I was looking at my chompers in the mirror and rubbed one of them so it was dry–no saliva on it. It was not as reflective as the other teeth obviously, but it got me thinking. Every bone in your body has moisture touching it. The only bones that are exposed are your teeth. So my question is, can your teeth be dry and still retain all their qualities such as hardness and durability? Or do the teeth have to be moistened to keep their qualities?
I realize I’m generalizing here, but as in most cases, I don’t care.
-Dave Barry
Yeah, they’d be fine if they were dry, but, you see, you have all that wet stuff in your mouth called saliva, which contains ptyalin, which is the first step in the digestive process. You don’t want to do without saliva, therefore, your teeth are going to be wet. Got it?
Teeth are mostly composed of a substance called dentin. It is like bone, but I believe it is slightly different, and probably stronger than normal bone.
The outside of the tooth is covered with enamel, which is the hardest substance in the human body. It gives the tooth it’s shine. (assuming you actually brush)
Llard, that isn’t how the board works. You don’t close a thread because you got the answer you wanted. If people still have something they want to say, they say it. Otherwise it dies on its own of disuse.
According to my dentist, dry teeth are more prone to decay. Doesn’t make sense to me since I think bacteria need moisture to thrive, but that’s what he said.
It seems to me that both human bones and teeth can survive long times outside the body without being wet. Ask any paleontologist who’s dug up skulls thousands of years old.
The enamel in teeth is the most mineralized substance in the body. Think about it, the tooth is subject to attack by acids, it cannot produce new enamel from the inside, so how does it repair itself? From the saliva. Substances in the saliva will repair the enamel by bonding to the tooth’s surface and re-mineralizing it. The presence of flourine greatly assists this process, which is why we have flouride toothpaste and flouridated water (at least in the civilized states).
Of course, once a tooth is removed from the body or the person dies the tooth starts deteriorating, but they’ll last longer than the bones.
I don’t know about remineralizing teeth. They grew from inside, why can’t they resupply from inside?
As for flouride, it acts like a sacrificial anode, so to speak. Flourine is really reactive, much more so than many other elements. So you put flouride on your teeth, and then when the plaque tries to react with your teeth, it binds the flouride first, thereby not stripping the material from your enamel, and thus preserving said ivories. Flourine is not really a component of your teeth.
Saliva works by disturbing the bacteria cultures and by digesting the sugars that act as food sources for the bacteria. If the sugars are gone, the bacteria can’t grow. The reason teeth last so well dry after death is because there is no longer an influx of new food for the bacteria cultures. No food, no bacteria, no cavities.
Dry teeth in a living mouth are more susceptible to decay than wet ones because the sugars coat the teeth, so the bacteria build up eating the sugars, and they react with the atoms in the enamel eating a hole. Thus a cavity.
I kept one of my baby teeth when it fell out and I remember it eventually cracked, apparently on its own. Although, that might be because the inside of the tooth wasn’t getting blood.
The teeth grow while they’re surrounded by tissue in the gum, once they emerge they have no source of nourishment, hence no growth.
The nerves inside just let you know you have a bad tooth, that’s why a root canal doesn’t ruin the tooth.
