Since you bring up fluoride—does anyone know the state of the literature on the effectiveness of fluoride treatments? I’ve been getting them for years. But with the recent trends towards PE owned dental practices and efforts to juice their profitability, I’m more and more skeptical of anything my dentist tries to sell me on.
I learned about Novamin a few years ago [0], and ordered BioMin Restore [1] to give it a try. I'm now a devoted customer. There are other Novamin/hydroxyapatite toothpastes, but I only have experience with this one brand.
I think this company's latest news is the version of their toothpaste that has fluoride [2] is now FDA-approved for sensitive teeth, so they're going to be able to sell it in the United States specifically labeled to help with sensitive teeth. If you live in Canada or the UK [3], it looks like you can order this now.
My HN comment, linked to as [0], was on a submission about the history of NovaMin - iirc it was originally used for soldiers in Vietnam, then came to be used for repair of teeth.
You can do your own experiment: $10 for a tube, plus $6 shipping. If you have sensitive teeth it’s worth a trial.
You can get high fluoride tooth paste (i.e. ~2% fluoride vs the 0.25% found in normal toothpaste) just by asking from most dentists. Costs about the same per bottle too.
Been doing this for years and have nearly perfect teeth due to it, flossing, and non alcohol based anti-gingivitis/anti-plaque mouth washing.
Also, people who think fluoride is bad for you or think it's not effective for teeth are exactly the kind of people I'm terrified of paying in the context of developing software. I really wish people would wear their love of homeopathy, and other psudo-scientific bullshit more clearly so they can be more easily avoided.
There's a big difference between applying a high concentration of fluoride to teeth where it's needed and then spitting the excess out vs swallowing a low concentration of flouride in drinking water and having most of it go where it isn't needed.
The issue is people (rightly imo) oppose the latter and throw the baby out with the bathwater
