I went to the dentist recently. I had to have a permanent crown put on a tooth. All the hard work had been done several weeks before. We just had to fix a date once the crown was manufactured to get it on my tooth. Normally, I don’t mind going to the dentist. In fact, most of the time, I have to keep myself from dozing in the chair.
But on this last visit, I didn’t get any novocaine to numb the area of the crown, and things got a little dicey. It was the most pain I’d ever had at a dentist visit that I can remember in my whole life.
I have my crown now, though I do not feel like a queen. It is my third crown, which would be pretty good if I were playing checkers. Unfortunately, it is the result of a rogue dentist we had when we were kids. My siblings and I. The man filled our teeth with heavy metal just about every visit. I doubt we had actual cavities as we were trained with a strict brushing routine, and we rarely ate sweets or candy. I won’t say his name here, though it rhymes with coward and begins with an H.
Regardless, there are a lot of dentists in the world, and there have been for a very long time. Humans have been performing dentistry since 7000 BC. Seriously.
Today, there are about 700,000 dentists in the world, with 200,000 of those practicing in the United States. They are needed, I’ll tell you, because surprisingly, 25% of adults do not brush their teeth twice a day.
I go about three times a day. For around four minutes at a time. I’m higher than average. That works out to 4380 minutes a year. That’s 73 hours per year. The average American spends approximately 38.5 total days just brushing their teeth in a lifetime. If my math is right, I’ve spent 176 days brushing so far, give or take a day or two. Seems a little sad, doesn’t it?
Of course, there is an entire industry devoted to oral hygiene. Apparently, the color of our toothpaste matters to people. More folks prefer blue toothpaste over red toothpaste. I like plain old white. But we Americans buy a lot of the stuff — more than 14 million gallons of toothpaste every year.
Most people brush out of fear, I’d say. Nobody wants to get a toothache. What a pain those can be. Yet, back in the Middle Ages? If you had a toothache, it was customary to kiss a donkey. I don’t have any idea why this might be. But, on matters unrelated, I know you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Yet, tooth problems are common. Tooth decay is the second most common disease going around, second only to the common cold.
It seems, though, that people are attracted to smiles. I’ve read that the average woman smiles 62 times a day. But the average man only manages to eke out eight smiles a day. If that isn’t bad enough, kids laugh roughly 400 times a day. And the average adult will only laugh 15 times a day.
Why so sad?
Well, it could be all this tooth decay. Almost 65 million American adults have some form of periodontal disease. Of this number, 38.4% are women, and 56.4% are men.
Just be glad we are not snails. A snail’s mouth is no larger than the head of a pin, yet it can contain over 25,000 teeth. And what then?
The best way to avoid dental problems?
Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
Try not to put your foot in your mouth.
And. Never. Ever. Smile at a crocodile.
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“The tongue is ever turning to the aching tooth.”
— Thomas Fuller.
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“Peace begins with a smile..”
― Mother Teresa
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“If you smile when you are alone, then you really mean it.”
― Andy Rooney
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Be kind to those pearlies.
