Читать книгу You: Being Beautiful: The Owner’s Manual to Inner and Outer Beauty - Michael Roizen F. - Страница 13

Your Mouth and Teeth Are a Portal to Your Inside—and Say a Lot About Your Outside

YOU Test: The Real Tooth

Look in the mirror. After taking a moment to admire and primp, open wide. Take a close look at your teeth. Yes, beyond the popcorn remnants. And the taffy. Are the tops of your bottom incisor teeth and bottoms of your top teeth flat or somewhat jagged?

If they’re flat, that indicates that you could be a teeth grinder—putting you at greater risk for wearing down, breaking, or splitting your teeth and leading to gum and mouth problems as you age, not to mention your looking like a jack-o’-lantern.

If our ancestors could see us now. They used their teeth for two things and two things only: one, to shred their fire-cooked meat and feast like the hungry warriors they were. And two, as a last line of personal defense, biting off attackers’ ears and noses. Us? Oh, let’s see. We use our teeth for such vital tasks as whittling toenails, tearing open cellophane wrappers, and carrying bags when you have kids in both arms.

It’s not that we don’t appreciate our own meat cutters. It’s just that the invention of such things as knives and fruit smoothies has shifted our priorities. Our teeth and mouths aren’t quite as essential for survival as they used to be, yet they’re still critical to our happiness. The mouth serves as our entrance portal for food and our exit shaft for words, songs, laughter, gas, and salmonella. That’s not even mentioning the fringe functions: Mouths allow us to kiss babies, taste falling snow, bite in self-defense, and earn elite status as a sexual dynamo. For your purposes here, however, it’s important to note that your mouth is more than a mere functional tool; it’s a key indicator of your vitality, your beauty, and even your ability to get a good job and spouse.

Your teeth, in addition to helping with a wide range of tasks and with chewing, are also a very clear marker of your health. If your gums are inflamed, your teeth are falling out, or your teeth are getting ground like fresh pepper from wear and tear, those problems can affect and reflect the health and beauty of your entire body.

As part of your smile, your teeth serve as one of your main markers for beauty. Together, your teeth and mouth act as a stage: You want that stage to be bright, white, and well lit. Though there’s no direct correlation, the common perception is that our oral appearance is linked to our cerebral powers. How? We equate snow-white teeth with high-powered brains. Just add a set of Bubba teeth to your mouth. Not only will you scare off neighborhood kids, your perceived IQ will immediately drop 20 points (and your real IQ will fade, too, due to gum inflammation).

YOU Test

Check the insides of your cheeks for a small, whitish ridge running parallel to the biting surface of the teeth. If you have that line, it likely means you’re a grinder, and on a subconscious level you use your cheek to keep the teeth from touching.

Your Mouth: Beauty Markers

On the surface, it would seem that mouths are as nondescript as file cabinets—they all look about the same. But if you think about it a bit more, you’ll realize that mouths are much more like fingerprints or eyes—on the surface they are similar, but the difference is in the details. Think of how mouths convey emotions—a smile at a lover’s gaze, a frown at a lover’s propensity to adore remote controls, a gasp, bewilderment, anger, or the inner happiness that you can’t hide. And that’s not even taking into consideration that lips come in all shapes and sizes. There are thin ones and plump, full, juicy ones. So it should be no wonder that your mouth is a messenger in many ways.

Plastic surgeons have pored over thousands of pictures of beautiful men and women to come up with the perfectly proportioned mouth (tough work, but someone’s got to do it), and this is what they’ve found. Rulers ready?

 The width of the mouth should be roughly 1.6 times the width of the bottom of the nose (what a coincidence—the golden ratio!).

 If you drop lines down from the inner part of the colored part of your eyeballs, your mouth should fit right between those two lines.

 Your upper incisor (front) teeth should be visible below your upper lip for 1–4 millimeters and your lower teeth should not be visible when your lips are open. As you get older, the upper lip drops and you see less of your upper teeth. At the same time, your lower lip sags, exposing more of your lower teeth. When Shakespeare mentioned older people as “long in the tooth” he was describing this drop. The real reason for being “long in the tooth” is periodontal disease, where the gum recedes and the bone follows. That creates triangles of space between the teeth and exposes their roots.

 Your upper teeth should also overlap the lower teeth by 1 millimeter.

 Your jaw should be level. How can you tell? Take a double-wide Popsicle stick and bite on it. If your jaw is asymmetrical, the stick will tilt.

Stink Mouth

We all know the nasty feeling of holding a conversation with a person whose breath smells like three-week-old leftovers. And we all pray that we’re never the source of such stench. Bad breath (or halitosis) comes from lots of places: Some stems from food getting trapped in pockets in the tonsils, some comes from the stomach, and still more originates from the tongue—where the stench from bacteria buildup can clear a room. Some even comes as a side effect of medication (as is the case with Benadryl). One good way to handle bad breath: a tongue scraper, which removes bacteria and takes some of the stink away. Some research shows that the tongue scraper reduces nasty compounds on the tongue by 75 percent (compared to only 45 percent by toothbrush alone). You need only about ten seconds. Just take the scraper and run it over your tongue. If your breath is just relentlessly offensive, talk to your dentist, who might even prescribe a few days of antibiotics. Your dates (and coworkers and subway companions) will thank you.

Now, we’re not suggesting that you go in, cut around, and move your facial features a smidge here or smidge there (though there’s more on cosmetic procedures in the appendix), but we are suggesting that there are objective standards to beauty (and you automatically calculate those when you look at others—almost instantly, even if you got a C in algebra). And if your mouth’s features don’t measure up to a perfect score along these scientific standards, there are still plenty of other ways that you can make the most of your mouth. Let’s take a closer look at the anatomy of the mouth when it comes to ideal standards of beauty (we’ll talk about health implications in a few pages).

Lips: We all know the main things we use lips for, so we’ll leave the sexy details to your imagination. (OK, back with us now? Good.) If you’ll allow us to go from sultry to scientific for just a moment, there’s more to know about your pinkish pucker. In the ideal scenario, the upper lip should be slightly larger than the lower with a gentle curve that peaks at what’s called a Cupid’s bow. The upper lip is divided symmetrically in two by two vertical lines under your nose called the central philtrum. The color of the lips also reflects what’s going on inside, as pale lips reflect anemia (lack of red cells or abnormalities of red cell contents) and blue reflects lack of oxygenation of blood (which can come from many causes). As we all know by now, lips—like faces, fat, and breasts—are a supreme target of the beauty counter and the plastic surgeon’s tools, and we’ll talk in more detail about these options in our YOU Tips.

Teeth: One thing we know for sure about mouth beauty: If your teeth look more like randomly shaped shards of glass than perfectly aligned chompers, then it’s a pretty good bet that those malformed biters can overshadow other beautiful body parts. Research shows that women tend to prefer upper front teeth that are rounded and men like a more square look, but it does seem that most of us prefer the height of the two front teeth to be about 1.6 times the width (phi ratio!). The front six teeth also should follow the golden rule that we discussed earlier—with the larger ones being 1.6 times the size of each successive smaller one.

Smile. Normally, we think of muscles as giving us the power to push, to pull, to heave, and to haul. But of the seven zillion cool things about the human body, here’s one of our favorites: The ever-so-subtle muscles in your mouth (and how you use them) determine exactly how you communicate with the world (see Figure 3.1). To do so, your mouth is controlled by a dozen or so muscles that all connect with the circular muscle around your mouth. Amazed that you have that many? That’s just a fraction of those around your eyes. Some pucker the lips, some suck in the cheeks, others lift or lower the lips. Just fire a few neurons that instruct your mouth to move a certain way, and depending on which direction those muscles pull, you can convey rage, sadness, happiness, sarcasm, excitement, fear, arousal, confidence, and on and on and on. Even smiles can be categorized by their beauty. The prettier the teeth, the more a person smiles. And the more a person expresses emotion by using the muscles of the face (especially around the eyes and mouth), the younger she looks.

FACTOID

Our wisdom teeth were nature’s version of a backup system—giving us one last set of teeth that would come out by the age we would’ve destroyed our molars when we lived in the wild. Why are they called wisdom teeth? Hopefully, we would get them at the age when we were wise enough to take care of them properly, usually by our mid teens. But unlike for your relatives 10,000 years ago, hopefully your molars haven’t fallen out yet. Because of this, crowding often occurs when wisdom teeth erupt, causing them to come in sideways. Cockeyed teeth can’t be cleaned and will destroy adjacent teeth—which is why they’re often removed.

Sore Sport

Surely, there are plenty of places on your body where you love a little tingling, but not right above your lip before a first date, an interview, or your reality show tryout. What starts as a tingle and ends as a full-blown cold sore can be as painful as it is embarrassing. The leading cause: herpes infections, which are transmitted through saliva, kissing, or sharing other people’s cups. This is called type 1, not to be confused with the genital variety, called type 2. The best treatment is a short course of virus-killing drugs like acyclovir (Zovirax) or valacyclovir (Valtrex) combined with hydrocortisone cream. By the way, these infections aren’t just painful or embarrassing; they seem to relate to an increase in cancers of the mouth. If you know the sore is on its way, you’d do better to start the drug sooner, to try to shorten the nearly two weeks of suffering (they can come back when you have a cold, which is why they’re called cold sores). An over-the-counter drug called Abreva seems to superpower your cells to resist this type of herpes infection. Give it a try if you don’t have the prescription stuff, and eat a soft, bland diet while you have the sores. If you figure that out on your own, your family won’t have to scrape you off the ceiling if you eat pickles.

The other type of mouth sore happens on the inside; they’re called aphthous ulcers (otherwise known as canker sores). People with iron, folate, and vitamin B12 deficiencies are more likely to get these sores, and sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) in toothpaste triggers them. It takes about ten days for these to go away, but hydrocortisone ointment and keeping the sores clean with antibacterial mouthwash can reduce the duration.

Safari Secrets:

Lessons from the animal kingdom

Elephants replace their teeth five times and then they die. Great white sharks? They spit out new teeth as if they’re on a conveyor belt. Both are signs that the animal kingdom knows the true value of our munchers. Without them, you can’t survive.

FACTOID

Mercury fillings may not have gotten more bad press than conniving government officials, but they certainly have taken their own share of hits. The fact is that there’s nothing that shows that mercury in fillings causes any neurological damage, but there are better alternatives than having a mine in your mouth. (Note, however, that if you’re pregnant or nursing or plan to be, you should avoid any new mercury fillings because potentially damaging toxins can be released during the procedure that are toxic to incubating infants.) Fillings made of composite resin or ceramic are aesthetically more pleasing and may last longer. Also, there’s no need to have a silver filling removed and replaced unless there’s leaking, there’s decay under the filling, or it has a rough surface that keeps you from being able to floss.

Figure 3.1 Lip Trick Dozens of muscles around your mouth send messages about your thoughts and feelings—without your ever having to utter a word. The subtle cues you communicate through facial expression reveal the secrets you may be thinking.

These are the three classic types of smile:

 The Mona Lisa (two-thirds of people): The corners of the mouth are pulled up and out, and the upper lip raises to show the upper teeth. The most attractive show all of their top teeth and about 2 millimeters of gums (any more and the smile is classified as “gummy”). Mona Lisa is considered most attractive, with the upper and lower lips moving out half an inch and up at a 40-degree angle.

 The Canine (one-third of people): Here a particular muscle (called the levator labii superioris, for you anatomy junkies) is dominant and exposes the canine teeth before the full smile.

 The Full Denture (rare): Here all of the upper and lower lips are working overtime to expose the whole dang shebang of teeth.

FACTOID

It’s a miracle that we don’t have more infections in such a dirty place as the mouth, but we actually need germs here to begin digestion. These germs keep fungus in check, as well as supply us with our own type of venom, since the human bite injects more bacteria into our enemies than any other species. But did you know that vegetarians really do have cleaner mouths than carnivores? It’s the rotting bits of meat between the teeth that feed mouth bacteria. As clean as a hound’s tooth? We think not.

As you age, you can work to change your smile with facial exercises and by taking care of your teeth. That’s important: Your teeth get worn down naturally as you age, and at the same the soft tissue around the mouth descends, leaving you with a Richard Nixon smile—showing all lower teeth and no upper. Teeth are going to move until they touch something that will make them stop. That might be a tongue, dental appliance, or other teeth. As teeth wear down and get shorter, this changes the normal tooth-to-gum ratio and gives the “gummy smile.”

Tongue: Besides being your taster, your tongue also helps you swallow and protects you from swallowing poison; you can thank your taste buds for that. Controlled by eight muscles and four nerves, your tongue helps move food and liquids down your esophagus. Of course, few people^* think of the tongue as an organ of beauty; normal tongues are moist and pink and have bigger bumps toward the back. It’s when you develop problems that things can get a little hairy. Black hairy tongue, for example, occurs when taste buds elongate and change color (due to smoking or antibiotics). Your tongue can also develop cysts, ulcers, herpes infections, and yeast infections (which are called thrush; milk of magnesia or nystatin can chase the yeast right out of your mouth).

The Tooth About Health

Besides being the tunnel that food and flies enter, your mouth gives you lots of clues about your overall health—especially when it comes to your teeth and their surrounding structures. Some things you can decipher for yourself, but for others, you’ll need a dentist and a hygienist to inspect for you. So let’s get into our literary dentist’s chair and do a quick inspection of the other elements of your mouth. Sit back, cue instrumental rendition of “Kokomo,” and we’ll take a look inside (see Figure 3.2).

Safari Secrets:

Lessons from the animal kingdom

Elephants displace teeth from the back; they’re grinders. But most animals are like us and have a single series of adult teeth, since we need to develop perfect occlusion and would lose this with continual change. Crocodiles have “nails” for teeth, which are designed for grabbing rather than chewing. Our mandibles were fused about 40 million years ago. We lost the independence of selective chewing but gained the ability to spread the force of chewing to the entire jaw. We also have a two-post jaw joint, which allows our mandible to slide forward and then drop down. This enables the masseter muscle to develop increased force during chewing. Carnivores don’t have the mechanism since they must grab and tear their food.

Your jawbone (docs call it the mandible): The only time we ever get to see jaws is in museums, and they’re usually of the shark or dinosaur variety. But the human jaw is a powerful little clamp of its own—exerting 50 to 250 pounds per square inch of pressure during chewing. It’s also extremely efficient: It’s the only joint in the body that purposely dislocates itself during a motion, using two points of attachment—one lever point in the back of the jaw and another two inches in front. Every time you chew, your jaw dislocates and relocates, allowing you to crush food so you can swallow and digest. But the muscles that move the jaw can also be a source of pain. If you chew too much or subconsciously clench your jaw during stressful times, your jaw muscles can spasm. Stress-induced clenching or grinding can cause slight misalignment of the jaw, leading to jaw, neck, or eye pain, as well as jackhammer-like headaches. By the way, if you lose your teeth—be it through decay or an errant baseball—your jawbone will eventually erode away as well (use it or lose it). The main purpose of your jawbone is to support teeth, and a very intricate and complicated set of muscles, ligaments, and skin holds your jaw in place.

Your gums: We all know how well that peas-in-the-teeth look impresses first dates and job interviewers, and it doesn’t go over too well with the rest of your body either. Lest you think your gums aren’t important: The amount of tissue involved in a severe gum disease case is approximately the same as the surface of the skin on the back of the hand. What would you do if the back of your hand was bloodred and swollen and bled at the slightest touch? You would haul your buns to the doctor. But when the same thing happens in the mouth, you think it’s normal. When plaque—that sticky gunk made up of bacteria, saliva, and yesterday’s dinner—wedges between your teeth into your gums, it triggers a process of inflammation that leads to periodontal disease (gingivitis is infection of the gums, while periodontitis occurs when the disease progresses to the ligaments and bones around the teeth). Regular flossing and checkups can rid you of plaque and help save your teeth. Gum disease is linked to many other problems, likely because the same bacteria that can cause periodontal disease can also trigger an immune response that causes inflammation and hardening of the arteries. That plaque that’s found near your teeth contains a zoo of bacteria and proteins, sugars, and fat, as well as calcium and phosphorus. This tough stuff sticks to your teeth and causes gingivitis (gingivitis is an even better indicator of heart disease than levels of cholesterol).

Your teeth. Wiggle your jaw around (go ahead, nobody’s looking). Your top teeth are fixed to your skull, while your lower jaw has the flexibility to move front to back and side to side. If the top and bottom are misaligned, your upper teeth can’t adjust, so you end up wearing down your teeth. How do you know if you’re a teeth grinder? One, by taking the flat-teeth test in Chapter 3, and two, because teeth grinders show less tooth when they smile, which makes them look older and less attractive.

While acceptable on dance floors, grinding isn’t so great for your mouth. It causes premature aging as the wearing down of the front teeth inhibits the ability of the jaw to work efficiently, causing back teeth to wear down as well. Grinding can also injure your jawbone joint, called the TMJ (temporomandibular joint). If you’re a grinder (which can be caused by stress or misalignment), you’ll want early detection so your bite can be analyzed and you can be fitted for a night-guard mouthpiece that prevents you from grinding while you sleep. Left untreated, your teeth will eventually break and split from your gums. It depends on the break or the severity of the split if they can be saved or not. If it’s not too severe, crowns can cover them. Severely worn teeth may have to be replaced (and that can cost up to $2,000 per tooth).

Figure 3.2 Taste Test Much of our perceived beauty comes from deep inside our voice portal: The way our teeth look (not to mention the way our breath smells) influences our relationships with others. Proper flossing, tongue scraping, and other methods of oral hygiene are little things you can do that have major results. Grinding your teeth will flatten them and can cause one heck of a headache. As we age, we make less saliva from our mouth glands, which besides causing us to made weird noises with our tongues can lead to tooth decay.

FACTOID

You may sleep next to a person who snoozes with a mouth that’s open wide enough for a subway to get through. The reason why it’s a problem? It’s like driving a car without the windshield. When mouth breathers (sleeping or not) are exposed to all that air (caused by a clogged nose), it dries the gum and enamel to create gingivitis and possible bone decay.

FACTOID

You’re naturally susceptible to tooth decay if your mother was unhealthy during pregnancy or you had poor childhood health, perhaps because the foundations of the teeth were not created well. Today, major food sources that cause decay include carbonated drinks that dissolve enamel and sugary gums and mints, since these continually bathe our teeth with food bacteria love. Also, avoid sticky foods and candies (such as raisins, unless you religiously brush afterward), which can stick to your teeth (sucking candies are better for the health of your teeth).

FACTOID

Your sinus region generates a liter of fluid daily, so you’re continually washing boogers down your throat. There’s nothing wrong with picking your nose if you keep the area moist (and use a tissue paper on your fingertip). You can also use a neti pot daily to clean the sinuses (it’s like brushing your teeth for your sinuses).

FACTOID

White spots on teeth are usually a sign of enamel breakdown, decalcification, and too much fluoride. The problem isn’t only that we get too much fluoride from our drinking water but that every year more than 20,000 young kids (especially those under six) swallow their toothpaste, meaning they get lots and lots of fluoride, which can lead to the discoloring or worse. A lethal dose of fluoride is only 500 mg for small children—that’s not too hard to get if a big glob is put on a toothbrush. If your kid does eat toothpaste, have him drink a lot of milk—that neutralizes the fluoride—and head over to the emergency room. Keep the toothpaste to a pea size for children, to lower the amount they might swallow. Kids and pregnant mothers can also discolor developing teeth by taking tetracycline, so choose different antibiotics to prevent speckled teeth.

YOU Tips!

It’s one of the most common dreams around: losing your teeth by the bucketful. We’re not dream psychologists, so it’s not our place to suggest that such dreams are symbolic of your chaotic life (though some people believe that these dreams indicate that you’re a grinder). But we do want to help you avoid the nightmare of your teeth falling out in real life. Of course, you know the basics—you gotta brush, you gotta floss, you gotta see a dentist and dental professionals, you gotta avoid barroom brawls. But here are some more details that’ll ensure that your new nickname becomes Mighty Mouth.

TAKE TWO. Waiting in traffic, two minutes seems like an eternity. Playing in bed, two minutes feels like a flash. At the sink, two minutes is the time you need to spend brushing your teeth in order to clean them adequately and reduce plaque. Use a soft brush and rub the bristles up toward the gums, so you can get to the actual cusps and gum. Change your toothbrush every two months. Those newfangled ultrasonic brushes amaze many dentists with their plaque-fighting abilities (and some have two-minute timers built in). Many cultures, by the way, believe that massaging your gums with your fingers is helpful in preventing periodontal disease. We actually prefer sonic brushes, since they produce more than 30,000 brushstrokes a minute (compared to about 5,000 of typical electrical ones) and spray into the crevices of teeth to clean beyond where the tips of the bristles actually touch. In other words, they’re more effective at dislodging plaque. To use one, follow these instructions:

 Wet the bristles and use a small bit of toothpaste.

 Place the toothbrush bristles against the teeth at a slight angle toward the gumline. Power up.

 Apply light pressure to let the brush do the brushing for you (as with a sensitive coworker, don’t push too hard).

 Gently brush the head slowly across the teeth in small back-and-forth motions so the longer bristles reach between your teeth.

 Do the outside top teeth, inside top teeth, outside bottom teeth, and inside bottom teeth each for 30 seconds. Then do the chewing surfaces and anywhere else that may have stains. Feel free to brush your tongue, too, which can help with bad breath.