Certified Dental Trash

so I am Behind and its a little daunting

if anyone has words of encouragement to help me keep at it, I would appreciate it. A huge part of me wants to quit.

my coworker, we'll call him Heifer, is trying to ABANDON ME and not take this seriously.

yeah! The gingiva is the fancy word for your gums :D There's a LOT going on with your gingiva actually it's really cool. Your teeth arent actually attached to your bones and instead are nestled in your gingiva, held in place by the periodontal ligament which is a tissue that lets your teeth shift around as needed for biting things!

Thats why sometimes you can feel your teeth moving. Not like, MOVING moving, but you know how sometimes you wake up in the morning, press your tongue against the back of your front teeth, and sort of feel them shift? Not anything actually noticable to the naked eye, but like, you FEEL it happen.

Thats what makes teeth so good at what they do! Being able to shift and adjust helps us maintain our bites, and the gingiva acts as a sort of shock absorber for it all. Your teeth are connected to the "attached" gingiva by the cementum, which is a thin layer of calcified gingiva around the roots of your teeth that is slightly rough and lets the ligament fibers attach.

And then above that, right at the base of the "crown" of your tooth (the bit thats covered in enamel) is the "free" gingiva which isn't attached to anything and allows movement around the teeth and provides a cushion and maintains spacing between teeth.

This is also why gingivitis can be really bad, it fucks with all of that and makes your teeth weaker.