
Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up? (2017) - BerislavLopac
https://www.sapiens.org/body/human-teeth-evolution/
======
cyberferret
As a slight aside from the premise of the article, I was reminded of a story
my friend once told me. He is a policeman, and works with the Water Police
department in our town.

One day, they got a call from some dirt bikers who were riding in the
mangroves beaches across the bay that they had found two skeletons partially
buried in the mud. As per standard procedures, a police patrol was dispatched
to investigate (which included my friend), and also as per SOP, because the
area was a known ancient Aboriginal burial ground, they took an anthropologist
out with them as part of the investigative team.

When they got to the site and were approaching the two semi exposed skeletons,
the anthropologist said (while still a few feet away from them) "Oh, these pre
date local colonial settlement and are probably over a hundred years old".

My policeman friend was curious, and asked her how she could tell even from
afar that these were not more current remains, and she said "It's the teeth.
There is absolutely no sign of decay caused by sugars in modern diets".

He (and I) never realised the extent of damage done to our teeth by what we
eat today.

~~~
refurb
Two thoughts:

1\. They really are no sugar in aboriginal societies? No fruit or carbs?

2\. I know a handful of people who eat Western diets who have zero tooth
decay.

Doesn’t seem like a great way to tell the age of a skull.

~~~
SteveCoast
"Doesn’t seem like a great way to tell the age of a skull."

The confidence of people far away at a different time without any relevant
knowledge to dismiss an experienced local on the ground based on flawed high-
level logic never ceases to surprise.

~~~
refurb
It’s because the story sounds like bullshit.

I have no doubt that you can tell the age of a skull with a close inspection
of the teeth. This story was an anthropologist looking at remains from several
feet away and claiming that it’s aboriginal from the lack of dental decay.

I proposed a few exceptions to that rule. Certainly not a quip about the
expertise of the anthropologist, but rather the accuracy of the story.

~~~
therealdrag0
I agree it sounds like bullshit.

However, I have listened to a talk by a lady (she consults on murdered
cadavers) who can tell which season a body died in by analyzing the teeth!
Apparently there is a lot there.

~~~
Baeocystin
That I can believe, assuming a detailed analysis in a lab. But snap judging
from a distance? Cavities are more common in modern populations than before,
but hardly omnipresent. I do find it an amusing thought that apparently my
skeleton would be assigned a more distant past simply because I am filling
free. :D

~~~
varjag
It might be not that hard for someone who's literal job is examining skeletal
remains.

------
skc
Teeth are annoying. Mine are ok, but as I get older I start to notice their
deterioration.

I've always felt that if there was a part of our anatomy that we should think
of replacing completely with an artificial design, it's teeth. We already do
so now (at great expense), but it's literally one or two teeth replaced but
I'm thinking more along the lines of replacing every single one with something
stronger and more efficient for it's intended purpose.

~~~
mgiampapa
This used to be quite common. In Ireland for example back in the 1970s about
30% of the population had no natural teeth whatsoever. It used to be a common
thing for young women to have all their teeth pulled and replaced with
dentures before being married. It was seen as a desirable trait for en
eligible bride to be.

~~~
lettergram
Do you have a citation on that, I’m genuinely curious about the stats on that.

~~~
gwern
I don't know about Ireland, but I did recently look up the same statistics for
the UK: [https://www.gwern.net/Questions#physical-
beauty](https://www.gwern.net/Questions#physical-beauty) You can source it to
the UK national dental surveys (which wouldn't be surprising if they covered
Ireland as well), for example,
[https://archive.org/details/np70033823/page/n1](https://archive.org/details/np70033823/page/n1)

------
chansiky
If you haven't heard of orthotropics, it sounds a bit pseuodoscience-ey, but
it attempts to solve the crooked teeth issue by enlargening the jaw rather
than through braces. Thus far, I have to say that I think there's some truth
to exerting a little pressure to my maxilla/mandible, and if anything I can
breathe much better, which for me is a bigger win than getting straighter
teeth.

~~~
keithwhor
I think the real science here is Orthognathic Surgery [1].

I mean - I'm not an orthodontist or a surgeon, but once growth has stopped in
the palate as a teenager or young adult I'd be skeptical of claims around bone
growth or sculpting. Do you have any resources?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthognathic_surgery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthognathic_surgery)

~~~
Empact
I'm 34 and have personally experienced significant changes in my face thanks
to orthotropic pressure / mewing, and have the photos to prove it.

In addition, my bite has been stable without a retainer, whereas in the past
I've had braces twice.

My background is I had an undiagnosed mild tongue tie that I discovered a bit
over a year ago. I previously couldn’t press my tongue against the roof of my
mouth, which led to a tongue thrust on swallowing, which led to an open bite,
and my nasal breathing was very constrained.

~~~
QuackingJimbo
Care to link to a good methodology? I've been intrigued by this but there's a
lot of conflicting information out there

~~~
keithwhor
I would go and schedule an interview with an orthodontist instead of relying
on the internet, here. "Orthrotropics" appears to be a registered trademark,
which is, at the very least, a yellow flag.

A cursory search on details has broken this down to extractive / surgical vs.
non-extractive / non-surgical orthodontics, the latter of which has proven to
be effective before the palate and growth plates have fused -- in children.

Talk to somebody you trust with a degree in the field.

~~~
Empact
Orthodontists are incentivized against embracing orthotropics by their current
knowledge and business model. They prefer interventions they can charge for
(braces, slenderizing) over practices which can be adopted without
intervention. This may be why the field emerged from dentists rather than
orthodontists.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
upon his not understanding it” — Upton Sinclair

~~~
jnbiche
> This may be why the field emerged from dentists rather than orthodontists.

Orthodontists _are_ dentists.

~~~
baolongtrann
but dentists aren't always orthodontists. I think OP meant those that aren't.

------
social_quotient
Weston Price talked a lot about this

[https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/traditional-
diets...](https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/traditional-
diets/ancient-dietary-wisdom-for-tomorrows-children/)

~~~
gregwebs
I highly recommend reviewing Prices account of his studies in the field:
[http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html)

His conclusion was quite different: that the cause was a lack of nutrients in
the modern diet.

It is difficult to point to an example from his work that would clearly rule
out the theory of chewing in this article. Sugar and white flour that he
pointed to are both easy to chew and low in nutrients.

However, it is hard to think of lack of chewing as the primary factor in tooth
decay, and Price was focused first on decay rather than crowding. Price did
note a very strong relation between decay and crowding, and in that light it
is difficult to view lack of chewing as the primary force in either decay or
crowding.

------
puranjay
A dentist told me that eating too many soft foods as a kid is often the reason
for crooked and weak teeth, and that parents should feed their kids tougher
whole foods, like apples, meat, carrots, nuts, etc.

~~~
Scoundreller
Definitely true for muscle and jaw bone density.

------
headalgorithm
See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14895121](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14895121)
for some interesting past discussion

------
osdiab
What are the aesthetic consequences of having a more developed jaw from
chewing tough foods as you grow? Given how sensitive people are to cosmetics
when it comes to their teeth, would doing this to your child positively impact
their dental outcomes at the expense of conformance with modern norms of
physical attractiveness, given trends like how having a small face is seen as
attractive in Asia, or soft jawlines for women?

I pose this since it is likely many people would worry about aesthetics more
than actual dental health, and also because the social consequences of
being/not being conventionally attractive can have significant impact on
people's lives as well, so answering this sort of stuff is probably necessary
for actual behavior change.

~~~
shard
There is surgery in Asia to shave the jawbones to achieve a slimmer face, so
I'd expect that this kind of information would lead to an increase of giving
soft foods to children in order for them to have the slim face that matches
Asian beauty aesthetics. After all, orthodontics are much less expensive and
painful than jawbone reduction surgery...

Example surgery site: [https://www.vippskorea.com/face/facial-contouring-
surgery/ja...](https://www.vippskorea.com/face/facial-contouring-surgery/jaw-
reduction.html)

------
keithwhor
Isn't an alternative explanation just that well-aligned jaws and spaced teeth
are selected for via both (A) natural selection, esp. in predator species
(well-aligned jaw = more efficient prey capture, chewing, defense) and (B)
sexual selection as a holdover result of the first? As in, if ancestors relied
heavily on their jaws and, behaviourally, a selective preference for well-
aligned jaws and teeth helped favor offspring with the same, that selective
behavior itself would be selected for -- and could perhaps persist even after
"well-aligned jaws" were no longer a deciding factor in objective fitness?

So now there's significantly less actual natural selective pressure on well-
aligned jaws / teeth in human populations, meaning phenotypic variability in
human jaw / teeth is simply the result of genetic drift in a very large
population. The holdover, of course, being there's a market for and industry
around striving for perfect jaws and smiles in Hollywood because we have a
behavioural (but no longer naturally selective) predisposition towards that
signal of health and fitness.

... that's always sort of been my mental model of orthodontia as an industry,
at least.

~~~
drcode
I think a stronger argument, along similar lines, would be to observe that the
human skull underwent pretty drastic architectural changes in the last 200K
years because of the rapid growth in size of the brain cavity. And, since the
importance of teeth fell behind the importance of intelligence, not enough
selective pressure existed to "fix" the teeth given the other radical skull
changes.

~~~
ryanmarsh
In addition, let’s not forget the invention of cooked food. Soft cooked food
no longer requires a massive jaw with jaw muscle attached to the top of the
skull. Furthermore, the higher sugar content of the (post)agrarian diet
creates a healthy environment for bacteria.

“Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human” has a lot to say on this subject.

------
b3b0p
My dentist told me the reason I never needed braces, but all my friends did
was from wearing a mouth guard from all the ice hockey we played growing up.
They aren't perfectly straight, but except for 2 teeth, very close to it.
Every dentist I ever had was like, "Did you ever have braces?"

------
qwerty456127
Misaligned teeth are not the worst problem IMHO. The fact teeth of most of the
humans decay in less than a lifetime and this is considered normal feels much
more weird to me.

~~~
timbit42
The average human lifetime has more than doubled in the past few hundred
years.

~~~
djmips
But average is a useless statistic since many people who survived childhood
lived to a similar age as today.

------
ethn
I think the argument of orthotropics[0], bad tongue posture, is much more
convincing.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO8O2y1jxtU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO8O2y1jxtU)

------
2038AD
This article seems to be part of the recent wave of content about
orthotropics/mewing. I'm not sure why it seems to have picked up so much
recently.

~~~
guskel
Orthotropics and mewing was widely discussed on incel communities and now that
the prominence of these communities has grown, the topic is trickling to the
mainstream.

~~~
OldFatCactus
Why would they be popular with incels?

~~~
gubbrora
Why is it surprising that unattractive people try to become more attractive?

~~~
jnbiche
My impression of many incels is that their looks are not their problem.

~~~
gubbrora
It's not like their opinions are written on their foreheads. Hit on a woman on
tinder she won't know. Hit on a woman in a bar she won't know. Clearly the
rejection is for simply being unattractive.

~~~
cm2012
Personality is often very obvious through body language.

~~~
gubbrora
Oh certainly. Having a boring or timid or otherwise unattractive personality
can be a big hindrance.

------
gnulinux
My teeth aren't that bad but are bad. My upper teeth are nearly perfect but my
bottom middle 4 teeth are a little messed up. Most people can tell because I
expose my upper teeth while talking, but if I smile it's pretty obvious
they're not aesthetic... For years I've been ok with this, my parents never
showed me to an orthodontist. But recently I'm getting more and more self-
conscious about this every day. I searched a little about this and saw that,
being 22, fixing them at this age is insanely expensive (up to 10k). I wonder
if someone went through this treatment and can chime in whether this 10k is
worth it?

~~~
barry-cotter
I’m 35 and have had braces for over six months now. I kind of regret it
because it’s purely cosmetic and a massive pain in the behind. I also cheaped
out and got train tracks instead of Invisalign. Don’t do that.

Seriously consider medical tourism. I live in China so total cost is going to
be just under $3,000. You might be able to go to Mexico or Thailand every two
months for your teeth cheaper than getting it done locally. If you get crowns
(veneers?) on your bottom incisors you can definitely get that done cheaper in
Thailand than the US, including flights and a two week holiday.

~~~
gnulinux
Ah that makes sense! Will definitely look into medical tourism to Mexico.
Thanks.

------
millettjon
Also see Weston Price's research from traveling around the world.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_Price](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_Price)

------
sashavingardt2
You ever wonder when they show a tribe from G-d knows where that had barely
any contact with our civilization, how come they've got perfect white teeth
and they've got them all? Nothing crooked, nothing missing.

~~~
forgotmypw3
I think a big part of it is that once you have even a minor cavity, eating
anything sweet hurts like hell, so people just don't eat sweet stuff when
they're older and have lost their baby teeth.

~~~
war1025
The feeling of a candy bar getting just right into the cracks of your molars
is a great motivator for avoiding such things.

------
senectus1
Interesting.

I was born without "Wisdom teeth", which my Dentist claims is widely accepted
as human evolution. (apparently the number of people born without them is
growing)

But I also have a bad, and getting worse "popping jaw" issue. where my jaw
pops (loud enough to make my ear ring for a while after) or locks up when
under too much pressure or opened too wide.

Her advice is to eat soft food.... which seems to go against what TFA suggests
we should be doing.

~~~
krackers
> apparently the number of people born without them is growing

I don't see what the selective pressure for this would be, since people with
wisdom teeth just have surgery to remove them, so there's no real difference
in terms of reproductive fitness right?

~~~
soonoutoftime
> people with wisdom teeth just have surgery to remove them

I think this is mainly a US and Australian thing:
[https://www.sciencealert.com/no-you-probably-don-t-need-
to-g...](https://www.sciencealert.com/no-you-probably-don-t-need-to-get-your-
wisdom-teeth-removed-ever)

In Australia it's particularly bad. During a checkup my dentist casually
mentioned how he'd be removing mine (at a later date), even though he could
provide no reason for doing so. The cheeky bugger just assumed I wouldn't ask
why!

Since then my trust in dentists has been further eroded by this Cochrane
review [https://www.cochrane.org/CD004625/ORAL_routine-scale-and-
pol...](https://www.cochrane.org/CD004625/ORAL_routine-scale-and-polish-
periodontal-health-adults) that concludes with:

 _Authors ' conclusions: For adults without severe periodontitis who regularly
access routine dental care, routine scale and polish treatment makes little or
no difference to gingivitis, probing depths and oral health-related quality of
life over two to three years follow-up when compared with no scheduled scale
and polish treatments (high-certainty evidence). There may also be little or
no difference in plaque levels over two years (low-certainty evidence).
Routine scaling and polishing reduces calculus levels compared with no routine
scaling and polishing, with six-monthly treatments reducing calculus more than
12-monthly treatments over two to three years follow-up (high-certainty
evidence), although the clinical importance of these small reductions is
uncertain. Available evidence on the costs of the treatments is uncertain. The
studies did not assess adverse effects (of the scale and polish treatment)._

I know it's a bit of a joke that HN commentators assume they know more than
the experts, so just to be clear: I consider the experts here to be the study
authors.

------
forgotmypw3
In addition to all the other arguments here (more chewing for bigger jaw
development), I have another theory about tooth decay.

I think that pre-civilization humans did not eat much sweets past adolescence.
This is because, as soon as a minor cavity starts developing, it hurts like
hell to put anything sweet in your mouth. Sweet stuff was for children and
adolescents, then we just stopped eating it.

~~~
SamReidHughes
I never had pain putting sweet stuff in my mouth when I had cavities.

~~~
forgotmypw3
I think that many toothpastes make our teeth less sensitive. I think it is
supposed to reduce pain, but it can backfire...

------
louprado
This article implies that if you can't change your diet then you could achieve
similar results with chewing exercises. The comments below mention _mewing_ ,
but I suspect greater force would be better. Googling "chew toys for adults"
gave interesting results but they are mainly used for anxiety and ADHD.
Curious if anyone knows of a chew appliance for children or adults that would
address the issues mentioned in the article.

------
etxm
Crooked teeth “run in my family” but mine are pretty straight.

I always attributed it to my obsession with ripping my teeth out as a kid.
Weird, I know. I figured that it gave my teeth room to grow.

After reading this I’m curious if it was due to my parents doing baby-led
weaning with me. They started it pretty young and always fed me whatever they
were eating.

------
gregw2
Human teeth development changed sometime during the industrial revolution when
women were expected to work outside the home and breastfeeding norms were
shortened from 3-4 years to more like 1 year. Or that's at least one
interesting hypothesis from someone looking at old skulls.

~~~
stochastic_monk
Do you have a reference for this school of thought?

------
netheril96
As always, prevention is more important than treatment. Teeth problems can
cause problems with mouth (lips), mandible and even facial structures. Braces
can fix teeth if done properly, but it can hardly fix these secondary issues,
especially for adults.

------
uvu
Ok, we know it's messed up. But, the question is how can we do better?

------
DantesKite
My hypothesis is that all the sugar from modern diets creates an environment
where bacteria can grow and mess with the alignment of your teeth.

See the British and how the introduction of sugar into their tea created so
many crooked sets of teeth.

------
uvu
Yeah, wisdom teeth are so annoying!

------
rutabega
Excess protein intake (vast majority of diets, not exclusive to keto or paleo,
etc.)

~~~
chrisco255
The article claimed that modern diets don't put enough strain on the jaw in
childhood, so the jaw doesn't grow as much and there's more crowding. Has
nothing to do with protein intake.

~~~
GordonS
I suppose meat, as a protein source, is typically l chewier that fruit or veg.

~~~
Pharmakon
Meat is easy on teeth, what traditionally wore down teeth in human history
were rough unprocessed grains, tough vegetable fibers, nuts, and the use of
teeth as tools (working plant fibers for example). Of course the inclusion of
sand or grit in food also contributed. People also chewed a lot of bone in
history, either whole or as with Aboriginal Australians, as a mash of whole
animals.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2014.353.pdf?origin=p...](https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2014.353.pdf?origin=ppub)

------
drcross
>I remember asking my wife not to cut our daughters’ meat into such small
pieces when they were young. “Let them chew,” I begged. She replied that she’d
rather pay for braces than have them choke. I lost that argument.

If a distinguished professor in dental antropology can't stand up for himself
for his daughters welfare in his field of study he's lost a lot of respect
from me.

~~~
dmos62
I see what you're saying, but standing up for something and winning the
argument is not the same thing, and he only said that he lost the argument.

A scenario where one's wife doesn't believe in one's own scientific findings
is another matter, which might ellicit thoughts about "standing up for
yourself". Maybe that's what you were reacting to.

