Microbes that cause cavities can form superorganisms able to ‘crawl’
penntoday.upenn.edu
penntoday.upenn.edu
This finding underscores the importance of taking preventative approaches to prevent attachment of biofilm producers (and why daily hygiene is so important), and finding more approaches to biofilm destabilization, like incorporating arginine into diets and possibly oral care products [2].
Source: founder of an oral microbiome testing company [3].
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5122233
[2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Also, xylitol is a great biofilm disrupter. Chewing xylitol gum has been shown to be beneficial in preventing carries.
To ensure I get an effective amount of xylitol, I use crystals in my tea and coffee. My child eats them with a spoon. Health Garden is one of the brands that uses birch xylitol.
Also, any health concerns with consuming xylitol?
Diarrhea is a concern at 45g for children and 100g for adults. If you introduce it gradually into your diet, it should not be a problem.
RE: oral probiotics, there is some promising evidence of oral probiotics in improving oral health. We wrote a guide [3] based on the available research that might be helpful.
For lysine, we're still looking into the evidence, but we're excited to see more innovation and research into oral care product ingredients that work with the oral microbiome.
[1] https://www.tomsofmaine.com/our-promise/ingredients/arginine...
[2] https://www.basicbites.com/
[3] https://www.bristlehealth.com/post/a-guide-to-oral-probiotic...
I recently shifted my mindset to feed not just for me, but also for the ~2kg of microbiota [1] inhabiting my digestive system. Has been great for my health.
[1] https://www.racgp.org.au/afp/2017/april/the-gut-microbiome/
While the scientific framework I'm building off of is patchy, I think of the gut biome as something you have to "train up" to give effective responses instead of dumping its issues onto other regulatory mechanisms, so exposing it to a variety of training scenarios would be an instrumental part of that, and it probably wouldn't be a factor of specific foods so much as general %s of fiber, fat, acidity, salinity, etc.
It seems like you can do great without the probiotics too, and only ensure you have a good quantity and diversity of high fibre foods in your diet. This seems to be the cornerstone of enriching and sustaining gut biodiversity.
A lot of people think they have the fibre part down, but the science suggests most of us are nowhere near adequate intake. Around 40 grams seems like the minimum, but if you can go higher, there doesn’t appear to be a disadvantage, but there could be more benefits.
A key factor here is that fibre from whole foods is far more beneficial to the gut flora. If it’s highly processed, it’ll move through the gut too quickly. It’ll help you move stool in the case of something like metamucil, but your gut won’t derive much benefit from it otherwise.
Off the top of my head, some excellent gut foods are:
- whole grains with the hull intact (oats are great)
- all legumes
- avocados
- berries
- many nuts and seeds, but especially chia, flax, sunflower, pistachio, walnut, coconut
I land somewhere around 65 grams per day, but I’d like to do better. In the USA, the average is around 16 grams. It’s nowhere near enough to support proper intestinal motility and robust, diverse flora.
Definitely eat probiotic foods, but include as many whole, high fibre foods as you can too.
I like to add fermented foods such as pickled vegetables, sauerkraut, kimchi before meat and fat. Some insoluble fiber occasionally also such as psyllium husk. Quality of stool is a key gut health indicator so I keep a close eye on how my diet impacts that... but I don't keep a log! :-)
Avocados, walnuts, macadamias (amazing fat profile), pecans. Getting a variety of leafy greens each day.
If it’s milk kefir, I’d say that there’s a wealth of research showing that dairy isn’t particularly beneficial to your health and my gut feeling is that you could replace milk kefir with other foods which are known to be health-promoting as well as flora-promoting and you’d be in a better place.
I’d also guess that sugar-free kefir would be ideal if you did decide to use it. Sugar seems like it quickly becomes harmful to gut flora and its diversity, so limiting it would be well aligned with the intent of building up better flora.
Overall it’s one of those things where you can ask: is it replacing something worse? i.e are you drinking kombucha which has very weak evidence of benefit, but some evidence of harm? Then it appears kefir is a good decision.
However, you can also ask if something better could take kefir’s place? This is a very individual thing. For some, they might be replacing Coca Cola with fruit juice, and if that’s the best they can manage than that’s fine - it’s still better.
If in your case it’s replacing milk with milk kefir, that’s also better. On the other hand, if you could replace milk with eating more greens for minerals, avocado for fat, and a blend of whole grains and legumes for protein, I suspect your baseline of health would increase and your gut flora would benefit more than from the kefir alone.
It’s all about “could I do something better?” because there are no silver bullets. Kefir, when added to a poor diet, will probably not provide a fraction of the benefit that simply improving the overall diet could.
[1] https://www.bristlehealth.com/post/improve-your-oral-microbi...
"Cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC), a quaternary ammonium compound, which is present in mouthwash, is effective against bacteria, fungi, and enveloped viruses. ... Interestingly, we found that low concentrations of CPC suppressed the infectivity of human isolated SARS-CoV-2 strains (Wuhan, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma) even in saliva."
For most spitting but not rinsing is as good as mouth wash.
What's MOST fascinating to me is that this dance isn't just our mouths vs the microbiomes. There's now considerable evidence that it is more likely to be the host response to the bacteria that leads to the tissue changes noted in gingivitis and periodontitis[2]
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3996550/
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/000399...
A different diet leads to a different microbiome.
I think mammals' teeth last long enough for a natural life. Of course we want a longer and better life.
For instance, all my dogs by age 13 yo have lost half their teeth to rot. We are terrible owners who don't take care of their dental hygiene, which I suppose makes it a more "natural" evolution. Old horses also lose their teeth, too.
What does this mean though? Ancient lifespans were actually quite close to modern American lifespans. They likely had higher childbirth mortalities so the average may have been low but the modal lifespan was around 70 years[0] which is right around in line with the modern American. Lifespans were significantly shorter in medieval Europe but that was probably the lowest it's ever gotten and that was a relatively short period in human (or at least Western) history. Yet we still find fossil evidence that early hominins and early humans generally had great dental health.[1] Even the Romans, peasant and nobility included, did.[2]
[0] https://theconversation.com/hunter-gatherers-live-nearly-as-...
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/02/24/1726888...
[2] https://www.docseducation.com/blog/ancient-romans-had-health...
It is not a natural diet.
Horses likewise are typically eating a very unnatural diet, typically hay.
These are both perfect examples of a analogous diet to modern human diet. The difference being that they are animals and have no ability to correct for poor dietary "choices" with proper maintenance.
I agree, however, with your self assessment.
Didn’t take long to go from glib self deprecation to judgy spectator sport.
Okay holier than thou pet owner, you tell me how I’m supposed to not feed my pup kibble. She has a prescription low fat diet and there are two vendors total who supply the prescription. One supplies only kibble. The other supplies kibble and canned food. She will only eat a few bites of the canned food each day. Should she starve because the kibble isn’t natural? The canned food isn’t either, should she just starve? Should I feed her chicken and rice which even with all the fat trimmed off is still too rich for her? Or should she be set free to eat whatever she can get sick on or get hit by a car trying?
I’m doubtful my pup will have rotten teeth at 13 because she’s fortunate that dental health has been among her better strokes of luck. But I’m sure as hell going to feed her the “unnatural” food she depends on to have a healthy life and not feel guilted by judgmental busybodies about it.
I’m glad my pup has medical professionals who take her well-being seriously and don’t think whether she gets to live a healthy life is up for abstract debate based on how her ancestors were domesticated.
Thanks for the discussion of how unnatural it is for my pup to be alive and healthy. I’m much more educated now.
It's illogical. Your statements are also illogical and emotional.
Figure it out. Dogs can eat just about anything. Kibble is a lot of dried out garbage. Vets are great at selling you stuff and you seem to be a good customer. That's the only compliment I can afford you.
The alternative to not eating kibble is starvation? This is senseless.
I'm no busy body, in fact, I think it somewhat of an admirable trait to tell animal neglectors that they should be better to their animals. But, do feel judged if you choose to air your negligence and someone tells you, rightly, that you are in the wrong.
> Vets are great at selling you stuff and you seem to be a good customer.
They didn’t sell me anything. They don’t stock the food they prescribed, they named two brands that offer a diet consistent with the prescription and recommended ordering from Chewy. The only relationship they have with Chewy is to confirm the prescription so orders can be filled.
If anything, my vet has been exceedingly conscious of financial impact of vet care. They’ve not only detailed when certain tests or treatments are optional and a judgment call for me to make, but have recommended against certain options as unnecessary, only telling me of those options so I can make an informed decision.
> The alternative to not eating kibble is starvation? This is senseless.
The alternatives were either:
- ignore their medical advice and let her continue to be acutely ill with a high likelihood of chronic illness
- try the prescription diet, which the vet acknowledged may not be sufficient but said it was where we should start; it has been sufficient for nearly a year, the longest stretch of time without any illness in my pup’s three and half years
- try non-prescription options, including home cooked foods like chicken/rice/vegetables; in fact this was part of the diet transition and even chicken breast with all the visible fat trimmed off was too rich for her
- try to change her taste so she won’t eat the kibble, while watching her under-eat with no way of knowing whether or how long that will continue; even with the kibble she’s a very finicky eater and always has been, and I often have had to resort to hand feeding her so she’ll be comfortable enough to eat
> But, do feel judged if you choose to air your negligence and someone tells you, rightly, that you are in the wrong.
With the help of my vet’s care, have got my pup back to health, and kept her healthy. You’re sitting here calling me negligent because you believe I’ve been swindled by an unscrupulous vet and because you think you know better than they or I do what my pup should eat. You are in fact being a busy body. And quite ignorantly so.
No need to take it personally. I don't think they were judging you for feeding your pup kibble at all. Just that it's not a fair representation of a "wild animal on a natural diet"
None of what I had stated was directed at your bizarre situation. You have internalized some kind of trauma about your dog and chose direct those statements at yourself.
Get help or something
Rope toys are great for cleaning their teeth continuously if you don't feel like brushing them. You will need to throw the toys away once a year though.
Most wild dogs would eat almost exclusively fresh raw meat.
Whereas dog food tends to be dried meat with lots of corn as a filler. People wouldn't be able to afford 100% meat dogfood, because dogs eat a lot.
Uncooked meat does not have near as many digestible calories density wise as cooked grains. Of course it would be a lot harder for them to become overweight, but the food cost would be tremendous. Remember that obligate carnivores that weigh a lot, like tigers, are incredibly expensive to feed.
That seems very unlikely, what with fat and the lipids in cell walls - got a source?
* Energetic consequences of thermal and nonthermal food processing Carmody, R. N., Weintraub, G. S., Wrangham, R. W., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences2011 / 11 Vol. 108; Iss. 48
* https://booksc.org/book/37997813/2fc522
Note that the 'Atwater' system is referring to the traditional method used to determine caloric content created in the 1890s which burns food and measures the heat obtained from it.
Here is an interesting article about this issue:
* https://www.economist.com/1843/2019/02/28/death-of-the-calor...
I apologize for the single source -- I believed that the science was far more settled on this issue than it appears to be. Regardless, I hope it proves informative for further research if you decide to pursue it.
Is that right? I understood most wild dogs eat a fair proportion of roots/berries and other herby stuff. A quick dig around:
"Unlike cats, dogs aren’t obligate carnivores. They can and do eat vegetable matter. Wild dogs will search for rotten fruit and will eat the semi-digested contents of their prey’s stomach. Some will dig up vegetables and eat grasses and herbs"
I suspect if dogs do eat vegetables in the wild, it's only if they can't get enough meat, since their domestication has made them less good hunters. Their wild counterparts, grey wolves, don't seem to ever eat vegetation (except when sick).
And our dogs will actively eat grass sometimes, but that's probably more about upset stomachs.
The switch of grain-based diets is suspected to be a big part of the cause.
It's important to remember that hunter gatherers had much more diverse diets than agriculturalists (and therefore also much better food stability). I would posit that any member of a primarily agricultural society had terrible teeth. But we generally see this less in non-agricultural diets
That being said, when you have Inuit people eating mostly meat with moss being a major plant source and Ryukyuan people turning an extremely poisonous plant (cycads) into everything from flour to alcohol, it's important to note that ANY generalization about human diets (and the health outcomes heavily affected by those diets) is hard to generalize
2. Should we be having micro biome implants? And more ridiculously, but not really, should we have “celebrity micro biome” products?
The above mentioned [1] species P. gingivalis is suspected to be a link there. [2]
No juice. No soda. No bad snacks. Lots of dentist recommended foods and snacks. Full brushing and flossing regimen. Fluoride. Dentist applied special fluoride treatments. Trust me when I say we’re doing everything right.
And yet they’re 3 and 5 and have had so many cavities.
I asked my dad about it and he said my brothers and I had, frankly, poor dental hygiene, and not a single cavity until our teens.
I’m not saying it’s because of this organism or any specific thing. But I cannot shake the feeling that something significant has changed in the last 30 years.
Maybe something else is at play?
I wondered (with absolutely no basis in fact) things like, “maybe the calcified tartar forms a barrier?”
But that we should prevent it accumulating in the first place and causing tooth damage.
Then a few years ago I get my shit together more and start a daily routine. A few months in, I finally visit a dentist for, I swear, the first time in a decade. I'm expecting them to find the motherload of disease in there, but nope. They tell me everything looks fine, except for a tiny bit of gingivitis. Take some x-rays and I'm on my way. 6 months later, worst head pain of my life turns out to be a deep one that needs a root canal. Now I've got a bunch of fillings, a crown, etc.
I still brush daily and my mouth feels like shit if I go without for a few days. I know in all logical ways, it's just a string of luck and coincidence. But damn does the conspiracy part of the brain start spinning up on my anecdotal experiences... lol.
Maybe a feature like that one can turn into a bad cavity when dental hygiene is abandoned for a short time?. I hope I don't find out!
No cavities so far. Last time i checked I was 25 years old. I brush my teeth once a day.
I consider myself lucky, since my siblings have had a couple cavities. My mother attributes this to her being very careful when we were babies to not share any spoons to give us some bacteria from saliva.
My sister has impeccable dental hygiene and many cavities. Her children have had anesthesia because they needed so much dental work. I’m the kind of person who would floss once a year and never had a cavity until I was 28 and drinking many acidic diet sodas. I started the book’s regimen using xylitol, eating basic foods like chocolate and cheese after acidic foods and drinks, took Florassist dental probiotic and stayed on top of cleanings and have had less problems since. My child is okay so far despite some not so great habits. I get extra cleanings that first year and make sure other caregivers do too.
This doesn't make sense unless everyone around you also suddenly got more cavities recently. If you ask around more, you'll find that there have always been people with good hygiene that get more cavities, and others that don't seem to get them despite poor habits. It may be related your specific oral bacterial biome, or diet.
I would have thought something changed in the opposite direction in the last 30 years.
Try the past few hundred years: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3996550/
> The composition of oral microbiota remained surprisingly constant between Neolithic and Medieval times, after which (the now ubiquitous) cariogenic bacteria became dominant, apparently during the Industrial Revolution. Modern oral microbiota are markedly less diverse than historic populations, which might be contributing to chronic oral (and other) disease in post-industrial lifestyles.
Natural sources of K include kale, collard greens, spinach, turnip greens, brussels sprouts, broccoli, asparagus, lettuce, sauerkraut, soybeans,edamame, pickles, pumpkin, pine nuts and blueberries.
When young I willingly ate the last two on the list if they were available. Only the command "Eat your vegetables!" at dinner made me partake otherwise.
Yeah, adult teeth erase some of the damage but it's not a fresh start.
For example, really young children can dehydrate to the point of requiring immediate hospitalization within 24 hours, which happens quite fast when they are sick.
Source: an actual anxiety ridden parent.
- there's 3-5 years more time for 3yo to have these teeth. If the prognosis was long term, maybe no big deal. But cavities over _years_ can turn into far worse conditions
- these _are_ practice teeth in a way. So let's practice proper dental care now so we don't ruin the adult teeth later.
- dentist said there's an assortment of ways damaged baby teeth can harm the adult teeth
Anecdotal, of course, but I got my first cavity at age 30 several months after dramatically improving my oral hygiene.
There are xylitol chewing gum, but I've read articles about kids dislike for chewing gum these days - so candies/mints may be more palatable.
search for "xylitol tooth decay" for explanation about its effects.
Excerpts from one such link: https://bellharbourdental.com/cavities/xylitol-reverse-tooth...
Mutans streptococci (MS or S. mutans) are a bacterium in plaque and saliva that are major contributors to tooth decay and oral disease.
...xylitol reduces the levels of MS in the mouth. It essentially starves the MS bacterium by not providing any energy to it when metabolized. Since xylitol is a non-nutritive sugar the MS bacteria spend energy to metabolize it and in return receive no energy gain from it. It’s a sunken cost and the S. mutans cannot keep growing. This reduces the population of S. mutans and impedes the ability of plaque and bacteria to adhere to our teeth. It also decreases the amount of lactic acid present in our mouth, making our teeth less vulnerable to decay. Curiously xylitol does all of this without affecting the other beneficial, or overall, flora of our mouths.
Another amazing find has been that when a mother of a newborn uses xylitol, that child’s teeth prove to be more resilient against cavities as they develop. Children have a dramatically lower risk of cavities when their mothers use xylitol starting 3-6 months after childbirth and continue using it until all their baby teeth are formed around the age of 2.
Xylitol comes in many forms but the most common delivery method is through chewing gum. Chewing xylitol gum for 3 weeks or more provides not only short but also long-term reductions in S. mutans levels! Even just the action of chewing the gum helps to rinse away lactic acids.
In order to be effective against bacteria the optimal intake levels are at least 6-10g of xylitol per day. Xylitol gums range from having .75g – 1g of xylitol per piece. So make sure to check the gum that you’re buying to make sure it contains closer to the ~1g/piece mark. In order to reach those levels you will need to chew more than one piece at a time a few times a day. After meals is a great routine to get into, but make sure to wait for at least 20 minutes after eating food before chewing xylitol gum.
Also, for fun: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-20080-3
Get "The computational beauty of nature", too. And its repo.
I think the answer to your question is probably "yes." I listened to an interesting show on PBS radio 30 Oct. about what happened 2Byo that jump-started evolution. I can't find the show online, which explained in depth, but this short and patronizing video[1] covers the gist of it.
I'm no biologist, but from what I've read: Probably not. A really important fact about multicellular life is that each cell is genetically identical to any other cell in the organism. Otherwise, different cells will start competing with one another, until the relationship falls apart. In nature, symbiosis only works because each cell has an independent means of reproduction, and that always puts a limit to how close the cooperation can be (nothing close to forming multicellular life).
Mitochondria is its own organism, has its own DNA that is separate and distinct from nuclear DNA. It has been very successful through very close cooperation.[0]
such as chloroplasts.
> In the last 190 million years, the number of genes on the Y has plummeted from more than 1,000 to roughly 50, a loss of more than 95 percent.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-incredible-shrinking-sex-...
How much of this has happened in the recent human history? Are we becoming less “manly”?
Not necessarily. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_%28genetics%29#Humans
Our cells DNA also drift over time due to localized mutations. What matters is that they should keep obeying all the chemical signalling.
> Otherwise, different cells will start competing with one another, until the relationship falls apart.
When that happens in complex multicellular organisms, it's usually called "cancer".
Many of the stages required to imagine how life went from solo and unicellular, to cooperative unicellular, to specialized unicellular verging on multicellular, to full-specialization unable to survive independently as a single cell, exists in some species or other today.
E.g. Dictyostelium is an amoeba. (Amoebas are not bacteria; they're eukaryotes like animals or fungi -- sexual reproduction and an encased nucleus.) Individual cells can survive independently, hunting for much smaller bacteria and nutrients. But in the presence of many other cells of its species, chemical communication occurs to trigger and guide cell differentiation. Some at the exterior of the cluster change into a protective shell, like skin, or a macro cell-wall. Others specialize into ion transfer between the interior and exterior environment. Some are even triggered to kill themselves during the reproductive phase, providing nutrients to their kin.
It's on the line between multicellular, and not. Parts can float off and re-join. I think something like that was the intermediate stage in the evolution of multicellular life like animals, but there's many other competing hypotheses and none seem to be universally accepted.
Burn, baby, burn!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4580409/
https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/micro/1...
Trying to do exactly this for my kids:
"Because these assemblages are found in saliva, targeting them early on could be a therapeutic strategy to prevent childhood tooth decay, says Koo. “If you block this binding or disrupt the assemblage before it arrives on the tooth and causes damage, that could be a preventive strategy.”"
I'm just doing the good oral care practices and it's working. My kid is going through dentists visits with flying colors. Not to jinx it.
Pattern formation by motile E. coli.
http://www.rowland.harvard.edu/labs/bacteria/movies/showmovi...
edit: here's a reference https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7596432/
Berg died about 10 months ago.
It has been decades and I have not heard anything more about this. Big Dentist keeping the research down or was there some "in mice" kind of gotcha which limited the treatment?
I remember reading in Popular Science on and off for years (00s) about all kinds of innovations that were right around the corner ('10-15 or so), much of which still remains firmly in "maybe one day" stage. Maybe a bunch of things didn't come to pass that I don't remember, but I clearly remember a lot of articles about air travel (delta wings everywhere!) and commercial space travel (Burt Rutan!). For a sense of how low my expectations got, I remember reading about the Boeing 7E7 and being surprised when a new generation of airliners was in fact coming out.
That experience has been born out many times since, in my adult life. I've all but completely stopped following "science journalism" as a result. I'll hear about it when it actually happens.
This was maybe twelve years ago, but he said essentially that the FDA really really really didn't like the idea, and he had to sell off bits and pieces of the concept.
I heard about it sometime between mid-2006 and late-2009.
Dr. Jeffrey Hillman, previously of Oragenics. Looks like he retired just after we corresponded, no surprise there. He had a version of strepococcus mutans that not only did not dump lactic acid (the mechanism behind dental caries), but also secreted MU1140, helping it out-compete the "bad" strepococcus mutans in your mouth. Well, it's still in the pipeline, maybe, at https://www.oragenics.com/news-media/press-releases/detail/3... ... but right now you can still get Probiora3, which is more of a probiotic for your mouth, kind of the more viable piece, since a one-time treatment replacing bacteria is a little scary to some.
Hope this helps.
Then comes using toothpaste.
Then comes visiting your dentist regularly.
Them comes everything else, that includes fluorine..
If you aren't brushing your teeth when needed, the rest is almost wasted.
Brushing your teeth right after is actually harmful for your teeth.
Your outer layer of your teeth get softer after contact with most foods. It takes a while (40+ minutes) for your spit to harden them again. So the brushing will wear this outer layer down if you're always doing it right after the meal.