It's visible cavities and decay, it's not like you're diagnosing based on symptoms someone is describing to you, which I can understand for general doctors or specialists drawing blanks or different conclusions.
But as in every job dentists also feel pressured to point out other people's lack of quality work to promote their own. You'll see this in the IT guy who immediately recognizes that whatever the previous one did on your computer was amateurish and they can do it better, same with the electrician, the plumber, the mechanic, the plastic surgeon, etc.
After college I worked at the computing lab. Someone started to talk about OOP. One dude said that OO was one thing; the other contradicted saying it was another thing. They started to debate about what said things were really .. they never reached any sort of conclusion.
Medicine isn't different. Sometimes I think we need a 2-tiers doctor meeting where you can have at least 2 different opinions in one go.
I've been to another dentist and they said
things completely different. I don't
understand how two professionals can draw
polar opposite conclusions.
I know they have tumor boards for cancers and such where they try to arrive at a consensus plan of treatment for an individual patient.[1]
Surely there are such solutions for dental / other medical issues, right?
Somewhat tangential from all this, I'm amazed that in this day and age we still have such a hit or miss approach to treating patients. Its mind blowing how little our medicine has advanced in some aspects despite cutting edge innovations.
[1]
What Is a Tumor Board? An Expert Q&A
https://www.cancer.net/blog/2017-07/what-tumor-board-expert-...
Source: a dentist.
" Some dental professionals have questioned this practice in the first decade of the twenty-first century.[1][2] The use of a sharp explorer to diagnose caries in pit and fissure sites is no longer recommended and clinicians instead should rely on "sharp eyes and a blunt explorer or probe." Penetration by a sharp explorer can actually cause cavitation in areas that are remineralizing or could be remineralized. "
A long time ago, a dentist we had told our parents we had good mouth bacteria or something. I don't know how true this is and I don't put much credence in it, but interestingly enough, the only time in my life I had any kind of gum problems was when I was regularly kissing someone with constant tooth problems. It went away after we broke up and i haven't had problems since again. Again more just a little side note than anything scientific or would recommend basing decisions on.
It sometimes seems like life is just a game where you can min-max your stats if you want but RNG rules in the end.
So it’s really hard to draw any conclusion from these cases.
Do you think stress levels are a factor that typically go unstudied that play a part in these things?
Gut-brain connection? Just good genes?
The way we're all bombarded with all kinds of health-centric information of varying integrity these days one would think someone is studying this in a massive way with very large trials across varied populations.
On day its TMAO[1] in red meat the next day its something else. Surely someones studying all of this as a whole, right?
[1] Teasing Out the Role of Red Meat and TMAO in Cardiovascular Risk
https://consultqd.clevelandclinic.org/teasing-out-the-role-o...
So I'd like to think someone is looking at the things you mention. Someone should study my wife's grandparents, BBQ and 7&7s are their way of life and they're as spry as can be
I've gone through a lot of diet changes over the years. I used to consume tons of sugar (multiple chocolate bars & 3 cokes a day), later tons of fast food, then healthy food, then mostly vegetarian & low carb & next-to-zero sugar or sweeteners. Never had a cavity throughout all those phases.
Ummmm Have you noticed that people tend to keep their distance when you talk?
Explain the math here? You went to the dentist 27 years ago but now you are rounding up to 30 years later?
Actually a larger point. How do we know (we don't) that you were correctly diagnosed as having three cavities that needed filling? Maybe the dentist was just an opportunist and you didn't even have any cavities? Or (someone who knows dentistry better can comment) there is a state whereby it could be considered a cavity but not such that it definitely needed to be filled?
I apologize for the lack of mathematical precision.
Using a precise number within two sentences of a rounded number is utterly inexcusable. I have nothing to say for myself. It was a contemptible and inexcusable mistake and I am going to voluntarily suspend myself from HN for 27 hours.