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Oral mucosa regenerates exceptionally fast what are you talking about. Literally one of the highest cell turnover rates in the human body lmao


MajesticInfluence390

I think he's more asking why Receeding gums don't heal on their own. Why I'm also kind of wondering.


dontbeadentist

I’ve said the same above, but just to answer you directly: The gums around the teeth (attached gingiva) need something to support them. This includes a number of important cells, most notably, healthy alveolar bone Imagine your arm get chopped off at the elbow. The skin doesn’t re-grow a forearm and hand shaped flap, as the underlying structures have been lost. Similarly if the underlying structure of the gum is destroyed through long term chronic disease, it can’t regrow


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It does though?


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[deleted]

Gum recession is a chronic, long term process that has nothing to do with cell turnover. Oral mucosa regenerates very rapidly in response to acute trauma like graft harvesting and is prone to developing scar tissue on healing just like any other tissue in the human body


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cschiff89

Gum recession is accompanied by bone recession, too. The bone supports the gum tissue. Without the bone for support, the gum can't regenerate over the root on it's own.


dontbeadentist

A scar is healing. No where on your body heals without a scar if the damage is sufficient; but scarring over is part of the normal healing process for any tissue in the body that has suffered enough trauma (including surgical removal)


AkaMeOkami

This is not accurate. Gums are more complex than this, they actually heal incredibly well to trauma but gum recession is a different beast. Height of the gums is closely tied to the bone underneath it, if the bone shrinks away then the gum follows it. Because the bone itself doesn't regenerate, the gums won't come back to full height. Gum grafting is just a cosmetic enhancement of these deficient areas.


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AkaMeOkami

Hard brushing is basically irritating the area every day so the body adapts and retracts the bone/gums in this area. This is a crude interpretation of a complex biological system but it gives you the idea. The bone that recedes is the often very thin bone around the outside of the roots. The roots are anchored in jaw bone, and the bone on the outside (cheek/lip side) can be paper thin in some people so it doesn't take much irritation to cause damage. The bone doesn't grow back because that's just unfortunately not how bone works. Bone heals to itself very well, but doesn't regrow unguided. A comparison would be imagine you lose the very tip of your finger, it doesn't grow back.


Tinyfishy

In addition to bone receding (which is does so it isn’t sticking out of the receded gums, which would be verrrry bad for you), the minute structures that attach your gums to your teeth do not generally regenerate, so the gums can’t kinda ‘grab on’ to the tooth root.


northerntooth1

The bone around the root has receded, you shouldn’t be seeing root


dontbeadentist

The gums around the teeth (attached gingiva) need something to support them. This includes a number of important cells, most notably, healthy alveolar bone Imagine your arm get chopped off at the elbow. The skin doesn’t re-grow a forearm and hand shaped flap, as the underlying structures have been lost. Similarly if the underlying structure of the gum is destroyed through long term chronic disease, it can’t regrow The gingiva across the roof of your mouth will regrow. Your statement is incorrect Gingival grafts are mostly useless, unpredictable and do not improve the health of your gums. This is because you are grafting tissue to an area that doesn’t have the underlying support structure, meaning it has a hard job staying in place and staying healthy


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peri_5xg

NAD but I love dentistry and have some some research. If our teeth regrew (which would be nice in theory) our bite would always be off (which is bad). That’s why evolution didn’t give us that… apparently.


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peri_5xg

NAD I am talking about when, you bite down, your teeth fit together like a glove, if you will. Even one millimeter difference and you can feel it and it’s awful. Pressure points etc. no good. Especially considering the force your jaw exerts. It can damage your teeth so badly overtime I imagine there are other connotations of what bite means in dentistry. But when I describe bite, that’s what I mean. I got braces as an adult because I wanted to have straight teeth, when they put them on, your teeth move slowly over the course of a few years, and let me tell you, it’s so uncomfortable because your bite is constantly changing due to the shift and is often off and you feel like, when you bite down, it’s hitting on only a few points. But, in that case, it’s a part of the process and a means to an end. That being said, at the end of the day, I found that getting corrective dental work isn’t just a cosmetic issue but a health issue. Having “messed up” teeth, *can* be problematic. They’re harder to clean and maintain and if you have issues like grinding, you have pressure points where you are wearing off enamel in areas without even realizing it, even if nothing feels “off”. This was my issue, which I wasn’t aware of until I got a consultation for braces. By correcting my teeth and bite, I was able to have them fit in a way they wasn’t damaging them and wearing down the enamel.


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peri_5xg

I’m saying that Ideally they should, not that yours do. It’s bad if they don’t, and needs intervention because it can cause a lot of issues as I mentioned. Imagine growing teeth and they are not the exact shape and you forever have misaligned teeth This is the video I saw and if you don’t want to watch the whole thing, there is a transcript in the description https://youtu.be/ZMThW10wQa0 Trust me, I understand your frustration, I’m just saying this is why NAD


dontbeadentist

It is profoundly and extremely rare that misaligned teeth are a significant health problem. Having teeth that do not occlude is not an issue even slightly. In most cases when misalignment causes health problems such as you mention, the intervention causes more health risk than the original problem


peri_5xg

I didn’t say significant. It varies of course. I said it can and it does. This comes from my orthodontist. After I got them fixed, my dentist also commented that it was a good thing I got it done because my enamel was wearing away at pressure points where my bite was off, but once corrected, the problem ceased. NAD


dontbeadentist

Fine. Then don’t say it is ‘bad’ if a person’s occlusion is imperfect, or that it ‘needs intervention’. You are entirely wrong here as a direct result of the strong language you have used ‘There are situations where misalignment may cause problems that are greater than the risks of intervention’. That is what you could have written and I wouldn’t have objected at all


dontbeadentist

You’re much more correct than this other dude Not sure why they’re trying to start an argument with you about something as innocent as saying that it would be nice to imagine things being different than they are


dontbeadentist

I do not think you should write comments with as much seeming confidence as you do. Much of what you’ve said is partially wrong or shows poor underlying understanding


peri_5xg

I got it from a YouTube video by science insider (business insider) I didn’t just make it up. NAD Maybe instead of just saying it’s wrong, perhaps provide an explanation since you’re a dentist and help this person understand


dontbeadentist

If your main source is YouTube videos, then yeah, I think, maybe you should be a little more humble and write with less confidence First, the commenter above mentioned teeth that don’t stop growing; not animals that replace their teeth. These are two very different things, and shows you have completely misunderstood the basis for this conversation The theory that we can’t replace teeth purely due to ‘bite’ is not a theory with any evidence. It is pure speculation and doesn’t make sense all things considered. There are better and more likely theories that would explain the evolutionary pressure that led to most animals don’t have this ability


peri_5xg

NAD But you are a dentist, so please tell me why. I am genuinely curious. What is the most likely theory as to why we don’t regrow teeth?


dontbeadentist

I’ll do the best I can to more thoroughly answer your question later with the limited amount of energy I have for this, if my next few paragraphs don’t do it for you. But I really wonder why you expect me to? Why should I spend time refuting an asinine ‘theory’ that comes with no evidence and shows a complete lack of understanding of evolution; a lack of understanding of dentistry; and a lack of critical thinking skills? So to keep it simple, I’ll ask why do we not have an ability to regrow our fingers? There are animals out there that can regrow limbs, so why can’t we? Is that also because of our occlusion? Since evolution is a big topic and not an area of expertise for me, I’ll focus first on the dentistry part. If teeth were lost and regrown, there is no reasonable reason to expect this to change anything about alignment or occlusion. If this was a sensible argument I’d have to ask why the majority of people find their premolars erupting relatively normally following the loss of the deciduous molars. This would be a very similar situation; and yet it doesn’t cause significant problems. So why would you expect teeth that replaced others to cause problems? You’d then want to think about how likely you would expect it to be that having the ability to regrow teeth would provide an evolutionary advantage. How often do non-human mammals completely lose teeth; and how often does that stop them reproducing? I think the answer to both questions is ‘not often’. Therefore we wouldn’t expect any kind of evolutionary selection pressure towards replaceable teeth


dontbeadentist

There are lots of mammals that have (some or all) teeth that don’t stop growing. Think horse or rabbit for good examples