people with tooth decay aren't bad people. they aren't lazy either. neither are they unclean or irresponsible. tooth decay doesn't make you a bad person. you don't deserve mockery, judgement, or tooth pain for having any. the only thing people with tooth decay deserve is healthcare.
Dental engineer here. Everything about this is true. I’ve seen 20s something needing a full teeth set up. Even though they have no reason to tell us, one of them explained their whole medical history so we “don’t think he has a bad hygiene or something”. Boy even if it was the case we would do it. Some people breaks teeth during sport, some have medical condition that affects their gengival blood distribution (ir anything really), some have mental disorders that makes them forget or are totally unable to brush their teeth, and that’s okay.
getting out of tracks about the og post, but I want to say it: it doesn’t matter if your tooth decay is because of one cause or another (which includes “bad” hygiene to me) you don’t deserve mockery or pain. Every body is different and some has issues with a “too good” hygiene (had cases of gengival loss due to too much teeth brushing) and that’s okay.
Every single case of tooth issues deserves care and help.
This is so especially relevant given that cavities are caused by one specific kind of bacteria that not everyone has. If you’ve got the bacteria in your mouth, you’re prone to cavities. If you’re not, well…I’m gonna be fully honest I haven’t regularly brushed my teeth in almost 20 years and I’ve never had a single cavity (sorry dentists autism is a hell of a drug). It’s more luck or lack thereof than anything
also, not to beat a dead horse by pointing out the obvious, but—as in so many other cases of Weird Shit That Can And Does Happen To The Human Body From Time To Time—it’s one of those things that ultimately comes back to the incredibly fickle whims of the human genome! somewhere, in some people’s dna, there just so happens to be a bitch-ass allele (or two) that’s responsible for Causing Problems™, and that’s just… how it goes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
the first time i ever had cavities that needed to be filled, i knew i needed to tell my mom about it because i’m still on her health insurance and therefore she’d be the one footing the bill for them, but i was so anxious and almost ashamed to tell her because i know that having The Metnal Illnes™ makes remembering to brush my teeth a little harder for me than it is for other people, despite my best efforts to the contrary, so i was already beating myself up about it and had fully prepared myself for mom to start chastizing me too and to tell her i know it was bad and that i needed to do better and [insert other self-flagellatory statements here] etc. etc. etc.
i told her the news like i was pulling the pin on a loaded grenade. throughout that entire conversation, mom was starting to get nervous too, during my lead-up to the news about the cavities, until i finally took a deep breath and spit it out, and the visible relief in her expression was practically a physical sensation—granted, i’d convinced myself that she was gonna be so upset about the cavities that, from the way i was talking, she thought i was about to tell her i had cancer or needed major surgery or something, which made the cavities a vastly more preferable outcome—her body completely relaxed and she just said, “oh, honey, cavities??? is that it?” and i let out this big defeated sigh and was immediately like, “yeah, i’ve got some cavities. i know, i’m really sorry, i’ve been doing my best—” and she cut me off and apologized to me, y’all.
my mom just kinda laughed and said, “baby, you have nothing to apologize for; they’re just cavities, they happen. your dad’s had to get cavities filled before, lord knows i’ve had to get cavities filled before, and your aunt and your uncles have all had to get cavities filled before too—and it certainly was not for a lack of trying to avoid them. if anything, i’m the one who’s sorry you inherited our crappy teeth genes.” and i took a giant deep breath and chilled out after that, until she asked, “so how many did the dentist say you need to have filled?” and i steeled myself for being on the receiving end of disappointment again just in case, and i said, “…four.” and her face actually lit up when she responded with, “wow, that’s it? you only have four cavities???”
anyways, the moral of the story is that the human body is an evolutionary marvel of biological innovation, and sometimes, the human body is also Just Out Here Doing Shit—moralizing and passing judgment on said shit helps absolutely no one. it doesn’t fix the shit, it doesn’t prevent the shit from happening again down the road, and (in many cases) it doesn’t make the person who’s doing the moralizing and judging any less susceptible to also experiencing the shit themselves!
this is one of those cases where some people might be inclined to use the phrase “it costs nothing to be kind”, which would make certain other annoying people inclined to be pedantic and split hairs about the wording, so instead of using that phrase, i’m going to say
it costs nothing to not be unkind.
if you can’t bring yourself to be anything other than a dick about something, then just be quiet! i’m so serious—shut the entire fuck up. keep your unsolicited opinions to yourself.
