Fun Tooth Facts for a Healthy Mouth

1. Did you know that the average person produces a quart of saliva daily? That’s 10,000 gallons of spit over a lifetime. Saliva is essential to good dental health because it washes food off the teeth, neutralizes acids in the mouth, fights germs and prevents bad breath.
2. On a daily basis, your mouth is home to over 100,000,000 micro-creatures who are swimming, feeding, reproducing, and depositing waste in your mouth. Makes you want to brush your teeth, doesn’t it?
3. Our teeth are meant to last a lifetime, and our tooth enamel is the hardest part of our body- even harder than our bones! In order to keep our teeth for a lifetime, we need to take care of them by brushing, flossing and seeing the dentist.
4. Did you know that 50% of people say that a smile is the first thing they notice about someone? Brush twice a day and floss daily so the smile people are noticing is shiny and white!
5. We think a shiny, white smile is attractive, but did you know in medieval Japan white teeth were considered ugly? Women used roots and inks to stain their teeth black, which they felt was much more attractive.
6. We need to keep our teeth healthy because we use our teeth to bite and chew, but did you know dolphins only use their teeth to grasp? Dolphins can’t chew, because dolphins’ jaws have no muscles.
7. Dental floss was first manufactured in 1882. If you floss once a day, you will use about 5 miles of floss over your lifetime! Dental floss isn’t just for teeth- a prison inmate in West Virginia braided floss in a rope, scaled the prison wall and escaped.
8. If you brush your teeth twice a day for two minutes each time, you will brush your teeth for about 24 hours each year, or 76 days over the course of your life! All this brushing will use about 20 gallons of toothpaste.
9. When we brush our teeth, we should remember to brush our tongue. Did you know that just like out fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different? Our tongue is the only muscle in our body that isn’t attached to something at both ends.
10. In 1816, Sir Isaac Newton’s tooth was sold in London for today’s equivalent of $35,700. Don’t expect that much money from the Tooth Fairy – in America, she brings an average of $3.00 per tooth.