lukeshep.com

This is crazy! I wish we had these back in the day. I mean who wouldn’t mind going to the dentist and getting candy instead of a 99 cent toothbrush! Though my dentist had a SEGA Genesis and pinball machine so I was never really bummed to go. Heck I was usually 30 minutes early.

Other articles I found on these lollipops say that you take two a day for ten days which helps prevent cavities up to six months.

The orange-flavored, sugar-free lollipop they devised is infused with a natural ingredient found in licorice that kills the primary bacterium causing tooth decay. Why in a lollipop? The ingredients needed to be in the mouth for a certain amount of time. That is why this lollipop is such a great idea in the fight against tooth decay.

Marketed as Dr. John’s Herbal Candy, the lollipop, now available for purchase through a candy manufacturer that licenses the technology from UCLA, is the first therapeutic developed by Shi. But he has many more in the works to target bacteria wreaking havoc in the nose, ear and gut, to name just a few.

It all emerges from a vision the microbiologist had eight years ago to apply a medical approach to dentistry - to identify the decay-causing pathogens among the 700 kinds of bacteria living in the human mouth, track their presence and then target them with antimicrobial “smart bombs” that he and his lab would engineer to kill the bad bacteria without harming the good.

And he’s also working on kits to test for these devilish pathogens. “Part of my wild dream is that one day you will walk into the dentist’s office and give a saliva sample to be tested, just as you would give urine and blood samples to doctors,” said Shi, a professor with joint appointments in UCLA’s dental and medical schools.

Original Story