
A drug that can repair cavities and regrow teeth (2017) - doener
http://www.loopinsight.com/2018/02/21/scientists-have-found-a-drug-that-can-repair-cavities-and-regrow-teeth/?utm_source=loopinsight.com/twitter&utm_campaign=twitter&utm_medium=referral
======
RobertRoberts
If you have a cavity, try repairing it yourself. (I did as a poor college
student) If the cavity is visible and you can work with it, you may want to
try and see if your body can do it on it's own.

At the very least, you can have a fun biology experiment.

First, stop eating anything that eats away your tooth. (coke, I am looking at
you..., coffee, sugary and acidic stuff, etc...) Clean out the cavity, I used
a toothpick and some hydrogen peroxide. Every day clean it out and keep it
clean. Swish copious amounts of spit around in your mouth regularly, all day.
That's it.

I fixed a large hole in the side of my molar doing this. (dentist didn't
believe me years later, but I have a witness, lol)

~~~
LinuxBender
I do something similar. I wash my mouth twice a day with listerine ultra-
clean, which contains 20% alcohol. I leave it in my mouth for about 2 minutes
and push my teeth together to get the mouthwash into the gums. This has a
funny side effect of killing bacteria that is in the plaque on the teeth.
Their remains stain the outer layer, but it comes off easily and makes
removing the plaque really easy.

I also don't eat anything with added sugar and I take supplements, amino
acids, enzymes, extra vitamin d, calcium, chelated magnesium to keep calcium
from building up in arteries.

A filling became brittle and fell out about 18 years ago. I completely ignored
it. I've had zero problems with my teeth since and have not returned to a
dentist since then.

~~~
RobertRoberts
I applaud your focus on health. It's not an easy thing to change in life.

What happened to your tooth where the filling fell out? Did it fill in at all
naturally? (ie, fully or partially in any way?)

Not sure about the listerine, as I think some (or most?) bacteria in our mouth
is supposed to be there. There may be some long term issues to consider. But
who knows, everyone is affected so differently, I no longer am dogmatic about
what will help or not these days.

Last note on the calcium build up in arteries (off topic a bit), but any build
up in the arteries is now known to be a good thing, as it's keeping you alive
by repairing a rip/tear in the artery. Even doctors are starting to admit
this. It's a bandage, not a blockage.

~~~
LinuxBender
The tooth somewhat repaired, minus the enamel. There is still a divot that I
must keep clean, but it is easy to clean.

Bacteria is required in the gut, but AFAIK, it is not required in the mouth. I
certainly replenish bacteria in my gut with 20 different cultures.

Excess calcium in the arteries will build up and become blockage. In my
younger years I ate many bad things and now I have to be careful not to add to
the existing layers.

~~~
RobertRoberts
I suspect that some bacteria from the mouth ends up in the gut? I have not
researched this topic at all, so I am just surmising.

> _Excess calcium in the arteries will build up and become blockage._

You may want to look into recent studies, they are finding that when an artery
is "scratched" (white sugar can scratch arteries) deposits (plaque) are
designed to cling to this damage and are a repair tool. If your diet is poor,
it can cause damage (as it seems you already know) but also being overweight,
lack of exercise, and other things can contribute to weak cellular structure
so arteries are more easily damaged.

(note, I got this info from friend who recently had a heart attack and went to
the Mayo Clinic, and this is the info they passed on, and is confirmed
elsewhere online)

~~~
KMag
> (white sugar can scratch arteries)

I don't doubt that white sugar is damaging to arteries and effects the
microstructure of arterial walls, but I'm skeptical that there's a
statistically significant difference between white and brown sugar for
cardiovascular health. Can you cite any studies that break out white vs. brown
sugar?

White table sugar is nearly 100% sucrose and water, while brown sugar has a
tiny percentage of molasses and iron, and perhaps traces of other minerals.

I'm skeptical that the tiny percentage of iron and molasses present in brown
sugar is protective of arteries. Also, any sucrose in your blood is in
solution, not crystaline. What's the mechanism for this "scratching", and why
isn't it (as you imply) also present with brown sugar?

I'm not saying you're wrong, but the most plain reading of your post suggests
a mechanism (physical scratching, presumably from microcrystaline sucrose)
that doesn't make sense to me. Does the sucrose form some large complex with
some serum protien, where it's formation is inhibited by something in the
molasses present in brown sugar? (Unless someone is massively iron deficient
and consuming massive amounts of brown sugar, white vs. brown sugar should
have no measurable effect on iron levels in the body.) Or, did you not mean to
imply that brown sugar is any better for your arteries than brown sugar?

At work, those times I put sugar in my coffee, I do use brown sugar, but I do
it for the difference in flavor and recognize that when mixed into coffee, I'd
likely fail a blind taste test. At home, I don't pay the extra cost of brown
sugar.

~~~
RobertRoberts
> _I don 't doubt that white sugar is damaging to arteries and effects the
> microstructure of arterial walls, but I'm skeptical that there's a
> statistically significant difference between white and brown sugar for
> cardiovascular health. Can you cite any studies that break out white vs.
> brown sugar?_

I have no studies to cite right now, my son just did a research paper for
school on the effects of white processed sugar though. He may have something,
but I feel this would require more effort than just googling this.

The source I got from this was a doctor at the Mayo Clinic, who treated my
friend. I would consider this a reputable source. (but hard to properly
reference)

Modern brown sugar is just white sugar with molasses added back to it. I have
no sources for this though, just info I've run into, and my experiences with
real brown sugar (looks nothing like the stuff in the store). Look up Sucanat,
a brand of unprocessed sugar, it still has the molasses in it, but it's dry.
:P

Edit: This article from Mayo Clinic seems to saying the connection between
refined sugar and heart disease is unclear, the message I got from my friend
(through doctor at Mayo) was that it was not unclear.

[https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-
and-h...](https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-
eating/in-depth/added-sugar/art-20045328)

Also, another friend (don't talk to her as much so I forgot this one) is that
refined sugars cause inflammation in arteries. I can't recall if she had gone
to Mayo as well, but that was from her doctor as well.

~~~
KMag
Ahh, you sound confused by the sugar industry marketing.

Brown and "raw" sugar are still processed sugars by many definitions. For
instance, see [[https://www.cancercenter.com/discussions/blog/natural-vs-
ref...](https://www.cancercenter.com/discussions/blog/natural-vs-refined-
sugars-whats-the-difference/)] Brown, raw, and white sugar are all extracted
and highly concentrated from the harvested plant products. When you read about
processed suger in medical research, they're almost certainly making a
distinction between extracted and concentrated sugars vs sugars that are still
bound in plant products such as fruits.

I don't doubt that these studies and the Mayo Clinic doctor warned your friend
about processed sugars. However, they were almost certainly directing towards
fruits and vegetables and away from white sugar, brown sugar, and "raw" sugar
(which is a marketing term for a still highly processed sucrose extract from
plants).

And while we're throwing around Mayo Clinic doctors, my dad recently retired,
but he was a practicing physician who did his residency at the Mayo clinic,
and he certainly considers brown and "raw" sugar to be processed sugar.

~~~
RobertRoberts
> _Ahh, you sound confused by the sugar industry marketing._

I don't think so, I agree with you. All of those sugars are processed. What
did I write that made you think otherwise?

I don't need a doctor to tell me if something is bad for me or not, but it
seems to be very useful for many people, hence the Mayo sources. But my point
in referencing Mayo was also to demonstrate that this is becoming common
knowledge.

Sucanat is simply juice from a cane plant with the water removed. This is not
a "processed sugar". My personal opinion is this is a plant extract.

------
ameister14
I had to dig through a few pages that summarized eachother like Russian
nesting dolls before finding this:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39654](https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39654)

This is kinda fascinating.

The original article was published in Nature over a year ago. The
summary/futurist speculative news article was published in October, that was
included in a '10 daily links' post today and then from there it was
summarized on loopinsight.com.

------
hprotagonist
more accurately, "we did some mouse trials last year that looked promising,
so, maybe!"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tideglusib](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tideglusib)

~~~
pawelk
[https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39654/figures/2](https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39654/figures/2)
doesn't look like mice teeth at all.

~~~
hprotagonist
And yet, they are.

From the methods section,

 _" The purpose of this study was to investigate whether natural dentine
repair could be enhanced by stimulating the formation of reparative dentine.
Adult CD1 wild-type mouse first molars were used and damage stimulated by
controlling drilling (see below). The drugs of choice and vehicle were based
on previous reports in the literature and also translational potential into a
simple, cost effective dental therapy."_

------
kej
I feel like I've read a variation of this headline every six months or so for
the last decade, and nothing ever seems to come of it.

~~~
drhousejr
Same here! Seems to pop up every 6mo to a year, but yet nothing ever changes
in the industry. I just found out I have a cavity and the dentist wants to
fill it. I am trying to avoid it at all costs though, so this is pretty timely
for me. The problem is that its in between my teeth, and even when I try
really hard with brushing and flossing in the area, there still seems to be
food particles that get in.

~~~
Aleroniponi
Get that taken care of bruh.

------
jaclaz
The actual scientific article is January 2017:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39654](https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39654)

------
johnchristopher
Not so long ago on HN: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/instead-of-
fillin...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/instead-of-filling-
cavities-dentists-may-soon-regenerate-teeth1/)

~~~
sebazzz
And here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16013803](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16013803)

------
kstenerud
An anecdote fwiw:

I rarely brushed my teeth as a child, and had numerous cavities. But for some
reason, they only occurred on my baby teeth, not my adult teeth.

My brushing habits atrophied further and by the time I was 18, not only was I
not brushing at all, but I never went to the dentist again, except for once in
my mid-30s. The dentist admonished me over lack of brushing and the plaque
buildup on my teeth, but there were still no cavities or irregularities. I've
not been to a dentist in the 10 years since then, and on the very rare
occasions (once a week or two weeks) where I do brush, I don't use tooth paste
(kept forgetting to buy some).

I keep waiting for the hammer to drop, but so far lucky.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
How do you handle the aesthetics part: residues, breath,..?

------
nate_meurer
Remember, brushing does the most good when you do it _before_ you eat. The
bacteria in your mouth take mere seconds to start acidifying the surfaces of
your teeth, and research has shown that most of the damage to enamel is done
within about half an hour after eating.

Brushing soon after you eat, while the surface pH is still low, can actually
damage your teeth beyond the damage done by the acid alone.

[http://www.rdhmag.com/articles/print/volume-24/issue-2/colum...](http://www.rdhmag.com/articles/print/volume-24/issue-2/columns/periodontics/brush-
before-eating.html)

~~~
Doxin
So can someone please invent a toothpaste that's not heavily mint flavored?
I'd rather have my food taste like food.

~~~
grzm
There are plenty available. Of the top of my head I’m aware of are fennel and
strawberry from Tom’s of Maine, which are pretty widely available. A quick
search shows lemon, mango, cinnamon, and pomegranate are also available from
others. Might take some trial and error, but hopefully you can find one you
like.

------
sli
Another dentistry advancement that won't leave the lab.

------
purplezooey
We've had this before. It never seems to make it into the mainstream.

------
Pica_soO
Now, lets assume i grow some elephant stem cells into molar-cells- and apply
this strategy to 3d print fake ivory and rhino - maybe the slaughter can still
be stopped.

