This is also why people who bite their nails don't get cavities.
cluckindan · 1h ago
So, chewing on beetle exoskeletons would repair teeth enamel? Wonder if there is archaeological evidence of humans doing that. Edit: there seems to be plenty of evidence of eating insects but any dental association is probably incidental (pun not intended). Maybe we just haven’t been looking into the enamel for these structures.
droningparrot · 1h ago
Exoskeletons are usually made of chitin and not keratin. But maybe it works the same way
hawk_ · 16m ago
But why not chew on hair directly?
NKosmatos · 41m ago
That’s very good news, but we’ll have to wait a little bit:
>>> “keratin-based enamel regeneration could be made available to the public within the next two to three years.”
HPsquared · 35m ago
That's pretty unbelievably fast, actually.
Y_Y · 9m ago
You can just put hair in your blender today.
ffsm8 · 1m ago
I don't think you can blend hair into a paste you can then spread over your teeth.
This is about tooth paste, not a supplement
bobajeff · 3h ago
>While fluoride toothpastes are currently used to slow this process, keratin-based treatments were found to stop it completely.
That's really great I hope to use this some day.
ben_w · 3h ago
Was thinking about oddities of language recently (happens a lot since moving to Germany), specifically how "toothpaste" isn't made from teeth and "tomato paste" isn't something you rub onto a tomato.
So anyway, should we be calling this "hairpaste for teeth", or "toothpaste from hair"?
mcswell · 23m ago
This semantic variability in the relation between the two nouns of a compound is pretty common in compound nouns: "Y made of X", like "tomato paste", "Y used (somehow) for X" (like "toothpaste", "paintbrush", "electrical outlet"--here an adjective, but still a lexicalized phrase), "Y in X" ("treehouse"), "Y for X" ("doghouse"), "Y containing X" ("paint can"), not to mention metaphorical uses, with some etymological relation between X and Y ("moon shot", "crapshoot", "greenhouse"), and so on. Not to mention multi-word compounds, like "greenhouse gas"--but I'm sure you've seen lots of those in Germany :).
nkrisc · 1h ago
“Toothpaste” is the commonly accepted English word (in most English dialects, as far as I’m aware) for that paste which we use to clean our teeth with a brush. So I expect we’ll call it “toothpaste” regardless of the exact chemical composition.
If keratin is the active ingredient, I would suspect the exact source doesn’t really matter.
swores · 1h ago
I agree that the source won't be a reason for not calling it toothpaste, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's not called toothpaste anyway - that's a term they're using now as it makes it easy for people to imagine what they're talking about, but dentists don't call every type of gel/stuff that they apply to teeth "toothpaste", and as this will be about targeting repair rather than daily cleaning I suspect it will get a new name.
BobbyTables2 · 49m ago
Indeed.
We expect olive oil to be made from real olives, but not baby oil…
tacker2000 · 16m ago
There was some joke where they showed a sign saying “Kinder Kebab, €2”
tchalla · 17m ago
Isn’t it Zahnpasta in German too?
iaw · 23m ago
I recently started using a nano-hydroxyapatite based toothpaste. It can't restore enamel but does better at remineralization than fluoride, hopefully it will be a good intermediate for me until something regenerative is available.
Funny that the first picture on the website is a bald man, I guess he hasn't tested it himself?
dkiebd · 1h ago
Why do you think he ran out of hair?
jncfhnb · 50m ago
Perhaps he had hair before the harvesting
MrGilbert · 25m ago
As you can see, he has a beard, so…
vhodges · 3h ago
Did they mean route as in path to a solution? Or root as the source? Seems odd.
altairprime · 8m ago
[delayed]
brnaftr361 · 1h ago
Root as in seed [crystal], as in nucleation point is what I would surmise.
__alexs · 1h ago
Dentistry pun? Root as in the root of a tooth?
swayvil · 46m ago
Once upon a time we ate our squirrels and wildebeests with the hair still on. Not the most pleasant of experiences but evolution exploited it for profit as it always does. Then we started skinning our meat and our teeth rotted. It's like having 2 project managers that don't talk.
ymolodtsov · 39m ago
Not really. People started having issues with teeth when we switched to farming and went from a diverse diet to a pretty poor one (grain, grain, grain).
1970-01-01 · 30m ago
Sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and acidic drinks such as coffee and cola does almost all the damage.
swayvil · 38m ago
Correlation causation etc. I'm gonna start eating whole mice. It's a nice compromise. They're velvety.
dfawcus · 14m ago
Or even just eat Rabbits, as they're already a common recognised food animal?
ammanley · 9m ago
I recommend rats, we have them in surplus around here-parts.
mcswell · 20m ago
There's a scene in the 1983 movie "Never Cry Wolf" about that. Apparently they taste better with ketchup.
This is about tooth paste, not a supplement
That's really great I hope to use this some day.
So anyway, should we be calling this "hairpaste for teeth", or "toothpaste from hair"?
If keratin is the active ingredient, I would suspect the exact source doesn’t really matter.
We expect olive oil to be made from real olives, but not baby oil…
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