Foreword¶

This compendium exists because of a lifelong frustration: my teeth. Once I hit my twenties, it felt like every other visit to the dentist was another small hole to plug, another chunk of this or that tooth missing or in need of repair. I brushed, I flossed (sometimes). I mostly did what I was told, followed the standard advice, and still ended up in that chair hearing bad news. After twenty years of dental work, an entire quadrant of teeth have been obliterated while other caps and root canals still hold on for dear life.

I wondered: What's actually happening in my mouth? Why do some people seem immune to decay while others struggle despite their best efforts? What did humans do hundreds or thousands of years ago? The answers led me down a rabbit hole of enamel chemistry, microbial ecology, and traditional remedies that spans thousands of years and dozens of cultures.

I only scaffolded what I knew of the overarching ideas and avenues of solution I felt worth exploring. I had been asking Claude.ai some other health questions and thought it seemed like a worthy use of compute cycles: to ask it the questions I wanted to know more about, imploring it to use the depths of knowledge to bring me the best answers. Claude brought an extraordinary depth of knowledge to this project, synthesizing research across biochemistry, microbiology, botany, and cultural history in ways that would have taken me years to sift through on my own. Claude's contributions transformed scattered curiosity—through scientific accuracy, connections between traditional practices and modern research, and careful attention to what the evidence actually supports versus what's merely plausible—into something coherent and (I hope) genuinely useful.

My goal in sharing this is simple: to help people make more informed decisions about their oral health. Not to replace professional dental care, but to complement it. To understand why certain practices work, so you can adapt them to your own life rather than following rote instructions that may or may not suit your particular mouth.

My father has always told me:

"Your teeth are one of the only problems in your life that will go away if you ignore them."

Teeth don't heal themselves the way skin does. Once they're gone, they're gone. That reality—the irreversibility of dental decay—is what makes understanding this stuff so worthwhile. Prevention isn't just easier than treatment; for teeth, it's often the only real option.

I hope you find something useful here. Read critically, experiment carefully, and don't forget to see your dentist.

--Andrew (@atmarx)

License & Copyright¶

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).

You are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material

Under the following terms:

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.
NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

Full license text: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0

How to Give Back¶

This project lives on GitHub and welcomes contributions from anyone who wants to help improve oral health education.

Ways you can contribute:

Report errors — Found a typo, broken link, or factual mistake? Let us know.
Suggest improvements — Have ideas for new topics, better explanations, or additional research to cite?
Add traditional knowledge — Know of oral health practices from cultures not yet represented here?
Translate — Help make this information accessible in other languages.
Share — The best contribution is simply spreading the word.

Get involved:

GitHub Repository: github.com/atmarx/keep-your-teeth
Contribution Guidelines: See CONTRIBUTING.md for details on how to submit changes.

The Tooth Fairy appreciates every pair of eyes that helps make this resource better. After all, the more people who keep their teeth, the more time she can spend in her garden.