I attribute it to better dental practices: keep and use dental floss by keyboard use water-pik with dilute hydrogen peroxide solution to clean teeth electric toothbrush if the first two come up short no-spit, mouthwash, tequila flavored Bob Wilson
No doubt good dental practices, can extend the life or your teeth and help avoid deterioration and problems. But without any scientific background or study or numbers to present, I've become convinced a lot of someone's dental longevity has to do with genetics. My entirely reactionary and incredibly personal small sample size example? I have a Sister in Law, who does brush every day. And I think she at least occasionally flosses. And she rarely visits a dentist, and has had little to no problems with any of her teeth. Meanwhile, I brush and floss, use restorative mouth rinses, and use one of those 100.000.000 Billion pulses a minute electric toothbrushes, and slowly I lose my teeth. And I'm on the fast track to dentures....since I don't think I can afford implants. And I blame genetics. My mothers side of the family? Everyone ended up with dentures in their 50's...sometimes earlier. I don't believe there is much I can do to avoid the eventuality. My family background is we just don't have great teeth. That's just the inevitable truth. I think I could brush and floss 10 times a day, and I'm still going to lose my teeth. That being said..... Don't listen to the grumpy old man kids....Brush and Floss Twice Daily! You DO want to keep your teeth...as long as you can.
Well I grew up in Oklahoma where a lot of the well water is loaded with minerals including fluoride salts. The John Birch Society tried to ban fluoride and the Okies were good with that until they found out how much it would cost to remove the natural fluoride. It does lead to some colorful teeth. Bob Wilson
I have found that having real teeth wearing out, over the decades, and being replaced with non-real teeth really cuts down the possibilities of having real teeth problems. Along the way I got used to hearing "we will be needing to do a root canal procedure on that one" to be almost comforting. That said, proper care of non-real teeth is still vitally important as on real teeth.
I don't know if schools still do it. But I grew up in public grade schools when every Friday, the teacher pulled out a big warm room temperature squirt bottle of fluoride treatment and passed out small dixie cups and napkins and we were all to swish for about 30 seconds, and spit. I figured out, that if I slipped the napkin in the cup after the teacher filled it? It would absorb the fluoride treatment, then I could "fake" putting it in my mouth.- So I never took it. Could it be 40 years later I'm paying for this deception?
My sister in law would..and does. And I guess her whole family is the opposite to mine. They all have minimal problems with their teeth. I took her to see a dentist, and she told me...and this was as an adult in her 30's, that it was only the second time she had ever visited a Dentist. She does take care of her teeth, but also, seems to have really strong, great teeth.
I admit it and am extremely thankful for it. My parents were fine dentally into their 80s when they passed away. In my 50s financial difficulties led me to nine years between exams as my wife went through all kinds of inherited dental problems. Finally got back to the dentist and everything was still ok other than a little tartar buildup. I'm sure using both a Waterpik and electric toothbrush helped but I attribute almost all of it to genetics.
my dentist told me i had 'soft teeth'. i'm not sure he knew definitively, but i have never been a great flosser
I don't mind the flossing tip on the Waterpik but I've always hated using floss. Over the years I just didn't do it. My wife, on the other hand, was a dental assistant when we got married (before she became a sheriff's deputy) so she has always flossed and brushed after every meal. She now sports a partial where they had to remove some teeth and root canals on most of the remaining ones. It has to be genetics.
The good thing about my dentist is he has hours one Saturday a month. Works out for us working folks.
