Today I get to spend spend an hour
in the dental chair for a replacement crown. I need either a new one or a
replacement every year it seems – sometimes two. I have all 32 teeth, or at
least the roots and cores of them but 20 are capped. So, a dozen uncapped teeth
remain at risk while any of the existing crowns could potentially need to be
reworked, though a couple (both gold) are over 40 years old and fine. No one
has fun in a dentist’s chair, but the greatest pain is paying the bill on the
way out. “You can split the bill into two or more payments,” the young woman at
the desk always helpfully offers. I decline and write out a check (yes I still
have a checkbook rather than going all digital) for the full four figures while
telling the story of the boy who cut off his dog’s tail a little bit at a time
so it wouldn’t hurt as much. (I stole that story from my old high school math
teacher Mr. Andre; he probably would have preferred I remembered how to do
integrals.)
Prehistoric peoples by and large had
excellent teeth from what we can tell by the skeletons we dig up. So do modern
Inuit with an almost pure carnivorous diet; so do the few remaining modern pure
hunter-gatherers (i.e. no farming or trade for farmed goods). However
meritorious or foolish the paleo diet may be in other respects (I have no
opinion on this), it seems to score on this count. Farming and consequent high
grain diets changed everything. Grain mixed in saliva turns to sugar and
attacks enamel, so ancient Sumerians and Egyptians had terrible teeth.
Unsurprisingly, they invented dentistry as a specialized profession. Mostly dentists
pulled teeth and fashioned bridges and dentures – often from human or animal
teeth. Yet, fillings were an occasional thing. Remains of Etruscans dating to
700 BCE have been found with gold crowns on teeth.
Monday, May 1, 2023
Wearing the Crown
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A lot of time I feel dentistry has become almost a guessing/money game. The same is my view of the medical community at times. Granted both have come a long way from the past. Part of that I think is the money tied up into all that. I had a crown put on not that long ago, and I wouldn't be surprised it I don't have to go thru an implant before it's all over as it was bothering me before I had my last examination.
ReplyDeleteMuch as folks fret about AI diagnostics, maybe we could use more of it. As that may be, dental issues seem a constant. It is not unusual for a newly capped tooth to need a root canal, though of course I have no idea if that is an issue in your case. It was with one of my caps once.
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