
Gum bacteria implicated in Alzheimer's and other diseases - laurex
https://neurosciencenews.com/alzheimers-gum-disease-11029/
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molecule
Recent discussion of the cited research:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19596915](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19596915)

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a3n
So people with full dentures, as a population, might be less prone to
Alzheimer's? There no longer being any breaks in the gums.

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SketchySeaBeast
The question there would be what damage was caused while the denturization was
ongoing - if it was decades of slowly pulling teeth, that doesn't strike me as
evidence of excellent hygiene.

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tabtab
Bacteria are relatively easy to spot. If Alzheimers sufferers have more of a
given bacteria in their brain than non-sufferers, that should have stood out
many decades ago. I'm missing something here.

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btilly
Recent research suggests that our brains attack bacteria with amyloid beta.
The result of a low-level bacterial infection is therefore not a lot of
bacteria, but ever growing amounts of amyloid beta plaques. Which are easy to
spot. After that, it is a question of what kinds of bacteria attack brains.

Until recently, the prevailing theory was that the amyloid beta plaques were
themselves the cause of Alzheimers. As a result we spent an insane amount of
money developing a variety of drugs that would clear/prevent those plaques.
They did reduce the plaques, but did absolutely nothing for the disease.
However with virtually all research money devoted to this theory, and all top
researchers on record as believing it, alternative theories fought an uphill
battle for acceptance.

The old theory is still conventional wisdom and a lot of research efforts are
focused on it. But there is mounting evidence for the infectious model. The
result is a classic paradigm shift in Kuhn's sense of the word where
researchers in each paradigm literally speak past the other. Each regarding
their theory as proven. To someone who thinks that infectious disease is the
problem, the fact that mouth bacteria have been found in the brain, plus a
correlation between gum disease and Alzheimer's, is a smoking gun for
causation. To someone who thinks that amyloid beta is the problem, it is an
interesting correlation but not compelling enough to overturn the prevailing
theory.

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tabtab
So you are saying that the actual bacteria found in the brain is relatively
small such that it's been hard to tell if and how amyloid beta relates to it.

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btilly
That, and hard to prove what is causing the brain damage. The amyloid beta
deposits are easy to see and therefore to blame. But over time, bacteria can
cause a lot of damage even if there aren't many at any given point.

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tmp12938
As if you didn't need another reason to floss! Always.

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Lio
Personally I'm not a fan of flossing. Always seems to make my gums bleed. I
much prefer using a waterpick it's gentler and seems more effective too.

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jerf
If flossing makes your gums bleed, you're not flossing enough.

No, this is not a "No True Scotsman" sort of argument or some sort of
sarcastic joke; that's really what it means. It should stop bleeding in just a
couple of days of regular flossing. If it doesn't, your mouth may be
indicating another problem.

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Someone1234
That was my experience too.

When I first started flossing I'd get some bleeding (in no small part because
my lack of flossing before caused the gum at the bottom of the tooth to be
inflamed). Bleeding is very infrequent now.

I personally use those plastic flosser sticks. I cannot figure out just the
string. But I floss once a day every day and have for years.

Just remember to floss each tooth twice in a V shape. You need to do both
sides of the tooth and the bottom.

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gnoppa
Correlation =/= causation. I would argue that the bacteria shows up AFTER the
body has been damaged through a lack of
nutrition/minerals/vitamins/probiotics/etc. and an overload of toxins.

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tuxracer
"No, correlation does not imply causation, but it sure as hell provides a
hint." [https://slate.com/technology/2012/10/correlation-does-not-
im...](https://slate.com/technology/2012/10/correlation-does-not-imply-
causation-how-the-internet-fell-in-love-with-a-stats-class-cliche.html)

> I would argue that the bacteria shows up AFTER the body has been damaged
> through...an overload of toxins

Not sure what this is based on. What does "toxins" even mean in this context?

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tasty_freeze
When this comes up, my stock answer is: No, correlation is not causation, but
it is correlated with causation.

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rikelmens
Use chamomile + sage tea (or oil) as mouth wash.

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GordonS
No sources, or at least an explanation of the reasoning for this suggestion?

