Wednesday, January 27, 2021

sorry, just to clarify the thought.

so, if i had a lot of bacteria in those pockets, what i'd need to do is:

1) clean them out.
2) let them heal

in theory, they should usually reattach if you get the bacteria out.

what i'm seeing happen instead is a kind of layer of white material - i presume hydroxyapatite, or fluoroapatite - develop over the stains, which seems to be....it's less that's filling the hole in and more that it's blocking the pocket. i don't know if the material then migrates in and fills up, or if it's just a surface layer. but, the result is that the stain gets hidden.

for the stained teeth that aren't splitting, what i'm seeing is slow wear on the stain. i don't know what the chemical composition of the stain is, but i remember reading that there might be a large amount of sulfur in there. but, i mean, it looks and feels like burnt carbon. i don't want to scratch it off for obvious reasons, but it's slowly, slowly, slowly washing off - which is all i can ask for.

what a dentist would have to do is drill out the stain and fill it in, and i don't want that - i want to find a way to wash it off, which they've all told me is impossible. but, i mean, it can't be impossible - that's not how chemistry works. i may lose some enamel in the end, which is why i'm trying to rebuild it. but, slowly washing it off has to be gentler than drilling it out...

i've regained white enamel under heavy staining on one tooth so far and hope it accelerates over the next few months.

so, i'm going to buy some more hydroxyapatite and extend the experiment another two months.