New discovery reveals how to tell your teeth apart by their numbers
How many teeth do you have? If you answered 32, you’re right! But how did you know? Did you count them one by one or simply remember it? Although it may not seem like a big deal, dental experts have been pondering this question for years without finding the answer. That was until recently, when they discovered that tooth numbers are encoded in our DNA! After years of hard work and dedication, we can finally tell our teeth numbers. Let’s take a look at the new discovery behind tooth numbers to see what all the hype is about.
The Myths
One of most common errors I see in dental clinic invisalign doctor site reviews is a lack of consistency in properly identifying individual teeth. Far too many dentists incorrectly identify parts of a tooth, such as cusps and fissures (areas on tooth surface) and roots (tissue that goes deep into our jawbone). These are called errant descriptions or erroneous determinations and they lead to questions about your skill level as a dentist, with patients wondering if you even understand what you are doing. Given my background as an Invisalign dentist, I like to think I know an awful lot about how teeth look from every angle. But even I get some wrong now and then; we all do.
Dental Anatomy and Tooth Numbering
Despite what you might think, you can’t easily tell your top teeth from your bottom teeth. Instead, a dentist uses tooth number as a more precise way of describing and understanding which tooth you mean. In fact, I once had an invisalign doctor site his treatment instructions off one of my X-rays using tooth number rather than looking at my smile and making a guess. For example, let’s use tooth number 12—which belongs to my two front central incisors (remember: The 12th pair out is always these two big front eye teeth). This means there are three spaces left in between them (1–2–3)—and there are eight bumps on each side of those central incisors.
How do you know what tooth comes next?
Fortunately, a new study has revealed that by counting off (invisalign doctor site) it’s possible to identify individual tooth numbers with ease – making trips to your dentist even more convenient than ever. So what are you waiting for? Get counting!
Removing Wisdom Teeth
This can cause complications and is an unnecessary procedure. In fact, most people are better off leaving them alone. Your mouth may be crowded but it’s a good sign that you have room for more molars because it means you can potentially live to a ripe old age. If wisdom teeth are causing pain or preventing other necessary oral surgery from happening, then they should be removed — but not until you’re in your late 20s or early 30s when they’ve stopped growing. This will allow them time to finish forming fully and provide surgeons with better access during removal. But don’t wait longer than that, since waiting increases risks including crowding of other teeth and infection in surrounding tissue.
Where do our fingers fit in all of this?
Studies show that even if you can’t see them, our fingers affect our ability to differentiate between objects. Researchers in Switzerland found that when a set of screws were replaced with replicas having additional fingers attached, subjects were more easily able to discern between different sizes of screws when they could actually feel them. This means that extra bulk or weight on any object will make it easier for us to differentiate. This seems counterintuitive at first—if I can feel an object better, shouldn’t it be harder for me to distinguish its dimensions? But recall that brains are pattern-seeking machines; making physical dimensions slightly more obvious simply makes it easier for us determine what those dimensions are.
