Tangentially related, apparently xylitol gum can reduce cavity risk by killing off bacteria (which cannot digest but cannot differentiate xylitol from regular sugar) in the mouth.

In case this is useful for anyone, this study on high-risk HPV and medicinal mushrooms blew my mind:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25271984/

In 88% (36 out of 41) of patients with high-risk HPV, taking reishi + turkey tail mushrooms daily for 2 months cleared the virus, versus 5% clearance (1 out of 20) in the control group. I suspect that 88% clearance rate would be higher if they continued for longer than 2 months.

Alternative form of delivery required for Singapore.

I'm just over here wondering how/where/when I can buy this

apparently it helps reduce risk of mouth cancer..... what im hearing is rotate this and zyns in my mouth, see what happens.

I wonder if chewing mastic would be as effective?

I'm curious. HIV has been largely conquered, so why hasn't HPV been conquered yet? Same goes for shingles.

Chicken pox is conquered. We went from 95% to <1%. Shingles will see a similar plunge.

Vaccine timeline differs though—Gardasil's only been widescale since ~2006, and cervical cancer takes decades to manifest. Give it another generation.

Adding to my sibling comments: It also has been conquered in some sense of the word. There are effective vaccines for the 9 most problematic HPV types: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPV_vaccine . It is worth getting, regardless of your gender.

Got Gardasil at 26 after reading up on it, no big deal. Wish they pushed it harder on guys earlier, most of my friends never got it.

You need to use antiretrovirals constantly to control the HIV. It's not worth it for the HPV that is mostly benign (and only rarely causes cancer).

Less resources devoted to curing because of lower lethality

There's been a lot of failed attempts at therapeutic vaccines and the like, but nothing has proven effective. It seems that the virus is quite hard to detect and target in the skin.

That, plus a lack of urgency due to the effectiveness of preventative vaccines, leads to a lack of urgency on the issue.

This is the future I wanted.

Sounds like an ad. "Eat this gum, it is so healthy."

Gum is often made of plastics so won’t be surprised if cancerous themselves

We stopped putting "clinically studied" claims in our own marketing after lawyers flagged how thin most cited studies actually are.

Not worth the time of day until it can be demonstrated that there is a net health benefit. Precautionary Principle FTW.

humans evolved to have risk seekers and risk avoiders. some people try it, the other people watch.

Aren't all gum based basically plastic? Including natural ones? So chewing any gum is just going to fill your body with microplastics right? I wonder if the risk offset is worth it.

Those are some great leaps of logic.

For those downvoting me:

https://samueli.ucla.edu/bursting-your-bubble-chewing-gum-re...

This includes natural gum bases.

Chicle's a natural latex, not plastic technically, but modern gum base often swaps in polyethylene/polyvinyl acetate anyway, so you're not wrong.

The original chewing gum was a latex called chicle from tropical trees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicle?wprov=sfla1

Engineered organisms as drug delivery goes back to at least the 90s gene therapy hype cycle. Gum's a nice vector, half of these never leave the lab though.