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SMNTY Classics: "Perfect" Teeth · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stephan.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: I never told you a picture of iHeartRadio.
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: Like that dance you did for me, it was just
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: for you.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: It's just for you. I have to apologize.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I'm going to put you on the spot.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Oh yay, yes, how how are your teeth? How are
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: they doing? Not doing that?
• 0:35
  Speaker 4: No?
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: Well, my favorite reviews that we've seen on this show,
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: when I was reading all the reviews was literally them
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: complaining about the fact that we complained too much and
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: that they're like, what's wrong with that one girl? What's
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: wrong with our teeth? Do y'all not pay enough for
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: your cares?
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Expensive?
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: And I love them now I'm even harping on it.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: So I hope that listener who stopped listening comes back
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: to check it out just one more time, and here's
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: this is.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: And then I'm talking about my teeth.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: That's my favorite part of this.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, it's getting better.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: I think after the treatment that I had with a
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: dry socket, y'all, I had the whole dreaded dry socket, which,
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: by the way I read that is women at my
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: age are more risk in getting that, and I found
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: that interesting. I'm like, why that's that's sexist and agist.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: I don't know, I don't like any of that anyway,
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: I'm getting better. I was just thinking I'm having a
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: harder time talking and speaking because I you know, we're
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: not going to talk about how people all the other
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: complays I've gotten, but because I like it was one
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: of those that was just in a difficult position anyway.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: So the way my mouth feels is so strange right now.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: So I'm adjusting, but less pain. I have started eating
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: food again. I still can't use a straw, which makes
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: me sad because my teeth are very sensitive. And for
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: those concerned, I did schedule in a new appointment with
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: a new dentist that I've had good reviews, like personal
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: references and testimonies for.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: So let's hope we get it fixed for a little while. Yeah,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: teeth pain is no, it is very very fatful.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this one's one of those moments I almost went
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: to with the er, not realizing people do that, and
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: I was like, now I see why.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, well I'm glad it's doing better. It
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: is kind of comical that right now both you and
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: I are experiencing something that affects our speaking ability, which
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: is our whole job, almost but this was on my
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: mind both because you have been going through this, but
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: also because we just had a Monday mini come out
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: about cosmetic surgery in the in cell world, and I
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: through that I found a bunch of articles about teeth
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: and perfect teeth in the evolution of teeth, and it.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Was actually really fascinating.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Like legitimately, there's a point where historians are like, we
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: don't know why this happened, why the jaw changed, why
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: the teeth started coming in this way, and that's when
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: like dental work became a big thing, and there's a
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: lot of theories about why, especially like new foods coming
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: in and stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, it was really fascinating,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: but it was you know, not in the scope of
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: that episode or.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: This podcast, but.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Previous host Kristen and Caroline did do an episode on
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: kind of the idea of perfect teeth and what that
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: looks like and how that intersects with so many things.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: So please enjoy this classic episode.
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told from houstufports dot com.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: and today on the podcast, we're going to talk about teeth.
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: So many implications with teeth, teeth and beauty, right, Yeah,
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: first things first, we i e.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Humans have been messing.
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: Around with our teeth in the form of oral modification
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: or dental modification.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: We're a long long time for all.
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: Sorts of reasons, including health reasons, beauty reasons, religious reasons,
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: rites of passage, social status.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Et cetera.
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: There is a world history contained in our chompers.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: I know, it's is so interesting that we have and
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: obviously we'll talk about this, but we have.
• 4:50
  Speaker 5: Such a history as humans of messing with our teeth
• 4:53
  Speaker 5: for various reasons, and like animals, you know, like apes,
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: our ape ancestors were like let me file this down,
• 5:00
  Speaker 5: or let me pull a molar or whatever.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like, this is such a person thing.
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: Well because if I mean, we could do a whole
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: series of podcasts on body modification. But if you think
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: about it, humans really love messing around with their bodies,
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: whether it's tattooing our skin or piercing holes in ears
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: in other places, or in this case, messing around with
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: the appearance of our teeth, whether it is for health
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: or purely esthetic purposes.
• 5:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so let's go back, as we often do, to
• 5:35
  Speaker 5: the ancient Egyptians, who developed a lot of dental treatments,
• 5:39
  Speaker 5: including fillings and false teeth. So already we're like, hey,
• 5:44
  Speaker 5: you're missing a tooth, Better get that fixed.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Egyptians.
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: And a little bit later on, the very first historical
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: record of a purely esthetic tooth modification came in the
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: seventh century BC with the Etruscans, who would sometimes wear
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: these gold bands around their teeth, and it was usually
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: exclusively worn by women. And some people think that they
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: were like a form of primitive braces that actually might
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: have been used to hold false teeth in place.
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but the false teeth weren't very convincing, right because
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: they were made out of things like other animals teeth.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: No, the Etruscan false tooth technology, not tip top.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Jenny over there is wearing that hippopotamus tooth's just protruding,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: doesn't she know? We can all.
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: Tell I didn't know Jenny was an Etruscan name. It
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: just came out of me. But anyway, So, these.
• 6:41
  Speaker 5: Primitive types of braces have also been found on mummies
• 6:45
  Speaker 5: that predate the Etruscans, made out of this thing called catgut,
• 6:49
  Speaker 5: which apparently is not cat gut.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not the gut of a cat.
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: No, a cat the cat and catgut is short for cattle.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: But a lot of times catgut would have been the intestines,
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: the dried intestines of sheep or goats.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: So why they didn't call it goat gut, Caroline, I
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know.
• 7:08
  Speaker 5: I'm sure it was something different in their language, though, probably,
• 7:11
  Speaker 5: So why are archaeologist.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Calling it that? I you know, I don't know. We
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: have so many follow up questions already.
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: But long story short, what we're trying to get at
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: is the fact that we have been wearing braces types
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: of gear in our mouths for a very very very
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: long time. In the case of the etruscans, it was
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: more ornamental, but there were also practical reasons for it
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: as well, to hold those teeth in place. Because we
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: also didn't have things like you know, your soniccare toothbrush
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: and mouthwash and fluoride rints, et cetera.
• 7:44
  Speaker 5: That's right, and fancy Elizabethan ladies, they would modify their teeth.
• 7:49
  Speaker 5: They actually put wax balls called puffers in place of
• 7:53
  Speaker 5: missing teeth. So that their cheeks wouldn't appear sunken in.
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: So this is another esthetic esthetic alteration which.
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: Does remind me of when I was a kid, when
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: I would be losing my baby teeth if I was
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: chewing gum.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: This might be a very gross detail to add. I
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: think we all ed did this time? Did you make
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: your own puffers? Yeah, kind of poke it up into
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: the space left by the tooth. Well. I also stuck
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: chicklets on my actual teeth.
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, of course, I mean you put chicklets on
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: your teeth, bugles on your.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Finger, right, endless entertainment, that's right.
• 8:27
  Speaker 5: But yeah, So there's a million different ways. I mean,
• 8:29
  Speaker 5: talk about body modification.
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: There's a million different ways that humans throughout history and
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: still today modify their smiles. And the whole point of
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: this is that a perfect in quote smile is culturally
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: relative in a lot of ways. It depends on where
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: you are, because if we go across history and also
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: around the world, there have been four main types of
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: dental modification, which includes ablation, which is intentionally removing certain teeth, filing,
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: drilling with inlays like putting kesha I believe she with
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: the money symbol in her name had a little diamond
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: put into one of her teeth.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: That's an inlay. And also staining, which we would think
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: of today when we whiten our teeth.
• 9:19
  Speaker 5: That's right, because it was the opposite way with those
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: silly Egyptians. They would stain their teeth red because they
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: thought that the natural color of teeth was like gross
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: or something.
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, which is so so so interesting.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: It's all relative, It is all relative.
• 9:34
  Speaker 5: For instance, in Japan, ancient Japan, they would blacken their
• 9:39
  Speaker 5: teeth for a couple of reasons.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: It showed a woman had come of age, it.
• 9:43
  Speaker 5: Did show wealth, but also women in Japan would blacken
• 9:48
  Speaker 5: their teeth to hide their mouth expressions. It wasn't until
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: a Japanese impress actually set an example for white teeth
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: for women that the natural teeth.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Took off well. And that was too, if I.
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: Remember it correctly, a process of Japan intentionally wanting to
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: become more westernized in appearance to the outside world, and
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: so it was outlawed. Yeah, that women even blacken their teeth,
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: although it is still practiced among some women, like in
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: more remote areas here and there of Southeast Asia.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: But speaking of puffers and those Elizabethan ladies.
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: Apparently in Elizabethan England as well, there was a brief
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: fad of blackening teeth. So you've put your puffers in,
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: you blacken your teeth, and you go to court.
• 10:37
  Speaker 5: That would be horrifying. Can you imagine, like all of
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: a sudden, we live in a world where you.
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: Can like teleport back in time and you show up
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: at the court and you have white teeth and everyone's
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: like embarrassed poser.
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: I know, and they're like, what is she wearing? What
• 10:50
  Speaker 5: are these pants? These pants you speak of? And then
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: something that to me personally is more horrifying than just
• 10:58
  Speaker 5: like blackening your teeth is the pain that would accompany
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: getting a tattoo on your gums. This has been a practice,
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: or had been a practice in Senegal to signal a
• 11:10
  Speaker 5: woman's coming of age. What is all this tooth modification
• 11:13
  Speaker 5: to signal like sexual availability?
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Kinda yeah, sexual availability status.
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: There Similarly, in Morocco, way back when they would also
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: practice gum darkening.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: In order to make their teeth appear even whiter.
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: Now, this is something that is still a marker of
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: female beauty and is a very coveted trait that is
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: not actually a dental modification, but something that you would
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: rather hope to be born with.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: And that is the gap.
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: Tooth and essentially the having a wide space between your
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: two front teeth, and that is still a coveted trait
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: among women in Nigeria, Ghana and Namibia in particular, and
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: there are certain family groups who are known.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: To have this tooth gap.
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: And it seemed as the most beautiful smile a woman
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: could possibly have.
• 12:06
  Speaker 5: Right Because Orange is the new Black actress, Uzzo a
• 12:09
  Speaker 5: Dubo otherwise known as Crazy Eyes in the show, she
• 12:12
  Speaker 5: has a tooth gap. And Kristen has a great blog
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: post e It's Stuffmomnever Told You dot Com that quotes
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: her from an interview talking about how she was begging
• 12:22
  Speaker 5: and begging and begging to get the gap closed up
• 12:24
  Speaker 5: as a kid, and her mom said, look, missy, that's
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: a history in your mouth. That is family history in
• 12:30
  Speaker 5: your mouth. That's how people know our family. And it's
• 12:32
  Speaker 5: beautiful and so it is. It is a celebration in
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: many cultures. It just happens to be in the West.
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: Typically we get that closed.
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: Up, although you do see some high fashion models here
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: and there who will have the gap tooth and when
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: I was researching for that blog post, I did run.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Across one trend piece.
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: In The Guardian from a couple of years back talking
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: about how, oh, the gap tooth is the hot new thing,
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: which I'm sure would make Nigerians laugh, because what hot
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: new thing?
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: What are you talking about? It's always been gorgeous, but.
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: You just because you have people like Georgia May Jagger
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: who has a big gap tooth, but you have Madonna too,
• 13:12
  Speaker 5: who's had one forever.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: But whatever.
• 13:14
  Speaker 5: There's also snaggle teeth which are really popular, and they've
• 13:18
  Speaker 5: been really popular in Japan. It's this whole concept of
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: wabi sabi, which is the idea of finding beauty and imperfections.
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and so some people might have seen this, these
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: kinds of Japanese trend pieces popping up in the past
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: couple of years about younger girls in particular going and
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: having their teeth like artificially kind of snaggletoothed in a way,
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: having them put into where they.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Overlap on each other.
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: And it was in order to achieve this look that's
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: associated with being being.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: A younger girl.
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: It looks very innocent and young, something that would be
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: now something far more painful is teeth chiseling, which is
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: still practiced by some remote tribes that particularly in Indonesia,
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: and sometimes it's for a coming of age. Sometimes it's
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: something done primarily to women to show that they have
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: matured in our of age. And it is exactly what
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: it sounds like, Ei, their chiseled into sharp points.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know. But then there are.
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: Ancient cultures also who considered sharp teeth to be equated
• 14:33
  Speaker 5: to like monsters and scary deities, and so that they
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: would file their teeth.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Down to be the opposite of sharp.
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what they would do in Bali in order
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: to ward off negative emotions like anger and jealousy.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: File those teeth down.
• 14:50
  Speaker 5: So in terms of ablation though, like we said intentionally
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: removing teeth, the Randa people of Australia would actually remove
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: a tooth from a boy's mouth as a rite of passage,
• 15:01
  Speaker 5: and then the boy's mom would stick the tooth in
• 15:04
  Speaker 5: a gum tree and once the boy died, the tree
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: would be stripped of its bark.
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, once he grew up and then died, and then
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: I guess that would be part of the funeral rites.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Interesting, his tooth tree would be stripped.
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: So all sorts of fascinating dental modifications going on in
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: all sorts of cultures around the world.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to what we.
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: Think of as the perfect smile by Western standards today,
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: which is very white.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: And very straight. And the history of.
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: How we whitened and straightened our teeth is.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Also pretty fascinating.
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: So when it comes to how we began brushing our
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: teeth every day twice a day and flossing from medieval
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: times through the Renaissance, tooth cleaning, as you would probably guess,
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: was very why you would essentially wipe them down with
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: a cloth, You might swish around with vinegar or wine which.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe I hope it was white.
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: Wine, and then you might chew on things like mint,
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: rosemary or other fragrant herbs in order to freshen your breath.
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: Because they did not have proper toothbrushes and toothpaste.
• 16:22
  Speaker 5: Some of them had a semi proper toothbrush because in
• 16:25
  Speaker 5: the seventeenth century some people were using a bristle brush
• 16:29
  Speaker 5: for their teeth that came to Europe from China.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then fast.
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: Forward to eighteen fifty seven when the first toothbrush is patented,
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: and then in the eighteen eighties the first electronic toothbrush, Surprise, Surprise,
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: is sold.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: And then soon after in the eighteen nineties, we get
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: dental floss.
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: Something that I neglected to google and I totally wanted
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: to and should have is that first electronic toothbrush. I
• 16:56
  Speaker 5: want to see what it looks like, because I imagine
• 16:58
  Speaker 5: it to be like this huge contral aption with a
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: giant plug or whatever. I don't know, something like a
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: torture device. But I need to do that mental note,
• 17:07
  Speaker 5: I'll do that.
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: Like, I feel like it was probably really dangerous to use,
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: just because it would have been presumably close to water
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: and thinking about electricity at that time. Yeah, needed a
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: lot of safety instructions. But so when we move into
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: the twentieth century, we get a huge uptick in the
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: pace of our dental technology, and bright white teeth gradually
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: become the standard. We have obviously moved away from red
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: Egyptian teeth and black Japanese teeth, but it still wasn't
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: until after World War Two the teeth brushing in the
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: US really became a thing. Yeah, because soldiers were instructed
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: to brush your teeth to avoid getting something called trench
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: mouth as a whole. But we should note that William
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: Colgate and company that name probably rings a brand name
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: bell to a lot of listeners, began selling toothpaste in
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: the US in the late eighteen hundred, so it was around.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: It probably just wasn't in every.
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: Single home because, as we'll talk about more later in
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: the podcast, higher end dental care and having things that
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: we would think of today as being so basic as
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: a toothbrush and toothpaste have largely been related to class
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: in your financial situation.
• 18:21
  Speaker 5: Right, and so I mean, speaking of money. By nineteen
• 18:25
  Speaker 5: ninety seven, Americans, we're spending three hundred and eighty three
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: million dollars per year on over the counter whitening products.
• 18:31
  Speaker 5: I had to stop using whitening stuff because it was
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: like my gums are not It was not good for me.
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: So now I have to use sensidine stuff type toothpaste
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: because my teeth were getting too sensitive from whitening.
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: Cautionary tale from Carolina. I know the cycle of the
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: cycle of whitening.
• 18:51
  Speaker 5: But fast forward to twenty ten and the New York
• 18:53
  Speaker 5: Times was reporting on cosmetic dental ceramis having.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: To make sure that their veneers didn't look.
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: Too perfect, because we've been pursuing these white, white, white,
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: perfect perfect teeth for so many years, and suddenly people
• 19:06
  Speaker 5: are like, your teeth just look fake.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: I want real looking teeth.
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: And so, now, if you're shelling out anywhere from seven
• 19:13
  Speaker 5: hundred to twenty five hundred dollars.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: For veneers, if you have the means, a lot of.
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: People are asking for slightly like tinted veneers that look
• 19:22
  Speaker 5: more realistic.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And the funny thing.
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: About it is, first of all, just the fact that
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: this trend piece exists, and they were able to interview
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: these dentists who were scoffing it how white some people's
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: veneers are, because these wealthy clients usually would walk into
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: the dentist's office and want a look that they saw
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: in a Hollywood tabloid. But the dentists were like, what
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: you don't realize is that when those paparazzi photos are
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: being taken, or red carpet photos are being taken, the
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: flash from the cameras is reflecting off of the teeth,
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: making them appear even whiter than they normally are.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: So if you get teeth that.
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: Are as white as you see in US Weekly and
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: People magazine, then they will be almost blindingly white, which
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: does harken my brain back to that episode and Friends when.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Ross gets I think, is teeth white? And they're way
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: too white? And I now feel old for a friend's joke.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: It's distracting.
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: Like talking to someone whose teeth are obviously like super
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: super white.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: I can't help it stare at their mouth.
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: It's incredible that we're to this point to where your
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: teeth can be too white and too perfect.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we have jumped the shark.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: But in addition to the pursuit of white, there's also
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: been the pursuit of the straight teeth, and so we
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: have a brief history of braces, which fun fact, barbers
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: were the first dentist, didn't you know when you go
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: to the barber, that's where you'd also go to get
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: a bad tooth pulled way back.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: In the day.
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: So it is a good thing that oral technology has
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: come the long way that it has. But orthodontia actually
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: took off in the eighteenth century, which isn't so surprising
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: that it's been around that long when you think about
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: the fact that those Etruscan women were wearing those gold
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: bands and the mummies had primitive braces.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: On as well. Catgut, Yeah, ol catgut.
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: Well, it's actually some French folks who took us far
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: far from catgut to more.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Modern braces, so kind of.
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: In seventeen twenty eight, French dentist Pierre Fouchard published a
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: book called The Surgeon Dentist, which described what sounds terribly painful.
• 21:38
  Speaker 5: It's some kind of device called a ban do. And
• 21:43
  Speaker 5: the brace technology really didn't change all that much up
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: until the nineteen fifties.
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and this brief history, by the way, is coming
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: from the fabulous folks at Mental Floss.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: And after the fifties.
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: You have an accelerated pace of orthodontia technology. By the
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: mid seventies, orthodont has had figured out how to put
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: those brackets on the front of our teeth, and then
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: by the eighties they figured out, hah, this is how
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: we put.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Them on the back of our teeth.
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: And so by the nineteen nineties, around a third of
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: us kids are getting braces.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: And now I feel like it's almost a standard, almost
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: box you check.
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: Once you have a kid, you start taking them to
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: the dentist, it's like, well, will he or she get braces?
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: Or not.
• 22:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I never had braces. I had them on my
• 22:31
  Speaker 5: bottom teeth. They wanted to wait to put them on
• 22:35
  Speaker 5: my top teeth because they wanted to break my jaw
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: and bring it forward because I have an overbite. But
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: I was like, I'm not going to let you do that.
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: You don't know this yet, but I'm not going to
• 22:44
  Speaker 5: let you do that. So I never end up getting
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: braces on my top teeth. And they look great, okank
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: and beautiful teeth. I feel like they're better from this side.
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: I'm turning my left side to Kristen because this side
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: I have a crooked tooth, and.
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: Today is the day I learned that Caroline has a
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: preferred tooth side.
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: I do so when the paparazzi finally find me down
• 23:02
  Speaker 5: here in Atlanta, you'll know as side to turn.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Take the picture from the left.
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: Well, the whole reason why we were even inspired to
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: do this episode on teeth is that when it comes
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: to braces in particular, it's far likelier that little Janie's
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: going to get braces compared.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: To Little Johnny, or that she is going to want braces.
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: She's going to look in the mirror and see her
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: teeth and think those are not up to snuff. Now,
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: going back to earlier in the podcast, when we were
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: taking a trip around the world with different forms of
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: dental modification, there were some that were exclusively targeted to
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: women in those cultures, such as the tooth blackening in
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: Japan and tooth chiseling among certain groups. But also now
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: today braces tend to happen more often among girls. It's
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: really interesting looking at girls, and also there parents wanting.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Girls to get braces.
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: But there was a twenty twelve study that looked at
• 24:06
  Speaker 5: the factors that go into children, young people, teens wanting
• 24:12
  Speaker 5: dental therapy of of several different kinds, and they found
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: that the two main predictors were psychological elements and female gender.
• 24:21
  Speaker 5: So just simply being a girl is a huge predictor
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: of seeking things like braces or other orthodontia or teeth whitening.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And that study was.
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: Linked to in an article by sociologist Philip Cohen who
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: noticed a stark gender gap in braces and he wrote
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: about it for Sociological Images, which was then crossbosted to
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: a Pacific Standard magazine, and he found looking at a
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: bunch of studies, the girls are twice as likely than
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: boys to say that they don't like their teeth and
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: want braces. He even said, just google image braces and
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: about seventy five percent of the photos that come up
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: are all, you know, stock.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Images of girls with braces on.
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: And there was even I don't know why it.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Gave me the hev gbs, but if you go on.
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: Pinterest and because I'm kind of got into a bit
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: of an Internet rabbit hole looking at images of braces,
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: you know, kids embraces to see whether you know, what
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: Cohen said.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Holds up, and it so does.
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: If you go over to Pinterest, there are so many
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: pinboards just of girls and braces.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Why. I don't know.
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: I think it's some of its fashion, you know, for girls,
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: you know, to be proud.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Of their braces, like beautiful with braces. Okay, but it's
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: definitely it's definitely a thing. Go on Pinterest and you know,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: you don't have to take my word.
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: For it, but this was something too that he found
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: not just in the US, but also abroad.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, same in England and Germany.
• 25:57
  Speaker 5: That girls are more likely to get braces, same with
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: adult women. Another Google search was if you google mother
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: daughter braces. He was talking about you get pictures of
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: mothers and daughters getting braces together, but if you google
• 26:13
  Speaker 5: father son braces, it brings you to practices or at
• 26:17
  Speaker 5: thedonist offices run by fathers and sons. Yeah, because adult
• 26:22
  Speaker 5: braces have become more common in recent years, and even
• 26:26
  Speaker 5: among that clientele demographic, it tends to skew female.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: And I went to the dentist a.
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: Couple of years ago and was so surprised because I
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: grew up had a great dentist and was never recommended
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: for braces. And I don't have a completely perfectly straight mouth.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Of teeth, but that is fine. They're like whatever.
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: And one of the first things she said was have
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: you ever considered braces?
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: What? Yeah, she was like, if you just wear these
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Invica line, no one will leave.
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: Be able to Oh no, no, that is just such
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: a sales pitch.
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: They're just trying to make money because dental costs are
• 27:07
  Speaker 5: spiraling and they're not getting all their money back from medicaid,
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: and so they just want to make their money through
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: in visil line.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: Well, jokes on you, Caroline, because she was right. You
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: can't see my visil lin because they're in right now.
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: No, I don't.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: I don't have them.
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it did feel it was a peculiar sales pitch
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: to get. And I wonder if a guy who walked
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: in with my teeth and my bite, which yes it
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: is a perfect bite, oh good, if she would have
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: recommended that to him.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: Higher expectations for women so well, And that's what Cohen
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: thinks the sociologists we talked about. He thinks that it
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: has a lot to do with these higher standards and
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: higher expectations for female beauty because more girls getting bracest
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: has absolutely nothing to do with more girls needing braces.
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: They're also studies that he looked at comparing whether where
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: kids were getting braces purely for esthetic reasons or because
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: they did have some kind of dental alignment issue that
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: needed to be corrected, and overwhelmingly girls were likely to
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: get them for purely esthetic reasons.
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: Right, But he was also talking about how in reality,
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: boys and girls have equal need for braces. Yeah, among
• 28:20
  Speaker 5: children who need them to correct a problem or whatever,
• 28:23
  Speaker 5: straightened teeth, whatever, the need is equal, but girl's perception of.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Their need is way greater.
• 28:31
  Speaker 5: He found that among girls who get braces, their actual
• 28:33
  Speaker 5: need is low, and like we said with adult braces,
• 28:37
  Speaker 5: that's a trend that continues into adulthood and that includes
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: cosmetic surgery. Women are much more likely to get various
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: types of cosmetic surgery into adulthood too, and that goes
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: back to expectations of how girls look. Yeah, there was
• 28:49
  Speaker 5: a survey from the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry which
• 28:53
  Speaker 5: found that eighty four percent of women reported that they
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: would pay money to improve the appearance of their teeth,
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: compared to seventy five percent of men, And that was
• 29:04
  Speaker 5: linked to from a blog post over at the Beheld
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: written by Autumn Whitefield Madrano past stuff I've Never told
• 29:10
  Speaker 5: you guessed who was wondering in this post whether the
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: gender gap is due to, yes, those higher beauty standards
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: for women, and the way she put it so well
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: that average teeth on men are considered more acceptable than
• 29:24
  Speaker 5: average teeth on women. And the thing that got her
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: thinking about it at least in this post was Will
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: Ferrell's teeth.
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: She was watching Anchorman and if you've watched Anchorman or
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: seen you know, anything with Will Ferrell, and you'll see
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: that he does not he yes, pretty, his lower teeth
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: in particular, are not all in the straight line, let's
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: put it that way.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: But you would never.
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: See I can't think of a single woman I've seen
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: on television who has that noticeably crooked teeth.
• 29:55
  Speaker 5: And I think, and this is just a hypothesis, but
• 29:58
  Speaker 5: I think that if you did, it would because some
• 30:01
  Speaker 5: message is being played up that this woman was a
• 30:04
  Speaker 5: quote unquote hillbilly, or she was poor or something that
• 30:07
  Speaker 5: if a woman's teeth looked like that on television or
• 30:09
  Speaker 5: in the movies, it's to deliver a certain message about her, whereas.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: That's just that's just Will Ferrell's teeth. Well, and that's the.
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: Thing, because the more we read about teeth, the more
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: it became apparent that even more than gender, these days,
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: class and social status are so closely associated with the
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: status of your teeth because you know, going way back
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: in time to you know, those Elizabethan women of means,
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: they would have those puffers to make sure that their
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: cheeks puffed out in the correct kind of way, and
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: they would have access to whatever sort of early dental
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: care was available.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Not so for the lower classes.
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: And that's something though, of poorer people not having access
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: to dental healthcare that remains today right.
• 31:01
  Speaker 5: And there was a two thousand and eight study in
• 31:03
  Speaker 5: the journal Nature that talked about the negative judgments that
• 31:06
  Speaker 5: we lob against people who have teeth that are darker
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: or more decayed. The darker or more decayed they are,
• 31:13
  Speaker 5: the more negative our judgments are in terms of things
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: like social competence, intellectual ability, psychological adjustment, and relationship satisfaction.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: It's sort of a.
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: Visible sign of inadequate access to healthcare and to taking
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: care of oneself well.
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: And I think there are more assumptions about the taking
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: care of oneself part that really stands out because gender
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: in this case did not.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Have a significant effect.
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: If you have decaying teeth, missing teeth, it has an
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: equally negative impact on how people perceive you. And I
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: mean especially for missing teeth, if you lose a tooth.
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: I've had a situation where I've shipped a tooth before
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: and you know, around for a week with a little
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: snaggle tooth, and I knew it was going to be fixed, but.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: It drew so much attention really just because of one Yeah,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: because you don't expect to see that true.
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: You know, we have this idea that you should have white,
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: straight perfect teeth, because that signals that you take care
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: of yourself, that you have the you know, the money
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: to pay for dental visits, that you might have had
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: braces when you were a kid, that you don't have
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: some kind of drug habit, that you don't smoke, et cetera.
• 32:28
  Speaker 5: Right, But we don't automatically think, oh, that girl has
• 32:31
  Speaker 5: good health insurance and doesn't smoke or do meth. We
• 32:34
  Speaker 5: it's just sort of tied up in our assumptions about, oh,
• 32:37
  Speaker 5: like you said, taking care of yourself exactly.
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: And the perfect character on Internet TV, because I don't
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: know if you can call Netflix TV TV who embodies
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: this is Pensentucky on Orange is the New Black who
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: has those stereotypical rotted out meth teeth, and it's so
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: much a part of her character, as well as that
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: entire group on Orange is the New Black that she's
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: a part of that we all assume, you know, have
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: had meth problems in the past, and so they have
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: these rotted out teeth.
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: But when she returns with corrected teeth, all of a sudden,
• 33:13
  Speaker 5: she's too big for her breeches and everybody thinks that
• 33:16
  Speaker 5: she thinks she's too good for them.
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but with the with the rotted out teeth, it's
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: this signaling that she has little education, she's not very smart,
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: she had a drug habit.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: It's like or even during in Halloween times when you know.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: They're all those false teeth at the costume.
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: Store, there's always a hillbilly teeth and they're you know,
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: poking out, they're missing, they're yellow, they're rotting right.
• 33:40
  Speaker 5: And speaking to the Telegraph, Malcolm Gladwell actually cited teeth
• 33:45
  Speaker 5: as the emerging social status signal between rich and portant.
• 33:50
  Speaker 5: He equated them and the issue of basically dental hygiene
• 33:54
  Speaker 5: and how your teeth appear with obesity problems in terms
• 33:57
  Speaker 5: of what they signal.
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he said, there's symptoms of the same set of
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: inferences that are being drawn. So from his logic, the
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: same way that obesity often is associated with having poor
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: lifestyle habits, we place the same set of negative social
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: assumptions and stigmas onto people who have less than perfect
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: looking teeth.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: And this is.
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: Happening while the sort of Hollywood projected standards for what
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: your teeth should look like only you know, continue to increase.
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: Everyone has white, perfect teeth when you flip through a
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: magazine these days. But it's astonishing when you look at
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: the US just the lack of oral healthcare, because even
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: with Obamacare and universal healthcare, there's still a massive gap
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: when it comes to dental coverage. There are around one
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: hundred and thirty million Americans, or around forty three percent
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: of the population with zero dental coverage.
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and forty five million Americans actually live nowhere near
• 35:05
  Speaker 5: a dentist, And it seems like in terms of health
• 35:07
  Speaker 5: care and dental care, dental is often almost like an
• 35:11
  Speaker 5: afterthought because a lot of people who do have health
• 35:13
  Speaker 5: insurance still don't have dental In two thousand and eight,
• 35:16
  Speaker 5: for instance, a quarter of Americans under sixty five had
• 35:19
  Speaker 5: no dental coverage. And having dental coverage tends to be
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: correlated with income and education, so people who have a
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: college education, that's a big predictor of whether you will
• 35:31
  Speaker 5: actually have dental coverage, but that definitely doesn't mean that
• 35:35
  Speaker 5: everyone's going to have it, And.
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: Even with things like Medicaid and Medicare, the dental provisions
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: are minimal at best. There is a statistic, I think
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: coming from the Pure Research Center, which found that in
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: twenty eleven over half of all kids covered by Medicaid
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: received no dental care, which might have had to do
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: with where they were living, because there are these massive
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: geographical areas is all around the US that have no
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: dental practices, because setting up a thriving dental practice can
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: actually be challenging if you're not in a large metropolitan area.
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: But even for poor people over twenty one who can
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: get access to Medicaid, the only dental care they can
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: get applies to emergency dental treatments, and even then it's
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: paid for only on a state by state basis.
• 36:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so I mean in terms of price, The Robert
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: Wood Johnson Foundation found that average out of pocket dental
• 36:33
  Speaker 5: costs are eight hundred and seventy three dollars. So basically,
• 36:36
  Speaker 5: dental care for a lot of people a lot of
• 36:39
  Speaker 5: people is becoming a luxury. And you have the costs
• 36:43
  Speaker 5: of dental care outpacing both the rate of inflation and
• 36:46
  Speaker 5: overall medical cost increases across the board.
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: Well, and think about it too, as you get older,
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: you probably need to take even better care of your teeth.
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: But when it comes to Medicare for the elderly, they
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: only get coverage for again, emergency dental procedures.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: It doesn't even cover dentures.
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: So it's a little wonder then that in two thousand
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: and nine, eight hundred thirty thousand and fifty Americans went
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: to the er for preventable dental problems because I.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Mean, what else are they going to do? They can't
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: there's nowhere else to go. Yeah, I yeah.
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: And it's especially bad when you realize, and a lot
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: of people might not realize that poor dental health is
• 37:32
  Speaker 5: linked to a lot of other health problems. My father,
• 37:35
  Speaker 5: who has heart issues, totally preaches that people.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Need to floss. It's a huge thing for him.
• 37:41
  Speaker 5: Because dental bacteria is linked to things like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, pneumonia.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Preterm birth. I mean, you wouldn't think it.
• 37:48
  Speaker 5: You're like, oh, I ate some cheesy poofs and I'm
• 37:50
  Speaker 5: just gonna fall asleep and not worry about it.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: No brush those cheep brush those cheesy poofs out.
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: But if you are living in a paycheck to paycheck
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: situation or even less than clearly, you know what was
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: that eight hundred and seventy three dollars average out of
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: cost dental care if you don't have insurance that's going
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: to be the last thing that you're going to pay for,
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: most likely, unless it is to the point to where
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: you are in such extreme pain that you probably.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Will have to go to the emergency room.
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: So it's something that we don't think about very often
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: at all when we just see these celebrities walking down
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: the red carpet with these perfectly imperfect veneers that they've
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: gotten for thousands of dollars, that this is actually a
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: huge issue and there's so much social class tied up
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: with that. So this modern day quest for a quote
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: unquote perfect smile is about so much more than looking good.
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: I mean, this is about basic healthcare that people are
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: missing out on.
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: Okay, So now that we have thrown a bunch of
• 38:59
  Speaker 5: these staff, I'm interested in hearing from listeners who maybe
• 39:02
  Speaker 5: have felt discrimination based on their appearance there, especially their
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: teeth appearance. I have a friend who got a tooth
• 39:12
  Speaker 5: knocked out in a freak accident, and he didn't worry
• 39:16
  Speaker 5: about getting it replaced for a while because of money issues.
• 39:18
  Speaker 5: But then it came time to do job interviews and
• 39:21
  Speaker 5: it's like it's not going to happen that in the
• 39:23
  Speaker 5: back of his mouth either, it's one of his front teeth,
• 39:25
  Speaker 5: and he's like, I've got to go show out some
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: big bucks now to get to get a fake tooth
• 39:29
  Speaker 5: so that I can get a job.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: Absolutely So, if you've experienced these kinds of things, or
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: if you are perhaps a social worker who works with
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: lower income communities on to target these kinds of dental issues,
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: we particularly want to hear from you because there is
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: so much more to our teeth than whether or not
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: we just have perfect, straight white paparazzi ready chompers. Remember
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: shoot me from the yes. And by the way, if
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: you also are a paparazzo shoe Caroline from the left
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: with a camera, Yes, with a camera.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: So send us all of your thoughts on teeth.
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: Mom Stuff at howseuffworks dot com is our email address,
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: and you can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: or messages on Facebook.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: And we have a couple of messages to share with.
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: You right now about insomnia.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Well, I have a letter here from Cindy.
• 40:30
  Speaker 5: She says, I was so glad to hear your podcast
• 40:33
  Speaker 5: on Lady insomnia, more.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Specifically the idea that the.
• 40:37
  Speaker 5: Sleep wake sleep cycle may be a natural occurrence, and
• 40:40
  Speaker 5: want our ancestors regularly experienced in the past, I quote
• 40:44
  Speaker 5: unquote struggled with insomnia, becoming frustrated and anxious when I
• 40:48
  Speaker 5: would go through periods of awakening for several hours in
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: the night, for many nights in a row. My anxiety
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: would put me into that anxiety loop you spoke of. Recently,
• 40:56
  Speaker 5: I heard about Ben Franklin's nighttime adventures. I heard that
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: Mark Wayne also experienced great creativity in the night.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: I realized that I, too, may be just one of
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: the great snicker.
• 41:07
  Speaker 5: I decided to accept night wakes as normal and see
• 41:10
  Speaker 5: what that attitude shift might do for me. It has
• 41:12
  Speaker 5: been great, although there have still been a few times
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: when my wakefulness seemed more exhausting and less enlightening. For
• 41:19
  Speaker 5: the most part, I now accept my night weights as
• 41:21
  Speaker 5: a time of peaceful reflection or let's be honest, facebook
• 41:25
  Speaker 5: alone time. I generally give myself one or two hours
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: in the night of wakefulness before I shut the iPad
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: and attempt to sleep again. Usually that's all it takes.
• 41:34
  Speaker 5: Sometimes I wake again and go through my wake cycle
• 41:36
  Speaker 5: once more, but usually not. I awake with less frustrated
• 41:39
  Speaker 5: anxiety and feel more arrested than when I got the
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: same amount or lack of sleep, but was angry about it.
• 41:45
  Speaker 5: I completely agree that some forms of insomnia are much
• 41:48
  Speaker 5: worse than mine and much more crazy making. However, much
• 41:51
  Speaker 5: like accepting the pain of childbirth as normal and therefore
• 41:54
  Speaker 5: fearing it less even though it still hurts my accepting
• 41:58
  Speaker 5: this sleep wake sleep cycle is does not change it,
• 42:01
  Speaker 5: but it changes my attitude toward it and therefore makes it.
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: Less grading usually on my soul. So thank you for
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: sharing your experience, Dundy.
• 42:09
  Speaker 5: I also thought about trying out that sleep wake sleep thing,
• 42:12
  Speaker 5: but I end up just lying in bed sad well.
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: I also have a letter here from CJ about insomnia,
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: and though the whole thing is too long to share, I.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: Did want to share some of it.
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: CJ writes, after a certain point, I kind of gave
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: up on trying to conform myself to what is considered
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: normal and quit inflicting the belief of others that it
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: was somehow a huge failing of mind that I couldn't
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: fall asleep by eleven PM or fall asleep within fifteen
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: minutes of going to bed. Society has very little sympathy
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: for you if you don't wake up early on a
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: permanent basis.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: Schools and most jobs.
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: Start in early morning hours, and our society is permeated
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: with the thought that the early bird gets the worm.
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: I learned long ago not to mention my sleep problems
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: because the most common response I get is along the
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: lines of you must really like to stay out late partying,
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: which couldn't be orther from the truth. Recently, I saw
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: new advice for taking melatonin, using a formula based on
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: when you wanted to get up. This new advice times
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: by melatonin taking closer to eight pm, rather than the
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: previous advice.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: For my doctors, which was to take it right before
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: I went to bed.
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: This method of taking the meltone in earlier, along with
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: the other things I do, like trying to wake up
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: at similar times every day, avoiding blue light in the evening,
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: avoiding eating late, getting exercise, and not doing other things
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: in my bedroom, et cetera, has allowed for my best
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: time so far in terms of sleep. Over the last
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: twenty years or so, I've usually been able to fall
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: asleep around one am, and I can also get to
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: my current job around nine am, so I've been able
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: to get around seven hours of sleep on a somewhat
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: regular basis, which is pretty darn good for me. With
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: taking the melatone in early for the first time in
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: my life, I actually feel a little more normal because
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: I usually feel sleepy before I go to bed, which
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: I never did before. Sleepy and physically tired are unfortunately
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: two different things, and I don't feel like the walking.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: Dead most of the time.
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: So I would encourage people to try and get treatment,
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: maybe because it can help, but also don't beat yourself
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: up if it doesn't work as well as you'd hope.
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: Maybe try working our life more around the insomnia rather
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: than the other way around. And for those of you
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: without insomnia'd be grateful and please have a little more
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: sympathy for us night owls. So thanks CJ, and thanks
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: to everybody who's written into us. Mom stuff at Housetuffworks
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: dot com is our email address and for links to
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: all of our social medias as well as all of
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: our blog posts, videos and podcasts.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: There's one place to go, and it's stuff Mom Never
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: Told You dot com.
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: For more on this and thousands of other topics, does
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: it houstuffworks dot com.