The picture says "enamel-mimicking" and the text says "protective coating that mimics the structure and function of natural enamel", so it looks like a protective layer, not true repair. I've been using a paste with novamin lately, it also creates a protective layer and is also marketed as "repair". I like it and feel some heat when it contacts with teeth, so the chemical reaction must be working. But the marketing leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
I don't know what this new hairpaste does, but Novamin promotes re-enamelization of teeth, which is where mineral ions like calcium bond themselves to the tooth and fill in small pits and fissures. It's not regrowing actual enamel, it's probably not going to fill in any pits you can see with the naked eye, but it's a real and beneficial effect. Actually any fluoride toothpaste also does this, but Novamin may be a bit more effective at it.
I had an impression that Novamin creates an artificial layer as strong as natural enamel, and fills tiny holes that are responsible for high sensitivity with this material that crystallizes with water contact. Then normal Ca+F mineralisation is orthogonal. Novamin itself contains Ca, can it really migrate from the crystals into the tooth tissue?
People waste their time and money with this garbage. I'm not saying its bad, but there's much better stuff out there. If you care about re-enamelization which everyone with bad to average teeth should, get some Prevident Rinse. Its prescription, its made by Colgate and it has a generic version also. There is also a prevident toothpaste.
Use the mouthwash once a week and you're good. If your dentist doesn't tell you about it and you don't have great teeth, its ONLY because they want to make more money off of you.
Conclusion
Review shows that Novamin has significantly less clinical evidence to prove its effectiveness as a remineralization agent in treating both carious and non-carious lesion. Hence, better designed clinical trials should be carried out in the future before definitive recommendations can be made.
Inetersting, the paper explain how remineralisation works and the role of F and fluoroapatite. This reminds me the recent Veritasium video about why Teflon is so strong - F chemical bonds are the strongest.
For Novamin alone, I've seen and understood the claims of sensitivity protection with hydroxyl-carbonate apatite (HCA). The paper explains it in 4.3. The layer is temporary and protects from acids, conserving the teeth tissue below.
But F is essential and my paste has it together with Novamin. It seems they may work well together. But the paper also explains that F works with saliva rich in minerals to repair the enamel. So if Novamin creates a strong layer, it may block access of F + saliva to enamel (my speculation, as in 4.2 they say "A clean tooth surface is required to access the mineral-deficient spot.").
So maybe a classical Ca+F paste is better overnight when no acid exposure is expected, but Novamin is nice in the morning before breakfast.
Welcome to the toothpaste rabbit hole of the internet.
Long story short, it didn’t work out in military applications and ended up being purchased by a toothpaste maker. They couldn’t bother getting it FDA approved for toothpaste so it is not available in the USA. Que conspiracy theories.
I don't feel anything when using it, but it does do a much better job with hot / cold sensitivity than anything else I have tried on the market. I find it more effective than Biomin or Nano-Hydroxyapatite.
I feel it on the spot that was sensitive to cold, and that was the reason I looked for something new. The paste is of room temperature, so that feeling must be not a fluke. No idea if it actually works, F+Ca used to be enough.
Was thinking about oddities of language recently (happens a lot since moving to Germany), specifically how "toothpaste" isn't made from teeth and "tomato paste" isn't something you rub onto a tomato.
So anyway, should we be calling this "hairpaste for teeth", or "toothpaste from hair"?
This semantic variability in the relation between the two nouns of a compound is pretty common in compound nouns: "Y made of X", like "tomato paste", "Y used (somehow) for X" (like "toothpaste", "paintbrush", "electrical outlet"--here an adjective, but still a lexicalized phrase), "Y in X" ("treehouse"), "Y for X" ("doghouse"), "Y containing X" ("paint can"), not to mention metaphorical uses, with some etymological relation between X and Y ("moon shot", "crapshoot", "greenhouse"), and so on. Not to mention multi-word compounds, like "greenhouse gas"--but I'm sure you've seen lots of those in Germany :).
“Windows Subsystem for Linux” is probably the most confusing example of this (an environment subsystem which provides a Linux userspace to a Windows NT kernel). more intuitive would be to call it a Linux Subsystem for Windows, but presumably for branding purposes they wanted Windows in front.
“Toothpaste” is the commonly accepted English word (in most English dialects, as far as I’m aware) for that paste which we use to clean our teeth with a brush. So I expect we’ll call it “toothpaste” regardless of the exact chemical composition.
If keratin is the active ingredient, I would suspect the exact source doesn’t really matter.
I agree that the source won't be a reason for not calling it toothpaste, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's not called toothpaste anyway - that's a term they're using now as it makes it easy for people to imagine what they're talking about, but dentists don't call every type of gel/stuff that they apply to teeth "toothpaste", and as this will be about targeting repair rather than daily cleaning I suspect it will get a new name.
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.
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.
That’s very good news, but we’ll have to wait a little bit:
>>> “keratin-based enamel regeneration could be made available to the public within the next two to three years.”
nHA is prohibitively expensive to produce and the most effective process that produces the smallest particles is patent-protected by Sangi, and therefore many nHA toothpaste brands only contain a fraction of the concentration used to produce the effective results reported in academic studies (1-2% instead of 10%).
If keratin toothpastes can be produced more economically they could be a better option for mass adoption. For anyone who wants to try nHA toothpaste for remineralization, I can only recommend Sangi Apagard Royal toothpaste ($$$) but it does work quite well when used as directed.
I wonder if this will fall into 'supplement' territory for US approval in toothpaste. I can imagine there would be a lot of manufacturers throwing it in without testing to see if their formulation actually works or not.
Any fluoride paste quietly calcificates your pineal gland. Try something natural, like Xylitol or even just pour a tea spoon of sodium bicarbonate into a glass of water and wash your teeth with it. Keep the mix in your mouth for 5 minutes. You can also use sunflower oil (a spoon of it) and rinse it in your mouth for 15-20 minutes.
* As far as I understood, calcium needs a scaffold to attach to bones and teeth - collagen, as in gelatine, can seemingly support the regeneration of the gums, as well as some limited regeneration of the teeth
* Personal Note: I used to have knee pain in my twenties when I still ate a standard diet, when I took collagen it took about a month until the knee pain went away
* Teaspoon in the morning was enough
* Overdosing on Collagen might create some problems - might wanna read up on this
>Unlike bones and hair, enamel does not regenerate, once it is lost, it’s gone forever.
This simply isn't true. I've chipped two teeth at separate times. Both healed up over the years. I still have all my teeth, including wisdom teeth. No dental work in my lifetime.
They….did not. Maybe the sharp edges eroded into smoother curves, and the nerve acclimated so any sensitivity resolved, but your teeth did not “heal” as in “replace the lost portion”.
>but your teeth did not “heal” as in “replace the lost portion”.
I can assure you that is exactly what happened, because one was a vertical chip out of the front of my tooth, like a small rice grain. For my tooth to "wear down" to hide it, I would have had to lose all the enamel on the front of that tooth, which did not happen.
As for the other, where I lost the corner of a front tooth, I suspect my old dentist in my hometown still has an xray, because my parents took me in. He offered to crown it and I declined, choosing to live with the chip. Good thing I did that, since it healed up.
“The root of the problem” is a more usual usage, but is just as readily applied (ha get it) as “the root of the solution”, especially when a dental pun can be bonded (puns are swell) to the headline (I can’t think of a way to pun on gumline here).
I found the phrasing really difficult to read and understand, even though I got the pun, so you’re not alone in that.
I recently started using a nano-hydroxyapatite based toothpaste. It can't restore enamel but does better at remineralization than fluoride, hopefully it will be a good intermediate for me until something regenerative is available.
It seems to me the two are effectively the same unless you have significantly misshaped teeth (remineralizing vs regenerating). I also use hydroxyapatite, just to reduce my fluoride exposure, although I believe fluoride is supposed to be a more potent remineralizer (and fluorapatite is allegedly stronger than natural hydroxyapatite). But the upside is that I don't mind swishing hydroxyapatite around in my mouth for 10 minutes, twice a day, so whenever I go to the dentist, I'm the healthiest mouth of the day (not the case pre-hydroxyapatite tooth paste/powder).
NHAP particles are smaller than fluoride particles, so they're able to penetrate farther into the porous surface of the teeth; flouride basically can only coat the surface. There is some research indicating that NHAP is more effective than flouride at remineralizing (e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4252862/) but that flouride is more protective than NHAP because NHAP isn't protective at all. (The flouride creates a temporary sacrificial enamel-like shell layer that closes off pores in the surface of the teeth in addition to buffering acids; the NHAP will just create new enamel.)
My dentist says that NHAP is great if you have lots of cavities or drink lots of acidic drinks like soda, but once your enamel is repaired too much of NHAP can actually cause weird growths.
Dave's toothpaste has both NHAP and flouride (and the sensitivity agent used in Sensyodyne) if you're looking for the best of all worlds in the U.S.
To everyone reading this you should still use flouride! Flouride and nanohydroxyapetite together both strengthen the outside layer of your teeth while strengthening the inside of them. Either alone is good, both together are great.
Hydroxyapatite based paste is incredible, and has astonished a few of my incredulous friends dealing with dental problems.
It always seemed very interesting in a cynical way that Sensodyne Repair and Protect has a European version with hydroxyapatite but doesn't offer it in the US. The only reputable US brand I'm aware of is Dr Collins Biomin, which is excellent but weak on the hydroxyapatite.
I'll be abused for it here, but I'm intractably convinced the ADA and generally despicable US health industry prefer to avoid it due to its efficacy and how much revenue would be lost if it were more common. Say what you will against this, and I'll remain convinced.
AFAIK the European version of Sensadyne Repair and Protrct uses Novamin, not Hydroxyapatite. From what I can tell, they are similar but separate chemicals.
While not sold directly in the US, Sensadyne with Novamin is available from Amazon (usually from India).
If you have no issues like sensitivity or cavities, imo I don't think there's a need to spend time optimizing the type of toothpaste. Went down that rabbit hole once reading research papers of tested and optimum fluoride concentration for remineralization, no idea why I did that considering I just use the toothpaste my partner gets and I haven't had a cavity in a decade probably
Ah, the non-problems of young people! What you say is true, but effective repair tooth pastes might be quite interesting for people that already have thin enamel, worn away enamel, crowns, reduced gums, etc.
I hope the effect size is big enough for one of the substances mentioned here …
Think about it, the human genome already contains genetic encoding of keratin, it wouldn't have to evolve (incrementally bruteforce) a full protein code to "protect and repair" damaged teeth. It would just need to "happen onto" accidentally expressing it somewhere in the mouth: perhaps the mucous membrane lining the inside cheeks, perhaps the tongue, perhaps some glands in the mouth. Accidentally expressing a gene in a cell type that didn't before is much easier to occur (i.e. more likely) than generating a new functional protein: all it takes is a change in the binding site (or promoter region) so that the relevant cell type (say lining the mouth) would express it, conditionally or unconditionally.
If this were effective, our bodies would probably be doing it already.
Just to clarify: even if 2 people had the exact same genetic coding for proteins, but different coding of promoter regions, then these will have different binding affinities, modulating when proteins will or wont be expressed and at what rate. So when considering a population's genome statistics, there is already a spectrum of promotor region codes in the population, if this keratin presence on teeth had significant advantage, selection pressure would already have increased that level towards optimum.
The only caveat for my reasoning would be if it were discovered that this is exactly what happens in a healthy mouth, and that we recently discovered that conventional toothpastes have been stripping such layer of keratin by abrasion.
> If this were effective, our bodies would probably be doing it already.
Naaah, this is not how evolution works. Tooth decay was not as big of a problem for our ancestors than it is for us (more sugar and acidic soft drinks) and tooth decay becomes more of a problem for older people that already reproduced making good teeth above a certain age uninteresting from an evolutionary standpoint. (And mayebe instead of better teeth we learnded to feed grandparents soft porridge to keep them around longer for babysitting duties ;-) (see the usefulness of aunts in elephants). Just because you like to keep your teeth, doesn‘t mean that nature cares.
Another win for sheep! If you've never encountered the wonder substance known as lanolin let me bring you some good news. This other sheeps wool extract is an oil that is absurdly good at healing dry and irritated skin. It's also fantastic for hair, producing manageable and silky locks. I know I sound like a commercial, sorry! It's usually marketed as nipple cream, which I think has unfairly limited its other uses. If you're a parent you may know about it, otherwise try it yourself!
So, chewing on beetle exoskeletons would repair teeth enamel? Wonder if there is archaeological evidence of humans doing that. Edit: there seems to be plenty of evidence of eating insects but any dental association is probably incidental (pun not intended). Maybe we just haven’t been looking into the enamel for these structures.
Yes, some studies and observations suggest that pre-contact Aboriginal Australians had generally good oral health with low rates of tooth decay and periodontal disease.
It's not just sugar, starchy foods like bread, potatoes start breaking down quickly right in the mouth into simple sugars, it's enough that white bread has a higher glycemic index than actual sugar :)
Never in History have humans had as good teeth as they do today. Also consider that until we had vaccines and antibiotics in the early 20th century, the average lifespan was very short.
Chewing plant twigs to clean teeth is an ancient way of tooth cleaning in many cultures[1]. I wonder if the Lignin or Suberin in plants acts the same was as Keratin in this study.
Just make sure to identify the plant first, and ensure it is suited for that (unlike the poison oak twig which the naïve city kid picked on one training deployment when trying to impress the country rubes with his knowledge of woodcraft --- fortunately a medic was able to perform a tracheotomy when the allergic reaction swelled his windpipe shut).
Yes! I've seen people with some very striking white teeth in India which is a place where people often do have horrible teeth (often from betel nut use). So the twig users sometimes really stand out. The Wikipedia article has a good point about frequent use though - some people clean their teeth with these twigs almost like a nervous habit and are very intense about it.
What the article doesn't mention is the salivation that Neem twigs cause! Neem trees also produce a biocide called azadirachtin and although the concentration is low in twigs maybe it helps clean the teeth when used a lot?
I’ve been reading about how “X could repair tooth enamel” for years, including on HN. Nothing ever comes of it. I’ll believe it when something exists out of a laboratory and on the market.
> The treatment could be delivered through a toothpaste for daily use or as a professionally applied gel
Could. In other words, they haven’t even tested if a toothpaste is viable, yet the title is written as if this is a ready-made and proven product.
Not really. People started having issues with teeth when we switched to farming and went from a diverse diet to a pretty poor one (grain, grain, grain).
The picture says "enamel-mimicking" and the text says "protective coating that mimics the structure and function of natural enamel", so it looks like a protective layer, not true repair. I've been using a paste with novamin lately, it also creates a protective layer and is also marketed as "repair". I like it and feel some heat when it contacts with teeth, so the chemical reaction must be working. But the marketing leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
I don't know what this new hairpaste does, but Novamin promotes re-enamelization of teeth, which is where mineral ions like calcium bond themselves to the tooth and fill in small pits and fissures. It's not regrowing actual enamel, it's probably not going to fill in any pits you can see with the naked eye, but it's a real and beneficial effect. Actually any fluoride toothpaste also does this, but Novamin may be a bit more effective at it.
I had an impression that Novamin creates an artificial layer as strong as natural enamel, and fills tiny holes that are responsible for high sensitivity with this material that crystallizes with water contact. Then normal Ca+F mineralisation is orthogonal. Novamin itself contains Ca, can it really migrate from the crystals into the tooth tissue?
People waste their time and money with this garbage. I'm not saying its bad, but there's much better stuff out there. If you care about re-enamelization which everyone with bad to average teeth should, get some Prevident Rinse. Its prescription, its made by Colgate and it has a generic version also. There is also a prevident toothpaste.
Use the mouthwash once a week and you're good. If your dentist doesn't tell you about it and you don't have great teeth, its ONLY because they want to make more money off of you.
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Never heard of Novamin but doesn't look promising?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7068624/
Conclusion Review shows that Novamin has significantly less clinical evidence to prove its effectiveness as a remineralization agent in treating both carious and non-carious lesion. Hence, better designed clinical trials should be carried out in the future before definitive recommendations can be made.
Inetersting, the paper explain how remineralisation works and the role of F and fluoroapatite. This reminds me the recent Veritasium video about why Teflon is so strong - F chemical bonds are the strongest.
For Novamin alone, I've seen and understood the claims of sensitivity protection with hydroxyl-carbonate apatite (HCA). The paper explains it in 4.3. The layer is temporary and protects from acids, conserving the teeth tissue below.
But F is essential and my paste has it together with Novamin. It seems they may work well together. But the paper also explains that F works with saliva rich in minerals to repair the enamel. So if Novamin creates a strong layer, it may block access of F + saliva to enamel (my speculation, as in 4.2 they say "A clean tooth surface is required to access the mineral-deficient spot.").
So maybe a classical Ca+F paste is better overnight when no acid exposure is expected, but Novamin is nice in the morning before breakfast.
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Welcome to the toothpaste rabbit hole of the internet.
Long story short, it didn’t work out in military applications and ended up being purchased by a toothpaste maker. They couldn’t bother getting it FDA approved for toothpaste so it is not available in the USA. Que conspiracy theories.
I use novamin but I can't feel a chemical reaction.
Have you noticed something more promising ? I am not sure, because I typically do not eat carbs.
I don't feel anything when using it, but it does do a much better job with hot / cold sensitivity than anything else I have tried on the market. I find it more effective than Biomin or Nano-Hydroxyapatite.
I feel it on the spot that was sensitive to cold, and that was the reason I looked for something new. The paste is of room temperature, so that feeling must be not a fluke. No idea if it actually works, F+Ca used to be enough.
I use toothpaste with Novamin and I also feel burning / heat. It begins immediately and lasts for about 2 minutes.
> and feel some heat when it contacts with teeth, so the chemical reaction must be working
I dunno, but I also feel some heat when I chew on cinnamon.
The image with the cross section looks convincing. I don’t really know what I’m looking at.
Try biomin F, newer novamin
Seems like this is just protection, not rebuilding of lost enamel.
> marketing leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Hard to brush that one off!
[that was brilliant, you missed your calling. I am completely enamled :D]
Was thinking about oddities of language recently (happens a lot since moving to Germany), specifically how "toothpaste" isn't made from teeth and "tomato paste" isn't something you rub onto a tomato.
So anyway, should we be calling this "hairpaste for teeth", or "toothpaste from hair"?
This semantic variability in the relation between the two nouns of a compound is pretty common in compound nouns: "Y made of X", like "tomato paste", "Y used (somehow) for X" (like "toothpaste", "paintbrush", "electrical outlet"--here an adjective, but still a lexicalized phrase), "Y in X" ("treehouse"), "Y for X" ("doghouse"), "Y containing X" ("paint can"), not to mention metaphorical uses, with some etymological relation between X and Y ("moon shot", "crapshoot", "greenhouse"), and so on. Not to mention multi-word compounds, like "greenhouse gas"--but I'm sure you've seen lots of those in Germany :).
“Windows Subsystem for Linux” is probably the most confusing example of this (an environment subsystem which provides a Linux userspace to a Windows NT kernel). more intuitive would be to call it a Linux Subsystem for Windows, but presumably for branding purposes they wanted Windows in front.
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“Toothpaste” is the commonly accepted English word (in most English dialects, as far as I’m aware) for that paste which we use to clean our teeth with a brush. So I expect we’ll call it “toothpaste” regardless of the exact chemical composition.
If keratin is the active ingredient, I would suspect the exact source doesn’t really matter.
I agree that the source won't be a reason for not calling it toothpaste, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's not called toothpaste anyway - that's a term they're using now as it makes it easy for people to imagine what they're talking about, but dentists don't call every type of gel/stuff that they apply to teeth "toothpaste", and as this will be about targeting repair rather than daily cleaning I suspect it will get a new name.
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Indeed.
We expect olive oil to be made from real olives, but not baby oil…
The coffee cake is a lie.
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There was some joke where they showed a sign saying “Kinder Kebab, €2”
I only clean my teeth with a dentifrice. I do not want to have to risk turning my teeth into paste!
Thanks for this, I'll be calling it toothhairpaste regardless of what the marketing department comes up with.
Is Baby Oil made from...?
And "pasta" is just the Italian word for paste.
Isn’t it Zahnpasta in German too?
Sometimes you need a (language) barrier to realize a inconsistency/detail which you'd never take notice of otherwise.
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>While fluoride toothpastes are currently used to slow this process, keratin-based treatments were found to stop it completely.
That's really great I hope to use this some day.
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.
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.
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It depends on the country also. In the UK for example, Repair & Protect uses novamin but in the US it just uses stannous fluoride.
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Open Access Paper: [ https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adhm.20... ]
That’s very good news, but we’ll have to wait a little bit: >>> “keratin-based enamel regeneration could be made available to the public within the next two to three years.”
That's pretty unbelievably fast, actually.
You can just put hair in your blender today.
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How does this compare with nano-hydroxyapatite, which is the current rage in toothpaste innovation and remineralization?
nHA is prohibitively expensive to produce and the most effective process that produces the smallest particles is patent-protected by Sangi, and therefore many nHA toothpaste brands only contain a fraction of the concentration used to produce the effective results reported in academic studies (1-2% instead of 10%).
If keratin toothpastes can be produced more economically they could be a better option for mass adoption. For anyone who wants to try nHA toothpaste for remineralization, I can only recommend Sangi Apagard Royal toothpaste ($$$) but it does work quite well when used as directed.
bah it's like $15-20 a tube that will last a couple months. That's nothing to most people on hackernews
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First time I've heard about apagard royal. In India it costs ₹5145 or $60 appprox.
Thats... substantially more expensive than regular toothpaste. Which costs ₹100-₹200 or $2-3.
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I wonder if this will fall into 'supplement' territory for US approval in toothpaste. I can imagine there would be a lot of manufacturers throwing it in without testing to see if their formulation actually works or not.
Funny that the first picture on the website is a bald man, I guess he hasn't tested it himself?
Why do you think he ran out of hair?
Perhaps he had hair before the harvesting
As you can see, he has a beard, so…
Or tested too much..
[flagged]
This isn't reddit. Low value comments like this have low value.
Any fluoride paste quietly calcificates your pineal gland. Try something natural, like Xylitol or even just pour a tea spoon of sodium bicarbonate into a glass of water and wash your teeth with it. Keep the mix in your mouth for 5 minutes. You can also use sunflower oil (a spoon of it) and rinse it in your mouth for 15-20 minutes.
Just wanted to add for anyone suffering problems with gums and teeth
Gums and Collagen - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7570157/
* As far as I understood, calcium needs a scaffold to attach to bones and teeth - collagen, as in gelatine, can seemingly support the regeneration of the gums, as well as some limited regeneration of the teeth
* Personal Note: I used to have knee pain in my twenties when I still ate a standard diet, when I took collagen it took about a month until the knee pain went away
* Teaspoon in the morning was enough
* Overdosing on Collagen might create some problems - might wanna read up on this
>Unlike bones and hair, enamel does not regenerate, once it is lost, it’s gone forever.
This simply isn't true. I've chipped two teeth at separate times. Both healed up over the years. I still have all my teeth, including wisdom teeth. No dental work in my lifetime.
> Both healed up over the years.
They….did not. Maybe the sharp edges eroded into smoother curves, and the nerve acclimated so any sensitivity resolved, but your teeth did not “heal” as in “replace the lost portion”.
>but your teeth did not “heal” as in “replace the lost portion”.
I can assure you that is exactly what happened, because one was a vertical chip out of the front of my tooth, like a small rice grain. For my tooth to "wear down" to hide it, I would have had to lose all the enamel on the front of that tooth, which did not happen.
As for the other, where I lost the corner of a front tooth, I suspect my old dentist in my hometown still has an xray, because my parents took me in. He offered to crown it and I declined, choosing to live with the chip. Good thing I did that, since it healed up.
Did they mean route as in path to a solution? Or root as the source? Seems odd.
“The root of the problem” is a more usual usage, but is just as readily applied (ha get it) as “the root of the solution”, especially when a dental pun can be bonded (puns are swell) to the headline (I can’t think of a way to pun on gumline here).
I found the phrasing really difficult to read and understand, even though I got the pun, so you’re not alone in that.
Root as in seed [crystal], as in nucleation point is what I would surmise.
Dentistry pun? Root as in the root of a tooth?
I recently started using a nano-hydroxyapatite based toothpaste. It can't restore enamel but does better at remineralization than fluoride, hopefully it will be a good intermediate for me until something regenerative is available.
It seems to me the two are effectively the same unless you have significantly misshaped teeth (remineralizing vs regenerating). I also use hydroxyapatite, just to reduce my fluoride exposure, although I believe fluoride is supposed to be a more potent remineralizer (and fluorapatite is allegedly stronger than natural hydroxyapatite). But the upside is that I don't mind swishing hydroxyapatite around in my mouth for 10 minutes, twice a day, so whenever I go to the dentist, I'm the healthiest mouth of the day (not the case pre-hydroxyapatite tooth paste/powder).
NHAP particles are smaller than fluoride particles, so they're able to penetrate farther into the porous surface of the teeth; flouride basically can only coat the surface. There is some research indicating that NHAP is more effective than flouride at remineralizing (e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4252862/) but that flouride is more protective than NHAP because NHAP isn't protective at all. (The flouride creates a temporary sacrificial enamel-like shell layer that closes off pores in the surface of the teeth in addition to buffering acids; the NHAP will just create new enamel.)
My dentist says that NHAP is great if you have lots of cavities or drink lots of acidic drinks like soda, but once your enamel is repaired too much of NHAP can actually cause weird growths.
Dave's toothpaste has both NHAP and flouride (and the sensitivity agent used in Sensyodyne) if you're looking for the best of all worlds in the U.S.
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What product(s) do you recommend? I'm in the US.
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To everyone reading this you should still use flouride! Flouride and nanohydroxyapetite together both strengthen the outside layer of your teeth while strengthening the inside of them. Either alone is good, both together are great.
Oh! To clarify. I use fluoride in the morning and hydroxyapatite at night.
Hydroxyapatite based paste is incredible, and has astonished a few of my incredulous friends dealing with dental problems.
It always seemed very interesting in a cynical way that Sensodyne Repair and Protect has a European version with hydroxyapatite but doesn't offer it in the US. The only reputable US brand I'm aware of is Dr Collins Biomin, which is excellent but weak on the hydroxyapatite.
I'll be abused for it here, but I'm intractably convinced the ADA and generally despicable US health industry prefer to avoid it due to its efficacy and how much revenue would be lost if it were more common. Say what you will against this, and I'll remain convinced.
AFAIK the European version of Sensadyne Repair and Protrct uses Novamin, not Hydroxyapatite. From what I can tell, they are similar but separate chemicals.
While not sold directly in the US, Sensadyne with Novamin is available from Amazon (usually from India).
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https://betterbiom.com/products/nobs-toothpaste-tablets
Not everybody agrees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYqP5y3iYHo
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I pick up a couple tubes of that Sensodyne every time I’m in Europe.
What product(s) do you recommend? I'm in the US.
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Is there any blogpost or website to get my mind unstuck on toothpaste? I feel this market is extremely confusing and I don’t know what to buy anymore.
EU citizen here.
If you have no issues like sensitivity or cavities, imo I don't think there's a need to spend time optimizing the type of toothpaste. Went down that rabbit hole once reading research papers of tested and optimum fluoride concentration for remineralization, no idea why I did that considering I just use the toothpaste my partner gets and I haven't had a cavity in a decade probably
Ah, the non-problems of young people! What you say is true, but effective repair tooth pastes might be quite interesting for people that already have thin enamel, worn away enamel, crowns, reduced gums, etc. I hope the effect size is big enough for one of the substances mentioned here …
I'd appreciate that too. My dentist recommended me to use Duraphat, a 9 euro per 50 gram toothpaste.
Just wash it with vinegar
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Think about it, the human genome already contains genetic encoding of keratin, it wouldn't have to evolve (incrementally bruteforce) a full protein code to "protect and repair" damaged teeth. It would just need to "happen onto" accidentally expressing it somewhere in the mouth: perhaps the mucous membrane lining the inside cheeks, perhaps the tongue, perhaps some glands in the mouth. Accidentally expressing a gene in a cell type that didn't before is much easier to occur (i.e. more likely) than generating a new functional protein: all it takes is a change in the binding site (or promoter region) so that the relevant cell type (say lining the mouth) would express it, conditionally or unconditionally.
If this were effective, our bodies would probably be doing it already.
Just to clarify: even if 2 people had the exact same genetic coding for proteins, but different coding of promoter regions, then these will have different binding affinities, modulating when proteins will or wont be expressed and at what rate. So when considering a population's genome statistics, there is already a spectrum of promotor region codes in the population, if this keratin presence on teeth had significant advantage, selection pressure would already have increased that level towards optimum.
The only caveat for my reasoning would be if it were discovered that this is exactly what happens in a healthy mouth, and that we recently discovered that conventional toothpastes have been stripping such layer of keratin by abrasion.
> If this were effective, our bodies would probably be doing it already.
Naaah, this is not how evolution works. Tooth decay was not as big of a problem for our ancestors than it is for us (more sugar and acidic soft drinks) and tooth decay becomes more of a problem for older people that already reproduced making good teeth above a certain age uninteresting from an evolutionary standpoint. (And mayebe instead of better teeth we learnded to feed grandparents soft porridge to keep them around longer for babysitting duties ;-) (see the usefulness of aunts in elephants). Just because you like to keep your teeth, doesn‘t mean that nature cares.
Strange to see this at 246 points on the front page and no mention of bioglass such as novamin?
Is this mechanism different?
How does this compare to microrepair? https://www.nature.com/articles/vital695
Does this kind of treatment still need probably years of testing and FDA-style approval, even if it’s essentially just a keratin derivative?
> The team ... believes [it] could be made available [in] the next two to three years.
Hey Siri, remind me in three years to look for keratin based toothpaste.
Visibly there is already Sanogyl Complete Essential Care that includes some.
I wonder how they got the idea to put some in it
Chew your fingernails! Do the toes with your molars. My foot is usually in the neighborhood anyway.
rms - is that you...?
Another win for sheep! If you've never encountered the wonder substance known as lanolin let me bring you some good news. This other sheeps wool extract is an oil that is absurdly good at healing dry and irritated skin. It's also fantastic for hair, producing manageable and silky locks. I know I sound like a commercial, sorry! It's usually marketed as nipple cream, which I think has unfairly limited its other uses. If you're a parent you may know about it, otherwise try it yourself!
So, that explains the benefits of chewing on one's own locks.
And nail biting.
Back in 2017, we were promised actual regeneration, not holding my breath.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/09/decline-of-t...
Brushing my teeth with Head and Shoulders
Any upcoming advances for gum disease?
Isn't Xylitol supposed to help with that? And brushing and flossing...
So, chewing on beetle exoskeletons would repair teeth enamel? Wonder if there is archaeological evidence of humans doing that. Edit: there seems to be plenty of evidence of eating insects but any dental association is probably incidental (pun not intended). Maybe we just haven’t been looking into the enamel for these structures.
Exoskeletons are usually made of chitin and not keratin. But maybe it works the same way
Insects are made of chitin, as far as I know.
You could chew on your fingernails...
Did past humans have the dental problems we have? I imagine a lot of our problems are caused by our diet and access to sugar.
Starchy food led to rotten teeth in ancient hunter-gatherers:
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-01-07-starchy-food-led-rotten...
But I think the more common prehistoric tooth problem was severe wear from using the teeth to process things like fibers and hides.
Yes, some studies and observations suggest that pre-contact Aboriginal Australians had generally good oral health with low rates of tooth decay and periodontal disease.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jphd.12570
It's not just sugar, starchy foods like bread, potatoes start breaking down quickly right in the mouth into simple sugars, it's enough that white bread has a higher glycemic index than actual sugar :)
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Never in History have humans had as good teeth as they do today. Also consider that until we had vaccines and antibiotics in the early 20th century, the average lifespan was very short.
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Chewing plant twigs to clean teeth is an ancient way of tooth cleaning in many cultures[1]. I wonder if the Lignin or Suberin in plants acts the same was as Keratin in this study.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teeth-cleaning_twig
Just make sure to identify the plant first, and ensure it is suited for that (unlike the poison oak twig which the naïve city kid picked on one training deployment when trying to impress the country rubes with his knowledge of woodcraft --- fortunately a medic was able to perform a tracheotomy when the allergic reaction swelled his windpipe shut).
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Yes! I've seen people with some very striking white teeth in India which is a place where people often do have horrible teeth (often from betel nut use). So the twig users sometimes really stand out. The Wikipedia article has a good point about frequent use though - some people clean their teeth with these twigs almost like a nervous habit and are very intense about it.
What the article doesn't mention is the salivation that Neem twigs cause! Neem trees also produce a biocide called azadirachtin and although the concentration is low in twigs maybe it helps clean the teeth when used a lot?
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But why not chew on hair directly?
Because you'll get a bezoar (hairball).
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I can see flossing with it, but chewing?
Beetle exoskeletons are not made of keratin. Try eating non-defeathered poultry.
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There are lots of activities wherein a hair, pubic or otherwise, might end up in a person's mouth.
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I’ve been reading about how “X could repair tooth enamel” for years, including on HN. Nothing ever comes of it. I’ll believe it when something exists out of a laboratory and on the market.
> The treatment could be delivered through a toothpaste for daily use or as a professionally applied gel
Could. In other words, they haven’t even tested if a toothpaste is viable, yet the title is written as if this is a ready-made and proven product.
Only thing missing is a B Corporation certification so that otherwise smart people won’t recognize the grift
Another great reason to chew on my nail clippings!
“Made from hair” is clickbait — the research is about keratin, a common structural protein.
They literally made it from hair (wool) though… So it’s fairly accurate.
I guess it implies human hair.
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Ok, we've taken hair out of the title above.
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That is the most made up sounding fact I’ve heard in a long time.
Not really. People started having issues with teeth when we switched to farming and went from a diverse diet to a pretty poor one (grain, grain, grain).
Sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and acidic drinks such as coffee and cola does almost all the damage.
Correlation causation etc. I'm gonna start eating whole mice. It's a nice compromise. They're velvety.
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Got a source for that? Seems like BS, tbh.
This is also why people who bite their nails don't get cavities.
Sadly not true. Source: my teeth and nails.