There's a company that builds upon decades-old research, which has developed a one-time probiotic treatment to change your mouth's microbiome to contain bacteria that don't attack your teeth (causing caries), but instead produce a weak antibiotic that disrupts the metabolism of the bacteria that do.
The new bacteria that live in your mouth also live from sugar, so the company's recommendation for jump-starting their reproduction after the treatment is to eat candy.
@raucao imho not worth it, unless it is a derivative of a traditional practice. Easier to just clean your mouth regularly
@vbhide How would pretty much certainly getting rid of caries for the rest of your life not be "worth it"?
@raucao because of the associated risks you pointed out for example the gut biome. You're introducing a genetically modified foreign species into your eco system. Default position is thats dangerous.
@vbhide That should be the default position, but if it can be proven safe in this case (and we're talking about bacteria, not gene therapy), then it could have tremendous benefits relative to the risks.
@vbhide ... especially because it's recently been shown just how dangerous cavities can be to the rest of the body, including the brain (e.g. significantly increasing the risk for dementia).
@vbhide We're talking about changing the mouth biome in a way that it literally takes any kind of sugar that would usually cause harm and turns it into more protection.
@raucao idk, from what i have seen of health there is never a 100%. It's always tradeoffs..
@vbhide I think I was pretty clear about it being a risk-benefit calculation. And yes, of course you can get close to 100% of your desired result (and I explicitly put a qualifier in front of that number in my reply) with many vaccines and other treatments.
@vbhide Even if you're extremely strict about cutting out sugar, it's almost impossible to guard your teeth long-term without significant manual cleaning and maintenance efforts. If I can get rid of the risk altogether, almost 100%, then no amount of strict lifestyle and nutrition choices (which you can't even make all the time when traveling) could beat that.