I don't have the time to do all of this, but it does make one wonder
How To Clean Your Teeth w Dr. Robert Cassar
I just tried it. I don't have half the solutions he requires but I used baking soda, alcohol, coconut oil, toothpaste and a pairing knife for my tounge scraper. Mouth feels good. And I can actually taste the flavor of a cigarette now. I'll have to buy a real tounge scraper.
Quote: (04-08-2013 05:18 PM)kickboxer Wrote:
I just tried it. I don't have half the solutions he requires but I used baking soda, alcohol, coconut oil, toothpaste and a pairing knife for my tounge scraper. Mouth feels good. And I can actually taste the flavor of a cigarette now. I'll have to buy a real tounge scraper.
lol that's funny. clean your mouth to taste the flavor of a cig!
Try dipping your toothbrush in lemon juice and sprinkling some baking soda on it for teeth whitening. Amazing combination.
Didn't watch the video, but the cheapest tongue-scraper (and likely best) is a flat medium sized spoon. If its too rounded, it can't reach as far back into your mouth. Too small, it takes too long. Too large, well thats obvious
WIA- For most of men, our time being masters of our own fate, kings in our own castles is short. Even those of us in the game will eventually succumb to ease of servitude rather than deal with the malaise of solitude
I always brush my tongue along with my teeth. I am guessing everyone does that these days.
Anyway - what advantages would a tongue scraper have over brushing your tongue with a toothbrush?
Just curious.
Anyway - what advantages would a tongue scraper have over brushing your tongue with a toothbrush?
Just curious.
I'll vouch for rinsing the mouth with salt water. I have sensitive teeth (even drinking a sip of pepsi will screw up my dentyne and give me tooth pain for a few months after) and the best thing to protect and treat dentyne erosion is salt water rinses after brushing. No other products work, and I tried a whole lot of them. I also benefit from going to a regular toothcleaning from an oral hygienist (dentists don't know what they're doing when it comes to cleaning my teeth, whereas oral hygienists always clean my teeth extremely well).
As for hydrogen peroxide, it messed my teeth up and gave me horrible tooth pain. Alcohol rinsing always eventually starts giving me bad breath (probably some weird bacterial overgrowth syndrome that develops when I kill off enough of the good bugs through alcohol rinsing, and then the bad bugs start to take over). Tried applying baking soda to my teeth but the scraping seems to make my teeth more sensitive.
I don't get the deal against fluoride toothpaste. The stuff is proven to reduce cavities. It works by disrupting bacterial scaffolding in the mouth - it makes the buggers homeless, letting your immune system come in and clean them out. Sure, if you swallow a couple of tubes of the stuff it will probably make you sick like crazy, but no one's asking you to actually eat the stuff.
I do floss, but I'm still not sure if it really benefits. There's no scientific evidence (that I was able to find) that flossing does anything.
And in this modern age, probably the best advice to take care of teeth is this:
Don't eat or drink anything with refined sugar in it.
Tooth cavities only became a large scale problem in the west once sugar became available.
As for hydrogen peroxide, it messed my teeth up and gave me horrible tooth pain. Alcohol rinsing always eventually starts giving me bad breath (probably some weird bacterial overgrowth syndrome that develops when I kill off enough of the good bugs through alcohol rinsing, and then the bad bugs start to take over). Tried applying baking soda to my teeth but the scraping seems to make my teeth more sensitive.
I don't get the deal against fluoride toothpaste. The stuff is proven to reduce cavities. It works by disrupting bacterial scaffolding in the mouth - it makes the buggers homeless, letting your immune system come in and clean them out. Sure, if you swallow a couple of tubes of the stuff it will probably make you sick like crazy, but no one's asking you to actually eat the stuff.
I do floss, but I'm still not sure if it really benefits. There's no scientific evidence (that I was able to find) that flossing does anything.
And in this modern age, probably the best advice to take care of teeth is this:
Don't eat or drink anything with refined sugar in it.
Tooth cavities only became a large scale problem in the west once sugar became available.
@thomastherhymer thanks for the tip re salt water, i'll give that a go
re flouride toothpaste, i guess it's the same argument as for flouridated water
yes it has brought down the level of dental caries, but over the long haul, there are questions about how safe it is to be ingesting that amount of flouride
i've tried non or low flouride toothpastes and the cleansing effect wears off after a few hours, and your breath will stink again
not only that, they simply don't do anywhere near as good a job at protecting your teeth as flouride toothpaste (and i've tried a few of them, none of them work)
so i guess it's a case of bite the bullet when it comes to flouride toothpaste, one sensible thing to do though is just keep the amount of toothpaste small each time you brush, that way you're taking less flouride into your system
re flouride toothpaste, i guess it's the same argument as for flouridated water
yes it has brought down the level of dental caries, but over the long haul, there are questions about how safe it is to be ingesting that amount of flouride
i've tried non or low flouride toothpastes and the cleansing effect wears off after a few hours, and your breath will stink again
not only that, they simply don't do anywhere near as good a job at protecting your teeth as flouride toothpaste (and i've tried a few of them, none of them work)
so i guess it's a case of bite the bullet when it comes to flouride toothpaste, one sensible thing to do though is just keep the amount of toothpaste small each time you brush, that way you're taking less flouride into your system
Quote: (04-08-2013 05:18 PM)kickboxer Wrote:
I just tried it. I don't have half the solutions he requires but I used baking soda, alcohol, coconut oil, toothpaste and a pairing knife for my tounge scraper. Mouth feels good. And I can actually taste the flavor of a cigarette now. I'll have to buy a real tounge scraper.
I just picked up the one he had in the video.
They sell them at Whole Foods.
Or you could probably get one on Amazon too.
Quote: (04-09-2013 12:15 AM)cardguy Wrote:
I always brush my tongue along with my teeth. I am guessing everyone does that these days.
Anyway - what advantages would a tongue scraper have over brushing your tongue with a toothbrush?
Just curious.
4 out of 5 Dentists recommend a tongue scraper over brushing your tongue with a toothbrush.
Quote: (04-09-2013 12:15 AM)cardguy Wrote:
I always brush my tongue along with my teeth. I am guessing everyone does that these days.
Anyway - what advantages would a tongue scraper have over brushing your tongue with a toothbrush?
Just curious.
It just cleans your tongue far better. I started using one after I dated a girl who used one and she had no morning breath-maybe a slight tartness, that was all. Make sure you hit the back of your tongue well- a lot of the bacteria live there
"If anything's gonna happen, it's gonna happen out there!- Captain Ron
Quote: (04-09-2013 02:20 AM)Thomas the Rhymer Wrote:
I'll vouch for rinsing the mouth with salt water. I have sensitive teeth (even drinking a sip of pepsi will screw up my dentyne and give me tooth pain for a few months after) and the best thing to protect and treat dentyne erosion is salt water rinses after brushing. No other products work, and I tried a whole lot of them. I also benefit from going to a regular toothcleaning from an oral hygienist (dentists don't know what they're doing when it comes to cleaning my teeth, whereas oral hygienists always clean my teeth extremely well).
As for hydrogen peroxide, it messed my teeth up and gave me horrible tooth pain. Alcohol rinsing always eventually starts giving me bad breath (probably some weird bacterial overgrowth syndrome that develops when I kill off enough of the good bugs through alcohol rinsing, and then the bad bugs start to take over). Tried applying baking soda to my teeth but the scraping seems to make my teeth more sensitive.
I don't get the deal against fluoride toothpaste. The stuff is proven to reduce cavities. It works by disrupting bacterial scaffolding in the mouth - it makes the buggers homeless, letting your immune system come in and clean them out. Sure, if you swallow a couple of tubes of the stuff it will probably make you sick like crazy, but no one's asking you to actually eat the stuff.
I do floss, but I'm still not sure if it really benefits. There's no scientific evidence (that I was able to find) that flossing does anything.
And in this modern age, probably the best advice to take care of teeth is this:
Don't eat or drink anything with refined sugar in it.
Tooth cavities only became a large scale problem in the west once sugar became available.
Man, I have been repeating this verbatim and ad nauseam for the last 6 months. +1 to the fluoride thoughts, baking soda concerns and sugar advice
Furthermore, check out two products.
1) Sensodyne for the tooth sensitivity. Use it for 3 months, then switch to a regular toothpaste (no Crest or Colgate) with no tartar control or whitening. This should help w/the sensitivity.
2) MI-paste+ - Cool science behind it. It helps remineralize teeth and actually permanently reduce dentinal sensitivity. It works better in trays.
Edit- Flossing is very effective. Mechanical removal of plaque/debris is #1. Chemicals dont even come close. The issue w/not seeing any physical benefits is that gum disease (periodontal disease) is a silent disease. You only notice it when its too late and your teeth are loose, at which point it difficult to reverse the damage. Kind of like heart disease.
An analogy for lay-folk is that doing dishes you need to scrub the pans first to remove food debris, then stick it in the dishwasher. Just sticking it in the dish-washer or running it under hot-water will not remove all the debris.
WIA- For most of men, our time being masters of our own fate, kings in our own castles is short. Even those of us in the game will eventually succumb to ease of servitude rather than deal with the malaise of solitude
Thats me in 30 years!
I hope!
I hope!
Quote: (04-09-2013 12:31 PM)DVY Wrote:
1) Sensodyne for the tooth sensitivity. Use it for 3 months, then switch to a regular toothpaste (no Crest or Colgate) with no tartar control or whitening. This should help w/the sensitivity.
That stuff doesn't work.
Quote: (04-09-2013 12:31 PM)DVY Wrote:
2) MI-paste+ - Cool science behind it. It helps remineralize teeth and actually permanently reduce dentinal sensitivity. It works better in trays.
Not available in South Africa, but I'll ask around.
Quote: (04-09-2013 12:31 PM)DVY Wrote:
Edit- Flossing is very effective. Mechanical removal of plaque/debris is #1.
There is no scientific evidence to support that assumption. I couldn't even find an observational study that compares flossers to non-flossers. For all we know, flossing does jack for the average person. You're welcome to link to some literature, since you're in the field maybe you have access to evidence that slipped through my literature search.
It's like with the removal of wisdom teeth. There's no scientific evidence of benefit for removal of asymptomatic wisdom teeth, but every dentist I go to starts yelling at me that I need my wisdom teeth removed or I'll get bone cysts, fractured jaws or worse. Yet in Somalia and other places where there are near-zero dental services, I don't hear of epidemics of jaw fractures due to bone cysts.
Dentistry has a long way to go before I'll respect it as a science. I'm keeping my wisdom teeth, the same way my father kept his and his father kept his.
@Thomas Rhymer-
Sensodyne works. It has a desensitizing agent in it. Weak, but works a good % of people.
MI-paste is sold online. Maybe check that?
As for wisdom teeth, the main reason to remove it is for aesthetics. Impacted wisdom teeth cause the teeth to shift/crowd. I think the statistic is that 30-50% of wisdom teeth end up causing some sort of problems (pericoronitis, cavities, crowding, etc etc). Bone cysts and fractured jaws is bs. Trust me, I see problems pop up w/wisdom teeth almost every other day.
Assuming you are over the age of 26 and asymptomatic, the damage/risk of removing them is greater than the positive benefits especially if asymptomatic.
The reason why it is pushed so heavily is that the roots aren't fully formed in your late teens (18-20), and that the bone becomes harder w/age. Thus wisdom teeth are more difficult to extract later in life than earlier. This is the same reason why braces work better in kids than adults.
Cochrane comes to the rescue....http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD008829/flossing-to-reduce-gum-disease-and-tooth-decay.
On a sidenote, do you really think that leaving plaque in between your teeth is a good idea? Flossing helps clear that biofilm out. W/the advent of fluoride, people in the west have must less propensity for cavities. This likely negates the positive effects of flossing, but our gums are hypersensitive to the food debris in pockets which leads to inflammation (gingivitis) and very likely periodontitis.
The link between gingivitis and periodontis is not well understood, but there is some correlation.
Dental health is more than just cavities...
Sensodyne works. It has a desensitizing agent in it. Weak, but works a good % of people.
MI-paste is sold online. Maybe check that?
As for wisdom teeth, the main reason to remove it is for aesthetics. Impacted wisdom teeth cause the teeth to shift/crowd. I think the statistic is that 30-50% of wisdom teeth end up causing some sort of problems (pericoronitis, cavities, crowding, etc etc). Bone cysts and fractured jaws is bs. Trust me, I see problems pop up w/wisdom teeth almost every other day.
Assuming you are over the age of 26 and asymptomatic, the damage/risk of removing them is greater than the positive benefits especially if asymptomatic.
The reason why it is pushed so heavily is that the roots aren't fully formed in your late teens (18-20), and that the bone becomes harder w/age. Thus wisdom teeth are more difficult to extract later in life than earlier. This is the same reason why braces work better in kids than adults.
Cochrane comes to the rescue....http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD008829/flossing-to-reduce-gum-disease-and-tooth-decay.
On a sidenote, do you really think that leaving plaque in between your teeth is a good idea? Flossing helps clear that biofilm out. W/the advent of fluoride, people in the west have must less propensity for cavities. This likely negates the positive effects of flossing, but our gums are hypersensitive to the food debris in pockets which leads to inflammation (gingivitis) and very likely periodontitis.
The link between gingivitis and periodontis is not well understood, but there is some correlation.
Dental health is more than just cavities...
WIA- For most of men, our time being masters of our own fate, kings in our own castles is short. Even those of us in the game will eventually succumb to ease of servitude rather than deal with the malaise of solitude
Failing to floss is a huge mistake
"If anything's gonna happen, it's gonna happen out there!- Captain Ron
+1 for the dental hygienist. I see one every 6 months and my teeth are so fucking clean. It costs me about £70 but my God is it worth it.
Flossing is hugely important, as is brushing your gums. Healthy gums are pink, not red. If you're flossing and you're bleeding, then you can tell the state your mouth is in and need to keep doing it regularly so they don't bleed any more.
I don't use the tongue scraper but I'm going to get one after reading this thread. I used to do warm salt water rinses but I couldn't bear the taste any more, even though it was doing good work on my gums.
Quote: (04-11-2013 11:57 AM)DVY Wrote:
Cochrane comes to the rescue....http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD008829/flossing-to-reduce-gum-disease-and-tooth-decay.
Did you even read the review?
"Twelve trials were included in this review which reported data on two outcomes (dental plaque and gum disease). Trials were of poor quality and conclusions must be viewed as unreliable. The review showed that people who brush and floss regularly have less gum bleeding compared to toothbrushing alone. There was weak, very unreliable evidence of a possible small reduction in plaque. There was no information on other measurements such as tooth decay because the trials were not long enough and detecting early stage decay between teeth is difficult."
Your link doesn't prove anything. Cochrane basically states that no one has managed to successfully prove that flossing causes statistically significant alteration in dental outcomes.
Quote: (04-11-2013 11:57 AM)DVY Wrote:
On a sidenote, do you really think that leaving plaque in between your teeth is a good idea? Flossing helps clear that biofilm out.
Not proven to be of benefit. Maybe we need the biofilm to keep the teeth healthy in the same way the intestinal biofilm keeps us healthy? Dentists love making grand statements without bothering to crunch the numbers.
I'm not against flossing personally, I do it because when I get rid of food particles between my teeth it helps with my tooth sensitivity. I can't extrapolate from my personal experience to the general population though.
@Thomas Rhymer- should have been more clear on my Cochrane review link. There are individual differences and there are constants. Dental Health is much more than just teeth.
Somebody ran a study involving dental students. One group flossed, another didnt for a period of time.
Pockets depths and bleeding were measured for 6 spots per tooth. This+color of gums implied that regular brushing and flossing reduces inflammation- aka gingivitis due to plaque reduction.
This is why I said dental health is more than just teeth.
As for cavities, most people are not susceptible to cavities past the age of 23 (bad diet/ kids love sugary foods) or before the age of 55 (saliva function in middle-age). There is a small subset of the population that is hypersensitive to cavities. A few patients of mine, if they fall short on flossing, have cavities pop up on every single tooth. When they start flossing, back to normal health.
Anecdotes are weak evidence, but excessive buildup of plaque leads to gum inflammation.
I think 10% of the general population is resistant to cavities- never had a cavity in their life. I've meet people who had perfect teeth and didn't brush or floss for weeks at a time. The constant is that they all had super-red puffy gums (inflammation from plaque).
Edit- you said yourself, biofilm is the scaffolding for the bacteria. What I am saying- Plaque is the nutrition. Acid and noxious odors (bad breath) are byproducts.
Somebody ran a study involving dental students. One group flossed, another didnt for a period of time.
Pockets depths and bleeding were measured for 6 spots per tooth. This+color of gums implied that regular brushing and flossing reduces inflammation- aka gingivitis due to plaque reduction.
This is why I said dental health is more than just teeth.
As for cavities, most people are not susceptible to cavities past the age of 23 (bad diet/ kids love sugary foods) or before the age of 55 (saliva function in middle-age). There is a small subset of the population that is hypersensitive to cavities. A few patients of mine, if they fall short on flossing, have cavities pop up on every single tooth. When they start flossing, back to normal health.
Anecdotes are weak evidence, but excessive buildup of plaque leads to gum inflammation.
I think 10% of the general population is resistant to cavities- never had a cavity in their life. I've meet people who had perfect teeth and didn't brush or floss for weeks at a time. The constant is that they all had super-red puffy gums (inflammation from plaque).
Edit- you said yourself, biofilm is the scaffolding for the bacteria. What I am saying- Plaque is the nutrition. Acid and noxious odors (bad breath) are byproducts.
WIA- For most of men, our time being masters of our own fate, kings in our own castles is short. Even those of us in the game will eventually succumb to ease of servitude rather than deal with the malaise of solitude
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