Fluorinex device claims to protect teeth against cavities for five years

We're not sure if we believe the claims being offered here (mainly because we don't understand the science behind it), but Israeli company Fluorinex says it has developed a method for protecting teeth against cavities through the use of mild electrical currents. The system involves slathering some special gel inside a form-fitting mouth tray, inserting into the mouth, and zapping the tray with six to nine volts from a battery or wall socket (two models are available-unfortunately we couldn't find a pic of the one that tethers the person's mouth to a live outlet). According to news site IsraCast, the five-year protective layer is formed by "an efficient ion exchange process through an electro-chemical reaction in which fluor ions displace the hydroxide ions at the outer layer of the tooth." Anyone care to help us translate? Once Fluorinex gets the kinks out of this system, you should be able power-up your choppers with a quick visit to the dentist- and then it's five years of pure no brushing, no flossing, opening-beers-with-your-teeth heaven.

[Via IsraCast and Slashdot]

[JamesO @ Feb 3rd 2006 7:12AM]

Sounds a little like powder coating your teeth!! Your teeth have a natural positive charge, and i'm guessing the electric current will cause the gel to have a positive charge causing the gel to weld itself to your teeth. (I'm sure someone will correct me if i'm wrong!) Here's betting that there will be multi coloured options so that you can coordinate your teeth with your outfit!

[odontologist @ Feb 3rd 2006 7:32AM]

I'm skeptical. I didn't look at the site too much, but this is just a variation of a fluoride treatment. I'll look into it more and may repost but here's the skinny. When you go to the dentist and the hygeinist gives you that tray of ever-so-pleasant goo, you are getting a fluoride treatment. The goo has a fluoride ion in it that when applied to your teeth replaces an ion in the mineralized surface layer of the tooth's enamel. This fluorodated structure is less susceptible to decay. Fluoride can also remineralize small cavities, reducing the amount of fillings needed.

The fluoride ion also messes up cavity causing bacteria. This bacteria likes to live in acid and poops out acid as it eats sugar from your diet. Therefore, when you eat your mouth goes to an acidic environment, the bacteria are happy and they eat the sugars in your food. Finnally they poop their acid all over your teeth. This acid dissolves tooth structure. When destruction reaches a point, the tooth structure has no support and BAM! you have a cavity. Soda pop is especcially bad since it is acidic and has lots of sugar in it.

Normally, you body can balance out the acid, but it takes ~20 minutes to do so. If you snack constantly or sip on soda all day, you keep you mouth acidic destroying your teeth. By eating 3 meals you give you body an opportunity to contol the acid.

The key to preventing cavities from happening in the first place is contolling one's diet. Combined with good plaque control--plaque is a colony of bacteria--and regular visits to the dentist you'll be in great shape.

I hope this helps.

[Andrew @ Feb 3rd 2006 7:35AM]

In my college inorganic chemistry course last semester, I had to answer a question about why flourine toothpaste works to make the enamel of your teeth incredibly strong. Basically, the elements in the 2nd to last column in the period table, the halogens [F Cl Br I], are inversely reactive depending on their state. If the element is in F2, Cl2, I2 form [2 = subscript], the most likely element to react is at the top, F. If they are in F-, Cl-, I- form, it's the inverse and F- is the worst.

So, you put F2 [Flourine] in toothpaste. It's way more reactive than the OH- in your enamel [Tooth Enamel � Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2] so it displaces the OH- and becomes F- [Flouride] which then reacts with pretty much nothing, because F- in principle sucks at reactions, where F2 rocks out.

My novice guess is that the current is used to aid the reaction between the Flourine in the gel and your tooth enamel - thus an "electrochemical reaction." How, exactly, you're supposed to stay plugged in to the wall after 8 hours of tossing and turning, I'm not sure, but it's a cool idea and I think has decent potential. My dad's teeth are yellow now, after years of living in the country, but they were stark white when he had the Flourine of the city water to help him out.

Anyways, hope that makes sense without a picture of the table. Normally I had visual aids ;)

[n8 @ Feb 3rd 2006 7:39AM]

Between the custom car paint guy and the odontologist (if that's a real word) I think there's an explanation in there - even if it is still hooey, I feel much better informed.

[odontologist @ Feb 3rd 2006 7:51AM]

Yellow comes from organic stains accumulating in the teeth and the deposition of dentin into the tooth's pulp chamber as the pulp shrinks with age. Dentin is yellow, so as it thickens, the tooth takes on a yellower hue. The organic stains are from C=C bonds(carbon-carbon double bonds)that have accumulated in the tooth. Bleaching (like Zoom!) can lighten both of the above, ie. breaking the C=C into a single bond. This makes the stain clear so your teeth look white again.

[Nick Postagulous @ Feb 3rd 2006 7:57AM]

Pretty brilliant. See, your teeth are made of hydroxyapatite (might be a slight mispelling there) which is water soluable to a degree. The whole brushing with fluoride is to gradually change your teeth from hydroxyapatite to hydroxyfluorite, which is non-soluable and very hard stuff. So, best thing to do with normal toothpaste tech is not rinse your mouth and let the reaction time be longer, since we can't really mess with the concentration. This is literally electroplating your teeth. Pretty smart. Not that I'm interested in the thing though.

[Neil T. @ Feb 3rd 2006 8:48AM]

I can't be the only one who thinks that the device looks like a weirdly-shaped USB memory stick, can I?

[Fabio @ Feb 3rd 2006 9:01AM]

When I was very young (30 years ago), here in Italy, they used to apply a free treatment to all asking families called ionophoresis (it was "ionoforesi" in italian, I hope the translation is correct). It was carried out in schools and it was exactly what You describe. Not such a new idea!

[kevin @ Feb 3rd 2006 9:08AM]

What a pompous bunch of pretentious babble from our inorganic friend. So without the esoteric who-ha, heres it is... bacteria in your mouth converts foods to acids, acids convert the hard components of your teeth into a softer form, flouride changes it back. Electricity "could" help flouride do this

[GunForHire @ Feb 3rd 2006 9:10AM]

There has to be a USB powered version of this some time.

[t.p. @ Feb 3rd 2006 9:31AM]

i wanna see someone try this for 5 years w/o brushing their teeth and see how destroyed their teeth are after 5 years.

[Oliver in Seattle @ Feb 3rd 2006 9:47AM]

your teeth will be nice and hard as they rot out of your skull from gingivitis/periostitis, which this device (and all the fluoride in the world) will do nothing to prevent.

[Jaime Jones @ Feb 3rd 2006 9:49AM]

C'est Bon! Tres Bien, et voila "clean teeth forever".

[Chris @ Feb 3rd 2006 12:55PM]

"What a pompous bunch of pretentious babble from our inorganic friend. So without the esoteric who-ha, heres it is..."

How was it pompous or pretentious? Personally I found it to be informative. I think you are the one with the problem. He was giving a chemist's answer as to how flourine helps teeth. I guess you prefer everything to be dumbed down.

[kevin @ Feb 3rd 2006 1:42PM]

I found inorganic guy pretentious not in the fact that he tried to explain the chemistry, but that he got it wrong. Fluorine (F2) is a gas, a very poisonous one at that. You don't want it in your toothpaste. toothpaste contains sodium flouride (NaF) which is a salt and is what forms flouride anions (f-) and sodium cations (Na+).Fluoride then reacts with the enamel damaged by acids and remeneralizes it. And by the way I am a chemist, with a degree and not just a student who took a class. no offense inorganic guy i know you were just trying to help.

[odontologist @ Feb 3rd 2006 5:15PM]

Addition to #2...
I re-read my post and I want to make it clear that IMHO I don't subscibe to this product working better than conventional topical fluoride treatments. I need to see INDEPENDENT research from someone like Clinical Research Associates before I lose my skepticism.

Secondly, my fluoride explanation is for the conventional fluoride treatment that people have been getting all their lives-not Fluorinex. I don't think I made that clear.

As a side note, we have fluoridated water to get fluoride into the entire tooth structure as fluorapatite. This works until age 7 when the adult crowns are fully developed, since typically the crown is the portion of the tooth exposed to the oral environment. It's the surface fluoride that becomes key later for demineralization resistance and remineralization along with the ion's anti-microbial properties. In fact, research has shown that a fluoridated water supply can half the cavity rate for a specific population.

That being said, don't have your kids swallow toothpaste to get them extra fluoride. The 1ppm city water concentration is adequate to add cavity resistance while preserving appearance. Aesthetics will be compromised if children are exposed to significantly greater fluoride concentrations due to flurosis. This can be mild causing hyper-white spotting or more severe with brown/black staining and/or pitting of the teeth. The end result is that the kid won't have cavities, but his teeth won't look pleasing.

Normal fluoride therapy won't cause fluorosis so don't be scared of what I wrote above so long as you follow doctor's orders.

[num10ck @ Feb 3rd 2006 5:41PM]

do some searching online, and there's all sorts of claims that flouride is toxic, perhaps deadly after long enough periods of consumption. any educated thoughts on that?

[odontologist @ Feb 3rd 2006 7:05PM]

Correct dosage prevents poisoning. Normal dosing is 1-3 MILLIgrams/day. A fatal dose is 5-10 grams. It's important to keep in mind that ANY substance can be poisonous in a high enough dose.

Chronically while its possible to undergoe crippling skeletal changes there have only been 5 cases reported in the literature over decades of time. And this is with exposure well beyond the limits of theraputic fluoride use.

The big acute problem is fatal poisoning while the chronic exposure issue is the fluorosis I've covered above.

Be careful with how much faith you put into info you find on the web. Many times you'll find some fanatic's point of view where data is misrepresented to side with their "cause." Remember: Figures don't lie, but liars figure.

BTW I'm a dentist in case you guys didn't catch on to that yet.

[sr @ Feb 3rd 2006 11:26PM]

Yeah, this doesn't look like anything better than regular fluoride treatment. It could be pretty efficient in getting conversion on the tooth surface from regular tooth material to the fluoridated tooth material but IMHO it simply cannot last more than a week or so as increased protection to simply drinking fluoridated water.

Oddly enough I just had my Cariology (the study of tooth decay) block exam today and fluoride treatment can be good, but overdoing it could cause fluorosis.

The 5 year claim IMHO is bunk. You will ruin your teeth if you go by that figure and neglect your teeth.

Fluoride doesn't make your teeth any harder but it allows your teeth to survive more acid environments better. Right after you eat the bacteria on your teeth cause a damaging acidic environment on your teeth and it rapidly goes back to normal. Teeth treated with fluoride can survive this acidic environment a little better so the exposure time to dangerous levels of acid is reduced.

The second thing fluoridated teeth can do is that they can poison bacteria that try to dissolve the minerals of your teeth by infusing those bacteria with tiny amounts of hyrdrofluoric acid as they try to dissolve your teeth. So they bacterial numbers become smaller and their potential to do damage is reduced.

Regular water floridation is good enough for most people and very safe. Only in cases of high risk individuals do they get high fluoride concentration mouthwashes to use 5 times a day and a high concentration fluoride toothpaste to use at night. By high concentration I mean higher than stuff you get at the grocery store but very far away from toxic levels. We're talking about 5000 parts per million of fluoride.

As for kids you really do have to be careful that they don't swallow toothpaste and that is why you have make sure they use only a tiny bit of paste just in case. If you have kids that tend to swallow their toothpaste then you should actually consider using a non-fluoridated paste until they kick that habit.

[JP @ Feb 4th 2006 2:09AM]

Just as a note, I keep reading statements about how you just need to drink the water and you will be well off. That only works in areas if high population. In places like Vermont. Only those that live in the cities or within the villages of larger towns get treated water. Those who live in all the other areas (~70% of the state by area) have wells and could use a better fluoride system. You should see some of the people I went to school with.

[nyscof @ Feb 4th 2006 8:18AM]

There's one big problem with this device - even if it does work as it states.

Fluoride in enamel is not inversely related to tooth decay, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control

"The prevalence of dental caries in a population is not inversely related to the concentration of fluoride in enamel, and a higher concentration of enamel fluoride is not necessarily more efficacious in preventing dental caries."
SOURCE: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2001). Recommendations for Using Fluoride to Prevent and Control Dental Caries in the United States. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 50(RR14): 1-42.

[doug @ Feb 4th 2006 2:01PM]

I get prescription toothpaste from my doctor, which is essentially just higher percentage of floride in the toothpaste. I think it is something like 5 times as much floride 1.25 percent or something like that verse something like 0.25 percent of regular toothpaste.

I have trays made for my teeth for tooth whitening, but couldn't I just put some of that high concentration floride in the trays and put them on my teeth for say 10 minutes and get some benefits?

Clearly, the advantage they have seems to be the electrical battery positive charge to the tray, but I was wondering if high floride is really helpful or am I just buying expensive toothpaste?

I'm interested in this article quite a bit. Read through all the comments, but there still seems to be something lacking for me to walk away from this and be content. I'm interested in strong teeth, other than my usual regimen.

[mark @ Feb 4th 2006 2:17PM]

I use teeth trays made by my dentist to put floride toothpaste in it and it sits on my teeth for however long, usually a few minutes, then I don't rinse. I do this randomly throughout the week.

I drink distilled water, because I don't trust what comes out of the tap. Nor do I want to drink floride, I get enough of it from it sitting on my teeth after brushings, etc.

Regular toothpaste is 0.15 floride and I think my prescription stuff is around 0.90%. My doctor tells me that it probably doesn't do anything too positive, but it shouldn't hurt either. I'm not sure. I can't say for sure either.

[codentist @ Feb 5th 2006 9:31PM]

this site is amazing...a tech site...and there's a remarkable amount of actual truth here! A couple things though, the gentelman above who said that flouride causes a change from hydroxyapetite to hydroxyflourite is a bit off...it's actually hydroxyapetite to flouroapetite. The primary effect of flouride is this change and flouroapetite is less soluble to the acids produced by bacteria.

As far as those trays, yes, putting flouride gel in your trays will provide benefit.

As far as this specific article: I'm skeptical. Kind of like 'lasers' with tooth whitening. No research has ever shown the lasers to be of any benefit, it's the gel in the tray that does this work. Similarly, I'd love to see some research (scientific, not so much like what CRA does as the gentleman above stated).

Very interesting reads though...

[John Williams @ Feb 6th 2006 10:28AM]

Some interesting comments,
however, "one test is worth a thousand expert opinions" and
there was some factually false information offered.

Someone asked about websites so
here's a webpage with distilled
information about the real dangers
of adding fluoride to drinking water;
complete with references to the best available science.

www.1hope.org/fluoride.htm

The short version is --

* Fluoride is not safe. It is a highly poisonous and dangerous. It is not a nutrient or a vitamin.

* Water Fluoridation damages teeth (mottling) in some 30% of children.

* Drinking Fluoridated water, at its very best, has only a tiny statistical benefit on tooth decay, but likely no actual physical benefit.

* Applying Fluoride paste to teeth is very different than drinking fluoridated water.

[codentist @ Feb 6th 2006 8:56PM]

John Williams--

That is a complete lie. You have no basis for your information and the website you produced is irresponsible at best, insane at the worst. Here's a few examples: "What's the difference in the flouride in rat poison and tooth paste? Nothing, only intent." That's ridiculous, how bout dose...there's a big difference. And they claim that because it needs an MSDS sheet it's horrible...so do 90% of the things in a dental/medical office, that's why they're restricted in their dispensing.

If you'd like some reliable info on flouridation, try the ada website: www.ADA.org .

Next, I'm sure you'll have some reason why the ADA is not reliable. Here's one question: If the ADA was out for some sinister motive...trust me, they'd recommending outlawing flouride, all us dentists would have A LOT more work to do.

Please, try to keep the discussion responsible.

CODentist

[Anthony @ Aug 15th 2008 1:17PM]

Of course DENTISTS are going to say it's safe. What do they study? TEETH and only teeth. Their research is on teeth.
Now, ask researches that study the body organs affected by fluoride..such as the liver.....and brain.

You're trying to convince people that fluoride is safe by pointing them in the direction of dentists. That's like calling Sprint and asking if cell phones are safe. Of course they're going to say yes.