Human Teeth the Only Part of the Body that Can’t Heal Itself – In our fascinating journey of exploring more about how our body works, let us delve into how the teeth work.
Did you know that the tooth is the only part of the human body that cannot repair itself? Yes, you read it right.
Facts about the Human Tooth
The tooth is the only part of the human body that can’t repair itself and tooth enamel is the hardest of all substances manufactured by the human body. Each tooth contains about 55 miles of canals for a total of over 1700 miles.
There are 20 baby teeth and 32 adult teeth. False teeth are often radioactive. Approximately 1 million Americans wear some form of denture; half of these dentures are made of a porcelain compound laced with minute amounts of uranium to stimulate fluorescence.
Without the uranium additive, the dentures would be a dull green color when seen under artificial light. If you are right-handed, you will tend to chew your food on the right side of the mouth. If you are left-handed, you will tend to chew your food on the left.
A tooth may seem like a single entity, but as with any other part of the body, it’s not as simple as it may seem on the surface. A tooth comprises several components, but we’ll stick to those that are specifically relevant to our discussion.
The top, white (or yellow… or even black, if you only brush your teeth once a year) part of the tooth, i.e., the only part that’s usually visible, is called the crown.
The shape of the crown determines the kind of work that particular tooth does; for instance, if it’s sharp and chiseled (the front teeth), then the tooth is used for cutting, whereas other shapes of teeth are better for other functions.
Can A Tooth Repair Itself?
It depends. It is possible for a tooth to repair itself if the damage is minimal. For example, a tooth with a crack on the outer level and a small fracture line that does not cause pain may repair itself over time.
The healing process is known as re-mineralization
It refers to the minerals in our mouths. Saliva does quite a lot when it comes to keeping our mouths healthy and can help to rebuild up the enamel on the cracked tooth so it is strong and protective once again.
To help the re-mineralization process, it is necessary to make good food choices (reducing one’s sugar intake is highly recommended) and use fluoride toothpaste.
“Cells are what start the healing process in our bodies, and as tooth enamel consists of 90 percent minerals, there aren’t many proteins and cells there,” explains Janne Reseland, a professor of biomaterials at the University of Oslo (UiO).
She explains that at the base of the roots of our teeth, we have cells that can provide a certain amount of repair, but not up in the crowns.
This leaves a large section of teeth’s surface area highly sensitive to the environment – what we breathe and what we eat and drink.
Anatomy of a Tooth
A tooth may seem like a single entity, but as with any other part of the body, it’s not as simple as it may seem on the surface. A tooth comprises several components.
There are three layers to the crown of a single tooth, namely enamel, dentin, and pulp.
Nature only provides us with two sets of teeth. First, our baby teeth, which are then exchanged for a set that is supposed to last a lifetime.
- Enamel (the outer layer):
Formed by ameloblasts, which are lost when your teeth erupt, and they don’t come back. As a result, enamel does not have self-reparative properties.
- Dentin (the middle layer):
Maintained by odontoblasts, which are present inside the pulp and get into the dentin through long processes extending from the cell.
The odontoblasts can lay down secondary dentin (which is secreted slowly over the lifetime of the individual) and tertiary dentin (in response to an irritant, such as decay).
This doesn’t mean that it can grow new dentin; it merely mineralizes the processes’ tubule.
That is, a large fracture isn’t going to grow a new area of dentin, but the holes in it could be filled. It’s like if you burst a tire, you can patch it with glue, but you can’t build a new tire from the glue.
- Pulp (the inner layer):
The area with nervous and vascular tissue contains the odontoblasts as well as progenitor cells that can turn into odontoblasts if needed (if the original odontoblasts were killed off by bacteria, for example).
In short, the difference is that teeth don’t have the same cells that bone does, and as a result, they have a very limited ability to repair themselves.