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Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up? (2017)

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Re: Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up? (2017)

#211

Post by djohnston »

skc wrote: post #40

Teeth 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 e…

the main problem with prosthetics is that they end up transferring forces directly to the jawbone which then causes wear and tear on the jaw instead of the teeth. the best solution to this problem is to stop using prosthetics, and start growing vascularized dental tissues from your own stem cells. tufts is working on this, im sure lots of others are as well, and im giving them 5 years for something promising before i cave and just get veneers :D

Re: Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up? (2017)

#212

Post by scotty79 »

blablablabla991 wrote: post #204
ryanmarsh wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having had wisdom teeth removed, a couple root canals and several cavaties, and having seen the discomfort and problems my wife and daughter’s impacted teeth have had on them, you could do much worse than just ripping them all out and replacing them with high quality manufactured teeth. Human teeth are about as reliable as the gal bladder. Obviously it would be preferable to maintain your essence but (post)agrarian d…

Unfortunately afaik all replacements are worse than real teeth. For some reasons one of my dentists had a booklet about the replacements in his waiting rooms. They all have issue.

My dentist would be horrified if she heard about pulling out functional teeth.

She does implants but she is aware and open about inferiority of artificial solutions and always tries to save as much of natural teeth as she can because mechanical interface between artificial thing and tissue never works as good as real stuff.

Re: Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up? (2017)

#213

Post by Balgair »

skc wrote: post #40

Teeth 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 e…

The Amish commonly pull all their teeth at once and just use dentures. Though I'm not a Lancastrian Dentist, I've not heard that they experience too many issues with long term dental use. Then again, their diets differ from the US norm by a fair bit. Still, they are a sub-group that does pull their teeth unnecessarily and seems to not have too many issues.

https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Why-do-Amish-Pull-Thei...

Re: Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up? (2017)

#214

Post by NeedMoreTea »

mcv wrote: post #200
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And at selling embalming as a standard and expected part of the process. For the UK at least: - Varnished coffins are usually very thin veneer on top of mainly particle board - the glue is as problematic as any varnish, and add pollution to cremation. US coffins are commonly steel(!) apparently. "Brass" fittings are usually plastic, and not removed before cremation as you might expect. - Embalming is so much an expec…

Burial in a wicker coffin in a forest somewhere has always appealed more to me than all these chemicals. I want to feed worms and trees after I die, not pollute the earth even more.

That's pretty much what we settled on, and for similar reasons. In time, just see forest, sometimes with flat local stone or wood plaques, without bleak rows of cemetery headstones. Far more uplifting and not even more expensive, surprisingly. Not as surprising was burial in managed woodland is a fairly common option when we looked into it, some planting a native tree in place of headstone.

Needless to say once we dug into how it's usually done, we found yet another industry that's become horribly eco unfriendly.

Re: Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up? (2017)

#215

Post by tomhoward »

pjc50 wrote: post #189
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try saying anything with a hard truth at its core that goes against what people want to believe. And instead of engaging with discussion and rebuttal, they do so with -1s and rate-limiting. 1. Cognitive impairment is likely already happening in office rooms 2. Rich people "donating" to semi-non-profit orgs and universities are doing so for non-altruistic reasons. 3. When you use a free service, you are paying primari…

> There's something else going on with meditation and mind, that we can't adequately explain with science at this moment. I was with your list of truths until this.

Do you mean there is published scientific literature that fully explains the mind and the effect of meditation?

Can you point to it?

Re: Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up? (2017)

#216

Post by NeedMoreTea »

Jwarder wrote: post #207
mcv wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burial in a wicker coffin in a forest somewhere has always appealed more to me than all these chemicals. I want to feed worms and trees after I die, not pollute the earth even more.

I have to wonder how toxic the human body is. I have read that bioamplification of pesticides and heavy metals can be a problem for fish and birds. A quick google only shows me vague possibilities when reviewing humans. Is it worse for us because we're bigger and long lived, or does processed food avoid that sort of problem?

We're an apex predator, so should receive all the amplification effects seen travelling up a food chain. Course having accumulated toxins, it depends what you do with them afterwards. Natural decomposition tends to spread it back to the bacteria, fungi and small animals at the very base of the food chain again.

Burn the body in a gas furnace for a few hours and release loads of ugly things. Including all the artificial fibres, coffin glues and plastics, and any fillings, implants etc. Mercury amalgam fillings can get to surrounding animals, even into fish off the coast. From memory something like 20% of uk atmospheric dioxins are from cremation.

If burying, the formaldehyde and other embalming chemicals leech into the ground along with any accumulated toxins in the body, and can prevent proper decomposition for decades or more. Embalming that's completely unnecessary for the timescale of most burials. Mostly those chemicals are ugly, and little studied when put in the ground in scale. Yet are studied when added in small amounts as fire retardants or glues in furniture etc. Then you have the US using steel coffins in concrete lined graves!

It's quite the ugly rabbit hole once you descend and start looking into burial and cremation.

Re: Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up? (2017)

#217

Post by corobo »

mcv wrote: post #200
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And at selling embalming as a standard and expected part of the process. For the UK at least: - Varnished coffins are usually very thin veneer on top of mainly particle board - the glue is as problematic as any varnish, and add pollution to cremation. US coffins are commonly steel(!) apparently. "Brass" fittings are usually plastic, and not removed before cremation as you might expect. - Embalming is so much an expec…

Burial in a wicker coffin in a forest somewhere has always appealed more to me than all these chemicals. I want to feed worms and trees after I die, not pollute the earth even more.

Pop out anything that someone else might be able to use and chuck me in the compost bin

Re: Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up? (2017)

#218

Post by soonoutoftime »

krackers wrote: post #187
senectus1 wrote: post #152

Interesting. 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…

> 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?

> 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-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-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.

Re: Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up? (2017)

#219

Post by ntucker »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #155
ntucker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I effectively have an "all-on-4" situation but where the 4 are my natural teeth. I have a genetic condition which caused very few of my adult teeth to grow, so the ones that did grow in nice and solid have been capped with machined gold cylinders and used as the receivers for a full denture (google "telescopic copings"), which fits perfectly on them and also acts as a retainer for those teeth. It's actually quite nic…

Removable dentures?

Yes, but attached much more solidly than a traditional one. They slide onto the pegs and stay put perfectly without any sort of adhesive and are actually tricky to remove due to the precision with which they snap in.

Re: Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up? (2017)

#220

Post by MattSayar »

gnulinux wrote: post #138

My 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…

I have nearly identical teeth to yours, but I had braces and don't care that my bottom teeth or a little messed up since they're a lot better than they used to be. That said, there's some cheap(er) teeth-straightening companies out there nowadays.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2018/05/02/braci...

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