Comment by dsego
I'm the same, I brush and floss regularly, occasionally use chx mouthwash, dental disclosing tables and oral probiotics. She forgets to brush sometimes, eats more sweet. She had only one or two cavities in twenty years we've known each other. I've had two root canals and have fillings regularly. Truth be told, she doesn't drink coffee at all, I drink several cups a day. She also doesn't drink much alcohol, I have one or two beers every week. In addition to bad genetics (both parents smokers and developed gum disease) I attribute this to poor oral hygiene when I was a kid, parents didn't really control my brushing, so ended up with a lot of fillings. In contrast, we brush our kid's teeth every day religiously, almost 5, no cavities whatsoever, and she eats plenty of sweets.
How many different dentists have you been to in the past twenty years? Does she see the same dentist as you now?
I once had a dentist who claimed I had a cavity every visit. I saw him once a year, and he did little more than look at my teeth. I've since switched dentists three times as I moved around the country and my dental insurance changed, and with all three, I've gotten nothing but rave reviews about the state of my teeth. I see my latest dentist twice a year, and he does an X-ray and an intraoral scan every other visit, and on my most recent visit, he discovered that one of those alleged cavities my first dentist had filled was filled improperly and appeared to have become reinfected. Unfortunately for me, I was busy at the time and postponed treatment for too long, and now the filling has fallen out and the tooth has collapsed in on itself, requiring a root canal and a crown, which in addition to being somewhat painful, will likely set me back several thousand dollars.
If you have access to the Journal of American Medicine (JAMA), I highly recommend reading this recent review of overdiagnosis and overtreatment in dentistry[1]. If you don't have access to JAMA, you can find pertinent excerpts in this Reddit post[2], along with some interesting backlash from some thoroughly offended dentists (all of it without any real supporting evidence, of course, though some of the points brought up are worth considering).
[1] https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2024.0222
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/Dentistry/comments/1cql9a8/interest...