The parable of the Corvette and the 18-wheeler, or why you should wear your elastics full time.
Now everybody knows that with traffic flowing freely, high powered sports cars like Corvettes, as well as giant 18-wheeler trucks, all move down the freeway at the speed limit. But what happens when the there’s a problem and all the traffic comes to a halt? When the jam clears the Corvette can take off like a rocket and in 4 or 5 seconds it’s going the speed limit again. But what of the huge trucks loaded down with 10’s of thousand of pounds of cargo? They take forever to get going again...until they too are going full speed with the rest of the traffic.
Now the question we ask is: are your teeth like high-powered sports cars or are they like heavy trucks? And, of course, you know the answer… they behave like trucks: as long as things are moving no problem. But let things stop and it is a long, long time to get moving again. Stop wearing your elastics for a few hours and everything grinds to halt… even when you start wearing your elastics again, it can be hours and hours before they start moving a full speed again. So missing even a few hours can significantly slow your treatment.
The moral to the story is: Be like the driver of a big truck..... peddle to the metal and you’ll get there
on time.
How Forks Gave Us Overbites and Pots Saved the Toothless
By Scott Douglas
inShare2065Historical changes in the ways we cook and eat have dramatically altered public health.
MLazarevski/Flickr
Bee Wilson is the author of Consider the Fork,
which documents
the evolution of cooking and eating technology. In the book, Wilson
describes many unintended consequences of new methods of or materials
for cooking and
eating. Here she talks about some of the health ramifications of
such changes.
I was struck while reading your book by how changes in the
instruments we use to cook and eat can have large-scale health
implications. It's especially fascinating that overbites didn't
become standard until we all
started eating with a knife and fork. Can you describe how that
happened?
Yes, I found to be this one of the most fascinating and surprising changes to be brought about by kitchen utensils.
Until around 250 years ago in the West, archaeological evidence suggests that most human
beings had an edge-to-edge bite, similar to apes. In other words, our
teeth were aligned liked a guillotine, with the top layer clashing
against the
bottom layer. Then, quite suddenly, this alignment of the jaw
changed: We developed an overbite, which is still normal today. The top
layer of teeth fits
over the bottom layer like a lid on a box.
This change is far too recent for any evolutionary explanation.
Rather, it seems to be a question of usage. An American anthropologist,
C. Loring Brace,
put forward the thesis that the overbite results from the way we use
cutlery, from childhood onwards.
"Women were particularly at risk from open
hearths, on account of the combination of billowing skirts, trailing
sleeves, and open flames."
What changed 250 years ago was the adoption of the knife and fork,
which meant that we were cutting chewy food into small morsels before
eating it.
Previously, when eating something chewy such as meat, crusty bread
or hard cheese, it would have been clamped between the jaws, then sliced
with a knife or
ripped with a hand -- a style of eating Professor Brace has called
"stuff-and-cut."
The clincher is that the change is seen 900 years earlier in China, the reason being chopsticks.
As with any such thesis, we will probably never have definitive
proof that the overbite results from the adoption of the fork, but it
does seem the best
fit with the evidence.
The first time I read Brace's work, I was truly astonished. So
often, we assume that the tools we use for eating are more or less
irrelevant -- at most, a
question of manners. I found it remarkable that they could have this
graphic impact on the human body.
At the same time, you write in the "Pots and Pans" chapter how until the 18th
century most families had one big pot, a cauldron, that had a
sort of palimpsest porridge in it -- they just kept adding new things to
cook along with whatever was left
over from the day before. So a lot of what people ate was soft.
Were there dental changes once other ways of cooking became readily
available?
The big dental change that was seen with pots happened with the initial adoption of pottery for cooking around 10, 000 years ago. Until the cooking pot was invented, no one who had lost all their teeth would survive into adulthood. There are no traces of edentulous -- toothless -- skeletons in any population without pottery. Pots made it possible
for the first time to cook nourishing stew-like meals that required no
chewing but could, rather, be drunk. So having teeth was no longer
necessary for survival. This is another clear example of how
utensils have acted as a kind of robotic extension of the human body.
On the question of why eating these soft foods didn't lead to
dramatic dental changes -- such as is seen with the fork and the
overbite -- I think the
answer must be that they tended to be eaten alongside other, tougher
foods.
But switching from a diet of mostly chewy foods to one of very soft
foods can definitely have an impact on human teeth. Studies of
Australian aboriginals
have found that within a single generation of leaving their homes in
the Outback and moving to cities (where the diet becomes one heavy in
refined white
flour and sugar), teeth have far less attrition (wear and tear from
chewing) but many more cavities.
In Lewis Carol's story Alice in Wonderland the Cheshire Cat has a remarkable ability to vanish except for its grin "which remained sometime after the rest of it had gone." With all our concern for the teeth and bite, it might seem as if we are dealing with only the GRIN and missing the PERSON to whom it belongs. That's why we would like to take this time to let you know that we do appreciate the opportunity of serving your orthodontic needs.
Our goal is to provide the highest quality treatment in a caring and friendly manner. We hope that all of your visits with us are pleasant, and that you will feel comfortable recommending us to your friends and family!.
