Immune Cells May Play a Role In Causing Cavities (newatlas.com) 77
Researchers at the University of Toronto have found that cavities may be collateral damage from an overzealous immune system. New Atlas reports: Traditionally, bacteria have taken most of the blame for cavities and tooth decay. The bugs cling to your teeth as plaque and produce acid as waste, which dissolves tooth enamel, dentin and even filling material. But the new study suggests the story is more complicated than that. Oral immune cells called neutrophils are dispatched by the body in response to invading bacteria -- but the researchers found that they might be a little careless in the battle.
On their own, neutrophils can't damage teeth but the problems arise after acids from bacteria demineralize them. Once weakened, enzymes released by the neutrophils could wreak havoc on other tooth substances. Damage was found to appear in a matter of hours, and worse still, it also seems to apply to tooth-colored fillings, which may explain why they tend to fail within five to seven years. The silver lining of the discovery is that it could lead to new types of treatment, or new standards for testing materials that are to be used in fillings. The research was published in the journal Acta Biomateralia.
On their own, neutrophils can't damage teeth but the problems arise after acids from bacteria demineralize them. Once weakened, enzymes released by the neutrophils could wreak havoc on other tooth substances. Damage was found to appear in a matter of hours, and worse still, it also seems to apply to tooth-colored fillings, which may explain why they tend to fail within five to seven years. The silver lining of the discovery is that it could lead to new types of treatment, or new standards for testing materials that are to be used in fillings. The research was published in the journal Acta Biomateralia.
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I mean, you're not wrong, but you do sound like you're on drugs talking about it like that...
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Up your fibre intake. It will help your body produce more treg cells which will keep your other immune system cells in line. You can solve an entire host of problems just by changing your diet.
Reading and comprehension please... What you said has nothing to do with what happening here.
On their own, neutrophils can't damage teeth but the problems arise after acids from bacteria demineralize them. Once weakened, enzymes released by the neutrophils could wreak havoc on other tooth substances.
In other words, it will be happening regardless your diets. It is not that your immune cells go off by themselves. It involves bacteria acids causing your own immune cells to damage your teeth.
There is a lot of MAY science. (Score:5, Informative)
The key word is "may".
The issues are not being fully explored.
Articles are not making the uncertainties clear. (Score:2)
Even worse: Sticky bread. (Score:1)
The bits that stick to your teeth are like cavity glue.
And: The acid in those drinks will melt away your enamel anyway.
Trust me, you WILL get cavities. All over. And your gums will loosen until your teeth become loose and rot from below.
Give it some 10 years.
Our body is extremely good at keeping up the balances in the face of what should be deadly. But not forever. Most age-related diseases are not from old age, but from decades of bad nutrition and bad behavior.
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Surface area and contact time.
If you literally gulp down Coke, it barely touches your teeth.
If you swill it around your mouth, you've increased the surface area and contact time by orders of magnitude.
If you chew a sweet for five minutes, holy hell, that's a lot of contact. If that sweet is sticky and can adhere to your teeth, even worse... it's literally inserting sugar into every tiny microscopic gap with the force of your tongue and can be in there for minutes and minutes and minutes. And that's *ONE*
A Related Story (Score:5, Interesting)
I follow a carnivore diet, on which I dropped 70 pounds and halted my internal inflammation. So no sugar or plants.
6 months in, I went to the dentist.
The hygenist was doing her thing. The dentist walked in and asked "So how is he doing with his flossing?"
The hygenist said "Perfectly - he'd been keep it clean between his teeth, there is zero build up and his gums aren't inflamed any more".
But I had not brushed or flossed once.
So plants and sugar that promote inflammation also contributes to the tooth decay. This is n=1 supportive evidence of that finding.
Re:A Related Story (Score:5, Insightful)
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A datum is the singular of data. This is one datum. The experience of many other people on a carnivore or no-sugar keto diet is an improvement in dental heath.
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It's not just an anecdote, there's also a very simple mechanism that explains the effects.
Bacteria love sugars more than anything else.
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The thing is, my brain also loves sugar. My whole body needs some sugar during a long run.
Not quite true. The brain will happily run on mostly ketone bodies, and your skeletal muscles can run fine on fat, especially on long runs. For explosive performance, glucose is still better, because it requires a little less oxygen per unit of energy, and it can be used anaerobically. However, your body can make its own glucose and will even build up glycogen reserves despite not consuming any sugars.
If you exercise for health reasons, you don't need any sugars at all. If you exercise competitively, you c
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The thing is, my brain also loves sugar. My whole body needs some sugar during a long run. Et cetera. "Slow carbs" (starch) are not a complete replacement (and even those are partially broken down to sugars in the mouth). I try not to overdo it and not to use sugar to compensate for boredom/fatigue/sadness like most people, but totally cutting out sugar just doesn't work.
A carb-intensive activity like running changes the equation, but for most sedentary people or people who works out less than moderate daily, "refined" carbs are addictive (and most people are on a carbs surplus.)
I went through the same cravings when I started cutting refined carbs and sugars. The body is used to go for them carbs right out of the bat, and that's your mind telling you "shit, something changed, bring it all back to whatever normal state I'm used to."
Refined carbs are effing addictive. Onc
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The storage form of lipids in the body is the triglyceride. That's 3 lipid chains bound together with a sugar molecule on top.
When the molecule is broken down to be used, the top is popped off and you get three fat molecules and one sugar molecule to burn.
The brain need a certain amount of glucose - there isn't space in the skinny brain cell endings for mitochondria to process lipids. So they use only glucose. Similarly, red blood cells need glucose. Everything else can use ketones.
It is no coincidence that
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The need for fiber has been thoroughly debunked by scientific research and the experience of many.
Try it and you will see for yourself that in a week or two you will be enjoying properly formed poops.
As for staying off the sugar - I haven't touched sugar in 15 months.
As for brushing teeth - I do it occasionally for the fun, but it makes no difference when you are avoiding plants and sugars that feed mouth bacteria and lead to internal inflammation that inflames the gums and inhibits their ability to fight h
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I can affirm that. I'm on a keto diet- ~18 carbohydrates total daily. That means no excess protein (which can be converted to carbs) and lots of fat. EVERY vital sign is optimized and my teeth are excellent. The dental industry push to brush & floss daily is superstition at best, subterfuge at worst. God did not give us defective teeth that need such treatment. We made them defective with our massive intake of carbohydrates.
And yes, those carbs contribute to inflammation, obesity and brain damage among
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Thus speaketh an anonymous coward who has ignored the huge mass of scientific evidence to appear in recent years.
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Go find it, you lazy coward. Google works. Weston A. Price published his findings 80 years ago and the data hasn't magically changed since. We didn't evolve with toothbrushes or sugar.
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Crohn's here with pouchitis. 2 month keto diet 85% fixed my symptoms. I'm underestimating if any.
Maybe the bacterial makeup changed. Which changed the immune response. Certainly worthy of more research, not dismissal.
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See this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It shows an interventional research study where removing plants has been shown to heal a permeable, inflamed gut.
I know a few people with Chron's who improved or fixed their symptoms on a keto and then a carnivore diet. There are also a lot of people who were suffering psychological disorders, who improved or eliminated them on a carnivore diet.
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I wonder how much plant-based inflammation is due to pesticides.
A lot. The vast majority of the insecticides in plants that we consume are naturally evolved chemicals called lectins and they do all sorts of harm.
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You had not brushed or flossed your teeth, but there was no plaque build up? Perhaps you meant something else.
When you say you avoided all sugar and plants, does that include in beverages? Because aside from water there isn't much you can drink that doesn't contain some plant derivative in it.
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>You had not brushed or flossed your teeth, but there was no plaque build up?
Correct.
>Perhaps you meant something else.
No plaque, bad breath, cavity formation or gum disease (I had a history of all four beforehand).
>When you say you avoided all sugar and plants, does that include in beverages?
I drink coffee and water. Coffee is hardly carnivore, but I'm not following anyone's rule book.
>Because aside from water there isn't much you can drink that doesn't contain some plant derivative in it.
Dairy
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Interesting. I'm surprised your teeth didn't stain very quickly though.
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They didn't. I kept an eye on it.I always had the option to go back to brushing and dental hygenists.
I do brush occasionally - usually down to when I have a crappy taste in my mouth, from an illness or jetlag or the occasional accidental sugar intake (it's hidden in many things - jerky is a minefield). I maintain a Michelin exception - If the restaurant has a one or more Michelin star, eat the food. I need to brush after that. That's once or twice a year.
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My brother-in-law went on a high protein no carb diet when he was in the military. It couldn't have been healthy he was eating a plate full of bacon and sausage links for breakfast, but he did drop a lot of weight fast. I have no idea if did anything for his teeth but I imagine his cholesterol was through the roof.
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> It couldn't have been healthy ...
> but he did drop a lot of weight
This is the cognitive dissonance of people who think fat is bad and carbs or plants are necessary. It isn't, they aren't.
The world is full of doctors who say "Wow your health has improved on your wacky diet - but I'm concerned the diet is unhealthy". A lack of mental clarity if ever there was one.
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Humans are omnivores as far back as anyone can detect, and not brushing or flossing at all is not a strategy for dental health.
An anecdote in a blog comment notwithstanding.
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>Humans are omnivores as far back as anyone can detect,
Untrue - it's been debated a lot, but the recent nitrogen isotope research shows forebears were strictly carnivore.
Adapting to tolerate plants certainly happened and was a good survival trait when you run out of big animals to eat.
Check out the research of Miki Ben Dor. He pulled together a lot of the data.
Paper here: https://www.pnas.org/content/1... [pnas.org]
Discussion here: https://twitter.com/KetoCarniv... [twitter.com]
Interesting stuff.
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>You're concerned about your health,
With good reason. 50, pre-diabetic, sedentary job.
>so you make a radical change to your diet,
Well gradual. Low carb -> keto -> keto+I.F. -> carnivore. Along with reading a crapton of research papers. The carnivore diet made the most difference.
>and you stop brushing and flossing your teeth?
It stopped being necessary.
>How do you know you had "internal inflammation"?
hsCRP > 4
>How do you know you "halted your internal inflammation"
hsCRP went from 4
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne... [telegraph.co.uk]
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne... [telegraph.co.uk]
"Americans" includes inner city denizens giving their babies Pepsi in their bottles. And hordes of recent immigrants. (Oh dear, he said something true, smelling salts please!)
Comparing the dental condition of both lands within reasonably educated polite society ... well, I'll go with what my eyes have seen.
(BTW, that's hilarious illustrating the article with royalty)
Carelessness neutrophils (Score:4, Insightful)
I know we've seen worse in science reporting, but 'overzealous' is not a helpful term to use in describing the immune system.
They still saying acid produced by bacteria is the underlying cause, so nothing new there, *but* they've identified a mismatch between the immune system's strategy for responding to the bacteria and the altered chemical environment created by said bacteria, and that insight potentially could prove very valuable in determining improved treatments.
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This shoulda been FP. Stop slacking, slashdotters.
No cavities (Score:2)
Well, I'm 31 and have yet to get a cavity.
I don't know how common or not that is. or what to make of that.
I guess I just take care of brushing and flossing regularly, no secret.
Is it still a cavity? (Score:2)