3 ms·

I wonder about brushing without toothpaste?

by frederickcook 16y ago

stavrianos 16y ago
Betcha that only works if you match an ancestral diet.
- bradleyland 16y ago
  In my opinion, people give a little bit too much credit to living like our ancestors. A quick review of the historical facts show that we now live longer than we ever have [1]. I'm not saying this means everything we do today is better for us than what our ancestors did, but bathing is a matter of hygiene, and personal hygiene came along with the wonderful improvement we like to call indoor plumbing. I wouldn't dismiss its impact on our longevity out of hand. Bathing regularly -- with soap -- has benefits, such as cleaning dirt from your skin better than plain water. Dirt; which is the home of such wonderful things as anthrax. I hate to use a scare tactic, but anthrax, as well as a host of other nasty vermin like MRSA, live in the soil. I know because my family owns a landscaping business, which means a lot of time spent in the dirt, and by consequence, knowledge of such infections. Bathing is good. Soap is good. Anti-bacterial-soap-with-ultra-lathering-action (tm) is probably a bit of an overkill, but I'm not convinced that it will be the end of our species. On the topic of brushing your teeth and the ancestral diet, it's worth considering that our hunter/gatherer ancestors (Paleolithic) -- those who enjoyed the diet most frequently referred to as "ancestral" -- only lived to see 33 years of age on average. Without refined sugars and acidic soda, the primary danger to your teeth was biting down on a the hard pit of a fruit, or having them knocked out by prey that turned on you. Basically, you didn't need your teeth to last you 60+ years, so consider that before abandoning toothpaste on a naturalist kick. I don't mean to be entirely dismissive, because I frequently question some of the practices we engage in daily, but the outcome of my questioning always involves the application of some common sense. Abandoning soap and toothpaste defies that principle. 1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy... PS - Yes, I'm citing Wikipedia. It, in turn, has many citations for the fact I'm claiming.
  - fingerprinter 16y ago
    "In my opinion, people give a little bit too much credit to living like our ancestors. A quick review of the historical facts show that we now live longer than we ever have [1]. I'm not saying this means everything we do today is better for us than what our ancestors did, but bathing is a matter of hygiene, and personal hygiene came along with the wonderful improvement we like to call indoor plumbing. I wouldn't dismiss its impact on our longevity out of hand." I'm not a huge fan of the life-expectancy argument. Goto any hospital or old folks homes and see how many people are basically the walking-dead. There are patients who basically died 20 years ago but can afford to be kept alive for quite some time. I'm not saying we should live like a caveman, rather just that I'm not a fan of the life-expectancy argument b/c I think there are too many holes in it. And remember, most people are not living longer b/c of things like diet, nor did our paleo ancestors die b/c of diet. We are living longer b/c of medicine, advances in science and other things....people died in the paleo era from sprained ankles. We can't readily compare them. It just isn't fruitful to compare the two eras b/c we can't control the variables to make a valid conclusion. However, using common sense, modern medical findings on diet, we can deduce that eating like our ancestor is actually quite beneficial and coupled with our modern medicine we can get the best of both worlds.
    - bradleyland 16y ago
      Hey, we agree! :) Notice I didn't say anything about diet. What I mentioned was hygiene. I also agree that comparing paleo man to current day man is about as useful as comparing the failure-modes a Model A Ford to a Toyota Prius. They operate in entirely different environments. The analysis of life-expectancy and quality-of-life gets far more interesting when you move in to a period of more recent history, when humans stopped dying of things like tripping over their rock pile and started congregating in groups, dying of something they contracted from the pile of poo they left in the gutter. All of the sudden we start seeing disease and infection becoming a major player in bringing us to our end. In this case, something as simple as soap can help extend our lives by drastically increasing the effectiveness of bathing. This is where we get in to some more "advanced" common sense. I don't think the goal ought to be eradicating bacteria from our bodies. If you set out to kill all the bacteria on your body, you will fail. It is simply impossible to kill all the bacteria without killing your own cells. This means that any remaining bacteria must have avoided an early demise either through resistance to your agent of bacteria-death, or adapted some way to hide. In either case, the bacteria is better equipped to survive the next round of cleansing, and will happily go forth and replicate. The end result is a whole heard of stronger bacteria. See also, MRSA. Backing up, my point is that I'm right there with you. As silly as it is to try to drag our entire paleo life in to the 21st century, I think it's foolish to accept at face value the messages we're bombarded with by product marketing on a daily basis. They want us scared of bacteria on our bodies so we'll buy their new Super-ultra-cleansing-action-anti-bacterial soap instead of their competitors Just-ultra-anti-bacterial soap. Accept that for what it is, but don't write off soap altogether. It's a game, and the winning strategy is to keep your head and as you said, "get the best of both worlds."
- btmorex 16y ago
  Not sure why that would matter that much. Our ancestors experienced tooth decay too. Of course their adult teeth only had to last 20-25 years or so.
naner 16y ago
Not something I'd experiment with. Your teeth don't get dry, greasy, or smelly from cleaning too much and you only have one chance to properly take care of your teeth.
fingerprinter 16y ago
Quite a few people actively don't use toothpaste in the paleo community. Many use baking soda or something else like that. Not that I would advocate that, I'm just saying.
dpatru 16y ago
I regularly brush without toothpaste. It works fine. The toothbrush tends to squeak a little when the teeth are clean. It might help that I'm vegetarian and have a pretty simple diet.
eel 16y ago
I'm not sure. I think it depends a lot on the diet. Here's a related article about that and the accompanying HN comments. http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/03/reversing-tooth-decay.html http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/03/reversing-toot... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=543293 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=543293
- puredemo 16y ago
  I just use water and did it both when I was vegan and when I moved to a paleo diet. No noticeable change.
kiddo 16y ago
Traveling through India I saw many people using what I think are called neem sticks. I don't know much about the science or efficacy, but if you're curious, explore away.
puredemo 16y ago
Yep, I quit using toothpaste along with the soap and shampoo, works fine. I just use water and an electric brush, and occasional flossing.

I wonder about brushing without toothpaste?

stavrianos 16y ago

Betcha that only works if you match an ancestral diet.

bradleyland 16y ago
In my opinion, people give a little bit too much credit to living like our ancestors. A quick review of the historical facts show that we now live longer than we ever have [1]. I'm not saying this means everything we do today is better for us than what our ancestors did, but bathing is a matter of hygiene, and personal hygiene came along with the wonderful improvement we like to call indoor plumbing. I wouldn't dismiss its impact on our longevity out of hand. Bathing regularly -- with soap -- has benefits, such as cleaning dirt from your skin better than plain water. Dirt; which is the home of such wonderful things as anthrax. I hate to use a scare tactic, but anthrax, as well as a host of other nasty vermin like MRSA, live in the soil. I know because my family owns a landscaping business, which means a lot of time spent in the dirt, and by consequence, knowledge of such infections. Bathing is good. Soap is good. Anti-bacterial-soap-with-ultra-lathering-action (tm) is probably a bit of an overkill, but I'm not convinced that it will be the end of our species. On the topic of brushing your teeth and the ancestral diet, it's worth considering that our hunter/gatherer ancestors (Paleolithic) -- those who enjoyed the diet most frequently referred to as "ancestral" -- only lived to see 33 years of age on average. Without refined sugars and acidic soda, the primary danger to your teeth was biting down on a the hard pit of a fruit, or having them knocked out by prey that turned on you. Basically, you didn't need your teeth to last you 60+ years, so consider that before abandoning toothpaste on a naturalist kick. I don't mean to be entirely dismissive, because I frequently question some of the practices we engage in daily, but the outcome of my questioning always involves the application of some common sense. Abandoning soap and toothpaste defies that principle. 1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy... PS - Yes, I'm citing Wikipedia. It, in turn, has many citations for the fact I'm claiming.
- fingerprinter 16y ago
  "In my opinion, people give a little bit too much credit to living like our ancestors. A quick review of the historical facts show that we now live longer than we ever have [1]. I'm not saying this means everything we do today is better for us than what our ancestors did, but bathing is a matter of hygiene, and personal hygiene came along with the wonderful improvement we like to call indoor plumbing. I wouldn't dismiss its impact on our longevity out of hand." I'm not a huge fan of the life-expectancy argument. Goto any hospital or old folks homes and see how many people are basically the walking-dead. There are patients who basically died 20 years ago but can afford to be kept alive for quite some time. I'm not saying we should live like a caveman, rather just that I'm not a fan of the life-expectancy argument b/c I think there are too many holes in it. And remember, most people are not living longer b/c of things like diet, nor did our paleo ancestors die b/c of diet. We are living longer b/c of medicine, advances in science and other things....people died in the paleo era from sprained ankles. We can't readily compare them. It just isn't fruitful to compare the two eras b/c we can't control the variables to make a valid conclusion. However, using common sense, modern medical findings on diet, we can deduce that eating like our ancestor is actually quite beneficial and coupled with our modern medicine we can get the best of both worlds.
  - bradleyland 16y ago
    Hey, we agree! :) Notice I didn't say anything about diet. What I mentioned was hygiene. I also agree that comparing paleo man to current day man is about as useful as comparing the failure-modes a Model A Ford to a Toyota Prius. They operate in entirely different environments. The analysis of life-expectancy and quality-of-life gets far more interesting when you move in to a period of more recent history, when humans stopped dying of things like tripping over their rock pile and started congregating in groups, dying of something they contracted from the pile of poo they left in the gutter. All of the sudden we start seeing disease and infection becoming a major player in bringing us to our end. In this case, something as simple as soap can help extend our lives by drastically increasing the effectiveness of bathing. This is where we get in to some more "advanced" common sense. I don't think the goal ought to be eradicating bacteria from our bodies. If you set out to kill all the bacteria on your body, you will fail. It is simply impossible to kill all the bacteria without killing your own cells. This means that any remaining bacteria must have avoided an early demise either through resistance to your agent of bacteria-death, or adapted some way to hide. In either case, the bacteria is better equipped to survive the next round of cleansing, and will happily go forth and replicate. The end result is a whole heard of stronger bacteria. See also, MRSA. Backing up, my point is that I'm right there with you. As silly as it is to try to drag our entire paleo life in to the 21st century, I think it's foolish to accept at face value the messages we're bombarded with by product marketing on a daily basis. They want us scared of bacteria on our bodies so we'll buy their new Super-ultra-cleansing-action-anti-bacterial soap instead of their competitors Just-ultra-anti-bacterial soap. Accept that for what it is, but don't write off soap altogether. It's a game, and the winning strategy is to keep your head and as you said, "get the best of both worlds."
btmorex 16y ago
Not sure why that would matter that much. Our ancestors experienced tooth decay too. Of course their adult teeth only had to last 20-25 years or so.

naner 16y ago

Not something I'd experiment with. Your teeth don't get dry, greasy, or smelly from cleaning too much and you only have one chance to properly take care of your teeth.

fingerprinter 16y ago

Quite a few people actively don't use toothpaste in the paleo community. Many use baking soda or something else like that. Not that I would advocate that, I'm just saying.

dpatru 16y ago

I regularly brush without toothpaste. It works fine. The toothbrush tends to squeak a little when the teeth are clean. It might help that I'm vegetarian and have a pretty simple diet.

eel 16y ago

I'm not sure. I think it depends a lot on the diet. Here's a related article about that and the accompanying HN comments. http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/03/reversing-tooth-decay.html http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/03/reversing-toot... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=543293 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=543293

puredemo 16y ago
I just use water and did it both when I was vegan and when I moved to a paleo diet. No noticeable change.

kiddo 16y ago

Traveling through India I saw many people using what I think are called neem sticks. I don't know much about the science or efficacy, but if you're curious, explore away.

puredemo 16y ago

Yep, I quit using toothpaste along with the soap and shampoo, works fine. I just use water and an electric brush, and occasional flossing.