New micro-robots can break apart and remove biofilm or plaque from a tooth

Disclaimer: I do not advise anyone to take this. I'm just reporting on my own experience.

I am not affiliated with anything related to healthcare or nutrition. I am just a software developer.

edit: I also don't take this that frequently anymore. I take it once a week only, with a meal (K2 is fat soluble). If I take it too frequently, it gives me some digestive discomfort.

The reason I started taking it was not dental plaque, but because my diet had few sources of vitamin K2 (due to diagnosed digestive issues) and the scientific consensus was that it is a valuable nutrient that occurs in diets correlated with reduced cardiac and other disease. I understand that correlation is not causation, but it is plausible that adding something missing in my diet could produce a benefit, and my mission was to correct deficiencies. It is, after all, a nutrient found in common foods.

I had read the claims about its effects on plaque incidentally to my research, but did not consider them factual because this effect had not been studied to my knowledge.

Several hours after taking K2, my teeth would start to feel a bit smoother. About a week and a half later, bits of plaque would start coming off my teeth when I brushed them. To answer your question, you can't not notice it. It's a chunk of solid white gunk that I couldn't previously remove from my teeth that has now become detached.

After a year or so I neglected supplementation with vitamin K2. The plaque eventually returned, albeit very slowly. Upon resuming vitamin K2, it would again dissolve.

I understand your skepticism with regard to n=1 vs. scientific theory, but I am a pragmatic person. I have been able to repeat this, and I can confirm it works for me. To put theory over practice when the reality of it stared me in the face would have been fallacious.

For researching supplements take a look at Examine.com

I've tried natto, and it does take some getting used to. Fortunately, a small amount is all you need.

According to Chris Masterjohn, "the foods that are richest in K2 are natto and goose liver, both of which may be difficult-to-acquire tastes. Natto is a fermented soy food popular in eastern Japan. The source of K2 is the bacteria used in the fermentation, not the soy beans. As a result, any vegetable fermented with natto bacteria should be rich in K2. For example, 100 grams of traditional natto contains just under 950 μg, while 100 grams of natto made from black beans contains almost 800 μg. The value for black bean natto is a little lower than that for traditional natto, but both values are phenomenally high. Simply adding 18 grams of natto (about two-thirds of an ounce) to your diet each day would give you 200 μg, and just two ounces of goose liver would provide the same benefit."

Source: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/blog/2016/12/09/the-ultimate-...

Part of my research involves reading impressions and reviews posted online. I take it all with a grain of salt, of course, but as long as you label it as low quality data, it still has value. Sometimes it matches up with research. In the case of the effect on dental plaque, I could not find any research backing it up, so I discarded it as a fact but I was still aware of it; later, when I observed the benefit in my own experience, knowing that others reported the same thing helped me determine that it was in fact the K2 that did it (and then I knew to re-test K2 to confirm it).

For example, the best paper award at the Robotics: Science and Systems conference this year was won by a magnetic jellyfish: http://www.roboticsproceedings.org/rss15/p13.pdf

Maybe the magnet should be counted as part of the robot, with the moving parts being analogous to a gripper.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo