depriving us the opportunity to collect data on this bacteria before it was made available as a supplement. There is clearly a demand for this product and it seems quite likely that Hillman et al could have gotten a cohort together to conduct a trial if they hadn't been faced with such extreme restrictions on testing. Why is info…

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…

Does the FDA have any actual mandate or expertise to do that, or are they just embracing mission creep?

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

#67

Post by Cthulhu_ »

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.

Fluoride treatments at the dentist and fluoridated tooth paste are a big factor in my area. A commenter also mentioned fluoridated water, which had the same objective, but it causes demineralization of teeth (fluorosis) and possibly behavioural / hormonal changes (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6520156/, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393512..., https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/opinions_l... ). I'm glad fluoridization of water isn't a thing where I live.

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

#68

Post by dtech »

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.

Your parents probably weren't brushing with fluoride toothpaste when they were young, since it only became near-universal in the late 60s in UK.

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

#69

Post by dtech »

bjourne wrote: post #64
ccppurcell wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fluoridated drinking water may explain the difference.

UK tap water isn't fluoridated

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

#70

Post by cubefox »

johnyzee wrote: post #63
cubefox wrote: post #60

> We are thus left with a product, Lumina, that cannot guarantee the prevention of future caries "Guarantees" are not strictly needed. What matters most is whether there is a substantial reduction of future caries, not whether it makes you totally immune to it. Say, if Lumina/BCS3-L1 "only" reduces cavities by 50%, it is already half as good (arguably) as a drug which prevented 100%. This would already be large progr…

The tone of the article is for some reason very dismissive and derisive of alternatives to plain dental hygiene. As you point out, if a simple supplement in the form of harmless bacteria could improve caries reduction by even a small amount, it seems it would be a valuable option. There is an existing 'probiotic' that has been around for years and works the same way, and promises the same benefits, as the one describ…

> The tone of the article is for some reason very dismissive and derisive of alternatives to plain dental hygiene.

Yeah, emphasis on "plain". It's proposed as an addition, not an alternative, to conventonal tooth brushing.

Streptococcus salivarius M18 seems also interesting, but its results in preventing caries are much more limited, from what I can tell. It also has be taken continuously (once per day), instead being a one-time application like BCS3-L1.

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