Microbes that cause cavities can form superorganisms able to ‘crawl’

I think a very interesting field of inquiry into oral microbiota is a broad evolutionary approach. There was a study published in Nature Genetics[0] showing big changes in oral microbiota corresponding with Neolithic and Industrial dietary change. Modern oral microbiota are markedly less diverse than historic populations and the, much more developed, study of the gut microbiome shows us that very microbial diversity very often corresponds with usually-commensal microbes becoming pathogenic. It seems that cariogenic bacteria became dominant, apparently during the Industrial Revolution.[0] But we know that pre-Neolithic hominins very rarely had caries.[1] Despite affecting anywhere between 60-90% of schoolchildren in industrialized nations, less than 3% of P. robustus specimens examined had dental caries.[1]

What's MOST fascinating to me is that this dance isn't just our mouths vs the microbiomes. There's now considerable evidence that it is more likely to be the host response to the bacteria that leads to the tissue changes noted in gingivitis and periodontitis[2]

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3996550/

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/000399...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3692012/

What do you think of mouth washes that contains Cetylpyridinium Chloride (CPC)? I was reading they may help inactivate SARS-Cov-2 in saliva. I wonder though about (1) killing everything in the mouth or (2) providing oral probiotics (I take one from Life Extension).

"Cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC), a quaternary ammonium compound, which is present in mouthwash, is effective against bacteria, fungi, and enveloped viruses. ... Interestingly, we found that low concentrations of CPC suppressed the infectivity of human isolated SARS-CoV-2 strains (Wuhan, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma) even in saliva."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-18367-6

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34282982/

A fascinating field of inquiry. Digestive systems and their inhabitants have evolved over millions of years.

I recently shifted my mindset to feed not just for me, but also for the ~2kg of microbiota [1] inhabiting my digestive system. Has been great for my health.

[1] https://www.racgp.org.au/afp/2017/april/the-gut-microbiome/

Doesn't arginine also stimulate the herpes virus? Seems that integrating it into diets could have the opposite of the intended effect for some people.

Interesting company! Are there any commercial oral care products with arginine in them? What’s your opinion on the toothpaste with lysine supplements and the oral probiotics for gum care?

1. I heard that oral health either predicts or is a causal effect in dementia and Alzheimer’s. What’s the mechanism?

2. Should we be having micro biome implants? And more ridiculously, but not really, should we have “celebrity micro biome” products?

Scared of biofilms? Just take ambroxol, acetylcysteine and Loratadine.

I don’t know much about this but doesn’t arginine increase likelihood of cold sore outbreaks? This would be an unfortunate side effect of encouraging people to consume more arginine.

What do you recommend as a generic approach to improve the oral microbiota without test?

Is there an ETA on global shipping?

It is my understanding (from reading Kiss Your Dentist Goodbye) that bacteria is seeded from primary caregivers in the first year of life, and it can be difficult to modify them after this, but it’s possible.

My sister has impeccable dental hygiene and many cavities. Her children have had anesthesia because they needed so much dental work. I’m the kind of person who would floss once a year and never had a cavity until I was 28 and drinking many acidic diet sodas. I started the book’s regimen using xylitol, eating basic foods like chocolate and cheese after acidic foods and drinks, took Florassist dental probiotic and stayed on top of cleanings and have had less problems since. My child is okay so far despite some not so great habits. I get extra cleanings that first year and make sure other caregivers do too.

Any chance they are mouth-breathing at night? It can lead to a shift in pH in the mouth which may increase risk of cavities [1]

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26666708/

Could be something has changed, or else something else is at work. I had wretched teeth throughout my youth and through my late 20s. I have 8 or 9 crowns maybe 16 teeth, a few with fillings; some were pulled for orthodontic work. Then about 10 years ago I stopped regular dental hygiene practices: I brush my teeth once a day (most days) and rarely floss. Haven't had a "watch" in years since I dropped the practice of flossing once a day and brushing twice. My breath isn't foul smelling, either, except when I have tonsil stones (which is rare these days). Maybe for me the hygiene disrupted whatever was in my mouth that was disrupting the bad bacteria.

> But I cannot shake the feeling that something significant has changed in the last 30 years.

This doesn't make sense unless everyone around you also suddenly got more cavities recently. If you ask around more, you'll find that there have always been people with good hygiene that get more cavities, and others that don't seem to get them despite poor habits. It may be related your specific oral bacterial biome, or diet.

My teeth were always complimented by the dentist as being beautiful. This is despite plenty of juice, candy, snacks, no special diet, etc, outside of regular dental cleanings and making sure to spend proper time brushing each tooth. I’m 24.

Maybe something else is at play?

Maybe you're doing too much and that's resulting in an unhealthy oral microbiota? I would imagine these microbes have a symbiotic relationship with us, similar to gut bacteria.

> I cannot shake the feeling that something significant has changed in the last 30 years.

Try the past few hundred years: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3996550/

> The composition of oral microbiota remained surprisingly constant between Neolithic and Medieval times, after which (the now ubiquitous) cariogenic bacteria became dominant, apparently during the Industrial Revolution. Modern oral microbiota are markedly less diverse than historic populations, which might be contributing to chronic oral (and other) disease in post-industrial lifestyles.

Have you moved to an area with a different water source than your childhood? Like switching from city water to well water, or vice versa?

I had the opposite experience. 9 cavities in my youth, and my brother had more. My two sons, 7 and 10, have perfect dental health. We are vegan and do eat less sweets than others, but it's not zero, and there is significant sugar in our diet. We've never used fluoride toothpaste but we have been very rigorous in teaching them how to properly floss and brush, and have almost never missed doing it.

I would have thought something changed in the opposite direction in the last 30 years.

Vitamin K? Do they eat their greens?

Natural sources of K include kale, collard greens, spinach, turnip greens, brussels sprouts, broccoli, asparagus, lettuce, sauerkraut, soybeans,edamame, pickles, pumpkin, pine nuts and blueberries.

When young I willingly ate the last two on the list if they were available. Only the command "Eat your vegetables!" at dinner made me partake otherwise.

I visit the dentist once every 5 years or so.

No cavities so far. Last time i checked I was 25 years old. I brush my teeth once a day.

I consider myself lucky, since my siblings have had a couple cavities. My mother attributes this to her being very careful when we were babies to not share any spoons to give us some bacteria from saliva.

My 6yo have had zero cavities so far. Me too had none for years, since we greatly reduced raw sugar from our diet to almost zero. No snacks, lots of fruits, sugar free yogurts etc.

Try giving your kids xylitol candies/mints (available at amazon and many health food stores), initially after every meal - you can probably reduce the frequency/amount later.

There are xylitol chewing gum, but I've read articles about kids dislike for chewing gum these days - so candies/mints may be more palatable.

search for "xylitol tooth decay" for explanation about its effects.

Excerpts from one such link: https://bellharbourdental.com/cavities/xylitol-reverse-tooth...

Mutans streptococci (MS or S. mutans) are a bacterium in plaque and saliva that are major contributors to tooth decay and oral disease.

...xylitol reduces the levels of MS in the mouth. It essentially starves the MS bacterium by not providing any energy to it when metabolized. Since xylitol is a non-nutritive sugar the MS bacteria spend energy to metabolize it and in return receive no energy gain from it. It’s a sunken cost and the S. mutans cannot keep growing. This reduces the population of S. mutans and impedes the ability of plaque and bacteria to adhere to our teeth. It also decreases the amount of lactic acid present in our mouth, making our teeth less vulnerable to decay. Curiously xylitol does all of this without affecting the other beneficial, or overall, flora of our mouths.

Another amazing find has been that when a mother of a newborn uses xylitol, that child’s teeth prove to be more resilient against cavities as they develop. Children have a dramatically lower risk of cavities when their mothers use xylitol starting 3-6 months after childbirth and continue using it until all their baby teeth are formed around the age of 2.

Xylitol comes in many forms but the most common delivery method is through chewing gum. Chewing xylitol gum for 3 weeks or more provides not only short but also long-term reductions in S. mutans levels! Even just the action of chewing the gum helps to rinse away lactic acids.

In order to be effective against bacteria the optimal intake levels are at least 6-10g of xylitol per day. Xylitol gums range from having .75g – 1g of xylitol per piece. So make sure to check the gum that you’re buying to make sure it contains closer to the ~1g/piece mark. In order to reach those levels you will need to chew more than one piece at a time a few times a day. After meals is a great routine to get into, but make sure to wait for at least 20 minutes after eating food before chewing xylitol gum.

Is it really a big deal though? Their teeth are going to be replaced anyway. If it happens in the adult teeth, then worry. Serious question -- I don't have children and it is tough to tell the difference between 'actual problem' and 'parents worry too much'.

People have varying quality tooth enamel. My friend is meticulous with oral care yet still gets cavities. Her brother-in-law is her dentist (and mine). He said there's not much she can do to improve it.

> But I cannot shake the feeling that something significant has changed in the last 30 years.

Anecdotal, of course, but I got my first cavity at age 30 several months after dramatically improving my oral hygiene.

I could be that their enamel is not strong enough. This could change once they get their adult teeth. Have you checked with your dentist that they are receiving enough fluoride?

What are the dentist recommended foods & snacks?

antibiotics can do this.

Face masks during Covid. Massive contribution to cavities in young children.

Well done.

> Are we a result of similar microorganisms?

Many of the stages required to imagine how life went from solo and unicellular, to cooperative unicellular, to specialized unicellular verging on multicellular, to full-specialization unable to survive independently as a single cell, exists in some species or other today.

E.g. Dictyostelium is an amoeba. (Amoebas are not bacteria; they're eukaryotes like animals or fungi -- sexual reproduction and an encased nucleus.) Individual cells can survive independently, hunting for much smaller bacteria and nutrients. But in the presence of many other cells of its species, chemical communication occurs to trigger and guide cell differentiation. Some at the exterior of the cluster change into a protective shell, like skin, or a macro cell-wall. Others specialize into ion transfer between the interior and exterior environment. Some are even triggered to kill themselves during the reproductive phase, providing nutrients to their kin.

It's on the line between multicellular, and not. Parts can float off and re-join. I think something like that was the intermediate stage in the evolution of multicellular life like animals, but there's many other competing hypotheses and none seem to be universally accepted.

> Are we a result of similar microorganisms?

I think the answer to your question is probably "yes." I listened to an interesting show on PBS radio 30 Oct. about what happened 2Byo that jump-started evolution. I can't find the show online, which explained in depth, but this short and patronizing video[1] covers the gist of it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhF5G2k45vY

Funghi can assemble themselves into a super-organism.

Also, for fun: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-20080-3

Get "The computational beauty of nature", too. And its repo.

https://github.com/gwf/CBofN

> Are we a result of similar microorganisms?

I'm no biologist, but from what I've read: Probably not. A really important fact about multicellular life is that each cell is genetically identical to any other cell in the organism. Otherwise, different cells will start competing with one another, until the relationship falls apart. In nature, symbiosis only works because each cell has an independent means of reproduction, and that always puts a limit to how close the cooperation can be (nothing close to forming multicellular life).