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Reasons not to take Lumina's anticavity probiotic

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Re: Reasons not to take Lumina's anticavity probiotic

#91

Post by koeng »

I got a tube of this probiotic. They asked me not to sequence it, but I'm a little suspicious of putting it in myself, so trust-but-verify (probably Nanoporing). I literally cannot see why sequencing it is a "dick move", so I think I'll be doing it anyway.

I do not buy that it is dangerous. However, I haven't seen any statistics showing the frequency of mutacin-1140 or its efficiency. Back in 2015 when I was a teen I did an experiment using colicin V (an E.coli one - I was planning on engineering E.coli Nissile to replace my current gut E.coli with something more fun. Got kicked out of the science fair for that one - https://keonigandall.com/posts/colicins.html ). Turns out, you need a sizable portion of the population to get takeover. I haven't seen ANY data on the population percentage necessary for takeover with this strain. Nor have I seen statistics of its natural occurrence percentage.

I wanted to modify the strain to have GFP expression, so I can have my own little engineered biome for myself that is showable at parties and such, but it looks like they removed comE :( will have to start from an original strain instead, I guess.

Re: Reasons not to take Lumina's anticavity probiotic

#92

Post by adamsb6 »

jeffbee wrote: post #77
astura wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The presence of "/dd" counts as 100 blue checks. Sorry, I don't understand Twitter lingo and Google doesn't return anything - What does /dd mean?

It is associated with Bryan Johnson's book "Don't Die". The author advocates daily electrocution of your penis, among other moronic ideas. He has a bazillion followers among the petty VC crowd.

This was so shocking that I went to look it up, and discovered that there's a bit of a telephone game here. It's "shockwave therapy" that isn't eletric. It uses acoustics to cause microscopic damage, and which Johnson rates as a 9/10 on the pain scale, "at the tip."

Re: Reasons not to take Lumina's anticavity probiotic

#93

Post by vlovich123 »

nikolay wrote: post #37
SkyMarshal wrote: post #17

A simpler alternative is xylitol. Not a drug, no FDA approval required. It's a plant-based sweetener that cavity-causing mouth bacteria love to ingest, but which provides no sustenance to them. It essentially fills them up and then causes them to starve them to death, helping maintain minimum mouth bacteria. No bacteria, no cavities. Get it in mints or gum like Zellies or PUR (the only two I've found that don't inclu…

Not just xylitol but also mastic gum, which, in addition to cavities prevention, kills H. pylori and strengthens your jaw muscles as it's a bit harder than regular chewing gum.

Any specific brands you trust?

Re: Reasons not to take Lumina's anticavity probiotic

#94

Post by milesvp »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #17

A simpler alternative is xylitol. Not a drug, no FDA approval required. It's a plant-based sweetener that cavity-causing mouth bacteria love to ingest, but which provides no sustenance to them. It essentially fills them up and then causes them to starve them to death, helping maintain minimum mouth bacteria. No bacteria, no cavities. Get it in mints or gum like Zellies or PUR (the only two I've found that don't inclu…

Please be careful pushing xylitol, "sugar alcohols" are neither a sugar or an alcohol. This, of course, is exactly the thing that makes them desirable as a sweetener substitute, the body doesn't really know what to do with the stuff, and, presumably, neither do common mouth bacteria. Sugar alcohols are known for causing digestive troubles, for this very reason, with the most notorious example being the Haribo "sugar free" gummies that caused diarrhea.

Small quantities in gum may be fine but sugar alcohols are increasingly being added to foodstuffs, and I'm increasingly dubious about it.

Re: Reasons not to take Lumina's anticavity probiotic

#96

Post by jkingsman »

sleepydog wrote: post #83
nikolay wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just xylitol but also mastic gum, which, in addition to cavities prevention, kills H. pylori and strengthens your jaw muscles as it's a bit harder than regular chewing gum.

I can attest to its effectiveness against H. pylori. I've suffered from canker sores most of my life. The two things that have helped were avoiding sodium lauryl sulfate in toothpaste, and chewing mastic gum at least once a week.

Anecdotal +1. I've switched to non-SLS toothpaste and seen a dramatic drop in my frequency and severity of apthous ulcers (and, unfortunately, I get them often enough and badly enough that I can state causality with some certainty).

I used to have a (powerful-to-the-point-of-personal-uneasiness) corticosteroid that I would put on them to dubious effect, but I haven't needed to resort to that at all since I switched away from SLS toothpastes.

Re: Reasons not to take Lumina's anticavity probiotic

#97

Post by ceejayoz »

b112 wrote: post #89
ceejayoz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the plant. I've got two GMO plants in my house right now; glow-in-the-dark petunias ( https://light.bio/ ) and purple tomatoes ( https://www.norfolkhealthyproduce.com/ ). The tomatoes breed true (i.e. the seeds have the gene); the petunias do not and must be cloned via propagation. Roses, fruit trees, etc. are the latter.

One could just eat other fruits, is there some reason the tomato, other than marketing "antioxidants", need be the purple fruit one eats? Maybe it's a different question. Does the flavour seem mostly the same? A drop in for recipes?

The reason I bought it was simply "that's neat". I'm not doing it for health reasons.

Mine aren't mature yet, but the flavor is apparently just a pretty typical cherry tomato.

Re: Reasons not to take Lumina's anticavity probiotic

#98

Post by ceejayoz »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #82
ceejayoz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the plant. I've got two GMO plants in my house right now; glow-in-the-dark petunias ( https://light.bio/ ) and purple tomatoes ( https://www.norfolkhealthyproduce.com/ ). The tomatoes breed true (i.e. the seeds have the gene); the petunias do not and must be cloned via propagation. Roses, fruit trees, etc. are the latter.

Ooh, did you grow your purple tomatoes from seed? I haven't seen any starts in my area yet.

Yeah, I ordered a seed packet.

The petunias came grown in a pot.

Re: Reasons not to take Lumina's anticavity probiotic

#99

Post by cool_dude85 »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #70
cool_dude85 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I also think it's unlikely enough to hurt people that FDA approval shouldn't be required. The author has provided some solid arguments that this is not the case. Why do you think so?

I actually don't think the author provided very good arguments. It was my only real beef with the article: "this might do bad things" gets rounded off to "this is dangerous", even though his sources don't say the bad things will happen. They simply might happen.

Nobody can predict the future. Bad things only ever "can" happen until they do - they never "will" happen. The author explains why and how those things are possible.

Re: Reasons not to take Lumina's anticavity probiotic

#100

Post by SkyMarshal »

zeteo wrote: post #60
nikolay wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just xylitol but also mastic gum, which, in addition to cavities prevention, kills H. pylori and strengthens your jaw muscles as it's a bit harder than regular chewing gum.

+1 for mastic, completely nontoxic and it's been used for thousands of years. My cavity problems have pretty much disappeared since discovering it several years ago.

Any brand you recommend?
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