The best scientific discoveries are the ones that validate gross habits.
For instance, for several years, reputable sources have been telling people to not bother with washing raw chicken. That’s because it spreads more germs than it kills.
And now it turns out that parents hoarding baby teeth is also a bad habit with a great result.
Many parents collect their children’s lost baby teeth and store them for years to come. Some put them in little silk sacks, where’s others have strange little jars.
When many ask these hoarder parents why they keep their child’s teeth in a weird place forever, the parents often can’t think of a good response.
It just feels right.
Well, it turns out that this parental instinct actually does have a purpose. And it can even save their child’s life!
Now the US National Center for Biotechnology Information is stating that tooth-derived stem cells can be used in all manner of medical procedures.
Stem cells have been in the news a lot in recent years. They’re at the frontier of medical research and are used to treat a wide range of conditions.
A stem cell is a young cell that hasn’t yet grown into a specific bodily function. It’s useful to scientists in this state, as it can be reworked into another bodily function, such as fighting cancer.
The main way that scientists harvest stem cells is through bone marrow. Getting to bone marrow is, as you can imagine, very difficult.
But it turns out that baby teeth are also filled with stem cells and offer scientists a much easier way of accessing the cells.
However, that’s only true if scientists have them in the first place.
The advantages of storing your child’s baby teeth should be obvious by now. Not only are they a strong memory of your child growing up, but they’re also packed with life-saving bodily material!
And as well as the much-touted cancer-fighting properties of stem cells, it turns out that baby tooth stem cells are being applied to many more uses.
For instance, current research is looking into using them for regrowing bones, regenerating neural cells, preventing heart attacks, creating new blood vessels, regenerating the liver, reproducing eye tissue, treating diabetes and so much more.
It should be stressed that many of the above uses are still in the early research stage.
However, if even one of those proposed uses turns out to be effective, then storing baby teeth for a person will pay off!
For the best chance of being useful in future years, baby teeth need to be kept in a certain way.
Just keeping them around the home is not enough. Parents should store baby teeth properly.
There are several ways to do this. For those who want to ensure that baby teeth have the best preservation, there’s a company that stores them professionally. This company, Store-A-Tooth, offers storage plans from $25 per month.
Another option is to clean, disinfect and dry a child’s tooth as soon as it falls out. After this, it should be kept in a manner that allows it to stay in its cleaned state, such as an airtight container.
It just goes to show that people should never judge others for their weird habits.
After all, perhaps the weird thing that they do is actually going to result in saving someone’s life one day!
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
