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FOR AS LONG AS there have been people, there has been tooth decay, but people in past civilizations didn’t have as many answers about what caused their tooth problems as we do now. That led to some very strange beliefs about dental health. One of the most common was the “tooth worm.” Ancient Well-Intentioned ErrorsAs […]

“MOUTH-BREATHER” HAS made the rounds as an insult in recent years, but breathing primarily through the mouth instead of the nose can actually have some pretty negative effects on health, including oral health. Mouth-breathing should only be done as an emergency backup, not the main way to breathe. The Nose Is a Built-In Air FilterThe […]

WE CAN SEE a hint of the state of dental health in Shakespeare’s England from a sonnet in which he describes his lady love’s reeking breath. The lines “black contagious breath” and “his breath stinks with eating toasted cheese” make it into two of the history plays. This was likely because dental health in England […]

WE TEND TO IMAGINE that people from earlier eras must’ve had worse teeth than we do because they didn’t have things like modern dentistry, orthodontics, and root canal treatment, but what dental problems were they dealing with and how did they protect their teeth? Gum Disease Through HistoryWe have evidence that ancient Native Americans — […]

BACK IN MEDIEVAL times in England (and in most other places, to be fair), people didn’t have a great understanding of what caused cavities or gum disease, but they still cared about having fresh breath. It wasn’t just out of politeness — they believed that bad smells could carry disease on their own, including bad […]

MANY STRANGE THINGS lie buried in the history of dental care and hygiene, but we think these five traditions really stand out. (Although we don’t recommend any of them!) 1. Ancient Babylonians believed teeth-grinding was caused by demons. So, logically, the best way to fix it was by scaring the demons away, and to do […]

HOPEFULLY WE ALL know how crucial daily flossing and twice-daily brushing are to keeping a growing child’s smile healthy, but the foods they eat are also important for their oral health as they develop. Vitamins Developing Teeth NeedAntioxidants like vitamin C help fight inflammation in the gums. Vitamin A helps with the production of saliva, […]

THE DENTAL CAREER everyone is most familiar with is the private practice dentist, meaning an individual dentist or a partnership working with local patients in their own practice. That’s the kind of dentist we all go to for our normal dental health needs, but not everyone who graduates from a four-year dental program goes in […]

AS DENTAL HEALTH professionals, our favorite figure in the magic of childhood has to be the Tooth Fairy. We all remember what it was like to leave a baby tooth under the pillow and find a shiny quarter in its place the next morning. It’s fascinating to see how the traditions around baby teeth differ […]