Some Fun Facts About Teeth

20 useful and not so useful facts about the wonderful world of teeth

Most of us probably only think about our teeth when we have a problem with them or, if we are lucky enough, when we admire our smile in the mirror before we go out for the day.

As dentists, we have been trained to be able to help you maintain healthy teeth and to treat them when things go wrong, but we are sure that even some of our dental team won’t know some of the more obscure facts about teeth that we have listed below!

With all the bad news in the world and as the weather is nice and sunny, we thought that we would compile this fun list for our Canterbury dental patients. We hope that you enjoy them….

1. Although we might worry about breaking our teeth (and we should always be cautious), in fact, the enamel on our teeth is the hardest part of the human body.
2. Your teeth are unique to you in the same way that fingerprints are. If you watch murder mysteries you will sometimes hear them refer to dental records to identify a victim. This is why.
3. If you were to add up the time that you spend cleaning your teeth each day (twice a day we hope!), the total time would come to nearly 40 days. Your arms would be pretty sore if you did that in one go!
4. Armadillos have 104 teeth but even that is nothing compared to the approximately 3000 teeth that a shark can have. This seems like a huge number but they also lose up to 100 teeth a day
5. If you were to add up all of the saliva that you produce over your lifetime. It would be enough to fill two swimming pools.  Not an attractive thought !
6. In mediaeval Germany, if you had a toothache, one ‘remedy’ was to kiss a donkey. We imagine that makes your visits to Bradley and Partners Dental & Implant Clinic more attractive doesn’t it?
7. Giraffes have no upper front teeth. If you watch how they take leaves from the trees, they use their lips and not their teeth, most of which are at the back of the mouth and used for chewing.
8. Tooth decay is one of the most common dental problems but did you know that it is second only to the cold when it comes to common illnesses over all.
9. Over 5% of adults in the UK have no natural teeth left at all and nearly 75% of us have had at least one tooth extracted.
10. One rather sad fact here. Apparently around a quarter of people in the UK only visit a dentist when they have a problem with their teeth. Unfortunately, by not seeing a dentist regularly, this becomes even more likely. We encourage our Canterbury patients to make sure that they have regular checkups with us.
11. A survey found that around 40% of people are unhappy with the colour of their teeth and have, or are considering having, their teeth whitened at some point.
12. More than half of us use our teeth for things that they are not designed for. This includes nail biting, chewing pencils and opening packets with our teeth.
13. If we didn’t produce saliva, in addition to having gum disease of course, we wouldn’t be able to taste our food. This has to dissolve into the saliva for our taste buds to pick up the taste.
14. If you think the population of the world is high, you might be surprised to know that your mouth contains more bacteria than the number of people in the world. Thankfully, most of these are good bacteria that break down food for example, but you still need good oral care to help keep the bad bacteria numbers in check
15. If you don’t use dental floss, then you are failing to clean approximately 40% of the tooth surface. This should give an indication as to why we encourage you to floss daily.
16. This isn’t the only use for dental floss apparently. In 1994 an inmate at a US prison facility braided dental floss into a rope and used it to successfully escape from prison (kids, don’t try this at home!).
17. In bygone years, it wasn’t uncommon for the local blacksmith to also be the local dentist. Things have changed for the better, we are sure you would agree!
18. George Washington is well known as an early dentures wearer. Less well known is that the teeth used came from a combination of human, donkey and hippopotamus.
19. Children laugh around 400 times a day whereas an adult does so only 15. Perhaps we can learn a lot more from our children than we think, especially as smiling produces stress relieving hormones which could even contribute to a healthier and longer life.
20. Finally, the blue whale is the largest mammal on the earth. Despite this though, it survives on a diet of tiny crustaceans as it has no teeth at all. That would be one gigantic set of dentures, for sure!

We hope that you enjoyed this little lighthearted blog and perhaps even learned something from it. Normal service will be resumed next time.

Despite this light hearted take on dentistry, please remember that your teeth and oral health in general are very important. If you have any problems or need more information about your oral health care, we are here to help. Please call Bradley and Partners Dental & Implant Clinic on 01227 463529.