I swear I can’t eat a meal without having a piece of pepper or something else stuck between two teeth. Any two. Sometimes many two.
Other people, it seems, could eat Oreo cookies with minced spinach by the handful and immediately smile for the cover of Vogue without so much as a crumb anywhere near their pearly whites.
What gives? Tooth shape? Chronic bad luck?
More like the gaps between teeth.
I have a couple gaps that seem to be food magnets. Yay, floss.
Also, chewing style, amount of saliva, and probably other factors.
you need space to catch the food.
Not only if you have large spaces but if your teeth are crowded food could still get stuck because depending on the food being eaten it could get forced between the teeth and then get trapped in the small space. Prob depends on a lot the way you chew food, too much space, too little space but just enough to trap the food, your saliva and hydration levels, and also what beverage you’re washing the food down with, multifactorial.
As you get older your teeth and gums change shape. Even if you take care of them. This affects how food particles get wedged in them.
I have a food trap on one of my molars. But it’s not the tooth, it’s the gum. A slight “V” shape has worn into the gum and food gets stuck in there. The food pushes against the tooth and it hurts, like a pressure. Dental floss doesn’t reach it so I have to occasionally use a dental brush to push the gook out of there. My dentist took all sorts of X-rays and concluded there isn’t much he could do about it short of yanking the tooth and fitting an implant in there and hope the gum grows around it. He’s not going to do all that, so I’m stuck with what I do.
I have some gaps where food gets stuck. For other teeth, it’s a hassle because I get dental floss stuck in there. All this is probably because I didn’t wear my retainer.
ETA: Yay, WaterPik!
pkbites, Actually I’m pretty sure you could have a gingival graft where they cut tissue from the roof of your mouth and transplant in the area of gum recession, there are I believe three types of grafts they perform depending on the severity. It’s expensive though and I’m not sure how much insurance covers.
Insurance usually doesn’t cover the grafts unless they’re required to save teeth. For cosmetic purposes it’s all on you. I suspect “I get gunk stuck between my teeth” would be considered cosmetic by insurance companies.
Um, yeah. That doesn’t really sound pleasant. It was one of the things my dentist talked about, but he talked about it in a tone of “we can do this, but you don’t really want to”.
Plus, about 5 years after I retired they changed the retirees dental plan. It oesn’t over what it used to. Still lucky, most retirees don’t get dental at all with their insurance package. Guess I’ll stick to the dental brushes that overall cost me about ten bucks a year.