Some fails take decades. When I was 9, my dentist told me if I didn't start brushing a LOT more, he'd stop being my dentist. I got toothbrush religion. I always used a "soft" bristle bush, as directed. And I'd brush for several minutes, after every meal, while reading or watching TV. And decades later, the local dental school informed me I had brushed away most of my enamel. How? Calcium is a METAL! The bristles were SOFT PLASTIC! #LFMF
This fail lesson was posted on Tuesday, May 17th, 2011 at 1:00 pm
Brushing straight after a meal is really bad. Your teeth are softened from all the food acid etc. Plus it sounds like you were brushing WAY more than you should have been, didn’t you have regular check-ups to catch it?
^This. You’re better off brushing before you eat, and maybe rinsing with mouthwash or at least water after you eat.
Or, waiting a half hour to 45 minutes after you eat. Plus, calcium is not a metal, but a mineral.
Um if you’d care to check a periodic table you will find that Calcium is, in fact, a metal of the alkaline earth variety.
Teeth are not made of straight calcium, though.
Anyway, metallic calcium is quite soft.
Thanks. I wish even ONE dentist had told me, sooner, about brushing TOO much.
Thanks for sticking up for me. I do understand the confusion, as calcium is generally not used the way other metals are. Do you know of any steel that uses an alloy with calcium?
Because everyone knows that if you want dental advice, LFMF is the place to get it.
I think they wanted to vent, not get advice.
No, I really wanted to GIVE advice, to warn people, so they will ask their dentists, and make sure they are neither brushing too much or too little.
LFMF is hardly going to be complete, but I think I raised an important issue, which people should bring up with their dentists. I wish someone – anyone – with a credible story to back it up – had said something to me, decades sooner. And all I did here was quote dentists.
Look in the periodic table. It may be considered a mineral in some cases; it is also chemically a metal. And it should be stronger than any plastic. It was decades before I heard of prisoners sawing through prison bars with dental floss.
I’ve never heard a dentist advise that. They have always said to brush AFTER every meal. They just took decades to say “Only brush 2 minutes,” and never showed me how gently. I never irritated my gums, so I didn’t think I was over-doing it.
I’ve always had regular checkups, even when all I could afford was the local dental school. I do know to rinse with water first, after eating/drinking anything acidic. It just took that long for dentist education to catch up with my subtle problem. They always commented on how clean my teeth were, how well I must be brushing. Then finally one of the senior students gave me the bad news, and a Rx for a Braun Oral B electric, that does a timed, 2-minute, gentle brushing.
Sounds like my old cooking teacher she destroyed the enamel in her teeth by brushing Too much she had to even brush her teeth during class
Pure calcium is a soft metal, harder than lead, but still cuttable by a knife (with difficulty).
Though tooth enamel is made mostly of the mineral Hydroxylapatite, which is very hard. Still, look at gullys; over a long period, water will wear away minerals. Very frequent toothbrushing (especially right after eating when the enamel is softer) will have a similar effect.
I try to brush twice a day, I use floss daily (keeping your gums healthy is very important to keeping off infection), and I use fluoride mouthwash daily (fluoride helps strengthen enamel, and my municipally doesn’t put a ton in the water).
And I still get cavities. I think I have genetically soft enamel.
Do you have frequent dry mouth? I recently learned that wrecks teeth; it also causes bad breath. What does the most damage to your teeth and causes bad breath isn’t food on your teeth or sugar; it is smelly white stuff that forms on your tongue. I believe the bacteria that form this white stuff actually thrive on liquid proteins and insufficient saliva. (Saliva actually hinders their growth.) If you see a white film on your tongue, you need to scrape it; you can use a special scraper or an everyday spoon.
The white film can also be a sign of problems in your intestines. A small film doesn’t really need any attention, but if there is a lot of white stuff, you might for example be lactose intolerant (like me, but not an extreme case). I do not know how your intestines influence the back of your tongue, but for some reason they do >.<
orly?
yep :p
doctor: stick out your tongue please.
me: sticks out tongue
doctor: Ah, you’re lactose intolerant. No more milk for you!
me: ??????
doctor: big medical explanation …
your saliva acts as an extension of your immune system – it helps to ward off bacteria. if you have dry mouth from meds or your mouth just fails, chew sugar free gum lots
sugar free gum? enjoy all your aspartame and consequent parkinsons.
^ This
Oh? Has Consumer Reports warned about aspartame?
My elderly cousin had xerostomia, a condition in which her salivary glands simply didn’t produce saliva, anymore. The gum may help for less severe conditions.
Thanks for the thoughts. I had an elderly cousin who had a condition that resulted in her having too little saliva. She said I was the only one who understood what she was facing, every day. No, she couldn’t just suck a lemon; that would have been even worse.
You’re right, saliva helps protect teeth from damage by bacteria.
No, my mouth is never dry. Again, thanks. I do keep a watch for that problem.
Thanks for the comments, and you’ve given me another issue to raise with my dentist: how soon after eating I should brush.
Calcium is not metal its porous and therefore can be weakened by certain foods and ove brushing
Calcium is an alkaline earth metal (atomic number 20), in series between magnesium and strontium. In its pure form it is non-porous. Tooth enamel is made up partially of calcium, but only partially.
Also, you need to take a typing course, and remedial elementary English. Start here: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe
Chemically, it is considered a metal.
In actuality, no one gives a damn.
I do.
Same here.
Don’t forget me!!
And my axe!
And my bow!
And my vuvuzela! BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!
LOl! Axe, bow and Vuvuzela! Thanks.
And my bandwagon!
And my C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!
LOL! Thanks!
Or me!
I too care.
Stop jumping on the band wagon, people.
You’re right. Band wagons are for tools! Come on, everyone! Let’s get off of this band wagon. Follow me!
Yeah! I’m off!
band wagons are for winners!
“Bandwagons are for tools! … Let’s get off this band wagon. Follow me!” LOL! Subtly sarcastic irony – I love it. Thanks!
No, you don’t care. Chemists care. Dentists care. I care, because I want to keep my teeth. I hope no one is trying to say anyone else here is a bad person for being wrong about what is a rather obscure fact for most of us. If we were dentists or chemists, we’d be responsible for knowing more about calcium. Most of us simply need to do some basic reading, and know how much calcium we need from our food.
If you check the post from the chemist, calcium is a metal. Metal objects, at the microscopic level, all have pores; they’re generally smaller. You do make a good point that tooth enamel isn’t all calcium. And again, I just wish I’d been given a credible warning, and corrective education, decades ago.
maybe you have a tooth enamel defect, why don’t you ask your dentist what the problem is?
Thanks. I will ask about that also. I think because I’ve always had very few cavities, they haven’t suspected an enamel defect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth_enamel#Systemic_conditions_affecting_enamel
That article on defective enamel has been written for the benefit of people who already know the information. By introducing terms that it does not define, it is almost incomprehensible to the general public.
Are you kidding? That’s half the fun of wikipedia, looking up all the words from one article you don’t recognize and getting a new article to learn yet more from!
Looking through chains of articles can be fun. Most of the time, I find it tiring. Too often, the definition link is to an article with yet more expressions for which I need definitions. :-/
Brushing has some impact on tooth health, but a LOT of it is determined by the bacterial colonies in your mouth, plus other genetic or acquired systemic issues, like celiac disease.
People with healthy oral colonies of Lactobacillus GG are very unlikely to develop cavities, regardless of their hygiene or diet. OTOH, people with robust colonies of Streptococcus Mutans will probably get LOTS of cavities, no matter what they do. These folks can avoid all refined sugar, brush after every meal, never drink soda, etc., and their dentists will still tell them they have to lay off the soda and junk food and start brushing regularly. :-/
I’m fortunate to be in the former category; I’ve never had a cavity in my 37 years, in spite of pretty poor oral hygiene as a youngster and only passable hygiene as an adult. But I know several unfortunate people in the latter category, too.
You should also go for toothpaste with peroxide in it (like the arm&hammer toothpaste) since many of the “bad” bacteria in your mouth are obligate anaerobes (read: they can’t stand oxygen, it kills them) and produce biofilms (slime) to protect themselves. The peroxide not only helps break up the film and expose the bacteria to oxygen, but it is easily oxidized itself and thus poisonous to anaerobic bacteria.
Peroxide? I thought Arm & Hammer’s claim to fame was baking soda (one of the first things people used, before there were tooth pastes). Peroxide is generally poisonous, and little kids tend to swallow things they put in their mouths. I know we’re supposed to rinse and spit it all out, but little humans can’t be counted on, that way.
Thanks for the details. From an article I read in a science magazine, we are far from knowing all about the bacteria that routinely live in us, and what symbiotic relationships we may have. Do you know if Lactobacillus GG colonies can be promoted by any particular foods included in our diet? Perhaps yogurt with active cultures?
Periodic Table of the Elements fail.
Metals in those columns are all very soft. You can cut lithium with a knife.
Not that it has any relevance whatsoever for tooth enamel, which is a compound and not elemental calcium.
I know lithium is soft, and is used in some machine lubricants. Dentists and grade school health texts always talked about how hard enamel is (and how it still needs help from us). I think I was still reasonable in expecting that brushing as directed (They never said how long.) with a “Soft bristle” toothbrush, made of soft plastic, … should not have hurt my teeth.
I did that. I was told for years to brush after sodas and juice too. I did and this year had to have all my top teeth removed for a lot of infection because there was nothing left to protect them. Between my meds making a dry mouth plus all the brushing, I damaged my teeth way more that just brushing once a day would have done. And the bottom teeth are weak and starting to crack but I’m trying my best to save those. I use a calcium and enamel building toothpaste and rinse the dentist told me to use. ONCE a day.
meds and illness are more likely culprits. Ill health is most eveident in the hair nails and teeth.
If that were the case, Ren’s dentist would probably have said so. After all, the dentist (a) is smarter than you, (b) graduated from dental school, and (c) has actually seen the inside of Ren’s mouth. Whose opinion should we pay attention to here?
The acid in juices and soda weakens the enamel. Also, even though calcium is not the biggest concern with enamel, it being a metal means it is also sensitive to acid erosion.
Ouch. I am sorry you are having such a tough time. It seems dentists need to take a more complex approach to guiding us. They need to ask more about what we eat and drink, and when, and they need to watch out for subtle signs. And I’m just fortunate that my meds don’t dry my mouth, as I can’t recall a dentist warning me about that, either.
Brushing after acid is bad for your teeth, so fruit juice, soda, things like that.
Good to know. Seriously, lol. I always thought you were “supposed” to brush right after soda (not that I do b/c I’m too lazy–but I won’t be passing on bad advice, at least).
Remember, it’s the acid that’s bad, not so much the brushing. I don’t know how much rinsing with plain water is enough, but that should help. I will ask my dentist about that. Thanks.
Sorry to hear you went a bit too far with the brushing. All things in moderation! They are starting to believe that flossing is the most important part of dental hygiene, now. Good luck with your teeth.
~Ashlee
http://theDragonsHoard.bigcartel.com
facebook.com/TheDragonsHoard
That’s good, except you can’t floss with permanent braces on the front or back of the teeth.
Thanks for the thoughts. As I have heard that some prisoners have sawed through prison bars with dental floss (They have a lot of time on their hands, and until prisoners started cutting through bars, no one denied them dental floss; it reduced state costs at the prison dentist.), I am also careful not to over-do flossing. It’s especially hard to remember to be gentle, as that means slowing down, and I get impatient. I agree with you that flossing is important.
It is a well-known effect in engineering that when a soft plastic rubs against a hard metal the metal wears out first. What actually happens is that tiny bits of dust (silicon dioxide) that are harder than the metal or the plastic get stuck in the surface of the plastic and rub against the surface of the metal. In the context of tooth brushing, you can avoid this by keeping your toothbrush in a case and by rinsing it before use while scrubbing it with your finger. And of course don’t brush right after eating and don’t spend half an hour scrubbing your teeth.
They you for explaining. I was wondering why OP emphasized that the toothbrush was soft plastic.
* Thank you, not they you.
Most people just assume that soft plastic rubbing on hard metal won’t wear out the metal, but it does. Same with brass and steel – the steel wears out first. once one of the surfaces is harder than silicon dioxide (sapphire or diamond coating, for example) it wears down the bits of dust and then the softer material wears faster.
I was surprised by this too when I learned it, but in machines where nylon or similar moves past steel, the steel wears out really fast.
Toothpaste contains abrasives designed to polish your teeth, which are harder than the plastic.
Exactly, it is an abrasive, you are in essence giving your teeth a light sanding when you brush.
True, and the toothpastes I’ve used were all recommended and approved by the biggest, most established group of dentists, the American Dental Association. So I thought I was safe. Again, no one warned me I could brush too much. Thanks.
When you are eating, your mouth produces extra saliva, which is acidic to help begin digestion. This acid, while present, weakens your enamel. So, right after eating is the worst possible time to brush.
Sounds to me like your original dentist was pretty sh**ty for not following up with you on exactly what good oral health is, and not catching your eroding enamel sooner.
Biochemistry FAIL. Saliva is within 2% on the pH of deionized pure water. It begins the digestive process through enzymes, not acid.
Fizzy drinks, fruit juice, … those are acids (not strong of course) . Saliva is almost water, but with enzymes.
The juices in your stomach are acids, that’s why anorexic people who throw up a lot have bad teeth. They are burnt away by the acid.
Your teeth are constantly covered in saliva, so it would be a big fail on natures part if it dissolved your teeth >.<
Anorexics don’t eat. Bulimics puke. The teeth aren’t burnt away, the gums recede and expose parts of the teeth that were never meant to be in contact with anything. Over brushing does the same exact thing. Then add over brushing to daily purging and you have toothless teenagers.
Correct, sorry for my mistake ^^
The local dental school is very good about keeping records, and passing them from one student to another, and the students never act before a an actual dentist (a professor) concurs. Maybe having a succession of people, new ones almost every year, for almost three decades, kept them from noticing such subtle changes.
My disabilities kept me from college for decades, and it took me another decade to get my degree, and I’m still too poor to go to a regular dentist. I’m not surprised to discover another way that being poor hurts.
Oh, and no, the comment below is correct. Saliva actually fights bacteria. That’s why the decay tends to happen later, after we’re through eating, are no longer generating as much saliva, and still have food particles.
Seriously. NO ONE of you engineering dudes has figured out the difference between Calcium Ions and Calcium as Element?
The outer part of your tooth is made of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxylapatite and while it is harder than Plastic or Rubber, it is not the plastic, that gets rid of your Apatite. It is the minerals within your toothpaste.
They add small minerals, imagine them as small salt grains only not water soluable, to rub off the dirt on your teeth.
Dear god, it is brushing teeth, not your silly “which material wears out first” experiment.
If parts are not easy readable I’m sorry, but my English skills are quite basic.
Thank you. I think one of the engineers tried to say the same thing, when he said bits of silica stick in the bristles, the same silica in the toothpaste to which you correctly refer. Again, all those years, I thought I was doing what the dentists prescribed. It took decades for one of them to say I’d worn away a lot of enamel.
I don’t know abaout you. But im 17 and brushing before bed with toothpaste is enough for me.
Not in the morning? You leave your house with Jungle breath? EW!!! You are supposed to brush twice a day, for two minutes.
I am 22, I brush only in the evening, and I have never had a single cavity in my life. I can also assure you I do not have jungle breath.
Same, and I’m 21.
“Jungle breath” goes away after a while, by the time I have managed to get up and go out, then by the time I actually meet someone I have eaten something anyway so I don’t smell.
Of course calcium is a metal, but your enamel is not made of pure calcium! It should still be harder than toothbrush bristles though…having said that, water is softer than limestone, and if you’ve ever seen limestone caves you’ll see it’s not necessarily about hardness.
What happens to limestone in caves takes millions of years. It took only decades of what I thought was what I’d been told to do … to wear away enamel. At least I have some left.
Maybe cause tooth paste has small rock particles in it? You should really watch How It’s Made
Calcium is a nonmetal. Chemistry fail.
Troll fail. (Or ability to use google or wikipedia, or science class memory fail).
How about all of the above? Calcium is a metal, which is not present in its pure form (or even a very high concentration) in tooth enamel.
Well, this fail was more sad than funny, but this has definitely been the most educational comments thread I’ve seen on this page! I’ve learned a lot more about oral hygiene than I ever learned from health class or those oral hygiene PSAs that they used to show during cartoons sometimes.
That’s because you never had a health teacher who’d graduated from dental school (dentists make more money than schoolteachers anyway), and those PSAs are make by marketing people.
me too! who knew I’d learn so much on LFMF.
I too have found this helpful. We still need to run all this by a dentist. Now we have a much better set of questions to ask, and are better prepared to evaluate the answers. And you’re welcome. It is sad, and I did try to add some humor, as people are more likely to read and remember something that’s funny. Take care, Lisa517.
Friction generates heat.
heat+metal=melting (usually)
If the metal is a pure metal, yes (if the friction generates enough heat to exceed the metal’s melting temperature). If it is in a compound (such as tooth enamel) with nonmetallic elements, quite often not so much.
The melting point of calcium is ~1542°F. A person would have caught on fire and burned their soft tissue off long before their teeth start to melt.
Abrasion is the problem, not heat.
Thank you, Mark. ~1,542°F – wow! You have brought actual scale and orders of magnitude to a point I could only make rather weakly.
The heat of manual brushing is insignificant. The people who have called attention to the hard mineral particles in toothpastes are on the right track. Not even the electric brushes at the dentists’ offices spin fast enough to heat tooth surfaces any where near their melting point. But good thought.
calcium is not a metal. It is a metalloid.
Chemistry fail.
That’s what flouride will do for ya! ruining our teeth so we have to pay dentists a fortune :-/
Fluoride is actually good for our teeth – it helps prevent acid wear. The scientific explanation is actually quite simple.
Flouride, though, I’m not so sure. If you’ve consumed a lot of it, judging from your comment I’d guess it leads to the loss of English language skills.
LOLOLOL! Thanks, I didn’t notice the misspelling, at first. Sorry, Gid, I couldn’t help laughing. I thank you for bringing some more joy into my life. I have made similar mistakes, and been as amusing to others.
And HG is correct. Fluoride (Almost mistyped it, myself!) – in the dentist-recommended concentrations – is safe. In extreme amounts, it’s bad. The extra brushing didn’t concentrate the fluoride. If anything, it thinned out, with my saliva (Eeew! Sorry.). As others have pointed out, it was the extra abrasion of WAY more than 2 minutes brushing, over decades.
I’ve been trying to convince my wife and daughter not to brush so hard. They don’t listen. My wife told me she was taught back in kindergarten to brush for 2 minutes at least.
Oh, how I wish I could help you more, to convince them there really can be too much of a good thing, including brushing. The recommendation is 2 minutes, period. And softly. I bought my Braun Oral B electric toothbrush at least ten years ago. It’s still going, and now I can get lower-cost replacement brush heads at Target. It taught me how soft is soft, in addition to training me to two minutes. I bought it when I was really poor, but I’m really glad I did. It may have saved what’s left of my teeth.
Sorry to say, but your metal vs soft plastic confusion is only true in the way you’re thinking of if your name happens to be Baron Underbite. And then only half of them.
Ever wonder why knives get dull by cutting stuff that is much softer than them?
Everytime you use anything it gets slightly worn. Over time it just degrades it. Like how I degrade your filthy mother.
Yes, and I got the point. My problem was that I thought I was doing what my dentist prescribed. I had been brushing my teeth when I was little. I probably wasn’t getting to all the surface of all my teeth, adequately. No doubt I needed to improve. He actually told me he would stop seeing me as my dentist, if I didn’t brush more. He really laid it on. Unfortunately, he couldn’t be around for the next ten years, to see if I were overdoing it.
according to the comments, the soft plastic bristles have nothing to do with it
Calcium is a chemical element! Epic Fail!
And all metals are chemical elements. It the same as how all dogs are animals, but not all animals are dogs. All metals (technically including lithium and calcium) are chemical elements, and not all chemical elements are metals.
By the way, not that you did this, but even very educated people don’t seem to get the difference between “all are not” and “not all are.”
Example:
“All animals are not dogs,” is the equivalent of what I hear and see,
yet
“Not all animals are dogs,” is the correct statement. It’s a bit of Boolean logic, the kind that makes these wonderful computers possible. So don’t say “Nobody cares.”
Here is a little advice from a Dental Hygienist (me). For many people, if they are healthy, brushing with water in the morning to dislodge the bacterial slime in the mouth is good enough. Then throughout the day floss after each meal (or use go betweens if you have braces/permanaent retainers) and rinse vigourously with water. At night floss, brush with toothpaste and use a mouthrinse with essential oils (listerine is a good one). This not only is enough to prevent caries, but also to protect against periodontal disease (which is much harder and more expensive to treat than decay) in people who are currently in good oral health and do not have strong predisposing factors.
Thank you, Amy. I hope I haven’t seemed to be trying to give the dental profession a bad name. I’m sure a lot of my problem was that a set of dental records passed from one senior dental student to another, over decades, isn’t the same as going to the same dentist for decades.
And thank you for speaking so carefully. I hope everyone notices your careful warning about other factors. I know I plan to continue regular checkups. And I have some new questions to ask. Now, big smile:
Enamel is made mostly of calcium phosphate, NOT a metal.