Opening a Bottle with your Teeth
Your teeth are stronger than bone, but even that will succumb to a metal bottle cap and a little bit of force. Opening a bottle with your teeth is putting pressure on your teeth and gums unnaturally. Your teeth are not made to be bottle openers and this can lead to a broken, chipped, or forever damaged teeth. Not to mention, if you bite the cap off hard enough you could potentially break the tooth off at the gum line, causing excruciating pain. You will be calling your dentist for an emergency tooth extraction for a severly broken tooth in short order.
Sewing your Teeth Away
Seamstresses and Sewers, you know who you are. Do you bite off the thread instead of using scissors? It may be saving you a few seconds by biting off the thread with your teeth, but it wears down your teeth. You or your dentist will first notice mild abrasions, but overtime could lead to more serious wear and tear of your gums and teeth.
Sucking on Lemons
Lemons are very acidic which can cause significant erosion to your tooth enamel and the surface underneath the enamel called dentin. In fact, most citrus fruit (lemons, limes, grapefruit etc.) will have the same impact on your teeth. In Central America, where fruit is grown abundantly, it is common for people to suck on lemons to pass the time or out of habit. People who do this show high levels of erosion, some beyond repair. The ADA defines dental erosion as the loss or wear of dental hard tissue by acids not caused by bacteria. [1]
Chewing on Ice
Eating crushed or cubed ice may provide you with some relief from a hot summer day, but it is a bad habit to get into. Ice is very dense and consistently chewing on ice can possibly break or damage teeth. Don’t forget about the fillings, crowns or other treatments by your dentist. It could easily damage or destroy those treatments.
Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Pipe Smoking
Constantly holding a pipe stem between your teeth can create a permanent groove in your teeth. Smoking a pipe in the 18th century was a lot more common than it is now, but the same thing can happen with other types of smoking mechanisms such as cigarettes and vaping. Vaping pens, in particularly, uses a device that is made of hard plastic or metal, like that of a pipe which caused this type of damage.
Other ways your teeth can be damaged by misuse
- Opening bobby pins with your teeth
- Using your teeth to remove a staple from paper
- Holding things with your teeth as if you’re using it as an extra hand.
- Do you use your teeth for something other than chewing and smiling?
