LifeSavers "Artic Berry Sorbets" saved my teeth. I'm quite convinced of it. Really.
Now, I am not a dentist or scientist of any kind so, of course, I can only declare this anecdotally based on my own experience -- basically many, many years of experience with "soft" cruddy teeth. I even had fillings in my baby teeth! But, given my amateur standing, I am still convinced that LifeSavers Artic Berry Sorbets saved my teeth. Or at least helped.
These Artic Berry Sorbets are the large sized LifeSavers that come in a bag at the grocery store. That is, if you're lucky enough to find them.
While on a quest for ways to help save the teeth that I have that aren't already drilled out, capped or bridged I came across some articles about a sugar substitute compound called xylitol. Xylitol is a natural compound sugar alchohol compound with a really slick trick up its molecular sleeve.
It turns out that like other sugars, xylitol is attractive to the nasty bacteria in your mouth that can cause tooth decay, gum disease and cavities, but, unlike the other sugars that feed the bacteria and help it grow, xylitol actually starves the evil bacteria and kills it off! How cool is that?.
Because of the caps and bridges mentioned earlier, chewing gum is not I do much of, but sucking on a nice tasty mint is something I do pretty regularly. So I was delighted to find these LifeSaver Artic Berry Sorbets a few years ago. It turns out that they are really delicious and I immediately fell in love.
So no trouble to replace my former mint habit (also LifeSavers -- BreathSavers Sugar Free, but with Sorbitol which, unfortunately still feeds the bacteria.) It turns out that, there are three flavors of Artic Berry Sorbets in a bag and that not all of them use Xylitol, but there is no doubt that along with the usual flossing and brushing and, as they say, regular dental checkups, my next check up showed little or no build up of plaque, no new soft spots and new (zero) cavities.
In the two years since I started enjoying these LifeSavers I certainly have kept up the usual dental care, but the difference between these two years and all the years before is amazing! Only one cavity!
It'd be for the real scientists to figure out exactly how much the xylitol in my LifeSaver Artic Berry Sorbets help, but I'm convinced.
Now for the bad news; LifeSaver Artic Berry Sorbets are getting harder to find. All the local stores stopped carrying them. So I've been making regular pilgramages to WalMart to get them, but it seems like they're disappearing from WalMarts too. Boo!
So, if you're wondering if I get something from the LifeSavers people to post this, the answer is a definite "no". But I am hoping that somebody will notice what I'm saying and maybe want to try the Sorbets experiment themselves -- and then maybe run up the demand for LifeSavers Artic Berry Sorbets in the stores. One can hope. I sure do.
UPDATES: 5/19/2010
Good news and bad news.
Bad news from WalMart: got a phone call from a WalMart store manager in response to a few "contact us" forms on the WalMart.com website. This contact told us that the Artic Berry Sorbets LifeSavers have been removed from the WalMart inventory -- permamently. Gone. Not coming back. Removed from the shelves. Well; at least they called.
Good news from Wrigley: a kind, thoughtful (though anonomous) email from Wrigley that actually found and listed stores within 10-15 miles that carry the most desired LifeSavers Artic Berry Sorbets. It turns out that they are all Stop & Shop or ShopRite stores, but that's OK. I drove to the closest of those and found my LifeSavers! Thanks unnamed Wrigley's person.
A side note: Wrigley does not make it easy to communicate with themselves about their products. If you follow the link on the bag, you end up at an online gaming site that provides no way (zero, none) to communicate about their products. What's up with that? If you go to Wrigley.com, you get nothing about the products and no way to specifically communicate with the product line managment. There is a "Contact Us" page, but the links and forms on it are so generic and non-helpful that you get the feeling that you're not going to get anywhere. I ended up using the "email" form but didn't even get an automated response until I got this email a couple of weeks later. To Wrigley: You and we (your consumer customers) need more transparency please. Put some communication links on that goofy gaming site, and for goodness sake, put your logo on it somewhere so that we can see that we didn't get caught in a spam or virus shill. Take charge of the communication process, Wrigley, and don't be afraid to let us talk to you. (Thanks)
my God, i thought you were going to chip in with some decisive insght at the end there, not leave it with �we leave it to you to decide�.
As I said; I'm not a scientist so the only no decisive insight. Just my opinion and some hope that Wrigley keeps making these sweeties.
This is all great advice, but remember it takes time