Question:
Should you clean your teeth?
Answer:
There's more to oral hygiene than just fillings.
When you do need fillings it can be distracting and painful. Your work may
suffer and you will spend time going off to the pharmacy to buy painkillers.
Perhaps a better argument would be to have all your teeth pulled ?
Of course you are right, Steve. I have had a miserable dental two years
with numerous appointments at the dentist (my teeth are prone to crack)
and I am sure Jeremy underestimates the amount of time waiting for the
dentist, or in the dental surgery. And in my case the cost of dentistry
is very high too. Still, having had to endure the dentist so
frequently, there is a kind of amusement in Jeremy's calculation.
According to a programme on the telly a few months ago, daily flossing
increases your life expectancy by about three years.
Yes I understand that there is a link between heart and arterial
disease and bacteria that infect your teeth.
I understand that flossing doesn't so much kill the bacteria as mix
them up so that they can't function as effectively.
Do you think there is a tendency for children pick up the habit of flossing
from their parents? Perhaps it is an example of non-genetic inheritance of
longevity.
I was under the impression it physically removed them. If you floss at
night it makes a big difference to the taste in your mouth the next morning.
The thing about breaking up the rafts of bacteria upsetting them as they
are cooperative was a finding published only a few weeks ago - I don't
have the reference.
I have absolutely no doubt that life-span is influenced by
environmental factors and by learning. Elsewhere I pointed out the
enormous contribution of clean water. That doesn't in any way alter the
fact that the upper limits of human life-span are determined by
genetics, and that humans have higher upper-limits than comparable
species.
