Eli5:Why do we need to brush our teeth every day?
In: Other
I mean, you don’t – unless you want to keep them.
As for the serious answer – diet’s a lot higher in sugar than it was in the Paleolithic era, and the bacteria in your mouth essentially feed on sugar and poop out acid, which wears holes in the enamel covering your teeth and destroys them.
Because if not, plaque will build up and so will bacteria which will lead to a host of dental health issues such as cavities, gingivitis, etcetera.
Imagine your teeth are in a video game. They have a certain amount of health. Everything you eat does a tiny bit of damage to them. Certain foods do more damage. Worse, some foods accumulate on the teeth and do damage over time.
Your body isn’t defenseless, though. To a tiny extent, tooth enamel can grow back. This is healing, it’s like it replenishes your dental health.
But if the damage you take is more than the healing you do, your teeth decay. If they decay enough, the nerves inside can get exposed. That can make the tooth die, you might get infections, and bad dental health is not just painful, it shortens your life.
Brushing your teeth, even without toothpaste, helps out. It scrapes off some of the food residue that causes damage, halting the damage over time. That makes the healing your teeth do more impactful. It’s even better if you use toothpaste with fluoride: that’s a chemical that’s been proven to boost enamel growth, so you heal *more* if you use it.
But it’s a balance. You can’t just soak your teeth in chemicals all day and magically restore them. There are a lot of weirder little factors, like if you eat too soon after brushing your teeth you might take MORE damage. So the reasons dental experts recommend brushing twice a day are:
1. It’s easy for people to remember.
2. It has a demonstrably big benefit on dental health.
3. Brushing more often doesn’t represent as big an improvement and raises the risks people brush at the “wrong” times.
It’s not magic. Some people will still have tooth decay even if they brush twice a day. But studies showed that across all people, this practice has major benefits so it’s a good recommendation for everyone. If you brush twice a day and still have tooth problems, at least you know you tried.
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