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Thumbnail of What if you didn’t brush your teeth for a year? - Justin Merritt

What if you didn’t brush your teeth for a year? - Justin Merritt

IntermediateAmerican accentAnimated lesson5 min

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Transcript: 42 sentences

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  1. 0:07 10 out of 10 dentists agree that you should brush twice and floss once every day.
  2. 0:13 But what if you just...
  3. 0:15 didn’t?
  4. 0:15 What would happen if you stopped doing any oral hygiene?
  5. 0:19 And how long would it take for your mouth to get messy?
  6. 0:22 Let’s start with the last day you do brush and floss.
  7. 0:26 This routine doesn't actually clean your mouth completely.
  8. 0:29 Rather, you’re maintaining a delicate balance between hundreds of microbial species.
  9. 0:35 At any given time, most of these microorganisms fit into one of two groups: commensals and pathobionts.
  10. 0:43 High quantities of commensals are good for oral health.
  11. 0:46 They minimize inflammation, protect our mouths from harmful foreign microbes, and produce ammonia, which neutralizes tooth-decaying acids.
  12. 0:56 Meanwhile, an abundance of pathobionts is bad for oral health.
  13. 1:01 Sugar-eating varieties produce acid that damages the mouths’ tissues, and meat-eating varieties thrive on the debris inflammation creates.
  14. 1:11 Thorough brushing and flossing remove members of both groups, but commensals can proliferate faster, so they tend to bounce back quicker.
  15. 1:21 This means daily oral hygiene keeps your commensal population higher than your pathobiont population.
  16. 1:27 Most oral disease is the result of this balance being disrupted, and that happens pretty quickly once you stop brushing and flossing.
  17. 1:37 For the first 72 hours, the most notable side effect is supremely bad breath.
  18. 1:42 But by day four, hordes of pathobionts have coated most of your teeth in a sticky film called dental plaque.
  19. 1:49 Over the following days, the plaque triggers an immune response that causes your gums to bleed and inflame - an uncomfortable condition known as gingivitis.
  20. 2:00 After a month, your booming pathobiont population may be releasing enough acid byproducts to break down enamel and begin causing cavities.
  21. 2:12 But the bigger problem is that your pathobionts far outnumber your commensals.
  22. 2:17 Since both microbe communities grow at an exponential rate, even if you started brushing again, pathobionts would always have a numerical advantage.
  23. 2:26 Researchers are investigating ways to add commensals back into the microbiome, but currently there’s no way to remodel a mouth that’s been overcome by pathobionts.
  24. 2:38 In this new world order, pathobionts divide and conquer.
  25. 2:42 Some pump out acids that dissolve the minerals in your teeth and drive dental decay, making them sensitive to pressure and temperature.
  26. 2:52 Others lead the gums to swell and recede, creating gaps that get colonized by yet more plaque.
  27. 2:59 Over the following months, this cycle breaks down the gum’s soft tissues, advancing your gingivitis into first stage periodontitis - a painful infection of the gums.
  28. 3:11 This loose gum tissue feeds the meat-eating pathobionts, perpetuating their cycle of destruction.
  29. 3:18 But the food you add to this environment also has a huge impact.
  30. 3:22 The more sugar a diet contains, the more acid-producing pathobionts it supports - all of which release destructive waste that further inhibits the growth of commensals.
  31. 3:34 After roughly a year without brushing, your gums have been inflamed so long that the body’s immune response starts impacting the underlying bone.
  32. 3:44 This process, called alveolar bone resorption, makes the jawbone recede and weakens the scaffolding holding your teeth, leaving them to wobble and fall out.
  33. 3:55 This kind of tooth and bone damage is permanent, but tooth loss isn't the end of this unhygienic journey.
  34. 4:02 In this advanced stage of periodontitis, areas of injured tissue have formed below the gum line that give pathobionts access to your bloodstream.
  35. 4:13 From here, these bacteria can worsen health conditions throughout the body, including cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, diabetes, and arthritis.
  36. 4:23 In some cases, they can even exacerbate neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and accelerate the growth of malignant tumors.
  37. 4:32 Thankfully, there’s a simple way to avoid this grim outcome.
  38. 4:36 If you picked up these tools 2 or 3 weeks into our unhygienic experiment, you could have fully reversed the early stages of gingivitis and tooth decay
  39. 4:46 and avoided all the permanent damage that followed.
  40. 4:50 Better yet, brushing with even coverage for two minutes at a time will help your teeth make the most of your toothpaste’s fluoride,
  41. 4:57 which replaces some of your exposed enamel with acid-resistant fluorine atoms.
  42. 5:03 So remember, brushing for two minutes twice a day will keep the pathobionts at bay.

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