#this is how bored i am in my sobriety lmfao

[novadreii]

teef rant

the amount of posts i see floating around the internet from people who say they never brush or floss their teeth is so alarming. most recently i saw a reddit post where the OP said he has brushed his teeth maybe 350 times...in the last 10 years. no floss. no dentist visits. now his teeth are rotting out of his head and his gums bleed constantly and he has no choice but to go to the dentist for a very painful and expensive visit.

another memorable one was someone who regularly woke up in the middle of the night feeling snackish (which i mean, been there), and opted to fall asleep with a “mouthful of chocolate or chips” as they put it because brushing their teeth after a midnight snack would “defeat the purpose” if they had to wash out the taste of their snack and replace it with minty toothpaste. -_-

on one hand i really don’t blame the majority of these people; if you’re a kid and your parents don’t drill the importance of dental health into you and stay on your ass to make sure you develop the habit, chances are you won’t do it. compound that with not being able to afford the dentist or insurance, and it’s gonna be a bad time.

hell, i take meticulous care of my teeth and always have thanks to my parents who cared about this kind of stuff. i usually brush within an hour of eating something, i don’t let food particles/sugar sit in there all day. i floss every single night. i apply this nasty calcium paste before bed to strengthen my enamel. and i STILL had two very small cavities in the past 5 years, caught early because i will beg borrow and steal to at least see my dentist once a year. dental insurance makes no sense here because of the stupid high deductibles, you are better off paying for checkups and the odd cavity if your dental heath is pretty good. but the couple hundred i spend on checkups each year has saved me thousands of dollars in fillings and root canals.

all this to say that we need to take dental health more seriously as a society. dental health is healthcare, and the hoops lower-income people have tojump through to obtain affordable dental care is unacceptable!!!

people don’t even understand how serious gum disease and infections can be, they can spread to your fucking heart!! there’s just no education and no funding. so we have swaths of people who think dental hygiene is just cosmetic bullshit they can opt out of, until they have no choice.

the mechanisms of how cavities form and the basic physiology of teeth and how to care for them should be part of the standard curriculum in kindergarten. and kids under 18 should at least be getting free yearly checkups and routine dental work. it’s such a massive societal failing (among many), especially when the worst dental problems are so stupidly easily preventable.