Comment by tbran | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tbran | Hacker News Reader

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A compelling book on tooth care is Kiss Your Dentist Goodbye by Ellie Phillips. It advocates for:

- Using flouride toothpaste.

- Using a combo of bad-bacteria-killing mouthwash and flouride mouthwash (especially before bed).

- Eating or finishing meals with tooth-protective foods.

- Chewing xylitol [0] gum or mints. Xylitol is a sugar-replacement (with a lower insulin response) found in plants . I think Epic Dental has the most reasonably priced stuff that I would trust.

Her routine is here [1]. I think her suggestions are reasonable. She has a product line, but you can use generic products that fit her guidelines. Just match up the ingredients.

Also, a couple good points in the book Breath by James Nestor:

- We have malformed mouths and teeth because we don't do enough serious chewing. Think bread/mac and cheese/peanut butter vs carrots/steak/celery.

- Mouth breathing is bad. Your mouth dries out and this assists tooth problems. You can solve this while sleeping by taping your lips together.

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

[1]: https://issuu.com/zellies/docs/zellies-cmcsbooklet?mode=wind...

I would also add electric toothbrush to this list.

This has been transformative for me. I wish I could hand one to my 6 year old self.

They are cheap and you can use them in the shower.

Same for me. I used to have cavities nearly every time I went to the dentist, and none after switching to electric brushing a decade ago.

A revelation for myself was the purchase of a water-based toothbrush. Then use a regular brush. Then water-based again. Then an electric.

What did you learn

I've read reports that say the mouth bacteria develop Xylitol resistance in about 9 months. So I'm not sure how sustainable it is in long term

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22218085/

ever since I started using a water floser (e.g. Waterpik).... my experience with dental hygienists has been much more pleasant

> You can solve this while sleeping by taping your lips together.

Uh...what? Nobody is going to do that.

If you enter the world of sleep apnea treatments its kind of actually quite common. The alternative sometimes is using head gear apparatus and look like darth vader. I mean even for fighting mouth breathing during sleep its been recommend.

I know someone who does. We were sharing a hotel on a work trip and he told me about it.

Well...I stand corrected.

https://www.sleepfoundation.org/snoring/mouth-taping-for-sle...

I do this

You forgot two big ones:

1. avoid as much sugar as possible

2. [deleted]

#2 is terrible advice. Acidic food weakens your enamel. Brushing after eating will make things worse. It's actually recommended that you wait after eating acidic foods to brush. Rinsing (with water) is totally safe, though.

Interesting, I'd always heard the opposite but I do see a lot supporting what you say, so I removed that for now... Hmm.

Heh I thought you were going for a 2. "there is no step 2" joke, or suggesting that you could just remove all your teeth and then have no tooth problems anymore.

I mean yeah the solution is pretty much to eat zero sugary and acidic things... but that'd be a hard life these days.

I'd love to see a section of the store or even a whole store dedicated to "no added sugar/sweeteners". It is really hard to find a surprisingly large amounts of food that don't come with sugar or corn syrup.

Daily mouthwash is a horrible idea. Mouthwash contains Corsodyl which has been shown to increase blood pressure. Regularly blasting any part of your body with a harsh antiseptic is probably a bad idea. It took us decades to realize that antibiotics messes up our gut floura, I'm sure we'll see similar consequence for mouth bacteria with mouthwash.

This is wrong. You didn't read the linked resources.

I just checked, and neither of the mouthwashes I use have Corsodyl as active or inactive ingredients.

Also, uh, don't drink your mouthwash, spit it out.

Since everything we do has tradeoffs, I'm okay with using an antiseptic that is spit then rinsed (per the routine) if I'm going to eat ice cream and bread.

An intuitive analogy is your gut is like a rainforest. It's hard for any one species to become overly dominant since it's a very dynamic system with many species that have optimized to even specific tree species. However in extreme environments like the Arctic there are only a handful of species as the environment is unfriendly to all. Antibiotic is akin to burning down a rainforest which does get rid of a few bad species, but also creates all the other species that keep the bad species in check. Post fire if a bad species is the first to take hold the entire area is fucked.

Your mouth has it's own floura. Sure you can blast everything away but eventually you'll be far more securable to some alcohol (or whatever antiseptic) resistant bad bug and you will get very sick for a very long time.

>Also, uh, don't drink your mouthwash, spit it out.

doesn't cut it for me. someone I know who doesn't smoke or drink and was sub-40 years old got diagnosed with tongue cancer. Cancer specialists were miffed at the cause. The only thing that stood out: he was a meticulous user of mouthwash 3x a day since he was a teenager.

Sometimes people just get unlucky and there's not some direct causal factor. Yes, it could have been the mouthwash. It also could have been a combination of their germline genome having some unfortunate mutations and/or a series of unlucky somatic mutations.

If mouthwash has harmful ingredients keeping it in your mouth for a prolonged duration and spitting it out instead of drinking it will not solve your problems, contrary to the quoted line.

If an patient who is an outlier exhibits an extreme habit related to the affected cancerous organ, it seems advisable to take note even if it is possible there are undiscovered more serious contributing factors.

I mean, you are making a jump from correlation to causation. There is a reason science does not use anecdotes and relies on statistics, p values, and, confidence intervals.

That being said, did you happen to know what ingredients were in play, since he was using the same product for ~>20 years it sounds like, maybe the carcinogen landscape was much more under researched that long ago? I mean leaded gas was still sold in the US 'til 96 -- even though theres just so much evidence of it being harmful to the nth degree.

And why pray tell, should I disregard cancer specialists at Sloan Kettering telling this guy's entire family not to use mouthwash?

Many available common mouthwash still contain alcohol. Alcohol's causal effect on oral cancer is rarely disputed in medical circles.

If ample clinical studies are absent, science does in fact rely on reason time to time in the interim.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6982979/

Even more reason not to use alcohol mouthwash, interesting. I did not previously use it just for the fact it dries your mouth and that exacerbates bad breath.

>And why pray tell, should I disregard cancer specialist

Not doing such a thing, your words were directly "someone I know who doesn't smoke or drink and was sub-40 years old got diagnosed with tongue cancer." -- which is different from your words here where you link a study -- and I appreciate you for doing.

Interestingly, there is research on xylitol and gut flora. The suggestion is it helps with creating a more healthy balance of bacteria.

Also, mouthwash containing alcohol increases the risk of oral cancer. I have had multiple dentists advise against mouthwash.

Many argue that pushing flouride on the public is an outright scam and lie. Fluoride is a known toxic substance that damages the body and can compromise one's health. It was being dumped in the water by factories, and the industry helped pull off a con by paying for studies to show that their industrial waste was actually "good" for people. The public fell for it, and here we are today. All these people drinking in and brushing with the so-called miracle of flouride, yet so many cavities (and other health problems).

There are multiple studies showing how flouride in toothpaste and drinking water prevents cavities, and is non toxic. Where is your evidence to the contrary?

Flouride is toxic, period. The argument that you are likely trying to make, to oppose my statement, is how much of it can a person ingest before having negative health effects and is it really good for your teeth. It might be better to read about its history of usage, and that many countries do not allow flouride in their drinking water, and have a cavity rate that is equal or less than that of the U.S.

https://www.primallifeorganics.com/blogs/primal-life-organic... (The Neurotoxin Lurking in Medicine Cabinets Around the Globe)

https://origins.osu.edu/article/toxic-treatment-fluorides-tr... (Fluoride's Transformation from Industrial Waste to Public Health Miracle)

Some communities have a naturally-occurring fluoride level higher than the amount that is added in other communities for tooth health. (As described at your link, these places see some cases of fluorosis, but no one dies of cancer.) That is, only very small non-toxic amounts of fluoride are ever added. These amounts have radically improved the oral health of children in those communities. Poor children, who have little access to dentists in red states, would be especially harmed if cranks have their way and fluoridation ceases.

Let me guess, you also don't want iodine to be added to salt?

https://www.ada.org/resources/community-initiatives/fluoride...

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