Hacker News Reader

Comment by Al-Khwarizmi | Hacker News Reader

I'm 43 now and haven't been to a dentist since I was 18. This started due to a combination of being young and generally careless, constantly busy and procrastinating, and somewhat scared of dental procedures. And over time, as years piled up, it kept going on because now honestly I'm ashamed of going to a dentist, looking like a normal, functional, well-dressed person, and telling them straight to the face that my mouth hasn't been checked in 25 years.

So far, I haven't had pain in any of my teeth (I guess I would bite the bullet and go if I did). I'm not proud of my attitude and I fear some day my negligence may come home to roost. But on the other hand, I see other people who go to the dentist every year, and every year they seem to need treatment and have lots of cavities while if I have had any, they haven't had any practical consequences in 25 years, and I can't help but thinking "overall, am I sure that they are better off?"

View on HN

Nice to see someone like me! I'm 33 and haven't been to the dentist since I was around 21.

I have no pain. So we'll see how long it lasts.

Last time I went, at 21, everything at the dental office felt like a scam, as if they were trying to find problems to fix. And I was a student and couldn't really afford any treatment anyway at the time. I lost trust in dentists after that and never went again.

On a lighter note, do you perform your own dentistry? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1JR-9Z5ORE

I think people in India visit dentists less frequently compared to say people in the USA. But in my experience the situation is similar. I have been charged for 3 x-rays (on different occasions, when I visited dentists for different reasons) because one of my wisdom teeth is a little misaligned and every time they told me it's ok now but to be safer side it'd be better to extract it now because eventually it will... shall we schedule an appointment for extraction, etc.

On the other hand, once they showed me how all my teeth look- high resolution digital images- uneven surfaces, edges, gums, etc. and looking at those zoomed images on screen was not pretty. Imagine looking at the internal organs, etc. Thank God, the machinery works.

I stopped going to dentists since COVID started. Only two exceptions: had to come when one of the crowns unglued and needed to be glued back. Twice. In these 7 years I had minor toothache start one time and seems to have resolved it by applying a diluted fluoride-based mouthwash to that tooth using a water flosser a couple of times.

I hear after 20 years all the accumulated tartar turns into a 2nd layer of enamel.

different mouths, different diets, different guts, different water, different genetics... there are a lot of explanations here.

I had tons of dentist interventions meanwhile my brother has had 1 in his whole life.

The way I see it, your teeth are just a particularly heavily used part of the body, like fingers. A good portion of people go their entire life without having any issues at all with their fingers.

Think about how you feel about dentists, and how everyone else talks and acts about teeth and dentists. Now swap teeth with fingers, and dentist with finger doctor.

"Shame on you, you haven't had your annual finger checkup? Doesn't matter if they feel fine, finger doctors can see issues before they arise and give you painful expensive treatments to prevent issues you didn't have and didn't know you were going to have."

FWIW, I read a study a long long time ago that talked about some people have a rare genetic mutation which means their saliva doesn't produce the acid that leads to cavities. I'm in my mid 30s, haven't been to the dentist in nearly a decade, never had a cavity or toothache or any mouth discomfort (apart from after I'd been to the dentist).

Fingers heal, teeth once damaged can majorly deteriorate and cause a range of complications. If you lose a finger, it's a huge impact; if you lose enough teeth it is debilitating (barring implants/dentures).

Saliva doesn't produce the acid that causes cavities, bacteria that feed on the food in your mouth do.

Look, go see a dentist or don't; but suggesting that dental care is unnecessary is reckless.

Lost fingers don't heal. A lot of the mouth still heals.

Saliva doesn't produce acid directly, but it combines with other things to contribute to the environment that produces the acid. I couldn't find the exact study, but a fair few studies founds links between genes, saliva, bacteria and cavity rates.

Look, I didn't suggest dental care is unnecessary. Quite the opposite: brush your teeth folks, and if you're lucky like many other people, you won't have to go to the dentist and won't suffer debilitating consequences. Treat it like a finger: look after it, clean it, don't hurt it, but you don't need to waste time and money on a yearly checkup of it (unless you've got a good reason to).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com