Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
One of my chief pieces of evidence for the non-existence of God, or perhaps the god of Thought for the Day or Songs of Praise, or even the god of the Methodist priest who became the chief of the Co-Operative Bank and fell from grace so publicly, is the whole thing about teeth.
My argument here is that we are constructed in such an astonishingly brilliant way, with so many interconnected systems and excellent repair facilities, and yet our eyes and teeth seem to let the whole thing down.
I’d be useless on a hunt
Speaking personally, without my glasses I have an effective focusing range of about a meter and a half. I’d be useless on a hunt, if asked to scour the horizon for possible prey. I wouldn’t even be able to see the horizon, let alone recognise anything on it. I would, though, be very good at picking berries from a bush, assuming that I could see the bush in the first place. I think I would have been short-sighted even if I hadn’t read in the dark (which I didn’t) or spent too much time reading (how could anyone spend too much time reading?).
Teeth are the same. It seems to me that we were short-changed there too. All our fuel arrives through our mouths and down our throats, often in the wrong shape and size and consistency, and our teeth are vital for mashing it into swallowable chunks. What’s the point in having teeth that go so bad so easily and don’t repair themselves?
Someone else’s real teeth
I’ve heard all the easy arguments about eating too much sugar and not brushing properly, but they don’t wash with me. If you took a trip back through time you’d be horrified at the state of people’s teeth. In the sixteenth century people would sell their teeth before they went bad, to be mounted in wooden shapes and used to disguise the toothless smiles of rich people. Not so much false teeth as someone else’s real teeth. Even George Washington wore a set made from Hippopotamus ivory.
Back then people didn’t eat cake and chocolate every day, all their food was natural and unprocessed, but their teeth were still terrible. It’s only dentistry that’s allowed so many of us to keep our teeth for so long.
It’s important if you want to get on
We let ourselves down, though. The whole dentistry thing was tacked on very unsuccessfully to the NHS, and has been loosened and bent out of shape badly by successive governments. We also fear dentists even more than bad teeth.
In America, it is said, people spend lots of money they can ill-afford keeping their teeth looking good, because they believe it’s important if you want to get on, in life and in your career. Over here we only ever go to the dentist when we’re in pain, and that’s usually too late. This is partly due to laziness, but there’s a lot more to it than that.
What’s the child learning from that?
Good dentistry is painless, although it can be a bit uncomfortable. It’s all about preventing pain in the future too, by tending to our teeth and encouraging us to take care of them. We encourage our children to go regularly for all the right reasons, but we stop all that when we become adults. At the same time, we can’t find dentists or afford them when we do.
It’s like a mother going out for a bike ride with her child, insisting that the child wears a safety hat but not wearing one herself. What’s the child learning from that? Safety only matters when you’re little, but grownups don’t bother. So. Brush your teeth twice a day, but you can stop when you leave school.
Treatment at a secret location
I’m as guilty as anyone else here. My teeth are terrible. I haven’t been to a dentist since I moved to the Island, partly because I’ve been working all over the place, but mostly because NHS dentists are thin on the ground everywhere. I’ve finally found one, and I’ll be attending my first treatment at a secret location soon for some remedial work.
I don’t know if my experience is typical, but I used to dread going to the dentist as a child. My mother made me brush my teeth religiously, but every time the dentist would announce that he needed to do a filling. Every time he would usher my mother out of the room and he would start drilling, whilst assuring me that it wouldn’t hurt. And every time it would hurt like hell and he would tell me I was just making an unnecessary fuss.
No wonder I developed a fear of going to the dentist.
Every nerve ending in my jaw tells me that he was I heard a while ago about a scandal that was uncovered in early NHS dentistry. Apparently they were paid mostly for ‘treatments’, which mostly involved fillings. They were also expected to pay for their own supplies. Apparently it was discovered that a number of dentists were doing unnecessary fillings to increase their pay, and some of them were saving on the costs of pain relief by not administering it, or using plain water instead.
I’m not saying that my dentist was doing that, but every nerve ending in my jaw tells me that he was. I‘m glad that I cured my phobia of dentists eventually and that I go more regularly now, although my teeth suffered from decades of neglect. Mostly I’m glad that the emphasis among dentists and their pay structure is now based on dental health rather than the number of fillings. We need more dentists, and it needs to be easier and cheaper, so we go more often.
If the god of Thought for the Day does exist, I’ll probably be heading downwards, and if so I’ll be able to seek out that dentist from my past so I can enjoy making his afterlife even more hellish.
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
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