Regenerative dental fillings use stem cells to allow teeth to heal themselves, potentially eliminating the need for root canals.
Adam Rifkin stashed this in Stem Cells
Stashed in: Awesome, Medicine, FLOSS!!!
Dental Fillings Heal Teeth With Stem Cells:
The treatment, developed by scientists from the University of Nottingham and Harvard University, earned a prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry after judges described it as a “new paradigm for dental treatments.”
The tooth filling works by stimulating stem cells to encourage the growth of dentin—the bony material that makes up the majority of the tooth—allowing patients to effectively regrow teeth that are damaged through dental disease.
This is a significant step forward from current methods to treat cavities, which involve drilling out the decay and putting in a filling. When these fail, a root canal is needed to remove the pulp of the tooth and damage it even further.
Reddit comment on gum healing:
For gum healing the #1 issue is to not have bacteria in pockets under your gum. Rinse thoroughly with 50% saturated salt water for 2½-3 minutes after your last and first meal in the day. Preferably use boiled water and sea salt. But if your tap water is good, it can be used too and also with ordinary salt. Afterwards rinse gently with ordinary water to get rid of the salty taste.
Brush as usual, but make sure when brushing in the evening to also clean your entire mouth, tongue and under it, and in the back of your mouth and behind lips and the roof of your mouth, (I think it's called palate).
Get some vitamin D unless you get lots of sun, and some zink that generally aids healing, and mix a teaspoon ascorbic acid powder and a teaspoon baking soda in water, and drink it.
If you don't eat much green and leaf vegetables like salad, and don't get much calcium from other sources, you may want to consider that too, but too much calcium has an adverse effect, and is harmful to bone and teeth strength and regeneration.
Avoid sugar as much as possible, obviously to prevent accelerated bacterial growth in your mouth, but also because it apparently disturbs healing mechanisms in general. The above is not a replacement for treatment, but can help restoration and prevent further damage.
7:42 PM Jul 06 2016