
Teeth Whitening and the Hygiene Hypothesis - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/26/color/have-we-hit-peak-whiteness-rd
======
allendoerfer
An aspect worth noting is, that our society is more and more redefining the
meaning of "health" from the absence of illness to perfection of some
universal subjective standard, which disregards factors like age or sex.

White teeth have at least some roots in biology - generally the younger you
are, the whiter your teeth - still it makes no sense to compare the whiteness
of different aged people and judge their health based on them.

Ethically we are on a dangerous path: Orthodontics for children are standard
in Europe and the US, countries like Japan are catching up quickly. Teeth-
whitening is common in the US and is becoming more popular in Europe, too.
Orthodontics includes oral surgery more and more often. Korea is all in and
full blown plastic surgeries are becoming the standard [0].

These surgeries cause pain and hinder you to eat properly for months. Still we
are on a path to include them in our definition of health. In Korea parents
often pay for them as a present for graduation.

People who the majority perceives as disabled or even just ugly are not
necessarily unhealthy. We should make a clear distinction between body
modifications and medicine. Unfortunately our ape brains see a high status
individual and cluster these things together. This lets us worry about health
problems we previously did not even know we had, making us psychologically and
often physically unhealthier in the end.

Another big problem is, that we ignore the fact that we age. I do not think
that care for the elderly should be an area of medicine. When your body breaks
apart at 80 years old, that does not make you unhealthy, you are just old. You
should not get the needed social interaction from doctors, who try to fix
something that is perfectly natural to fall apart.

Some of the plethora of pills an 80 year old takes surely increase his or her
life expectancy, I feel like others might not be worth the hassle. I surely do
not want to ruin my last moments on earth organizing my calendar of doctor
appointments trying to squeeze out the last couple of days I can possibly get.

[0]: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/23/about-
face](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/23/about-face)

~~~
hessenwolf
The NHS approach of putting monetary value on a year of life and comparing the
drug costs to that is a good approach to reducing the spend on tired old
bod's.

~~~
pc86
It is beyond offensive to imply that 60 year old individual is worth less to
society than a 30 year old individual, and that there are life-saving measures
appropriate for the latter that are too costly for the former.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
I mostly disagree although I understand and appreciate the sentiment of your
post.

You have to consider first of all that we're working with scarce resources.
When we're not, it's not even an issue to compare two lives if you can save
them both. But in the case that there are limited resources and you happen to
have to choose between focusing on two different groups of people and make
that tradeoff, you inevitably have to base your decision on something.

Now if you have a 15 year old kid and an 80 year old person, and both are
dying from some preventable disease at a rate of 1% per year, and you have a
scarce budget to focus on researching one particular disease, which one do you
choose to focus on?

Well flipping a coin is probably shit. But making a ranking based on qualify
adjusted life years[0] probably makes more sense. Of course it's not perfect,
but it's not beyond offensive if you ask me to go about reasoning like this to
partially inform policy decisions.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-
adjusted_life_year](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year)

~~~
melling
What scarce resources are you referring to in the developed world?

Bill Gates turns 60 this year. It's pretty safe to assume he'll accomplish
more in the next 20 years than you will in your lifetime.

~~~
omalleyt
The scarce resources implied here is the money that the government spends on
medical treatment for the elderly, poor and disabled. Bill Gates obviously
could always buy his own medical treatment.

~~~
barrkel
Sure, but the money Bill Gates spends on medical treatment takes resources
away from other things. Even if supply is elastic enough to adjust, it's
unlikely to adjust immediately, and the adjustment will still reduce resources
that would have been consumed elsewhere.

Money is a claim on future productivity. Spending it causes people in the
world to adjust what they're doing to satisfy what you're asking for. Most of
our claims aren't very large though, so this isn't particularly noticeable
except in aggregate.

------
dschiptsov
Whiteness of teeth and _eyes_ are biological markers of being a good potential
mate with [currently] good health and [presumably] strong immune system
(evolutionary "hints" of having "good genes"), an analogy of peacock's tail.
Breath is another important hint, btw. These are just hard-wired to our
brains.

People are mere monetizing these "heuristics" into absurd.

~~~
golemotron
Yes and the author tells a story about Western culture but I kept asking "how
do you know?" Eastern cultures may have the same bias but without enough
technological development over their history to actualize it at the same rate
that we have.

~~~
hodwik
A lot of Asian cultures actually have a culture around teeth blackening.

[http://www.traveldudes.org/travel-tips/tooth-blackening-
forg...](http://www.traveldudes.org/travel-tips/tooth-blackening-forgotten-
tradition/14811)

~~~
tabio
And some American subcultures have a cuture around teeth goldening!

------
amelius
I usually only notice how yellow my teeth are when I brush my teeth, by the
contrast with the toothpaste that is usually whiter than white.

------
cpncrunch
Link doesn't work on mobile devices. It redirects to the issue homepage.

------
comrade1
Whenever I'm in the u.s. I think people look bizarre with their super-white
teeth. I mean, my teeth aren't yellow or anything, but they don't glow in the
dark either.

There are some things that don't transfer so easily between where I live
(switzerland, but I think germanic europe in general) and the u.s.: super
white teeth, visible tattoos, and piercings. (although I'll see a small nose
piercing on women every now and then)

(and if you're German, you should probably leave your puma track suit and
aviator glasses at home when you go to the u.s.)

~~~
EliRivers
How common is it, really, in the US? I genuinely don't know.

On the one hand, I hear that medical (and thus presumably dental) insurance
costs a fortune, and even then the "co-pay" means that many hesitate to seek
treatment. I can't imagine that "my teeth aren't as white as I'd like" is
something insurance companies like paying for (or rather, they don't like
paying for anything, but something purely cosmetic seems easy to deny), so how
are people affording this? is it just the wealthy? If I wander around poorer
areas, will I start seeing ordinary teeth?

~~~
hodwik
Teeth whitening is very cheap, you can buy teeth whiteners over the counter in
the US, and most toothpastes you can buy in the store have whitening agents in
them.

~~~
tabio
Those whiteners don't create the super-bright almost-blue color you get from
the dentist.

~~~
hodwik
Are you sure? The handful of times I've inquired to an acquaintance about
freakishly white teeth, they've always said it was just because they took
really good care of their teeth, didn't drink coffee or soda, used whitening
toothpaste, and had good genes.

