Ask Biologists 🙋👨‍🔬 🧬

617 readers

1 users here now

Ask anything about all fields of biology. 🧪🧬🔬

We value quality over quantity.

Rules:

Be kind, friendly and patient.
No shitposting or other low-effort content.
If possible, add sources.
If possible, do some research and do not "just guess".
No spam.
No ads.
No NSFW, gore, hate speech, violence, insults or trolling.
No memes.
Be as professional as you can, where appropriate.

You may also like:

[email protected]

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

ndr

What specifically causes the breakdown of teeth? (self.askbiologists)

submitted 2 years ago by breadsmasher to c/askbiologists

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

When you see images of skulls from 100,000 years ago, they have seemingly perfect teeth.

Today, modern humans have terrible dental health. I understand sugar causes a number of issues- the growth of bacteria which decays enamel.

What is the process teeth go through in the modern world to cause this? How quickly after consuming a sugary drink for example does this degradation start to occur?

And as a follow up, how does tooth paste help prevent this?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] INeedMana 2 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Wait, so it's mostly due to sugar in our food? Is it mainly about the processed one? Or the sugars from fruits act the same?
What about other carbohydrates? Wheat, beer, starch...
If we were eating a lot of insects (chitin) that would be bad for our teeth too?

[–] ndr 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Well, to be thorough, any food source could cause problems but it is for the most part due to sugars.

Processed or natural doesn’t really matter. Carbohydrates are just long chains of sugars (glucose), put it simply. They can be broken down to individual sugars by certain enzymes, so the same applies eventually. However, they’re not as accessible as a food source as straight-up ready-to-consume sugar.

[–] INeedMana 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

But if processed vs natural doesn't matter then why OP is seeing a difference between our teeth and the teeth of the guy unthawed after 100k years? They also had sugars in their diet.

Let me rephrase my first question: to me your first answer sounds like "we have more dental issues because we eat more sugar. Therefore nowadays a group with diet that contains no added sugars and no candy bars, will statistically have dental state similar to people whose skulls we look at after 100k years (better than average modern human)"
Is that understanding of your point correct?

[–] ndr 2 points 2 years ago

Yes, the amount and the frequency are the cause. I’m no anthropologist but they did not have access to all this sugar all the time like we do now. Even our fruit is much sweeter than it used to be even only a few centuries ago (we selected for those traits).

As I said, our saliva should be able to neutralize the acids after some time, but this is not enough if we introduce sugar all the time in our mouth.

load more comments (1 replies)