WE CAN SEE a hint of the state of dental health in Shakespeare’s England from a sonnet in which he describes his lady love’s reeking breath. The lines “black contagious breath” and “his breath stinks with eating toasted cheese” make...
YOU PROBABLY HEARD the line “it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown” when you were growing up, but the pedantic dentist might point out that it technically isn’t true. At least ten muscles are involved in smiling, while as few as six are...
WE TEND TO IMAGINE that people from earlier eras must’ve had worse teeth than we do because they didn’t have things like modern dentistry, orthodontics, and root canal treatment, but what dental problems were they dealing with and how did they protect...
ANYONE WHO REGULARLY swims might have noticed that your teeth are more sensitive after climbing out of the pool. That’s not just your imagination. Doing a lot of swimming actually can take a toll on our teeth if we aren’t careful. Pool Chlorine Can Cause...
BACK IN MEDIEVAL times in England (and in most other places, to be fair), people didn’t have a great understanding of what caused cavities or gum disease, but they still cared about having fresh breath. It wasn’t just out of politeness — they...
