Mini Mandible

I have endured a life of dental infirmity. There's not a tooth in my head that has escaped the attention of various dentists, due to decay or many other problems. Had I been born a few decades earlier, the majority of my current teeth would have been replaced by something artificial: so-called false teeth. Most elders in my family had them. I remember my grandfather spooking me as a young kid by bulging out his cheeks and then seemingly regurgitating a whole mouthful of dentures at me.

My dental dilemmas have been due to three unfortunate circumstances: bad genes, bad food, and bad birth timing. My genes may have endowed me with good resistance to many common diseases, but they have led to innumerable teeth fillings, gum infections, and those incredibly costly devises: dental bridges. My generation—adolescence in the 1950s—had far too much access to sugar and its insidious invasion of tooth enamel. Finally, my timing was bad—my kids benefited from fluoride in their drinking water, something not yet available in my youth. Although they inherited my defective dental genes, their cavities have been few.

There is another problem with my mouth (although some people would say it's not just a dental issue): my lower front teeth are as crooked as a drunk's path laid down, as he wanders from a bar after midnight, struggling to find his way home. Those bottom teeth are staggered and overlapped, as each of them contends for a paucity of space. To aggravate the situation, my upper row of front teeth do not squarely meet the lower jaw's row, but hangs over them, like an ivory awning. My dental problems have been expensive and at times painful, but I know I could have had far more troublesome health concerns, so I live with it.

It can help to discover the cause of chronic health problems—if only to understand them, even though you can do little to change the situation. An example that helps me to understand my dental predicaments was recently finding out about the results of research that has examined the cause of some of my dental struggles.

Researchers at the University of Arkansas write about the amazing capabilities of our teeth. (Even though I have my problems with them, it helps to be reminded of how well they do their job.) They point out that, while our teeth do so well at breaking up food, we appear to have too many of them—as if they are too big for our mouth. Our teeth are overly crowded and uneven, and we often get impacted wisdom teeth. Overbites are common. (That's me!)

What's going on? It's not that our teeth are too big, the researchers say, but that our jaw is too small. They point out that, while the size and shape of our teeth are genetically programmed by evolution (and thus cannot change, as we age), our jaw can respond to environmental conditions and grow. The more we chew tough food, the greater the strain on our jawbone, which responds by growing!

Our deep ancestors had to munch some pretty tough food, so their jaws grew accordingly. As a result, our hunter-gatherer ancestors had perfectly aligned teeth. This is also true for most animals. Even our current human cousins who live a primitive lifestyle possess jaws and teeth that match. Modern humans consume soft mush at tender ages, so their jaws—unchallenged by stress—become stunted. Teeth get jammed. Dentists are beginning to focus on helping kids to grow larger jaws, rather than use expensive orthodontics. Even adults can get surgery to lengthen their jaws.

Maybe a larger jaw would have fended off some of my dental problems? It could also have given me a more handsome countenance—giving me that desirable square jaw. It could have paved the way for fame in Hollywood, where a movie star's salary could easily cover any dental issue I've ever faced. But at least I'm not frightening my grandkids by blowing out my false teeth at them.