Is brushing one's teeth necessary?

“Is brushing one’s teeth necessary?”
If you want to get laid.

Happiness is a healthy mouth.

Of course, it is.

Curious to see the responses you gather here. Personally I’d be fine if we engineered a bacterium that did the job, or nanobots. Yes. Then the action wouldn’t be necessary.

But you raise a good question, we didn’t have brushes for the longest time. We had maulers that came in and became useful after the rest of our presumably rotting teach fell out. And presumably died when we couldn’t chew. Unless there was ritualistic group-chewing. Forcing the young to do the old and weak’s chewing – but I doubt it.

Better answers anyone? :)

I think it’s a pretty well established fact and accepted practice, at least in the U.S., that a twice-daily brushing and flossing reduces bacterial build-up that leads to plaque and a variety of tooth and gum diseases. Plus it freshens the breath.

I wouldn’t want to reply on my pet, beloved as he is, to be a role model for dental care.

It’s true that, as with other animals, our ape-like pre-cultural ancestors didn’t brush their teeth. Skulls reveal that their teeth had pretty much fallen out by around age 30, which was the normal human life expectancy determined by evolutionary programming.

If you want to keep your teeth past that age, then brush & floss.

Yes brushing your teeth is completely necessary. First of all we live much longer than most animals, a dog will have good teeth till it’s 12, but some of us (myself included) don’t even have our permanent teeth by that age. This matters because our teeth have to last until we’re 80 years old now (or you can buy dentures). As others have said, our teeth fell out before we were middle aged in nature. You don’t wanna be 40 with complete dentures do you?

Perhaps more importantly is diet. The food we make and eat now has lots of artificial ingredients and is high in many substances that can harm your teeth/mouth. These didn’t exist in nature and don’t present problems to animals in nature, but do to us humans. Unless you eat solely organic, then the risk is much reduced, but still there.

Long story short, just brush your teeth. 4 minutes per day won’t kill you, but systemic infections and oral cancers might.

Animals don’t eat a lot of refined sugar, either.

@Jeruba yeah that was part of what I was saying. HCFS laying on your teeth is corrosive, our ancestors had only natural sugars to deal with. Also they drank water washing this away, instead of soda adding more of it.

Not necessary but sanitary.
I have seen some animals with very nasty looking teeth.

Most animal life spans are less than 30 years. There might be a few longer, but not many. They may not brush but most of them have teeth trouble relatively early in life.

A couple of years ago I had lunch with a woman I hadn’t seen in probably 15 or 20 years. The subject of teeth was not discussed, but “disgust” would have been the word. Her teeth were brown where they weren’t yellow, and snaggled, and some were missing. It nearly cost me my appetite to look at her while we chatted and ate lunch. I swear it looked as though she hadn’t brushed her teeth since I had last seen her.

I remembered the nice smile she used to have and wondered what she’d done to herself in the meantime.

If another opportunity to meet comes along, I will decline as gracefully as I can.

What a lesson not to quit your dental care and oral hygiene.

Indeed.
It’s true that there were no toothbrushes in the ancestral environment, but this is one of the genuinely good ideas humans have had that have made us more healthy than the old, natural way of life ever could. For which we make up by eating all sorts of delicious poisons that our ancestors never could have gotten their hands on.

Nature is a stupid, clumsy and sloppy life engineer, that doesn’t care about anything but genetic competition. If we want to have better living conditions than the minimum of what it takes to allow our genes to rule the world – a goal we’ve already achieved ages ago – we’ll have to do it ourselves.

Hence pills, insulated houses, soft beds, mass-produced food, meticulously machine-crafted clothes, world-spanning trade routes to bring chocolate to Europe, and toothbrushes.

Like people have said, animals’ teeth only have to live for about 30 years, and if the animal lives longer than that, they continually get new sets of teeth.

I agree mostly with what @Katexyz said. I tend to think thought that our need to brush teeth arises mostly because of our poor diets (sugars and other crap in the foods – basically just about anything that’s not fresh fruits and veggies). I also look to animals and see they don’t have to brush their teeth, but of course they don’t live as long as we do. But elephants, for one, get pretty old, however i have no idea of the condition of their teeth once they’re that old.
Either way, i think the biggest factor is our diets.

Smoking methamphetamine, btw, is a big risk factor for tooth loss. There’s even a term for it: Meth mouth. I’m pretty sure no other primates do that.

I agree that a steady diet high in sugar (sipping juice or soda all day long, for instance) promotes tooth decay— not to mention other medical evils. Though prevalent today in the US and other industrialized nations & linked to the epidemic of obesity, etc, it’s still a relatively recent phenomenon—within the past century, say.

The earliest toothbrush was 3500 BC in Egypt (source) but even prehistoric people used “chewing sticks” that broke into fibers like a toothbrush. The basic message is as old as humanity: Brush your teeth or bad things will happen to them.

. . . brushing one’s teeth. . .

I’m thinking that if you don’t then that’s what you’ll end up with. . .
Brushing, one tooth. . .

Not only brushing, but flossing too!
If you are too lazy you can always get an electric toothbrush.

@Ben_Dover I was thinking preemptive removal, and denture fitting.

Only if you don’t want your mouth to turn into a science project. Tooth decay and gum disease isn’t exactly a pleasurable experience. Mouth disease also leads to many other diseases in the body. Its all connected. If you like green, mossy teeth, you could probably find some clip ons at the costume store what with Halloween coming.

No it’s not necessary, its just matter of whether or not you like your teeth healthy and strong. But then again, you may like chronic halitosis and teeth that you could literally pull out with a gentle pull from your fingers.

@winters have you ever seen the fly with Jeff Goldblum pulling out his teeth… how pleasant.

@Ltryptophan no I have not, that is a movie i need to get around to watching.

Animals, differing from humans in many other ways too, have “good” bacteria that regulate the “bad” bacteria in there mouth. We do not.

Toothpaste isn’t mandatory (it’s actually unnecessary) but brushing is. I hav’nt used toothpaste in my household for a long time.

@mrrich724
Are you sure we don’t have helpful bacteria in our mouths too?
If that’s true, I wonder what causes that difference.
Hygiene habits? But we still have detrimental bacteria, how can those survive if helpful bacteria can’t?

Have you ever met an animal with fresh, kissable breath? You are correct that animals don’t have to brush their teeth because they don’t eat the refined foods that humans do, which cause increased build up on teeth (especially sugars and carbohydrates). I guess if you choose to eat raw plants and meats, you could get away with it.

By the way if you have a dog you need to brush it’s teeth, this prevents the dog from getting diseases, and so will it prevent you from getting diseased. I think a proper question should have been: Does it AFFECT the whiteness. No it doesn’t, some never brush their teeth and end up having whiter teeth than someone who brushes them every hour. But it is definitely necessary if you want to get laid like @ChazMaz said. :P

Yes for all the reasons above plus gum disease causes heart disease. the bacteria between teeth gets into the bloodstream and can travel to the heart (sorry this notebook pc is dreadful)

Brushing is really necessary. If you don’t brush, you can get cavities, horrible breathe, yellow teeth which will eventually fall out, etc.

Yes, of course brushing one’s teeth is necessary. Unless you want yellow teeth and bad breath, its unhealthy and gives a terrible first impression.

FLOSSING: Is flossing necessary, and what teeth should I floss ? The answer is the cliche used by dentists the world over: You should only floss the teeth you want to keep! You see next to brushing, flossing is the most important thing that you can do to ensure good oral health.

The purpose of both brushing and flossing is to reduce the number of bacteria which inhabit our mouths. Normally, millions of these microscopic monsters call your mouth home, feeding on food particles left on our teeth.

Ungrateful guests, these bacteria produce acid as a result of their feasting and it is this acid which eats into tooth enamel creating cavities. If this wasn’t bad enough, the bacteria also pour out volatile sulfur compounds creating embarrassing bad breath.

Normally bacteria are found within a mesh of mucus and debris known as plaque. Regular brushing removes the plaque and the bacteria plaque contains. Unfortunately, many people only brush, forgetting that flossing is a key component to any good oral hygiene program.

Flossing removes the bacteria that escape the toothbrush by hiding in the tiny spaces in between teeth. Brushing without flossing is like washing only 65% of your body. The other 35% remains dirty! The American Dental Association recommends that you floss at least once a day.

What happens if you don’t floss?

If you do not floss and allow plaque to remain in between teeth it eventually hardens into a substance known as tartar. Unlike plaque which can be easily removed by brushing, tartar can only be removed by your dentist.

Over time, levels of more dangerous types of bacteria build up within tartar. Mean and vengeful, these bacteria produce toxins which irritate and inflame the gums. This condition is known as gingivitis. If gingivitis is left untreated it can progress to periodontal disease – a condition where bacteria and their toxins invade not only the gums but also the bones and the structures supporting the teeth. This can lead to bone loss, loose teeth, and teeth which fall out.

We recommend Glide or any other coated dental floss because they slide easily between teeth. However, any floss that you can get between your teeth and which does not fray or break easily is good.

Alternatively, if you don’t like using dental floss, consider an interdental cleaner (electric flosser) which makes flossing easy and convenient.

Source: Doesn’t matter – they’re selling something – I’m not.