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

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I don't have to stuff.
0:07
Speaker 1: I've never told reproduction of I High Radio. So recently
0:19
Speaker 1: we released kind of a a bummer slash hopefully sort
0:23
Speaker 1: of comforting episode about pandemic health effects. I thought, I
0:30
Speaker 1: think it was a bit of a bummer. It was,
0:33
Speaker 1: and in it we gave you listeners a lot of
0:36
Speaker 1: opportunities to diagnose Samantha and I for current issues that
0:43
Speaker 1: we might be dealing with it. So in it we
0:48
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about teeth. And after we did
0:53
Speaker 1: that episode, I was like, huh, maybe I should look
0:57
Speaker 1: into this. And I took a glance and my mouth,
1:01
Speaker 1: and there's definitely an issue. It's definitely an issue. Teeth
1:07
Speaker 1: are protruding, um. And I don't know how long that's
1:10
Speaker 1: been going on, but I suspect it has something to
1:13
Speaker 1: do with teeth grinding. And I am a terrible person
1:17
Speaker 1: that I am still not going to the dentist for
1:19
Speaker 1: a minute at least until things die down a little bit. Um.
1:25
Speaker 1: But I know Samantha, we talked, you have had kind
1:29
Speaker 1: of a long history of having trouble with teeth. Correct. Yeah,
1:35
Speaker 1: so I have an enameled deficiency partially due to my
1:40
Speaker 1: male nutrition as a child, infant, and toddler. So I
1:45
Speaker 1: came into the U S when I was seven, did
1:47
Speaker 1: not have really good teeth or it just was not
1:50
Speaker 1: in great help. Uh. Definitely lived in an orphanage so
1:54
Speaker 1: don't had a lot of problems, to the point that
1:56
Speaker 1: I had to get to a specialist when I came
1:58
Speaker 1: into the US because my teeth were so ad. I
2:00
Speaker 1: was told that I would need so much work by
2:03
Speaker 1: the time I was eighteen nineteen years old, and now
2:06
Speaker 1: my dentist trips are nightmares. Yeah it's so expensive, No,
2:11
Speaker 1: it really is. Um. I have been very, very privileged
2:17
Speaker 1: and fortunate in a lot of ways when it comes
2:19
Speaker 1: to my teeth, and one way is even though I
2:21
Speaker 1: was jealous as a kid, I was the only person
2:24
Speaker 1: in my close friend group that didn't get braces, but
2:26
Speaker 1: I got kind of weirdly jealous about because they would
2:28
Speaker 1: talking about it, complained about it. I'd be left out.
2:30
Speaker 1: But now I'm glad if there was a thing like
2:33
Speaker 1: I definitely would pretend like I had braces by putting
2:35
Speaker 1: things on my teeth, even though like I didn't need
2:38
Speaker 1: braces because I didn't have enough teeth to need braces,
2:41
Speaker 1: and I still don't necessarily to this day. Not that
2:44
Speaker 1: I don't have enough teeth. I do, I'm just saying
2:46
Speaker 1: I did didn't need it, but yeah, I also did
2:49
Speaker 1: the same thing. I also was weirdly jealous of my
2:52
Speaker 1: brother because he rarely brushed his teeth, but he had
2:55
Speaker 1: perfect teeth. Yes, crazy, yes, yes, Well I'm not sure
3:02
Speaker 1: if I've ever told this story on this podcast before.
3:04
Speaker 1: And I was all condense it because it's quite a story.
3:06
Speaker 1: But a few years back, I dropped a weight on
3:09
Speaker 1: my face and broke my tooth. Um, And it was Easter,
3:13
Speaker 1: and no, I was up visiting family and I didn't
3:16
Speaker 1: live with family at the time. So my dentist, my
3:19
Speaker 1: best friend Katie has been on this show, one of
3:21
Speaker 1: my best friends and still my one of my best friends. Um,
3:25
Speaker 1: her dad is a dentist, and now she's like, why
3:27
Speaker 1: did you not just ask him? He would have done it.
3:29
Speaker 1: But anyway, I ended up having to tell everybody, all
3:32
Speaker 1: of like family and friends that were there at this
3:34
Speaker 1: Easter dinner. I had to go try to find a
3:36
Speaker 1: dentist that was open on Easter Sunday that would take
3:39
Speaker 1: somebody who was not their patient, which is surprisingly hard
3:42
Speaker 1: to do. Well, No, maybe not surprisingly at all, but
3:45
Speaker 1: it was very difficult to do. And I ended up
3:48
Speaker 1: at this place. It was thirty minutes away, and everyone
3:50
Speaker 1: there spoke Russian and I couldn't understand what they were saying,
3:54
Speaker 1: and they injected me with something and then showed me
3:57
Speaker 1: a tooth, and then to this day, I'm not entirely
3:59
Speaker 1: sure what happened. And then they said they're like very
4:04
Speaker 1: broken English, no carrots, no apples, no ice, and they
4:06
Speaker 1: sent me on my waye Um. But I'm so fortunate
4:11
Speaker 1: because that ended up only costing me forty bucks. Had
4:13
Speaker 1: really good insurance at the time. Um. And that, I mean,
4:17
Speaker 1: that was just a moment where I thought, I am
4:20
Speaker 1: so lucky that I could find this and do it.
4:24
Speaker 1: And I got it done that day, and it's still lasted,
4:26
Speaker 1: like it's still there today, but it's cracking. I can
4:31
Speaker 1: see a crack in the fake tooth, so I'm a
4:34
Speaker 1: little considered. I'm going to get a fancy of it.
4:36
Speaker 1: The tooth is going to fall out. But that kind
4:39
Speaker 1: of reminds me what we were talking about with hair
4:40
Speaker 1: and all the stigma around teeth and having perfect teeth
4:44
Speaker 1: and having white teeth and how that is such a
4:47
Speaker 1: privileged thing. That is, so that's not in reach for
4:51
Speaker 1: everybody for a variety of reasons, whether it's access or
4:53
Speaker 1: just genetics. Yeah, so in light of that, we wanted
4:59
Speaker 1: to bring back this classic episode on perfect Teeth. So
5:03
Speaker 1: please enjoy. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you from
5:09
Speaker 1: house Supports dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
5:17
Speaker 1: I'm Kristin and I'm Caroline. And today on the podcast,
5:20
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about teeth. So many implications with teeth,
5:23
Speaker 1: teeth and beauty. Yeah, first things first, we i e.
5:30
Speaker 1: Humans have been messing around with our teeth in the
5:34
Speaker 1: form of oral modification or dental modification. We're a long
5:39
Speaker 1: long time for all sorts of reasons, including health reasons,
5:44
Speaker 1: beauty reasons, religious reasons, writes, a passage, social status, etcetera.
5:49
Speaker 1: There is a world history contained in our chompers. I know,
5:55
Speaker 1: it's just so interesting that that we have. And obviously
5:58
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this, but we have such a street
6:00
Speaker 1: as humans of messing with our teeth for various reasons.
6:04
Speaker 1: And like animals, you know, like apes are ape ancestors
6:08
Speaker 1: weren't like, let me file this down or let me
6:10
Speaker 1: pull a mohler or whatever. You know, it's like, this
6:12
Speaker 1: is such a person thing. Well, because I mean, we
6:16
Speaker 1: could do a whole series of podcasts on body modification.
6:20
Speaker 1: But if you think about it, humans really love messing
6:24
Speaker 1: around with their bodies, whether it's tattooing our skin or
6:28
Speaker 1: piercing holes in ears and other places, or in this case,
6:33
Speaker 1: messing around with the appearance of our teeth, whether it
6:37
Speaker 1: is for health or purely aesthetic purposes. Yeah, so let's
6:42
Speaker 1: go back, as we often do, to the ancient Egyptians,
6:46
Speaker 1: who developed a lot of dental treatments, including fillings on
6:50
Speaker 1: false teeth. So already we're like, hey, you're missing a tooth.
6:54
Speaker 1: Better get that fixed, Egyptians. And a little bit later on,
6:58
Speaker 1: the very first historical record of a purely aesthetic tooth
7:02
Speaker 1: modification came in the seventh century BC with the Etruscans,
7:06
Speaker 1: who would sometimes wear these gold bands around their teeth,
7:11
Speaker 1: and it was usually exclusively worn by women, and some
7:15
Speaker 1: people think that they were like a form of primitive braces.
7:19
Speaker 1: It actually might have been used to hold false teeth
7:23
Speaker 1: in place. Yeah, but the false teeth weren't very convincing, right,
7:27
Speaker 1: because they were made out of things like other animals teeth. Yeah,
7:32
Speaker 1: now they the etruscan false tooth technology, not not tip top.
7:40
Speaker 1: Jenny over there is wearing that hippopotamus tooths protruding, doesn't
7:44
Speaker 1: she know? We can all tell I didn't know Jenny
7:46
Speaker 1: with an Etruscan name. It just came out of me.
7:49
Speaker 1: But anyway, So, these primitive types of braces have also
7:53
Speaker 1: been found on mummies that predate the Etruscans made out
7:57
Speaker 1: of this thing called cat gut, which apparently is not
8:00
Speaker 1: cat gut. Yeah, it's not the gut of a cat.
8:03
Speaker 1: Now a cat the cat and cat gut is short
8:06
Speaker 1: for cattle. But a lot of times cat gut would
8:09
Speaker 1: have been the intestines, the dried intestines of sheep or goats.
8:13
Speaker 1: So why they didn't call it goat gut? Caroline? And
8:15
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know. I'm sure it was
8:18
Speaker 1: something different in their language. Probably, So why are archaeologist
8:21
Speaker 1: calling it that? You know? I don't know. We have
8:23
Speaker 1: so many follow up questions already. Um, But long story short,
8:28
Speaker 1: we're trying to get at is the fact that we
8:30
Speaker 1: have been wearing braces types of gear in our mouths
8:35
Speaker 1: for a very very very long time. In the case
8:38
Speaker 1: of the etruscans, it was more ornamental, but there were
8:41
Speaker 1: also practical reasons for it as well, to hold those
8:45
Speaker 1: teeth in place, because we also didn't have things like
8:48
Speaker 1: you know, your sonic care toothbrush and mouthwash and fluoride rints,
8:52
Speaker 1: et cetera. That's right, and fancy Elizabethan ladies, they would
8:57
Speaker 1: modify their teeth. They actually put axe balls called puffers
9:02
Speaker 1: in place of missing teeth so that their cheeks wouldn't
9:04
Speaker 1: appear sunken in. So this is another aesthetic, aesthetic alteration
9:09
Speaker 1: which does remind me of when I was a kid,
9:12
Speaker 1: when I would be losing my baby teeth if I
9:15
Speaker 1: was chewing gum. This might be a very gross detail
9:17
Speaker 1: to add. I think we all did this. Did you
9:20
Speaker 1: make your own puffers kind of poke it up into
9:23
Speaker 1: the space left by the tooth? Well, I also stuck
9:25
Speaker 1: chicklets on my actual teeth. Oh yeah, of course I
9:28
Speaker 1: mean that eat to put chicklets on your teeth, bugles
9:31
Speaker 1: on your fingers, endless entertainment. Um. But yeah, So there's
9:37
Speaker 1: a million different ways I mean, talk about body modification.
9:40
Speaker 1: There's a million different ways that humans throughout history and
9:43
Speaker 1: still today modify their smiles. And the whole point of
9:48
Speaker 1: this is that a perfect unquote smile is culturally relative
9:55
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. It depends on where you are,
9:58
Speaker 1: because if we go across history and also around the world,
10:02
Speaker 1: there have been four main types of dental modification, which
10:06
Speaker 1: includes a blation, which is intentionally removing certain teeth, filing,
10:13
Speaker 1: drilling with inlays like putting Kesha. I believe she with
10:17
Speaker 1: the money symbol in her name, had a little diamond
10:21
Speaker 1: put into one of her teeth. That's an inlay, and
10:23
Speaker 1: also staining, which we would think of today when we
10:27
Speaker 1: white in our teeth. That's right, because it was the
10:30
Speaker 1: opposite way with those silly Egyptians. They would stay in
10:32
Speaker 1: their teeth red because they thought that the natural color
10:35
Speaker 1: of teeth was like gross or something. Yeah. Yeah, just
10:39
Speaker 1: so so so interesting. It's all relative, it is all relative.
10:43
Speaker 1: For instance, in Japan, ancient Japan, they would blacken their
10:48
Speaker 1: teeth for a couple of reasons. It showed a woman
10:51
Speaker 1: had come of age, it did show wealth, but also
10:55
Speaker 1: women in Japan would blacken their teeth to hide their mouth.
10:59
Speaker 1: Express Russians, it wasn't until a Japanese impress actually set
11:03
Speaker 1: an example for white teeth for women that natural teeth
11:07
Speaker 1: took off well, and that was too, if I remember
11:09
Speaker 1: it correctly, a process of Japan intentionally wanting to become
11:14
Speaker 1: more Westernized in appearance to the outside world, and so
11:19
Speaker 1: it was outlawed. Yeah, that women even black in their teeth,
11:22
Speaker 1: although it is still practiced among some women, like in
11:28
Speaker 1: more remote areas here and there of Southeast Asia. Um,
11:33
Speaker 1: but speaking of puffers and those Elizabethan ladies, apparently in
11:37
Speaker 1: Elizabethan England as well, there was a brief fad of
11:41
Speaker 1: blackening teeth. So you put your puffers in, you black
11:44
Speaker 1: in your teeth, and you go to court. That would
11:47
Speaker 1: be horrifying. Can you imagine, like all of a sudden,
11:50
Speaker 1: we live in a world where you can like teleport
11:51
Speaker 1: back in time and you show up at the court
11:54
Speaker 1: and you have white teeth, and everyone's like embarrassing poser.
11:58
Speaker 1: I know, they're like, what is she wearing? What these pants?
12:01
Speaker 1: These pants you speak of? And then something that to
12:04
Speaker 1: me personally is more horrifying than just like blackening your teeth, um,
12:10
Speaker 1: is the pain that would accompany getting a tattoo on
12:14
Speaker 1: your gums. This has been a practice, or had been
12:17
Speaker 1: a practice in Senegal to signal a woman's coming of age.
12:20
Speaker 1: What is all this? All this tooth modification to signal
12:23
Speaker 1: like sexual availability kinda yeah, sexual availability status. Um. They're
12:29
Speaker 1: similarly um in Morocco way back when they would also
12:34
Speaker 1: practice gum darkening in order to make their teeth appear
12:37
Speaker 1: even whiter. Now, this is something that is still a
12:41
Speaker 1: marker of female beauty and is a very coveted trait
12:45
Speaker 1: that is not actually a dental modification but something that
12:48
Speaker 1: you would rather hope to be born with. And that
12:51
Speaker 1: is the gap tooth and essentially the having a wide
12:55
Speaker 1: space between your two front teeth, and that is still
12:59
Speaker 1: a covet a trait among women in Nigeria, Ghana and
13:03
Speaker 1: Namibia in particular, and there are certain family groups who
13:08
Speaker 1: are known to have this tooth gap and it's seen
13:12
Speaker 1: as the most beautiful smile a woman could possibly have. Right.
13:16
Speaker 1: Because Orange is the New Black actress Uzo a Dubo
13:19
Speaker 1: otherwise known as Crazy Eyes in the show, she has
13:22
Speaker 1: a tooth gap. And Kristen has a great blog post
13:25
Speaker 1: every Stuff Mom Never Told You dot Com that quotes
13:28
Speaker 1: her from an interview talking about how she was begging
13:31
Speaker 1: and begging and begging to get the gap closed up
13:33
Speaker 1: as a kid, and her mom said, look, missy, that's
13:37
Speaker 1: a history in your mouth. That is family history in
13:39
Speaker 1: your mouth. That's how people know our family. And it's
13:41
Speaker 1: beautiful and so it is. It is a celebration in
13:46
Speaker 1: many cultures that just happens to be in the West,
13:49
Speaker 1: typically we get that closed up, although you do see
13:53
Speaker 1: some high fashion models here and there who will have
13:56
Speaker 1: the gap tooth. And when I was researching for that
13:58
Speaker 1: blog post, did run across one trend piece in The
14:03
Speaker 1: Guardian from a couple of years back talking about how, oh,
14:06
Speaker 1: the gap tooth is is the hot new thing, which
14:09
Speaker 1: I'm sure would would make Nigerian's laugh because what the
14:13
Speaker 1: hot new thing? What are you talking about? It's always
14:15
Speaker 1: been gorgeous, but you just because you have people like
14:17
Speaker 1: Georgia May Jagger who has a big gap tooth, but
14:20
Speaker 1: you have Madonna to who's had one forever. But whatever.
14:23
Speaker 1: There's also snaggle teeth, which are really popular, and they've
14:27
Speaker 1: been really popular in Japan. It's this whole concept of
14:31
Speaker 1: wabby sabby, which is the idea of finding beauty and imperfections. Yeah,
14:36
Speaker 1: and so uh, some people might have seen this, these
14:40
Speaker 1: kinds of Japanese trend pieces popping up in the past
14:42
Speaker 1: couple of years about younger girls in particular going and
14:47
Speaker 1: having their teeth like artificially kind of snaggle toothed in
14:53
Speaker 1: a way, having them put into where they overlap on
14:56
Speaker 1: each other. And it was in order to achieve this
14:59
Speaker 1: look um that's associated with being being a younger girl.
15:05
Speaker 1: It looks very innocent and young. Now something that would
15:09
Speaker 1: be now, something far more painful is teeth chiseling, which
15:14
Speaker 1: is still practiced by some remote tribes that particularly in Indonesia,
15:19
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's for a coming of age. Sometimes it's
15:22
Speaker 1: something done primarily to women to show that they have
15:27
Speaker 1: matured and our of age. And it is exactly what
15:30
Speaker 1: it sounds like, either teeth chiseled into sharp points. I
15:36
Speaker 1: don't know. But then there are ancient cultures also who
15:40
Speaker 1: considered sharp teeth to be equated to like monsters and
15:44
Speaker 1: scary deities, and so that they would file their teeth
15:47
Speaker 1: down to be the opposite of sharp. Yeah, that's what
15:49
Speaker 1: they would do in Bali in order to ward off
15:53
Speaker 1: negative emotions like anger and jealousy file those teeth down.
15:59
Speaker 1: So in terms of oblation though, like we said, intentionally
16:02
Speaker 1: removing teeth, the Randa people of Australia would actually remove
16:06
Speaker 1: a tooth from a boy's mouth as a rite of passage,
16:10
Speaker 1: and then the boy's mom would stick the tooth in
16:13
Speaker 1: a gum tree and once the boy died, the tree
16:18
Speaker 1: would be stripped of its bark. Yeah once see that,
16:20
Speaker 1: once he grew up and then died, and then I
16:21
Speaker 1: guess that would be part of the funeral rites. Interesting,
16:24
Speaker 1: his tooth tree would be stripped. So all sorts of
16:30
Speaker 1: fascinating dental modifications going on in all sorts of cultures
16:35
Speaker 1: around the world, which brings us to what we think
16:39
Speaker 1: of as the perfect smile by Western standards today, which
16:44
Speaker 1: is very white and very straight. And the history of
16:49
Speaker 1: how we whitened and straightened our teeth is also pretty fascinating.
16:55
Speaker 1: So when it comes to how we began brushing our
16:58
Speaker 1: teeth every day twice the day and floss ing, uh,
17:02
Speaker 1: from medieval times through the Renaissance, tooth cleaning, as you
17:07
Speaker 1: would probably guess, was very d i y. You would
17:10
Speaker 1: essentially wipe them down with a cloth you might swish
17:13
Speaker 1: around with vinegar or wine, which I don't I don't know.
17:18
Speaker 1: Maybe I hope it was white wine. And then you
17:21
Speaker 1: might chew on things like mint, rosemary rather fragrant herbs
17:25
Speaker 1: in order to freshen your breath because they did not
17:27
Speaker 1: have proper toothbrushes and toothpaste. Some of them had a
17:32
Speaker 1: semi proper toothbrush because in the seventeenth century, uh, some
17:36
Speaker 1: people were using a bristle brush for their teeth that
17:40
Speaker 1: came to Europe from China. Yeah, And then fast forward
17:45
Speaker 1: to eighteen fifty seven when the first toothbrush is patented,
17:49
Speaker 1: and then in the eighteen eighties the first electronic toothbrush, surprise, Surprise,
17:54
Speaker 1: is sold, and then soon after in the eighteen nineties,
17:57
Speaker 1: we get dental floss. Something that I neglected to google
18:01
Speaker 1: and I totally wanted to and should have is that
18:04
Speaker 1: first electronic toothbrush. I want to see what it looks
18:06
Speaker 1: like because I imagine it to be like this huge
18:08
Speaker 1: contraption with a giant plug or whatever. I don't know,
18:13
Speaker 1: something like a torture device. But I need to do
18:15
Speaker 1: that mental note. I'll do that, Like I feel like
18:17
Speaker 1: it was probably really dangerous to use, just because it
18:20
Speaker 1: would have been presumably close to water and think about
18:24
Speaker 1: electricity at that time. Yeah, needed needed a lot of
18:29
Speaker 1: safety instructions. Um. But so when we move into the
18:33
Speaker 1: twentieth century, we we get a huge uptick in the
18:37
Speaker 1: pace of our dental technology and bright white teeth gradually
18:43
Speaker 1: become the standard. We have obviously moved away from red
18:45
Speaker 1: Egyptian teeth and black Japanese teeth, but it still wasn't
18:50
Speaker 1: until after World War Two the teeth brushing in the
18:53
Speaker 1: US really became a thing, Yeah, because soldiers were instructed
18:58
Speaker 1: to brush your teeth to avoid get a something called
19:01
Speaker 1: trench mouth. But we should note that William Colgate and Company,
19:05
Speaker 1: that name probably rings a brand name bell to a
19:08
Speaker 1: lot of listeners, began selling toothpaste in the US in
19:11
Speaker 1: the late eight hundred, so it was around. It probably
19:14
Speaker 1: just wasn't in every single home because, as we'll talk
19:17
Speaker 1: about more later in the podcast, higher end dental care
19:20
Speaker 1: and having things that we would think of today is
19:22
Speaker 1: being so basic as a toothbrush and toothpaste have largely
19:26
Speaker 1: been related to class in your financial situation, right, and
19:32
Speaker 1: so I mean, speaking of money by Americans, we're spending
19:36
Speaker 1: three d and eight three million dollars per year on
19:38
Speaker 1: over the counter whitening products. I had to stop using
19:42
Speaker 1: whitening stuff because it was like, my gums are not
19:46
Speaker 1: It was not good for me. So now I have
19:48
Speaker 1: to use sensidine stuff type toothpaste because my teeth were
19:52
Speaker 1: getting too sensitive from whitening. Cautionary tale from Caroline. I
19:57
Speaker 1: know the cycle of the cycle of whitening. But fast
20:01
Speaker 1: forward and the New York Times was reporting on cosmetic
20:04
Speaker 1: dental seramus having to make sure that their veneers didn't
20:08
Speaker 1: look too perfect because we've been pursuing these white, white, white,
20:12
Speaker 1: perfect perfect teeth for so many years, and suddenly people
20:15
Speaker 1: are like, your teeth just look fake. I want real
20:18
Speaker 1: looking teeth. And so now if you're showing up anywhere
20:21
Speaker 1: from seven veneers, if you have the means, a lot
20:26
Speaker 1: of people are asking for slightly like tinted veneers that
20:31
Speaker 1: that look more realistic. Yeah, And and the funny thing
20:34
Speaker 1: about it is, first of all, just the fact that
20:36
Speaker 1: this trend piece exists, and they were able to interview
20:40
Speaker 1: these dentists who were scoffing it how white some people's
20:43
Speaker 1: veneers are. Because these wealthy clients usually would walk into
20:49
Speaker 1: the dentist's office and want a look that they saw
20:54
Speaker 1: in a Hollywood tabloid. But the dentists were like, what
20:58
Speaker 1: you don't realize is that when those paparazzi photos are
21:01
Speaker 1: being taken, our red carpet photos are being taken, the
21:04
Speaker 1: flash from the cameras is reflecting off of the teeth,
21:09
Speaker 1: making them appear even whiter than they normally are. So
21:12
Speaker 1: if you get teeth that are as white as you
21:14
Speaker 1: see in US Weekly and People magazine, then they will
21:18
Speaker 1: be almost blindingly white, which does hearken my brain back
21:24
Speaker 1: to that episode and Friends when Ross gets I think
21:29
Speaker 1: it's teeth white and in their way too white, and
21:32
Speaker 1: I now feel old for your friends joke. It's distracting.
21:36
Speaker 1: Like talking to someone whose teeth are obviously like super
21:39
Speaker 1: super white. I can't help but stare at their mouth.
21:41
Speaker 1: It's incredible that we're to this point where your teeth
21:44
Speaker 1: can be too white and too perfect. We have jumped
21:47
Speaker 1: the shark. But in addition to the pursuit of white,
21:50
Speaker 1: there's also been the pursuit of the straight teeth. And
21:54
Speaker 1: so we have a brief history of braces, which fun fact,
21:58
Speaker 1: Barbers were the first denist didn't you know, when you
22:01
Speaker 1: go to the barber, that's where you'd also go to
22:03
Speaker 1: get a bad tooth pulled way back in the day.
22:05
Speaker 1: So it is a good thing that oral technology has
22:09
Speaker 1: come the long way that it has. But orthodongia actually
22:14
Speaker 1: took off in the eighteenth century, which isn't so surprising
22:16
Speaker 1: that it's been around that long when you think about
22:18
Speaker 1: the fact that those of Truscan women were wearing those
22:21
Speaker 1: gold bands, and the mummies had primitive braces on as well,
22:25
Speaker 1: cat gut o cat good. Well, it's actually some French
22:29
Speaker 1: folks who took us far far from cat gut uh
22:33
Speaker 1: to more modern braces, so kind of. In seventeen eight,
22:38
Speaker 1: French dentist Pierre Fourchard published a book called The Surgeon Dentist,
22:43
Speaker 1: which described what sounds terribly painful. It's some kind of
22:48
Speaker 1: device called a band and braces. The brace technology really
22:53
Speaker 1: didn't change all that much up until the nineteen fifties. Yeah,
22:57
Speaker 1: and this brief history, by the way, is coming from
22:59
Speaker 1: the fabulous folk at Mental Floss. And after the fifties
23:03
Speaker 1: you have an accelerated pace of orthodontia technology. So by
23:09
Speaker 1: the mid seventies orthodontists have figured out how to put
23:12
Speaker 1: those brackets on the front of our teeth, and then
23:15
Speaker 1: by the eighties they figured out is how we put
23:18
Speaker 1: them on the back of our teeth, and so by
23:22
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, around a third of us kids are
23:26
Speaker 1: getting braces. And now I feel like it's almost a standard,
23:30
Speaker 1: almost box you check where once you have a kid,
23:33
Speaker 1: you start taking him to the dentists, like, well, will
23:36
Speaker 1: he or she get braces or not? Yeah, I never
23:40
Speaker 1: had braces. I had them on my bottom teeth. They
23:43
Speaker 1: they wanted to wait to put them on my top
23:46
Speaker 1: teeth because they wanted to break my jaw and bring
23:48
Speaker 1: it forward because I have an overbite. But I was like,
23:51
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna let you do that. You don't know
23:53
Speaker 1: this yet, but I'm not going to let you do that.
23:55
Speaker 1: So I never end up getting braces on my top teeth.
23:58
Speaker 1: And they look great. Okay, have BEAUTIFU team. I feel
24:00
Speaker 1: like they're better. From this side. I'm turning my left
24:03
Speaker 1: side to Kristen because this side I have a crooked tooth.
24:05
Speaker 1: And today is the day I learned that Caroline has
24:07
Speaker 1: a preferred tooth side I do so when the paparazzi
24:10
Speaker 1: finally find me down here in Atlanta. You'll know his
24:14
Speaker 1: side to turn. Take the picture from the left. Well,
24:16
Speaker 1: the whole reason why we were even inspired to do
24:20
Speaker 1: this episode on teeth is that when it comes to
24:24
Speaker 1: braces in particular, it's farlikelier a little Janey's gonna get
24:29
Speaker 1: braces compared to little Johnny, or that she is going
24:32
Speaker 1: to want braces, that she's gonna look in the mirror
24:35
Speaker 1: and see her teeth and think those are not up
24:38
Speaker 1: to snuff. Now, going back to earlier in the podcast,
24:42
Speaker 1: when we were taking a trip around the world with
24:45
Speaker 1: different forms of dental modification, there were some that were
24:49
Speaker 1: exclusively targeted to women in those cultures, such as the
24:54
Speaker 1: tooth blackening in Japan and tooth chiseling among certain groups,
24:59
Speaker 1: but all so now today braces tend to happen more
25:03
Speaker 1: often among girls. It's really interesting looking at girls and
25:09
Speaker 1: also their parents wanting girls to get braces. But there
25:13
Speaker 1: was a study that looked at the factors that go
25:17
Speaker 1: into children, young people, teens wanting uh dental therapy of
25:23
Speaker 1: of several different kinds, and they found that the two
25:25
Speaker 1: main predictors were psychological elements and female gender. So just
25:31
Speaker 1: simply being a girl is a huge predictor of seeking
25:35
Speaker 1: things like braces or other orthodontia or teeth whitening. Yeah,
25:40
Speaker 1: And that study was linked to in an article by
25:43
Speaker 1: sociologist Philip Cohen who noticed a stark gender gap in
25:48
Speaker 1: braces and he wrote about it for Sociological Images, which
25:51
Speaker 1: was then cross posted to a Pacific Standard magazine, and
25:55
Speaker 1: he found looking at a bunch of studies, the girls
25:58
Speaker 1: are twice as likely than boys to say that they
26:01
Speaker 1: don't like their teeth and want braces. Even said, just
26:05
Speaker 1: google image braces and about of the photos that come
26:11
Speaker 1: up are all you know, stock images of girls with
26:15
Speaker 1: braces on. And there was even I don't know why
26:19
Speaker 1: it gave me the heavy geeps. But if you go
26:22
Speaker 1: on Pinterest, because I'm kind of gotten to a bit
26:26
Speaker 1: of an internet rabbit hole looking at uh images of braces,
26:31
Speaker 1: you know, kids embraces to see whether you know, what
26:33
Speaker 1: Cohen said holds up, and it so does. If you
26:36
Speaker 1: go over to Pinterest, there are so many pin boards
26:39
Speaker 1: just of girls embraces. Why I don't know. I think
26:44
Speaker 1: it's some of its fashion, you know, for girls, you know,
26:47
Speaker 1: to be proud of their braces, like beautiful with braces.
26:50
Speaker 1: But it is definitely, it's definitely a thing. Go on
26:54
Speaker 1: Pinterest and you know, you don't have to take my
26:56
Speaker 1: word for it. Um, but this was something too that
27:00
Speaker 1: found not just in the US, but also abroad. Yeah,
27:04
Speaker 1: same in in um, England and Germany. That girls are
27:07
Speaker 1: more likely to get braces, same with adult women. Um.
27:13
Speaker 1: Another Google search was, uh, if you google mother daughter
27:17
Speaker 1: braces he was talking about, you get pictures of mothers
27:20
Speaker 1: and daughters getting braces together. But if you google father
27:23
Speaker 1: son braces, it brings you to practices orthodonist offices run
27:28
Speaker 1: by fathers and sons. Yeah, because adult braces have become
27:33
Speaker 1: more common in recent years, and even among that you
27:38
Speaker 1: know clientele demographic, it tends to skew female. And I
27:43
Speaker 1: went to the dentist a couple of years ago and
27:47
Speaker 1: was so surprised because I grew up had a great
27:49
Speaker 1: dentist and was never recommended for braces. And I don't
27:54
Speaker 1: have a completely perfectly straight mouth of teeth, but that
27:59
Speaker 1: is fine. They're they're whatever. And one of the first
28:02
Speaker 1: things she said was have you ever considered braces? What? Yeah,
28:07
Speaker 1: she was like, if you if you just wear these Invisilene, No,
28:09
Speaker 1: one will even be able to No, No, that is
28:12
Speaker 1: just such a sales pitch. They're just trying to make
28:15
Speaker 1: money because dental costs are spiraling and they're not getting
28:19
Speaker 1: all their money back from medicaid, and so they just
28:21
Speaker 1: want to make their money through invisible line. Well, jokes
28:25
Speaker 1: on you, Caroline, because she was right. You can't see
28:26
Speaker 1: my invisible because they're in right now. No I don't,
28:29
Speaker 1: I don't have them. Yeah, it did feel it. It
28:31
Speaker 1: was a peculiar sales pitch to get. And I wonder
28:35
Speaker 1: if a guy who walked in with my teeth and
28:37
Speaker 1: my bite, which yes it is a perfect bite, Oh good,
28:41
Speaker 1: if she would have recommended that to him. I don't know.
28:44
Speaker 1: Higher expectations for women, um so well, And that's what
28:48
Speaker 1: Cohen thinks the sociologists we talked about. He thinks that
28:52
Speaker 1: it has a lot to do with these higher standards
28:56
Speaker 1: and higher expectations for female beauty, because more girls getting
29:00
Speaker 1: braces has absolutely nothing to do with more more girls
29:04
Speaker 1: needing braces. They're also studies that he looked at comparing
29:09
Speaker 1: whether kids were getting braces purely for aesthetic reasons or
29:14
Speaker 1: because they did have some kind of dental alignment issue
29:16
Speaker 1: that needed to be corrected, and overwhelmingly girls were likelier
29:20
Speaker 1: to get them for purely aesthetic reasons. Right. But he
29:24
Speaker 1: was also talking about how in reality, boys and girls
29:27
Speaker 1: have equal need for braces. Among children who need them
29:31
Speaker 1: to correct a problem or whatever, straighten teeth, whatever, the
29:35
Speaker 1: need is equal, but girls perception of their need is
29:39
Speaker 1: way greater. Um he found that among girls who get braces,
29:43
Speaker 1: their actual need is low. And like we said, with
29:46
Speaker 1: adult braces, that's a trend that continues into adulthood, and
29:48
Speaker 1: that includes cosmetic surgery. Women are much more likely to
29:52
Speaker 1: get various types of cosmetic surgery into adulthood. Two. And
29:54
Speaker 1: that goes back to expectations of how girls look. Yeah,
29:58
Speaker 1: there was a survey from the American Academy of Cosmetic
30:01
Speaker 1: Dentistry which found of women reported that they would pay
30:06
Speaker 1: money to improve the appearance of their teeth compared to
30:11
Speaker 1: of men. And that was linked to from a blog
30:14
Speaker 1: post over at the Beheld written by Autumn Whitefield Madronto
30:18
Speaker 1: past stuff Mom Never Told You guessed who was wondering
30:21
Speaker 1: in this post whether the gender gap is due to, yes,
30:26
Speaker 1: those higher beauty standards for women and the way she
30:28
Speaker 1: put it so well that average teeth on men are
30:32
Speaker 1: considered more acceptable than average teeth on women. And the
30:35
Speaker 1: thing that got her thinking about it, at least in
30:38
Speaker 1: this post was Will Ferrell's teeth. She was watching Anchorman,
30:43
Speaker 1: and if you've watched Anchor, manners, seen you know, anything
30:46
Speaker 1: with Will Ferrell and it, you'll see that he does
30:48
Speaker 1: not he has pretty His lower teeth in particular, are
30:53
Speaker 1: not all in the straight line, let's put it that way.
30:56
Speaker 1: But you would never see. I can't think of a
30:59
Speaker 1: single woman I've seen on television who has that noticeably
31:04
Speaker 1: crooked teeth. And I think, and this is just a hypothesis,
31:08
Speaker 1: but I think that if you did, it would be
31:10
Speaker 1: because some message is being played up that this woman
31:13
Speaker 1: was a quote unquote hillbilly, or she was poor or
31:16
Speaker 1: something that if a woman's teeth looked like that on
31:19
Speaker 1: television or in the movies, it's to deliver a certain
31:22
Speaker 1: message about her, whereas that's just that's just Will Ferrell's teeth. Well,
31:25
Speaker 1: and that's the thing, because the more we read about teeth,
31:29
Speaker 1: the more it became apparent that even more than gender,
31:33
Speaker 1: these days, class and social status are so closely associated
31:39
Speaker 1: with the status of your teeth because you know, going
31:42
Speaker 1: way back in time to you know, those Elizabethan women
31:45
Speaker 1: of means, they would have those puffers to make sure
31:49
Speaker 1: that their cheeks puffed out in the correct kind of way,
31:52
Speaker 1: and they would have access to whatever sort of early
31:55
Speaker 1: dental care was available. Not so for the lower classes.
32:00
Speaker 1: And that's something though, of poorer people not having access
32:04
Speaker 1: to dental health care that remains today right. Um. And
32:11
Speaker 1: there was a two thousand eight study in the journal
32:13
Speaker 1: Nature that talked about the negative judgments that we lobb
32:17
Speaker 1: against people who have teeth that are darker or more decayed.
32:22
Speaker 1: The darker or more decayed they are, the more negative
32:24
Speaker 1: our judgments are in terms of things like social competence,
32:28
Speaker 1: intellectual ability, psychological adjustment, and relationship satisfaction. It's sort of
32:33
Speaker 1: a visible sign of inadequate access to healthcare and to
32:39
Speaker 1: taking care of oneself well. And I think there are
32:41
Speaker 1: more assumptions about the taking care of oneself part that
32:46
Speaker 1: um that really stands out because gender in this case
32:49
Speaker 1: did not have a significant effect. If you have decaying teeth,
32:54
Speaker 1: missing teeth, it has an equally negative impact on how
32:58
Speaker 1: people perceive you. I mean, especially for missing teeth. If
33:02
Speaker 1: you lose a tooth. Um. I've had a situation where
33:06
Speaker 1: I've shipped a tooth before and you know, walked around
33:10
Speaker 1: for a week with a little snaggle tooth and I
33:13
Speaker 1: knew it was going to be fixed, but it drew
33:14
Speaker 1: so much attention just because of one. Yeah, because you
33:19
Speaker 1: don't expect to see this. You know, we have this
33:21
Speaker 1: idea that you should have white, straight, perfect teeth because
33:25
Speaker 1: that signals that you take care of yourself, that you
33:27
Speaker 1: have the you know, the money to pay for dental visits,
33:31
Speaker 1: that you might have had braces when you were a kid,
33:33
Speaker 1: that you don't have some kind of drug habit, that
33:36
Speaker 1: you don't smoke, etcetera. Right, But we don't automatically think, oh,
33:40
Speaker 1: that girl has good health insurance and doesn't smoke or
33:42
Speaker 1: do meth. We it's just sort of tied up in
33:45
Speaker 1: our assumptions about, oh, like you said, taking care of
33:48
Speaker 1: yourself exactly. And the perfect character on Internet TV, because
33:53
Speaker 1: I don't know if you can call Netflix TV TV
33:56
Speaker 1: who embodies this is Pensent tuck E on Orange The
34:00
Speaker 1: New Black, who has those stereotypical rotted out meth teeth
34:07
Speaker 1: and it's so much a part of her character as
34:09
Speaker 1: well as that entire group on Orange is a New
34:12
Speaker 1: Black that she's a part of that we all assume,
34:14
Speaker 1: you know, have had meth problems in the past, and
34:16
Speaker 1: so they have these rotted out teeth. But when she
34:20
Speaker 1: returns with corrected teeth, all of a sudden, she's too
34:24
Speaker 1: big for britches and everybody thinks that she thinks she's
34:27
Speaker 1: too good for them. Yeah, but with the with the
34:29
Speaker 1: rotted out teeth, it's the signaling that she has little education,
34:34
Speaker 1: she's not very smart, she had a drug habit. You know,
34:37
Speaker 1: it's like or even during uh in Halloween times when
34:42
Speaker 1: you know they're all those false teeth at the costume store,
34:44
Speaker 1: there's always a hillbilly teeth and they're you know, poking
34:47
Speaker 1: out and they're missing, they're yellow, they're rotting right, And
34:50
Speaker 1: speaking to the Telegraph, Malcolm Gladwell actually cited teeth as
34:56
Speaker 1: the emerging social status signal between rich and or, and
35:00
Speaker 1: he equated them and the issue of basically dental hygiene
35:04
Speaker 1: and how your teeth appear with obesity problems in terms
35:07
Speaker 1: of what they signal. Yeah, he said, there's symptoms of
35:10
Speaker 1: the same set of inferences that are being drawn. So
35:14
Speaker 1: from his logic, the same way that obesity often is
35:18
Speaker 1: associated with having poor lifestyle habits, we place the same
35:23
Speaker 1: set of negative social assumptions and stigmas onto people who
35:28
Speaker 1: have less than perfect looking teeth. And this is happening
35:32
Speaker 1: while the sort of Hollywood projected standards for what your
35:37
Speaker 1: teeth should look like only you know, continue to increase.
35:41
Speaker 1: Everyone has white, perfect teeth when you flip through a
35:44
Speaker 1: magazine these days. But it's astonishing when you look at
35:48
Speaker 1: the US, just the lack of oral healthcare, because even
35:53
Speaker 1: with Obamacare and universal healthcare, there's still a massive gap
35:59
Speaker 1: when it comes to dental coverage. There are around one
36:03
Speaker 1: hundred thirty million Americans, or around of the population with
36:08
Speaker 1: zero dental coverage. Yeah, and forty five million Americans actually
36:13
Speaker 1: live nowhere near a dentist, And it seems like in
36:16
Speaker 1: terms of healthcare and dental care, dental is often almost
36:20
Speaker 1: like an afterthought because a lot of people who do
36:23
Speaker 1: have health insurance still don't have dental In two thousand
36:26
Speaker 1: and eight, for instance, a quarter of Americans under sixty
36:28
Speaker 1: five had no dental coverage. And having dental coverage tends
36:34
Speaker 1: to be correlated with income and education, so people who
36:38
Speaker 1: have a college education. That's a big predictor of whether
36:41
Speaker 1: you will actually have dental coverage, but that definitely doesn't
36:44
Speaker 1: mean that everyone's going to have it. And even with
36:47
Speaker 1: things like Medicaid and medicare, the dental provisions are minimal
36:52
Speaker 1: at best. There is a statistic, I think, coming from
36:55
Speaker 1: the Pew Research Center which found that in two thousand eleven,
36:58
Speaker 1: over half of all kids covered by Medicaid received no
37:03
Speaker 1: dental care, which might have had to do with where
37:06
Speaker 1: they are living, because there are these massive geographical areas
37:10
Speaker 1: all around the US that have no, you know, dental practices,
37:14
Speaker 1: because setting up a thriving dental practice can actually be
37:18
Speaker 1: challenging if you're not in a large metropolitan area. But
37:21
Speaker 1: even for poor people over twenty one who can get
37:24
Speaker 1: access to Medicaid, the only dental care they can get
37:29
Speaker 1: applies to emergency dental treatments, and even then it's paid
37:33
Speaker 1: for only on a state by state basis. Yeah, so
37:38
Speaker 1: I mean in terms of price, the Robert Wood Johnson
37:40
Speaker 1: Foundation found that average out of pocket dental costs are
37:43
Speaker 1: eight hundred and seventy three dollars. So basically, dental care
37:46
Speaker 1: for a lot of people a lot of people is
37:49
Speaker 1: becoming a luxury, and you have the costs of dental
37:53
Speaker 1: care outpacing both the rate of inflation and overall medical
37:57
Speaker 1: cost increases across the board. And think about it too,
38:00
Speaker 1: as you get older, and you probably need to take
38:03
Speaker 1: even better care of your teeth. But when it comes
38:06
Speaker 1: to Medicare for the elderly, they only get coverage for again,
38:10
Speaker 1: emergency dental procedures. It doesn't even cover dentures um. So
38:15
Speaker 1: it's a little wonder then that in two thousand nine,
38:20
Speaker 1: eight hundred thirty thousand and fifty Americans went to the
38:23
Speaker 1: e er for preventable dental problems because I mean, what
38:28
Speaker 1: else are they going to do? They can't there's nowhere
38:30
Speaker 1: else to go. Yeah, yeah, And and it's especially bad
38:35
Speaker 1: when you realize, and a lot of people might not
38:39
Speaker 1: realize that poor dental health is linked to a lot
38:42
Speaker 1: of other health problems. My father, who has heart issues,
38:46
Speaker 1: totally preaches that people need to floss. It's a huge
38:51
Speaker 1: thing for him because dental bacteria is linked to things
38:54
Speaker 1: like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, pneumonia, preterm birth. I mean, you
38:57
Speaker 1: wouldn't think it. You're like, oh, I had some cheese,
39:00
Speaker 1: see poofs, and I'm just gonna fall asleep and not
39:01
Speaker 1: worry about it. No, brush those teeth, brush those cheezy
39:05
Speaker 1: poofs out. But if you are living in a paycheck
39:10
Speaker 1: to paycheck situation or even less than clearly, you know
39:15
Speaker 1: what was that eight seventy three dollars average out of
39:18
Speaker 1: cost dental care? If you don't have insurance, that's going
39:21
Speaker 1: to be the last thing that you're going to pay
39:24
Speaker 1: for most likely, unless you it is to the point
39:27
Speaker 1: to where you are in such extreme pain that you
39:30
Speaker 1: probably will have to go to the emergency room. So
39:34
Speaker 1: it's something that we don't think about very often at
39:36
Speaker 1: all when we just see these celebrities walking down the
39:39
Speaker 1: red carpet with these perfectly imperfect veneers that they've gotten
39:44
Speaker 1: for thousands of dollars, that this is actually a huge
39:48
Speaker 1: issue and there's so much social class tied up with that.
39:53
Speaker 1: So this modern day quest for a quote unquote perfect
39:57
Speaker 1: smile is about so much more than looking good. I mean,
40:01
Speaker 1: this is about basic healthcare that people are missing out on. Okay,
40:06
Speaker 1: So now that we have thrown a bunch of these
40:09
Speaker 1: stats that you I'm I'm interested in hearing from listeners
40:11
Speaker 1: who maybe have felt discrimination based on their appearance there,
40:17
Speaker 1: especially their teeth appearance. I have a friend who got
40:21
Speaker 1: a tooth knocked out in a freak accident, and he
40:25
Speaker 1: didn't worry about getting it replaced for a while because
40:27
Speaker 1: of money issues. But then it came time to do
40:29
Speaker 1: job interviews and it's like, it's not going to happen
40:32
Speaker 1: in the back of his mouth either. It's one of
40:34
Speaker 1: his front teeth, and he's like, I've got to go
40:36
Speaker 1: show out some big bucks now to get a to
40:38
Speaker 1: get a fake tooth so that I can get a job. Yeah.
40:41
Speaker 1: Absolutely so. Um, if you've experienced these kinds of things,
40:44
Speaker 1: or if you are perhaps a social worker who works
40:49
Speaker 1: with lower income communities on to target these kinds of
40:53
Speaker 1: dental issues, we particularly want to hear from you, because
40:58
Speaker 1: there is so much more to our teeth than whether
41:03
Speaker 1: or not we just have perfect, straight, white paparazzi ready choppers.
41:08
Speaker 1: Remember shoot me from the left, yes, and and by
41:11
Speaker 1: the way, if you also are a paparazzo, shoot Caroline
41:14
Speaker 1: from the left with a camera. Yes, with a camera.
41:19
Speaker 1: So send us all of your thoughts on teeth. Mom
41:23
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuffworks dot com is our email address,
41:25
Speaker 1: and you can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast
41:28
Speaker 1: or messages on Facebook. And we have a couple of
41:30
Speaker 1: messages to share with you right now about insomnia. Well,
41:39
Speaker 1: I have a letter here from Cindy. She says, I
41:42
Speaker 1: was so glad to hear your podcast on Lady Insomnia,
41:45
Speaker 1: more specifically the idea that the sleep wake sleep cycle
41:49
Speaker 1: maybe a natural occurrence and one our ancestors regularly experienced.
41:53
Speaker 1: In the past, I quote unquote struggled with insomnia, becoming
41:57
Speaker 1: frustrated and anxious when I would go through periods of
41:59
Speaker 1: awakening for several hours in the night for many nights
42:02
Speaker 1: in a row. My anxiety would put me into that
42:04
Speaker 1: anxiety loop you spoke of. Recently, I heard about Ben
42:07
Speaker 1: Franklin's nighttime adventures. I heard that Mark Twain also experienced
42:11
Speaker 1: great creativity in the night. I realized that I, too,
42:14
Speaker 1: maybe just one of the great snicker. I decided to
42:18
Speaker 1: accept night wakes as normal and see what that attitude
42:21
Speaker 1: shift might do for me. It has been great, although
42:24
Speaker 1: there have still been a few times when my wakefulness
42:26
Speaker 1: seemed more exhausting and less than lightning. For the most part,
42:29
Speaker 1: I now accept my night wakes as a time of
42:31
Speaker 1: peaceful reflection or let's be honest, Facebook alone time. I
42:36
Speaker 1: generally give myself one or two hours in the night
42:39
Speaker 1: of wakefulness before I shut the iPad and attempt to
42:42
Speaker 1: sleep again. Usually that's all it takes. Sometimes I wake
42:45
Speaker 1: again and go through my wake cycle once more, but
42:47
Speaker 1: usually not. I awake with less frustrated anxiety and feel
42:50
Speaker 1: more rested than when I got the same amount or
42:53
Speaker 1: lack of sleep but was angry about it. I completely
42:56
Speaker 1: agree that some forms of insomnia are much worse than
42:58
Speaker 1: mine and much more crazy making. However, much like accepting
43:02
Speaker 1: the pain of childbirth as normal and therefore fearing it
43:05
Speaker 1: less even though it still hurts my accepting this sleep
43:08
Speaker 1: wake sleep cycle as natural does not change it, but
43:11
Speaker 1: it changes my attitude toward it and therefore makes it
43:14
Speaker 1: less grading usually on my soul. So thank you for
43:18
Speaker 1: sharing your experience. Then, I also thought about trying out
43:21
Speaker 1: that sleep wake sleep thing, but I end up just
43:23
Speaker 1: lying in bed sad well. I also have a letter
43:26
Speaker 1: here from c J about insomnia, and though the whole
43:29
Speaker 1: thing is too long to share, I did want to
43:31
Speaker 1: share some of it. C J rites After a certain point,
43:36
Speaker 1: I kind of gave up on trying to conform myself
43:38
Speaker 1: to what is considered normal, and quit inflicting the belief
43:41
Speaker 1: of others that it was somehow a huge failing of
43:43
Speaker 1: mine that I couldn't fall asleep by eleven PM or
43:46
Speaker 1: fall asleep within fifteen minutes of going to bed. Society
43:49
Speaker 1: has very little sympathy for you if you don't wake
43:52
Speaker 1: up early on a permanent basis. Schools and most jobs
43:55
Speaker 1: start in early morning hours. In our society is permeated
43:58
Speaker 1: with the thought that the early bird gets the worm.
44:01
Speaker 1: I learned long ago not to mention my sleep problems
44:03
Speaker 1: because the most common response I get is along the
44:06
Speaker 1: lines of you must really like to stay out late partying,
44:09
Speaker 1: which couldn't be further from the truth. Recently, I saw
44:13
Speaker 1: new advice for taking melatonin, using a formula based on
44:17
Speaker 1: when you wanted to get up. This new advice times
44:20
Speaker 1: by Melotoni in taking closer to eight PM, rather than
44:22
Speaker 1: the previous advice for my doctors, which was to take
44:25
Speaker 1: it right before I went to bed. This method of
44:27
Speaker 1: taking the melitone in earlier, along with the other things
44:29
Speaker 1: I do, like trying to wake up at similar times
44:31
Speaker 1: every day, avoiding blue light in the evening, avoiding eating late,
44:33
Speaker 1: getting exercise, and not doing other things in my bedroom,
44:36
Speaker 1: etcetera has allowed for my best time so far in
44:40
Speaker 1: terms of sleep. Over the last twenty years or so,
44:43
Speaker 1: I've usually been able to fall asleep around one am,
44:45
Speaker 1: and I can also get to my current job around
44:47
Speaker 1: nine AM, so I've been able to get around seven
44:49
Speaker 1: hours of sleep on a somewhat regular basis, which is
44:52
Speaker 1: pretty darn good for me. But taking the melitonin in
44:55
Speaker 1: early for the first time in my life, I actually
44:58
Speaker 1: feel a little more normal because I usually feel sleepy
45:01
Speaker 1: before I go to bed, which I never did before.
45:04
Speaker 1: Sleepy and physically tired or unfortunately two different things, and
45:08
Speaker 1: I don't feel like the walking dead most of the time.
45:11
Speaker 1: So I would encourage people to try and get treatment
45:13
Speaker 1: maybe because it can help, but also don't beat yourself
45:16
Speaker 1: up if it doesn't work as well as you'd hope.
45:18
Speaker 1: Maybe try working your life more around the insomnia rather
45:22
Speaker 1: than the other way around. And for those of you
45:24
Speaker 1: without insomnia'd be grateful and please have a little more
45:26
Speaker 1: sympathy for us night owls. So thanks c J, and
45:30
Speaker 1: thanks to everybody who's written into us mom stuff at
45:33
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com is our email address and
45:35
Speaker 1: for links to all of our social media's as well
45:37
Speaker 1: as all of our blog posts, videos, and podcasts. There's
45:41
Speaker 1: one place to go, and it's stuff Mom Never told
45:44
Speaker 1: You dot com or more on this and thousands of
45:50
Speaker 1: other topics doesn't how stuff works dot com