Breaking teeth

[Wowbagger]

I seem to do this rather a lot.

When we were in France in May I broke off a lump of tooth whilst eating some very good baguette. I went to the dentist on my return to Blighty and he fixed the tooth. The very same day I felt a sliver of enamel flake off my lower right incisor. I had my checkup less than a month ago and he either didn't spot the problem or decided it wasn't worth bothering with. Today I broke a lump off an upper left molar, leaving a nasty jagged edge. I have an appointment to fix it on Friday at 9.15.

I'm pretty sure that age is a factor here, but I wonder whether several years' worth of alendronic acid abuse has contributed to my teeth's brittleness.

[Pancho]

I'm a bit younger than you WB  but my fangs are disintegrating in the manner you describe. I feel swizzed - brushed and polished all my life, avoided sugary stuff, don't drink booze yet I may as well have teeth made of chalk.

[Polar Bear]

I am fifth in line of six siblings.  All my siblings have had extensive dental work and continue to do so on a regular basis.   I have one filling and one broken tooth.   I rarely bother to attend the fangmerchantofdoom whereas the others attend religiously every six months and throw vast wads of hardearned at them.

I love sweets and chocolate, used to drink gallons of beer, now drink not quite gallons of gingeralcopopbeer.

Am I just lucky?

[hellymedic]

I suspect you are lucky.
I am the eldest of six. I have had pretty ropey teeth since childhood and poured a fair amount of cash at them. They seem to be holding well now I've given up cheap, nasty dentistry.
I think my teeth are worse than my other sibs but none have brilliant teeth.
The next generation has FAR better teeth than we ever had.
Fluoridation and fissure sealing for the WIN.

[ian]

Teeth wear out. I think anyone in their forties is going to start to notice their dentition is looking a little the worse for wear. They're not going to grow back so it's downhill from there. Given the constant friction and acid, your teeth are very hardy. They should make bikes out of them.

I'm sure I've lost half my incisors to beer bottle incidents over the years. I must have started out with giant monster teeth, like a walrus or something.

I avoid dentists generally, my dentist as a child gave us fillings and pulled out her teeth to fund her secret drug habit. I'm 60% mercury because she wanted to take enough painkillers that she could believe she was a soft toy. I'm more sympathetic these days, if I had to spend all day gazing into a person's facehole I'd be shovelling whatever happy pills I could find into my own.

I should probably go and abuse my dental insurance plan and get megawatt teeth like the Americans. I'd like proper teeth, just like Jess, south London's only vampire librarian. Her teeth are magnificent and splendidly bitey.

[hellymedic]

My Mum's teeth seem to be holding up pretty well.
Like me, she had pretty ropey teeth and lost a few.
She's had good work on what remains and this seems to be holding up well.
She'll be 80 in February.
Dad's teeth were stronger earlier on but he seems to have lost rather more recently. He's 85.

I think Mum's parents still had some natural teeth when they died in their 90s. I believe dentistry is rather better in Copenhagen, where they lived than in the UK.

[BrianI]

Apart from a few fillings, and removal of wisdom teeth (hence my lack of wisdom), mine have been ok.

Apart from those strange dreams where either loads of teeth come loose then start to come out, or those strange dreams where teeth crumble...   

[hellymedic]

I believe those are classic features of castration anxiety...

[Wowbagger]

I think that the 6-monthly poking around and "polishing" which seems to be what a checkup is can loosen fillings and damage teeth.

A propos Ian's comment about the robustness of teeth, when the Saxon King Saebert was unearthed at Camp Bling, Southend, in 2003, all that was left of his body was a few bits of molar. That's what happens when you leave a dead person in sandy soil for almost 15 centuries.

[hellymedic]

I believe Wowbagger's right. AIUI the modern teaching is that probing teeth is bad and can encourage caries to worsen and dentists are now taught not to probe and prod teeth.
So it seems regular (sometimes four-monthly) attendance at the dentist indeed worsened teeth.

Dentists' pay is no longer so focussed on piecework so there is less incentive for needless (and destructive) work.

[mrcharly-YHT]

My parents had a customer who owed them money. He was a dentist.
They agreed that he could pay off his bills with dental work.
My brother and I suddenly required MASSOOVE fillings.

There isn't much of my molars left, just huge lumps of amalgam. The thin remnants of my actual teeth are now splintering away from the amalgam.

[ian]

I'm planning to fund my retirement by selling a Chinese mining conglomerate the rights to all the mercury in my mouth.

[hellymedic]

Splintering away from massive lumps of amalgam mostly happened around 20- 30 years ago for me.
Some teeth were crowned with jacket crowns.
Some teeth had post crowns.
Some teeth had white composite fillings.
One tooth had a gold inlay made and fitted.
Amalgam can be meh. (Properly prepped and burnished on completion can be fair.)
Other things seem better.