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?

My grandparents (late 80s and 90) all have/had full dentures and my mum and aunt (late 50s/early 60s) both have top set dentures and have had since their 20s!

In contrast, me, my DH and my cousin do not have a single filling between us. My brother has one or two and so does my other cousin. We're all late 30s.

It definitely seems to be an older person thing, we must have much better dental care now.

Although currently the biggest cause of children under 8 being anaesthetised is tooth removal so....

Feeling so angry/sad that so many of us had our perfect teeth trashed by dentists filling for cash in 70s and 80s... would love to know if this has ever been proven or is a known thing. I have an Australian friend of same age (50) with only one filling. Identical childhood (apart from weather) and no special anything although I think fluoride might have been added to water sooner but certainly she had lots of sweets squash and ice lollies as a child. I'm glad I moved away and got good dentistry because my dps stayed with Mr dodgy dentist for another 15 years and their teeth are terrible in old age. Constant problems with old fillings and crowns.
My dc have no fillings and are teens.
This type of thing will be on the way back (unnescessary medical procedures of all kinds) when NHS privatised fully so watch out!!

I seemed to have a lot of fillings, too, as a child, despite having a very strict mother, who wouldn't let us drink masses of squash or eat sweets between meals on a daily basis, took us to regular check-ups and made us brush our teeth properly.

This was back in the early seventies. I Feel angry, too, that I have lumps of metal in my teeth that probably didn't need to be there and have needed replacing. I expect a lot of these drill-happy dentists have now died or else I wonder whether they'd be facing some kind of class action?

MrsMoastyToasty, funnily enough, I grew up in West Central Scotland in what is considered a very deprived area. That probably contributed to all the fillings. Every one of my back teeth had a filling by the time I was 15. Everyone else was exactly the same. It's no wonder so many folk don't like the dentist.

Ffs I have dentures and I'm not old!
I also looked after my teeth very well. It's called medical conditions. I hate posts like this, why so judgmental? Not everyone who has dentures didn't bother to look after their teeth.

I did have amalgam fillings as a teenager, but when they needed replaced it was in composite. I also have some extra composite fillings since. You would think I have all my natural teeth.

Feeling so angry/sad that so many of us had our perfect teeth trashed by dentists filling for cash in 70s and 80s
It was especially common for dentists to do unnecessary fillings on the baby teeth of kids aged 5-10. I guess they figured they weren’t doing any permanent harm because those teeth would fall out anyway. Poor kids suffered for nothing though.

I am 80 and I was discussing this topic the other day with a friend of mine. It is true that no one seemed bothered when a extraction was needed. Dental care wasn’t discussed when I was a child and I remember asking my mother why she allowed me to eat so many sweets. My grandparents gave us their rations and my mother exchanged our old clothes for sweet rations. There was no flossing etc.My mother’s answer was “we were fighting for our lives so didn’t worry about teeth”. The dentist came to school and looked into our mouths and we were sent home with an appointment to have an extraction at his surgery which was under gas. That awful smell! Later on I had fillings some in my front teeth until as an adult I had these capped under the NHS. Then a bridge made. Later a plate to give me some back teeth. Oh! How I envy the care given to later generations. It is true I just went for extractions to get rid of pain.

It was often a 21 st birthday present or a present on marriage, dentistry was expensive, dentures ensured an even smile and no future bills.

I didn't have a filling until I was 13, within about 12 months I had a mouth full but not the tooth that hurt, I actually got a mirror and looked, half the tooth was yellow and I could actually see the hole.

I went to a different dentist then and have had approximately 3 fillings since. I later worked with someone who had ben tot he same dentist who had filled all my teeth, apparently the dentist who owned the practice had contacted her uni to check her qualifications as she was so bad.

My carer is 40 nd has a denture, he knocked his teeth out twice as a child so had veneers but in his 30's that cracked and he needed a denture. Apart from that and having his wisdom teeth removed he has 1 filling.

Strangely my brother's teeth are crumbling, we obviously had the same childhood but as adults I tend to drink water and he tends to drink coke and eat biscuits so maybe that's why.

Gum disease. It doesn't have much to do with sugar but more about overall hygiene and some genetic factors too. Lack of good toothbrushes as well. Electric ones are much better than manual ones but those only really became mainstream 10-20 years ago.

DH is a dentist and often sees patients in their late 20s/30s with full or partial dentures because they've lost so many teeth. It can happen surprisingly quickly over a few years if you simply stop brushing your teeth or don't do it thoroughly enough. Sadly a lot of those are patients from troubled backgrounds or with MH/addiction issues. Obviously when everything in your life goes wrong, brushing your teeth is one of the first things that goes out the window.

As a rule, teeth need to be cleaned thoroughly for 2mins with an electric toothbrush every day. Follow with interdental brushes and mouthwash to get rid of all trapped food & bacteria. Brushing twice a day isn't necessarily better if both times are shorter or with a hand held brush. A deep clean with a dental hygienist every 6-12 months is also recommended. This way, you can easily go without gum disease and cavities for decades (bar rare genetic disorders that affect oral health).

@Pumpkinstace

Young women often had their teeth removed and a full set of dentures as a wedding present or similar.

My nana had hers for her 21st birthday.

It was to prevent painful decay and costly treatment later in life.

It was similar to people getting veneers today. Just cosmetic.

I don’t know whether to laugh 😂 or cry at what they did ha I then to teeth 😢

back then to teeth

@Fordian

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

You might want to have a think about the specific decades the people you are talking about lived in.

Basically, the answer is blindingly obvious, you just need a little bit of awareness to understand it!

Start with - I am 56. In my lifetime

Kevlar was invented
Heart bypass surgery was first performed
A man walked on the moon
Arpanet (birth of internet) was linked
Electronic ignition in cars was invented
MRIs were invented
Computers were made smaller than houses
PCs were invented
We went from Sony Walkmamn, Discman, iPod to streaming on that other thing -
Mobile phones were invented and shrank from briefcase sized to being built into a wrist watch
Bill Gates, Microsoft ruled the world
Space Station
Play sStation
Blue Tooth
The Human Genome Project
Google Maps
Siri
Mars landing
3-d printing
Tesla

And dentists have gone from extraction being the main way of keeeping your mouth pain free to whitening and veneers being 'necessary'.

Fluoride in water.
Ddad grew up in the years of the depression and shortly after, with a father who had been gassed in WWI and was unable to work. Ddad and his 4 brothers shared a toothbrush and rarely encountered toothpaste. When we were growing up the only thing my dad was tyrannical about was tooth brushing!

DGran had her teeth removed in the early thirties because of gum disease.

IMO, it was the start of the NHS and someone had the brainwave of giving everyone dentures at the first sign of decay to save problems for the NHS further down the line.

I have absolutely tons of fillings (under 40) but mainly white not silver. My NHS dentist was close to retirement during my childhood and I think he was of the drill/fill school.

My mum is in her 60s and fully expects to lose her teeth and need dentures at some point. She sees it as a natural process of ageing! I think that attitude is changing and people want/expect to keep their natural teeth.

I must admit my gum hygiene is not where it ought to be and I think this happens when I skip flossing for a while. Despite knowing how important it is (Brushing without flossing is like showering with your legs and arms clamped together and therefore totally neglecting to wash your armpits or crotch) I can't seem to shift the mindset that it's something unusually extra that you do on top rather than standard daily hygiene.

@RampantIvy

It's interesting, and rather ageist that all the younger posters think that good NHS dental care wasn't available to people in their 60s .

Both of my parents had a full set of dentures, but they were born in 1909 and 1918, and people of that generation generally did have dentures.

Yes both my dgps were of this generation and my dh said the 21 gift thing was the norm and his dgps also had false teeth

Teeth - Routinely taken out for soldiers going to WW1/2

My df had a bridge and I remember it as a child but this was replaced with a crown

All of it's time

Wow this is fascinating!

21st birthday present of getting dentures. 😱

Although a PP pointed out it is similar to people getting veneers now. Just a fashion.

Some veneers are so awful. I can't imagine why celebrities have them so white and so protruding.

@Orangejuicemarathoner

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

This. My grandparents and older great aunts all had their teeth removed for this reason.

I think that's why people looked so old in some ways as their faces sagged as the natural teeth gave their face more structure

I think it's the Mormons or church of JCLDS still regularly get all their teeth pulled and replaced with dentures so they don't have to pay for dental care.

Extreme but money has a lot to do with it.

Fluoride went into toothpaste in the 70s and made a dramatic difference to children's teeth from then, and to adults getting less new decay.

Fluoride isn't in the water in the majority of the country, that would be a really good thing

Dental materials have improved-white fillings are sealed to the teeth so fillings can be smaller, silver fillings are bigger. They do last though!

Maybe people are more aware of their teeth and try to look after them more?

The thought of it is horrifying. I can't imagine it being a normal thing at all!

My nan's teeth fell out when she was pregnant with my dad due to childhood and pregnancy malnutrition.

In those days dentures were offered as routine rather than replacing teeth.

A lot of my family lost teeth due to smoking (gum disease) and alcoholism (passing out with teeth coated in sugary booze)

@Orangejuicemarathoner

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

Quite right. My DH is 73 and he had all his teeth out when he was 21. It was very common then, it was to save the person having costly dental problems later in life.