18 ms·
Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up? (2017)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 2038AD 8y agoThis article seems to be part of the recent wave of content about orthotropics/mewing. I'm not sure why it seems to have picked up so much recently.
- guskel 8y agoOrthotropics and mewing was widely discussed on incel communities and now that the prominence of these communities has grown, the topic is trickling to the mainstream.
- OldFatCactus 8y agoWhy would they be popular with incels?
- cheesymuffin 8y agoIncels generally hate women and the progress made in Western society. Part of holding women in subjugation is painting them as superficial, and one good way to do that is to convince everyone that male attractiveness is based on a very specific facial feature as if a single dimension of the face can make up for more serious personality flaws.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- gubbrora 8y agoWhy is it surprising that unattractive people try to become more attractive?
- jnbiche 8y agoMy impression of many incels is that their looks are not their problem.
- gubbrora 8y agoIt's not like their opinions are written on their foreheads. Hit on a woman on tinder she won't know. Hit on a woman in a bar she won't know. Clearly the rejection is for simply being unattractive.
- cm2012 8y agoPersonality is often very obvious through body language.
- gubbrora 8y agoOh certainly. Having a boring or timid or otherwise unattractive personality can be a big hindrance.
- djmips 8y agoVisible attractiveness just gets you past the first gate. Some guys fail spectacularly at anything beyond that. Will fall on their face when chatting.
- gotocake 8y agoYou’re not kidding, and even a little research into this reveals it to be on the same level as dry needling and homeopathy. I think my favorite “evidence” in favor are people taking pictures when they’re preteens, and then showing how their facial structure changed with mewing. It’s not the normal course of puberty guys, it’s magic! I can easily see why this became mainstream, because it’s easy to do, and a sucker is born every minute. I am however, surprised to see this bunk here. Although, I’ve noticed that on health topics this forum is at its worst. Endless testimonials about vitamin D, magnesium, LSD, FSD diets and more seem paradoxically popular here, and I’m unsure why that is. Maybe the California connection?
- forgotmypw3 8y agoIn addition to all the other arguments here (more chewing for bigger jaw development), I have another theory about tooth decay. I think that pre-civilization humans did not eat much sweets past adolescence. This is because, as soon as a minor cavity starts developing, it hurts like hell to put anything sweet in your mouth. Sweet stuff was for children and adolescents, then we just stopped eating it.
- hutzlibu 8y agoOr there were not so much sweet things in the first place and only at certain times of the year.
- war1025 8y agoI see you're the same person that posted somewhere else, but for what it's worth, I agree that minor tooth pain is a great motivator not to keep eating things that will turn it into major tooth pain.
- SamReidHughes 8y agoI never had pain putting sweet stuff in my mouth when I had cavities.
- forgotmypw3 8y agoI think that many toothpastes make our teeth less sensitive. I think it is supposed to reduce pain, but it can backfire...
- findthewords 8y agoThat pain is caused by nerve-connected dentin. Unless the cavities go all the way through, recessed gingiva expose cementum that erodes, exposing dentin. It's the same sugar-loving bacteria that inflame the gums.
- GordonS 8y ago> I think that pre-civilization humans did not eat much sweets past adolescence Pre-civilisation humans wouldn't have had "sweets" as we know them. They would have occasionally had unrefined sugars through honey or palm sugar, and at certain times of the year had fruits (which most likely wouldn't even have been as sweet as they are now)
- headalgorithm 8y agoSee https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14895121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14895121 for some interesting past discussion
- sashavingardt2 8y agoYou ever wonder when they show a tribe from G-d knows where that had barely any contact with our civilization, how come they've got perfect white teeth and they've got them all? Nothing crooked, nothing missing.
- GuiA 8y agoNo refined sugar in the diet certainly plays a big part.
- Retric 8y agoSome form of dental hygiene is common worldwide. So, you can find young people anywhere with a clean smile. But, the worst cases get really bad. Sadly, you will often see 40 year olds missing many teeth in those same areas.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- forgotmypw3 8y agoI think a big part of it is that once you have even a minor cavity, eating anything sweet hurts like hell, so people just don't eat sweet stuff when they're older and have lost their baby teeth.
- war1025 8y agoThe feeling of a candy bar getting just right into the cracks of your molars is a great motivator for avoiding such things.
- peteradio 8y agoNatural selection. If you got fucked up teeth out in the wild you are screwed. If you got fucked up teeth in civilization since the 1700s theyd just give you pig teeth or wooden teeth or whatever to get you chompin again.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rutabega 8y agoExcess protein intake (vast majority of diets, not exclusive to keto or paleo, etc.)
- chrisco255 8y agoThe article claimed that modern diets don't put enough strain on the jaw in childhood, so the jaw doesn't grow as much and there's more crowding. Has nothing to do with protein intake.
- GordonS 8y agoI suppose meat, as a protein source, is typically l chewier that fruit or veg.
- Pharmakon 8y agoMeat is easy on teeth, what traditionally wore down teeth in human history were rough unprocessed grains, tough vegetable fibers, nuts, and the use of teeth as tools (working plant fibers for example). Of course the inclusion of sand or grit in food also contributed. People also chewed a lot of bone in history, either whole or as with Aboriginal Australians, as a mash of whole animals. https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2014.353.pdf?origin=ppub https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2014.353.pdf?origin=p...
- gregw2 8y agoHuman teeth development changed sometime during the industrial revolution when women were expected to work outside the home and breastfeeding norms were shortened from 3-4 years to more like 1 year. Or that's at least one interesting hypothesis from someone looking at old skulls.
- stochastic_monk 8y agoDo you have a reference for this school of thought?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ip26 8y agoDo you have anything supporting that? My observation has been the kid loses interest somewhere between 1-2 years- the moms aren't cutting them off. Solid food is generally much more interesting.
- puranjay 8y agoA dentist told me that eating too many soft foods as a kid is often the reason for crooked and weak teeth, and that parents should feed their kids tougher whole foods, like apples, meat, carrots, nuts, etc.
- Scoundreller 8y agoDefinitely true for muscle and jaw bone density.
- millettjon 8y agoAlso see Weston Price's research from traveling around the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_Price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_Price
- social_quotient 8y agoWeston Price talked a lot about this https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/traditional-diets/ancient-dietary-wisdom-for-tomorrows-children/ https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/traditional-diets...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ne_jo 8y agoiirc also our self-defense body's behaviour acts automatic responses when we "miss" something, as like taking some elements or create them from other organs, if in need (our organs are also bigger than what is needed, iirc also for those "emergency" states). So if missing calcium, the first places where the organism might take it from, are the tooths -iirc-.
- gregwebs 8y agoI highly recommend reviewing Prices account of his studies in the field: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html His conclusion was quite different: that the cause was a lack of nutrients in the modern diet. It is difficult to point to an example from his work that would clearly rule out the theory of chewing in this article. Sugar and white flour that he pointed to are both easy to chew and low in nutrients. However, it is hard to think of lack of chewing as the primary factor in tooth decay, and Price was focused first on decay rather than crowding. Price did note a very strong relation between decay and crowding, and in that light it is difficult to view lack of chewing as the primary force in either decay or crowding.
- chansiky 8y agoIf you haven't heard of orthotropics, it sounds a bit pseuodoscience-ey, but it attempts to solve the crooked teeth issue by enlargening the jaw rather than through braces. Thus far, I have to say that I think there's some truth to exerting a little pressure to my maxilla/mandible, and if anything I can breathe much better, which for me is a bigger win than getting straighter teeth.
- keithwhor 8y agoI think the real science here is Orthognathic Surgery [1]. I mean - I'm not an orthodontist or a surgeon, but once growth has stopped in the palate as a teenager or young adult I'd be skeptical of claims around bone growth or sculpting. Do you have any resources? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthognathic_surgery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthognathic_surgery
- Empact 8y agoI'm 34 and have personally experienced significant changes in my face thanks to orthotropic pressure / mewing, and have the photos to prove it. In addition, my bite has been stable without a retainer, whereas in the past I've had braces twice. My background is I had an undiagnosed mild tongue tie that I discovered a bit over a year ago. I previously couldn’t press my tongue against the roof of my mouth, which led to a tongue thrust on swallowing, which led to an open bite, and my nasal breathing was very constrained.
- QuackingJimbo 8y agoCare to link to a good methodology? I've been intrigued by this but there's a lot of conflicting information out there
- keithwhor 8y agoI would go and schedule an interview with an orthodontist instead of relying on the internet, here. "Orthrotropics" appears to be a registered trademark, which is, at the very least, a yellow flag. A cursory search on details has broken this down to extractive / surgical vs. non-extractive / non-surgical orthodontics, the latter of which has proven to be effective before the palate and growth plates have fused -- in children. Talk to somebody you trust with a degree in the field.
- keithwhor 8y agoIsn't an alternative explanation just that well-aligned jaws and spaced teeth are selected for via both (A) natural selection, esp. in predator species (well-aligned jaw = more efficient prey capture, chewing, defense) and (B) sexual selection as a holdover result of the first? As in, if ancestors relied heavily on their jaws and, behaviourally, a selective preference for well-aligned jaws and teeth helped favor offspring with the same, that selective behavior itself would be selected for -- and could perhaps persist even after "well-aligned jaws" were no longer a deciding factor in objective fitness? So now there's significantly less actual natural selective pressure on well-aligned jaws / teeth in human populations, meaning phenotypic variability in human jaw / teeth is simply the result of genetic drift in a very large population. The holdover, of course, being there's a market for and industry around striving for perfect jaws and smiles in Hollywood because we have a behavioural (but no longer naturally selective) predisposition towards that signal of health and fitness. ... that's always sort of been my mental model of orthodontia as an industry, at least.
- testplzignore 8y agoThe article addresses that with this: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.1330620311 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.1330620... Within one generation, the palate size decreased. So that can't be explained by natual selection. Well, unless small jaws killed a huge portion of the population before modern times.
- keithwhor 8y agoI'd love to read it, but it's not Open Access and I'm not a member of any academic institution. Do you have a copy of the paper? Edit: It's not that small jaws killed anybody, the hypothesis would be that in a pre-industrialized society sexual selective (behavioural) mechanisms favoured well-aligned jaws / teeth but with the rise of globalization stronger selective mechanisms superseded them. This would be mostly due to rapid real living standard + wealth accumulation gains more strongly correlated with other behaviours.
- johnsimer 8y agoIIRC the orthotropics explanation for this is because we have much easier to chew foods, we chew much less and have poor tongue posture, leading to skinnier inter-molar width (IMW) and jawbones that are more down and in as opposed to up and out
- drcross 8y ago>I remember asking my wife not to cut our daughters’ meat into such small pieces when they were young. “Let them chew,” I begged. She replied that she’d rather pay for braces than have them choke. I lost that argument. If a distinguished professor in dental antropology can't stand up for himself for his daughters welfare in his field of study he's lost a lot of respect from me.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 8y agoIf he did, he would be put on Puy probation. Sorry for the sarcasm, but that's how it likely went down! Let the down votes commence.
- dmos62 8y agoI see what you're saying, but standing up for something and winning the argument is not the same thing, and he only said that he lost the argument. A scenario where one's wife doesn't believe in one's own scientific findings is another matter, which might ellicit thoughts about "standing up for yourself". Maybe that's what you were reacting to.
- skc 8y agoTeeth 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.
- mgiampapa 8y agoThis 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.
- lettergram 8y agoDo you have a citation on that, I’m genuinely curious about the stats on that.
- gwern 8y agoI don't know about Ireland, but I did recently look up the same statistics for the UK: https://www.gwern.net/Questions#physical-beauty https://www.gwern.net/Questions#physical-beauty You can source it to the UK national dental surveys (which wouldn't be surprising if they covered Ireland as well), for example, https://archive.org/details/np70033823/page/n1 https://archive.org/details/np70033823/page/n1
- proy24 8y agoI 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...
- evmar 8y agoThis 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".
- etxm 8y agoCrooked teeth “run in my family” but mine are pretty straight. I always attributed it to my obsession with ripping my teeth out as a kid. Weird, I know. I figured that it gave my teeth room to grow. After reading this I’m curious if it was due to my parents doing baby-led weaning with me. They started it pretty young and always fed me whatever they were eating.
- qwerty456127 8y agoMisaligned teeth are not the worst problem IMHO. The fact teeth of most of the humans decay in less than a lifetime and this is considered normal feels much more weird to me.
- timbit42 8y agoThe average human lifetime has more than doubled in the past few hundred years.
- djmips 8y agoBut average is a useless statistic since many people who survived childhood lived to a similar age as today.
- wj 8y agoThe fact that we grow one set of bones, lose them, and then grow another set has always been weird for me to think about.
- frosted-flakes 8y agoWell, both sets actually start growing before birth, so your timeline is a bit off. The primary teeth start to come in after half a year or so after a child is born. The permanent teeth continue to develop until they absorb the roots of the primary teeth beginning around 6-7 years old, causing them to fall out and making room for the new teeth.
- ip26 8y agoOnly if you eat a modern diet. You can't blame our teeth for being ill prepared to handle coca cola.
- pdimitar 8y agoMy dentists, whose service I'm very happy with, are telling me misaligned teeth are much more prone to decay than the straight ones. Reasons being: certain parts of the dental periphery are more vulnerable since they are supposed to be covered by gums or neighboring teeth. My dentists keep saying that our teeth are highly specialized in every meaning of the word, and every deviation from the beaten path is heavily penalized with decay and a number of other conditions. :(
- osdiab 8y agoWhat are the aesthetic consequences of having a more developed jaw from chewing tough foods as you grow? Given how sensitive people are to cosmetics when it comes to their teeth, would doing this to your child positively impact their dental outcomes at the expense of conformance with modern norms of physical attractiveness, given trends like how having a small face is seen as attractive in Asia, or soft jawlines for women? I pose this since it is likely many people would worry about aesthetics more than actual dental health, and also because the social consequences of being/not being conventionally attractive can have significant impact on people's lives as well, so answering this sort of stuff is probably necessary for actual behavior change.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ip26 8y agoPeople also care about healthy straight teeth and a nice smile, so it's not like you're getting nothing.
- shard 8y agoThere is surgery in Asia to shave the jawbones to achieve a slimmer face, so I'd expect that this kind of information would lead to an increase of giving soft foods to children in order for them to have the slim face that matches Asian beauty aesthetics. After all, orthodontics are much less expensive and painful than jawbone reduction surgery... Example surgery site: https://www.vippskorea.com/face/facial-contouring-surgery/jaw-reduction.html https://www.vippskorea.com/face/facial-contouring-surgery/ja...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- DantesKite 8y agoMy hypothesis is that all the sugar from modern diets creates an environment where bacteria can grow and mess with the alignment of your teeth. See the British and how the introduction of sugar into their tea created so many crooked sets of teeth.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cyberferret 8y agoAs a slight aside from the premise of the article, I was reminded of a story my friend once told me. He is a policeman, and works with the Water Police department in our town. One day, they got a call from some dirt bikers who were riding in the mangroves beaches across the bay that they had found two skeletons partially buried in the mud. As per standard procedures, a police patrol was dispatched to investigate (which included my friend), and also as per SOP, because the area was a known ancient Aboriginal burial ground, they took an anthropologist out with them as part of the investigative team. When they got to the site and were approaching the two semi exposed skeletons, the anthropologist said (while still a few feet away from them) "Oh, these pre date local colonial settlement and are probably over a hundred years old". My policeman friend was curious, and asked her how she could tell even from afar that these were not more current remains, and she said "It's the teeth. There is absolutely no sign of decay caused by sugars in modern diets". He (and I) never realised the extent of damage done to our teeth by what we eat today.
- refurb 8y agoTwo thoughts: 1. They really are no sugar in aboriginal societies? No fruit or carbs? 2. I know a handful of people who eat Western diets who have zero tooth decay. Doesn’t seem like a great way to tell the age of a skull.
- thoughtstheseus 8y ago1. Significantly less. 2. That's great to hear.
- smallnamespace 8y agoTo expand on (1.), modern cultivated fruit varieties are quite different from what wild fruits are seasonally available—for one thing, you're always competing with wild animals for a sugary, tasty snack. Here's a somewhat fascinating article looking at both sides of this debate: https://deniseminger.com/2011/05/31/wild-and-ancient-fruit/ https://deniseminger.com/2011/05/31/wild-and-ancient-fruit/ The conclusion to me seems to be that unless you're in the tropics, you almost certainly be eating less fruit, and the fruit you'll eat will be much more varied and seasonal. A lot of the wild fruit you eat may have specific defenses (tannins, alkaloids, etc.) that discourage you from eating too much (the fruit's job is to make you spread and excrete its seeds, after all).
- temp192823 8y agocarb heavy diets
- williesleg 8y agoThere's lots of cash in those teeth!
- b3b0p 8y agoMy dentist told me the reason I never needed braces, but all my friends did was from wearing a mouth guard from all the ice hockey we played growing up. They aren't perfectly straight, but except for 2 teeth, very close to it. Every dentist I ever had was like, "Did you ever have braces?"
- gnulinux 8y agoMy teeth aren't that bad but are bad. My upper teeth are nearly perfect but my bottom middle 4 teeth are a little messed up. Most people can tell because I expose my upper teeth while talking, but if I smile it's pretty obvious they're not aesthetic... For years I've been ok with this, my parents never showed me to an orthodontist. But recently I'm getting more and more self-conscious about this every day. I searched a little about this and saw that, being 22, fixing them at this age is insanely expensive (up to 10k). I wonder if someone went through this treatment and can chime in whether this 10k is worth it?
- marviel 8y agoI have not gone through such a significant procedure as yours, however I did get two of my bottom front teeth replaced, which ran around 2k. Aesthetically, and durability wise, I'd say it's definitely worth it. If they get the proper crowns, they are far more durable than real teeth, which is superb for a "tight mouth" such as mine.
- ip26 8y agoIf they aren't going anywhere, you can clean them effectively, and the gums are happy, then maybe you don't care. But if they are getting worse, you can't clean them well, etc then you run the very significant risk that you'll be forced to do something about them eventually anyway (which is even more expensive)- better to do it sooner, before things start to deteriorate. I wish I could tell that to 22 year old me.
- barry-cotter 8y agoI’m 35 and have had braces for over six months now. I kind of regret it because it’s purely cosmetic and a massive pain in the behind. I also cheaped out and got train tracks instead of Invisalign. Don’t do that. Seriously consider medical tourism. I live in China so total cost is going to be just under $3,000. You might be able to go to Mexico or Thailand every two months for your teeth cheaper than getting it done locally. If you get crowns (veneers?) on your bottom incisors you can definitely get that done cheaper in Thailand than the US, including flights and a two week holiday.
- louprado 8y agoThis article implies that if you can't change your diet then you could achieve similar results with chewing exercises. The comments below mention mewing, but I suspect greater force would be better. Googling "chew toys for adults" gave interesting results but they are mainly used for anxiety and ADHD. Curious if anyone knows of a chew appliance for children or adults that would address the issues mentioned in the article.
- senectus1 8y agoInteresting. I was born without "Wisdom teeth", which my Dentist claims is widely accepted as human evolution. (apparently the number of people born without them is growing) But I also have a bad, and getting worse "popping jaw" issue. where my jaw pops (loud enough to make my ear ring for a while after) or locks up when under too much pressure or opened too wide. Her advice is to eat soft food.... which seems to go against what TFA suggests we should be doing.
- krackers 8y ago> apparently the number of people born without them is growing I don't see what the selective pressure for this would be, since people with wisdom teeth just have surgery to remove them, so there's no real difference in terms of reproductive fitness right?
- PavlikPaja 8y agoIt's more likely just race mixing, since if I remember correctly, native americans don't grow them.
- soonoutoftime 8y ago> people with wisdom teeth just have surgery to remove them I think this is mainly a US and Australian thing: https://www.sciencealert.com/no-you-probably-don-t-need-to-get-your-wisdom-teeth-removed-ever https://www.sciencealert.com/no-you-probably-don-t-need-to-g... In Australia it's particularly bad. During a checkup my dentist casually mentioned how he'd be removing mine (at a later date), even though he could provide no reason for doing so. The cheeky bugger just assumed I wouldn't ask why! Since then my trust in dentists has been further eroded by this Cochrane review https://www.cochrane.org/CD004625/ORAL_routine-scale-and-polish-periodontal-health-adults https://www.cochrane.org/CD004625/ORAL_routine-scale-and-pol... that concludes with: Authors' conclusions: For adults without severe periodontitis who regularly access routine dental care, routine scale and polish treatment makes little or no difference to gingivitis, probing depths and oral health-related quality of life over two to three years follow-up when compared with no scheduled scale and polish treatments (high-certainty evidence). There may also be little or no difference in plaque levels over two years (low-certainty evidence). Routine scaling and polishing reduces calculus levels compared with no routine scaling and polishing, with six-monthly treatments reducing calculus more than 12-monthly treatments over two to three years follow-up (high-certainty evidence), although the clinical importance of these small reductions is uncertain. Available evidence on the costs of the treatments is uncertain. The studies did not assess adverse effects (of the scale and polish treatment). I know it's a bit of a joke that HN commentators assume they know more than the experts, so just to be clear: I consider the experts here to be the study authors.
- uvu 8y agoOk, we know it's messed up. But, the question is how can we do better?
- uvu 8y agoYeah, wisdom teeth are so annoying!
- ethn 8y agoI think the argument of orthotropics[0], bad tongue posture, is much more convincing. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO8O2y1jxtU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO8O2y1jxtU
- netheril96 8y agoAs always, prevention is more important than treatment. Teeth problems can cause problems with mouth (lips), mandible and even facial structures. Braces can fix teeth if done properly, but it can hardly fix these secondary issues, especially for adults.