this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
1242 points (99.4% liked)

Science Memes

11414 readers
2203 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] psud@aussie.zone 31 points 2 months ago (6 children)

The teeth thing is just because of our high sugar, high grain diet

The first* people with bad dental health were Egyptians as they lived on bread (which packs your teeth and feeds the bacteria that ferment it and make acid) before that, and until the invention spread, people died of old age with all their teeth intact

I eat very low carb - almost entirely meat due to allergies, and haven't had a cavity since I started doing that, despite me nearly never brushing or flossing my teeth

*There were also people who lived in the tropics and ate a lot of fruit, and those with sugar cane.

[–] Lux18@lemmy.world 30 points 2 months ago

You never brush your teeth? It's not only good for health dude

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 15 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Brush your teeth bud. People can probably smell your breath from a mile away.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

You'd think. But where does the bad smell come from?

My understanding is it's from overactive bacteria; I don't feed my mouth bacteria with food that makes them smell

At least my partner still kisses me

[–] Eiri@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I do intermittent fasting.

My breath stinks quite a bit on days I don't eat. The bacteria develop very well on those days, since they're not being washed off as often. And that's before "keto breath" even comes into play.

Point is, your mouth bacteria are fine producing all sorts of "charming" smells even without food.

You probably do stink. The two of you are just used to it.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How do you think you can know when your breath is bad and I can't?

You didn't say what you feed your mouth bacteria aside from saying you only do so occasionally.

[–] Eiri@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 months ago

It's just a really well-known phenomenon. People thinking they don't stink because it's the smell they're used to. I'm just speculating, and there's of course a chance I'm wrong.

As for how I know I stink, i have a much keener nose than the average. I can tell when my hair stinks because it's been too long since my last shampoo, for instance, a thing most people can't even tell about others apparently. Even though it's the grossest smell ever.

But even then, most of the time I can't tell my breath stinks. It probably has to do with how close the mouth is to the nose. Mostly, I've associated sensations in my mouth with instances where I was told I stunk and work from there.

As for what I eat, oh yeah, I absolutely do eat carbs a normal amount. But I really don't think this should have much of an effect when I'm not eating. I have trouble imagining bacteria having a stock of food for when I don't eat.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 3 points 2 months ago

Some people get off on eating ass

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 2 months ago

brushing your teeth doesnt do much for bad breath. You want to clean the rest of your mouth to get rid of that, which is probably what they do.

[–] Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I thought Egyptians had bad teeth because their flour was ground with sandstone, leaving sand in their bread. They ground their teeth into nothing by eating sand.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 6 points 2 months ago

I feel like the sand thing was a guess by people who couldn't pick why ancient Egyptians had worse teeth than everyone else in the ancient world

If there's sand in your food you notice and it feels bad. It's not something that makes you go "oh well I'll just keep chomping" and that would wear teeth down, not give them abscesses

this is also common with older bread. Another reason why it's bad, it's probably both though.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Similar. I don't eat low carbs, just almost no bread, and my teeth never get cavities

[–] mugthol@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 2 months ago

Yeah but that can also be because of genetics. I eat bread everyday and still never had a cavity

[–] psud@aussie.zone 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I note that birds, which evolved eating grains, don't have teeth

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

Birds originally did have teeth. Beaks are thought to have replaced teeth because they serve the same purpose but are much lighter, and more importantly because they develop faster than teeth. Birds considerably predate grasses (which are what grains are).

[–] mihor@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago

Now THAT'S intelligent design!

[–] booly@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Teeth can need work from physical trauma, too. Getting hit in the head while hunting or fighting or just hiking might cause a cracked tooth, which can be deadly in the absence of dental care. Or just while eating, sometimes a stray rock or bone fragment or shell might cause an issue.

Lots of other species can regrow teeth in adulthood, even a handful of other mammals. All sorts of animals can have tooth problems in the wild, so I wouldn't assume that prehistoric humans were exempt from that general danger.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Sure. All sorts of things would kill you, and a dental injury would be a crap way to die. The ancient stuff is from preserved hunter gatherer skeletons.

We, fortunately, have excellent dental care available so people hardly ever die of a broken tooth, I know about my lack of cavities from a pair of several x-rays and a check up while replacing a filling from when I ate the common diet

[–] HereIAm@lemmy.world -5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeeeah but they also only lived to like 30.

[–] watersnipje@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Those low life expectancies are typically due to high infant deaths. Once you are like 10 or so, the life expectancy is much higher, and more informative. The life expectancy at birth is in many cases a bit misleading.

[–] HereIAm@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

That's fair. It was just my understanding that one of the leading causes to death was that the teeth started to rot away. I clearly need to brush up on my human history a bit!