Episode: 1709
Title: HPR1709: Hacking Your Teeth
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1709/hpr1709.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 08:05:54

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This is HPR Episode 1,709 entitled Hacking Your Teeth.
It is hosted by MRX and is about 21 minutes long.
The summary is advice on Hacking Your Teeth.
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Before we start, I had to be listened to this and I realised that I made a big goof.
I make reference to the Class of 99, where really I should have said everybody's free to wear sunscreen.
Apparently that's the name of the song I was talking about, so I apologise in advance.
Please ignore my nonsense. I speak later on.
Let's hope there isn't too many other mistakes that I find or that you find.
I haven't found.
Anyway, on with the show, hello and welcome Hacker Public Radio audience.
My name is MRX and welcome to my 9th HPR podcast.
It's been a long while, but hopefully you'll enjoy this one when you get to listen to it.
Let's start again as usual by thanking PeopleHPR, it's a fantastic service.
Really without them being here, I would never have produced a podcast in the first place.
It's actually really very easy. You can pick any topic you like.
It's completely open-ended and it's an interest, an interest in the story of God, an interest in
family history, an interesting hobby. Anything at all, it's just pick up a microphone and
talking to it. You can use an MP3 player or anything. It's very easy.
If all the listeners just produce one show a year,
we'd have plenty shows in the queue. My plan is to do one a year and so far I've been in
your drawing. It's so much that I've done more than one a year and I've got other ideas in the
pipelines so they'll be more coming. Anyway, this podcast has been a bit hastily pulled together.
I did battered on a few we notes but it's really going to be free-flowing.
I had also some funny ideas of what we're going to call this. I thought about calling it
Tata for new or hacking your teeth or something like that but I decided to go with hacking your teeth.
I feel a bit like the chap in the song for the class of 99 dispensing advice. That's a great
song if you have a chance to listen to some great advice on that and yes, do your sunscreen.
Definitely a good idea. I live in Britain and Britain we have an innate choice which is
in the National Health Service and I kind of part of that is linked to that as a dentist and
it's not completely free. I think I think for a check-up I pay something like £7 or something
like that. If you need extra work then it can cost more and if you're wanting
to say you need a filling or whatever and the tooth needs to be you want something that's
quite as opposed to a malgum then there's opposed to a silvery card thing. If you want something
that looks a bit more appealing then you need to pay for that. But for basic
and tooth care it's heavily subsidised by the government so we're all pay for it so that's
how he works in Britain. I have no expert in this field at all so I suppose that should be
a stamp by saying that but it's just a thought of just an interesting thing that you might
find interesting about my experiences of dentistry over the years.
So my recollections I suppose start at school, the school dentist and I recall him having
there was like a we get tripped down into this caravan type thing it was parked on the side of
the school building and you get you go into this thing and it would be rather terrifying
and I seem to remember the chap we wore a white coat and it had small hexagonal glasses. I'm
sure he had small hexagonal glasses and you know you always imagine I'm saying things like
you know this will hurt you more than it will hurt me and sometimes it did. So that was a bit
daunting obviously but at some point we went to a local dentist in the area and he was
quite an interesting chap he was I think I think he originally came from Africa I think and he had
actually I'm sure he had a couple of scars and I said he's face very very thick African accent
very very very difficult to understand in fact certainly for me anyway I could never understand
a damn word he was saying mind your suppose when I had things stuck in my mouth and whatnot
he probably didn't hit understand much of the patient was saying either I suppose so
but then in my later years the dentist that I had it was it was very nice I had
fantastic bedside man are very very relaxing and really put you at ease I made a big difference
from my previous experiences servers actually quite skilled at the dentist as I'm sure many people are
I'm not sure the time scale I'm really bad for for time scales stuff but this this recent dentist
I had was a tad for several years and was very pleased with with his his work and you know you
would go into the place and it would go a bit like this you know you get and then it did a lot
Mr X hi there please take a seat and you sit down and open up wide
how are we today Mr X and how's Mrs X oh yeah that's good that's good okay now if you just
open up a bit and we'll just take a wee look and see how you're doing okay upper left missing
filled blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah that's great Mr X
we'll just do we push and and clean and that would be good to go and the Mr we bit at the back
they will we'll see you in another six months okay thank you bye and that was it and that went on
for many trips and I was very pleased and and and and this was great or so I thought
so a few years ago I went in and I was told that my normal dentist was unavailable but one of
other dentists could stand in so that's fine no problem so I stepped into the dentist's office
and I was I was greeted by a woman and she said sit down please and I thought that was rather
rather she thought she was rather a brat but I never took any notice of that really and so she
said you know open up Mr X and well take a look and she did the checks and whatnot and at the end
of it she said right you have moderate to severe gum disease you need to take immediate action
if you don't all your teeth will fall out it's very serious you have to deal with this
take away this leaflet take away take away make away this corset del cream apply this
think it was twice a day take these interdital toothbrushes read the leaflets it's very important
and we'll see you at a month's time so at this I was rather shocked where did this come from this
this is bizarre and when I looked at the leaflets yeah the gum disease is very serious
or can be very serious and I had this moderate to severe gum disease and I was completely unaware
of it I had no pain in my mouth no pain in my gums it was I just didn't know it was there
it's a real shock and so and it turns out that really as an adult gum disease is very prevalent
and most people will banner where they've even got it might say a little bit of bleeding when
they're cleaning their teeth and perhaps a little bit extra sensitivity which I think when I
think back I did have I'm using that well-known brand in written called scentedine and yes it does
work but I don't use it now and don't need to use it but more of that later so what does
the happen is that in the gap between the teeth I think food tends to sit there and and damage
the gum line and so the gum pulls away from the base of the tooth and it exposes a pocket
I'm ledically that's what happens I may have the terminology a bit a bit wrong but then this
pocket gets deeper and wider and deeper and it can extend quite far down there below the gum line
and then you can end up with abscesses it's can be very very common and then you know eventually
leading to your teeth falling out or whatever I've never had an abscess I think that maybe I was
was saved by this I may as opposed to mistil get an abscess but I think that
reduces your chances and so I use every day I use well twice a day in fact in the morning and
that night I use the interdental brushes and obviously I want to use the cream for this
coastal cream for a month or so it all cleared up the pockets remain but they don't get any deeper
so you can stop the rot so to speak so I use three interdental toothbrushes I use a
blue one a yellow one and a purple one and so the idea is that you go in between each tooth
starting from bottom body you can start anywhere I suppose I'll start at bottom right and work
to bottom left and then top right to top left going in between each tooth and then when you first
do it it seems quite difficult almost impossible difficult and the blue one is what
science is a blue one I don't know what science a blue one is I can't it's not a number on it but
the blue one actually goes between every single gap in my teeth and once I've done that I then
move on to the yellow one which is next bigger one up and that does about three quarters of the
gaps and I get to know which ones they are and then finally the big molars I've got big gaps
big molars and I use the purple one and those that's used in four gaps I think in the teeth
but all that takes 60 seconds I type myself just to see how long it takes just one minute
when you first do it it's quite slow and difficult and quite and maybe a bit uncomfortable
see the idea is that you want to pack the gap with a tight fit on the brush
so that's why you start with the nervous one and then go between each tooth once
and then move up the next one and that way you get a tight fitting between all the gaps if that
makes sense one of the ways you can tell they um apart from slightly bidding gums and what not
is if you if you look at your teeth if you sort of open your lips and look and the gaps between
your teeth um the gum should come to a point between each tooth if it's round either and blunt then
that suggests that the gum isn't adhering tightly to the to the surface of the base of the tooth
and then that promotes gum disease it was quite remarkable um you know looking at my teeth in
the mirror and how that transformed over time and that's helped by by brushing the the gums
themselves i think what maybe contributed my to my problem was a remember as a as a child
we were given a big giant cardboard teeth and practice brushing them and the the wisdom at the time
if you pardon a pun was that you your brush would start at the base of the gum and you would
rotate your your your wrists so to speak to to swivel it up the way butting the fragments of
of food from the base up to the tip of the tooth and do the opposite brush down the way from
the the base to the tip from the top set of teeth of course this was a bit laborious and
and um it was a good intentions but it meant that you didn't really brush the gums properly and um
i think i make more or less constricted more on my teeth than the gums and you really need to
brush your gums um for you know i don't know how long but for a reasonable amount of time when
you're brushing your teeth don't just brush the the teeth i just do it you know the traditional way
side to side and in and out sort of thing um not rotating my my wrist like i used to do as a
as a child and young adult sort of thing um but uh the same my my my gums have the shapes completely
changed it's now they're all pointed between the teeth uh as a dentist said that and um i really
think that um that she probably saved my teeth uh in the long run and while the previous dentist
had a great bedside manner and uh really put me at ease and he perhaps didn't do me any favors
by not strongly enough telling me that i had um gum disease is you know severe gum disease at that
and i wonder how many other people are uh in the same camp i mean maybe the dentist
himself got fed up trying to tell people you know look you're not doing this properly but
but i really uh a tough stance is probably important so that people are aware of the implications
or maybe some people don't care i suppose maybe a lot of you read listening to this won't care
and um well obviously it's a free country you can decide for yourself um and obviously you can
skip this podcast if you don't think it's important um it's not a hobby it's not um it's not
um anything like that it's just that i was quite shocked by the fact that for all those years i
didn't know i had a problem and i just think maybe i said i would imagine a lot of people are in
the same camp as myself and maybe they would care too if they knew that they had to murder
us if you're gum disease um if you find your gums tend to bleed when you um brush and if you
also find quite likely that your gums don't come to a point between the teeth then you may want
to bring this up with your dentist and um have the next visit and ask them you know do i have gum
disease should i really be um tackling this what do i do ask you ask his advice might you save your
teeth anyway i hope i haven't rambled too much and uh i hope you enjoyed this podcast um i can
be contacted at mr x at hpr at googlemail dot com as mrx at hpr the at symbol googlemail dot com
so until next time thank you and goodbye
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