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Comment by dotancohen | Hacker News Reader

Sensodyne toothpaste has two lines: one that contains a mild painkiller (Rapid Relief) and one that [claims to] repair small cracks in teeth (Repair & Protect).

I use the latter. I do not know if it works, but I use it. I have never suffered from tooth pain before or after.

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I found out the hard way that my mouth really doesn't like having SLS in it because I bought the wrong version of Sensodyne once. The "Pronamel" version is the only one I'm sure doesn't have SLS.

Regular Sensodyne in other countries has novamin though, and does not have SLS. I've brought home a few tubes from traveling and it seems to work just as well as the US version - I don't get sensitivity back when using it.

Interesting. I buy Repair & Protect in Israel, it does not have SLS. I'll look to see where it was manufactured.

The tube that I'm currently using does contain Novamin, and was manufactured in Ireland.

It depends on the country also. In the UK for example, Repair & Protect uses novamin but in the US it just uses stannous fluoride.

I think Canada has it with Novamin, while the US doesn't. The Netherlands does, and Germany doesn't. All with the same "repair & protect" name. It's puzzling. Now Germany does have it under a new "clinical repair" name, of course the "clinical" ones in the US do not, those do contain soap for some reason (sodium lauryl sulfate) which I don't think I've seen in any other country.

I actually started using Sensodyne because of the lack of SLS. I'm not in the US though.

Be careful, they add SLS to several versions of their products in the US.

same in the netherlands, oddly enough. The repair&protect has it in there unfortunately.

I'm curious if there's been any evidence Novamin actually repairs enamel or "repairs" in some other way.

IIRC, it's not allowed in the states because it's not economical to prove that it actually repairs teeth, but I think my understanding is based on some internet comments and nothing else. The studies I've seen haven't proven to effectively repair enamel, I think, but I'm also not scientifically literate enough to understand the p values they report.

I used to buy repair and protect from Canada back in 2017 but haven't used it since then. I periodically check if there is any solid evidence but I haven't seen much or I'm too stupid to understand it.

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