This is certainly an interesting idea, but there's absolutely no way for anyone to judge whether the claim on this page is bulletproof true, something plausible worth researching more, or just total nonsense.
But the fact that there isn't a single link to any scientific paper or evidence whatsoever, or even a single person's name linked to the site (or source of funding or anything), makes me assume this is just spam or a scam.
Apsec112, why did you submit this? How did you find it? Can you give us any context to suggest that anything about this is legit?
And anybody else -- are there actual published results from legit scientists on this? Is this a real thing, or just make-believe?
Because this is an extraordinary claim, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Not just 11 sentences.
Edit: I missed that at the very bottom of the page there's a link to a... Google Drive folder? [1] But it's disorganized and not exactly, well, professional. I can't make heads or tails of anything in it, or find anything that suggests credibility.
>are there actual published results from legit scientists on this?
The main papers referenced by document on the page are by JD Hillman on 1987[0] (et al) and 2002[1]. A layman review was done few years later by PopSci[2]. This specific site and company appear to have no relation to Hillman or Oragenics (co-founded by Hillman) that holds a patent on this[3,4].
If your friends are looking for feedback, you can pass on that at least one person on the internet finds it in very bad taste for them to describe the delay in treatment as a "civilizational embarrassment" while planning to charge $20k for a dose. The pricing point seems equally a civilizational embarassment to me.
Sorry, but we don't know you either, so a word-of-mouth referral doesn't tell us much here. The Google Drive link doesn't provide anything substantive, like links to peer-reviewed, published research.
I take very significant issue with the fact their appendix A and B do not link to the original literature. When I was skimming the pitch deck, I thought they had done the experiments themselves, but it just looks like they copy pasted the results without proper citation. At best this appears as miscommunication, at worst misrepresentation of the work they have accomplished.
I work in medical startup space and the evidence we develop to prove our technology works typically has a higher threshold than what I've seen presented. I would want to see significantly more work done to demonstrate the scientific validity of this research. Do they intend to carry out any additional pre-clinical research (in vitro/in vivo)? Do they intend to do a clinical trial? It appears from their slide deck that they don't?
>I work in medical startup space and the evidence we develop to prove our technology works typically has a higher threshold than what I've seen presented.
Like what?
>I would want to see significantly more work done to demonstrate the scientific validity of this research.
Like what?
Educate the layman instead of saying this is no good, please.
"LANTERN BIOWORKS, INC. is a California Non-Profit Corporation - Ca - Public Benefit filed on January 4, 2023. The company's filing status is listed as Active and its File Number is 5412825.
The Registered Agent on file for this company is Tovella Dowling, PC and is located at 501 W Broadway Suite 1310, San Diego, CA 92101. The company's principal address is 501 W Broadway Ste 1310, San Diego, CA 92101 and its mailing address is 501 W Broadway Ste 1310, San Diego, CA 92101.
The company has 3 contacts on record. The contacts are Aaron Silverbook from San Diego CA, Connor Flexman from San Diego CA, and Nick Mossakowski from San Diego CA.
It seems hard to believe the ethanol producing bacterial strain would dominate your oral microbione for life from one application. But I’m willing to have an open mind and see some data.
They need to get the data off of the Google drive and presented in a better way. I don’t click unknown Google drive links if I can avoid it.
Brushing your teeth and using mouthwash wipes out the majority of the micro biome. Application of the new strain shortly after could totally replace it wholesale.
That said, I can’t imagine there’s not other side effects that just aren’t known yet. The sample size and reporting (as far as we know) is just too small and meaningless.
As a layman, I would be concerned about trying to control a bacterium called Streptococcus mutans, as that, to me, signals “this thing mutates rapidly”.
As I layman, I am more concerned that drastic alterations to the oral microbiome could have many negative downstream effects on health, from everything to digestion (naturally) to heard disease and neurodegenerative disorders. All of which show some correlation to an altered oral microbiome. We barely understand the connections, but that is obviously an argument in favor of caution.
I'm grateful that there are people out there willing to be guinea pigs for stuff like this, but I definitely wouldn't touch this kind of product until there are years (ideally decades) of usage with systemic scientific investigation into immediate complications as well as long term health impacts.
Mutations trend towards stable states. Stable states further trend towards states where fast mutation becomes disabled because it's in a "good" stable zone.
Symbiosis is the ultimate stable state.
You can get stable states in intermediate zones like hiv infections, but these zones are not as good as symbiosis. They have potential to kill off a weak population, additionally humans are actively combatting the virus. In symbiosis there's no negative for either side.
There is no evolutionary pressure to "mutate" in symbiosis. Mutations will occur in the beginning. Those will die off fast and eventually the strain will become more and more stable as the gene starts mutating towards a configuration that has slow mutations.
A conversation with my friend who was a dentistry student, ~2013.
> [The friend, let's call her L, trying to dissuade me from drinking some fizzy drink]
> J: But I won't get a cavity if the liquid doesn't touch my teeth.
> L: Cavities are caused by the ensuing low ph environment, not by contact with teeth
> J: Does that mean I can drink as much of it as I want as long as I rinse my mouth with water afterwards?
> L, with a hint of defeat in her voice: yes.
After this conversation, I started the practice of rinsing my mouth with water after eating anything sugary or associated with tooth decay, as well as using interdental toothbrushes. My rate of cavities dropped from one on most years to zero - I haven't had a cavity since. Even the one noticed by my dentist at the time and left untreated for being too small hasn't developed yet, and that was ~ten years ago.
On a sidenote, I have yet to find interdental toothbrushes whose use doesn't lead to ingesting nylon.
Water also just dissolves the sugar and reduces the amount sitting in and on our teeth. I do this same thing and haven’t had a cavity in a very long time.
Very bad advice, as the brushes need to have specific sizes suitable for the spaces and the bristles actually reach more spaces and remove plaque.
However, someone could manufacture the brushes from natural hair, e.g. from pigs as with other kinds of brushes.
This conflicts with some advice I have previously heard, so would be interested in any hard research for or against.
I was told that if you vomit, you should not brush or rinse your mouth. You are only moving the low pH stomach acid around your mouth and exposing more teeth to the acidic environment. Instead you should try to neutralize the acid (baking powder or similar).
On one hand, I could believe you are just spreading the damage around. On the other, it feels hard to believe that some residual ~2 pH stomach acid would remain when massively diluted by a mouthful of ~7 pH tap water.
That doesn't sound like a conflict to me. People actively resist allowing vomit to touch most of their mouth. We tend to do the opposite with soda. So swishing with water after vomiting puts vomit where it otherwise wouldn't have been, while swishing with water after drinking soda only dilutes the places that soda already was.
The brushing thing has to do with the effect acid has on enamel.
I doubt you could find a dentist that wouldn't recommend swishing with water after drinking soda.
And cutting out sugars - especially fructose - avoids diabetes. Some people who are lactose intolerant cut out lactose, and some people prone to celiac disease cut out gluten. Sometimes the simplest solutions, done consistently, are best:
I pretty much stopped getting cavities when about 10 years ago I stopped enjoying sweet foods and drinks. (Dessert, pastries, juice, soda, etc)
Yes I understand that refined breads, such as white bread on sandwiches, will still cause tooth decay; but I found simply drastically cutting down sugary foods & drinks was enough.
The research that found this didn’t identify PFAs in any dental floss but instead found a correlation in blood levels in the (small number of) participants.
They detected fluorine in the floss and assumed that meant PFAs (Perfluoroalkoxy). This is a really bizarre leap because the floss is made of PTFE (Polytetrafluoroethylene), which has fluorine, but is unrelated to PFAs even if you squint, despite both being fluropolymers.
PTFE is safe unless heated to over 300C, which doesn’t happen in your mouth. At one point in history the manufacturing process used PFOA, which is not an awesome chemical, but has not been used since 2013.
However it carries a reputational stigma from that time to this day. It’s otherwise chemically stable and non reactive. It’s also important to note that the study that everyone is basing these conclusions on was in the range of time that PFOA was used to produce PTFE, possibly explaining the PFOA detected in higher amounts.
You could make the bristles from pigs hair or similar as with other kinds of brushes probably. It would just be really expensive and probably isn't worth it.
If you can, do use the correct interdental brushes as they are way more effective. You should consult a dental hygienist for proper sizing. Should you come to Prague, you should contact fulldent.cz as far in advance as you can and arrange an appointment.
(Disclaimer, my GF works there however I and my whole family and some friends who attend there have since then the best dental hygiene possible. They also don't mind English at all.)
It would apply to all to some extent, but when you make the wrong move with an interdental toothbrush it can lose a quarter of its bristles in one session.
You could be lucky but you could also just have a bad dentist who does not x-ray or the x-ray might be old and with insufficient picture quality. (Source, GF is a highly specialized dental hygienist and we talk a lot about some cases. I was even at Euro Perio with her...)
Genetics seems to be weird when it comes to teeth.
I (foolishly) stopped seeing a dentist at all after college. I finally managed to force myself to go around 15 years later. My enamel was worn down, my teeth discolored (not terribly, but noticeably), and my gums were not in great shape, but I ended up with only two cavities that needed to be drilled and filled. After resuming regular dental visits, my teeth are fine. My general oral hygiene prior to that was ok, but not great (2x daily brushing most of the time & mouthwash, very occasional flossing).
A friend of mine does everything right: mostly avoids sugary foods, brushes after meals), mouthwash, flossing, and he goes to the dentist every 4 or 6 months for a cleaning. But he still has many dental issues to deal with, and has had quite a few cavities filled.
I've done everything the experts have said, we were too poor for sweets, but they have continued to prove themselves wrong.
Something I find interesting is the role zinc plays in the oral cavity, a sufficiently high intake see's an increase of zinc in the saliva, which in turn reduces the oral bacteria levels, zinc will appear in the enamel of the teeth, and zinc has a similar oesteoblastic effect with bones where its also stored for quick release. The effect it has on bone marrow, increasing stem cell numbers, and people will be familiar with the idea of taking zinc at the start of a cold to half the duration, I'm left wondering if zinc is deliberately ignored by medical experts for fear of being put out of work!
I've found them to be pretty correct. I brush and floss before I got to bed and I haven't had a cavity in over 15 years. In the past few years I've switched to using hydroxyapatite toothpaste, but that's the only big change.
The FDA requirements for the original clinical trial were wild: "...the FDA required them to find a cohort of 300 healthy 18-30 year olds who lived alone, not near a school zone, and had fully removable teeth."
I can see why this makes sense, but no wonder they failed at enrolling the cohort.
That is a good question. I couldn't find a citation for the original comment, but my guess would be either that they want an unbiased cohort OR, since its a bacterial treatment, they wouldn't want to risk the spread and possibly contaminating children after the trial was done.
For FDA, never permitting it is a completely acceptable outcome, and that's why it probably will never be permitted in the US. Unless somebody will find a reason to spend many billions of dollars to make it happen, which I don't foresee happening. I wonder if there's a chance in other countries, or they have their own FDAs?
Doing a couple Google/Twitter searches for this company it's pretty obvious it's coming out of the Berkeley-area EA/rationalist cluster, which automatically makes me pretty skeptical. These people don't exactly have a stellar track record of medical startups (recall all the hype around MetaMed, which delivered precisely nothing).
> These people don't exactly have a stellar track record of medical startups (recall all the hype around MetaMed, which delivered precisely nothing).
I can only think of one other medical startup coming out of the Berkeley-area EA/rationalist cluster, which would be Equator Therapeutics. They're working on an anti-obesity drug, and my understanding is it's going pretty well. But maybe you have others in mind?
(MetaMed came out of the NYC-area rationalist cluster and ~predates EA, and Alvea came out of the Boston-area EA group and shut down after their vaccine candidate gave disappointing results in human trials.)
Their org chart includes "Aella", who is apparently acting as their "media advisor" [0]. That tells you just about everything you need to know about this organization.
"This has, to our knowledge, caused no ill effects since."
That's the kicker. Damn near everything has side effects. How and why the FDA approves some things but not others is a quagmire, but the truth is that almost everything has side effects. Sometimes it feels like every approved drug ad you see on TV will have some lawsuit 20-30 years later. Look at where we are right now with ozempic. We know one of the side effects is thyroid cancer and doctors are prescribing it left and right while there is money to be made. In 10 years there will be a multi-billion dollar settlement for "misrepresenting the risks".
Thyroid cancer is one of the least dangerous cancers being easily treated and not generally life threatening. Obviously it would be nice not to get it, but a small increase to the risk of thyroid cancer for a substantially reduced risk of cardiovascular issues and complications from diabetes seems like a very sound medical decision.
You also need to weigh cost/benefit though. Everything may have side effects, but the mere presence of side effects is not alone grounds to not use something. For the particular case of ozempic, the effectiveness appears so strong, and obesity causes so many complications and such a massive loss of QALYs, it's probably worth it even if there is an increased risk of thyroid cancer, unless that increase is really huge.
Only thing I could find was a study in mice (which you should always take with a heap of salt) showing an increased incident, and a modest correlation in human studies but with a lot of caveats and a disclaimer that the study was in no way conclusive.
> doctors are prescribing it left and right while there is money to be made
I think that's painting with a broad brush the motivations of doctors. Case in point: when diagnosed with diabetes, my doctor suggested attempting a modified diet before she'd prescribe medications (such as ozempic). She got no money from a modified diet.
Furthermore, I don't think she would've gotten any money had she prescribed medication; in the US, there's a "Medicaid/Medicare anti-kickback statute" [0]
I suspect that those motivated by money would be more inclined to pursue a lucrative career in finance rather than the long, arduous, and expensive path of becoming a doctor.
The question I always have with this type of stuff is: why is it not _already_ huge. Cavities were a big thing already in 1985. If this was a miracle cure in 1985 then I do not believe that this study would have ended in 'ok that was fun, back to normal life'. This has huge commercial potential if true, so the apparently implications is that there is something blocking that commercial application.
Was it FDA? Was it side effectives? Is it impossible to scale this up? What is it that made this "miracle cure" just stop.
They say it was because of FDA approval. As it was GM, in order to prove it is safe they wanted a study done on healthy people who are completely isolated from the human race so that they can't spread it. As nobody lives in a place where they are completely isolated from the human race it wasn't a very realistic. Then the patent ran out so it wasn't worth it for any drug company to proceed with approval because everyone else would just wait until they've paid the fee and then sell it too.
But it wouldn't be surprising that there's pushback against any technological breakthrough where established industries had something to lose. The FDA is not a stranger to corruption[1,2], so it wouldn't be far-fetched for lobbyists in the dentist industry to grease a few palms in their favor. Big Pharma is an ugly business.
Some other countries have healthcare systems where the primary goal is the patient outcome, and lowering the need for treatment is considered a win. If this were a thing, you'd expect that it might have been picked up and trialled in one of those places.
If you want to more or less permanently stop gum bleeding pre-brush with a dilute (50 to 200 ppm) solution of hypochlorous acid generated from vinegar acidified salt water (0.8-2%) with salt concentration (saline is 0.8-0.9%) then hit it with a
$5 Aliexpress USB electrolyzer for about 30 seconds. The biofilms come right off, your toothbrush ceases to accumulate biological matter, and hypochlorous acid does not begin to show toxicity in keratinocytes until 10,000 ppm. It is extremely unpleasant in the mouth above 200 ppm so it is relatively easy to guesstimate.
Yes, sometimes it takes time, like in Japan the birth control pill ..
"Campaigners here joke that it took the country 30 years to approve the contraceptive or birth control pill, but just six months to approve the Viagra pill for male impotence. Both became available in 1999, but the latter came first."
A different generalization is that dentists make more money on treatments, and less on diagnosis or preventive care. It's hard to say if this is really a conspiracy theory since the diagnoses from different dentists aren't always consistent.
A one time cure for cavities is just bad for business!
Same with RISUG, a cheap semi-permanent reversible male contraceptive made with a tiny piece of plastic (which would destroy condoms and female hormonal pill - never got to the western world) or ocumetics, the bionic eyes promising 20/20 for everyone with a simple cataract surgery (which seems to be stuck in a endless cycle of getting bought, and doing trials).
Now this topic has a huge grain of salt, but imagine something that one cheap treatment of basically wipes out an entire industry do you think that industry and associated ones wouldn't fight tooth and nail to buy it an bury it? I know it's been said the same thing about various engine designs, but just for the sake of argument I believe that's what they're saying here.
So within the existing population today there exist individuals who essentially never get cavities. The hypothesis for this has been 1. they don't eat sugar, or only fibrous foods, etc. 2. They have a genetic difference that builds stronger enamel or similar.
I have never heard of anyone discussing bacteria in the mouth as a possible difference. Be interested to see if there is a natural strand that some people have present that could also be a culprit.
There has been modest support for this concept in term of gut bacteria, i.e. thin people who donate their excrement to fat people seem to inoculate them with a gut biome that helps them lose weight, or deal with digestive issues.
I have very strong (and ugly) teeth. The few "cavities" that I had, were actually made by dentists (they do that, y'know), and have resulted in a couple of crowns.
Otherwise, my teeth are great. I now have a dentist that doesn't make cavities, and she seems almost disappointed, when she checks me.
But gum care is every bit as important as tooth care (take it from me, you don't want a gum-scraping), and that is why I need to brush, floss, and mouthwash, twice a day.
A dental hygienist (those people who do maintenance cleaning at dentist’s offices) told me that saliva quality is key to cavity and periodontal health. The ability of keep all teeth moist prevents plaque/tartar build up. I don’t know how true that is, but this at least provide an alternative hypothesis to the two that you listed.
Yeah, it's always baffled me. Growing up I ate snacks and sugar fiendishly, but only ever had maybe one or two cavities in 2nd grade or so.
I had another friend who got cavities on an almost yearly basis. What was really fascinating was how boring her diet was; I never saw her eat anything more complex than a peanut butter sandwich or cheese pizza. She brushed, flossed and mouthwashed every day but could never get ahead of it. Meanwhile I went through all of middle and high school without any major dental work besides getting my wisdom teeth pulled.
It's all very odd, and my personal experiences have also led me to believe that diet plays a smaller role than we might think. I could be wrong though, I'm willing to defer to the most reasonable explanation.
Scientist lurkers in the thread take note. We have a couple for the first cohort for testing to see if their mouth biome differs from base population. Inquiring minds want to know!
Are you good about brushing your teeth and flossing on the regular? Having lots of sugar isn't what causes cavities, it's not keeping up your dental hygiene. So if you eat a lot of sugar but brush well on a regular basis, I would expect you to not get cavities.
Genetics play a role as well. My mom never got cavities despite never brushing her teeth, whereas my dad could brush pretty regularly and still have a cavity or two when he got checked up. Sadly I inherited my dad's genes, not my mom's.
You should assume that everything related to digestion is caused by gut bacteria.
Nerds love saying things is "genetics" because they think it'd make humanities types mad if something was genetics. But it's like lupus. It's never genetics. (Except celiac.)
Probiora seems similar, but less sticky (it recommends a daily dissolvable tablet instead a once a decade tablet) and instead of producing ethanol, produces hydrogen peroxide.
Oral bacteria are a complex system of delicate balance. There are second-order effects that can arise which undermine the benefits of the first-order effects.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324621
What happens when these get into the esophagus and produce oxide species? Extra free radicals can't be great for your DNA. I wonder what the long term cancer outcomes would be.
Hydrogen peroxide producing bacteria are far more of a known factor than ethanol producing bacteria where it comes to long-term interactions with human mucosa, the former being a natural part of human vaginal flora.
Interesting product, but the site has one of the worst GDPR controls ive seen - silently redirects to Google if you attempt to view the site from an EU IP address. Thought my computer is going nuts
Readit News
But the fact that there isn't a single link to any scientific paper or evidence whatsoever, or even a single person's name linked to the site (or source of funding or anything), makes me assume this is just spam or a scam.
Apsec112, why did you submit this? How did you find it? Can you give us any context to suggest that anything about this is legit?
And anybody else -- are there actual published results from legit scientists on this? Is this a real thing, or just make-believe?
Because this is an extraordinary claim, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Not just 11 sentences.
Edit: I missed that at the very bottom of the page there's a link to a... Google Drive folder? [1] But it's disorganized and not exactly, well, professional. I can't make heads or tails of anything in it, or find anything that suggests credibility.
[1] https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/18ZDSe92LgLmS0sUb...
The main papers referenced by document on the page are by JD Hillman on 1987[0] (et al) and 2002[1]. A layman review was done few years later by PopSci[2]. This specific site and company appear to have no relation to Hillman or Oragenics (co-founded by Hillman) that holds a patent on this[3,4].
[0]: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002203458706600...
[1]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1020695902160
[2]: https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-01/germ-could-sa...
[3]: https://www.oragenics.com/news-media/press-releases/detail/3...
[4]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9260488B2/en
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1OqDqFYMQdcS0XM4hORqN...
I work in medical startup space and the evidence we develop to prove our technology works typically has a higher threshold than what I've seen presented. I would want to see significantly more work done to demonstrate the scientific validity of this research. Do they intend to carry out any additional pre-clinical research (in vitro/in vivo)? Do they intend to do a clinical trial? It appears from their slide deck that they don't?
Like what?
>I would want to see significantly more work done to demonstrate the scientific validity of this research.
Like what?
Educate the layman instead of saying this is no good, please.
"LANTERN BIOWORKS, INC. is a California Non-Profit Corporation - Ca - Public Benefit filed on January 4, 2023. The company's filing status is listed as Active and its File Number is 5412825.
The Registered Agent on file for this company is Tovella Dowling, PC and is located at 501 W Broadway Suite 1310, San Diego, CA 92101. The company's principal address is 501 W Broadway Ste 1310, San Diego, CA 92101 and its mailing address is 501 W Broadway Ste 1310, San Diego, CA 92101.
The company has 3 contacts on record. The contacts are Aaron Silverbook from San Diego CA, Connor Flexman from San Diego CA, and Nick Mossakowski from San Diego CA.
They need to get the data off of the Google drive and presented in a better way. I don’t click unknown Google drive links if I can avoid it.
That said, I can’t imagine there’s not other side effects that just aren’t known yet. The sample size and reporting (as far as we know) is just too small and meaningless.
Deleted Comment
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12369203
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caries_vaccine
As a layman, I would be concerned about trying to control a bacterium called Streptococcus mutans, as that, to me, signals “this thing mutates rapidly”.
I'm grateful that there are people out there willing to be guinea pigs for stuff like this, but I definitely wouldn't touch this kind of product until there are years (ideally decades) of usage with systemic scientific investigation into immediate complications as well as long term health impacts.
Symbiosis is the ultimate stable state.
You can get stable states in intermediate zones like hiv infections, but these zones are not as good as symbiosis. They have potential to kill off a weak population, additionally humans are actively combatting the virus. In symbiosis there's no negative for either side.
There is no evolutionary pressure to "mutate" in symbiosis. Mutations will occur in the beginning. Those will die off fast and eventually the strain will become more and more stable as the gene starts mutating towards a configuration that has slow mutations.
On a sidenote, I have yet to find interdental toothbrushes whose use doesn't lead to ingesting nylon.
Use the interdental toothpicks made of wood.
I was told that if you vomit, you should not brush or rinse your mouth. You are only moving the low pH stomach acid around your mouth and exposing more teeth to the acidic environment. Instead you should try to neutralize the acid (baking powder or similar).
On one hand, I could believe you are just spreading the damage around. On the other, it feels hard to believe that some residual ~2 pH stomach acid would remain when massively diluted by a mouthful of ~7 pH tap water.
The brushing thing has to do with the effect acid has on enamel.
I doubt you could find a dentist that wouldn't recommend swishing with water after drinking soda.
And cutting out sugars - especially fructose - avoids diabetes. Some people who are lactose intolerant cut out lactose, and some people prone to celiac disease cut out gluten. Sometimes the simplest solutions, done consistently, are best:
https://aeon.co/essays/sugar-is-a-toxic-agent-that-creates-c...
As for toothbrushes — if you are worried about microplastics you can get this:
https://www.amazon.com/Bamboo-Toothbrush-Adult-Size-Pack/dp/...
So basically drinking water?
Yes I understand that refined breads, such as white bread on sandwiches, will still cause tooth decay; but I found simply drastically cutting down sugary foods & drinks was enough.
You drink fizzy drinks during the day, and each time that you drink you rinse your mouth with water without brushing your teeth.
And you only brush, say, before sleep, and this has reduced your cavities to zero?
thanks
Isn't that all toothbrushes, or are interdentals unique? (I haven't used them.)
I always assumed that toothbrushes would shed microplastics during brushing.
Also, avoid flossers, as they usually have PFAS. I use a water flosser instead.
They detected fluorine in the floss and assumed that meant PFAs (Perfluoroalkoxy). This is a really bizarre leap because the floss is made of PTFE (Polytetrafluoroethylene), which has fluorine, but is unrelated to PFAs even if you squint, despite both being fluropolymers.
PTFE is safe unless heated to over 300C, which doesn’t happen in your mouth. At one point in history the manufacturing process used PFOA, which is not an awesome chemical, but has not been used since 2013.
However it carries a reputational stigma from that time to this day. It’s otherwise chemically stable and non reactive. It’s also important to note that the study that everyone is basing these conclusions on was in the range of time that PFOA was used to produce PTFE, possibly explaining the PFOA detected in higher amounts.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-018-0109-y
(Disclaimer, my GF works there however I and my whole family and some friends who attend there have since then the best dental hygiene possible. They also don't mind English at all.)
What?! Did you never brush your teeth or something? That's an insane rate.
I (foolishly) stopped seeing a dentist at all after college. I finally managed to force myself to go around 15 years later. My enamel was worn down, my teeth discolored (not terribly, but noticeably), and my gums were not in great shape, but I ended up with only two cavities that needed to be drilled and filled. After resuming regular dental visits, my teeth are fine. My general oral hygiene prior to that was ok, but not great (2x daily brushing most of the time & mouthwash, very occasional flossing).
A friend of mine does everything right: mostly avoids sugary foods, brushes after meals), mouthwash, flossing, and he goes to the dentist every 4 or 6 months for a cleaning. But he still has many dental issues to deal with, and has had quite a few cavities filled.
Something I find interesting is the role zinc plays in the oral cavity, a sufficiently high intake see's an increase of zinc in the saliva, which in turn reduces the oral bacteria levels, zinc will appear in the enamel of the teeth, and zinc has a similar oesteoblastic effect with bones where its also stored for quick release. The effect it has on bone marrow, increasing stem cell numbers, and people will be familiar with the idea of taking zinc at the start of a cold to half the duration, I'm left wondering if zinc is deliberately ignored by medical experts for fear of being put out of work!
I can see why this makes sense, but no wonder they failed at enrolling the cohort.
Deleted Comment
(along with AI companies of course)
They're doing well numerically when it comes to funding but is there anyone who has actually lived materially longer as a result of the field?
I can only think of one other medical startup coming out of the Berkeley-area EA/rationalist cluster, which would be Equator Therapeutics. They're working on an anti-obesity drug, and my understanding is it's going pretty well. But maybe you have others in mind?
(MetaMed came out of the NYC-area rationalist cluster and ~predates EA, and Alvea came out of the Boston-area EA group and shut down after their vaccine candidate gave disappointing results in human trials.)
[0] https://nitter.net/Aella_Girl/status/1705772547781140541
Not saying this company is or is not legit, but this doesn't seem like a reasonable vector for criticism.
Dead Comment
That's the kicker. Damn near everything has side effects. How and why the FDA approves some things but not others is a quagmire, but the truth is that almost everything has side effects. Sometimes it feels like every approved drug ad you see on TV will have some lawsuit 20-30 years later. Look at where we are right now with ozempic. We know one of the side effects is thyroid cancer and doctors are prescribing it left and right while there is money to be made. In 10 years there will be a multi-billion dollar settlement for "misrepresenting the risks".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaglutide
https://healthnews.com/news/possible-thyroid-cancer-risks-wi...
Maybe that's true, I don't know. But it's worth noting they did not say it had no side effects, it was that they weren't aware of any ill effects.
I think that's painting with a broad brush the motivations of doctors. Case in point: when diagnosed with diabetes, my doctor suggested attempting a modified diet before she'd prescribe medications (such as ozempic). She got no money from a modified diet.
Furthermore, I don't think she would've gotten any money had she prescribed medication; in the US, there's a "Medicaid/Medicare anti-kickback statute" [0]
I suspect that those motivated by money would be more inclined to pursue a lucrative career in finance rather than the long, arduous, and expensive path of becoming a doctor.
[0] https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/it-legal-physic...
Was it FDA? Was it side effectives? Is it impossible to scale this up? What is it that made this "miracle cure" just stop.
But it wouldn't be surprising that there's pushback against any technological breakthrough where established industries had something to lose. The FDA is not a stranger to corruption[1,2], so it wouldn't be far-fetched for lobbyists in the dentist industry to grease a few palms in their favor. Big Pharma is an ugly business.
[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/fda-chief-approved-oxycontin...
[2]: https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-conflicts-pha...
Some other countries have healthcare systems where the primary goal is the patient outcome, and lowering the need for treatment is considered a win. If this were a thing, you'd expect that it might have been picked up and trialled in one of those places.
"Campaigners here joke that it took the country 30 years to approve the contraceptive or birth control pill, but just six months to approve the Viagra pill for male impotence. Both became available in 1999, but the latter came first."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62515356
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37022911
Same with RISUG, a cheap semi-permanent reversible male contraceptive made with a tiny piece of plastic (which would destroy condoms and female hormonal pill - never got to the western world) or ocumetics, the bionic eyes promising 20/20 for everyone with a simple cataract surgery (which seems to be stuck in a endless cycle of getting bought, and doing trials).
1. There's always new people.
2. If you don't do it, someone else will, because they'd rather be paid once than not have any business.
I have never heard of anyone discussing bacteria in the mouth as a possible difference. Be interested to see if there is a natural strand that some people have present that could also be a culprit.
There has been modest support for this concept in term of gut bacteria, i.e. thin people who donate their excrement to fat people seem to inoculate them with a gut biome that helps them lose weight, or deal with digestive issues.
I _do_ have to brush my teeth etc... though, because i tend to have a lot of plaque if i don't.
Apparently either it is cavities, or plaque. You must take care of your teeth!
Otherwise, my teeth are great. I now have a dentist that doesn't make cavities, and she seems almost disappointed, when she checks me.
But gum care is every bit as important as tooth care (take it from me, you don't want a gum-scraping), and that is why I need to brush, floss, and mouthwash, twice a day.
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I eat plenty of sugar.
I had another friend who got cavities on an almost yearly basis. What was really fascinating was how boring her diet was; I never saw her eat anything more complex than a peanut butter sandwich or cheese pizza. She brushed, flossed and mouthwashed every day but could never get ahead of it. Meanwhile I went through all of middle and high school without any major dental work besides getting my wisdom teeth pulled.
It's all very odd, and my personal experiences have also led me to believe that diet plays a smaller role than we might think. I could be wrong though, I'm willing to defer to the most reasonable explanation.
Genetics play a role as well. My mom never got cavities despite never brushing her teeth, whereas my dad could brush pretty regularly and still have a cavity or two when he got checked up. Sadly I inherited my dad's genes, not my mom's.
Nerds love saying things is "genetics" because they think it'd make humanities types mad if something was genetics. But it's like lupus. It's never genetics. (Except celiac.)
https://probiorahealth.com/product/probiora/
That tells me everything I need to know, the site owner simply wants to steal my personal data and use it against me.