A quick search on the internet machine reveals that a lot of people are very concerned and suspicious about the ingredients in their toothpaste. Let’s face it, the thought of putting Dicalcium Phosphate Dihydrate in your mouth may sound a bit scary.

For the concerned consumer, there is actually a big market out there for natural and organic toothpastes.

Personally, I tend to be quite practical about these sorts of things. I generally begin with some basic assumptions, that… A) Just because a corporation is large, does not mean it is trying to cause harm to people and B) People buy “natural” alternatives because they feel they ought to be better, without really having any knowledge about it one way or the other.

So let’s go inside the tube to see what’s in your standard Colgate brand toothpaste. Each ingredient is there for a reason. They break down into either active or supporting ingredients. Active ingredients are there to clean your teeth, and the supporting ingredients help the active ingredients do their job.

Abrasive Polishing Agent – The primary job of toothpaste is to scour your teeth the same way you would clean gunk off your stove. In toothpaste the abrasives are relatively gentle so as to not remove the enamel from your teeth. A standard abrasive would be Silica.

Historically, Silica was one of the first “tooth powders” that was used centuries before toothpaste was invented. It can be found naturally in the earth.

Fluoride – To prevent tooth decay. While some people are fear-mongering over fluoride in the water supply, the benefits have been made massively clear over time. Medical evidence against is sparse.

Surfactants – Usually this is Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, the same ingredients found in shampoo to cause foaming. The reason for this is that it helps spread the toothpaste around your mouth, and moves away debris.

Moisturizing Agent – As toothpaste sits on your shelf for a couple months, it would dry to a flaky powder without some help. Glycerin and Sorbitol do the job, keeping it a gooey paste.

Binding Agents – As with many chemical compounds, individual ingredients don’t always get along. Hydrated Silica, Cellulose Gum, and Carrageenan make sure that the parts do not separate or settle.

Sweetener – To cover up the bitter flavour of the main ingredients Sodium Saccharin is added. It’s an artificial sweetener, like Aspartame, but has just the right amount of sweetness for most adult tastes.

Flavour – No mysterious ingredients here. If you buy peppermint toothpaste, it will contain some form of peppermint. Baking Soda flavoured toothpaste will contain Sodium Bicarbonate (that is baking soda) which also acts as an abrasive and lends a little assistance to fighting bacteria.

Whitener – For toothpastes that claim to whiten your teeth, the active ingredient might be Hydrogen Peroxide, which effectively is a bleach, and/or Titanium Dioxide, which is the same little white flecks of metal used to make white paint. Health-wise, the peroxide is more harmful than the titanium, but the latter really only “paints” your teeth temporarily.

That’s it. So relax, and smile your beautiful smile. Colgate is not trying to kill you, they are just trying to let you feel good about your teeth.

While some people like to point out that toothpaste shares some ingredients with rat poison, it’s a bit like saying your car uses some of the same metals as a ballistic missile. Does that make you want to drive a car made out of compressed wood chips?

• Source: Fact Sheet about Toothpaste (PDF) – Colgate Consumer Information
• Source: Toothpaste Ingredients – Wikipedia

Unfortunately wisdom teeth are on my mind these days, as I’ve got one being a pain in the… jaw. I’m all for the wisdom part though.

These molars, usually four, at the very back of the mouth come in at the age of 17 to 25. The origin of the wisdom moniker may come from the Dutch, where they are called verstandskies, which would literally translate to wisdomtooth. However, verstand may have been intended to mean “standing far away”, as in, in the far back of the mouth.

Turkish people call them the 20th Year Tooth, while Spanish refers to them as the Molars of Judgement (as 18 is the age at which the law applies).

In Japan they are Oyashirazu, literally meaning “unknown to the parents”. Apparently, children have moved away from home by the time these teeth come in.

In Thailand they call it the huddling tooth, for it’s pesky reputation for crowding your other teeth. It’s for that reason that many people have had their wisdom teeth removed. Many dentists believe in preemptively extracting wisdom teeth whether or not problems occur while others prefer a wait-and-see approach as surgery can have side effects.

The most unique term comes from Korea, where they are called Sa-rang-nee, which means love teeth. It refers to the pain of a first love, commonly experienced around that age.

Turns out that your wisdom teeth may in fact lead to wisdom in the truest sense. In 2008 Japanese researchers found that stem cells can be extracted from extracted wisdom teeth. That’s pretty good news, as it’s a source for these scientifically important cells that’s not bogged down in controversy.

• Source: Wikipedia: Wisdom Tooth

Chapstick is a trade-marked brand name for lip balm, but the name has become so popular to use with any kind of lip balm that they could be in danger of losing their trade-mark. (like what happened to the Yo-Yo) The one and only Chapstick was invented in the 1870s by Dr. Charles Browne Fleet, a physician who dabbled in this sort of stuff. His original product was like a large wick-less candle wrapped in tinfoil… which wasn’t exactly a blockbuster seller. In 1912 John Morton bought the rights to the product for a whopping five dollars. His wife melted down the large pieces of the balm and formed it into smaller sticks, and its future success got underway.

Now, back to my needlessly shocking headline, how can Chapstick kill you? Strictly speaking, it can’t. Well, I suppose anything could become a choking hazard. Or if Chapstick could be fired from an air cannon at a high enough velocity… (hmm) But what I meant was some of the interesting ingredients in Chapstick. Most of it is made up of wax and oil, along with the usual suspects of any skin lotion. (vitamin E, aloe vera, etc.) One of the more interesting ingredients is Phenol… a.k.a. the Nazi Death Toxin!

Phenol is used in medicine as a germ-killing antiseptic. It even smells like “hospital”. It’s also the structural ingredient in aspirin, and had it’s debut in the manufacturing industry as a chief ingredient of Bakelite, one of the original types of plastic. Most intriguing was it’s popularity in Nazi Germany as a lethal injection. Primarily due to it’s ready availability and quick, effective results. The reason for it to be in your Chapstick is not so dastardly. It has exfoliating properties (removing dead skin) as well as some UV-protection.

Another controversial ingredient in Chapstick is oxybenzone, as found in many sunscreen products. There is some evidence to suggest that this UV absorbing compound becomes carcinogenic on the skin, which can actually cause skin cancer… which the sunscreen was trying to avoid in the first place! So you can add that to the infinite list of “_____ may cause cancer”. Yippee!

But really, the choking hazard is still the most dangerous potential of Chapstick. I’m just saying… you might not want to yawn with your eyes closed while Chapstick is nearby. Who knows what could happen?

• Source: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/ChapStick

Many of my lessons here at LSNED are inspired by random curiosity. Yesterday the thought came to me, as I was standing outside in my wool jacket, scarf, mittens, and toque… why does my nose run when it’s cold? Being that November is an ideal month for general nose awareness, I thought it appropriate to pass on what I learned about snot.

Snot, or more technically accurate (but not as fun) “mucus”, is produced inside your nose and sinuses as a first line defence against germs and dust in the air. It works like fly-paper, basically, as particles will stick in the goop before it gets inhaled into your lungs where it could cause more serious trouble. You produce about a quart of mucus every day. Or a litre, for you metrically-inclined. That’s a full bottle of snot every day. Gross.

As for why it might be dripping out your nose, it could be one of many reasons. Of course, when we’re sick with a flu or cold our mucus production goes into overdrive making more than the usual daily quota. It can overfill your sinuses, causing you to get stuffed up, and we all know it runs out your nose like a gooey waterfall. It’s working extra hard to prevent those airborne germs from coming in and getting you doubly sick.

If you have allergies to pet hair, or pollen, or anything else it can cause a runny nose. Allergies are caused when your body interprets something, like dog hair, as a germ and it reacts the same as if you were sick. Again, turning on the snot faucet.

When you cry (and we already learned the health benefits of crying) you get a runny nose, but it has nothing to do with sickness or germs. In that case, the tears produced in your eyes also drain into your sinuses, mixing with the mucus, and making things all runny.

Lastly, the answer to my pondering, when it’s cold outside your body turns on your nose heater so as to warm up the incoming air before it hits your lungs. As the flow increases to the blood vessels in the nose, that triggers more mucus production and the overflow starts on it’s epic journey south causing the traditional Canadian greeting: “(sniff) Hi, (sniff – sniff) it sure is (sniff) cold out there! (sniff)”

• Source: http://kidshealth.org/kid/talk/qa/nose_run.html

Penicillin remains one of the most significant medical advancements, umm, ever. Before its first use in 1940, infections from a skinned knee or a shaving cut could prove fatal. There was nothing doctors could do to fight bacteria. Until the P-bomb came along.

Alexander Fleming is credited as the one who discovered penicillin while working at St. Mary’s Hospital in London. How he got to St. Mary’s in the first place is by pure chance. His brother, already a doctor, suggested he invest his sudden inheritance in medical school. He chose to attend St. Mary’s because, earlier in his life, he had played water polo against a team from there. Later on, faced with the decision to leave St. Mary’s, he was influenced to stay by the captain of the rifle club. Fleming was a good shot, it would have been a shame to lose him.

So there he was, working in the lab studying the staphylococci bacteria. (aka: staph infection, which at the time was deadly) He was a rather messy kinda guy, and at one point came back to his lab after a long absence to find his bacteria samples ruined. There was penicillium fungus growing in his petri dishes. As he was throwing them out, he saved a couple to show a colleague, at which point he took a closer look. Where the fungi had grown, the bacteria had retreated. (cue dramatic science music)

Now, fast forward a decade through a long, slow moving process of un-exciting research. So un-exciting that the other scientists were tired of Fleming and his fungi. (apparently, he was a terribly dull lecturer who showed no passion for his work) He had managed to extract the “active ingredient” from the penicillium, which he named penicillin, but not much more. Still, had he not continued to work diligently, the medical breakthroughs would have been missed.

It was actually other researchers, first Dr. Cecil Paine, and later Dr. Howard Florey, who did the work of applying penicillin to medical testing. The first human patient, a police officer who had cut himself shaving, was a successful test… except that he died. The penicillin did stop the infection, and he did get better, but then they ran out. (they were even trying to reclaim the fungi from the man’s urine!)

Such was the problem for a few years. The medicine worked great, but they could not produce enough. Until the final random events in the story. A different sort of the penicillium fungi was found… in a grocery store… on a cantaloupe. This one produced 200 times the amount of penicillin. After some mad-science experiments with x-rays and UV light, they produced a mutation that generated 1000 times as much. That oughtta do it.

So consider that next time you’re shaving. Have you thanked a cantaloupe lately?

• Source: http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/wong/BOT135/Lect21b.htm (the loooong story)

So let’s say you had a fever and, for some crazy reason, you wanted to be rid of it. Perhaps you thought it would be nice if you could make it disappear with magic. Ta-da, you’re healed! Well once upon the time, that was the number one over-the-counter prescription.

The wise doctor was Serenus Sammonicus working in the second century as the top physician for the Roman empire. If you came to him with hay fever, or a runny nose, he’d probably offer up his most famous cure… Abracadabra! No really… the word abracadabra was the cure. You couldn’t just say it, though. You needed an amulet with the word engraved across the top. It would be written again on the next line, but missing the last letter. The third line again, missing two letters, and so on. It would go from ABRACADABRA all the way down to just A in a triangle shape.

Nowadays, the word Abracadabra is more likely to cause sneezing than cure it, since the word is often said immediately before the appearance of furry, allergy-inducing bunny rabbits. Ta-da-choo!

Hopefully, you realize that using a magic incantation or amulet is a ridiculously ridiculous idea for any medical doctor, but at the time (200 AD) Sammonicus was among the top scholars of the world. Fortunately knowledge marches on. It’s important to keep in mind that just because an idea comes from the top, it doesn’t make it right.

• Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abracadabra

As I sit here, all sniffly, clinging to a tall glass of orange juice, I am somewhat surprised to discover that there is no evidence to support vitamin C as an effective protector against colds. Whether you take it as a regular supplement, or just pack it in after the cold hits, it doesn’t help prevent colds, and it doesn’t help you recover from colds. Bummer.

This is the conclusion of multiple scientific studies, comparing vitamin C against placebos in varying doses and schedules. With the rather odd exception of marathon runners, skiers, and soldiers training in the arctic, most people received no increased protection from the ravages of the sniffles.

So vitamin C won’t help your achy-stuffy-watery-goobery self get through a cold, but don’t knock it. It still has many other health benefits such as preventing further complications from colds, keeping your skin looking young, and reduce the risk of strokes, cancer, and heart troubles. Oh, and scurvy.

Bonus fact: On the other hand, grandma’s chicken soup has been proven to have scientific merit for fighting colds. The combination of the heat, the broth, and the vegetables do make for a beneficial treatment.

• Source: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Vitamin_C_and_the_common_cold
• Source: http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/the-benefits-of-vitamin-c