Fight Tooth Decay with Electricity

Erica Campbell writes "According to IsraCast, The Israeli Company Fluorinex Active has developed a new technology that can protect the tooth from cavities for 5 years with one simple electrical treatment. The company is currently working on a small device which, together with a gel, will impose an efficient ion exchange process through an Electro-chemical reaction in which fluor ions displace the Hydroxide ions at the outer layer of the tooth. This is intended to produce a new mineral layer with significantly improved chemical and physical resistance to the aggressive bacteria and the resulting acidic environment in the mouth."

Gums.

Your teeth can be protected largely by not eating too much sugary food - your acidic saliva is quite capable of destroying a lot of bacteria. It's your gums that require care.

Ridiculous

There are many primates that subsist almost exclusively on fruit that has substantial amounts of sugar. They live for 20 years and their teeth are fine.

The problem of tooth decay is complex, but this oft repeated lie doesn't get to the bottom of it.

Re:Ridiculous

Have you seen primates' teeth up close? They're actually pretty nasty. But you are partly right, they do have subtle differences in saliva biochemistry due to adaptation that allow them to handle sugary diets... the teeth remain usable despite the formation of cavities (ultimately the teeth are lost, as expected). Animals in captivity get rudimentary dental care, or at the least, fluorinated water. On the otherhand, your notion that many primates eat fruit exclusively is an oft repeated lie (mostly from cartoons). Fruits are a treat, and more uncommon than one might think. Sugars diets are the causative factor for increased microflora in the mouth -- the simpler the carbohydrate, the easier it is for the bacteria to fluorish (eg high fructose corn syrup). In fact, there are over 500 different species of bacteria that come onto your teeth in between twice-daily brushings. The bacteria themselves will not decay teeth as long as you keep an alkaline environment in your mouth. This is how other animals deal with them... we use brushing with fluoride ion (a base). If you'd like to test your theory, please feel free to stop using fluoride or baking soda in your dental care.

Re:Ridiculous

The fibers in fruits usually wash away the sugars. Most processed sweets don't have any fiber, thus the sugar is deposited and stays there.

This is also the case with honey - it's sticky and cause cavities if used as a sweetener. But it's not too dangerous eating an apple/orange without brushing your teeth for a while.

As long as people avoid honey, processed foods with sugar or flour - you should be able to get away without brushing and have no cavities.

However, that lifestyle and this treatment isn't going to be an end to brushing or flossing. Even if the teeth are completely protected, your gums can get gingivitus/periodontis without the stimulation of brushing/flossing.

Here is a pretty good website that explains/backs-up most of what I said. I found it to read up on wisdom teeth extraction a while back:

http://www.doctorspiller.com/ [doctorspiller.com]

a variant on cathodic protection

One of the first things I learned while working at a solar power firm was the concept or use of anti-corrosion techniques [wikipedia.org], which just sounded amazing to me at the time. Essentially you can protect metal from oxidising by putting a residual electrical charge over it -- which you can get directly from a working solar panel during the day. Night-time hours would be powered by a battery that you would charge with the excess electricity from the panel accumulated during the day.

I'm oversimplifying it massively here, but cathodic protection is a priority application for solar panels and equipment in remote areas, such as pipeline and radio-transmitter installations in the high Arctic.

This treatment sounds like a weird and cool transferral of the idea to teeth.

Re:Gums.

Your saliva is basic, not acidic. The bacteria produce lactic acid and lower the pH in plaques, ultimately resulting in tooth decay. The bacteria produce the acid because they metabolize sugary foods by glycolysis. Less sugar means less acid production by the bacteria in the mouth.

Re:Believe it or not

You're wrong, chap, but you're also right. Eating less sugary foods saves the day. But your reasoning was wrong. Our tooth enamel becomes soluble at any pH more acidic than about 4.5. When our tooth enamel dissolves, we set ourselves up to get holes all the way through the enamel. As I understand it, our bodies have no way of replacing enamel once its gone. And enamel is what keeps our teeth from getting infected. Our poor gums are sensitive too, though, as you noted. But there's more.

So the thing to do is keep our moth more basic than 4.5 (normal is about 5, I think). But the sugars that you noted get digested by the bacteria in our mouth, and then the biproduct of the digestion is lactic acid. This increases the acidity in out mouth (or decreases the pH). If you brush well enough that you have no bacteria in there, then you can eat all the sugar you want to no detriment. But most people have some bacteria in there, so we need to brush it out. But there's even more.

Toothpaste is designed not only to be all bubbly and tasty, but to make our mouth more basic (raise the pH) as well. That's why there is sodium flouride in toothpaste. The flouride ion attaches to the free hydrogen ions that are making our saliva acidic. But keeping our mouths alkaline still can't save our enamel that's already gone. It sounds to me like this new technology maybe kind of can though...

Re:Believe it or not

Do you think anyone is going to listen to a Wonka regarding tooth decay?

Would this affect coloring?

Would this process affect the coloration of the teeth?

It'd really suck to lock in any staining...

Re:Would this affect coloring?

well a floride coating is what natrually protects our teeth, thats why tap water, and toothpaste have this as an additive. Actually I just read that tooth decay is on the rise because many of us no longer drink tap water wwhich is forified with floride. From what I understand this is basically a electrochemical process which artficially bonds the floride to our teeth.

Re:Would this affect coloring?

No. The natural coating of the teeth is enamel, which is largely composed of the minerals hydroxyapatite and carbonated hydroxyapatite. Fluoride ions in water or toothpaste can displace the hydrogen ions in the enamel forming fluorapatite which is more acid resistant.

When I was a kid, I was actually subjected to sitting in a dentists chair for 15 minutes while a mould with a concentrated fluoride gel where held against my teeth.

It looks like this company is using exactly the same type of gel and mould, but adding an electrical current to try and speed up the hydrogen replacement. I've no idea if this would work or not, but it gets my snake-oil detectors twitching just a bit.

In terms of discolouration, I believe the advice is that children under 5 should limit exposure to fluoride toothpaste (just use a bit) to avoid white spots on their teeth, apart from that, there aren't any problems.

Broccoli

However, when pressed, the company acknowledged the new device would be ineffective against pieces of broccoli and spinach.

Right audience

Well, this is at least correctly targeted towards the /. crowd, most of whom only brush once every 5 years (whether they need it or not)

Great idea...

Go to the dentist and get a free shock-therapy session. This should help those with Dentophobia.

Wouldn't dentists fight this?

Somehow I have this horrible feeling that Dentists here in the US would do everything in their power to make sure these things never get used; think of how much money they would lose if no one got cavities anymore.

Luckily I bet I can improvise one of my one; all I need is an old lamp cord, a football mouthpiece, and some high fluoride gel toothpaste.

Re:Wouldn't dentists fight this?

Actually I've noticed a disturbing trend. Now that more and more people have "good teeth" (because a larger and larger % of the popullation has been brushing their teeth all their life), dentists are "diversifying."

Whereas before they would only fix cavities, now they are telling me that I need a tissue graft from my pallet onto a receeding section of my gums, that I need cleanings every 6 months at least, and that more orthodontic work wouldn't hurt either. After getting second opinions, I've determined that most of what they are suggesting is unnecessary... Basically they are trying to maintain their revenue stream by going after more obscure and largely non-worrisome problems.

Yes this is based on my own anecdotal experience (and talking to others), so it's a highly skewed opinion. But it seems to me that dentists are "inventing" new problems to treat and deal with, since the core problem (cavities, etc.) has been solved satisfactorily.

Re:Wouldn't dentists fight this?

You are painfully on target. (Pun intended, I guess.)

I spent my Senior year in High School going through a series of "necessary" gingival grafts. The pain was excruciating because the Viccodin didn't do much for me and I ended up not taking it because it screwed with my attention span, which was bad when I was drilling myself through AP Calculus and English among other things (girlfriend included!).

It turns out that everyone in my family has "receding" gums. That's just how they are - small. The doctor made a few thousand dollars, I got one cool picture of my shredded mouth roof. Exciting. Thank you, profit motive!

Bring on the Mountain Dew!

We'll see how well that 5-year warranty holds up after I'm through with it!

Bring on the Energy Drinks!

Sweet! (literally) Now I can just rinse with Red Bull before bed time and I'm set.

How does it get below the gum line?

The nasties really happen below 3mm (anaeorobic bacteria). Even your denatal hygenist can't do much below 3mm (though you can have your gums reduced). How does the gel get down there if your dentist can't?

Other approaches

What is the latest on ...

• Genetically modified bacteria to fight tooth decay [taipeitimes.com]?
• Vaccine for tooth decay [eufic.org]?

Enquiring minds want to know.

Pass

When I was 10 I tried touching a 9-volt to my braces. Nuff said.

This is how it's meant to work...

The enamel on our teeth consists of hydroxyapatite. This is a very strong substance, both in terms of low solubility and physical strength.

As any chemistry geek knows a fluorine ion (F-) can replace a hydroxyl ion (OH-). In teeth, fluoride causes formation of hydroxyfluoroapatite, where some of the OH's have been replaced with F's.

The compound with the fluoride is slightly stronger physically, it also has better pK values. The pKa and other values tell us about the solubility of a compound in acids or bases. Fluoroapatite is less soluble in acid. This means cavities will not form as easily when bacterial start producing acid in the teeth.

Normally, fluoride gets into our teeth through diffusion. Fluoride is in reasonably high concentrations in saliva anyway, but topical application of fluoride (for instance brushing your teeth) will increase the amount of strong fluoroapatite in your enamel.

This method uses a current to influence the exchange of OH for F in tooth enamel. It is nearly similar to the copper plating experiments you may have seen in high school.

Fluoride is only bad if ingested in large quanties. Fluorosis, a discoluration of the teeth, is caused by problems with the enamel producing cells in childhood. It can happen if children habitually eat toothpaste. It will not happen with topical application.

Skeletal bones can be adversely affected by fluoride, but this also requires high internal F- levels. It is unlikely to happen with topical application of toothpaste.

Well, you kinda deserve tinfoil hat jokes

Ok so you found a site with an agenda: Eliminating flouride consumption, that claims it's bad. Right, of course they are going to claim that. Now I can find information from respected orignizations, like the CDC and NIH, that says it's not only fine but good for oral health.

http://www.cdc.gov/oralhealth/waterfluoridation/in dex.htm [cdc.gov]
http://www.nidcr.nih.gov/HealthInformation/Disease sAndConditions/Fluoride/WaterFluoridation.htm [nih.gov]

Now I don't care to argue with you about who to believe, I'm just pointing you that you are presenting only a source with an agenda. Have a look at what the CDC has to say, as well as others.

Re:fluoride is toxic waste

If city governments didn't buy this stuff from chemical plants to put in drinking water, they'd have to dispose of it like any other toxic waste.
It's not the city governments or plants that are doing this to us. It's the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids [imdb.com]. Duh.