Wednesday, April 25, 2007

more about teeth

As you all know, i need to get my final (thank god!!!) wisdom tooth extracted. And fortunately, it's just the upper molar.

No real biggie.

To cut to the chase, my mom recently had root canal treatment and the extraction of 2 teeth. I don't know why her teeth got extracted cuz she flosses like 2x a day and brushes without fail...but anyway, she had some surgery done.

And now, she's suffering from trismus. Trismus is nearly, if not the same as lockjaw. Basically, you cannot open your mouth wide. Currently, she can only stick 1 finger inside her mouth. It's not really funny anymore because she can't eat alot of food...she resorted to snipping her durian into bitesized bits the other day with a scissors.

Anyway, she's taken to surfing the Net to find out more on the cures for trismus and as a result, i made a startling discovery.

Apparently, the removal of wisdom teeth (esp the lower ones) can also cause trismus! I'm so glad nothing happened to me!

But that's not what I want to tell you about. The most interesting thing i found out today was that you can re-grow your permanent teeth if they get knocked out!


Should you lose your tooth (say you were involved in an accident and your tooth got knocked out), you should NEVER wash your tooth in water. Instead, you should use your saliva to clean it and pop it back into your mouth or back into its original place and hold it there gently (water kills the root of the tooth). Should saliva not be available (ok, so maybe you're bleeding profusely in the mouth), you can also (apparently) dump the fallen tooth into a clean cup of milk. Make sure that you hold the tooth by its crown and not the root.

Go the the dentist immediately and get the tooth reinstalled. Apparently, the tooth (and i do mean your permanent teeth) can continue to grow normally after some help from the dentist.

However, you will need to get to your dentist and get that tooth implanted within an hour; 30mins after the tooth falls out, the fibrioblasts begin to die. Any later than that and it might be better if you just gave up the tooth for the dead and resign yourself to a life of dentures.

You can read more about tooth replantation here.

Cool huh?



Why am I telling you this? Er, just for general information I guess. Just in case your teeth ever get knocked out. :P

XxX,

audrey at 23:31

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