Avoid Using Your Teeth As TOOLS?

Curated by




Our teeth are amazing. They can cut and chew and grind. They even help us in our speech and in forming the sounds of our words. Their versatility and strength enabled our ancestors to eat many different kinds of foods and even communicate.  This certainly helped us to adapt to changing conditions and contributed to the survival of our species. However, many people cause damage to their teeth by using them improperly. We easily forget that we only get one set of adult teeth. It is very important to keep your teeth as healthy as possible. An important way to protect our teeth is to try to avoid falling into the following bad habits.
  • Using your teeth to help tear or open things…. It is very tempting to use your teeth to open a bag of potato chips, envelopes, or even unscrewing bottle caps. Using your teeth as tools on these foreign objects can cause then to crack, break or wear severely over time.

  • Using your teeth as scissors. Those pesky plastic ties on new clothes or clear plastic tape, that doesn’t come with a built in cutter, are both very tempting and common things to cut with your teeth. Some people even cut wire with their teeth! Take the time to get a pair of scissors instead of using your teeth for these seemingly harmless tasks.

  • Using your teeth to chew on foreign objects. Many people, when overly stressed out or nervous, tend to chew on pencils, pens, or pen caps. This addicting habit can cause your teeth to chip, crack or cause damage to your existing dental work. There are many other ways to de-stress that don’t cause harm to your teeth.

  • Using your teeth as an extra hand. Holding knitting and sewing pins, nails and screws, or any other object between your teeth could cause wear of the enamel in that one area, overtime. Put these object down and remember you only have two hands, not three!

 It is so important to avoid these bad habits and to also regularly take care of your teeth and visit your dentist to ensure all is well or if there is anything untoward, it is taken care of early. Protecting and taking care of your teeth will help maintain their health and keep them functioning properly for a long time.







Source: http://bit.ly/2u6k4nH