i’ve always wondered this. i just toothpicked something that my toothbrush missed out and it’s made me think.
say you haven’t flossed in a while and have a bit of chicken you ate a few days ago stuck inbetween ur teeth that you didn’t know about. it’s definitely not fresh, so why doesn’t it make us sick?
is it not the same as eating something you left out for a while?
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Your mouth is a more closed environment than the outside air. It’s more hostile to bacteria. There’s a lot of saliva that’ll wash away the bacteria before it can penetrate far into the little bit of food.
Also, there’s a lot less food for the bacteria to work with. And, unless your dental hygiene is *really* bad, you’ll likely get rid of that food before it has a chance to grow dangerous levels of bacteria.
Note that with most bacteria and stuff that makes you sick, it’s an issue of volume. Just eating a little bit of bacteria won’t hurt you. In fact, you’re probably eating some with every meal. Your body can easily deal with small amounts of bacteria. It’s when there’s a lot of it that it becomes an issue.
And one more thing to think about – a lot of the time (but not all), it’s not the bacteria itself that makes us sick, it’s the waste products they leave behind. And again, it’s a volume issue. If there’s only a little bit of waste in the food we won’t even notice, but when there’s a lot of it, that’s when we get sick. Even if there’s a little colony of bacteria living on your teeth, they’re probably not producing enough waste product to get you sick. Your saliva washes it away and the rest of your body deals with it before it reaches hazardous levels.
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