Some pain is physical, and some is mental, but the one that’s both is dental
I usually brush my teeth twice a day, once in the morning before bath and once in the night before going to bed, just to avoid feeling yuk!!
I remember having tooth ache when I was a kid. Actually one teeth from the first set decayed, because of too much of chocolate!. My mother used to give me cloves to chew to reduce the pain. Clove and clove oil are effectively used in ayurveda, the ancient Indian medicinal system to counter tooth ache.
The thought that came to my mind today about tooth or teeth or whatever you call it is about the types of it.
There are three types as we know from our primary school lessons i.e incisors, canines and molars. Canines are sharp ones that help us to tear food while molars are flat ones that help us to chew food.
Naturally, herbivorous animals have more molars that help them to chew food from plant source. While carnivorous animals have stronger canines that help them tear meat.
Now the question I have is, what about humans? We have both herbivorous (like me) and carnivorous (like unlike me) and also herbo-carnivorous (like and unlike me) people. So how are their teeth? Molars like cows? or canines like tigers? or both like humans
Once when we went on a trip somewhere, early morning a friend was so hungry that he came to have breakfast without brushing his teeth. When I asked him to brush his teeth first, he replied saying Have you ever heard about lions brushing their teeth !
I am sure he very well knew that he was not a lion, but was a Homo-Sapiens (please dont mistake me for using this word if you dont know biology, Homo-Sapiens means modern humans, nothing less, nothing more).
But the point of interest is yes, only humans brush their teeth. But again I haven’t seen or heard about couples of any other species involved in French Kiss either
So, was it that as humans evolved, they wanted to kiss their soul mates only to probably discover that it was not that pleasant with all the food remnants in the mouth, and so they started brushing the teeth!
But then if that is the case, then why should I brush the teeth now, that too twice a day? I can wait till I get married!
Some time back I had a thought that kissing could be a risky thing to do in the future!
Or is it something different? not kissing, but bacteria? because of the fear of bacteria causing tooth decay we brush our teeth. But then bacteria were discovered long after we started brushing in history!
Well, but not tooth decay itself. It was present even before bacteria were discovered.
So finally, was it to avoid the physical and mental pain that humans started brushing teeth?
But then don’t Lions get dental pain???????
Or probably they dont know why to brush or how to brush!
But we humans do know. Because we have evolved!!
Yes, humans as a species have definitely evolved. But humans as individuals have not, except for a few like Buddha
Yes Veronica
I used to brush my teeth for quite sometime in my childhood using neem and also using the stem of mango leaves! Now I use ayurvedic toothpastes which contain herbal ingredients.
http://store.naturalnirvana.com/ayto.html
As ursri said, neem is widely used in Ayurveda to treat almost every kind of skin problems.
Early morning chewing Neem/ Azadirachta indica is still in practice in rural area. Neem: India’s tree of life
What we think old/rural practice is actually more advanced and has scientific reasons behind Neem usage. Another link About Neem
Relative had acute skin allergy. Used many things like brushes to scratch till skin bleeds and reduce itching. No medicine really worked out. Some one insisted him to consume edible Neem oil. So he took Neem oil for couple of years and became so strong that he developed resistance to any infections. Surprisingly he need not use mosquito repellant rather mosquitoes hardly fly around him.
I would say that we need to brush our teeth because of the amount of junk we usually eat especially between meals. Our water at least here in the West is re-cycled, the vegetables are chemically grown, we are getting more and more biological grown vegetables which are a bit pricy, that?s true. So the attack on our teeth in these modern days is immense. Some experts says fluorine is good for your teeth, while others says it is not. Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) according to dentists of the old school is the best to brush your teeth with, but no modern dentist will agree with this. There is in India the neem tree a natural tooth brush tree I?m told
Animals have a keen sense of what is good to eat and when but they also have problems with their teeth at least the ones in captive do. Take my dogs for instance they know when to eat grass and for what reason the vets do not know the reason behind this grass eating. It might be to clean the stomach they say.