The Greatest and Most Interesting Facts About Our Teeth

We’ve grown up learning how to take care of our teeth from a very early age. It starts with brushing and flossing, and learning that our teeth will hurt if we use them for anything besides chewing up our food. This seems real simple doesn’t it?

Yet there is more things to learn about our teeth than these very basic truths. Teeth may seem to be very mundane, but they have a lot of cool secrets as well! In fact, many of us
have a lot to learn about teeth, and it starts right here! Check out these very cool and interesting facts you did not know about your teeth!

Our Teeth’s Best Friend is not Our Toothbrushes

Sorry toothbrushes, while you may be a favorite of our teeth, they don’t need you as much they need the power of saliva! Yes, saliva helps rinse the mouth and neutralizes any growing bacteria and plaque that is eating at the enamel of your teeth. Without saliva, the hundreds of millions of bacteria in your mouth would no longer be dormant and could lead to health risks that extend further than your teeth.

People who have dry mouth or feel dehydrated most times have insufficient saliva levels. If you have dry mouth issues, it’s recommended to keep a bottle of water with you handy, or have sugar-free mints that may act as a catalyst for saliva production. Our teeth need saliva to stay healthy, so we need to make sure our good friend saliva is always around.

Teeth can Indicate Changes in the Environment

Your teeth aren’t weather channels, so how exactly do they record what happens in the environment? Simple.

A study by Norwegian scientists has led them to pursue and collect deciduous, or milk teeth from growing toddlers and kids to study
the changes in the environment. These temporary teeth allow the scientists to learn how the environment’s makeup affects the child’s health and pollutants are affecting the future generations.

As of 2013, there’s a bank in the University of Bergen that houses over 17,000 teeth, all out of reach of the tooth fairy.

Caffeine is Terrible for Your Teeth

We’ve been told as kids that drinking soda excessively can lead to rotten teeth, and a shorter lifespan. While both are true, the idea that caffeine is only in soda is misleading. There is as much caffeine in a tall Starbucks coffee as there is in a carbonated soda can.

People who drink 3 or more cups of coffee or soda on a daily basis have a 62% higher chance of tooth decay and eventual tooth loss. If your goal is to keep your teeth throughout your lifetime, ditch the sodas and coffees and pick up a nice pure bottle of water.

Flossing is Just as Important as Ever

In recent studies, the ADA gave a report about flossing and how daily flossing is not vital to having a nice healthy set of chompers. However, you decide what you do with flossing by the following fact.

Brushing your teeth alone only cleans 60% of your teeth, the back and the front. If you want to get a thorough cleaning in between your teeth, you must resort to flossing. You don’t have to use traditional dental floss, there are other easier and just as effective methods such as waterpiks, But if you want to have 100% clean teeth, floss.


We Don’t Brush Our Teeth Much at All

Here’s the thing, most of probably don’t brush our teeth for the full two minutes that is recommended by all the medical personnel we’ve ever come across. It’s a problem because the average time people take to brush their teeth every time is between 45 and 70 seconds.

The average life expectancy of a person in the United States is said to be 75. Say a person who lived that long brushed their teeth 2 times every day 2 minutes each time. They’d spend close to 76 days brushing their teeth, which doesn’t seem like a lot. However, if we took the actual time we spend brushing our teeth, we’re only spending about 38.5 days in our lives doing so. That’s over a month difference in time between what we spend brushing our teeth and what we should be spending. A month’s worth of time not taking care of our teeth can surely mean the difference between healthy teeth later in life and not having teeth at all.

More Interesting Facts About Our Teeth

I broke down above some of the most interesting facts about our teeth you most likely did not think about until now. However I am not done yet! Here are some more facts that don’t have much to go into detail about, but are just as intriguing.

According to a survey taken by Time Magazine, 59% of participants would rather be at a dentist appointment than sit next to someone talking on their cell phone. What would you do?

73% of all Americans would rather pick up groceries from the market than spend even less time flossing their teeth. I’d personally take the time to floss the nasty gunk out of my teeth so I could enjoy the food I’m buying a little more.

Our teeth are just as unique as our fingerprints, which makes each and every person more unique than ever!

The enamel that coats our teeth is the hardest substance produced by our body. However, it’s unlike any other bone in our body, and will not grow or rebuild itself. Take care of your enamel and keep your teeth protected!

The average woman in the United States smiles an average of 62 times a day. Men? They only smile an average of 8 times a day. Poor dental hygiene is a direct cause of not smiling.

Sports are the primary reason 5 million teeth go missing every year. While mouth guards are an effective solution to prevent this from happening, there is an also a way to restore missing teeth by getting dental implants.

It's Your Turn!

Do you have any interesting facts about teeth not listed here that you would like to share? Leave a comment below!