Elvira Dunnington has something a lot of people her age don’t: most of her original teeth.
At 89, this Ironwood Estates resident still sports most of her adult teeth, although many have been augmented with artificial crowns, and she can still flash a winning grin at the dinner table.
“It’s far easier to eat and chew than it is with dentures,” she said, adding she had seen many of her neighbours struggle with them.
“Believe me, I would prefer my own teeth.”
Colin Diener, a dentist at St. Albert’s Nuvo Dental and implant dentistry professor at the University of Alberta, said very few people in their 80s today will have all their adult teeth, as they would have grown up without fluoridated water and many other aspects of modern dental care. Younger folks have better odds but also have to contend with modern diets that have more cavity-causing refined sugars in them.
The modern fad of energy drinks has been particularly harmful, said fellow dentist Brett Shkopich.
“The carbonation of the drink will just eat away at your teeth,” he said, and it’s loaded with the sugars tooth-rotting bacteria love.
Losing one tooth can cause you to lose others, as the same chewing action now presses down on fewer teeth, Shkopich said. It can also affect your dietary health.
“You’ve got to chew your greens,” Shkopich said, and those back molars are usually the first ones to go. Patients with dentures often switch to softer or high-carb foods because they can’t chew fruits and vegetables, which can make them malnourished. Dentures also cover up parts of your mouth, which affects your sense of taste.
Lost teeth can also change the shape of your face, Diener said. Your jawbone’s sole job is to hold your teeth, so if it doesn’t have teeth to hold, it shrinks.
“Your face starts to collapse,” he said, and you get a jutting “witch’s chin” as a result.
Besides rot and physical trauma, Diener and Shkopich said one of the main causes for tooth loss is periodontal disease, particularly periodontitis (the advanced form of gingivitis). Caused by bacterial build-up in plaque, these diseases attack the root and bone supports of teeth and eventually cause them to fall out.
Dentists can install replacement teeth that are drilled directly into the jawbone, but those start at $4,000, Diener said. He and Shkopich say it’s far better to keep your original teeth intact.
Step one is prevention in the form of daily dental care and what Diener calls the “Holy Trinity” of oral health: floss, brush and rinse with bacteria-killing mouthwash (such as Listerine), in that order.
“Almost everybody will brush their teeth at least once a day,” he explained, but something like 80 per cent of people don’t floss. If you don’t let yourself brush until you floss, you’re more likely to do both.
Next, come regular checkups and cleanings – at least one of each a year, more if your dentist recommends so.
“Dentistry is strange because you don’t have symptoms when things are wrong,” Shkopich said, as most of the warning signs only show up on an X-ray or close examination. By the time you’ve got a toothache, it’s already too late – you’re looking at a root canal or a crown and worse odds for keeping your teeth.
That means it’s important to spot and treat teeth problems early, Shkopich and Diener said. A tooth with a small filling will last longer than one with a big one, and a night-guard will stop more tooth grinding if you start wearing it at 18 than if you get it at 40.
Dunnington advised younger folks to get lots of calcium in their diet and to invest in a private or work-based dental plan, as tooth care gets expensive.
“Go to the dentist and clean (those teeth) often,” she said.
