# What is the worst that can happen if you never brush your teeth?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-that-can-happen-if-you-never-brush-your-teeth/689086>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [May 23, 2014, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-that-can-happen-if-you-never-brush-your-teeth/689086 "2014-05-23T13:17:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-that-can-happen-if-you-never-brush-your-teeth/689086/41 "2014-05-26T08:58:29Z")

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Apart from death, one of the worst things that could happen could be losing your job or your partner due to your horrendous breath. Bad breath is a HUGE turn-off and working with someone with bad breath is really unpleasant; it’d be worse if your job was customer-facing.

If your partner or HR manager had a quiet word with you about your breath and you said you were doing all you could, they might be sympathetic, but if you refused to do anything about it then you could have serious problems.

> [@Incubus](#):
>
> Obviously people have managed for millenia without brushing their teeth (at least with toothbrushes and flouride toothpaste; they may have chewed on reeds or something for a similar effect).
> 
> I would say it _really_ depends on the person’s genetics. For some people, brushing is really important because their teeth are much more prone to decay, and regular brushing/flossing can really extend the lifetime of their teeth. For others, they seem to go cavity-free with plenty of neglect their whole lives.
> 
> As important as your one and only set of teeth are, I think gum health is really important as well. Periodontal diseases can be devastating in the long term and brushing/flossing helps deal with this.
> 
> So in summary, the worst that can happen is your teeth rot/fall out and you end up with infected gums and a lot of pain in the long run, not to mention halitosis.

I wouldn’t say people “managed” without brushing their teeth for millennia. They lived long enough to make babies, start civilisation etc, but they would have suffered a lot from dental pain and would have been a lot more prone to illnesses caused by dental problems, like the aforementioned cardiovascular disease.

At the British Museum they currently have an extra exhibition on mummies (they have the big permanent one too, this is a more detailed look at eight specific ones). According to that exhibition, when the mummies are scanned there is a strong correlation between dental problems and cardiovascular disease; none of the mummies were of old people. These would have been rich people, so it’s possible their diet actually made them worse off dentally than poor people, but the connection was quite remarkable.

BTW, I thought the false stereotype about the British was having wonky or yellow teeth, not bad breath or lot of plaque. So the joke fails in that respect too. Though I’d better be careful not to sound too annoyed at the joke, or I might get a warning.

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