Our relationship with teeth is uneven, messy and grim
economist.com
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Three days ago I had the remaining 12 teeth pulled and I am currently at home adjusting to dentures - and around the new year I will be looking in to All-on-4 implants. It's truly amazing how much better I already feel about myself for just a few hours of work - and I look forward to the quality of life improvements that I will have. Even with this relief though, there is definitely tons of regrets on how I could let it get this far.
Take care of your teeth - it's worth it.
If you spend time reading the literature, you may reach the conclusion the pros of getting fluoride don't outweigh the potential damage done to other organs. Same goes for professional dental cleaning, it erodes enamel quickly, but advantages are not very clear to me.
I think keeping the oral microbiome healthy is a much more fundamental step towards true dental health. You want a healthy balance of bacteria, yeast and phages. And you want them to be generating healthy metabolites. That's why I emphasize a good toothbrush plus a good technique, pocket irrigation, calcium salts, and probiotics. And a good diet.
37 years old. No cavities. No fillings. Brush my teeth once a day in the morning most of my life. Use regular toothpaste. I prefer ultra soft brush, and usually soften them up more with hot water.
The color of my teeth depends on my diet, when I was doing keto or slow carb, it whitened them quite a bit.
I have always spent a long time cleaning and flossing my teeth and have lots of minor repairs and fillings done over the years.
Was there anything particular that helped you get out of that condition?
The reason is that our jaws are actually too small for our teeth. Their jaws are the right size because the jaw grows to its correct size in response to chewing when you are a baby. We dont chew enough as babies.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150204144653.h...
She replied "yes, but cavemen could die at 20 years old from painful tooth infections that spread up to their brain"
I never complained about brushing my teeth again.
Our modern culture taboos anything less than brushing multiple times per day, but it’s not clear how reliable the evidence is supporting this as a blanket requirement (the studies I’ve seen had many other confounding variables, but admittedly I did not do an exhaustive literature review), and most of the tooth infections probably result from other causes.
There are people with perfect teeth who brush rarely, and people with frequent caries who brush religiously after every meal. On average, hunter–gatherers have better teeth than people in agricultural societies, including modern ones. They don’t have access to oral surgery, so when things go bad they can go very bad. But that’s not really related to brushing.
I've heard so much conflicting information on this... Off the top of my head:
* Brushing too often - such as three times a day - speeds up erosion
* Or, that only happens if you brush too hard
* Or, that brushing too hard doesn't affect the teeth, that that's just confusion with it affecting the gums
* Or, that it has nothing to do with duration or hardness, but rather, how soon after eating that you brush (something about the extra saliva for food causing a slight weakness that takes an hour or so to go back to normal)
* Or, that leaving food residue in the mouth for any duration - such as that hour in the last case - causes saliva and bacteria buildup that speeds up erosion
I said "how did you know?"
She said "because that makes it easier to brush the left side of your mouth. Which is why your gums are really eroded on that side, and perfect on the right side."
A soft toothbrush using in small circular motions is best. And for the love of all that is holy, floss!
If you stop brushing your teeth for a week, that's about the final state (unless you eat lots of sugary things which actually break your teeth).
Same thing for showering. At some point you stop getting stinkier.
I've been playing with this myself, thanks to discovering recently that I grew up with an undiagnosed mild to moderate tongue tie. I've changed my tongue position, and even as an adult have noticeably expanded my palate such that there is more room in my arch than their was before (as determined by modest gaps developing between my mid-molars).
In short it's been a big discovery for me this year, and the results are manifest in my life. Sad that this is not well understood by orthodontists and such everywhere.
I have bruxism at night. Generally, my jaw grinds down too much. Hard to stop, because I'm asleep.
I tried pushing my tongue up to the roof of my mouth, and it feels like the opposite of grinding. I'd like to research and see if there's any link. (I'm really out of options for reducing bruxism)
Are you pressing the tongue or just resting it up top?
Additionally I found this that seems to suggest skepticism: https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2014.711
Another thing to bear in mind is that scientific theories are obviously developed faster than they can be proven. And as long as what Orthotropics is not invasive you can try what they preach yourself and draw your own conclusions rather than wait for academic silos to try prove that the method works.
I am trying it on myself. The results are not magical, but I can feel them, I can breathe better. And at the end of the day that's what matters most
I push hard on the roof of my mouth as often as I’m able and have it in mind, as firmly as I think I safely can (bone is sturdy but I imagine it is possible to over-stress it), because I’m trying to actively remodel my face and there was some doubt in the beginning whether that was possible at all as an adult.
As of now the results are clear, my jaw swings farther forward and up, before it was compressed back by the rearward position of my maxilla. The differences are not huge - measured in milimeters, but the difference in articulation can be felt and seen. I actually remember the day I was able to shift my jaw forward to a relaxed position while closing it. My face is now shorter/squarer and broader in appearance. Previously it was consistent with “long face syndrome”. Look up photos of that and you’ll see what I see now: a rearward maxilla, and a jaw forced to swing low to meet it.
Anyway, I’m still at it - my goal is to move my cheekbones to meet my brow. Currently they’re set back a bit, but progess is noticeable. Sounds crazy, I know, but it’a true. :P
Some people don't even have wisdom teeth, so that seems like a mutation that had been spreading, not caused by chewing softer foods.
Think about the mechanics of breast vs bottle feeding: while superficially similar, one requires the child to draw milk out of a breast by generating suction, while the other allows them to mostly passively receive milk delivered via gravity.
http://www.sparkledentaljoondalup.com.au/Blogs/Sparkle-Denta...
That's not how bottles work. You have to actively suck onto the nipple in order to get milk, and you can only get a small quantity per suck. Sure, you can get it in edgewise and bite down so it opens up and the milk runs, but that's not how babies drink.
Source: I used to drink from a bottle well into my teens, because I found it a convenient delivery device for chocolate milk in bed.
A quick web search turns up many images and explanations, e.g. http://www.brianpalmerdds.com/pdf/adsm_section_c.pdf
Source: experience feeding and buying baby's bottles.
edit: As a teen, you probably didn't have the same incentives, you didn't have other things to take care of in parallel, your jaw was more developed, and a tightly screwed bottle will hardly drop anything if you don't shake it, so you could lay down in any position you wished, and take as long as you wanted.
I imagine you can easily try it and report back if you have quick access to a bottle, maybe you can shed more light on this.
Milk from bottles is by auction and it's usually easier than breastfeeding.
(Learned this from a lactation consultant for my daughter)
And yes, there are babies that perform self-service. It's a good way not to have a sleep deprived mother.
Teeth are weird. And correlation isn't causation.
Living in constant stress will destroy one’s teeth over time.
That, and longer life expectancy.
average life expectancy back then is 30 years old. I had pretty good teeth by that age.
When a population has a) a life expectancy of 30 years, and b) an infant mortality rate of 50%, the life expectancy of "people who live a year" is 60.
I don't think it makes much sense to compare our modern concept of stress to very different times in the development of our society. Wild animals are in constant threat of being killed but I wouldn't think it makes sense to imagine them as stressed. They just live in the moment in a very different way to us.
Maybe 'stone-age' isn't far enough in the past to be different enough to modern life in that way. Even if that is the case, humans are very adaptable, the way a modern city dweller feels if they get attacked isn't necessarily the same way someone would feel who has experienced it many times.
I've had my own very small experience related to this. Just over a year ago I gave up my bricks and mortar home in the city and moved into a caravan. It was a wreck and I had to completely rebuild the interior and re-do the electrics and plumbing myself. I learned that my walls and windows provide no security - you could break into my home with your bare hands, with a hammer or axe it would be very easy. I carried a lot of fear in my head at first. In bed I'd be worrying that there'd be a gas explosion or fire because of something I'd done wrong. Once I found a couple of massive surly travellers eyeing up my solar panels, thinking I wasn't around. I had to go out and show that I was around and confident and not a target. I've met all kinds of people and not grown up sheltered at all but these two carried a real heavy, violent air - for a good week or two I was expecting them to turn up in the night to try to rob me, it was very hard to get that thought out of my head, and then to sleep in basically an unprotected tin can with plastic windows. Now I stay on a farm hundreds of miles away from any friends or family, there's no contract or notion of stability, if I fell out with the farmer I might have to leave immediately. I don't drive and at times haven't had enough money to pay to be towed somewhere else (work has been tricky... especially in winter when I'm trying to keep my laptop alive by solar, I've limited mobile data and it's 0-5C indoors), so a few cross words and I could basically be instantly homeless. Shops are an hour walk away, once I put a foot wrong on a track which nobody (not even locals) walks along and instantly sunk up to my waist in thick, sucking sinking mud and genuinely felt I might die there. LOL.
The point I'm ramblingly trying to get around to making is that after a while, it just wasn't sustainable to carry on feeling stressed and edgy. Or my tolerance went up, or something. Life just feels a lot more reactive than it used to, I want to say more real. Although I do have stresses and worries sometimes I don't walk around feeling permanently stressed or scared, actually I love it - it was the best move I ever made in my life, I feel a vitality which I didn't have before.
I've learned that the kind of stresses I have now are somehow easier to bear than the kind I used to have in my old life. I'd somehow rather fight off an intruder in the night than try to navigate a Kafka-esque phone menu system and be condescended to by a passive-agressive CSR. Cold is a feeling I can distract myself away from by writing some code or mending something, whereas receiving a bill with big red capital letters on it could negatively affect my state of mind for several days. When I'm standing over a pit emptying my reeking toilet I just compare it (favourably) to talking to a letting agent.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding...
Thank you for writing this. I think the constant stress “field” we live in has to do less with real immediate threats and more with a lot of artificial but constant pressures, reminders and triggers.
I somehow don’t think worrying about being attacked by an animal which is not here right now is the same as a boss putting the screws in you on an hourly basis, the ad industry telling you you’re ugly 250 times a day, the constant reminder that getting sick equals bankruptcy and death, and the daily news feed reminding you that the world is going to hell and you’re the only one not having amazing fun.
No way to check this hypothesis, fortunately or unfortunately.
Bad teeth and infections were roughly as common 20,000 years ago as they are today. The difference is that back then, they could kill you.
However, the explanation is over-simplistic. Perhaps a bigger contributory factor is whether diet contains the nutritional factors require for proper teeth formation. The case for this factor was made convincingly a century ago [1].
There is no good evidence that it does anything.
hell, here's a crackpot theory website linking to a study saying its the best possible toothpaste known so far... https://www.davidwolfe.com/coconut-oil-is-better-than-toothp...
'Chocolate is an octave of sun energy. In fact it's the energy of the center of the sun. It's a male energy that comes down off the sun and it.. actually, of all the plants, the cacao is right on line target the center of the sun, which we call in our body, the heart, and actually cacao is right up with the center of the sun, which is the center of the heart, which is called the sacred heart.'
- David Wolfe, new-age huckster and scam artist
Literally every single dentist I know would disagree with this.
People are weird about dentists. Almost no-one is claiming, say, that penicillin doesn't do anything, or that doctors only tell you to stop smoking to hurt you. But when it comes to dental standard advice, people go nuts.
Many naturopaths make a decent living.
Like you, I also had a baby tooth that didn't fall out. It was anchored to the bone somehow. It interfered with the movement of my adult teeth as they came in and thus had to be removed in my teens. It was a pain to get out. It had to be broken into pieces and dug out, and since there was no adult tooth to replace it, they put in an implant, which has also worked just fine.
I will probably keep my wisdom teeth. They're not fully in yet but I like the idea of not pulling anything out of my face, you know?
I have dreams in which my jaw widens to the point that it gets stuck-- and then keeps widening. I have dreams where all my teeth fall out and I have to perform an algorithm to put them back in the right order.
Probably because teeth are so exposed, so vulnerable, and are so critically important to social matters-- nevermind that I need them to eat.
I also can't look at pictures of teeth for more than 30 seconds without feeling disconcerted, even though I focus on people's mouths most during a conversation.
One time it was my tongue swelling up til I couldn't contain it in my mouth anymore, and another I was chewing bubblegum, but no matter how much gum I spit out, the gum kept growing until I was choking on it.
I also had a dream where my teeth fell out, I woke up, was relieved it was only a dream, and got up to go the bathroom. Everything was normal and exactly as it should have been. Even the bathroom light switch worked, which is usually one of those things people say is a dream-tell. Then my teeth started getting loose again, and I panicked and woke up a second time. I had been just been dreaming that I woke up the first time.
I took a nap on the couch. Woke up on the couch, could not move. Woke up on the couch, could wiggle my fingers. Woke up on the couch, tried to roll over but woke up on the couch. Managed to roll off the couch onto the floor, but woke up on the couch. This continued til I managed to roll off and drag myself about a foot with my arms (my legs were still paralyzed), then I finally woke up on the couch, my whole body tingling, and wasn't sure I was really awake until I'd gotten up and gone about the rest of my day.
I dunno, maybe everything since then has been a dream and I never did wake up from that nap.
I had that dream a lot in the past.
Most of my dreams on any given night involve some kind of "mission" in a realistically-rendered futuristic compound, without much of a body feeling unless I'm swimming or flying/falling. These dreams, I think, are a reflection of the way I think of my future-- kind of a way to resolve the map I have in my head of my trajectory.
Then I have dreams where it's very clearly about the past. Usually steeped in mood (not necessarily emotion) and a sense of a cohesive "theme", which really illustrates the fruits of introspective moments during waking time.
Then there are people who have dreams regularly filled with symbology, which is one of the common conceptions of what dreams are. Symbol dreams are rare for me, but I definitely pay attention when they happen.
Ultimately I think it comes down to abstractions. Maybe when you wake up in the morning try to figure out what your dreams were abstracting, and then you'll notice a pattern. There are abstractions within the abstractions too. Very very intriguing stuff, like you said. Dreams are more important than our culture allows for, I think.
Ironically, my diet was never healthier than when I was drinking too much, too often. I craved all the things that I was depleting, especially magnesium, and that my body needed to repair the damage I was doing to it. It actually taught me a lot about my body and what cravings for specific nutrients & minerals felt like. Nowadays I just drink a lot less!
I take kratom for anxiety—and because it significantly reduces my desire to drink—and I guess a lot of people take magnesium (in one of its many different preparations) both as an alleged potentiator of kratom and to relieve the common side effect of constipation. Fortunately, kratom doesn’t have an appreciable effect on my bowels in the doses I take, and my diet is fairly high in magnesium already by way of grains, greens, nuts, and beans.
That's great, actually! A lot of people don't know what specific cravings mean. Helps a lot with overall health because I know if I'm craving fried food I just need some good fats so I go and make something with avocado oil or what-have-you.
>I take kratom for anxiety
I've wondered about kratom before. How specifically does it help your anxiety, and how often do you take it? Does it impair any cognitive functions to any degree? (Could you take it before class or studying and still be able to focus well?)
It makes me less prone to runaway trains of thought, sub-panic attacks I guess you might call them. I can just chill and focus on what’s in front of me. It’s also great for relieving some chronic pain I have when ibuprofen doesn’t cut it; it’s maybe a step above naproxen, and I think the pain relief is part of the general stress reduction that I perceive as anxiety relief.
If I’m making capsules, it tends to last longer (4–5 hours, peak around 3 hours), so I may only take it once or twice a day as a general relief thing; if I mix it with a beverage (fruit smoothies in my case) and drink it, it comes on stronger but doesn’t last as long (3–4 hours, peak around 1–2 hours), which is better for PRN relief, but if I do that then I might end up taking it thrice or, uh, fource a day, which feels like too much, so I try to avoid that. It’s also good to take periodic breaks to avoid building tolerance.
Typically I take larger doses (6–10g) of “down” red varieties (Maeng Da, Thai, Borneo, Bali) for anxiety, pain, and sleep; smaller doses (3–5g) of “up” green/white varieties (Jong Kong, Thai) for stimulation, as a less anxiety-inducing alternative to caffeine. The difference between “strains” is noticeable but usually not that significant in my experience; dosage is typically more important. I recommend avoiding extracts—they can be more addictive as they can be 10–50× more potent than regular leaf powder (1–2% mitragynine/7-OH-mitragynine), and I find them less pleasant anyway.
It doesn’t cause any cognitive impairment that I’ve observed. For some reason it especially makes me want to write, which is great for documenting my code and figuring out a problem, but it doesn’t provide any real cognitive boost either. Taking a low dose before class might make you more energetic and social, but overall I don’t think it’d help or harm your focus much. Personally, when taking an “up” dose, I’d rather clean or go for a walk than go to class/work. Different people react differently, of course.
If you take too much, it’ll make you woozy, sleepy, and nauseated, which as you can imagine isn’t great for getting things done. If that happens, you pretty much need to drink water, eat food, lie down, close your eyes, wait for it to pass—or barf if you need to. Most people only take too much kratom once, hah—it’s highly unpleasant.
Kratom is not a wonder-drug—all it really does in my experience is take you from “not fine” to just “fine”. If you’re just looking to get “high”, kratom is not for you. It is habit-forming and can be addictive with frequent high doses or especially when taking extracts. Side effects may include constipation, more frequent urination, irritability, and (rarely) reduced testosterone in males. Withdrawal symptoms may include sweating, runny nose, diarrhea, dilated pupils, and elevated testosterone. Most people don’t experience most of these side effects or withdrawal symptoms, though.
Finally, and most importantly, kratom is under-researched and caveat emptor. There have been no confirmed cases of kratom alone causing death, but as a precaution it should not be taken in conjunction with other drugs or medications, and should only be purchased from reputable sellers; if you’re buying it in a smoke shop, make sure it’s a known, reputable brand in properly sealed packaging. My hope is that it will remain legal and be regulated for quality and purity in the future.
I'm always trying to find a way to feel relaxed without taking something that significantly affects other functions. A glass of wine on the beach is great. Two glasses and I can't sleep or do anything meaningful. Pot makes me full-on panic-- yes I've tried CBD oil, and it causes panic attacks of a lesser intensity.
Breathing exercises sometimes work, and maybe I haven't practiced enough (hey! good point, me), but it's not reliable enough so that I can do it anywhere (especially being so busy) and find relief.
There's always this underlying, gnawing anxiety. It's usually low-level enough that I can manage unless something unexpected happens-- which is often. In that case I have a few different things to manage but all of them result in someone being disappointed.
I used to have this dream every now and then. It was awful, but I could never be sure if I actually clamped my mouth shut or just dreamed I did. Thankfully it's not happened for years, so perhaps was related to stress.
He focuses a lot on body horror: https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/06/13-extremely-...
Accutane is a popular "scare drug" for some reason, when in fact it's a magical life-changing medicine.
This would, of course, eliminate 90% or so of the entire dental industry in a single blow. I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not, but the doctor researching it lost funding and the pursuit of turning it into a product or available treatment was abandoned.
This overstates the case. The prevalence of caries really depends on the patient population. There are some populations for whom most dental work is caries-related: e.g. poor children in USA [0]. Even so, fillings are not the biggest moneymakers for any dentist here. There is far more money to be made on e.g. implants, prosthodontics, orthodontics, etc. Other nations probably would have a bigger focus on caries.
[0] Incidentally, dentists deserve much of the credit for the fact that we can't leave out the adjective "poor". They have encouraged pediatric oral health at every opportunity. Apparently they weren't too worried about losing this important demand for their services.
It’s no surprise the FDA has suppressed this industry-changing research that would save so much pain and suffering in the world.
You also profoundly underestimate the cashflow from dentistry that is purely cosmetic or otherwise unrelated to replacing missing teeth.
I'm as critical of FDA as anyone but this is straight conspiracy theory. Why has no one started selling this miracle cure over the internet?
If your practice has margins of 20%, then a 25% drop in procedures will mean you go out of business.
And why hasn't anyone started selling this? Well, large-scale synthesis and reproduction of genetically modified bacteria has significant upfront costs; no one is going to invest $20m in a production line if all they can do is sell it on darknet markets.
I don't know much about bacterial treatments, but one can buy them for the garden for like $10. They do a number on the hornworms. This is a "natural" bacteria rather than an engineered one, but bacteria reproduce rather than requiring manufacture. If someone has this miracle bug in a lab, she could start selling small quantities pretty easily.
Once the FDA realised the impact, their requirements were inexplicably hiked to be impossible to meet, and the research had to be shelved.
Jeffrey Hillman from the University of Florida developed a genetically modified strain of Streptococcus mutans called BCS3-L1, that is incapable of producing lactic acid – the acid that dissolves tooth enamel – and aggressively replaces native flora. In laboratory tests, rats who were given BCS3-L1 were conferred with a lifetime of protection against S. mutans. BCS3-L1 colonizes the mouth and produces a small amount of a lantibiotic, called MU1140, which allows it to out-compete S. mutans. Hillman suggested that treatment with BCS3-L1 in humans could also provide a lifetime of protection, or, at worst, require occasional re-applications. He stated that the treatment would be available in dentists' offices and "will probably cost less than $100." The product was being developed by Oragenics, but was shelved in 2014, citing regulatory concerns and patent issues. In 2016, Oragenics received a 17-year patent for the product.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caries_vaccine#Attempts_using_...
[1]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1941-gm-bacteria-may-...
> On rare occasions the native S. mutans strain escapes into the blood, potentially causing dangerous heart infections. It is unclear how likely BCS3-L1 is to do the same.
b) How many more stories (and what kind of stories) of nefarious obstacles erected by the FDA are required until there is a large-scale sentiment to either abolish that agency or severely limit its (unconstitutional) powers? [2]
Dental insurance is not included in standard insurance, and is in general a much worse deal, because all people tend to have dental issues in some form or another. So there is nothing rare about it to spread the risk / cost out.
The main benefit is that it makes the appointment costs reasonable enough that people will actually get them.
We keep learning more about how major, devastating, and very costly illnesses have origins -- contributory or principal -- in oral illness.
That we haven't already acted on this, speaks to the disfunction of our health care system. Here in the U.S., for me, but also in other countries whose "universal health care" excludes dental health.
Cosmetics may be another matter. But oral health? It needs to be covered. A primary factor in preventive care.
And also, the people who make (very good) livings shoveling sugar to kids -- especially, going around parents' controls and wishes -- need a good, hard looking at.
Another thread where everyone on HN can demonstrate that they think they know everything about health while being almost completely wrong.
You can't really avoid hurtful misinformation so you could at least enjoy the benefits that the more open climate engendering it offers... I really hope the coming wave of "garage bio-hacking" brings a more playful and research accelerating attitude to the biomedical fields (along with some little bit of unavoidable death and maiming that we can hopefully laugh off)...
i.e., mostly useless, and possibly dangerous.
Edit: Needless to say, I don't remember the title. Perhaps I should re-investigate it.
The most recent discovery I can remember is about growing new dentine using an Alzheimer drug: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39654
Anyway, I actually find it shocking that in 21th century people are still walking around with a part of our bodies rotting and consider it normal.