What Effect Does Chewing Food Have on Teeth?

The researchers, from the United States and China, hope that their findings can improve dental care and enhance the understanding of fossil hunters regarding ancient teeth they find during excavations.

"Peter Ungar," one of the researchers from the University of Arkansas, says, "Hydroxyapatite crystallites are the fundamental units of tooth enamel, each of which is one-thousandth the thickness of a human hair."

These hydroxyapatite crystallites stack on top of each other and attach to proteins to form enamel.

For their research, the team used powerful microscopes to examine real human molars that were extracted for orthodontic purposes.

The researchers used tools such as diamonds to create scratches on these teeth and also applied pressure to simulate chewing and biting actions on them.

They discovered that creating a chewing-like action for the teeth caused more damage to the enamel, and in general, chewing food caused more harm to the teeth due to wear than the act of biting.

The reason for this is that, in tooth wear, the chemical bonds that hold the hydroxyapatite crystallites together break, causing them to separate, change shape, and fracture.

Until now, we didn't have precise information on how teeth react to the pressure applied to them, but in this study, researchers were able to examine the real nanochemical bonds between the crystallites.

According to the team, the images and scales obtained can be applied in various fields, including dentistry, evolutionary biology, and biomedicine.

Ultimately, these findings could help us choose diets that are better for our teeth.

This research was published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.