this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2025
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Teeth has got to be one of the most disrespected and undervalued parts of your body. Your body's other bones can heal but then it's like "fuck your teeth, I'm not doing shit about them". And then we got health insurance companies who have the gall to not consider teeth an important part of your body that should be covered, got to get it separately and the costs are fundamental.
I mean, you smile with these things and they are key responsible for how you digest food, by chewing on it before swallowing. You can't just swallow whole pieces of food without risk of choking on them at somepoint.
You can pretty much die from bad teeth, like rot and cavities. It is just a matter of when.
A tooth infection can easily spread to your brain and kill you. It's a very short path.
But even if your teeth are just regular bad, that affects how you can eat, and eating is kind of important to living.
Research has also shown a link between dental bacteria and heart disease. Not sure if it’s causation or correlation, but keeping your dental microbiome healthy seems to have benefits throughout the body.
There are larger, more established correlational studies that show a link between dental health and overall physical health as well. There needs to be much more study done but preliminary evidence would suggest that preventive dental care provides for a cheaper overall health cost for a person over their lifetime.
doesnt need to spread to your brain, just cause sepsis lowering your blood pressure to dangerous levels, or to a major organ and kill you that way.
The best description for teeth in the context of insurance that I've ever heard was "luxury bones".
Gum disease has been linked to heart disease and now there might be a link to dementia due to the bacteria that can enter the bloodstream from the mouth.
Not to mention a tiny fucking hole in them is one of the the most painful experiences in life which only ends if you see a dentist, wait for it to rot, or rip the tooth out yourself.
And that's not even mentioning how fucked the average persons diet is, it's practically guaranteed to happen eventually, without intervention.
Then there is the constant risk of biting on something hard and busting a tooth. I've had it happen 3 fucking times.
Keeping acidic things on your teeth pulls out the flouride making them brittle over time. The flouride added to all kinds of stuff is meant to help with that but the effectiveness is questionable. Better to simply not keep acidic stuff in your mouth too long, and to clean your teeth with your tongue after or swish some water.
Coke is famous for causing brittle teeth.
Have you tried flossing?
What does that have to do with biting down on an olive pit or a bit of clam shell?
doesnt work on the biting surfaces, need to invest an electric or sonic tooth brush for that. and regular cleanings from the dentists. also discourage the usage of whitening toothpaste.
I have all of those things and get regular cleanings. No whitening toothpaste or treatments.
regular cleanings and probably mouthwash once in a while, and i use stannous flouride which is better than the regular kind.
nHAP is allegedly used by the flouride free crowd without a significant efficacy since there is more than one company making nHAP, i noticed most of them are obsessed with stuffing it with abrasives, so be wary.
Luxury bones
Just gonna drop this here for anyone that wants to know about the best way to take care of teeth.
https://slrpnk.net/comment/18504970
Yes, but you're leaving out how bad a problem gum disease is.
Eyes and skin are not far off if it want for the fact they were replied soon so much. (Re WHS protective goggles , sunscreen)
I'm not a fan of insurance companies, but the dental/medical insurance split makes sense. Insurance is fundamentally a risk hedging game. It matters what the risks are. Most medical conditions will only happen to a small percentage of people, so we can all put money into a pool and pay out to the unlucky people who, for example, get cancer. Almost everyone needs some dental work eventually, everyone's teeth wear down. Dental insurance is more like a savings plan than a gamble on rare outcomes. It doesn't make sense to pool those risks together.
mammals pretty much have the short end of the stick as far as teeth goes, we cant replace it often like reptiles can.