Attractiveness Plays A Role In Everything

We live in a society obsessed with beauty. I wholeheartedly agree! But to avoid having this conversation because of those objections ignores reality. Because of that, attractiveness matters for a person’s success in life. In so many cases, it all hinges on a healthy mouth. What do you think is the number one feature people choose when you ask them what makes someone attractive? Attractiveness plays a role in everything from finding a partner to landing a job. Often, it comes down to that great first impression. You have 100 milliseconds to make a first impression, and first impressions tend to become the lasting default view we have of people, even when we’ve known them for a while. When considering a potential love interest, 77 percent of women think crooked teeth are worse than a receding hairline. When it comes to employment, good oral care is just as crucial. Americans perceive those with straight teeth to be 45 percent more likely to get a job than someone else who is evenly matched in skills and experience. A candidate’s appearance ranks as more important to getting a job than where the candidate went to school.12 Is this fair? But it is the world we live in.

Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad

If you’re not happy with your smile, you’re not alone. That means they’re not enjoying all the advantages that smiling provides. These people may be missing out on mental health gains, positive relationships, employment opportunities, and other benefits because they don’t feel good about their smiles. Think about what not smiling says about them to others. Someone who never smiles seems angry or mean, uninterested, or judgmental. But, in fact, an orthodontist can do so much more to improve the functionality and confidence of our smiles. I remember my grandmother taking her dentures out before bed. She’d put them in a cup on the nightstand. I figured that’s what all grandparents did. One day, when I was about 12, I asked her about it. With tears in her eyes, she told me the story. When she was in her 20s, she had a full set of beautiful teeth.

Signed Sealed Delivered

She was young and strong. But she started having some problems with her digestion, so she went to see her doctor. He had no idea what was wrong with her. She went back many times and tried many different treatments, but none of them worked. Finally, her doctors suggested the problem could be with her teeth. The solution they proposed was a total extraction. If they took out all her teeth, they posited, the digestive problems would go away. So, that’s what they did. It was also traumatic for her family, as she struggled to adjust to her new circumstance. How shocking must that have been for her? Even now, many years later, I shudder to think. Sadly, they never did find out the cause of my grandmother’s digestive troubles. But I am pretty confident it wasn’t rooted in her teeth.

Day After Day

It’s interesting how the pendulum swings on medical and dental opinion. Today, we’ve landed in a more objective and reasonable center, but we’re still reeling a bit, as a discipline, from the vagaries of the past. We’ve seen this happen with many other treatments too. We used to remove tonsils and adenoids at the drop of a hat, anytime we saw issues with recurrent infections or breathing. Now, we take a more thoughtful approach, removing them only when it’s absolutely necessary. We keep learning that there’s still so much we don’t know about the human body, and so we’ve become more cautious about removing structures unless we absolutely must. No one has probably had more reason than I have had to admire the sheer ingenuity and mechanical skill constantly displayed by the dental surgeon. And no one has had more reason to appreciate the ghastly tragedies of oral sepsis which his misplaced ingenuity so often carries in its train. A perfect gold trap of sepsis of which the patient is the proud owner, and no persuasion will induce him to part with it, for it cost him much money and it covers his black and decayed teeth. In 1912, an American physician, Frank Billings, similarly introduced the concept of focal infection to American physicians. They were all on the right track, of course. They began to think of it as the only true cure for a variety of ailments. This thinking resulted in a generation of toothless people in their prime, like my grandmother. Fortunately, the science eventually prevailed, and the 1930s and 1940s saw a steep decline in baseless extractions and a reemergence of restorative dental procedures.5 But scientists continued to wonder about the link between oral infection, inflammation, and overall health. It really didn’t come back into the mainstream consciousness until the end of the 20th century. It finally became very clear why eliminating dental infections or periodontal disease could help people live longer, healthier lives. In fact, the science in this area is growing and changing so much that a whole new branch of periodontology has emerged. It’s called Periodontal Medicine and its entire focus is on the strong bidirectional relationship between periodontal disease and systemic health. The list includes cardiovascular disease, diabetes, atherosclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, pneumonia, adverse pregnancy outcomes, chronic kidney disease, erectile dysfunction, Alzheimer’s, and many types of cancer. The relationship is real, but as with every relationship, it’s complicated! Sometimes, both things have a common underlying cause. In a healthy mouth, there is a delicate balance of microbes. But when this balance is upset, opportunistic overgrowth can occur. This is often what starts the process of disease and decay. A ealthy mouth begins to get less healthy, gingivitis develops. The gums may bleed and look red. There may be bad breath or sensitive, swollen gums. Gingivitis is reversible with good oral care but, left untreated, it often progresses to periodontitis. These structures include the gums, alveolar bone, cementum, and the periodontal ligament. As periodontitis advances, teeth can get loose and eventually all will fall out.