[HN Gopher] The tooth, the whole tooth and the jawbone too
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       The tooth, the whole tooth and the jawbone too
        
       Author : Hooke
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2024-12-13 13:07 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (thequackdoctor.substack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (thequackdoctor.substack.com)
        
       | mistersquid wrote:
       | From the OP:
       | 
       | > She suffered a toothache and asked a barber-surgeon to extract
       | the offending molar. He struggled to get the tooth out, but
       | convinced the patient to let him try again with different tools.
       | 
       | > > He fixed his instrument, and with a sudden exertion of all
       | his strength, he brought away the affected Tooth, together with a
       | piece of the jaw-bone, as big as a walnut, and three neighbouring
       | Molares.
        
         | evmar wrote:
         | (wife is a dentist)
         | 
         | To my knowledge, the state of the art in tooth removal still is
         | basically pliers and a lot of force. The difference today is a
         | trained professional knows the technique and has practiced it a
         | lot. (And anesthetic.)
         | 
         | Here's a random video of it from a quick search on YouTube:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vydv7aomV20
        
           | thangngoc89 wrote:
           | (I'm a dentist)
           | 
           | To further expand on your comment, the alveolar bone is
           | porous so we use pilers on the tooth to compress the alveolar
           | bone, making a big enough hole for the whole tooth to come
           | out in one piece.
           | 
           | Molars have 2-3 roots so it is a lot of efforts. In difficult
           | case, I would divide the tooth into sections to pull each
           | root out.
        
             | infinite8s wrote:
             | What's the current state of the art in terms of being able
             | to regrow teeth/regenerate alveolar bone?
        
               | heymijo wrote:
               | One thing is using rapamycin for bone and soft tissue
               | regrowth. The FDA recently approved a human study after
               | previous research showed success in mice.
               | 
               | https://dental.washington.edu/uw-periodontal-study-
               | receives-...
        
             | bbarnett wrote:
             | I have 4! At least on the one yanked a few years back. My
             | dental surgeon was amused... and annoyed.
        
               | lukeholder wrote:
               | Don't ever tell a 2 wisdom teeth story:
               | https://youtu.be/cRdjDTMSTtY?si=4Qz0OR6B8t2MG7E9
        
       | handzhiev wrote:
       | Teeth treatment alone is enough to be very very thankful that we
       | live today vs even a century ago
        
         | graemep wrote:
         | If you go further back it lot does not get a lot worse, and
         | further back at least some people would have had less tooth
         | decay because of better diets.
         | 
         | A century ago is probably pretty close to the worst possible
         | time: starchy diets, relatively cheap pure/refined sugar, but
         | no modern dentistry.
        
           | jader201 wrote:
           | > A century ago is probably pretty close to the worst
           | possible time
           | 
           | Which may have attributed/motivated the later advancements
           | that were made.
        
           | lifestyleguru wrote:
           | It took me too many unnecessarily drilled and filled teeth by
           | overzealous dentists to realize this. I removed salt-sugar-
           | fat junk food from the diet and care about my teeth.
           | Absolutely nothing happened with them for one decade now.
           | Again... bloody dentists, they abuse so much the fact that
           | you trust them. They treat your teeth as a piece of sandstone
           | until there is nothing to drill into anymore.
        
           | potsandpans wrote:
           | I've read that medieval populations had significant tooth
           | wear due to stone mills depositing stone residue into flour.
           | 
           | Im not sure how this stacks against the time period youre
           | referencing, if it was better or worse.
        
             | inglor_cz wrote:
             | https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3094918/
             | 
             | One of the many articles studying dental health of pre-
             | modern populations.
             | 
             | Yeah, it wasn't great. Human teeth aren't really suitable
             | for a long-lived species that eats a lot of carbs.
        
             | archermarks wrote:
             | Even as far back as ancient Egypt [1]. And they had
             | dentistry too [2]! Any time in history where they milled
             | grains into flour with stone, you can see this pattern. In
             | fact, it can be used to differentiate certain agricultural
             | vs non-agricultural populations in the archaeological
             | record [3].
             | 
             | [1]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19396207/
             | 
             | [2]https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/
             | ar.2...
             | 
             | [3]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16353225/
        
           | Mistletoe wrote:
           | I've always found this guy's stuff fascinating.
           | 
           | https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/nutrition-
           | greats/...
           | 
           | Lots of pics here.
           | 
           | https://www.ericdavisdental.com/facial-orthotropics-for-
           | your...
        
           | Modified3019 wrote:
           | Unfortunately, here in the US, the elderly are often
           | completely without any sort of dental coverage.
           | 
           | Which means they can't afford to do anything besides watch
           | the teeth rot out of their head when problems start showing
           | up, leading to far worse and even more painful and expensive
           | problems.
        
         | thefaux wrote:
         | North American indigenous people were known to have remarkably
         | good teeth.
        
           | lbourdages wrote:
           | Probably caused by the relatively small amount of carbs in
           | their diet?
        
             | inglor_cz wrote:
             | I suspect that the Mexica who ate a lot of maize had more
             | cavities.
        
       | block_dagger wrote:
       | Bravo on the title.
        
       | rekabis wrote:
       | When wholesale collapse does come for humanity later this
       | century, things are going to get very ugly for people in terms of
       | the lack of modern dentistry and medical care.
        
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