Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by alakep 1124 days ago
I don’t brush my teeth because I don’t want the residual fluoride there.

It’s healthier to just slosh some vodka around to kill the germs (this wouldn’t work with kids, but hey they’ll lose their first teeth so who cares).

7 comments

I hope this is poorly conveyed satire. If not… good God.

Apart from the hygienic value in brushing, whether you agree with it or not, halitosis is an offensive smell to most of the public. Some of the worst breath I’ve ever had to smell came from alcoholics whose spirit of choice is vodka.

I’m very much anti fluoride in drinking water. And did not buy fluoride tooth paste for my kids until they learned to spit.

But 1) kids brush teeth to form a healthy habit, and protect their gums. Kids who do not brush teeth often develop gum disease which can cause tooth loss in the future as adults.

2) residual fluoride isn’t anything to worry about. Just spit the toothpaste out. If you’re super worried about fluoride then look for calcium fluoride toothpaste which is not poisonous.

3) sloshing vodka or whiskey around doesn’t remove plague from your teeth and you will suffer tooth decay regardless.

Whats the point of calcium fluoride in your toothpaste, the water solubility is very low I would suspect it to do almost nothing, could be wrong, never heard of this. Generally soluble salts like sodium or tin fluoride are used.
Sodium fluoride is a by product of aluminium production and is poisonous in high dosage. That’s why people are so anti fluoride.

Calcium fluoride is naturally occurring and was what was discovered to be so good. Well the water it was first discovered was contaminated with sodium fluoride from aluminium but the water that promoted the research was calcium fluoride.

But while sodium fluoride is poisonous in high levels. You could drink super high levels of calcium fluoride and be totally fine.

So if you’re super worried about sodium fluoride (which you shouldn’t be in tooth paste since you should spit it out and anything you swallowed is harmless as the dosage is so low) then the alternative is to source tooth paste with calcium fluoride. Which is harder to get but it does exist.

The fact that its produced from aluminum refining is irrelevant. Also everything is poisonous in high enough doses.

I understand that calcium fluoride isn't going to harm you because its not soluble, its just like eating some inert rocks but its basically pointless to add to toothpaste.

I'm not worried about fluoride, its very helpful for dental health, I did a bunch of my PhD on this.

> I'm not worried about fluoride, its very helpful for dental health

The parent comment I originally replied to is.

That will just dehydrate your mouth and kill all the bacteria which is supposed to be there. I joke about it with my neighbors when we have a boil water advisory, do not actually do it in real life.
Wait till you find out whats in mouthwash...
Floor cleaner?
> but hey they’ll lose their first teeth so who cares

Just like learning best practices in computer language-- fire up that REPL and don't do shit because it's not a real application.

This can also double as a sleep aid if you don’t spit it out.
I could smell this comment
whiskey work better apparently due to acidity
Neither are a good idea but vodka is virtually pure water and alcohol. Whisky has a bunch of other stuff in it, including sugar.
Whiskey is only very weakly acidic, likely having no impact compared to neutral unbuffered vodka.