5 ms·

I think genetics have a part too. My grandmother was deported to Siberia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_deportations_from_Lithuania https://en.wikipedia.

by stplsd 10y ago

I think genetics have a part too. My grandmother was deported to Siberia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_deportations_from_Lithuania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_deportations_from_Lithu...) for 20 years where they have 200 grams of bread a day at best and never brushed her teeth in her life and never had a tooth filling or missing tooth before her retirement, and I have half my teeth missing and I am only 30 years old. Fuck my life.

torinmr 10y ago
Could that also be related to diet? I'm guessing your grandmother practically never ate sugar if she was living on 200 grams of bread a day. I've also heard that early modern humans had fairly good teeth for their age despite the presumed lack of dental care, presumably also due to differences in their diet from us.
- Cerium 10y ago
  Diet is super important. I used to drink orange juice every day. I got a cavity every 6 months. I have stopped drinking orange juice and have not had a cavity since.
- filoeleven 10y ago
  I just heard a radio piece about how basically all humans had Hollywood smiles (where the teeth lined up perfectly) until the Industrial Revolution, when our jaws began to shrink and there was no longer enough room for all the teeth. I didn't get to hear the part where they discussed/hypothesized whether the changes were due to diet or environment or something else.
torinmr 10y ago
Could that also be related to diet? I'm guessing your grandmother practically never ate sugar if she was living on 200 grams of bread a day. I've also heard that early modern humans had fairly good teeth for their age despite the presumed lack of dental care, presumably also due to differences in their diet from us.
cookiecaper 10y ago
Yeah, there is undoubtedly a genetic side to it. My teeth decay rapidly -- as an under-two toddler, I had to undergo full anesthesia for a dental rehabilitation. Though neither my siblings nor my parents have very bad teeth, I've always been the exception (I guess I got just the right mutation). My pediatric dentist was always expressing astonishment at how quickly my teeth decay. You know how dentists say "Hey, I can tell you drink a ton of soda, you need to stop"? I would get told this every time I'd go in for a cleaning, despite not drinking any soda and very little fruit juice/other sugary drinks for many years, 90%+ water only. Fast forward 20-something years, and 2 of my daughters have had to undergo a dental rehab similar to mine at very young ages (though not quite as young as me), despite the stringent dental regimen my wife enforces to prevent this fate. There's no doubt that they got my bad teeth genes. We're talking young kids here, ages 2-3 at the time of the operation (I was 18 mos. when I went down). They don't eat an inordinate amount of sugar, and as I stated above, my wife is very thorough with their dental hygiene. The water is fluoridated where we live. A lot of kids this age surely have much worse diets and much worse dental hygiene, but their teeth seem to be problem-free for many years. Personally, I've had tons of fillings, 7-ish root canals, two teeth fully extracted because they were past saving, and several that badly need work and I'm not even 30 yet. Pretty much the only people living with worse teeth are opiate addicts. I hope I win the lottery some day so I can get a mouth full of implants and be done with it. I hear the going rate for this is about $75,000. A lot of people refuse to believe that genetics play any role, but that's absolutely not consistent with my experience, nor the opinion of most of the dentists I've had.
- throwaway00061 10y ago
  You might want to pay Dr. Kim Kutsch a visit, or at least watch some of his webinars on YT. One of the things he recommends that could help you is ordinary bleach (sodium hypochlorite) heavily diluted to about 0.05% as an anti-microbial rinse.
  - grzm 10y ago
    Serious question. Why are you posting health-related advice from a throwaway account? If it's something you are recommending to others, posting from an established account would have much more weight.
robbiep 10y ago
So ¼ of your genetic material had a diet in which she never had a filling, and you on a different diet at age of 30 are missing many teeth, and you conclude that it's genetics? Either some leap of logic or information is missing there or you're drawing the wrong conclusion from your data
adrianN 10y ago
I think your oral microbiome is also important. I've heard about experimental treatments which replace the cavity causing bacteria with other strains that don't produce acids.
- dethswatch 10y ago
  I read about that in the 90's- did anything become of it?
shoover 10y ago
I was astounded when Viktor Frankl reported the same thing in Man's Search For Meaning, observed in his time in a Nazi concentration camp. Your grandmother may well have superior dental genes, but there is something unique about that bread diet and camp/deportation life, too. Sorry to hear about your teeth.

by stplsd 10y ago

torinmr 10y ago

Could that also be related to diet? I'm guessing your grandmother practically never ate sugar if she was living on 200 grams of bread a day. I've also heard that early modern humans had fairly good teeth for their age despite the presumed lack of dental care, presumably also due to differences in their diet from us.

Cerium 10y ago
Diet is super important. I used to drink orange juice every day. I got a cavity every 6 months. I have stopped drinking orange juice and have not had a cavity since.
filoeleven 10y ago
I just heard a radio piece about how basically all humans had Hollywood smiles (where the teeth lined up perfectly) until the Industrial Revolution, when our jaws began to shrink and there was no longer enough room for all the teeth. I didn't get to hear the part where they discussed/hypothesized whether the changes were due to diet or environment or something else.

torinmr 10y ago

cookiecaper 10y ago

Yeah, there is undoubtedly a genetic side to it. My teeth decay rapidly -- as an under-two toddler, I had to undergo full anesthesia for a dental rehabilitation. Though neither my siblings nor my parents have very bad teeth, I've always been the exception (I guess I got just the right mutation). My pediatric dentist was always expressing astonishment at how quickly my teeth decay. You know how dentists say "Hey, I can tell you drink a ton of soda, you need to stop"? I would get told this every time I'd go in for a cleaning, despite not drinking any soda and very little fruit juice/other sugary drinks for many years, 90%+ water only. Fast forward 20-something years, and 2 of my daughters have had to undergo a dental rehab similar to mine at very young ages (though not quite as young as me), despite the stringent dental regimen my wife enforces to prevent this fate. There's no doubt that they got my bad teeth genes. We're talking young kids here, ages 2-3 at the time of the operation (I was 18 mos. when I went down). They don't eat an inordinate amount of sugar, and as I stated above, my wife is very thorough with their dental hygiene. The water is fluoridated where we live. A lot of kids this age surely have much worse diets and much worse dental hygiene, but their teeth seem to be problem-free for many years. Personally, I've had tons of fillings, 7-ish root canals, two teeth fully extracted because they were past saving, and several that badly need work and I'm not even 30 yet. Pretty much the only people living with worse teeth are opiate addicts. I hope I win the lottery some day so I can get a mouth full of implants and be done with it. I hear the going rate for this is about $75,000. A lot of people refuse to believe that genetics play any role, but that's absolutely not consistent with my experience, nor the opinion of most of the dentists I've had.

throwaway00061 10y ago
You might want to pay Dr. Kim Kutsch a visit, or at least watch some of his webinars on YT. One of the things he recommends that could help you is ordinary bleach (sodium hypochlorite) heavily diluted to about 0.05% as an anti-microbial rinse.
- grzm 10y ago
  Serious question. Why are you posting health-related advice from a throwaway account? If it's something you are recommending to others, posting from an established account would have much more weight.

robbiep 10y ago

So ¼ of your genetic material had a diet in which she never had a filling, and you on a different diet at age of 30 are missing many teeth, and you conclude that it's genetics? Either some leap of logic or information is missing there or you're drawing the wrong conclusion from your data

adrianN 10y ago

I think your oral microbiome is also important. I've heard about experimental treatments which replace the cavity causing bacteria with other strains that don't produce acids.

dethswatch 10y ago
I read about that in the 90's- did anything become of it?

shoover 10y ago

I was astounded when Viktor Frankl reported the same thing in Man's Search For Meaning, observed in his time in a Nazi concentration camp. Your grandmother may well have superior dental genes, but there is something unique about that bread diet and camp/deportation life, too. Sorry to hear about your teeth.