Comment by kazinator

12 days ago

Screw enamel; man-made materials are better.

If you ever get into any serious money, forget cars or houses: have your teeth ripped out and replaced with artificial ones.

This is horrible advice. Do everything you can to keep your original teeth, even partially with a crown is better than a post or dentures. Nothing will perform as good, and the side effects of dentures range from pain to liquid diet if/when your gums can't support them.

An artificial crown may be better, but not the roots. Natural teeth are fixed in the jaw in a very ingenious way that is durable and somewhat flexible at the same time. Not so with implants; the metal fuses with the bone in a hard way and transmits all the shocks fully into the jaw.

  • Using gold as the core would help but of course would be somewhat expensive.

    • I don't know what you mean by "core", but using it as a material in the center of an implanted post, such that another material faces the bone, seems like cost for no benefit.

      And gold is not a good bone-facing material, because bone doesn't fuse with it.

      Titanium is favored for implants because it supports osseointegration.

  • I wonder whether there is any research into dental implant posts which incorporate flexibility: like some kind of bushing, or spring.

    ...

    Doh, yeah: TSA! Titanium Shock Absorber:

    https://bonecare.be/en/

    So this entire subthread about implanted teeth rigidly connected to the bone is about mainstream technology, not the state of the art.

  • What are the disadvantages of having all the shocks go fully into the jaw?

    • Depending on the location, state of the bone and other parameters, anything from mild discomfort to catastrophic failure of the implant and a jaw fracture.

      I have four implants, two in my lower jaw, two in my upper jaw. My lower jaw is basically stone, an extremely hard bone even by usual lower jaw standards; the dentists (plural, as one was unable to finish the job) drilling into it destroyed a few drilling bits doing so. I have never had any problems with the lower jaw implants. That bone can take almost anything in stride.

      My upper jaw, on the other hand ... very delicate, just enough bone left for the implants to work, and I learnt to be careful about biting into anything harder with them.

    • Discomfort and pain, I would assume.

      I wouldn't be surprised if this can, over time, also cause damage to your jaw, and put extra stress on your jaw muscles.

My dad did that a couple of decades ago (we nicknamed him Bionic Mouth), and now his body is rejecting almost all of it, and he has to get even more advanced and expensive stuff to replace it (on a fixed retirement income to boot).

  • That sounds like that movie "the breast men"

    These doctors pioneered silicone breast implants.

    Eventually side effects happened, and they tried to prevent those patients from coming forward.

    Later, it all came out... and all the patients just came back to them and paid for breast upgrades to the next generation saline implants.

Wouldn't you rather reapply a coating that allows the base to regrow, than have to constant get them ground out and replaced as they accumulated small damage? Growth sounds way better than static existence.