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?

I am 57 and certainly had regular checkups on the nhs. Dentists came into schools too.

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

Sorry, but that was down to bad parenting I'm afraid. I'm 62, and my sister and I had regular dental check ups when we were children (1960s and 1970s).

OP- Surely this can't be that hard to work out!

Like advances in medicine, nutrition, scientific advances, medical research and peoples general knowledge- dental care has improved over the years.

My grandfather apparently had very crooked front teeth. Age 20, he was advised by the dentist to have the entire top row pulled out, and replaced with lovely, straight dentures!

I don't know what orthodontics were even available during and between the wars years. Many men were fighting wars, metal was in short supply, so I assume dental health/braces was low on the priority list compared the quick fix of pulling teeth!

No one under 40 has a filling ??

A 21st birthday treat for those in working class backgrounds was to often have all your teeth removed and have dentures also cheaper before nhs arrived as my Nan told me once!

The amount of flouride in toothpaste has increased

My mom is 75 and said she didn't brush her teeth for the first 10 years of her life!
I don't know why - they were poor, parents both working all hours, parents had poor teeth.. amazingly, my mother has all her teeth and they are very strong!

My FIL, 83, has dentures. I saw photos of him in his 20s with only a few teeth left. He jokes that teeth were designed to fall out, so pull them out

Dentists were drill happy because dental decay was much more aggressive before fluoride and prevention.
I personally think the biggest affect was from advertising. Back in the 70s personal hygiene was targeted by the big pharmaceutical companies. Focusing on toothpaste and personal hygiene products we were brainwashed into cleanliness. Every other advert was for soap, deodorant or toothpaste.

Fluoride wasn’t added to the water supply until the 60s. Fluoride toothpaste wasn’t around until the 70s. Older relatives who were around in the 40s and 50s have told me about not having toothbrushes and not brushing their teeth when they were young, or brushing with substances such as soot. Smoking was more common and pregnant women often had their teeth ruined because there weren’t vitamin supplements or stuff to protect your teeth if you kept puking. I was a kid in the 80s and was only encouraged to brush once per day, full sugar drinks were common as was sugar in tea.

very few school children have the regular check ups that we used to have. It is not uncommon, when speaking to a class of teenagers to find that none of them have ever seen a dentist in their lives.

I suspect their teeth are all the better for it.

Sadly the benefits are now disappearing. The advent of fast foods and lack of good nutrition education has resulted in an increase year for n year in child decsy

The NHS happened. Before 1948 , ordinary people had no free dental dental care, free medical care, free maternity care etc.

I thought someone working in health care would know that

Nearly 50. Not had a single filing since teen years. Had about 10 before then.Turned out our family dentist was an alcoholic and got struck off (he was terrible and his practice shabby and he smelled of stale fags and booze- but hey it was 70s/80s). He was the main dentist in our small town. He got paid per filling. Sometimes he took out filings and redid them.
My sister has even worse teeth and spent a fortune fixing his deliberate mistakes. Nothing to be done though. He's very likely long dead. He was ancient then and how can we prove it. Even DPs have admitted it was a mistake going there
So yes that, and no fluoride and toothpaste.poverty poor diets, smoking etc.

I'm in my late forties, and I think dentists were a lot keener on giving fillings until the late 90s/early 00s, and some dentists would give unnecessary fillings. Nothing about my lifestyle has become more tooth-friendly, but I used to get a filling every couple of years and then nothing for the past 20 years.

@TrainforSpeed

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.

Yes it did used to be a thing.

DGF had all his teeth removed. It apparently left him very self conscious and he regretted it but it was actually encouraged at the time!

My parents in their 80's have a mixture of their own teeth and dentures.

I know they cleaned their teeth but toothpaste and oral hygiene wasn't the same back then as it is now.

I fall into your 'tin mine' section.
I do have a few fillings. I also only have 20 natural teeth. (I do have partial dentures as well as the 20).
Reasons for this are a combination of ; never having grown any wisdom teeth in the first place, my asd dc knocked some of my teeth out during a meltdown, the others the dentist said didnt develop as well as they should have done and I have had them out at various times.

My grandparents didnt have great teeth either and the dentist said my issue is probably hereditary.

My Nan had her teeth out for her 21st.

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

Have to agree with other posters that this isn’t true. I went every six months and saw the dentist in school as well. I did suffer from 70s dentistry where fillings and extractions were extremely common and I know that at least one of my fillings wasn’t needed. I also saw an orthodontist, had fluoride painted on my teeth and had a dental splint while at school.

I still have all my teeth, complete with fillings as does DH. My mum who is well into her 80s has only lost one.

Menopause causes receding gums and gingitivis. It can mean going from perfect teeth at 40 to needing implants.

But in reality lets be honest. The people saying they had ‘perfect’ teeth at 40 probably didn’t; they just didn’t go to the dentist.

I also had an aunt who used to put neat bleach on her teeth in the 1960s. It screwed up her gums and she lost teeth.

I work with older people - the majority are in their 80's/90's. An awful lot of them had all their teeth out and dentures fitted as a 21st birthday present, as PP's have said.

@DaisyWaldron glad it wasn't just me!

From memory there was an NHS practice of drill and fill growing up. Every time I went as a child, and I do remember regular check ups, there was usually at least one filling. My DM said her bad teeth were due to her pregnancies mainly, and probably as she was born in the 1920's due to poverty. DF was born in eastern Europe and had perfect teeth with almost no fillings until he died. He said that was down to almost no sugar or processed food growing up.

*AuntieStella", no one I knew growing up went to the dentist. It just wasn't something you did. That may be because of where I grew up, but it's how it was. Pair that with lots of sugar and it's easy to see why everyone that I gre up with has awful teeth.

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

I hear you! My 2nd DC late 30s literally took my teeth! My teeth went from Hollywood smile to smoking 40 a day and eating licorice. I hate my teeth now and they used to be my best feature.

I'm 50 and have no upper right teeth (no dentures tho)