What If You Stopped Brushing Your Teeth?

This man didn’t brush his teeth for over two years. And unfortunately, he had to get a lot of his teeth removed due to them decaying. This is what would happen if you stopped brushing your teeth for two years, but what would happen if you stopped forever? How much bacteria lives inside your mouth? How could this affect your overall health? How long could you last before your teeth fell out?

After just a single day of not brushing your teeth, the bacteria in your mouth would produce plaque. Plaque is what helps bacteria adhere to your teeth, which means you’d produce even more plaque and bacteria. And this is just after a single day. What would happen if you stopped brushing your teeth for the rest of your life?

But before we get to that, what lives inside your mouth on an average day? Over 6 million bacteria, from 700 different species, live inside your mouth. Now, not all of these are bad for you, in fact, a lot of them promote good health. But some bacteria living in your mouth are harmful to you. That’s why you brush your teeth since it helps get rid of that harmful bacteria.

And now, you’ve suddenly decided to stop brushing. A week has gone by, and you’re starting to notice some serious bad breath. People
stay a little bit further away from you when you try to talk to them. But bad breath would be the last thing on your mind. After just a
week of not brushing your teeth, the plaque on your mouth would begin to harden and form tartar. This is like a really hard plaque that discolors your teeth, and at this point, only a dentist would be able to get rid of this.

And on top of all that, your enamel would begin to be damaged as bacteria continues to increase in your mouth. Now that’s one week of not brushing. Let’s fast forward to one month in this crazy experiment.

So, here’s some good news. If you normally spend an average of 4 minutes a day brushing your teeth, at this point, you’ve saved two whole hours! Wow, that’s like enough to watch a movie. And then we have some bad news, which is everything else. After Not brushing your teeth for a month, you’d start to get some cavities in your teeth. These holes in your teeth would continue to get deeper and deeper and they’d eventually fill with pus.

And as time goes on, these cavities in your teeth would get worse and worse. You’d also start to develop gingivitis which would inflame the gums around your teeth. And good luck trying to eat anything because, at this point, your gums would be incredibly sensitive.

And this would continue for about a year. And after that, you not brushing your teeth would lead to periodontitis. This is when the inner layer of your gums starts to pull away from your teeth and form pockets that would collect food and bacteria. With all this extra bacteria in your mouth, your immune system would start to destroy your gums. And after your gums start to go away, you’d lose your teeth as they fall out of your mouth and decayed.

And now that you don’t have any teeth, you could start to have health issues outside of your mouth. A study in Caifornia found that people who didn’t brush their teeth daily had a 20 – 65% greater chance of getting dementia than those who brushed multiple times a day. And for all the guys out there who decide to stop brushing your teeth? Well, that could lead to erectile disfunction. In a 2012
study, it was found that 53% of the patients with erectile dysfunction also had severe periodontitis.

So not brushing your teeth forever would not only affect your mouth but also other parts of your body as well. My advice? Just brush your teeth. It only takes a couple of minutes a day, and you’ll be a healthier person for it. It’s obvious that not brushing your teeth would be pretty awful for your body. Another thing that would be terrible for you? Only drinking Coca-Cola.

Sources

• “Huffpost Is Now A Part Of Verizon Media“. 2020. Huffpost.Com.
• “Curious Kids: How Did People Clean Their Teeth In The Olden Days?“. 2019. The Conversation.
• “For Hundreds Of Thousands Of Years, Humans Did Not Brush Their Teeth. Why Do We Brush Them Now?“. 2017. Medium.
• “Do Any Other Species Practise Dental Care?“. 2013. Thenakedscientists.Com.
• “Tooth Loss in Adults (Age 20 to 64)“. 2020. Nidcr.Nih.Gov.
• “Associations Between Periodontal Disease And Risk For Nosocomial Bacterial Pneumonia And Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. A Systematic Review“. Scannapieco, Frank A., Renee B. Bush, and Susanna Paju. 2003.Annals Of Periodontology
• “13 Awful Things That Happen If You Don’t Brush And Floss Your Teeth“. 2020. Business Insider.