Lesser Known Facts About Mouths

The human body is a fantastic thing, and one of its essential elements is in the mouth. You guessed it – your teeth! Your mouth is the entrance to the rest of your body and is how you hydrate and energize yourself. While you know how to care for your and your kiddo’s teeth, there are a few fun facts you might not know!

That’s a Lot of Teeth: Many critters on the planet have a mouth full of teeth, and that includes some of the smallest, slimiest creatures, too. For example, while having a mouth the size of a pinhead, snails can have over 25,000 teeth depending on the species. They don’t use their teeth to chew, but they scrape and cut food. The teeth are arranged in dozens of rows, each typically having 100 teeth per row. Imagine the oral hygiene needed to maintain that many teeth!

One of a Kind: You’ve heard of fingerprints, but tooth prints? Like their finger counterparts, teeth have unique prints that are yours and your alone. This means teeth can serve in identifying an individual. They are so special that even identical twins have unique prints. Dental prints can be used in recovering and identifying lost children, and many dental offices offer services to take these impressions.

That’s a K-O: Be careful of your pearly whites when you’re engaging in horseplay or anything that could result in a tooth being knocked out. It takes only 15 minutes for a tooth to start dying after it is knocked out of the jaw. That’s why it is essential to act quickly if you have a tooth knocked out. If possible, rinse the tooth with cold, clean, water and insert it back in the socket. If you are unable to insert it back into place, put it in milk or your own saliva to keep it from drying out, which will help the cells live longer, and hurry to the dentist.

Drool Pool: A healthy mouth produces enough saliva to fill two swimming pools over the course of your life. That’s 25,000 quarts, which is a lot of mouth-watering meals and a lot of drool. But just what is the purpose of saliva, anyway? Produced by the salivary glands, saliva serves as lubrication to help food pass from the mouth into the esophagus. Not only is it lubricating, but it has an enzyme in it called amylase that helps break down starches during digestion. Essentially, saliva is the starting point of the digestive system.

Who’s “Happier”: Males and females smile plenty during the day, but females smile nearly eight times as often as males. Females smile an average of 62 times per day, while males average eight times per day. This varies in different regions and social settings, and the disparity is often shown the most in the teenage age group.