Comment by panny
3 months ago
>Unlike bones and hair, enamel does not regenerate, once it is lost, it’s gone forever.
This simply isn't true. I've chipped two teeth at separate times. Both healed up over the years. I still have all my teeth, including wisdom teeth. No dental work in my lifetime.
> Both healed up over the years.
They….did not. Maybe the sharp edges eroded into smoother curves, and the nerve acclimated so any sensitivity resolved, but your teeth did not “heal” as in “replace the lost portion”.
>but your teeth did not “heal” as in “replace the lost portion”.
I can assure you that is exactly what happened, because one was a vertical chip out of the front of my tooth, like a small rice grain. For my tooth to "wear down" to hide it, I would have had to lose all the enamel on the front of that tooth, which did not happen.
As for the other, where I lost the corner of a front tooth, I suspect my old dentist in my hometown still has an xray, because my parents took me in. He offered to crown it and I declined, choosing to live with the chip. Good thing I did that, since it healed up.