I have had a long history of dental issues - I can blame so many things for how they got to this state; severe substance abuse two decades ago, homelessness, teeth grinding, GERD. The reality of it though, is that I let my teeth get really bad, and ultimately they were too sensitive to properly take care of - which caused so many more issues. I have spent so much money to attempt to save them over the years, and finally came to the conclusion that they were not worth saving due to the amount of neglect that I had caused them. For years I have mumbled when I spoke to not cause attention to them, and I rarely smiled for the same reasons.
Three days ago I had the remaining 12 teeth pulled and I am currently at home adjusting to dentures - and around the new year I will be looking in to All-on-4 implants. It's truly amazing how much better I already feel about myself for just a few hours of work - and I look forward to the quality of life improvements that I will have. Even with this relief though, there is definitely tons of regrets on how I could let it get this far.
Taking care of teeth is important, but I feel we are misinformed in a number of ways.
If you spend time reading the literature, you may reach the conclusion the pros of getting fluoride don't outweigh the potential damage done to other organs. Same goes for professional dental cleaning, it erodes enamel quickly, but advantages are not very clear to me.
I think keeping the oral microbiome healthy is a much more fundamental step towards true dental health. You want a healthy balance of bacteria, yeast and phages. And you want them to be generating healthy metabolites. That's why I emphasize a good toothbrush plus a good technique, pocket irrigation, calcium salts, and probiotics. And a good diet.
37 years old. No cavities. No fillings. Brush my teeth once a day in the morning most of my life. Use regular toothpaste. I prefer ultra soft brush, and usually soften them up more with hot water.
The color of my teeth depends on my diet, when I was doing keto or slow carb, it whitened them quite a bit.
You are very lucky like my girlfriend in that respect. She cleans her teeth twice a day and does minimal care and has one minor filling which was done a couple of years ago.
I have always spent a long time cleaning and flossing my teeth and have lots of minor repairs and fillings done over the years.
I have had some cavities filled in the past, but somehow nowadays I can brush twice a week and haven't had any cavities for more than a decade. (I brush a bit more often than that to prevent bad breath.)
Dental cleaning is backed by years of scientific research, so if you're going to make claims like that, I would expect it to be also backed up by similar research.
The burden of proof is on the person making the absurd claim, not one that is well accepted in the scientific community. I love how HN is super critical about anything tech related but is basically the flat earthers of hygiene.
Regardless of where the burden of proof lies, it seems silly to say "Dental cleaning is backed by years of scientific research" and then balk at providing any reference on "procedural" grounds.
Didn't the United States government remove flossing from their official health recommendations because there isn't actually any scientific evidence in favor of it, and the law required the government only make recommendations backed by science? From what I understand much of dentistry isn't actually backed by science but is rather just the opinions of dentists. So I think it's justified to ask where you are getting the evidence for the empirical claims you are making.
Fun fact. Stone-age level tech people or hunter gatherers have perfect teeth. Their teeth meet perfectly, they have no wisdom teeth issues for example (in fact they just have more normal teeth than civilised people)
The reason is that our jaws are actually too small for our teeth. Their jaws are the right size because the jaw grows to its correct size in response to chewing when you are a baby. We dont chew enough as babies.
If you want to avoid tooth infections, the #1 thing you can do is stop eating sugary food / drinking alcohol or sugar water; for a more complete caveman approach, cut back on other starchy foods like rice, bread, and pasta. The #2 thing you can do is occasionally visit the dentist for a checkup or whenever your teeth give you trouble. The #3 thing you can do is occasionally apply topical fluoride (it’s not clear what difference there is between drinking fluoridated water, brushing weekly, brushing daily, ...). Getting a nutritious diet is also probably important.
Our modern culture taboos anything less than brushing multiple times per day, but it’s not clear how reliable the evidence is supporting this as a blanket requirement (the studies I’ve seen had many other confounding variables, but admittedly I did not do an exhaustive literature review), and most of the tooth infections probably result from other causes.
There are people with perfect teeth who brush rarely, and people with frequent caries who brush religiously after every meal. On average, hunter–gatherers have better teeth than people in agricultural societies, including modern ones. They don’t have access to oral surgery, so when things go bad they can go very bad. But that’s not really related to brushing.
> Our modern culture taboos anything less than brushing multiple times per day, but it’s not clear how reliable the evidence is supporting this as a blanket requirement (the studies I’ve seen had many other confounding variables, but admittedly I did not do an exhaustive literature review), and most of the tooth infections probably result from other causes.
I've heard so much conflicting information on this... Off the top of my head:
* Brushing too often - such as three times a day - speeds up erosion
* Or, that only happens if you brush too hard
* Or, that brushing too hard doesn't affect the teeth, that that's just confusion with it affecting the gums
* Or, that it has nothing to do with duration or hardness, but rather, how soon after eating that you brush (something about the extra saliva for food causing a slight weakness that takes an hour or so to go back to normal)
* Or, that leaving food residue in the mouth for any duration - such as that hour in the last case - causes saliva and bacteria buildup that speeds up erosion
My dentist the other day said "oh you're right handed."
I said "how did you know?"
She said "because that makes it easier to brush the left side of your mouth. Which is why your gums are really eroded on that side, and perfect on the right side."
One of the most important things is to get the appropriate toothbrush, ie. one that says "soft". Not "hard" or even "medium", because while those feel like they would be more effective, they are much too harsh on the gums even the enamel, over time. They also force you to apply a lot of pressure if you want to clean between the teeth, adding to the damage.
A soft toothbrush using in small circular motions is best. And for the love of all that is holy, floss!
But the argument is kind of stupid. It would have made a little sense if she said something like "Cave men didn't ate candy bars" or something like that..
Another major aspect of jaw development is tongue posture. Resting the tongue on the roof of the mouth and breathing through your nose results in increased jaw development, e.g. a broader palate, thanks to the bone's natural response to give and grow under pressure.
I've been playing with this myself, thanks to discovering recently that I grew up with an undiagnosed mild to moderate tongue tie. I've changed my tongue position, and even as an adult have noticeably expanded my palate such that there is more room in my arch than their was before (as determined by modest gaps developing between my mid-molars).
In short it's been a big discovery for me this year, and the results are manifest in my life. Sad that this is not well understood by orthodontists and such everywhere.
Can you point me to more on this? A technical name for it, etc
I have bruxism at night. Generally, my jaw grinds down too much. Hard to stop, because I'm asleep.
I tried pushing my tongue up to the roof of my mouth, and it feels like the opposite of grinding. I'd like to research and see if there's any link. (I'm really out of options for reducing bruxism)
Are you pressing the tongue or just resting it up top?
The practice is called orthotropics. I can vouch for this user's experience myself, have had difficulty breathing for many years which led to poor teeth and a narrow palate. Once I received a palatal expander i realized how important it was to keep tongue pressure flat on the roof of the mouth. I practice regularly now and have seem improvements to teeth, breathing, and facing structure. It's a shame this stuff isn't taught more. You can find more details in this video: https://youtu.be/eh9OqEd5z1k
I understand your skepticism. But you should start with the orthotropics youtube channel. Obviously, not an unbiased source of information. But it's a start from which you can at least critically evaluate what they say.
Another thing to bear in mind is that scientific theories are obviously developed faster than they can be proven. And as long as what Orthotropics is not invasive you can try what they preach yourself and draw your own conclusions rather than wait for academic silos to try prove that the method works.
I am trying it on myself. The results are not magical, but I can feel them, I can breathe better. And at the end of the day that's what matters most
Yeah busterbaxter has it right, Orthotropics is the name.
I push hard on the roof of my mouth as often as I’m able and have it in mind, as firmly as I think I safely can (bone is sturdy but I imagine it is possible to over-stress it), because I’m trying to actively remodel my face and there was some doubt in the beginning whether that was possible at all as an adult.
As of now the results are clear, my jaw swings farther forward and up, before it was compressed back by the rearward position of my maxilla. The differences are not huge - measured in milimeters, but the difference in articulation can be felt and seen. I actually remember the day I was able to shift my jaw forward to a relaxed position while closing it. My face is now shorter/squarer and broader in appearance. Previously it was consistent with “long face syndrome”. Look up photos of that and you’ll see what I see now: a rearward maxilla, and a jaw forced to swing low to meet it.
Anyway, I’m still at it - my goal is to move my cheekbones to meet my brow. Currently they’re set back a bit, but progess is noticeable. Sounds crazy, I know, but it’a true. :P
Poor tongue posture can also cause obstructive sleep apnea where your tongue relaxes too much in your sleep and collapses, closing off your airway and causing you to "wake up" but not in a conscious way 5+ times per hour. The end result is that you wake up feeling extremely tired but do not remember feeling restless at all during the night.
My story is ridiculously similar to yours, thank you for mentioning this alternative to existing dental practices, which don't account for the orchestra that is the tongue, teeth and jaw etc.
Babies' milk-drinking actually also has an effect on jaw development, because of the pressure generated when suckling on the breast.
Think about the mechanics of breast vs bottle feeding: while superficially similar, one requires the child to draw milk out of a breast by generating suction, while the other allows them to mostly passively receive milk delivered via gravity.
> the other allows them to mostly passively receive milk delivered via gravity.
That's not how bottles work. You have to actively suck onto the nipple in order to get milk, and you can only get a small quantity per suck. Sure, you can get it in edgewise and bite down so it opens up and the milk runs, but that's not how babies drink.
Source: I used to drink from a bottle well into my teens, because I found it a convenient delivery device for chocolate milk in bed.
When you feed a baby, you tend to unscrew the bottle to remove the vacuum effect and make it easier. Some of them are even marked to indicate the intensity of the flow.
Source: experience feeding and buying baby's bottles.
edit: As a teen, you probably didn't have the same incentives, you didn't have other things to take care of in parallel, your jaw was more developed, and a tightly screwed bottle will hardly drop anything if you don't shake it, so you could lay down in any position you wished, and take as long as you wanted.
It's not about the vacuum effect in the bottle, it's about how the nipple is constructed. When you suck on the end, the "neck" closes because of the pressure and won't let more milk flow. I'm a bit hazy on the mechanics because it's been a while, but I'm very sure of the end result.
I imagine you can easily try it and report back if you have quick access to a bottle, maybe you can shed more light on this.
Babies don't suction milk out of the breast, rather they take the nipple and areola into the mouth and squeeze it between the tongue and palate to express milk.
Milk from bottles is by auction and it's usually easier than breastfeeding.
(Learned this from a lactation consultant for my daughter)
Having read more about the mechanism of suckling, it seems even more clearly important to the development of the jaw, because the baby uses their tongue to draw the milk out of the nipple, which requires applying pressure with the tongue from front to back against the palate. Bottle feeding requires simple general suction.
Thats usually not needed. Towards the end of the breastfeeding session when the baby has drained much of the milk, mothers will often massage the breast to push more milk towards the end. That can make milk squirt out, but it isn't the purpose. Really full breasts can definitely leak milk without any suckling, but most of the milk comes out as a result of the baby suckling.
? I've got 34 technically. Behind my wisdom teeth I have little buds of teeth which can never surface (not nearly the size of a full wisdom tooth/molar) Supernumerary I believe it's called. I happen to have a pretty long jaw, so still have my full set of wisdoms surfaced.
A more correct thing to say would maybe be they have less dental crowding than humans who are living in the modern world. There are many other oral maladies beyond dental crowding that people without access to modern dental care just have to live with.
That sounds like a caricature on cavemen civilisation. I’ve read sources that suggest some hunter gatherers were extremely violent and others weren’t. But, really, we just don’t know.
Even if there aren't any rival tribes around, worry about other creatures (lions, tigers, bears!) and unpredictable natural events (flooding &c.) could be a bit stressful.
The standard modern view on why stress is so bad for our health is that it builds up levels of cortisol and other stress hormones, which prepare us to act explosively in a fight or flight response, the doing of which uses up the stress hormones... a bit like a spring coiling up then releasing. But because in our modern lives we don't do the running away or fighting we don't use up the cortisol and it just simmers away in us.
I don't think it makes much sense to compare our modern concept of stress to very different times in the development of our society. Wild animals are in constant threat of being killed but I wouldn't think it makes sense to imagine them as stressed. They just live in the moment in a very different way to us.
Maybe 'stone-age' isn't far enough in the past to be different enough to modern life in that way. Even if that is the case, humans are very adaptable, the way a modern city dweller feels if they get attacked isn't necessarily the same way someone would feel who has experienced it many times.
I've had my own very small experience related to this. Just over a year ago I gave up my bricks and mortar home in the city and moved into a caravan. It was a wreck and I had to completely rebuild the interior and re-do the electrics and plumbing myself. I learned that my walls and windows provide no security - you could break into my home with your bare hands, with a hammer or axe it would be very easy. I carried a lot of fear in my head at first. In bed I'd be worrying that there'd be a gas explosion or fire because of something I'd done wrong. Once I found a couple of massive surly travellers eyeing up my solar panels, thinking I wasn't around. I had to go out and show that I was around and confident and not a target. I've met all kinds of people and not grown up sheltered at all but these two carried a real heavy, violent air - for a good week or two I was expecting them to turn up in the night to try to rob me, it was very hard to get that thought out of my head, and then to sleep in basically an unprotected tin can with plastic windows. Now I stay on a farm hundreds of miles away from any friends or family, there's no contract or notion of stability, if I fell out with the farmer I might have to leave immediately. I don't drive and at times haven't had enough money to pay to be towed somewhere else (work has been tricky... especially in winter when I'm trying to keep my laptop alive by solar, I've limited mobile data and it's 0-5C indoors), so a few cross words and I could basically be instantly homeless. Shops are an hour walk away, once I put a foot wrong on a track which nobody (not even locals) walks along and instantly sunk up to my waist in thick, sucking sinking mud and genuinely felt I might die there. LOL.
The point I'm ramblingly trying to get around to making is that after a while, it just wasn't sustainable to carry on feeling stressed and edgy. Or my tolerance went up, or something. Life just feels a lot more reactive than it used to, I want to say more real. Although I do have stresses and worries sometimes I don't walk around feeling permanently stressed or scared, actually I love it - it was the best move I ever made in my life, I feel a vitality which I didn't have before.
I've learned that the kind of stresses I have now are somehow easier to bear than the kind I used to have in my old life. I'd somehow rather fight off an intruder in the night than try to navigate a Kafka-esque phone menu system and be condescended to by a passive-agressive CSR. Cold is a feeling I can distract myself away from by writing some code or mending something, whereas receiving a bill with big red capital letters on it could negatively affect my state of mind for several days. When I'm standing over a pit emptying my reeking toilet I just compare it (favourably) to talking to a letting agent.
>after a while, it just wasn't sustainable to carry on feeling stressed and edgy. Or my tolerance went up, or something. Life just feels a lot more reactive than it used to, I want to say more real. Although I do have stresses and worries sometimes I don't walk around feeling permanently stressed or scared, actually I love it - it was the best move I ever made in my life, I feel a vitality which I didn't have before.
Thank you for writing this. I think the constant stress “field” we live in has to do less with real immediate threats and more with a lot of artificial but constant pressures, reminders and triggers.
I somehow don’t think worrying about being attacked by an animal which is not here right now is the same as a boss putting the screws in you on an hourly basis, the ad industry telling you you’re ugly 250 times a day, the constant reminder that getting sick equals bankruptcy and death, and the daily news feed reminding you that the world is going to hell and you’re the only one not having amazing fun.
not sure if this would cause a stress field similar to the one of living in capitalism, with the addition of a media machine existing solely on distress, amplifying fear, distraction and anxiety as a means to get business.
No way to check this hypothesis, fortunately or unfortunately.
However, the explanation is over-simplistic. Perhaps a bigger contributory factor is whether diet contains the nutritional factors require for proper teeth formation. The case for this factor was made convincingly a century ago [1].
testosterone levels can elongate jaw development later in life. On another note, I got rid of fluoride based toothpaste because the scientific evidence is bad, and switched to just coconut oil and eat pro-biotics. If my teeth hurt, I assume my body is robbing the calcium to neutralize something and I take calcium and try to eat better.
I don't mind placebo if it works for me. A guy said 'there is no good evidence' while i witnessed it with my own eyes. So who should i trust more, random Joe from internets or my own eyes? Cheers.
coconut oil was in one of my tissue culture protocols (sorry forgot which plant) so I thought, what the hell I'll try it as tooth paste. It has a known mild anti-bacteria effect and oil is hydrophobic. It coats your teeth well and stays there. There were other people from a google search that use it, it just worked for me. If its good enough for a petri dish then its good enough for me.
If David 'Avocado' Wolfe said that water is wet I would reflexively have to check the faucets.
'Chocolate is an octave of sun energy. In fact it's the energy of the center of the sun. It's a male energy that comes down off the sun and it.. actually, of all the plants, the cacao is right on line target the center of the sun, which we call in our body, the heart, and actually cacao is right up with the center of the sun, which is the center of the heart, which is called the sacred heart.'
they say a broken clock is right twice a day
if David Wolfe said Pi = 3.14, would you disagree? see your ad hominem argument is flawed.
Plus, if the guy is just being enlighten and not hurting anybody, linking to a few articles and research papers and writing what he thinks, who are you to judge? If I asked you just to try coconut oil on your tooth brush, would you specifically go out of your way not to try it just in spite?
That's because they're all part of an evil conspiracy, obviously ;)
People are weird about dentists. Almost no-one is claiming, say, that penicillin doesn't do anything, or that doctors only tell you to stop smoking to hurt you. But when it comes to dental standard advice, people go nuts.
Sure, if everyone knew they had perfect teeth. But most people rely on their dentist for that kind of information. Which makes you wonder if your assertion would actually turn out to be true.
Yeah so there's a vaccine that kills the bacteria that causes tooth decay, but you don't hear much about it That would definitely cause disruption in the dentist field if someone were to make it readily available
Do you know anything else about teeth? I have 2 baby teeth with no adult teeth to replace them, and I was also born without 4 back molars (one on each side, top and bottom). Consequently, now that my wisdom teeth are coming in, I seem to have lots of room and may not need to have them removed.
I highly recommend keeping your wisdom teeth if you have room for them. I have all four -- a full rack as my dentist says -- and they're nice to have; I chew pretty far back in my mouth so they get lots of use. Cleaning them hasn't been a problem so far. I'm 42 years old.
Like you, I also had a baby tooth that didn't fall out. It was anchored to the bone somehow. It interfered with the movement of my adult teeth as they came in and thus had to be removed in my teens. It was a pain to get out. It had to be broken into pieces and dug out, and since there was no adult tooth to replace it, they put in an implant, which has also worked just fine.
My baby teeth are anchored to the bone as well, but not very strongly. They discovered them when fitting me for braces and decided they would just leave them. They didn't put anchors on the babies and just told me to pray they wouldn't fall out and they haven't!
I will probably keep my wisdom teeth. They're not fully in yet but I like the idea of not pulling anything out of my face, you know?
Teeth is a favorite focal-point for anxious people. My very anxious friend, who took acutane when she was younger, is absolutely certain her teeth will fall out when she's 40 years old because her mother took acutane and all of her teeth fell out. The dentist apparently told her something about the roots drying up.
I have dreams in which my jaw widens to the point that it gets stuck-- and then keeps widening. I have dreams where all my teeth fall out and I have to perform an algorithm to put them back in the right order.
Probably because teeth are so exposed, so vulnerable, and are so critically important to social matters-- nevermind that I need them to eat.
I also can't look at pictures of teeth for more than 30 seconds without feeling disconcerted, even though I focus on people's mouths most during a conversation.
I've had similar dreams as well. They usually only happen when I'm extremely stressed. It's usually my teeth falling out, and oh is the sensation of loose teeth rolling around in my mouth both vivid and horrifying.
One time it was my tongue swelling up til I couldn't contain it in my mouth anymore, and another I was chewing bubblegum, but no matter how much gum I spit out, the gum kept growing until I was choking on it.
I also had a dream where my teeth fell out, I woke up, was relieved it was only a dream, and got up to go the bathroom. Everything was normal and exactly as it should have been. Even the bathroom light switch worked, which is usually one of those things people say is a dream-tell. Then my teeth started getting loose again, and I panicked and woke up a second time. I had been just been dreaming that I woke up the first time.
Wow, this is apparently so common. One of the worst dreams you could have. Although, I do like those dreams-within-dreams. They usually happen when I'm "resting my eyes for five minutes". I dream that I've awoken and am dutifully completing my tasks for the day. Do you get those?
I don't often get those, though I did once have a dream-within-a-dream combined with sleep paralysis that was like seven dreams deep.
I took a nap on the couch. Woke up on the couch, could not move. Woke up on the couch, could wiggle my fingers. Woke up on the couch, tried to roll over but woke up on the couch. Managed to roll off the couch onto the floor, but woke up on the couch. This continued til I managed to roll off and drag myself about a foot with my arms (my legs were still paralyzed), then I finally woke up on the couch, my whole body tingling, and wasn't sure I was really awake until I'd gotten up and gone about the rest of my day.
I dunno, maybe everything since then has been a dream and I never did wake up from that nap.
This dream-of-teeth-falling-out thing is intriguing. I've never experienced it and I dream pretty much every night, even during naps. Yet somehow it's a "type" of dream for many people.
Are you not an anxious person? It used to be more common when I was younger and less self-aware, when I didn't know how to deal with anxiety or even that I experienced it to a significant degree. They are rare dreams for me now but very vivid in a specific way (I feel them in my body). The body thing seems to be common for emotive dreams.
Most of my dreams on any given night involve some kind of "mission" in a realistically-rendered futuristic compound, without much of a body feeling unless I'm swimming or flying/falling. These dreams, I think, are a reflection of the way I think of my future-- kind of a way to resolve the map I have in my head of my trajectory.
Then I have dreams where it's very clearly about the past. Usually steeped in mood (not necessarily emotion) and a sense of a cohesive "theme", which really illustrates the fruits of introspective moments during waking time.
Then there are people who have dreams regularly filled with symbology, which is one of the common conceptions of what dreams are. Symbol dreams are rare for me, but I definitely pay attention when they happen.
Ultimately I think it comes down to abstractions. Maybe when you wake up in the morning try to figure out what your dreams were abstracting, and then you'll notice a pattern. There are abstractions within the abstractions too. Very very intriguing stuff, like you said. Dreams are more important than our culture allows for, I think.
Not sure if this is an old slavic wives tale or well known, but my mother always told me that dreaming about teeth was caused by worrying about money/finances.
I never had it (or didn’t notice) until I heard of it. Much like “exploding head syndrome”, it appears to be slightly contagious (suggestible). Even then, it wasn’t the usual “falling out”, but rather my jaw squeezing tighter and tighter, unable to open, until my teeth began to crack. I think I was really just grinding my teeth in my sleep after a night of drinking.
Can I suggest something? I'm no expert, but magnesium is often suggested for teeth grinding, and is great for me to get relaxed before bed. It's also an important electrolyte (often overlooked as such)-- part of what you need to replenish after a night of drinking. If you're interested, pick up some magnesium bisglycinate. This form is kind of expensive, but the most bio-available (and consequently doesn't cause too much, if any, gas or cramping... or shitting). It helps a lot with my anxiety.
Ironically, my diet was never healthier than when I was drinking too much, too often. I craved all the things that I was depleting, especially magnesium, and that my body needed to repair the damage I was doing to it. It actually taught me a lot about my body and what cravings for specific nutrients & minerals felt like. Nowadays I just drink a lot less!
I take kratom for anxiety—and because it significantly reduces my desire to drink—and I guess a lot of people take magnesium (in one of its many different preparations) both as an alleged potentiator of kratom and to relieve the common side effect of constipation. Fortunately, kratom doesn’t have an appreciable effect on my bowels in the doses I take, and my diet is fairly high in magnesium already by way of grains, greens, nuts, and beans.
> It actually taught me a lot about my body and what cravings for specific nutrients & minerals felt like. Nowadays I just drink a lot less!
That's great, actually! A lot of people don't know what specific cravings mean. Helps a lot with overall health because I know if I'm craving fried food I just need some good fats so I go and make something with avocado oil or what-have-you.
>I take kratom for anxiety
I've wondered about kratom before. How specifically does it help your anxiety, and how often do you take it? Does it impair any cognitive functions to any degree? (Could you take it before class or studying and still be able to focus well?)
It makes me less prone to runaway trains of thought, sub-panic attacks I guess you might call them. I can just chill and focus on what’s in front of me. It’s also great for relieving some chronic pain I have when ibuprofen doesn’t cut it; it’s maybe a step above naproxen, and I think the pain relief is part of the general stress reduction that I perceive as anxiety relief.
If I’m making capsules, it tends to last longer (4–5 hours, peak around 3 hours), so I may only take it once or twice a day as a general relief thing; if I mix it with a beverage (fruit smoothies in my case) and drink it, it comes on stronger but doesn’t last as long (3–4 hours, peak around 1–2 hours), which is better for PRN relief, but if I do that then I might end up taking it thrice or, uh, fource a day, which feels like too much, so I try to avoid that. It’s also good to take periodic breaks to avoid building tolerance.
Typically I take larger doses (6–10g) of “down” red varieties (Maeng Da, Thai, Borneo, Bali) for anxiety, pain, and sleep; smaller doses (3–5g) of “up” green/white varieties (Jong Kong, Thai) for stimulation, as a less anxiety-inducing alternative to caffeine. The difference between “strains” is noticeable but usually not that significant in my experience; dosage is typically more important. I recommend avoiding extracts—they can be more addictive as they can be 10–50× more potent than regular leaf powder (1–2% mitragynine/7-OH-mitragynine), and I find them less pleasant anyway.
It doesn’t cause any cognitive impairment that I’ve observed. For some reason it especially makes me want to write, which is great for documenting my code and figuring out a problem, but it doesn’t provide any real cognitive boost either. Taking a low dose before class might make you more energetic and social, but overall I don’t think it’d help or harm your focus much. Personally, when taking an “up” dose, I’d rather clean or go for a walk than go to class/work. Different people react differently, of course.
If you take too much, it’ll make you woozy, sleepy, and nauseated, which as you can imagine isn’t great for getting things done. If that happens, you pretty much need to drink water, eat food, lie down, close your eyes, wait for it to pass—or barf if you need to. Most people only take too much kratom once, hah—it’s highly unpleasant.
Kratom is not a wonder-drug—all it really does in my experience is take you from “not fine” to just “fine”. If you’re just looking to get “high”, kratom is not for you. It is habit-forming and can be addictive with frequent high doses or especially when taking extracts. Side effects may include constipation, more frequent urination, irritability, and (rarely) reduced testosterone in males. Withdrawal symptoms may include sweating, runny nose, diarrhea, dilated pupils, and elevated testosterone. Most people don’t experience most of these side effects or withdrawal symptoms, though.
Finally, and most importantly, kratom is under-researched and caveat emptor. There have been no confirmed cases of kratom alone causing death, but as a precaution it should not be taken in conjunction with other drugs or medications, and should only be purchased from reputable sellers; if you’re buying it in a smoke shop, make sure it’s a known, reputable brand in properly sealed packaging. My hope is that it will remain legal and be regulated for quality and purity in the future.
Interesting. More social sounds good. More writing is good. I'll probably try it and see how it affects me. The up variety will probably be better for me, since caffeine doesn't affect my anxiety if I have a single cup of coffee a day, and if I take downers I definitely feel relaxed but in a way that eventually causes some melancholy and sadness about the lack of work I feel like doing.
I'm always trying to find a way to feel relaxed without taking something that significantly affects other functions. A glass of wine on the beach is great. Two glasses and I can't sleep or do anything meaningful. Pot makes me full-on panic-- yes I've tried CBD oil, and it causes panic attacks of a lesser intensity.
Breathing exercises sometimes work, and maybe I haven't practiced enough (hey! good point, me), but it's not reliable enough so that I can do it anywhere (especially being so busy) and find relief.
There's always this underlying, gnawing anxiety. It's usually low-level enough that I can manage unless something unexpected happens-- which is often. In that case I have a few different things to manage but all of them result in someone being disappointed.
> but rather my jaw squeezing tighter and tighter, unable to open, until my teeth began to crack.
I used to have this dream every now and then. It was awful, but I could never be sure if I actually clamped my mouth shut or just dreamed I did. Thankfully it's not happened for years, so perhaps was related to stress.
I have these dreams sometimes and it is a terrible feeling. I also dream of getting shot, which is a similar sensation. You feel broken and wake up happy that you are not.
I have the dream where all my teeth fall out in my mouth, one by one, until they are filling my mouth and I'm so desperate to keep them inside my mouth that I start to choke on them...
I had these dreams 4 or 5 times during a depressive period of my life. I never knew how common this dream was until I saw in Reddit from others. In my dreams, I would spit them out one by one and soon all my teeth would be in my hands. And I would wake up scared. I don't remember having them before that period. I haven't had them for the last 3-4 years once I came out of that phase.
For me, the jaw is my focal-point. I seem to tense my jaw when i feel anxious and not even notice it. Nowadays it can feel pretty bad after chewing for too long or just opening and closing my mouth. I'm just glad I don't have any nervous tics relating to teeth.
Hey, I don't know if that's a common symptom! My friend did some research and she said she found a few accounts of that happening, but I don't even think it's on the list of side-effects they give you. Keep that in mind!
I took it. I'm 41 and all my teeth are fine. I have one filling, for a cavity that my dentist claimed was caused by a sealant that didn't fall off when it should have.
i have dreams of casually plucking out my teeth like i might pluck out a long, out of place hair. those are fine to dream but a little unsettling upon waking.
About a decade ago there was a tremendously promising discovery. A genetically modified variant of the caries bacteria that is the major cause of tooth decay was created which, instead of metabolizing glucose into acid, metabolized it into something inert which also happened to be poisonous to the caries bacteria that excrete acid. A 45 second rinse with a small amount of liquid doped with these bacteria would mean permanent lack of tooth decay.
This would, of course, eliminate 90% or so of the entire dental industry in a single blow. I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not, but the doctor researching it lost funding and the pursuit of turning it into a product or available treatment was abandoned.
This would, of course, eliminate 90% or so of the entire dental industry in a single blow.
This overstates the case. The prevalence of caries really depends on the patient population. There are some populations for whom most dental work is caries-related: e.g. poor children in USA [0]. Even so, fillings are not the biggest moneymakers for any dentist here. There is far more money to be made on e.g. implants, prosthodontics, orthodontics, etc. Other nations probably would have a bigger focus on caries.
[0] Incidentally, dentists deserve much of the credit for the fact that we can't leave out the adjective "poor". They have encouraged pediatric oral health at every opportunity. Apparently they weren't too worried about losing this important demand for their services.
Without S Mutans, there wouldn’t really be a need for implants, prosthodontics, etc. Sure, you’ll have orthodontics left, but pretty much anything else (including even routine cleanings) would be wiped out.
It’s no surprise the FDA has suppressed this industry-changing research that would save so much pain and suffering in the world.
You have an incomplete understanding of the causes of tooth loss. Anyone who gets old enough will lose her teeth for a panoply of geriatric reasons that do not include caries or periodontitis. In addition teeth are lost for other reasons including drug use, injury, dietary deficiencies, etc.
You also profoundly underestimate the cashflow from dentistry that is purely cosmetic or otherwise unrelated to replacing missing teeth.
I'm as critical of FDA as anyone but this is straight conspiracy theory. Why has no one started selling this miracle cure over the internet?
You have a fair point. Still, if S Mutans was nullified, I do believe this will significantly impact dental practice cash flow that I wouldn't be surprised if most goes out of business (over a long timeframe, as more people get this treatment).
If your practice has margins of 20%, then a 25% drop in procedures will mean you go out of business.
And why hasn't anyone started selling this? Well, large-scale synthesis and reproduction of genetically modified bacteria has significant upfront costs; no one is going to invest $20m in a production line if all they can do is sell it on darknet markets.
Once upon a time one could have been forgiven for thinking the dentists had this type of political control, just by comparing the cars they drove to the cars driven by e.g. physicians. However, the recent boom in dental-school-openings is a much bigger threat to their individual earnings than a potential bacterial wonder treatment.
I don't know much about bacterial treatments, but one can buy them for the garden for like $10. They do a number on the hornworms. This is a "natural" bacteria rather than an engineered one, but bacteria reproduce rather than requiring manufacture. If someone has this miracle bug in a lab, she could start selling small quantities pretty easily.
This is actually true. The rights were brought by Oragenics, who’s well known for dental probiotics, and they started trials. I was quite excited to be following along.
Once the FDA realised the impact, their requirements were inexplicably hiked to be impossible to meet, and the research had to be shelved.
Jeffrey Hillman from the University of Florida developed a genetically modified strain of Streptococcus mutans called BCS3-L1, that is incapable of producing lactic acid – the acid that dissolves tooth enamel – and aggressively replaces native flora. In laboratory tests, rats who were given BCS3-L1 were conferred with a lifetime of protection against S. mutans. BCS3-L1 colonizes the mouth and produces a small amount of a lantibiotic, called MU1140, which allows it to out-compete S. mutans. Hillman suggested that treatment with BCS3-L1 in humans could also provide a lifetime of protection, or, at worst, require occasional re-applications. He stated that the treatment would be available in dentists' offices and "will probably cost less than $100." The product was being developed by Oragenics, but was shelved in 2014, citing regulatory concerns and patent issues. In 2016, Oragenics received a 17-year patent for the product.
You left out the next paragraph which is may be one of the reasons it's not used:
> On rare occasions the native S. mutans strain escapes into the blood, potentially causing dangerous heart infections. It is unclear how likely BCS3-L1 is to do the same.
That would be a really weird reason. The natural bacteria has the exact same problem. The engineered one is uncertain to have the problem. Why would you opt for the one that definitely carries the risk and ALSO causes expensive tooth decay?
Because the engineered caries might behave differently and unexpectedly. Regular caries has a pretty hard time getting into the bloodstream and won't infect other regions. Can the immune recognize the new strain? Can the new strain infect other regions of the body? Does it permeate into the bloodstream more often? There are more questions to be answered, experimentally.
a) Since there is a patent (Replacement therapy for dental caries [1]) it means many/some people should be able to make the product on their own.
b) How many more stories (and what kind of stories) of nefarious obstacles erected by the FDA are required until there is a large-scale sentiment to either abolish that agency or severely limit its (unconstitutional) powers? [2]
Pretty crazy how much misery (and even death!) it would cure. There was also a "vaccine" targeting s. mutans, but there were some concerns about that having unwanted systemic effects. And there was a neutered version of the same bacteria, and a peptide, ...
The idea behind insurance is that you pay a small amount consistently over time so that there is enough money in the mutual pot to cover it when rare expensive events occur.
Dental insurance is not included in standard insurance, and is in general a much worse deal, because all people tend to have dental issues in some form or another. So there is nothing rare about it to spread the risk / cost out.
Oral health care should be at the center of our health care strategy and tactics.
We keep learning more about how major, devastating, and very costly illnesses have origins -- contributory or principal -- in oral illness.
That we haven't already acted on this, speaks to the disfunction of our health care system. Here in the U.S., for me, but also in other countries whose "universal health care" excludes dental health.
Cosmetics may be another matter. But oral health? It needs to be covered. A primary factor in preventive care.
And also, the people who make (very good) livings shoveling sugar to kids -- especially, going around parents' controls and wishes -- need a good, hard looking at.
One would say that anything that offsets the narrowness of perspective you usually see in discussions between healthcare professionals is worth it. Yeah, most advice here is harmful, but so are things in other fields where we have learned to swallow a need for diversity of perspective and diversity of opinions...
You can't really avoid hurtful misinformation so you could at least enjoy the benefits that the more open climate engendering it offers... I really hope the coming wave of "garage bio-hacking" brings a more playful and research accelerating attitude to the biomedical fields (along with some little bit of unavoidable death and maiming that we can hopefully laugh off)...
The level of discussion here that veers from the scientific mainstream re: nutrition, diet, and exercise, is comparable to that found in your local hippie dippy whole foods co-operative or crossfit gym.
Just my 2 cents. 13 years ago I used to always have cavities every time I went to the dentist. Then got told to leave toothpaste on my teeth instead of rinsing after brushing (I only brush once a day). Haven't had any issues since, so I'm guessing the floride has a local effect.
I was taught to not rinse, I just wash the outside of my lips & face to freshen you. I presume that lets it linger longer and also you'll swallow some so will be absorbed that way too.
i've heard that you're supposed to brush for 2 minutes not because your teeth need that much scrubbing but because that's the time the fluoride needs to be in contact with your teeth to be effective.
I remember one of the very first David Letterman shows, he had his dentist as a guest, reviewing the recent Warren Beatty movie Reds from the point of view of dentistry. Apparently it wasn't a very realistic movie.
New caries cures/vaccines invented appear in news every other year (the only thing that seem being invented more often are new super-duper batteries) yet none of them reach general availability.
George Eastman, father of Kodak, was passionate about oral health --particularly for kids. It's why we have an Eastman Institute in Sweden. Not everybody knows it was funded by the Eastman!
Three days ago I had the remaining 12 teeth pulled and I am currently at home adjusting to dentures - and around the new year I will be looking in to All-on-4 implants. It's truly amazing how much better I already feel about myself for just a few hours of work - and I look forward to the quality of life improvements that I will have. Even with this relief though, there is definitely tons of regrets on how I could let it get this far.
Take care of your teeth - it's worth it.