Hacker News Reader

Comment by zdw | Hacker News Reader

While it obviously appears to shorten the brushing time, it also looks like it would be much harder to keep the device itself clean - everyone who has had a retainer or other removable dental device could likely attest to this. I'd imagine it would also require more toothpaste.

Seeing as toothbrushes in bulk are about less than $1 each, a $300 ($150 refurbished, but ewwwwww...), hard to clean device seems somewhat difficult to argue for.

View on HN

Lets put aside the cleaning argument and discuss cost for a minute here.

Its recommended you brush your teeth for ~2 minutes. Lets say with this thing you shorten it to 30 seconds. That means you save 3 minutes per day every day on brushing, assuming you brush twice daily. This works out to about 18 hours a year. If your time is more valuable than 17/hr it's arguably worth it.

Time and time again I see people complain about the cost of daily use items but when you factor in how much you actually use them and the potential benefit you can get out of a them it quickly becomes worthwhile.

edit: there is a huge difference between being maximizing productivity and measuring opportunity cost, I'm arguing the latter. I don't expect you to get paid another 18 hours a year. I'm simply pointing out that depending on how YOU value YOUR time spending $300 on a fancy toothbrush is entirely worth it.

Only if you'd be able to use those 3 minutes productively. You can't sit down at a computer and work for just a minute and a half, you'd have to be able to get to work a minute and a half sooner to capitalize on this. If you have a salaried job then this makes no difference.

You know, I see that argument all the time - 3 minutes here, 1 minute there. But I just wasted 5 minutes of my life where I zoned out staring at the ceiling. Sometimes you can justify 'wasting' 18 hours per year.

Also, it's not like you stop thinking in those 3 minutes per day, you can still use that time for something constructive, even if that something isn't using your hands.

That's a bit of a simplification. When I brush my teeth, I am often doing something else as well. So it doesn't end up costing me 4 minutes of my free time every day.

You are assuming that you'd use those extra 3 minutes a day doing something that's worth >$17/hr. In most cases, it probably just means hitting the sack 3 minutes early. I've always found these types of arguments perplexing because while 18 hours at one time can be used to great effect, 1.5 minutes at a time cannot. I waste that much time just flipping through the HN headlines, which I would not pay $17/hr to do.

Do you value your sleep so lightly? An extra 3 minutes is an extra 3 minutes. Imagine getting that extra 3 minutes of snooze - I'd say that's highly valuable time for lots of folks.

I sometimes unintentionally skip brushing because I have to participate in the bedtime procedure for our 3 kids which can get a bit involved. I'd love to make brushing as fast as flossing - I'd do it more often.

So, it takes me approximately one minute to walk to the bathroom per day. I probably average four trips, so that's four minutes.

But if I just peed in a jug at my desk, I could save four minutes per day, or about one whole day every year!

For most people, saving three minutes a day is negligible. I know I'd get far more utility turning on noprocrast then I would trying to optimize for those three minutes.

If you're going to take that approach you also need to factor in the time to disinfect the thing and the extra minutes you spend huddled over the toilet if it triggers your gag reflex (which it might well do, since it covers your tongue).

Why not just pull all your teeth and eat baby food? Chewing takes forever.

I value a contiguous 18 hours far more than I value 60 second chunks that total 18 hours over a year. They aren't worth the same because they cannot offer the same value.

The time it takes for an activity accounts for part of the "cost" of the activity. The lower the cost, the higher the chances of people carrying it out. It's not just about how much time it saves, it may make some people who are on the fence do more regarding oral hygiene.

If saving three minutes a day is valuable to ones way of life, then I'd suggest that person should rethink their way of life...

Not doing something unpleasant is valuable to most normal people

There's nothing wrong with a refurbished device like this, provided it's been cleaned. I don't understand why people always have problems with things like this.

Or do you have a problem with the cleaning tools the dental hygienist uses? Those were in someone else's mouth the previous day, after all.

I agree with your other points, although if the device cleans your teeth better, that may be worth it to some people.

> Or do you have a problem with the cleaning tools the dental hygienist uses

They open a sealed set of new tools for each patient at all of the places I've been. Is this a US thing?

They are not "new" - they are simply cleaned and resealed in packaging.

It would be crazy expensive to only use these instruments once.

They'd move to disposable items which would be much cheaper.

But, even then, people want to reuse items. (http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/crdweb/ShowRecord.asp?LinkFrom=OAI...)

Luckily there seems to be lots of research around reusable instruments.

(https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/search?q=disposable%20instrument...)

Many of the tools are actually reused again and again. However, between uses they are sterilized using an autoclave and then immediately put into sealed bags to maintain sterility.

Not quite, you have to sterilize the things in the bag.

Yep. The bags usually have an indicator to show that they've been properly autoclaved (e.g. have reached the required temperature and pressure for enough time).

Just because the bags are sealed doesn't mean the tools have never been used. They are cleaned, sealed in bags, and put in an autoclave to be sterilized.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclave

It doesn't really look like cleaning that would be as straightforward as cleaning a lot of the equipment that dental hygienists use.

I use a "dental device" on those nights that I remember to place it in my mouth, and typically I just give it a soak in some water with one of those denture cleaning tablets thrown in. Couldn't be much easier to clean.

My assumption is that cleaning this device would be the same.

The refurbished point confused me. Does that mean they refurbish your own old one? If so, I would think that would alleviate most people's cootie fears. And if it's someone else's, how does that work? I thought they had to be custom created for each person's mouth.

How can a product that is "tailor-made to fit into a person's mouth using 3D scanning and 3D printing" be sold refurbished?

I assume they mean that your previous one can be refurb'd with new bristles, rather than it being someone else's.

Although "refurbished" wouldn't be the right word, I took it to mean that they would print out a new one for you, having already created the 3D model.

Specifically to retainer cleaning, there is a huge difference between something that's in your mouth for 6 seconds daily and something that's in there for 16 hours. Retainers need constant cleaning to not smell like death. Your toothbrush does not, though it's in your mouth for longer than this one would be (seriously, go smell it. it's probably fine.).

Maybe they should make custom cleaning brushes that are tailored to each tooth-brush they produce.

But how do you clean the cleaning brushes?

By making custom tooth-brush cleaning brush cleaning brushes that are tailored to each tooth-brush cleaning brush they produce?

At each iteration, the shape changes slightly, until eventually, the design stabilizes to a device that looks suspiciously like a turtle.

So you hypothesize that there exists a fixpoint for the cleaner function?

It would be shaped more-or-less like your teeth.

Maybe you can put it in a cleaning fluid after brushing.

And similarly, a more fluid/watered out paste to ease appliance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com