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buybackoff · 14 days ago
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.
safety1st · 14 days ago
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.
buybackoff · 14 days ago
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?
timtim51251 · 12 days ago
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.

alyx · 14 days ago
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.

buybackoff · 14 days ago
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.

wodenokoto · 13 days ago
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.

majkinetor · 14 days ago
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.

mgiampapa · 13 days ago
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.
buybackoff · 14 days ago
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.
danhau · 13 days ago
I use toothpaste with Novamin and I also feel burning / heat. It begins immediately and lasts for about 2 minutes.
amelius · 13 days ago
> 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.

jbjbjbjb · 14 days ago
The image with the cross section looks convincing. I don’t really know what I’m looking at.
petulla · 14 days ago
Try biomin F, newer novamin
amelius · 13 days ago
Seems like this is just protection, not rebuilding of lost enamel.

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upghost · 14 days ago
> 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]

ben_w · 14 days ago
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"?

mcswell · 14 days ago
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 :).
Birch-san · 14 days ago
“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.
nkrisc · 14 days ago
“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.

swores · 14 days ago
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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BobbyTables2 · 14 days ago
Indeed.

We expect olive oil to be made from real olives, but not baby oil…

Waterluvian · 14 days ago
The coffee cake is a lie.
tacker2000 · 14 days ago
There was some joke where they showed a sign saying “Kinder Kebab, €2”
readthenotes1 · 14 days ago
I only clean my teeth with a dentifrice. I do not want to have to risk turning my teeth into paste!
boothby · 14 days ago
Thanks for this, I'll be calling it toothhairpaste regardless of what the marketing department comes up with.
SweetSoftPillow · 14 days ago
Is Baby Oil made from...?
glial · 13 days ago
And "pasta" is just the Italian word for paste.
tchalla · 14 days ago
Isn’t it Zahnpasta in German too?
ffsm8 · 14 days ago
Sometimes you need a (language) barrier to realize a inconsistency/detail which you'd never take notice of otherwise.
bobajeff · 14 days ago
>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.

dotancohen · 14 days ago
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.

latortuga · 13 days ago
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.

mackey · 14 days ago
It depends on the country also. In the UK for example, Repair & Protect uses novamin but in the US it just uses stannous fluoride.
NKosmatos · 14 days ago
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.”
HPsquared · 14 days ago
That's pretty unbelievably fast, actually.
Y_Y · 14 days ago
You can just put hair in your blender today.
CGMthrowaway · 14 days ago
How does this compare with nano-hydroxyapatite, which is the current rage in toothpaste innovation and remineralization?
skylissue · 14 days ago
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.

EasyMark · 14 days ago
bah it's like $15-20 a tube that will last a couple months. That's nothing to most people on hackernews
2Gkashmiri · 13 days ago
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.

jmward01 · 14 days ago
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.
orliesaurus · 14 days ago
Funny that the first picture on the website is a bald man, I guess he hasn't tested it himself?
dkiebd · 14 days ago
Why do you think he ran out of hair?
jncfhnb · 14 days ago
Perhaps he had hair before the harvesting
MrGilbert · 14 days ago
As you can see, he has a beard, so…
djmips · 14 days ago
Or tested too much..

Dead Comment