Teeth are annoying. Mine are ok, but as I get older I start to notice their deterioration.
I've always felt that if there was a part of our anatomy that we should think of replacing completely with an artificial design, it's teeth. We already do so now (at great expense), but it's literally one or two teeth replaced but I'm thinking more along the lines of replacing every single one with something stronger and more efficient for it's intended purpose.
I’m a freakishly lucky bastard, to date. Also, a freak.
I have a fairly gracile jaw for a guy. A bit of a chinless wonder. I have 28 teeth. Always have, since my adult teeth came through - but I do have wisdom teeth. What I don’t have are any M1 molars. They’re just not there. Seems my maternal grandfather and my sister are the same.
I’m 35, with so-so at best oral hygiene. Never had a cavity, never had a filling, never needed orthodontics - and really weirdly neither has my grandfather - he’s 86 with a complete and unaltered set of original gnashers. A bit worn down after seven decades, but all still there and working. My mother lost all of hers in a motorbike crash decades ago so there’s no telling there.
So - while I think the idea of artificial replacements is a perfectly good one, there should perhaps be some research into pheno/genotypes such as my family’s which seems to have a useful mutation for the incredible shrinking jaw. It’s this sort of thing which could be a valid use of gene editing - it doesn’t really present any advantages other than being able to eat.
Genetics play an enormous part in dental hygiene. Some people in my father in laws side never had a cavity in their entire lives - even 85 y/o grandpa (also my 28 year old wife).
I'm 42, and in the no cavity boat. I was always a daily brusher before bed, but that was it. In my early 20's, I took 5 years off from the dentist and when I finally got an appointment, I had a small amount of tartar build up, and that was it.
I've had the same dentist for almost 15 years now and his comment to me every time he looks at my teeth is: "Boring!".
This used to be quite common. In Ireland for example back in the 1970s about 30% of the population had no natural teeth whatsoever. It used to be a common thing for young women to have all their teeth pulled and replaced with dentures before being married. It was seen as a desirable trait for en eligible bride to be.
I was genuinely thinking about this...I mean for enamel is so high maintenance and gets spoilt so easily not just germs but also acid reflux and natural decay...
This is still common. I recall the anecdote that there is one US state where one in four people have no teeth, due to getting them all pulled, though I can't find the data now.
My wife is a dentist. One of her classmates told the story of their parent's dental practice, where someone had taken their teenager in, discovered they needed some expensive dental work, and said "take out all the teeth, they're gonna fail eventually anyway".
Having had wisdom teeth removed, a couple root canals and several cavaties, and having seen the discomfort and problems my wife and daughter’s impacted teeth have had on them, you could do much worse than just ripping them all out and replacing them with high quality manufactured teeth.
Human teeth are about as reliable as the gal bladder. Obviously it would be preferable to maintain your essence but (post)agrarian diets and lifestyles disagree.
Yes I know they're not the most reliable teeth in the world, that's not what I'm talking about. A parent saying "take out all the teeth, they're gonna fail eventually anyway"? Am I weird for thinking that sounds horrible? I can't even try to make analogies for it because whatever I think of is not as bad as that quote.
I think its horrible - its far too early to make that decision for your child. I think its something a person should make for themselves. "Expensive dental work" could mean only a few teeth impacted - the rest may be perfectly great. I see no reason to take them out.
For many children, my daughter in this case, it was an option, and was suggested. We didn't go that route but given both parents teeth and the dentist's assessment it would have been reasonable.
I think what your main concern is that such a drastic body modification should not be done in a flippant manner. I feel the same way about hormone therapy.
Oh heck no, you act as if implants are a simple, permanent thing. I worked at a series of offices that specialized in implants long before they were a fad and whom pioneered techniques.
The reason they sell well with old people is that the patient will be dead before the lifecycle of the implant is up.
There are SO many things that can and do go wrong placing implants, especially now that every corner dentist is using them as a profit center.
Bone loss, gum recession, rejected implants, nerve issues, poor aging of crowns in both color/quality, and a million other things make implants far from a simple solution.
A full set of implants is easily over 60k often times up near 80-100k, and a huge number of full mouth implant patients had to come back due to complications (and our offices had lower complication numbers per implant.)
If it weren't for the bone loss thats hard to get back, implant supported dentures are almost a better way to go.
My dentist would be horrified if she heard about pulling out functional teeth.
She does implants but she is aware and open about inferiority of artificial solutions and always tries to save as much of natural teeth as she can because mechanical interface between artificial thing and tissue never works as good as real stuff.
See my post a little bit up - you're totally right. I saw it from the dentist PoV and theres a lot they don't tell you - let alone that most dentists should not be let near an implant.
Only if you don’t get implants, a bridge or dentures. It’s not about the teeth per se, it’s about the pressure you exert on the bone underneath the teeth. If you can still bite hard and exert force on the underlying bone you’ll be fine.
No, only if you get implants (and they are done right.) Bone still recedes if you have a denture or bridge. Its such a common issue that dental software ships with a video to show patients this.
No, it was to save on future dental costs, and that was seen as desireable not... what you said. It was not atypical for it to be paid for by the parents or either bride or groom as a wedding present. The idea was that pulling all of the teeth and replacing them with dentures was inevitable, and by doing it before tons of money was spent preserving the natural teeth for some time, you’d be setting the couple up for financial success.
My father had all of his pulled (from necessity) and is having them replaced with implants. It’s a very expensive and time consuming process, involving minor preliminary surgeries. I know someone else who had this done and regretted it, several of the implants kept coming out and the replacement procedure was painful and expensive. But it can be done.
I worked at behind the scenes at a series of offices that specialized in implants and full mouth replacements. The people that love them have a lot of money and don't mind going back to the dentist frequently to fix issues. The industry keeps it hush because its such a huge profit center.
Which is why dental veneers [1] are so popular with the easily influenced reality-show-wannabees. If you can afford veneers you have apparently made it...
So much that some of the reality stars make it a show or as part of their contracts. [2][3]
Except they look ridiculous and many can't chew properly especially some meat afterwards...
Not sure I'd want my teeth ground down to little sticks. Nature works best as it intended, I like my teeth.
There are different types of veneers. Most cosmetic veneers are just thin layers glued onto the tooth, and often leave most or all of the underlying tooth intact. Full veneer crowns involve grinding it down.
I have cosmetic veneers on two teeth that were intact but looked awful, and they're just a layer of porcelain laminate glued to my real tooth. The underlying tooth was polished and filed a bit, but certainly not "ground down to little sticks"; the teeth could have been left as-is and functioned fine.
I also have several full crowns, but they were down because of decay, certainly not for cosmetic purposes. That of course does not mean that you can't do full crowns for cosmetic purposes, but it's usually a last resort before implants.
If you can't chew properly on a crown you have a bad dentist. Nature really does not work best in this case for a lot of us - two of my crowns are in place because parts of the real tooth shattered into several pieces while chewing, others because the damage eventually got so severe that there was too little left to save.
I don't know if you'd call it a veneer, but one of my upper central incisors is a ceramic and stainless steel cap over a ground down "stick", and the real one is night and day better than the fake. The real one is slightly serrated and has a sharp edge, while the fake one is totally smooth and rounded, and slightly thicker. Essentially, it feels like the mould was made out of play-doh. I can't imagine having my whole mouth like that.
I got it when I was a child (broke the end off when I was ~10 years old) and my gums have receded somewhat since then, so now there's a gap where the base of the original tooth is visible below. I was told at the time that I'd probably need a new one once I got older for this reason, but it hasn't been a problem so I haven't gotten around to it--I'm in my mid 20s now. It's also fallen out twice (once when I sneezed and it skittered across the classroom floor), so now I have an irrational feeling sometimes when eating apples or other tough foods that it's coming loose.
Really sounds like you had a bad dentist. Whenever you do get around to having it fixed, don't let them get away with it.
Also note that dentistry tech advances very rapidly; a proper crown done now will be substantially better than a crown done a decade ago, and certainly a lot better than a mediocre one done a decade ago.
This isn't a necessity, though. It boils down to the exact technique used and the skill of the technician making your tooth. Yours just sounds like it was made badly.
I'd say no if you meant replacing teeth with dentures, which get levered away from your gums by your chewing and take away your palate sensitivity. I'd say yes if you meant implants. As far as I can tell from the two I have they're just the same as natural teeth, except they can't be moved around with braces.
The Amish commonly pull all their teeth at once and just use dentures. Though I'm not a Lancastrian Dentist, I've not heard that they experience too many issues with long term dental use. Then again, their diets differ from the US norm by a fair bit. Still, they are a sub-group that does pull their teeth unnecessarily and seems to not have too many issues.
Nah. You've never heard of someone having a "bad back"? That's been a common thing for centuries. You can tell because it doesn't have a fancy Greek- or Latin-derived name.
And there seems to be an understanding that "bad back" is an extremely common thing that can happen to anyone. For example, when JFK was president, many of his health issues were covered up because they wanted to project the image of a young, healthy President--except it was pretty well known that he had a bad back. In other words, in the 1960's, it was considered perfectly normal for a man in his forties to have a "bad back" for some reason or another, even during an era when chronic health conditions were stigmatized.
(It probably helped that JFK's back injury was partially caused by his heroic WWII exploits, namely swimming back and forth to rescue the crew of his sunken PT boat and sometimes towing their unconscious bodies to shore with the strap of their life vest between his teeth--thus elevating his disability to the status of a heroic war wound.)
I'm reasonably sure most "back" issues are more related to the muscles than the spine. (people /can/ have spine issues, I just don't think it's as common).
This is the principal behind 'all-on-4' dental implants. I've no idea how good they are though. I've seen a few YouTube videos but you never really know if they're paid shills nowadays.
I effectively have an "all-on-4" situation but where the 4 are my natural teeth. I have a genetic condition which caused very few of my adult teeth to grow, so the ones that did grow in nice and solid have been capped with machined gold cylinders and used as the receivers for a full denture (google "telescopic copings"), which fits perfectly on them and also acts as a retainer for those teeth. It's actually quite nice and comfortable and my teeth went from being a painful horror show to functional and trouble-free in a relatively short timeframe.
Yes, but attached much more solidly than a traditional one. They slide onto the pegs and stay put perfectly without any sort of adhesive and are actually tricky to remove due to the precision with which they snap in.
If you already are losing all your teeth due to decay and can't afford full implants, then its a good option. Beside that, avoid it at all costs. You'll have massive bone loss where you dont have implants and eventually have issues (unless you're at end of life anyway and just want a good 10 years or whatever.)
If youre already losing teeth, the more implants the better, as your bone requires that object there to not recede - and bone grafting is very expensive and hit or miss.
Take good care of your teeth, theres nothing like the real ones. If I had not worked at a huge implant office, I wouldn't believe it.
Seems better than dentures, but not as good as teeth. You're putting all that stress onto 8 points in your jaws and probably losing jaw bone in between.
A person I know got their whole mouth replaced with cubic zirconia implants in his 30s and is pretty happy about it. He just said that he screwed up his teeth very badly in his 20s somehow. I didn't ask.
I feel like I'd love to have that, but I run into the same reasoning against laser eye surgery:
My work benefits cover full dental and my contacts, but I would have to pay substantial out-of-pocket for those procedures, even if they could save the benefits plan money over time.
Well placed implants dont have much bone recession. On the other hand, bridges or other dental solutions where theres nothing in the bone do lead to bone loss. Poorly placed implants or crowns can lead to bone/gum loss though.
the main problem with prosthetics is that they end up transferring forces directly to the jawbone which then causes wear and tear on the jaw instead of the teeth. the best solution to this problem is to stop using prosthetics, and start growing vascularized dental tissues from your own stem cells. tufts is working on this, im sure lots of others are as well, and im giving them 5 years for something promising before i cave and just get veneers :D
I've always felt that if there was a part of our anatomy that we should think of replacing completely with an artificial design, it's teeth. We already do so now (at great expense), but it's literally one or two teeth replaced but I'm thinking more along the lines of replacing every single one with something stronger and more efficient for it's intended purpose.