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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

That seems like a lot though. Let's say it's just 1 micrometer per day. A tooth is about 10mm (10,000 micrometers). So over a period of about 28 years all of your teeth's enamel can be completely restored?

Given that most people don't lose all of the enamel of any of their teeth it seems like there wouldn't be any point of going to a dentist. By the time you're getting the age where you'd even think about dentures, this treatment would completely reverse all tooth decay no?

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Tooth decay isn't a generic slow wearing down of all of your enamel but instead a concentrated attack on a small location of enamel from food for example being consistently stuck in a small fissure. A big thing you use dentists for is managing plaque that makes these issues worse, and probably also will help block the effects of these lozenges. Polishing your teeth actually removes small quantities of enamel with the goal of making the teeth a bit smoother so there are less places for things to get stuck. Dentists also are dealing with issues where your teeth get cracked or otherwise damaged from grinding or hard foods. I can't imagine just indiscriminately throwing layers of enamel at the problem is going to leave you in a solve where "there wouldn't be any point of going to a dentist".

If it's depositing a layer, that will lessen the extent of fissures and round them out. That's a great thing to be convinced with polishing. This adds to the valleys and polishing removes from the peaks, making an overall much flatter surface.

Where I think this would really shine is with receding gums. It'll be able to slowly add protecting to a part of the teeth that has absolutely no protection. That will help "clog" the pores and reduce sensitivity as well as likeliness of a cavity.

I feel problems with gums and other areas don't get stressed enough in childhood. There are plenty of other problems that are not enamel-related, and I'd guess you can easily still have trouble with enamel even with this treatment.

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