Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. Robert, have you ever had the misfortune
Speaker 1: of going to work having forgotten to brush your teeth
Speaker 1: in the morning. First, No, you've never done it. No,
Speaker 1: I just don't. I don't remember having done it. I
Speaker 1: might have done this earlier on. But I've I've really,
Speaker 1: I've been on a care the last ten years or so,
Speaker 1: um where I've I've really put a focus on maintaining
Speaker 1: proper dental hygiene. Yeah, you keep the mouth regiment under
Speaker 1: the lash. Yeah. Like I'll go into to see my
Speaker 1: dentist and the dentist will say, hey, what do you uh,
Speaker 1: what's it like when you don't wear your mouth guard
Speaker 1: at night? Because I wear a mouth guard at night
Speaker 1: to keep from grinding my teeth. And and I when
Speaker 1: they asked me this, they say, well, what do you
Speaker 1: mean you tell me to wear this every night? I
Speaker 1: wear it every night. So um so yeah, I I
Speaker 1: try and follow everything to the letter. You are like
Speaker 1: a monk. You are like a medieval monk with that
Speaker 1: kind of discipline. I guess you know the fear of hell,
Speaker 1: but in this case, the hell that I that I
Speaker 1: am uh fearful of is a hell of lost teeth
Speaker 1: or decaying teeth, et cetera. Oh, nasty mouth is a
Speaker 1: kind of hell. I mean, when this has happened to me,
Speaker 1: it feels so disgusting, and my mouth feels nasty and unhealthy,
Speaker 1: and I assume my breath must be terrible, and I
Speaker 1: assume that, like my teeth are all going to fall
Speaker 1: out by six pm. It's it's just bad. And I
Speaker 1: also feel like I have, I have made some seriously injurious,
Speaker 1: irreparable mistake for my own dental health. I know that's
Speaker 1: probably way over the line, but I I do feel
Speaker 1: that way sometimes, And and brushing one's teeth can sometimes
Speaker 1: feel I don't know if you share this, feel as
Speaker 1: absolutely essential, as like biologically essential and primordial as sleeping
Speaker 1: or breathing. You know that like if you don't do it,
Speaker 1: something is deeply wrong with your body and you're not
Speaker 1: living as you were meant to. Yeah, it's it's a
Speaker 1: totally weird area that I've probably spent way too much
Speaker 1: time contemplating. Because on one level, yes, when you're when
Speaker 1: you're younger, older people tell you, hey, you need to
Speaker 1: brush your teeth, you need to flash your teeth, you
Speaker 1: need to do these things. And when you're young, you're
Speaker 1: you're just kind of like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll do
Speaker 1: those things. I'll do those things some of the time.
Speaker 1: Um it's and oftentimes as only as you get older
Speaker 1: that you realize, oh, I need a double down on that,
Speaker 1: or worse, I really should have listened to them back
Speaker 1: in the day, back when I was younger. Well, you
Speaker 1: don't want to be looking back and saying, oh, if
Speaker 1: only I've done things differently, I wouldn't have goblin shark mouth.
Speaker 1: And it also doesn't help that so many of us
Speaker 1: are pet owners. And if you get older pets, then
Speaker 1: you know the experience of your your your pet outliving
Speaker 1: its teeth um because or having to pay for for
Speaker 1: brushings for your various animals, having to get in there
Speaker 1: and brush their teeth yourself, that sort of thing. You know.
Speaker 1: I was wondering what happens if you just don't brush
Speaker 1: your teeth. I have this fear that the bad things
Speaker 1: will happen if I don't. But what actually happens if
Speaker 1: you just say let it go for a year. And
Speaker 1: there are actually quite a few articles about this. There
Speaker 1: must be a thing people wonder pretty often. For example,
Speaker 1: I was just reading an article in USA today that
Speaker 1: interviewed a dentist and a spokesperson from the American Dental
Speaker 1: Association named Matthew Messina about what would happen if you
Speaker 1: stop brushing your teeth for a year, And for reference,
Speaker 1: the the a DA, the American Dental Association recommends flossing
Speaker 1: once a day and brushing twice a day. And that's
Speaker 1: and that's what everyone should do um at least twice
Speaker 1: a day. I say, do three if you can. But
Speaker 1: everybody apparently has a different reaction to neglect of dental hygiene.
Speaker 1: So there are probably some people out there, just depending
Speaker 1: on your genes, your diet, your microbiome, various things about you,
Speaker 1: that that could do this and wouldn't suffer all that
Speaker 1: many consequences. Probably there are other people who would have
Speaker 1: very negative consequences. But generally, on average, people who stopped
Speaker 1: brushing their teeth for a year would be a lot
Speaker 1: more likely to develop tooth decay in the form of
Speaker 1: cab at ease, and more likely to develop periodontal disease
Speaker 1: or gum disease, and both of these can be really bad,
Speaker 1: They cause pain in the mouth, can cause tooth loss.
Speaker 1: Uh So, a primary function of tooth brushing is to
Speaker 1: just brush away bacterial formations on your teeth, and if
Speaker 1: you don't brush that bacteria away, it can cause immune
Speaker 1: system reactions, and the gums can potentially lead to a
Speaker 1: host of other sort of secondary health problems in the
Speaker 1: body which aren't even in the mouth. It can even
Speaker 1: it's been linked to, say, pneumonia and heart attacks and
Speaker 1: so forth. And then on the more esthetic side, you
Speaker 1: of course have your teeth looking like you haven't brushed
Speaker 1: them in a year, and chronic bad breath probably, But
Speaker 1: sometimes I think about how my toothbrush, the toothpaste I use.
Speaker 1: These are products of twenty first century industry, and if
Speaker 1: you go back a few hundred years, people didn't have
Speaker 1: products exactly like these. They might have had some other
Speaker 1: things they did to their mouth, and we'll discuss those
Speaker 1: in a bit. But what would it be like to be, say,
Speaker 1: a fifteenth century peasant who just doesn't have a tooth
Speaker 1: rush and toothpaste. Because our dental health and hygiene, as
Speaker 1: we understand it is, is dependent upon this modern technology,
Speaker 1: upon these inventions, and what did we do before those inventions,
Speaker 1: because obviously there's like a base level, right of like
Speaker 1: the animal level of maintaining your dental hygiene, in which
Speaker 1: you use your tongue and maybe your nails to remove
Speaker 1: and you know, dislodge bits of vegetable or flesh. But
Speaker 1: but beyond that, what was there. That's one of the
Speaker 1: things we're gonna talk about today, not only where does
Speaker 1: modern toothpaste come from, but what past for toothpaste in
Speaker 1: ages past and the relationship between why we use toothpaste
Speaker 1: and what it actually does. I have to to admit
Speaker 1: that the historical question here is something I always think
Speaker 1: about whenever I'm watching a movie that's that has a
Speaker 1: historical setting, especially if it's a big budget, modern Hollywood production,
Speaker 1: because you inevitably have just somebody with you know, they've
Speaker 1: they've put grime on their face, they're wearing splendid outfits,
Speaker 1: but then their their teeth just shine like like the sun,
Speaker 1: and they're just so pearly white. And I'll often say,
Speaker 1: often call them out on that. I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that that doesn't seem right at all, like the teeth
Speaker 1: in Brave Heart, And yeah, you know, to go in
Speaker 1: the other direction, if you look at post apocalyptic films,
Speaker 1: especially bad post apocalyptic movies from the eighties, the kind
Speaker 1: of Mad Max rip offs that like Cannon films did,
Speaker 1: like a Cyborg, the gen Claude Van Damn movie, You'll
Speaker 1: get people living in this squalid future and they do
Speaker 1: the thing where they take people who have normal, healthy
Speaker 1: looking teeth and they just kind of rub grime on it,
Speaker 1: like they've got these streaks of black across their teeth.
Speaker 1: Like in the future, everybody just eats shoe polish. Well,
Speaker 1: who knows. I mean, that's actually gonna gonna line up
Speaker 1: in interesting ways with some of the earlier dental hygiene
Speaker 1: inventions that will be discussing. That's true. I didn't even
Speaker 1: think about that. People in Cyborg, those those black and
Speaker 1: teeth could be a product of their their tooth cleaning regimen,
Speaker 1: not a product of decay, right or you know that
Speaker 1: has to do with their their tobacco usage. Who knows.
Speaker 1: But another question and I have is, Okay, so if
Speaker 1: we don't brush our teeth for a year or even longer,
Speaker 1: some bad things can happen to our mouth. Which makes
Speaker 1: me think that if you go back to prehistoric life,
Speaker 1: people didn't really have much of anything, toothbrushes, toothpaste. Uh,
Speaker 1: they probably didn't really brush their teeth much anyo. They
Speaker 1: had fingers and like they had twigs to chew on.
Speaker 1: They could probably rub around in their in their mouth
Speaker 1: with their fingers if they felt like it. We don't
Speaker 1: know how much they did that, but did prehistoric people's
Speaker 1: just always have nasty mouth syndrome with teeth rotten away
Speaker 1: by the time they were teenagers? Like, how did teeth
Speaker 1: survive before we had modern dental care and dental hygiene equipment.
Speaker 1: And I actually found a really interesting paper about this.
Speaker 1: This was a paper published in Nature Genetics in by
Speaker 1: Christina J. Adler at All a bunch of authors called
Speaker 1: Sequencing Ancient calcified dental plaque shows changes in oral microbiota
Speaker 1: with dietary shifts of the Neolithic and Industrial revolutions. And
Speaker 1: so the takeaway of this paper is, despite not having
Speaker 1: the dental hygiene methods that we do, prehistoric hunter gatherers
Speaker 1: had pretty good teeth. They could probably pick at their
Speaker 1: teeth with twigs and so forth, But they didn't have toothpaste,
Speaker 1: they didn't have toothbrushes, they didn't have dentists, So how
Speaker 1: did their teeth survive And the answer appears to be
Speaker 1: their teeth were pretty healthy because they survived on a
Speaker 1: totally different diet than we do now. Yeah. Indeed, think
Speaker 1: of all the coffee and sugary sodas that they were
Speaker 1: not consuming. I think it seems like sugar is a
Speaker 1: big part of this equation because much of our oral
Speaker 1: health depends on the relationship with the microbial organisms that
Speaker 1: live in our mouths. It's kind of fun to think
Speaker 1: about the fact that your mouth is an ecosystem. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and sugar is something that you're you're only really
Speaker 1: supposed to find so much of in the wild. Our
Speaker 1: modern candy bars just throw all that out of whack.
Speaker 1: And my my father, I should mentioned, was a dentist
Speaker 1: and u in. One of the things he always told
Speaker 1: my sisters and me was was, if you eat that
Speaker 1: candy bar, it's just gonna write your teeth own, Like,
Speaker 1: don't don't eat that candy bar. Don't eat it. We
Speaker 1: still ate a lot of candy, but the message was
Speaker 1: always there, like it's eating consuming too much sugar is
Speaker 1: a road to garbage mouth. Well that you can assume
Speaker 1: that that might be like one of those kind of
Speaker 1: just uninformed parental warnings is just to scare you, the
Speaker 1: same way they say, like don't if you watch too
Speaker 1: much TV, you'll go cross eye. There's something like that.
Speaker 1: You know, that's not really based in fact, but but
Speaker 1: it does appear that that piece of advice is somewhat
Speaker 1: based in fact that there does appear to be a
Speaker 1: relationship between sugar consumption and poor oral health. Because if
Speaker 1: you change what you eat, you also change what the
Speaker 1: organisms in your mouth eat. It's an ecosystem. You're changing
Speaker 1: what chemical energy profile is going into that ecosystem in
Speaker 1: your mouth, and different microbes eat different things, change your diet,
Speaker 1: and you might encourage a different crowd to take up
Speaker 1: shop in your teeth. And so the prehistoric hunter gatherer
Speaker 1: diet favored things like meat, vegetables, and nuts, and apparently
Speaker 1: that is pretty friendly to your teeth. One of the
Speaker 1: important things to keep in mind yeah here is that
Speaker 1: inventions do not occur within a vacuum, and inventions are
Speaker 1: affected by other inventions. And there's a pretty key invention
Speaker 1: involved here. That invention, of course, would be agriculture. About
Speaker 1: ten thousand years ago, Neil with the humans began the
Speaker 1: farming Revolution, which caused a massive shift in the human diet.
Speaker 1: If you were in one of these regions that was
Speaker 1: sustained by farming, suddenly your diet would shift from things
Speaker 1: like you know, meats, wild growing fruit and vegetables and
Speaker 1: nuts and roots and all that into carbohydrate rich grains,
Speaker 1: grain based breads and porridges and things like that. So
Speaker 1: you're you're suddenly shifting your diet to this mainly carbon
Speaker 1: driven thing. And then there's another shift that happens again
Speaker 1: once again due to technology. Uh, the Industrial Revolution brings
Speaker 1: about the wide spread availability of processed flour and sugar
Speaker 1: around say eighteen fifty or so. And so this study
Speaker 1: that I mentioned a minute ago, it looked at thirty
Speaker 1: four early European skeletons to show that the transition from
Speaker 1: the hunter gatherer diet to farming quote, shifted the oral
Speaker 1: microbial community to a disease associated configuration. And apparently around
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution, carryogenic bacteria, which is bacteria that causes
Speaker 1: tooth decay, became dominant in our mouths, and mouth microbiota
Speaker 1: are much less diverse now, which may be the cause
Speaker 1: of all the chronic oral disease we see in wealthy
Speaker 1: industrial societies today. It's a case where innovations and innovations
Speaker 1: unbalanced things, and then we have to create other inventions.
Speaker 1: We have to come up with with with various schemes
Speaker 1: to try and rebalance everything. Yeah, exactly. So one of
Speaker 1: the authors of that paper was Alan Cooper, director of
Speaker 1: the Australian Center for Ancient DNA, and so, speaking to NPR,
Speaker 1: he said, quote, what you've really created is an ecosystem
Speaker 1: which is very low and diversity and full of opportunistic
Speaker 1: pathogens that have jumped in to utilize the resources which
Speaker 1: are now free. And as a result, of course, what
Speaker 1: happens is that the mouth is constantly fighting these microbes
Speaker 1: that live inside it. Uh to quote Cooper again, quote
Speaker 1: you're walking around with a permanent immune response, which is
Speaker 1: not a good thing. It causes problems all over the place.
Speaker 1: This reminds me of of of of one of my
Speaker 1: favorite quotes from Tina Fey that was in her her autobiography.
Speaker 1: She's talking about the experience of growing older and waking
Speaker 1: up in the morning and just having this horrible taste
Speaker 1: in your mouth, and she uh surmised that quote the
Speaker 1: mouth dies first, and it makes sense that it would
Speaker 1: be of them. The mouth is just this constantly just
Speaker 1: ground zero for this war against pathogens. Well, this is
Speaker 1: just one front on which we're seeing more and more
Speaker 1: evidence that our microbiome, the microbes that live within us
Speaker 1: and on us, really do affect our health in in
Speaker 1: pretty extreme ways that we haven't really recognized until very
Speaker 1: recent times. But anyway, what all this so far tells
Speaker 1: us is that it's not necessarily a fact of nature
Speaker 1: that animals just have to brush their teeth with toothpaste
Speaker 1: and floss and stuff. I mean, it can be good
Speaker 1: for animals to clean their mouths, right, Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's worth noting that cleaning your teeth is
Speaker 1: not merely a human thing. I mean, you just think
Speaker 1: about how we might again dislodge food with you with
Speaker 1: a tongue or or a nail in some cases. And
Speaker 1: certainly there are other creatures that may do the same. Uh.
Speaker 1: Tooth grooming even with tools has been observed among chimpanzees.
Speaker 1: So they might use twigs for close work when fingers
Speaker 1: won't cut it. But do they stand outside the olive
Speaker 1: garden with that twig hanging out of their mouth in
Speaker 1: the parking lot holding a styrofoam clamshell. Uh no, I
Speaker 1: don't believe they do. But but they're not there yet
Speaker 1: as a species. But from these results, it seems pretty
Speaker 1: clear that what what's going on is that we have
Speaker 1: created through our technology a need for an oral hygiene
Speaker 1: regime that was that was not necessarily there in our
Speaker 1: wild existence. And so how how do we cope with
Speaker 1: this new microbiome in our mouths, this new more hostile
Speaker 1: ecosystem between the teeth and the gums. Yeah, when we
Speaker 1: look into the look back into the deeper history of
Speaker 1: toothpaste itself, um, it seems pretty clear that that people
Speaker 1: were figuring out things they could do pretty early on. Um,
Speaker 1: in terms of recorded history. Uh, it's thought that Egyptians
Speaker 1: probably started using uh something like toothpaste is as long
Speaker 1: ago is maybe five thousand uh BC. And also we
Speaker 1: see evidence for this among the ancient Greeks, the Romans,
Speaker 1: the ancient Chinese, the ancient Indians. Yeah, there there is
Speaker 1: a long tradition of I mean, one of one of
Speaker 1: the things you see if you go back into the
Speaker 1: ancient world as medical manuals and and like more magical
Speaker 1: edging kind of potion manuals and these things may sometimes
Speaker 1: give you recipes for what to do with the mouth.
Speaker 1: A lot of times there will be like a powder
Speaker 1: or something it'll tell you to grind up and you
Speaker 1: rub that on the teeth to clean them. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was actually reading in a book, uh title Clean, a
Speaker 1: History of Personal Hygiene Impurity by Virginia Smith, which is
Speaker 1: a really excellent book that I've referred to on podcasts
Speaker 1: in the past. But she mentions that the ancient Egyptians
Speaker 1: indeed had to deal with dental problems and that this
Speaker 1: is ultimately one of the quote problems of civilization. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, getting back again to the the idea that
Speaker 1: the the agricultural revolution created some of these problems for us.
Speaker 1: She says that it's likely that excess consumption of honey
Speaker 1: and sugar likely impacted that at least the wealthy in
Speaker 1: Egyptian society, but that many ancient Egyptians had teeth that
Speaker 1: were also worn down to the quick due to poorly
Speaker 1: milled flour. Oh yeah, so if you have flower the
Speaker 1: it's got like um, it's got like sand or grit
Speaker 1: and mixed in it can actually wear down your teeth
Speaker 1: from chewing on it. Yeah, So all you kids out
Speaker 1: there that love to eat sand, and we're looking for
Speaker 1: an excuse to stop eating sand. There you go, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you get sand in your mouth of the beach,
Speaker 1: do wash it out if it all possible, because it
Speaker 1: gives me the olivers to think about the alternative fear.
Speaker 1: So thinking about tooth what does toothpaste actually do? In fact,
Speaker 1: toothpaste does something sort of like the sand and the bread,
Speaker 1: except hopefully not as harsh on the teeth. Uh. It
Speaker 1: fulfills functions related to both health and aesthetic. So on
Speaker 1: the health side, it removes the build up of dental plaque,
Speaker 1: which is a bacterial biofilm that grows on surfaces inside
Speaker 1: the mouth, such as on teeth and around the gum line,
Speaker 1: and that helps prevent tooth decay and gum disease. But
Speaker 1: then the aesthetic side, of course, is that it also
Speaker 1: helps prevent bad breath, It prevents you know, stinky mouth,
Speaker 1: It helps keep the teeth appearing white and healthy, and
Speaker 1: it also sometimes just provides a pleasant taste, which is
Speaker 1: actually I think a more important factor in why people
Speaker 1: use toothpaste than many of them realize. Now, back on
Speaker 1: the health side, there are a couple of different things
Speaker 1: that it does. On one hand, it's an abrasive kind
Speaker 1: of like the sand or the grid or something that
Speaker 1: helps rub the stuff away in the mouth. And on
Speaker 1: the other hand, sometimes it has chemical aids as well,
Speaker 1: Like an ingredient might be something like fluoride. Yes, fluoride,
Speaker 1: that's an essential one as well. Well, we'll get back
Speaker 1: to the importance of fluoride in a bit. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that'll be in the modern section. First, we gotta
Speaker 1: tell you about what people used to do to their teeth, right,
Speaker 1: And before we do that, we should probably take our
Speaker 1: first break. But yeah, when we come back, we will.
Speaker 1: We will jump in the time machine and brush our
Speaker 1: teeth among the denizens of history. Robert, would you like
Speaker 1: to go on a journey with me to twelveth century
Speaker 1: Italy to find out what toothcare looked like? Then let's
Speaker 1: do it, Okay. So I want to quote from the Trotula,
Speaker 1: which is a famous collection of treatises on women's health
Speaker 1: from medieval Italy. Translated this is a translation by Professor
Speaker 1: Monica H. Green, And there are several entries in the
Speaker 1: Trotula about what to do about problems with the teeth.
Speaker 1: First of all, here's one for black teeth. Off to
Speaker 1: a good start. Quote for black and badly colored teeth.
Speaker 1: Take walnut shells well cleaned, if their interior rind, which
Speaker 1: is green. And we rubbed the teeth three times a day.
Speaker 1: And when they have been well rubbed, we washed the
Speaker 1: mouth with warm wine and with salt mixed in if desired.
Speaker 1: Do you swallow the wine? I would think not, not
Speaker 1: with the salt thrown in there. But you know this,
Speaker 1: this reminds me of episodes that we've recorded for Stuff
Speaker 1: to About Your Mind, where we've talked about the history
Speaker 1: of well cocktails, but also things that we're sort of
Speaker 1: like cocktails that at least involved alcohol being mixed with
Speaker 1: other substances, and very often those were magic potions or
Speaker 1: some sort of medi snol mixture that was supposed to
Speaker 1: aid you, and very often they did involve wine or
Speaker 1: some other alcohol. It is striking how many of the
Speaker 1: treatments of the past involved alcoholic beverages. It almost makes
Speaker 1: you think that, like in some cases, the alcoholic beverage
Speaker 1: may have been a sort of consolation prize for the
Speaker 1: fact that the treatment does not generally work, or if
Speaker 1: it had some kind of placebo effects. The placebo effect
Speaker 1: might have been linked to the fact that the alcohol
Speaker 1: gets you a little bit drunk. Yes, And and I
Speaker 1: can't think about the salt aspect of this without thinking
Speaker 1: of about some of the saltwater treatments that have been
Speaker 1: employed in the past, where you're essentially you're you are
Speaker 1: just drinking saltwater, maybe saltwater mixed with honey or milk
Speaker 1: or something, but but just drinking a bunch of saltwater
Speaker 1: to try and cure some ailment. Oh yeah, some of
Speaker 1: the ancients actually thought that that could heal you of problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're not so ancients, And I recall correctly. Uh,
Speaker 1: here's another one. This is also from the trotula. This
Speaker 1: one sounds more like this is for rich people. I
Speaker 1: think quote for whitening black teeth and strengthen in corroded
Speaker 1: or rotting gums, and for a bad smelling mouth. This
Speaker 1: works the best. Take some each of cinnamon, clove, spike,
Speaker 1: nord mastic, Frankinson's grain, wormwood, crab foot, date pits, and olives.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I know what crabfoot is. I think
Speaker 1: crabfoot is a plant. I was looking it up. There
Speaker 1: appears to be a plant that, at least in the
Speaker 1: modern world, that is some kind of plant that may
Speaker 1: be a parasitic plant that grows on the tea tree
Speaker 1: or something that it's some modern people on the Internet
Speaker 1: I've seen referred to as crab foot, But as to
Speaker 1: this medieval reference, I don't know if it refers to
Speaker 1: the same thing or something else, or to just crabs feet.
Speaker 1: I would hope they would say foot of crab if
Speaker 1: it were, if it were an actual foot of a crab. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we get all these together. What do we
Speaker 1: do with them? Well, you grow, So, to resume the quote,
Speaker 1: grind all of these and reduce them to a powder.
Speaker 1: Then rub the affected places. Likewise, in order to make
Speaker 1: black teeth white, take tin DRAMs of roasted pummice, tin
Speaker 1: DRAMs of salt, two DRAMs each of cinnamon and cloves,
Speaker 1: and honey as needed. Mix the pumice and salt with
Speaker 1: a sufficient amount of honey, then place them on a
Speaker 1: plain dish upon the coals until they burn, and reduce
Speaker 1: the other spices to a powder. And when there is need,
Speaker 1: rub the teeth. Well that doesn't sound all that bad. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're putting honey in there. I was like, wait a second,
Speaker 1: you're brushing your teeth with honey. That sounds counterproductive. Well,
Speaker 1: I think one possibility here and uh and I believe
Speaker 1: I read this in reference to the ancient Egyptians is
Speaker 1: that if you were to use honey in your toothpaste,
Speaker 1: you would help hold everything together because if because with
Speaker 1: all these ingredients like it sounds like it's coming together
Speaker 1: as a powder. And certainly powders were employed, but the
Speaker 1: difference between a powder and a paste is kind of
Speaker 1: the the addition of some sort of viscous substance. Right
Speaker 1: right now, For a few other recipes for ancient toothpaste
Speaker 1: um which again various paste washes, toothpicks were used throughout Eurasia,
Speaker 1: we have the ancient Egyptian evidence as well as pointed
Speaker 1: out by a teen National Geographic article a fourth century
Speaker 1: see recipe. Uh and I believe this was a This
Speaker 1: was an Egyptian recipe called for a paste made from salt, peppermint,
Speaker 1: and dried iris flower. Dennist Hines Newman actually tried this
Speaker 1: out in two thousand three and reported that it made
Speaker 1: his mouth feel clean and fresh, though it also made
Speaker 1: his gums bleed. Still He said that this was probably
Speaker 1: this probably would have been an improvement over some of
Speaker 1: the the soap toothpaste that were used prior to World
Speaker 1: War Two soap toothpastes. Yeah, And basically it's just a
Speaker 1: reminder and we'll get into this uh as we progress
Speaker 1: here that that really toothpaste as we know it. Uh,
Speaker 1: the dental dental hygiene products as we know it are
Speaker 1: really a post War War two phenomenon. Like that is
Speaker 1: really where we enter the more or less modern age
Speaker 1: of of dental hygiene. Fourteenth and fifteenth century England, you
Speaker 1: had toothpaste made from honey, salt rye flour meal. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the honey, as I mentioned earlier, this held it
Speaker 1: all together and gave it flavor. Also from the from
Speaker 1: the time period, you have toothpowder made from the burnt
Speaker 1: branches of a broom plant mixed with burnt alum black.
Speaker 1: And this is in a black, ashy substance that had
Speaker 1: a likely just horrid taste. But maybe that's where you
Speaker 1: know the black and teeth of post apocalyptic societies come from. Okay,
Speaker 1: for some reason, this is the only the only thing
Speaker 1: they know to go back to that they skip all
Speaker 1: the other dental hygiene products, and they just go back
Speaker 1: to this ashen mixture. We're out of guzzline. Time to
Speaker 1: get out the blackened album. Now I mentioned the book
Speaker 1: Clean earlier, and she concludes some interesting material on eighteenth
Speaker 1: century Paris. In Clean, Smith writes that you kind of
Speaker 1: had a perfect storm of bad teeth at the time
Speaker 1: because you had the existing problems of dental hygiene again
Speaker 1: sort of the problems of civilization, compounded by poverty and
Speaker 1: increased access to sugars, sticky fruits, and sweetmeats that traditional
Speaker 1: teeth cleaning methods just couldn't contend with. You couldn't just
Speaker 1: scrape or wipe your mouth clean with sticks and cloth
Speaker 1: like one might have been able to for uh in
Speaker 1: previous ages. Uh. You know, suddenly these these methods that
Speaker 1: we had that were, you know, pretty good, we're suddenly
Speaker 1: just ineffective. On top of that, you had a lot
Speaker 1: of additional damage done by course and badly ground powders,
Speaker 1: ashes and whiteners. So the the the very products that
Speaker 1: are being rolled out to help within all hygiene or
Speaker 1: also contributing to some of the problems. Worn enamel and
Speaker 1: irritated gums end up resulting from these products, and teeth
Speaker 1: could also be destroyed by overuse of cleansing sticks and
Speaker 1: irons that were used to you know, to get in
Speaker 1: there and uh scrape them clean. But towards the end
Speaker 1: of the century, she notes increased understanding and vastly improved
Speaker 1: brushes and pace were beginning to make an impact. Robert,
Speaker 1: this is this has given me vibes from like a
Speaker 1: marathon man. Oh yes, is safe? Well, over use of
Speaker 1: cleansing sticks and irons. It sounds like it is not safe.
Speaker 1: We do not recommend the use of irons now. One
Speaker 1: of the common features you're seeing in many of these
Speaker 1: ancient toothpaste and toothpowder recipes is that there is, uh,
Speaker 1: there's a common need for some kind of abrasive powder
Speaker 1: something that would be also useful and say scrubbing a
Speaker 1: pot clean or something like that. You know. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: might use salt like rock salt, or that might use uh,
Speaker 1: sand or ash or something like that. What we've seen
Speaker 1: references to powders that that used ox hoofs, or that
Speaker 1: use something like egg shells, which look that sounds really awful,
Speaker 1: or as we mentioned several times earlier, pummice. You could
Speaker 1: look to the Greeks and Romans, who occasionally used a
Speaker 1: crushed bone and oyster shells powdered charcoal and bark, and
Speaker 1: the Romans also added flavoring to assist with with bad breath.
Speaker 1: So many terrible stories of the ancient Roman period involved
Speaker 1: oyster shells. Thinking about like the murder of Hypatia. That
Speaker 1: that that's suppose believe they like killed her with oyster shells. Huh,
Speaker 1: like a bunch of them are just just like one
Speaker 1: really sharp one. Well, this might not be a historical anecdote.
Speaker 1: It might just be the legend, but the story is
Speaker 1: that Hypatia was killed by a mob who like scraped
Speaker 1: her to death with oyster shells. Just horrible. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I guess that'll get the get the job done though. Um.
Speaker 1: The Chinese are said to have had a wide variety
Speaker 1: of toothpastes over time, which included the use of gen
Speaker 1: sing herbal mints, and salt. And this makes sense given
Speaker 1: the robust nature of Chinese traditional medicine. But before eighteen fifty,
Speaker 1: most toothpaste were not paste. They were powders. They were
Speaker 1: again some sort of powdery substance that you would you
Speaker 1: would put in your mouth and kind of rub into
Speaker 1: your teeth and your your gums to clean things up.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm thinking traditional comet scrub. Oh yeah, isn't
Speaker 1: there a song about that makes your mouth tearing green? No?
Speaker 1: I don't know this song. We're getting sidetracked. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's take another break, and when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: gonna spend the rest of the episode of talking about
Speaker 1: modern tooth phase. Alright, we're back. So we mentioned World
Speaker 1: War Two earlier. Uh and and that's that's really where
Speaker 1: we're heading to in this portion of the episode, because
Speaker 1: we see improved dental powder's paste and brushes during the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, but the modern age of dentistry doesn't really
Speaker 1: kick in until after World War Two. You had um
Speaker 1: in the United States, you had army dentists that championed
Speaker 1: a modern dental health practice of biennial checkups, a healthy diet,
Speaker 1: and twice a day brushing and uh. And then they
Speaker 1: bring this back to the civilian world with them that
Speaker 1: they bring this back to private practice and the resulting
Speaker 1: high standards in US hygiene and cosmetics, which is always
Speaker 1: key because with I mean, we see this in the
Speaker 1: some of these early examples too. Dentistry involves both hygiene
Speaker 1: and cosmetics. It's some of these these efforts are about out, yes,
Speaker 1: let's keep the let's make the mouth healthy, let's keep
Speaker 1: the teeth where they are. But others are about let's
Speaker 1: make the let's make the breath smell nice, let's make
Speaker 1: the teeth look shiny. Well, I mean, I would say
Speaker 1: that oral hygiene dental hygiene products are an area where
Speaker 1: there is a lot of blurring of the line between
Speaker 1: health and aesthetics. Yeah, and it can I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: it can be frustrating when you go to the dentist
Speaker 1: and you have to ask this question, like you want
Speaker 1: to trust yourself completely over to healthcare professional, and I
Speaker 1: certainly um suggest people do that. But but at the
Speaker 1: same time, sometimes in the back of your head, you
Speaker 1: you you want to ask, wait, is the is this
Speaker 1: service that is being offered me? Is this is this
Speaker 1: aligned with hygiene? Or is this about cosmetics? Is this
Speaker 1: about improving the uh, you know, the the the subjective
Speaker 1: appeal of my smile, or is it about more objective
Speaker 1: health benefits? And of course most modern tooth we mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier that toothpaste in general it serves both functions usually right, So,
Speaker 1: the ingredients of modern toothpaste usually include things like mild
Speaker 1: abrasives and that's just gonna be to help scrub things away.
Speaker 1: But then of course you've got flavors, things that maybe
Speaker 1: taste sweet or taste minty and fresh. And I would
Speaker 1: say the mintiness of toothpaste is in the modern world,
Speaker 1: a very very important part of the package. It is
Speaker 1: a crucial part of what you're paying and why you
Speaker 1: use the product. Now here's something interesting. Uh, So many
Speaker 1: other products are marketed, especially in the United States, are
Speaker 1: marketed towards either male consumers or female consumers. But I
Speaker 1: don't think we really see this with with toothpaste, and uh,
Speaker 1: and and mouthwash. Oh no, gendered marketing of toothpastes. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: what's like the the ax body spray brand of toothpastes,
Speaker 1: like the hardest, toughest mouth I mean, I guess to
Speaker 1: a limited stent extent, maybe you could say something like
Speaker 1: arm and Hammer is like maybe accidentally marketing towards a
Speaker 1: like a hyper masculine audience because it's arm and hammer, right.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, for the most part, adult
Speaker 1: toothpastes are kind of all the same. It's only like
Speaker 1: you basically have kids toothpaste who have tastes like you know,
Speaker 1: sickeningly sweet mango sherbet or something or that that blue
Speaker 1: stuff with the sparkles in it. And then most adult toothpastes,
Speaker 1: at least the the main toothpaste, not talking about some
Speaker 1: of the ones you might acquire only at health food stores,
Speaker 1: but like the kind you can get to the grocery store.
Speaker 1: I feel like most of those are going to be
Speaker 1: more or less in the same realm our mild abrasives
Speaker 1: are made of eagle claws. No, I'm sorry, I don't
Speaker 1: mean to encourage all you advertising brains out there to
Speaker 1: try gendered marketing of toothpaste. Leave it be. We don't
Speaker 1: need more gendered marketing. I mean, unless it encouraged improvedental hygiene.
Speaker 1: I mean then I guess you know if. But but
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any like gender based messaging against
Speaker 1: brushing your teeth, Like what are you doing brushing your teeth?
Speaker 1: Don't be a girl? Like nobody's saying that other common
Speaker 1: ingredients in toothpaste would be things called humectants, which sort
Speaker 1: of prevent the paste in the mouth from getting too
Speaker 1: dry or all the water leaving it that you've got
Speaker 1: usually some kind of binder thickener, somewhat the role that
Speaker 1: honey might have played in these older toothpaste kind of
Speaker 1: holding everything together. You've got foaming agents that make it
Speaker 1: foam in the mouth, and that's an important aesthetic part
Speaker 1: of the process. If you brush your teeth with a
Speaker 1: toothpaste that doesn't foam, you might be wondering is it
Speaker 1: working right? Right? You want to get a good froth
Speaker 1: going in there because it's then I think also that
Speaker 1: it reminds one of scrubbing one's body with soap, right.
Speaker 1: But then, of course there might also be chemical agents
Speaker 1: in the toothpaste that do something in particular, say like
Speaker 1: a whitening formula, or say it might contain fluoride. Ye,
Speaker 1: And we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that
Speaker 1: that water of fluoridation is one of the top medical
Speaker 1: achievements of the twentieth century. Do not believe your local
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory about the fluoride and your drinking water, I mean,
Speaker 1: unless you just want to end up rubbing your teeth
Speaker 1: with pummice. Now, speaking of conspiracy theories and whatnot, I
Speaker 1: do think it is worth reminding everyone out there that
Speaker 1: just because we've reached a certain point in the evolution
Speaker 1: of of dental hygiene and dental hygiene products, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that we can't slip back and fall into into
Speaker 1: pseudo science, into conspiracy theory, or even into uh, like
Speaker 1: to put an optimistic spin on it, traditional medical practices,
Speaker 1: alternative medical practices that have not yet been completely vetted
Speaker 1: by modern science. Are you referring to the oil pulling
Speaker 1: craze of several years ago. Oh? Yeah, that's a good example,
Speaker 1: oil pulling, which is an oil dental rents based on
Speaker 1: air vated practices. I don't really know anything about whether
Speaker 1: that's supposed to be actually efficacious or not. Does it
Speaker 1: do anything good. It's definitely one of these practices that
Speaker 1: some people swear by and some people have very strong
Speaker 1: opinions about. But generally speaking, those individuals are not going
Speaker 1: to be dentists, uh, and it's not going to be
Speaker 1: They're not gonna be representatives of the say the American
Speaker 1: Dental Association. Okay, so would you say if it provides
Speaker 1: any benefit? The evidence is not really in right. I
Speaker 1: saw one source that was saying there was kind of
Speaker 1: speculating on ways that it could work if it was working.
Speaker 1: That that's kind of the answer one tends to to
Speaker 1: come across. That being said, they pointed out that there
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily a reason why you couldn't do it in
Speaker 1: addition to um more modern dental practices, but that this
Speaker 1: is also a great question for any listeners out there,
Speaker 1: because I'm sure there's somebody listening to this has a
Speaker 1: very strong opinion about oil pulling, and I wouldn't mind
Speaker 1: listening to to what you have to say. We also
Speaker 1: they'll have to remember what we said earlier about the
Speaker 1: other factors that play into one's overall dental hygiene. Uh,
Speaker 1: this one person on the left might be able to
Speaker 1: fall back on a more traditional or alternative method of
Speaker 1: maintaining the all hygiene and it will work for them,
Speaker 1: where the person on the other side it will just
Speaker 1: it will fail miserably. Like you know, even with with
Speaker 1: modern dental hygiene methods, they might be kind of having
Speaker 1: an uphill battle. Yeah, it depends on a lot of things.
Speaker 1: Your genes, your microbiome, your diet and all of that contributes. Now,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I want to point out we've
Speaker 1: been talking about a sort of modern science based dental hygiene.
Speaker 1: But as best I can tell, it is apparently the
Speaker 1: case to me that toothpaste is not strictly necessary to
Speaker 1: get many of the health benefits from tooth brushing. From
Speaker 1: what I've read, toothpaste essentially can help, but it's not
Speaker 1: like brushing your teeth without toothpaste is useless. Brushing teeth
Speaker 1: without toothpaste appears to be much better than not brushing
Speaker 1: at all, And there might be cases where the toothpaste
Speaker 1: isn't even providing all that much of a benefit on
Speaker 1: top of just brushing. So if you're in a situation
Speaker 1: where you have, I don't know, you've gone out to
Speaker 1: a cabin in the middle of the woods and and
Speaker 1: you're you're there for the night, there's no leaving that
Speaker 1: the monsters are prowling in the forest, and you realize
Speaker 1: that you you brought your tooth brush, but you didn't
Speaker 1: bring any toothpaste. You you're you're not that bad off, right,
Speaker 1: You might not get some of the aesthetic benefits such
Speaker 1: as like the mintiness, you know, the breath cleaning, and
Speaker 1: especially if if you're trying to get some kind of
Speaker 1: chemical benefit out of your toothpaste, like whitening, or if
Speaker 1: your toothpaste provides fluoride. But also if you're simply just
Speaker 1: brushing away as you would normally brush with with you know,
Speaker 1: the bristles of a toothbrush, you will succeed in removing
Speaker 1: a lot of the bacterial coating on your teeth, which
Speaker 1: is one of the primary health reasons for brushing your teeth.
Speaker 1: You want to try to get the bacteria off of
Speaker 1: the surfaces in your mouth so they don't build up. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, if you are using toothpaste, one of the
Speaker 1: key rules out there is that you do not swallow
Speaker 1: it as you are brushing your teeth or after you've brushed.
Speaker 1: You know, you spit in the sink and then you
Speaker 1: wash your mouth out and you spit that in the
Speaker 1: sink as well. Yeah, our our researcher, Scott, was looking
Speaker 1: at this and apparently toothpaste swallowing can be a really
Speaker 1: big deal. Yeah. Now, I had looked into this a
Speaker 1: little bit because I have a six year old and
Speaker 1: so in in in teaching him to brush his teeth,
Speaker 1: you know, we were we were told, you know, don't
Speaker 1: let him swallow the toothpaste. You know, that's just one
Speaker 1: of the parental rules that you you pass on. And
Speaker 1: so I looked into it a little bit. I'm like,
Speaker 1: why why why not? And then you see some of
Speaker 1: these these reasons are like, Okay, it's just a it's
Speaker 1: a bad idea for them to swallow at the toothpaste.
Speaker 1: Just really encourage them not to. But yeah, Scott brought
Speaker 1: up some of these specific things that can happen if
Speaker 1: you even have a toothpaste overdose. A toothpaste overdose. What's
Speaker 1: a regular dose, that's a recommended dose. I guess there'd
Speaker 1: be none, right, none? Yeah, as absolutely little as possible.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why you're spitting, uh, you know, rinsing
Speaker 1: out your mouth, spitting again. There's no just you know,
Speaker 1: there's no swallowing a little toothpaste as part of your breakfast. Um.
Speaker 1: In fact, Scott to point it out a page on
Speaker 1: meadline plus dot gov that pointed out the following quote,
Speaker 1: Swallowing a large amount of regular toothpaste may cause stomach
Speaker 1: pain and possible intestinal blockage. Quote. These additional symptoms may
Speaker 1: occur when swallowing a large amount of toothpaste containing fluoride. Uh.
Speaker 1: They this include The list includes convulsions, diarrhea, difficulty breathing, drooling,
Speaker 1: heart attack, salty or soapy taste in the mouth that
Speaker 1: seems kind of mild compared to these others U but
Speaker 1: also slow heart rate, shock tremors, vomiting, and weakness. So again,
Speaker 1: don't swallow your toothpaste, and if you have been doing
Speaker 1: so for some reason, please stop. But why do they
Speaker 1: make it so delicious? I look, for instance, I brush
Speaker 1: my teeth at work here sometimes, and you know, it
Speaker 1: means having to spit into a sink in the men's
Speaker 1: room or spitting into a water fountain. And sometimes I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of somebody's gonna walk by, or they'll you know,
Speaker 1: they'll be washing their hands and they'll think I'm discussed
Speaker 1: thing for spitting. But clearly the alternative is that I
Speaker 1: poisoned myself. So I am going to continue to spit.
Speaker 1: Do you ever meet that guy who carries around like
Speaker 1: an empty gatorade bottle that he spits his his dip
Speaker 1: dip mouth in, or the chewing tobacco. No, there is
Speaker 1: there's such a person here. Yeah, I've met guys like that,
Speaker 1: but this is this is a Tennessee thing. Oh, I
Speaker 1: think you meant here at work thing. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I remember this from Tennessee. Yeah, they'd be like a
Speaker 1: guy's got an empty power aid bottle, he already drank
Speaker 1: all the power Aide out of it. He's got a
Speaker 1: mouthful of tobacco product, and he walks around at some
Speaker 1: point needs to spit the bacco juice out somewhere, and
Speaker 1: just goes right into the bottle that he carries in
Speaker 1: his hand. Oh well, that's better than I remember being
Speaker 1: in study hall in high school in Tennessee, and there
Speaker 1: was a desk at the back of the room, like
Speaker 1: an old like teacher's desk made of wood kind of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it was on unsteady footing. And and that's
Speaker 1: for for some ungodly reason, me and a few friends
Speaker 1: would hang out and like do our homework at the
Speaker 1: last minute. But in some other class, clearly a stud
Speaker 1: sudents were chewing tobacco and then spitting into the desk.
Speaker 1: So most of the drawers were filled with like you know,
Speaker 1: scraps of paper and uh, and tobacco spit. And occasionally
Speaker 1: the desk would leak a little. There would be like
Speaker 1: a foul brown substance that we begin dripping out of
Speaker 1: some corner of the desk and pooling on the floor. Um,
Speaker 1: it was. It was disgusting, Robert. That is a wretched,
Speaker 1: wretched story. Thanks for sharing. You're welcome courtesy of Lincoln
Speaker 1: County High School. So here's another question we should address
Speaker 1: before we leave, because we've established that throughout history. You know,
Speaker 1: since the the agricultural Revolution, people have needed to clean
Speaker 1: their teeth much more than they did when in a
Speaker 1: hunter gatherer state. Especially since the Industrial Revolution, people's oral
Speaker 1: health has been a bigger concern. You're more at risk
Speaker 1: given the kinds of diets people eat, with refined sugar
Speaker 1: and flour and all that kind of stuff. And so
Speaker 1: we know at some point tooth brushing became an extremely
Speaker 1: common thing in the Western world. But how did that happen?
Speaker 1: When did when did that come about? And the American
Speaker 1: journalist and author Charles do Higg wrote about how toothpaste
Speaker 1: took hold of American culture in a book called The
Speaker 1: Power of Habit, Why we do what we do in
Speaker 1: life and business? Uh So, in this book, do Higg
Speaker 1: tells a story about sort of the toothpaste revolution. It's
Speaker 1: the story of a man named Claude C. Hopkins who
Speaker 1: was one of the great and perhaps one of the
Speaker 1: great diabolical minds in the history of modern advertising. Hopkins
Speaker 1: wrote a book called Quote Scientific Advertising. It does sound sinister.
Speaker 1: So around the turn of the twentieth century, apparently almost
Speaker 1: nobody in America brush their teeth, at least not with toothpaste.
Speaker 1: Do Higgs sites consumer research claiming that only seven percent
Speaker 1: of people had toothpaste in their medicine chests around the
Speaker 1: turn of the twentieth century. But then one day a
Speaker 1: friend of Claw Hopkins came to him for help promoting
Speaker 1: a new product that he was selling. He was an
Speaker 1: industrial manufactured toothpaste called PEPSIDENTT. And the pure aesthetics of
Speaker 1: this name sounds so disgusting to me. It makes me
Speaker 1: think of dyspepsia. Like the only toothpaste endorsed by a dyspeptic,
Speaker 1: Jodan Baker defined dyspeptid well, dyspepsia means indigestion. You bad,
Speaker 1: bad digestion. But they think Jodan Baker has bad digestion.
Speaker 1: That's a line from Mystery Science Theater three thousands, starring
Speaker 1: a dyspeptic Joe Don Baker, which which Jodan Baker movie was?
Speaker 1: It I think it was Final Justice. Is that the
Speaker 1: one where he's running around Malta? Yes, But anyway, there
Speaker 1: is actually a common thread in the names here. So
Speaker 1: dyspepsia is indigestion. The root is pepsis, which is the
Speaker 1: ancient Greek word for digestion, and this was apparently a
Speaker 1: clue to the chemical formula of Pepsident. It contained a
Speaker 1: chemical digestive agent to help break down or quote digest
Speaker 1: best food stuck in the teeth. Okay, what's a little
Speaker 1: disgusting when need to put it that way, But a
Speaker 1: lot of things about dental hygiene or disgusting if you
Speaker 1: looked too closely. So Hopkins signed on to spearhead and
Speaker 1: advertising strategy for Pepsident, and it was a huge success.
Speaker 1: Do Higg writes that just a decade after the first
Speaker 1: Pepsident ad campaign, uh, that tiny fraction of Americans who
Speaker 1: had toothpaste in their medicine chest jumped to six and
Speaker 1: we went so we went from almost no Americans brushing
Speaker 1: their teeth with toothpaste to more than half in a
Speaker 1: very short span of time. And do Higg writes also
Speaker 1: that the advertising campaign wasn't just successful in America by
Speaker 1: nine thirty, Pepsident was on store shelves in China, South Africa, Brazil, Germany,
Speaker 1: among other markets. So the question is what made Pepsident
Speaker 1: such a successful advertising and marketing campaign. And so Hopkins
Speaker 1: had a strategy that he always used. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: for this product, it was something he'd used on other products.
Speaker 1: And the strategy she was to create a repeated daily
Speaker 1: routine using the product. And the system might go something
Speaker 1: like this oatmeal gives you energy for twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: but you have to eat it first thing in the morning.
Speaker 1: So this gets people into the habit of having it
Speaker 1: every day when they wake up. There's a queue, there's
Speaker 1: like a time of day Q that signals time to
Speaker 1: consume this product. And then if you consume it every day,
Speaker 1: you keep buying it because you're in a habit. And
Speaker 1: in fact, we still see this kind of strategy used
Speaker 1: in marketing all the time today. Right, try trying to
Speaker 1: encourage you not just to try a product, but to
Speaker 1: make a product a repeated routine in your life, a
Speaker 1: complete part of your daily breakfast, right, exactly right. So
Speaker 1: Hopkins wanted to find a way to to find that
Speaker 1: kind of trigger that would get people using pepsin like
Speaker 1: this every single day. And so he was reading through
Speaker 1: dental textbooks and according to his own autobiography, he he
Speaker 1: was doing this, and he was reading these books and
Speaker 1: he found references to the fact that bacteria in your
Speaker 1: mouth form mucin plaques on your teeth. And you can
Speaker 1: feel this plaque with your tongue if you let it grow.
Speaker 1: And here's his idea to quote one of the ads, quote,
Speaker 1: just run your tongue across your teeth. You'll feel a film.
Speaker 1: That's what makes your teeth look off color and invites decay.
Speaker 1: Another ad, note, how many pretty teeth are seen everywhere.
Speaker 1: Millions are using a new method of teeth cleansing. Why
Speaker 1: would any woman have dingy film on her teeth? Pepsident
Speaker 1: removes the film. So the fact is, of course that
Speaker 1: pepsidint the product was by no means the only way
Speaker 1: to get rid of this film. Right, You could brush
Speaker 1: your teeth without pepsident and do it. According to do Hig,
Speaker 1: one of the top dental authorities of the day, explicitly
Speaker 1: said that the toothpaste was worthless. It did not add
Speaker 1: anything to this process. But it didn't matter because Hopkins
Speaker 1: had found a queue to use the product feeling the film,
Speaker 1: and the film is always is reforming, so you always
Speaker 1: have a new queue to use the product again. And
Speaker 1: so this was hopkins model and how to sell something.
Speaker 1: It was you have a queue, a routine, and a reward.
Speaker 1: And hopkins original idea was the queue is you run
Speaker 1: your tongue across your teeth, and when you do that,
Speaker 1: you will happen to feel a film. It's just biology.
Speaker 1: It just happens. That triggers the routine, which is brushing
Speaker 1: with pepsident, and then there is a reward that comes
Speaker 1: after that, which is feeling that your mouth is now beautiful.
Speaker 1: But do Hig points out that this was actually enhanced
Speaker 1: by the fact that there was a much more direct
Speaker 1: and sensory reward. You didn't just have to rely on
Speaker 1: the cognitive idea of like, ah, now I'm more beautiful.
Speaker 1: You had a very crucial part of the recipe of
Speaker 1: pepsident that contributed to the cycle, and that part of
Speaker 1: the recipe was the mintiness. There was a clean tingling
Speaker 1: left in the mouth after the brushing had been done,
Speaker 1: and that, in fact has been cited as the main
Speaker 1: reward that people feel. You feel your mouth your mouth
Speaker 1: feels dirty, so you brush your teeth and then it
Speaker 1: feels tingly. The tingle lets you know it's working. It does.
Speaker 1: And once the tingle is gone and your mouth feels
Speaker 1: kind of hot and nasty again, don't you want to
Speaker 1: brush your teeth again? This also, you know, I imagine
Speaker 1: this also factors into into some various reasons that one
Speaker 1: could neglect one's stental health, because all you really want
Speaker 1: is the feel of something working. I mean that alone
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons that you have various pseudoscientific
Speaker 1: medical practices that have been pushed by by hoaxters over
Speaker 1: over the the ages. Just if something feels like it's happening,
Speaker 1: then you can you can, you can you can get
Speaker 1: caught up in that alone, like, oh, you just drink
Speaker 1: a little bit of poison of so that's what you're feeling.
Speaker 1: But no, you're feeling something and that is the cure. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean we talked earlier about why so many of
Speaker 1: these quack medical cures from the past involved alcohol. Right,
Speaker 1: You're feelings something's happening, right, So I mean you could
Speaker 1: fall into the trap of say thinking, wellhy I have mouthwashed,
Speaker 1: why should I brush my teeth. Why should I flash
Speaker 1: my teeth? Because if I just take a swig of
Speaker 1: this stuff, I feel a little tingle and uh, and
Speaker 1: then I'm minty afterwards, I'm good to go. That, of course,
Speaker 1: is is inaccurate because we've discussed here you're not gonna
Speaker 1: you're not gonna actually get the effects of brushing on
Speaker 1: your teeth and gums that way. But Yeah, one of
Speaker 1: the big takeaways for me at the end of this
Speaker 1: is that, um, while to toothpaste has come to feel
Speaker 1: like an invention that is the central part of modern
Speaker 1: dental health, I think my takeaway from this research is
Speaker 1: that it's it's not that it's bad. Toothpaste is good,
Speaker 1: but it's not the central part of modern dental health.
Speaker 1: That would be brushing and flossing and going to a
Speaker 1: dentist regularly, right, Yes, And that toothpaste is sort of
Speaker 1: like a little bonus it helps a little bit more.
Speaker 1: That being said, I find myself I find myself oddly
Speaker 1: okay with someone using the dark science of of marketing.
Speaker 1: H If it results in people brushing their teeth more like,
Speaker 1: if it if it actually results an improved dental hygiene,
Speaker 1: it's good. Yeah, I guess you're right. I mean, as
Speaker 1: long as it is as long as people retain the
Speaker 1: idea that brushing is important whether you have toothpaste or not.
Speaker 1: But toothpaste can help. Still at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I'm very pro toothpaste. Oh, I mean me too. Without it,
Speaker 1: I can only imagine how I would spend the day
Speaker 1: just thinking of the horrors of hell lurking under my tongue.
Speaker 1: I am one of the people who's been affected by this, uh,
Speaker 1: this this tingling cycle, the queue and the routine and
Speaker 1: the reward. I've got to feel the minty tingle in
Speaker 1: my mouth. And in fact, I have actually used toothpaste
Speaker 1: before that did not have the minty tingle after I
Speaker 1: was done brushing. I'm sure it helped clean my mouth
Speaker 1: just as good as as a minty toothpaste died. But
Speaker 1: my mouth didn't feel like it was clean. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: whole business of clean is is a complex one, and
Speaker 1: this is one of the topics of Virginia. Smith comes
Speaker 1: back to time and time again in the book, is
Speaker 1: that throughout human history we have hygiene like and then
Speaker 1: we have we have this idea of cleanliness that that
Speaker 1: is detached from the body and these two things just
Speaker 1: become intertwined in human culture and very difficult to to
Speaker 1: pull apart. So the things that are are things that
Speaker 1: are hygienic and things that are clean. It's often that
Speaker 1: they're complicated and they're intertwined to the point that you
Speaker 1: just really can't separate them. Again, well, I think there's
Speaker 1: a case to be made psychologically and sort of theoretically
Speaker 1: that the the cleanliness drive, the hygiene drive is sort
Speaker 1: of part of the over of the overarching orderliness mindset,
Speaker 1: which is a powerful part of of human psychology and
Speaker 1: can be deployed for for great good and great ill.
Speaker 1: I think some people would say that the orderliness drive
Speaker 1: gives us civilization and and all that, but it also
Speaker 1: gives people, uh, I don't know, fascism and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So uh so, hey, keep your mouth clean,
Speaker 1: but don't practice fascism of the mouth. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'd say, go practice fascism of the mouth. At least
Speaker 1: it's going to be a very orderly state in there.
Speaker 1: But we can we'll just have to agree to disagree
Speaker 1: on that, all right. So there you have another episode
Speaker 1: of invention. In the books, we looked at toothpaste. Who
Speaker 1: knows what we'll look at next. We didn't even talk
Speaker 1: about flossing all that much, but dental floss is another
Speaker 1: invention of the post War War two uh dental world.
Speaker 1: If dental floss is independently interesting, we will revisit it,
Speaker 1: all right. So that's it for this week's episode of Invention.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about the show and
Speaker 1: check out other episodes, head on over to our website
Speaker 1: invention pod dot com. Big thanks to Scott Benjamin for
Speaker 1: research assistance with this episode, thanks to our audio producer
Speaker 1: Tari Harrison. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us directly with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 1: say hi, let us know how you found out about
Speaker 1: the show where you listen from all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at invention pod dot
Speaker 1: com the rep day and your pearlier with your da