For healthy teeth stop these habits

Press, 4 September 1989, Page 14

For healthy teeth stop these habits

Word of Mouth

It took a long time to develop our teeth to their present efficient shape and position — like a few million years. So it seems a shame that we should use them in ways that are less than helpful to their health. But that is just what many of us do. Fortunately the habit of removing the tops from bottles with one’s teeth has mostly disappeared, and screw tops on beer bottles have helped. Many is the front tooth that was chipped or even sheared right off by an enthusiastic and thirsty drinker. Not so fortunately, we still have the clown who tries to make somebody swallow the bottle they are drinking from by giving it a healthy push from the base. Of course, most people rest a bottle against their teeth as they take a swig and the result is inevitable. But there are a few less violent and much more common dental habits which almost everybody succumbs to sometimes — like tearing off sellotape, the ends of plastic wrappers for chocolate bars or potato chips, and the final bit of cotton on a sewing job. Most people look on their teeth as a handy instrument for

these tasks. Occasionally it may be all right, but if they are too frequently used, damage can result. The reason is that our teeth are held in place by a complicated series of stretch fibres which anchor them against their bony sockets. These fibres are designed to take all the stress of biting and grinding, but very few of them are built to resist sideways pulls such as we give them with plastic bags and sellotape. That sort of tug, often repeated, can start trouble around the soft collar of gum which surrounds each tooth. The little blood vessels we rely on to supply the gums are only about fif-teen-thousandths of a millimetre in diameter. That’s pretty small and it doesn’t take much to throw them out of kilter. Scissors or Handy Cutters are much better than

teeth for opening plastic bags. Our dental set-up has not evolved to fill several of the jobs which we try to pile on it. Take bones for example, especially those belonging to chops or to chickens. Carnivorous animals, even the domestic cat, are provided with canine teeth which can tear most effectively and molars which can grind bones to powder. We are not, and yet we will insist on trying, often with dire results. Some birds have crops in which they can store things. We have a simple mouth -pharynx -stomach passage-way and we still try to pack things in there, like pins with dressmakers and tacks with carpet-layers. Mouths were made for food and words, not for storage cupboards or cutting tools.

If we were prepared to check our teeth and gums as carefully as we check and manicure our fingernails, our teeth would respond by giving us a dentally trouble-free existence. To get that quality of life we really have to kick all the bad habits.