Are there bugs in your teeth? In fact, this substance is working.

Almost everyone has heard of "worm tooth", and doctors are often asked when accepting patients: am I a worm tooth? Doctors often struggle when answering this question. Why? Let's look at these questions first:

"Worm tooth" is because there are worms in your mouth, and your teeth are eaten by worms?

What people call "worm teeth" is medically called "dental caries". Let's look at the word "caries" first. On the left stands for "tooth", and on the right the word "jade" stands for the pictogram of insects, indicating that there are insects in the teeth. Therefore, people even smoke "tooth worms", but is this effective? The answer is no, first of all, what we call "worm teeth" is not because there are worms in the teeth, but because the bacteria in our mouth use food to produce acidic substances. This acidic substance corrodes teeth, so it is unscientific to treat "worm teeth" by "expelling insects".

Why is eating sugar bad for teeth?

This should start with the types of bacteria in our mouth. The bacteria most likely to cause "dental caries" are called Streptococcus mutans. This kind of bacteria is the easiest to use sugar, especially sucrose, to produce acidic substances, so eating too much sugar, especially sucrose, and not cleaning the food left in the mouth in time, is easy to be used by bacteria to produce acidic substances. In the long run, our teeth will be corroded by acid.

Why are our teeth corroded by acid?

We know that the surface layer of teeth is enamel, which is the most calcified tissue in human body. That is to say, 95% to 97% of enamel is inorganic, mainly calcium and scale, while acidic substances will cause decalcification of enamel, tissue disintegration and tooth cavities.

What should I do if I have cavities?

Because of the long-term wear and non-regeneration of tooth surface tissue, when cavities appear, they can only be repaired by "filling teeth" Filling teeth in time is an important means to preserve teeth. Clinically, it is often seen that many patients wait until their cavities feel pain before coming to the hospital for treatment, which is very undesirable. Because the tooth surface is hard enamel, the lower part is low calcified dentin, and there is a cavity in the middle to accommodate blood vessels and nerves, which is called "pulp cavity". Once the blood vessels and nerves in the medullary cavity are infected, there will be severe pain, so we have to take "nerve removal treatment", which is called "root canal treatment" clinically. Dental cavities that are not filled in time are more likely to stay and block food residues, thus accelerating tooth decay and rapidly infecting the pulp cavity. Because the tooth nerve is wrapped by hard tooth tissue, once infected, the pain is very intense. As people say, "toothache is not a disease, it hurts like hell." Therefore, healthy eating habits, oral hygiene, timely treatment of dental caries and regular check-up can obtain complete, healthy and beautiful teeth.

Authors: Deng Lei, attending physician of the Department of Stomatology, the Fourth Hospital of Changsha.

This article is scientifically checked by Chen Jinwu, director and deputy director of the Department of Stomatology of Shenzhen Fourth People's Hospital.