>Does dentifrice use help to remove plaque? A systematic review
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27513809/
"The cumulative evidence for this systematic review demonstrates that there is moderate certainty that toothbrushing with a dentifrice does not provide an added effect for the mechanical removal of dental plaque."
However, plaque removal is not the only purported function of toothpaste. It can also serve as a fluoride delivery system, and fluoride has strong evidence for strengthening teeth. I personally drink a lot of tea, which is a fluoride hyper-accumulator, so I'm more concerned with avoiding fluoride, but if you don't drink tea this might influence your decision to use toothpaste.
There are also some toothpastes with antimicrobial ingredients. Those also have strong evidence for actually doing something, although I'm personally skeptical that messing with your mouth's microbiome like that is a good idea.
Additionally, I believe that toothbrush wear is an underestimated factor in cleaning efficacy. Toothbrush bristles are manufactured with microscopic texturing that helps remove plaque. I can feel the difference when changing from a worn to a new toothbrush. Ben Krasnow of Applied Science has a video on Youtube with electron micrographs showing the difference:
Much human effort has been spent eliminating unpleasant odors.
Breath though. Wouldn't fly with my wife. I not only brush with toothpaste, I then use some Hexetidine. And then I take a little Fisherman's Friend or something similar.
I like the feeling of freshness. I don't care much about the actual effect: I just care about feeling fresh.
Of course, the minty freshness is nice to have but that is just a bonus. Most people rely on this to cover up bad hygiene but a proper dental hygienist will of course see the problems either way.
If you search my comments, I have written about dental hygiene at length. Source: my fiance is a DH, see neighbouring threads.
I use Philips Sonicare, heard good things about Oral-B iO from a dental hygienist who has patients using both.
Of course, flossing using a super floss (OralB makes those) and interdental brushes by Curaprox/ TP of correct sizes is important to also clean the space between your teeth and significantly lower the likelihood of gingivitis and almost eliminates the progression to periodontitis.
So do you change your toothbrush every quarter?
(Source: My fiance is a dental hygienist in Prague, Czechia specializing in periodontology and treatment of advanced periodontitis.)
To know to start the sentinel toothpaste he must search around and prove it’s the only one left - by doing this he doesn’t need the sentinel anyway, as the searching process with yield only one, sentinel or not?
If it doesn’t need a search, e.g. they are in a line/all on easy view - then it’s obvious it’s the last even without a sentinel?
Similarly with the emoji list. If can reliably remember which emoji is last, then each is equally as good as a sentinel. But if you can't, having one which is "special" will help remind you.
Works great for an average person who usually visits the store. Adjust the initial putchase if you visit the store twice a year.
Also works great for many suplies like coffee, pasta, legumes...
i.e. when taking out last tube, you have to remember to do it them, but you are about to brush your teeth, so probably not going to do it then, will get to it afterwards, but you're a forgetful person, so you forget, and now you've forgotten its the last tube.
But with the sentinel tube, every time you use it you will remember its the sentinel and you'll be like "did I add it the shopping list?" Eventually one time you'll remember to check the storage / shopping list to see if it needs to be added.
TLDR: the point is for forgetful people who can't do the action required right away.
I might suggest phrasing this a little differently. Obviously, when you find that any tube is the only tube left, you know it’s time to buy more toothpaste. The problem is that you realize this early in the morning or right before bed, and so you’re likely to forget. The advantage of the “sentinel toothpaste” is that it continues to remind you after that moment, so that you’ll actually remember when you have time to do something about it.
And I think that captures the key thing about a sentinel value: it captures state in a place where you’re already storing state, without requiring you to wrap the state in some external structure, e.g. putting a sticky note on your mirror or storing a string’s length in a separate field.
1. Have two toothpastes (actually two of everything) 2. When one gets used up, remove the checkmark from my shopping list (just a simple checkmark list on my phone in Google notes) 3. When in the store, buy everything that's not checked on the shopping list
Works all the time, except during the CoVID toilet paper crisis, which made me increase my prepper level to 3 of everything.
A different class of problem with this technique is when I bought 150 old-style lightbulbs just before they got banned in the UK. At the time, I really hated LED lights because they flickered, and so I could use them in areas I just passed through, but nowhere I sat and spent any time. I still have about 120 of them left because, of course, LED bulb tech has got better and I now only have 2 lights in the house that still use the old bulbs. They don't get much use, one is in the loft and one is in a cupboard.
I buy more $CONSUMABLE whenever I take the last unit of $CONSUMABLE out of storage. If I don’t order online or add it to the grocery list right away, I put the old empty (second-to last) container in a place where it is likely to prompt me to resupply in a timely manner, which is often different from the place where $CONSUMABLE is consumed. Otherwise there’s the risk that the “special sentinel” is always encountered at a place or time where resupplying is inconvenient, and so it might run empty before you get around to it, despite its “special” nature. This approach also has the benefit that you don’t have to switch from your favorite variety of $CONSUMABLE.
I put anything needing resupply, empty or approaching empty depending on the item, right there on that part of my desk. Unless I’m rushed or preoccupied, checking that space before I leave for the store is usually pretty effective for my defective executive function.
Remembering to clean up the queue afterward is a bit more challenging. But that’s just a mild inconvenience compared to prior years of consistently failing to stock essential items on a routine basis.
Looking for 42 in a table of integers? Put 42 after the last element (obviously you need n+1 elements allocated) and your loop does not need to check array bounds, only checking for a[i]==42 is now guaranteed to stop and not read past the array bounds.
(obviously it doesn't work if multiple threads search the same table for different values)
A type of sentinels that are cute are "poison pills": when you have a queue and know at some points that no more items are coming, and several consumers, you can simplify the logic by putting as many poison pills at the end of queue as there are consuming threads.
When a consumer finds a poison pill, he stops removing/processing items for the queue.
As there are the same number of poison pills as there are consumers, all consuming threads shall eventually stop.
I probably learned about poison pills back in the days either in Effective Java or in Java Concurrency in practice.
Adam is obviously massively competent and known etc, but as an avid SO poster I have to point out the potential accidental footgun discharge:
In C abs() returns int, you must use fabs(). Not sure about other C-like languages and the article doesn't specify language but still.
Post covid I like to keep at least a month stash of anything cheap and durable as toothpaste.
We are a family of 3, and teeth are brushed at least twice a day. 5 tubes of toothpaste would last 6 month. That’s a lot of toothpaste.
Personally I just keep a few rolls of single-ply Scott on hand for backup if my stock gets too low.
I just have rows of everything I use that's consumable in my pantry or bathroom closet (depending on the item) in rows. If the row is getting too deep then I need to skip/limit my subscribe and save (or skip buying more when it's on sale if it's not automatic), if it's down to the last item or two then I might order more.
The "last" roll of last resort is cheap 1-ply, and it serves as an unavoidable reminder to restock and replace it.
* cards through mainframes, so roughly 1910s-1960s?
I don’t get it. If there’s one tube left, what does it matter what kind it is
Not all things we do on computers translate well to meatspace.
There are lots of programming languages that are built on coventions (for example in Python, private variables are not actually protected in any way). We rely on other programmers to know the rules and respect them. Same goes with toothpaste management system, or with deciding what should happen even you finish communal ketchup bottle.
Still I think this is a stretched analogy. Decent strategy in real life, but programming is not the same and in my experience in-band signalling like this generally leads to fragile code. I mean nobody would recommend null terminated strings as a sane design today...
