Eli5: why is when a bone shatters it can rebuild itself but when a tooth gets a hole in it it just keeps eating away at it
In: Biology
Long version: Why people gotta ELI35 instead of ELI5 in these comments? Teeth aren’t bones.
Short version: Teeth aren’t bones.
Bones are more spooky on the inside than the outside, and teeth don’t have much spook since their more exposed
ONE I CAN ANSWER!!!!!
TLDR: It does!….. sorta.
So I’m assuming when you say “gets a hole” you mean a cavity. And when you say a cavity, I’m assuming the normal person term and not the dental way of thinking. A normal person thinks of a cavity as a hold in a tooth while dentistry sees it as a de-calcification/soft spot or a de-calcification/soft spot that destroyed structure (non-cavitated vs cavitated).
Now if we are a soft spot or de-calcification but the tooth looks normal, then improved care can REVERSE that cavity. Lay off the sweets, brush better, maybe a mouth rinse and BINGO no more cavity. Ever present calcium in the mouth can move into the crystal matrix of the tooth to make it hard again. This doesn’t always happen but it can extremely often.
Now with a soft spot or de-calcification that makes the tooth look different, that’s a hole or what you would call in normal speak a cavity. You have lost crystal structure and there are no more cells to rebuild it. But we aren’t done yet. If you improve your care and brush and lay off the sweets and maybe a mouth rinse then you can stop that cavity from getting any bigger. It’s an infection of the tooth structure and you can stop it essentially by starving the bacteria and hardening the tooth. Most times, the tooth will take on a black appearance but will be incredibly hard. So hard in fact, that the possibility of cavity forming on that structure again is lower than a cavity forming on any other normal tooth structure.
Well now that we are missing enamel or the structure that you think of when you think of teeth, the dentin layer or the layer under the enamel will respond to the trauma. It acts as a separating layer between the nerves/blood vessels of the tooth and the outer enamel structure. In response to this cavity and loss of tooth, the dentin will actually grow inward filling the nerve space more so. At the end of this process you will have a smaller enamel layer, a larger dentin layer, and a smaller nerve space.
So yes, the tooth can respond to a cavity and yes it can sort of rebuild itself but not completely due to lack of living cells in the enamel. This is why the American Dental Association recommends NOT drilling teeth unless there is a “hole” and other dental groups (UK, Europe, Japan) recommend not drilling teeth even if there is a hole. Most small cavities can be reversed with a glass ionomer or a sealant on the tooth and allowing the tooth to heal itself.
So you’re just gonna re-word the same question from last week?
Teeth have the ability to heal from the inside out (laying down tertiary dentin to protect the pulp) but not the outside in. Like others have said before, there’s no scaffolding for teeth to build on to repair. Bones are totally inside the body so the cells can rebuild much more efficiently. Hope that makes a little sense
You might be interested to read about Weston Price – he was a dentist back in the 1950’s (I think) who asked the same question and did a ton of research about how to heal cavities. He did have success in doing that too. His research is one of the reasons I don’t use toothpaste that contains glycerin anymore (and have far fewer cavities).
And yet we still don’t have an ELI5 for why teeth and eye care aren’t part of your health plan 🙄 /s
I wonder why humans never evolved tooth regeneration. We get two sets and that’s it. Some animals get new set periodically.
Cavities are literally tooth rot. Gotta cut it out. If bone develops rot, you’d have to cut it out too
Teeth can heal back theoretically but the issue is there’s like a jillion times more bacteria in the mouth than in the body itself so the bone doesn’t have continued bacteria exposure eating away at it. If someone had a mutated tooth that’s not in their mouth and people preserved it, it’d be harder than bone because it wouldn’t have the crap tons of bacteria our mouths do (from eating, drinking and filtering air when we breathe) that slowly eats away at teeth.
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