Science
Ingredients, evidence, and the trends that don’t survive a closer look.
Enamel
The layer that decides everything, and the one that can’t heal itself.
Up to One Point, and Then Never
Up to one point yes, past it never. A cavity is reversible until the enamel surface breaks, which is why a dentist saying watch it is not fobbing you off.
Craze Lines Are Not Cracks
Most lines people notice are craze lines and need nothing. A cracked tooth is a different object, and not every one of them ends in a crown.
Hydrochloric Acid, Six Hours a Night
Badly, and overnight. Stomach acid is far stronger than anything you drink, and the pattern it leaves is distinctive enough that a dentist can spot the cause.
Why Enamel Is Different From Every Other Tissue
Bone knits. Skin closes. Liver regrows. Enamel is the one tissue with no living cells in it at all, and that single fact built an entire profession.
Weird but true
The stuff about your body that sounds made up and isn’t.
The Pole Was an Advertisement for Surgery
The stripes are blood and bandages. For centuries the man who cut your hair also pulled your teeth, and the pole outside was the advertisement.
A Buffalo Dentist and a Very Bad Idea
Yes. A Buffalo dentist saw a man die touching a generator, decided it looked painless, and designed the electric chair out of the only chair he knew.
It Was Not Sugar. It Was Bread.
Hunter-gatherer skulls show cavity rates near zero. The rate jumps with farming, thousands of years before sugar, and the reason is one specific molecule.
Two Billion People Have It Right Now
Tooth decay, by a wide margin. Around two billion adults have it untreated right now, more than any infection, and it barely gets called a disease.
Ingredients
What’s actually in the tube, and which parts are doing the work.
Real, Rare, and Usually Something Else
Allergy to a filling is real and rare, with a specific presentation. Far more often the symptom blamed on it has a mechanical explanation that takes minutes to fix.
It Works by Making You Drool
Sugar-free gum after a meal is one of the few genuinely evidence-backed habits nobody bothers with. It works by making you produce saliva, not by cleaning anything.
A Small Real Effect and a Very Large Claim
Oil pulling trials find a small real effect on plaque and breath, and nothing on whitening. What it does not do is remove anything from your body.
The Burn Is Not the Working Part
The sting people read as proof it works is a solvent, not an active. Three kinds of mouthwash, and only one has strong evidence behind it.