Dentures. Why do so many olde people have dentures?

[Fordian]

It has occurred to me a couple of times.

I work in health care and see The Ages of Dentition 😊

No one under 40 has a filling. Everyone from 40-70 has a face like a Cornish tin mine. Everyone older has dentures.

Why?

Please, I'm not looking for any 'Well, I'm 80 with a full set of natural teeth'- I'm generalising 😂

But given that the older folk didn't encounter a grain of sugar on their entire youth (if you were to believe my mother, RIP, b. 1933)... why?

What changed? What factors came into play?

Poor dental care.

Less knowledge, less access to dentists for preventative treatments and less available treatments.

My dad is 85 and has no teeth. He was born in 1936, toothpaste was not high on the agenda during the war. My mum is 80, just five years younger, and has a full set.

My nan who is 84, fell off a wall over a iron spike that was left after the war and knocked all her front teeth out at around the age of 12. She had a full set of dentures at 21 before she got married.

Or milk and calcium based food

But what knowledge? What was lacking? Depending on whether it's sugar that's the chief culprit in dental decay?

Fluoride?

My parents in their 70s have most.ofntbeir own teet but their parents had dentures as long as I knew them (from when they were in their 50s)

I believe it used to be a thing to have teeth removed to avoid costly dental work in future.

Dgf was in the army in the war and it was standard practice to take teeth out

In the Cazalet chronicles there is an account of a wealthy character - Villy having her teeth removed

@JustLyra

Poor dental care.

Less knowledge, less access to dentists for preventative treatments and less available treatments.

But my DSs have had no 'preventative dental care' - they just went to the dentist for an inspection every so often.

In my dad's case, who is in his 60s with false teeth since he was in his 20s his dentist told him his all needed to come out and he needed false ones, years later a different dentist told him that was common but bad practise because dentists got paid per tooth when they removed them and his teeth were likely fine. Not sure how true this was.

Yes, fluoridation of tap water. Plus better dental care, and better nutrition in terms of adding vitamins and minerals to everyday cheap foodstuffs like bread, cereal and milk so that even people with poor diets are better nourished than their counterparts decades ago.

@Fordian

But what knowledge? What was lacking? Depending on whether it's sugar that's the chief culprit in dental decay?

Sugar didn’t harm my teeth at all. Not a filling and I was raised from age 1 on sugary squash and sweet tea in bottles 😱 then tons of sweets and not much proper brushing.

Started seeing a dentist aged 16 and my teeth luckily were perfect. No issues went every 6 months.

Then in my late 30s I got pregnant and had HG. My teeth literally got the life sucked out of them from the inside I think !! I was getting drained of everything to ensure the baby got what they needed plus being sick rotted them from the outside. Absolutely horrific . 2 just cracked and fell out the rest are ruined

In my parents generation "full dental clearance" was often something a family banded together to provide for a 21st birthday present - guarantee of no further dental pain or need of dental treatment ever again in your life

People don’t only lose their teeth to decay, it’s often gum disease. Which is caused by lots of factors but a big one is smoking (which also increases decay). Flouride fortification in water/ toothpaste/ supplements has improved dental health hugely
Dentists also used to be very drill happy, and many people had fillings which wouldn’t have been done today. Once a tooth is filled it’s weaker

I’m 55 and fluoride wasn’t put into all the drinking water- I had to give my daughter fluoride added to her drinks in 1980’s . We weren’t really educated about dental health either and the big standard thing to do was drill and fill!
Once my youngest DD started school in 2000’s the dentist would come round to do a talk about the importance of cleaning teeth properly.
As for the ‘there was no sugar comment’
That only applied to ore and post war-dugar was aplenty in the 70’s so your average 50+ adult grew up with sweets puddings etc -plenty of sugar
And you were rewarded by the dentist with a lollipop if you sat and behaved !

I'm mid fifties and have tons of fillings as does almost everyone my age that I know.

We didn't really have access to dentists. You only went when there was something wrong with your teeth. No such thing as regular check ups. Sugary drinks were given freely. I remember getting some kind of national orange juice and rosehip syrup from the clinic which we had to drink. I think that attitudes were just different then, tbh, and fillings etc were just an accepted part of life.

I'm under forty and I have fillings in my back molars from grinding them away to nothing in my late teens/early twenties.

I don't know many people my age without a filling actually but there is no fluoridation around here either.

NHS dentistry didn’t start start until 1948 prior to that all dentistry was private. Many people had poor dental health as a result of diet and oral hygiene. Dental anaesthetic was poor and patients preferred the instant fix of extraction. Probably cheaper when money was short.
Fluoridated toothpaste didn’t exist until 70s, it has probably made the biggest impact on dental health in modern times. The introduction of sugar back in the 16th century made the biggest impact in history.
NHS dentistry has made a massive impact on our dental health something that has never really been championed.

@Fordian

Fluoride?

Introduction of fluoride toothpaste doesn't fit your timeline. its been around post war, and was really the only version available by the 1970s.

And as you're telling those of us in our 50s that we are are all blighted by our bad teeth, and we can In turn tell you that we had the toothpaste. So no can't be that.

According to my mother (born 1955), NHS dentists in her day were paid by the filling, so she had a lot of unnecessary dental work, removal of teeth and putting in fillings when they weren't necessary, which I guess over time would weaken teeth.

Also, she grew up very poor and (again, according to her) in order to look wealthier, children needed to look "plump" , so her mother would lace her cereals with sugar, which I can't imagine was good for the teeth.

I"m early 40s and have far more fillings than I should. I think my parents had the misguided assumption that at 9 years old I would look after my own teeth

Don’t forget that before 1948 there was no NHS so many people could hardly afford the doctor never mind the dentist.

No such thing as regular check ups

Yes there was. I'm older than you and NHS check ups were routinely available

Now, if your parents chose not to take you, no-one was going to force them (same as now). But the service was available (and well used and popular, as were all the newish NHS services)

Past a certain age it’s poor gums that lose you teeth and people didn’t understand how to keep gums healthy. Nobody flossed when I was a child.

Poor dental care post war and well into the 1960’s

Little or no Orthodontic work for teenagers in the 1950’s / 1960’s

No fluoride routinely added to water and little fluoride in toothpaste until well into the late 1960’s / early 1970’s

An assumption of tooth removal rather than attempted repair and poor quality fillings where repair was attempted, well into the 1970’s

I went for checkups never had any problems. Had fillings and extractions I was sure they weren’t necessary. They must have earned more money.