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Dental Caries Are Holes In Your Teeth

Dental caries is the scientific and not too popular term for a tooth cavity. The term dental caries, or carious teeth, seems to imply that it is infectious, but it is not. The term "caries" refers to the progressive destruction of any kind of bone, including the teeth.

In the United States, the nation spends an estimated $60 billion annually on dental services including approximately $500 million for visits to dental offices. In 1996 the estimated hospital charges for diseases of the mouth and disorders of the teeth and jaw were $451 million.

Dental Caries Surveys

A survey by Read & Knowles in 1938 indicated that 12 children free of dental caries consumed more fat and protein but less carbohydrates and candy than a different group of 12 children with a high number of dental caries. Many other surveys presented on dental caries could not find any direct relationship between diet and dental caries, probably because they didn't know exactly what to look for.

Dental Caries Early Observations

Another direction in which observers have obtained a valuable negative result is that although a weak acid is able to dissolve out the lime salts from enamel and dentine, the result of such a solution is not completely like caries, either in its mode of attack, its colour, consistency, naked-eyed or microscopic appearance. (Dental Caries, Henry Sewill 1884)

This is an interesting comment because it is saying that they had a hard time producing an exact replica of dental caries in a laborartory. This implies that it isn't just acid that is the cause of tooth decay.

Underwood and Milles once more demonstrate the fact that caries of extracted teeth retained in the mouth as artificial substitutes is absolutely identical with the disease in living teeth. Attempting to nearly reproduce in every respect the conditions existing in the mouth as to temperature and presence of saliva and decomposition products usually found there, they endeavoured to produce caries in extracted teeth by carefully conducted experiments" (Dental Caries, Henry Sewill 1884)

Comment on the above text: Another interesting thought. A decayed tooth that is extracted but left in someone's mouth still seemed to decay more. However I question how detailed the experimentor was in that experiment.

Mr. C. Tomes Odontological Society - And then with regard to the evidence of this acid state of the saliva he had himself many years ago made a very large number of observations upon this point, expecting to be able to connect an acid condition of the saliva with very active events or acute cases of caries. But he obtained no such result. In cases of pregnancy and those convalescent from the exanthemata the conclusion was the same and yet in such cases it often occurred that teeth which until these conditions supervened had been excellent, then underwent very rapid decay. This had led him to doubt very much a simple acid cause for caries and brought him to believe that the greater liability to disease in such cases arose from a lowering in the power of resistance of the teeth to agencies external to them, that is to say to the ordinary laws of chemical affinity.

This shows that the primary cause of tooth cavities is related to the health of the person, as a factor of diet. When extreme nutrient demands are placed on the body, tooth decay can result.

We know further we may take a tooth which has been extracted for months or years, we may cut off the crown of such a tooth and affix it as an artificial substitute by a pivot or peg permanently to the root of a broken down incisor, thus placing this dead crown in the fluids of the mouth surrounded by all the circumstances favourable to its decomposition, and yet in this situation it will be neither more or less liable to decay than its living neighbouring teeth with living pulps and living periosteum and indeed so placed it will often outlast some of its neighbours if these are of innate structural inferiority.

Comment on the above text: A dead tooth in the mouth in this experiment will decay slower, not faster than its neighbors. This implies that tooth decay happens from some other mechanism than the saliva.

Miller on cavities - A most powerful influence in the causation of caries which we do not well understand is exerted by the nutritive processes in the teeth themselves. I am assured by men who have grown old in the practice of dentistry that mouths which have long been under their observation and which practically have been completely free from caries for years at once on account of some sudden change of health show a general breaking down or crumbling of the teeth en masse in the space of a few weeks.

Miller is the one who founded the acid-bacteria theory of tooth decay. He again is concerned with how well the tooth would protect itself from tooth cavities, not just how much acid is in the mouth.

Conclusion about dental caries:

In the beginning states of modern dentistry, observers were able to see the correlation between the health of the body, and tooth decay. They did not prescribe the existence of dental caries to an infectious disease, but rather to a rapid breakdown in the health of the individual.

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