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?
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...