Mama's Tooth Experiment
A month or so ago my 10 year old had a loose tooth that was bothering him. He let me pull it out. I told him, “Hey we should soak this in coke. I have heard that if you do that it will dissolve the tooth! ” I offered him a buck for his tooth and he agreed.
Then I realized that I could soak a bunch of teeth in different things to see what happened. So I offered him $10 for his tooth collection of 11 teeth. It was worth it for the sake of pure science.
I put one tooth in each of seven jars and filled with 7 liquids and labeled them. I kept them on a table for about a month. Tonight I inspected the teeth and had some pretty interesting results!!
Here is what I soaked the teeth in:
- Coke
- Apple cider vinegar plus water tonic
- Hydrogen Peroxide
- Distilled water
- Colloidal Silver
- Apple Cider Vinegar, baking soda, water tonic
- Baking soda tonic
The tooth soaked in coke was nearly black. Ugh! It looked the worst. My 16 year old son was passing through and I showed him the tooth. He said, “That is why I don't keep coke sitting in my mouth.” Hmmm…)
The tooth soaked in hydrogen peroxide looked amazing. It was pure white.
The other teeth had varying amounts of color. The ones in vinegar solutions looked somewhat stained.
The tooth that was in the Apple Cider Vinegar tonic broke in half when I took it out of the solution!
I took a wooden spoon and tried to crush each tooth, to no avail (even the broken tooth).
So I got a hammer and hit each tooth until it smashed. J The colloidal silver tooth and the distilled water tooth were easiest to crush. The coke tooth and the peroxide tooth were equally hard to crush.
Some limitations of my experiment:
These teeth were dead teeth. So this experiment did not replicate “real life.”
Additionally, these teeth did not have the benefit of body functions that would affect teeth. I am thinking in particular of saliva, which has a benefit to the teeth, I believe.
Each tooth came out of my son's mouth at different times over the course of 5 years. They would not all have been of identical quality, which could have affected the outcome.
Some conclusions and observations:
I think the most striking thing was how white the hydrogen peroxide tooth was, and with no appearance of being worse for the wear. I think hydrogen peroxide is likely among the best ways to safely whiten your teeth. Now, you can't soak your teeth in them, but you can use hydrogen peroxide as a mouthwash after you brush, or whenever you like.
I had used some distilled water in one because Robert Henry and others say that distilled water will leach minerals out of your body. It did seem to weaken the tooth that was soaking in it!
I have to admit that I was surprised that the coke tooth was not compromised in its strength, though the color was quite dreadful.
Of course, none of this takes into account the bodily processed affected by each liquid and how that would affect your teeth.
At the end of the day, what is my take away from this?
I need to be using hydrogen peroxide to try and whiten my teeth.
I don't need to get too excited about my children having an occasional soda.
I will stick to using distilled water only for particular things, like making colloidal silver. I don't think it is a good idea to drink it unless you add back in the minerals.
The pictures below:
1. Before
2. After
3. Before (again, by mistake.)
4. Close up which shows the coke tooth and cracked ACV tooth and H2O2 tooth.
If you have an observations or conclusions, let me know!
