I’ve noticed in my cats over many years, that those who spend more time hunting and eating naturally out in the fields, have whiter, healthier teeth than those who prefer croquettes from the supermarket.
Then I wondered about our ancestors who didn’t have toothpaste and dentists to sort out their teeth. They could only eat naturally, so how were their teeth back then?
Quote – “Our oldest ancestors had great teeth, despite the lack of toothbrushes, toothpaste and lies to dentists about daily flossing. But as humans transitioned from hunting and gathering to farming, tooth-decaying bacteria that feast on carbohydrates proliferated in human mouths. The industrial revolution made things worse, pumping sugar and processed flour into our diets”.
Chimpanzees clean their teeth from time to time with twigs, but only to remove stuff that gets stuck between their teeth. So too our ancestors apparently. Archaeological remains, thousands of years old, of indigestible wood fibres have been have been found stuck between our teeth. Maybe we learned from the chimpanzee back then. Pity we don’t take more notice of nature.
So, what we eat contributes to our excessive need maybe to clean our teeth on a daily basis, using stuff that denigrates nature. Seems to me that everything we do, denigrates nature in one way or another.
Yes absolutely, the sugars in our diets are the cause of the issues you mention.
The first point of contact of the immune system is the mouth. Using mouthwash like chlorohexidine will wipe out our natural immune system in our mouths in seconds. Of course this long lasting biocide enters the water course and bacteria and viruses adapt so we harm ourselves and give the things we are worrying over the very tools to infect us.
Just stupid and the industrial food for us and our pets has so much hidden sugars
I know every little helps, but toothpaste must come a long way down the list of things to do to help the environment…to quote some bumbling idiot the other day, “there are bigger fish to fry”
And clothes with plastic fibres in them. Guilty here but will change as time goes by. Hemp fibre is not used enough, maybe because it has fallen from favour because of cannabis legislation but its a great crop from building materials, clothes and medicines.
Maybe if you look at it directly but the oceans are 2/3rds of our planet and kept healthy can absorb all of the CO2 but humans with their priority chemicals have killed 50% of the coral reefs and those ecosystems deal with CO2 so maybe a tiny part but it does have a big effect. Apart from vanity do we actually need this stuff just because its become custom and practice?
This gets repeated endlessly. We’re not destroying the planet. What we are doing is changing the planet in such a way as to make it uninhabitable for humans and many other species. When it happens, the planet will be just fine. Mass extinctions happen fairly regularly and they will happen again. The planet will just adjust, as will life.
Answer is very bad. Tooth wear was a real problem from medieval times and before because of coarser foods wearing teeth. And brushing teeth is a fairly modern invention for most peoples. Of course lifespans were much shorter too, so not as long for teeth to go south. Average life expectancy didn’t get much above 30 years until the 16th century.
Indeed. I watched that scientist that has a Beatle hairstyle the other night (don’t worry, his name may re-enter my decaying brain if I type long enough ) and he was talking about the universe, the sun etc., in trillions of years.
Set me to thinking, is all this fuss really worthwhile, our species is doomed anyway.
Absolutely. I think one of the issues may be that it’s just so long lasting. I have some hemp shirts I purchased in the late 90’s and have worn them regularly. Two are still going and the other was physically damaged. You can still get hemp shirts, but they now tend to be mixed with cotton which makes them more lightweight and not last as long. I also have lots of socks made from bamboo fibre. Bamboo grows at an enormous rate and is easy to process into a thread. It is also very hard wearing.
But that is all quite obvious - it makes sense. But is that what we want? I don’t think so, especially as we have an opportunity to help make things better.
And it’s not just the corrals. All shelled creatures in the oceans lock up CO2 in thier shells. When the creature dies, it’s shell end up at the bottom of the ocean. That what eventually makes limestone and its relatives (calcium carbonate), locking up the carbon. Higher atmospheric CO2 levels increase the acidity of the oceans. This makes it more difficult for the creature to form the shells, and also increases the proportion that gets converted back to CO2 after death. All this means less CO2 locked up and more released from the oceans.
Of course, that’s what all right thinking people want … in theory. In practice, many people just either dont really think too hard about it, or are too busy surviving day to day that they can’t really think about it. @Geof_Cox has it right. Its capitalism and it’s need for endless growth, driven by over consumption that is a large part of the problem. Thing is, what do we do about that ?
) and he was talking about the universe, the sun etc., in trillions of years.
