homehome Home chatchat Notifications


Why Women Get More Cavities

It’s not because they deserve it, if that’s what you’re thinking – you mysoginistic bastard; and it’s not because they’re just much sweeter than man. Actually, the old tale that a woman loses a tooth every time she delivers is not as far from the truth as you’d think. A study published in this month’s […]

Mihai Andrei
October 24, 2008 @ 10:48 am

share Share

It’s not because they deserve it, if that’s what you’re thinking – you mysoginistic bastard; and it’s not because they’re just much sweeter than man.

Actually, the old tale that a woman loses a tooth every time she delivers is not as far from the truth as you’d think. A study published in this month’s issue of Current Anthropology concluded that women have had more problems with teeth since our ancestors became farmers, about a hundred thousand years ago.

But the implications are way more subtle than you would think; the women who were settled around farms were more fertle than the hunter gatherers and thus they gave birth to more children. This caused changes in their hormones and saliva secretion which caused damage to the teeth. Researchers have known since the 1980s that this change caused decay in the teeth of women, but they didn’t understand the causes.

Most of them attributed this to the change of lifestyle and diet, as they started to eat more grains, which contain sugars. They believed that this change applied more to women because they prepared the food and had more access to it, and they ate snacks more often.

“You increase carbohydrates and generally you increase the incidence of dental caries,” says anthropologist Clark Spencer Larsen of Ohio State University in Columbus.

This also brought some other significant biological changes, according to anthropologist John Lukacs of the University of Oregon in Eugene. As it turns out, how much having babies affects tooths can be calculated. Lukacs agrees:

Our new task is to partition the factors that cause caries–how much is caused by biology and how much by culture,” he says. “It’s not all or nothing–it’s a mixture.”

share Share

Climate Change Unleashed a Hidden Wave That Triggered a Planetary Tremor

The Earth was trembling every 90 seconds. Now, we know why.

This new blood test could find cancerous tumors three years before any symptoms

Imagine catching cancer before symptoms even appear. New research shows we’re closer than ever.

CAR T Breakthrough Therapy Doubles Survival Time for Deadly Stomach Cancer

Scientists finally figured out a way to take CAR-T cell therapy beyond blood.

A Man Lost His Voice to ALS. A Brain Implant Helped Him Sing Again

It's a stunning breakthrough for neuroprosthetics

In the UK, robotic surgery will become the default for small surgeries

In a decade, the country expects 90% of all keyhole surgeries to include robots.

Bioengineered tooth "grows" in the gum and fuses with existing nerves to mimic the real thing

Implants have come a long way. But we can do even better.

Science Just Debunked the 'Guns Don’t Kill People' Argument Again. This Time, It's Kids

Guns are the leading cause of death of kids and teens.

A Chemical Found in Acne Medication Might Help Humans Regrow Limbs Like Salamanders

The amphibian blueprint for regeneration may already be written in our own DNA.

Drinking Sugar May Be Far Worse for You Than Eating It, Scientists Say

Liquid sugars like soda and juice sharply raise diabetes risk — solid sugars don't.

Muscle bros love their cold plunges. Science says they don't really work (for gains)

The cold plunge may not be helping those gains you work so hard for.