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Comment by fc417fc802

6 days ago

That is impressive, but it also looks likely to be misinformation. SLS isn't a chelator (as the quote appears to suggest). The concern is apparently that it might compete with NaF for sites to interact with the enamel. However, there is minimal research on the topic and what does exist (at least what I was quickly able to find via pubmed) appears preliminary at best. It also implicates all surfactants, not just SLS.

This diversion highlights one of the primary dangers of LLMs which is that it takes a lot longer to investigate potential bullshit than it does to spew it (particularly if the entity spewing it is a computer).

That said, I did learn something. Apparently it might be a good idea to prerinse with a calcium lactate solution prior to a NaF solution, and to verify that the NaF mouthwash is free of surfactants. But again, both of those points are preliminary research grade at best.

If you take anything away from this, I hope it's that you shouldn't trust any LLM output on technical topics that you haven't taken the time to manually verify in full.