What happens when you stop brushing your teeth?

What happened when you suddenly wake up one morning and decided to take up the challenge of not brushing your teeth for a day? Well, for the most part, nothing honestly. A day of not brushing your teeth isn’t really enough to really do much harm.

But…

Let’s say if you were to never brush your teeth again, like ever,

What’s going to happen?

The short answer is BLERGH!!!

You see, the human mouth is a dirty place. It is dark, warm and moist – All the pre-requisites needed for bacteria to breed and flourish. In fact, from my knowledge in Emergency care in medicine, the human bite is one of the dirtiest bite there is, making the management of getting bitten by other human pretty serious. Your mouth, can actually have more bacteria than there are people on the planet.

Brushing our teeth controls the rampant growth of bacteria in the mouth by scrubbing them off as well chemically killing them. When brushing, we’re also scrubbing off food particles that serves as food for the bacteria as well as plaques that are consistently building up.

Abstaining from brushing your teeth simply allows an unchecked multiplication of the bacteria in the mouth and if you were to do that long enough, gingivitis or cavities is the least of your worries. With the continued build-up of bacteria, you run the risk of developing periodontitis.

Periodontitis

Periodontitis is simply the erosion of the gums, tissues and underlying bones that support your teeth. When this happen long enough, the aforementioned elements won’t be able to support and hold the teeth anymore, leading to the fall of your teeth. Periodontitis is one of the leading cause of tooth loss. Pockets of eroded gums can also become site for harbouring HPV virus and carcinogenic substances.

Blood spread of bacterial infection

That’s right. Over-spilled bacteria can find access to the blood vessels and when that happens, they can go pretty much anywhere and cause all sorts of problem. The most notorious of which are Endocarditis and Valvular infection. They can also find their way to the lung and cause Pneumonia.

Controversial findings

There are also some controversial studies depicting links between poor oral hygiene to dementia and even Erectile Dysfunction. Yikes!

P/s: I didn't mentioned bad breath as a result of not brushing your teeth because duh, that's pretty obvious.

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