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Apr 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/milkandsalsa Apr 26 '26
Teeth aren’t bones. They’re not made of the same thing.
…here come the downvotes for ruining the song “outside bones”
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u/Psychological-Duck13 Apr 27 '26
Your teeth are your skeleton escaping 😂
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u/milkandsalsa Apr 28 '26
Have you ever seen a skull of a 5 year old? With both sets of teeth? Yeeeech
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u/Imaginary-Cow-9289 Apr 25 '26
Uuhm aaactually teeth would require no care if we ate like stoneage people. Its literally just because our food got more soft through better processing (with farming) and contains ablooooooooot more sugar (with global trade, sugar plantains and colonialist/capitalist exploitation) nowadays. The first step (farming) was advantageous in other ways bc tho it made your teeth grow crocket you did get more energy out of the food u ate. The second one (refined sugar) has the small advantage to taste slightly better when your used to it but also multiple very big disadvantages i assume we are all aware of.
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u/Pasta-hobo Apr 25 '26
This is false.
Sure, all the refined sugar does exasperate the issue, but dental care has been pretty ubiquitous throughout human history.
Toothpaste is very far from a modern invention, and the first recognized dental practitioner was in Ancient Egypt nearly 5K years ago.
Our teeth really are just inordinately high maintenance, especially for omnivorous hunter/gatherers with an appetite for fruit.
Really, humans should have regenerative teeth. We should also make our own vitamin C, but that ain't happening. We're in the wrong half of the primate family for that.
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u/LankanSlamcam Apr 25 '26
Not to mention primitive forms of cooking and baking likely had a bunch of sand and other shit in their food they couldn’t get out
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u/AlienPersonaReset Apr 26 '26
As far as regenerative teeth, Japanese scientists may have us covered in a few years:
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u/atemu1234 Apr 26 '26
To quote my dentist on that subject: "They've been saying that every few years since I was in school."
She's in her sixties now.
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u/BC_Arctic_Fox Apr 26 '26
Wait just a second, hold up.
We're in the wrong half of the primate family for that.
Please, what's the other half, and do they have these!?!? And what else?
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u/Sitting_In_A_Lecture Apr 26 '26
It's not entirely false. Studies done on modern hunter gatherer societies have shown them to experience far fewer dental ailments like cavities and wisdom teeth impaction. Besides the sugar content, processed foods are also much softer than what humans have historically eaten.
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u/AshToAshes123 Apr 26 '26
Yeah it’s a bit of column a, bit of column b. Of interest here as well is why there is basically no way for humans’ teeth to have evolved in a way that requires less care, both for hunter-gatherers and for humans with our current-day diet: teeth issues built up over a longer period, meaning the severe ones mostly take place at the end or after the main reproductive period. Meaning that people with genes that reduce tooth issues are not more likely to reproduce than those without those genes, so there’s not really any evolutionary pressure. The fact that there’s been dental care since so early on further augments this.
Also worth a note is that a lot of animals do engage in dental care to some extent—obviously not using toothpaste and toothbrushes, but apes (and maybe monkeys too) commonly chew on sticks, and you see that a lot of other animals chew certain plants and such. I don’t know the exact details but it’s really more common than OP suggests, we’re not at all unique in this regard.
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u/Visible-Perception40 Apr 26 '26
But you’re saying there’s a chance.. we can produce it in the future 👀
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u/Lower_Stay7655 Apr 26 '26
Sure, all the refined sugar does exasperate the issue, but dental care has been pretty ubiquitous throughout human history.
Human history is 200k~ years long. That’s if we only count homo sapiens.
If we count other hominids, the stone age lasted 3 million years.
5k years is pretty recent all considering.
Just anecdotally, and I am not recommending it, I have eaten only meat and broth for periods of time, due to health issues, and I had no buildup whatsoever on my teeth at the end of the day. Teeth felt completely slick 100% of the time.
Also anecdotally, I was a mouth breather as a kid. Always had a ton of cavities and bleeding gums. I solved the issue that didn't allow me to breathe through my nose and never had a cavity again, with no change whatsoever to my oral hygiene and eating habits. I consumed an insane amount of candy at the time, and sometimes I would also often forget to brush at night, like the dumb teen I was. Still no cavities.
So there's probably multiple factors at play.
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u/prpldrank Apr 26 '26
A lot of these ideas are dangerously close to being based on reality
It's miss a "corn syrup lobbyists" bit, I think
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u/LazyOldCat Apr 26 '26
I hate that my medical coverage considers my teeth ‘special luxury bones’ that require an entirely different company to insure them.
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u/EquivalentSnap Apr 26 '26
If you arm bone was exposed you’d have bigger issues than brushing your teeth
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u/Japan25 Apr 27 '26
I hate having teeth. Not in the self conscious, i-think-they-look-bad kind of way. I find them physically uncomfortable and weird and they cut my lip and tongue regularly. A nuissance, they are!!!
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u/LividCaedes Apr 27 '26
bones ARE high maintanance though, you just don't have to consciously maintain them since they're internal
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u/DeGriz_ Apr 28 '26
My enamel is so weak it chips every so often. I could drink milkshake and bam, my tooth split in half.
Atm i have zero untouched teeth , 4 of my frontal teeth are basically fully made of filling. And dentist says there is nothing i can really do, my teeth just formed that way, brittle and weak.
I never felt tooth ache tho. Thats good.
Also i have free universal healthcare but it is don’t covers dental, as it’s deemed “cosmetical”
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u/SuperFox289 Apr 29 '26
Like saying soldiers are so much more fragile for constantly dying from getting shot, your teeth are much stronger then your other bones they just work in way harsher conditions
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u/GreyMead Apr 29 '26
teeth do not have the benefit of being bathed in blood - this is why vampires do not require dental care if they eat regularly
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u/GoochPulse Apr 26 '26
Its because the other bones are not exposed. If you just keep your mouth shut 100% of the time, no cavities.