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Comment by RobertRoberts | Hacker News Reader

Last few times I went for a teeth cleaning, I was told about how "tarter" (the supposed "bad stuff") develops mostly around where the saliva glands excrete into the mouth.

I added this to how I was able to have a full hole in my tooth fill back (when poor and in college) in by just keeping it clean, not eating junk food, and swishing spit in my mouth around that tooth religiously for a long time.

Dentist later said, "nope, didn't happen, teeth don't work that way"

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Happened to me too, I was surprised when it just stopped hurting one day and healed

Aside: My wife recently had a kid and the experience taught me how much work gets done to you just because you're being monitored that you may not actually need. You definitely need to know your own body and trust yourself to some degree. At least pregnancy is having a resurgence in "natural" birth.

Is dentistry the same? I could see this as plausible. My assumption at times has been that people's teeth all just fell out immediately before the 1900s lol, which is probably further from the truth

Just wait until you see someone bounce between hospital -> inpatient rehab -> hospital, etc. Each step takes the previous medication list as mandatory truth, and then tacks on some new just-in-cases. Watching over the medical system and making sure its constructive behavior isn't outright abusing a patient is a full time job.

> keeping it clean, not eating junk food, and swishing spit in my mouth around that tooth religiously for a long time.

This is why I’ve decided to follow an OMAD (One Meal a Day) diet, if I have to dirty up my mouth to survive, I’ll at least do it one time a day.

I removed white sugar/corn syrup from my diet and my teeth have rarely had issues for many years. Even when I skipped regular teeth brushing in the past.

I want to do that too but it’s a hellish nightmare because sugar is in nearly everything sold at grocery stores, and living in a big city there are also endless temptations. I did manage to kick the habit of putting sugar in tea and coffee though, which is good because I drink those nearly everyday.

Congrats!! Building/stopping habits step by step is easier. Your freewill is stronger than the groceries, wish you success.

I love this comment because I am a strong advocate of free will, but sometimes I forget that I have it. Thank you.

Note: It can take several decades for the damage to accumulate, even for completely absurd diets. It is very difficult to observe results from changes to lifestyle or routine and correctly attribute them.

Take these anecdotes with a grain of salt.

Decades? Maybe in some people others it can be observed in months.

Most will start seeing dental issues with untreated tooth decay in the beginning or during their 30's, which equates roughly 2 decades of mistreatment. If accelerated, in your 20's after 1 decade.

Assuming you're not predisposed to other issues and that you still brush your teeth at least once a day most of the time, that's the speed of decay you should expect and the timelines you're working with. The daily, monthly or even yearly progression is miniscule, making it difficult to observe if it has been slowed or halted, especially in messy anecdotal tests.

The exception being tooth grinding, which can go faster and is easy to measure.

One meal a day honestly sounds like a good way to mess with your blood sugar - at the very least it won't do you any favors, and you'll still have calcium build-up and possible staining from what you drink, and little mechanical use also means whatever gets in gets to stick around longer.

There is an American meme that believes that not eating often and regularly is unhealthy. It’s untrue. Study after study shows that fasting is good for us.

Exactly. And no one wonders why the countries with the highest rates of obesity are those in which a high calorie breakfast is the norm and actively recommended.

Breakfast is the least natural meal, you should not even be hungry when you wake up, it's unhealthy and should be skipped.

I heard it said elsewhere that a mouse deprived of food dies in a matter of dys while even a slender built human can with water last approx a month before succumbing to starvation. 3 meals a day is more a modern indulgence than best practice.

It doesn't mess with your blood sugar. Assuming you're eating a low sugar meal with high fat and complex starches, your blood sugar stays at a normal level. It does take time for your body to adjust, though.

I can wake up and go for a 15 mile hike with no breakfast and not feeling hungry.

See: intermittent fasting

If you could do serious damage to yourself only eating once a day we would've died out hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Hundreds of thousands years ago life expectancy wasn’t 80yo.

That is mostly because of childhood mortality. A large number of babies were unlikely to make it to the age of five. Which significantly drags down the average life expectancy.

And I'm saying if only eating a meal a day did us harm, given the _way_ worse conditions of most of our history, we wouldn't have nearly gotten this far.

I mean it may at first but the body is good at adapting to changes like this for long term (Keto diet is an excellent example of this). Besides I will still be eating carbohydrates (simple and complex) just one time a day but not in the same quantity as 3 meals a day. Reserves of sugar are also stored in the liver in case the body is really desperate for it.

Blood sugar levels are not something that needs to be babysat by a metabolically healthy person. We should be able to seamlessly move from being fueled by glucose to ketones. (Well, I suppose suddenly running out of available glucose because of strenuous endurance activity can sometimes be rough waiting for the switch to complete. Thing is, once in ketosis this kind of activity is easier as energy supply becomes more steady state)

The only broad concern I would have is being more prone to accidentally having too much calorie restriction for a prolonged period, where metabolism reduction, potential thyroid issues, and potential nutrient deficiencies can come into play based on highly individual thresholds.

I also suppose some people who fast, especially on very low carb/carnivore diets can sometimes experience the exact opposite of your concern, their blood sugar levels can become constantly elevated, seemingly induced primarily by elevated cortisol, though also seemingly effected by other complicated individual factors like the kinds of stored fatty acids they are burning.

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