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Comment by ebg13 | Hacker News Reader

I have a dream of one day being able to just replace _all_ of my teeth at once with one solid porcelain+titanium prosthetic without any interstitial cracks or crevices.

No more painful cavities. No more cracked teeth. No more need for floss or toothpicks, because there aren't any gaps for food to get stuck in. And it could be trivially sculpted to still have the same outward appearance of bullshit normal teeth.

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Implants are a lot like that. The remaining hurdle is that gums actually bond to the enamel of natural teeth, which wards off gum disease somewhat. Gums don't bond to current prosthetics, so good cleaning is allegedly even more imperative as bacteria can get in between the gum & prosthetic.

Hopefully not impossible to fix- osseointegration, for example, works- but currently unsolved.

Maybe one day we'll figure out how grow a fresh layer of enamel on a prosthetic in the lab, and maybe gums will happily bond to that.

Additional problems with the prosthetic are any horizontal forces at all. Without the periodontal ligament, implants just don't behave, mechanically, like natural teeth on the bone.

My dream is that someone invents a fleet of nanobots that I can put in my mouth that will clean up all the plaque and repair any tooth and gum damage. Just pop them in at night, recall them all back in the morning.

Just add it to our water supply, together with flouride :D

And make them self replicating and you only have to add it once! Grey goo here we come!

Fun idea. Or going even further, have them also take care of your throat, stomach, etc. Just constantly roaming around, maintaining things.

Like your immune system?

And if you forget to pay your monthly nanobot bill, they shut you off...

There's an Outer Limits episode that's exactly as you describe. As with all it's episodes, it takes an unexpected twist that was not anticipated.

https://theouterlimits.fandom.com/wiki/The_New_Breed

You mean like the microscopic bacteria keeping our teeth healthy described by the article? :-)

Yes but the nanobots wouldn't be killed by my poor diet.

Sounds nice on paper, but it would mean somebody could use the same tech for evil things. The reality is that any such tech may set us up for something much worse than covid19.

Teeth problems are easy to fix (and prevent). The serious problems that come with age are with the gums. These problems become worse with implants.

Considering how many ceramic fillings I have bitten into pieces, I have grown much more respect for my natural teeth. I had to replace one filling with a gold tooth to prevent it bitten into pieces again. Overall they are amazing in stability. If we could figure out some better way of preserving and repairing them, they should still be the best solution.

The crowns on my incisors are substantially stronger and more resistant to drills than the natural teeth they replaced. The issue with most artificial teeth I’m seeing are related to bone loss and inability to rest as securely into the jaw as natural teeth. Even still, it may be better sometimes in a trauma event to have teeth knocked out or broken than to damage the jaw.

So...Jaws.[1]

[1.]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaws_(James_Bond)

Except shaped and veneered to look and function normally.

....Can I get the name of your dentist?

My dream is that someone will create genetically engineered bacteria that would out compete the existing bacteria in a persons mouth thus solving at least one of the problems.

Lactobacillus Reuteri supposedly fights off Steptococus Mutans, (the decay causing bacteria.)

Xyletol gum is also claimed to fight S. Mutans.

One problem with replacing natural teeth is that you will have bone loss in your jaw. The bone line is slightly lower where my crowns are compared to my other teeth and this is expected according to my dentists. So as a side effect your jaw would become substantially weaker over time, which may not be so terrible but I don’t know the realistic chances of a broken jaw for most people that don’t do MMA or have violent physical occupations.

Would be nice if they could somehow culture your own stem cells and then trigger them to turn into the enamel producing cells and spray it into cavities to refill them with fresh enamel.

> I have a dream of one day being able to just replace _all_ of my teeth at once with one solid porcelain+titanium prosthetic without any interstitial cracks or crevices.

How about the ability to grow one's own teeth in a lab so that you can pull one out and put the new one in? I'd prefer that over having a mouthful of fake teeth.

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