When kids start losing their baby teeth, the tooth fairy usually leaves behind a few dollars, but it seems these baby teeth are worth way more than a few dollars, which is why doctors are urging parents to save them.
While some parents like to save these baby teeth in a box or container because of their sentimental value, many others end up just throwing away because they don’t think they’re worth saving. However, in 2003 scientists from the National Insititute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) discovered that baby teeth actually contain precious stem cells like the ones found in a baby’s umbilical cord, which have the ability to change into any type of cell as needed.
Because these stem cells can change into any cell, they can be grown into any tissue your child might need in the future should they ever get sick or experience things like pancreas damage, brain damage, heart issues, or even cancer.
Normally if that happens, patients often need to wait on long donor lists, but keeping baby teeth can help eliminate that step and help them get better quicker.
What To Do:
Just keeping your child’s baby teeth in a container at home, however, isn’t good enough. The tooth needs to be kept fresh since the cells will die without proper care.
In order to save these teeth and keep the stem cells alive, you need pay a fee to store the teeth with a teeth storage service like Store-A-Tooth, which collects the teeth, extracts the cells, puts them in a special culture where the cells thrive, and then are finally frozen using a cryogenic process.
Do you think it’s worth saving your child’s tooth for the stem cells? Let us know what you think in the comments below, and please SHARE this with parents on Facebook.
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The Number 1 Reason You NEED To Be Saving Your Child’s Baby Teeth is an article from: LifeDaily