Article gets weird at the end. Says to listen to the Cochran reviews, and includes one that says "High fluoride toothpaste prevents carries" and then immediately writes there's no difference between brushing normally and using high-fluoride toothpaste.
Then wraps it up by trying to sell preorders for his own product.
Cochran is right.. high fluoride toothpaste works. Had half dozen cavities during my 20s a year apart, and finally found out about this from my dentist, and it immediately halted any progression. Not one cavity in 10 years since starting it. Ask your dentist.. its not even expensive. Just dont let your kids use it.
The only cavities I have had formed before my 25th year. 6 of them. I haven't had any other since then.
After I had them filled, I started going to an odontologist for a checkup every 4 years. The odontologists says she doesnt see cleaner teeth from patients who checkin once a year.
My personal conclussion is that adults can be more careful with their health than teenagers.
I don't eat between meals (mostly). I eat twice a day. I brush after meals. I only floss before going to sleep.
I’ve been waiting for years (more than a decade at this point) for this to be commercialized, and have had to have most of my teeth repaired due to cavities. $250 is a cheap experiment, depending on your financial situation.
Which high fluoride toothpaste do you use? My dentist recommended that I use one, but none of the options seem to give an indication of how much fluoride they actually contain.
I've used Prevident 5000 and Clinpro 5000. The first is gel, the later is paste. Both have 5000ppm fluoride, which is the same as 1.1% sodium fluoride (compared to 1100ppm or 0.243% sodium fluoride in otc).
Looking into vitamin K2 (not K1) along with vitamin D is interesting as well -- I got my bone mineral density to 99th percentile (DEXA measured) without changes in physical activity (which has just been walking) with lots of K2 and vitamin D; with the vitamin D from sunlight and a UVB phototherapy lamp when I wasn't getting lots of sunlight. My sense is that bone and teeth health are at least significantly related and I bet having excellent bone density carries over to caries, or to a lack thereof.
My guess is that typical Western diets are pretty subpar in terms of vitamin K2 intake (modern Westerners aren't usually fans of liver etc) which makes teeth pretty vulnerable to physical/chemical insult.
An Astral Codex Ten article is no substitute for clinical trials and measured experimental data. The ethanol concerns are dismissed by ACT with no real analysis, when the data presented is from an in-vitro thesis that didn't study the actual genetic modified bacterium at all, and feeding it nutrients which aren't found in the mouth of Western diets: that is, a very low sugar blood agar/DNB broth. It's quackery to make comparisons on that kind of flimsy evidence. This bacterium produces ethanol from sugar!
Further, ACT has their facts wrong, citing an average blood alcohol level of 1 mg/dl when it's actually 0.039. 1 mg/dl is the 95th percentile. So, according to the cited source, average blood alcohol levels go up 5.6x, and that is somehow not a risky chronic condition because there are people in the population with higher levels of that toxin in their bloodstream at the 95th percentile. ACT should know better, but is biased because his wife takes it. Probably knows the principals socially in Berkeley.
“Alcohol is a toxic, psychoactive, and dependence-producing substance and has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer decades ago – this is the highest risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation and tobacco. Alcohol causes at least seven types of cancer, including the most common cancer types, such as bowel cancer and female breast cancer.“
I have been watching this with considerable interest since I first learnt about it.
I personally have never had ANY cavities so things have worked out well for me but there are multiple family members with enamel hypoplasia so I would be interested in knowing if this could be a solution.
Disclaimer: I have zero financial interest but I would love to see this actually work. I do have that odd feeling of distrust as I read through the responses so definitely wary.
That said, this is what I've seen cremieux claim so far in response to some of the questions that others have in the comments.
* cremieux claims zero conflict of interest: https://twitter.com/jeremy_b12345/status/1777893469627072686?s=61
* it is being sold as a "cosmetic" (no idea what that means in this context): https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1777885660407370063?s=61
* claims to eliminate morning breath: https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1777854752635691247?s=61
* claimed to be a one time thing: https://twitter.com/loobah_l/status/1777896253499887813?s=61
* claimed not to be affected by mouthwash but I can't find the reference right now
* caries vaccine??: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caries_vaccine
Brushing, flossing, and mouthwash doesn't kill all of the bacteria in your mouth. Your entire mouth is coated with a biofilm... and after cleaning, your mouth gets recolonized by bacteria from between your teeth, beneath the gums, plaque, and other small crevices in your mouth.
Probably, but the difference I see is that single application of this product is enough (as opposed to buying mouthwash and other stuff that's often discussed here like toothpaste with Novamin for the rest of your life).
Talk about burying the lead. The whole article is interesting and worth a read, but the final section is about the first ever vaccine for dental caries which can be pre-ordered now and is scheduled to ship to the US in June: https://www.luminaprobiotic.com/
Does it really work? I guess we'll know soon enough.
Lede is an alternate spelling (dating only from the 70s) of lead-the-intro to distinguish from lead-the-metal which was also an important word in printing at the time.
Ethanol (alcohol) is toxic; do I want bacteria producing ethanol in my mouth constantly, poisoning my brain? If I swallow this bacteria, will it start producing ethanol in my gut? If it does, how do I get rid of it? I don't want to have a low level of cognitive impairment 24x7.
If I have this in my mouth and then have a baby, will the baby be contaminated with alcohol-producing bacteria during critical periods of development (up to age 18?) Will that alcohol damage their central nervous system?
So much wrong here.
EDIT: some data from their FAQ: "The endogenous alcohol concentration in the blood of sober people is 0.39 ± 0.45 μg/mL or 0.039 mg/dL (Antoschechkin, 2001)."
Further down: 5. Then you’ll end up with 11mg/5L of blood. This is, in more familiar units, 0.22 mg per dL
0.22 / 0.039 = a 5.6x increase in chronic blood alcohol concentration under pessimistic assumptions [1].
No thank you. There's no telling what that will do to a person over 50 years.
[1] I'm not sure it's so pessimistic. This number comes from culture on blood agar, which isn't exactly the sugar level of a Western diet. Blood agar contains almost no sugar.
"The average person has enough of these bacteria in their gut to have a natural blood alcohol level - even after zero drinks - of about 0.1 mg/dl. Under pessimistic assumptions, BCS3-L1 will add another 0.2 mg/dl, bringing the total to 0.3. This is still a pretty normal number that some people have naturally (it would bring the average customer from the ~50th to the ~80th percentile of natural blood alcohol). It’s also far from the usual threshold for feeling tipsy (30 mg/dl) or too drunk to drive (80 mg/dl).
Under more realistic assumptions, the amount of alcohol produced by BCS3-L1 probably isn’t significant even by the very low standards of natural blood alcohol concentrations."
From the source: "The endogenous alcohol concentration in the blood of sober people is 0.39 ± 0.45 μg/mL or 0.039 mg/dL (Antoschechkin, 2001)."
Further down:
5. Then you’ll end up with 11mg/5L of blood. This is, in more familiar units, 0.22 mg per dL
0.22 / 0.039 = a *5.6x* increase in chronic blood alcohol concentration, albeit under pessimistic assumptions [1].
No thank you. There's no telling what that will do to a person over 50 years.
[1] I'm not sure it's so pessimistic. This number comes from culture on blood agar, which isn't exactly the sugar level of a western diet. Blood agar contains almost no sugar.
You have hundreds of varieties of bacteria in your mouth, many of which already make ethanol. You have one that makes lactic acid and causes tooth decay; by making a variety of it that makes ethanol and can outcompete the tooth-decay causing variety, you improve the situation: drastically lower lactic acid and not much more ethanol.
When ethanol is added to saliva, bacteria in the mouth produce acetaldehyde, which is known to be carcinogenic. I need less ethanol in my mouth, not more!
The claim on Twitter has been the amount of ethanol produced is small on the order of eating a piece of bread a day but I have not seen any further evidence.
"The claim on Twitter" is why the FDA exists, and that's a good thing. Bread can be a bit alcoholic, yes. I try to avoid it for other reasons. I would prefer that everything I eat over 50 years not be turned into fractional bread by my saliva.
It produces a weak antibiotic, mutacin-1140, which kills competing oral bacteria.
It’s immune to mutacin-1140, so it doesn’t kill itself.
It metabolizes sugar through a different chemical pathway that ends in alcohol instead of lactic acid.
It lacks a peptide that its species usually uses to arrange gene transfers with other bacteria."
A strain with modifications 1 and 2 was found. 3 and 4 were added to it.
This means we could check for mutacin-1140 health issues by tracking those people but not the increased alcohol in blood.
Then wraps it up by trying to sell preorders for his own product.
Cochran is right.. high fluoride toothpaste works. Had half dozen cavities during my 20s a year apart, and finally found out about this from my dentist, and it immediately halted any progression. Not one cavity in 10 years since starting it. Ask your dentist.. its not even expensive. Just dont let your kids use it.