The $4000 Toothbrush

For a whopping $4,000, you can own your very own all-titanium toothbrush! For more details, check out this article from Consumerist.com. From a dentist's point of view, the best toothbrush is the one that a) has soft bristles and b) you'll use twice a day!

Happy Veterans' Day,
Dr. Lynda Tran
KaiDentistry.com

Toothsavers App!

This fun, interactive app reminds kids to brush twice a day for two minutes. While this fairy tale kingdom is geared towards kids, adults are welcome to play too! Learn more about the app below...

Best,
Dr. Lynda Tran
KaiDentistry.com

New Toothsavers Game!

Game encourages kids to brush for two minutes, twice a day through interactive fairy tale kingdom adventure!

With Children's Dental Health Month around the corner, the Ad Council and the Partnership for Healthy Mouths, Healthy Lives have released a new, free mobile gaming app, Toothsavers, in an effort to motivate parents and caregivers to take action to reduce their children's risk of oral disease. This interactive game makes toothbrushing fun by encouraging kids to save friendly fairy tale characters from the evil, cavity-creating sorceress who cast a wicked tooth-rotting spell on the kingdom. The goal of the game is to motivate children to save their own teeth by brushing their teeth two minutes, twice a day. Click here to watch a preview of Toothsavers.

Created by the Ad Council and the Partnership for Healthy Mouths, Healthy Lives, Toothsavers is part of our successful Kids' Healthy Mouths campaign. We hope you will share this game with your patients so that we motivate parents to take action to reduce their children's risk of oral disease by making sure their kids are brushing their teeth for two minutes, twice a day.

8 Tips for Healthier Teeth

It's some times very helpful and important to go back to the basics. Below, you'll find a neat infographic of 8 Tips for Healthier Teeth. I hope you'll find a new tip or two, or just a nice reminder of a few you might have forgotten. :)

Happy Columbus Day,

Dr. Lynda Tran

KaiDentistry.com

Tea - It Does a Body Good

As an avid tea drinker, I absolutely love starting my day cozing up to a warm cup every morning. While many of us know the mood benefits of tea, I wanted to share with you a recent article in the General Dentistry journal that lists other benefits of tea consumption. Read about the neurological, cancer risk reduction, oral, and other health benefits of tea here or click on the image above.

Here's to your next cup,
Dr. Lynda Tran
KaiDentistry.com

Retrievers May Help Cleft Palate Research

As you all may well know by now, I am a huge dog lover and came across this story in my alumni newsletter. Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers are helping researchers at UC Davis unlock the genetic mutations involved in cleft palate patients (whether the be canines or humans). Check out the full story here or you can read the reproduced article below.

Happy Labor Day weekend,
Dr. Lynda Tran
KaiDentistry.com

Cleft palate discovery in dogs to aid in understanding human birth defect

Printable version

Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on linkedinShare on emailMore Sharing Services

This puppy is a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, the breed with the newly discovered genetic mutation for cleft palate. Read more news from the School of Veterinary Medicine. (Danika Bannasch/UC Davis)

UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine researchers have identified the genetic mutation responsible for a form of cleft palate in the dog breed Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers.

They hope that the discovery, which provides the first dog model for the craniofacial defect, will lead to a better understanding of cleft palate in humans. Although cleft palate is one of the most common birth defects in children, affecting approximately one in 1,500 live human births in the United States, it is not completely understood.

The findings appear this week online in the journal PLOS Genetics and are available online athttps://tinyurl.com/knr8wb3.

“This discovery provides novel insight into the genetic cause of a form of cleft palate through the use of a less conventional animal model,” said Professor Danika Bannasch, a veterinary geneticist who led the study. “It also demonstrates that dogs have multiple genetic causes of cleft palate that we anticipate will aid in the identification of additional candidate genes relevant to human cleft palate.”

Bannasch, who holds the Maxine Adler endowed chair in genetics, explains that common breeding practices have made the dog a unique animal model to help understand the genetic basis of naturally occurring birth defects.

By conducting a genome-wide study of these particular retrievers with a naturally occurring cleft palate, researchers identified a mutation responsible for the development of cleft palate in the breed. Dogs with this mutation also have a shortened lower jaw, similar to humans who have Pierre Robin Sequence. The disorder, a subset of cleft palate, affects one in 8,500 live human births and is characterized by a cleft palate, shortened lower jaw and displacement of the tongue base.

Cleft palate condition occurs when there is a failure in the formation of the secondary palate, which makes up all of the soft palate and the majority of the hard palate. A disruption in the sequential steps of palate development causes a cleft palate and leads to the spectrum of cases that are observed. Children born with cleft palate may develop hearing loss and difficulties with speech and eating. They also may be at increased risk for neurological deficits.

Additional UC Davis researchers include: Zena T. Wolf, a graduate student in the Department of Population Health and Reproduction at the School of Veterinary Medicine, whose thesis topic is the study of craniofacial clefts in dogs; and Assistant Professor Boaz Arzi from the Department of Surgical and Radiological Sciences, School of Veterinary Medicine.

Funding was provided by the Center for Companion Animal Health at the School of Veterinary Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.

About UC Davis

UC Davis is a global community of individuals united to better humanity and our natural world while seeking solutions to some of our most pressing challenges. Located near the California state capital, UC Davis has more than 34,000 students, and the full-time equivalent of 4,100 faculty and other academics and 17,400 staff. The campus has an annual research budget of over $750 million, a comprehensive health system and about two dozen specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and 99 undergraduate majors in four colleges and six professional schools.

Media contact(s):

• Danika Bannasch, School of Veterinary Medicine, (530) 752-1358, dlbannasch@ucdavis.edu
• Trina Wood, School of Veterinary Medicine, (530) 752-5257, tjwood@ucdavis.edu
• Pat Bailey, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-9843, pjbailey@ucdavis.edu

Drinking Coffee Accelerates Tooth Movement

A recent study from West China Hospital of Stomatology, Sichuan University found that caffeine affects the bone metabolism in the jaw, which can accelerate tooth movement. This is very exciting news for all of us in the orthodontics/braces world!

Check out the article here or the scientific paper here.

To Cuppa Joe,
Dr. Lynda Tran
KaiDentistry.com

Wooly Mammoth Tooth Found in New Hampshire

Biology professor Fred Prince makes his discovery...twice. Check out the article here about his search for this 10,000+ year old molar or you can read the reproduced article below. (Unfortunately, the age of the sample could not be confirmed due to the lack of collagen.)

Here's to the elephant's distant cousin,
Dr. Lynda Tran
KaiDentistry.com

Wooly Mammoth Tooth Provides First Evidence Of Behemoth Roaming New Hampshire

By Rebekah Marcarelli r.marcarelli@hngn.com | Aug 02, 2014 10:35 PM EDT

A recently-discovered wooly mammoth tooth is the first evidence of the creature's existence in New Hampshire. 

A decade ago researcher Plymouth State University biology professor Fred Prince found a strange object near a stream in Campton. Not knowing what it was he tossed it away, the university reported. 

"I threw it away, I just dropped it back into the gravel," Prince recalls. "It was ten years after the fact when I realized what I had done."

"As soon as I put that partial molar in my hand I was back ten years ago beside that stream," Prince said.  "I felt sick knowing what I tossed aside."

The mistake inspired Prince to do more research on wooly mammoths and their anatomy. 

"I told my wife, 'I'm going to go look for a mammoth molar,' and I found this in a decades-old gravel pit; it was the third place I looked," Prince said. "It was embedded into the surface of the ground, and I could see those contours on top. I know it's hard to believe, but that's what happened.  I went out specifically to find a mammoth tooth and I did.  So, with this second chance, I officially had the first New Hampshire mammoth find to go along with my unofficial find of years ago."

Prince sent photos of the molar to Doctor Larry Agenbroad, Director of The Mammoth Site in South Dakota, who confirmed it was a wooly mammoth tooth. The specimen was also sent to Accelerator Mass Spectrometry lab at the University of Arizona for radiocarbon dating, but the collagen was not preserved well enough for an analysis. 

Mammoth remains are extremely rare in New England. Findings include a tooth and tusk discovered in 1848; a partial skeleton found in 1959; and a tooth in 2013. The researcher believes many other have been found, but also tossed aside. 

"I wouldn't doubt there are people who have picked up something like this and did the same thing I did ten years ago. I think people have assumed some were here in New England, but there isn't much evidence, in part due to the acidity of our soil and in part likely a result of low population density," Prince said.