Losing Teeth: The Emerging Black Hole Of Emotions
Losing Teeth: The Emerging Black Hole Of Emotions
Tooth Loss, Shame & Fear
“A new study by researchers at the University of Sheffield’s Healthy Life Span Institute and the School of Clinical Dentistry has highlighted the emotional struggles and hidden challenges patients experience when having dentures fitted. This is the first study to map out the patient journey and how this experience can affect the overall success of the treatment.”
– University of Sheffield. “Hidden challenges of tooth loss and dentures revealed in new study.” ScienceDaily, 6 June 2024.
Obviously, studies are funded by someone or something and in this instance it was the consumer heath company Haleon. Some of Haleon’s brands are Sensodyne, Polident, Parodontax, Biotene, Centrum, Otrivene, and Flonase. Why would a company like Haleon invest in such a study? Shining a light on the shame and fear associated with tooth loss and the clinical pathways involved in denture replacements attracts community attention and can create positivity around this process.
Our Teeth Are More Than Their Parts
Our teeth boast a much higher profile in the 21C than in previous times. Mass media has thrust the ideal of those perfect white teeth into our faces on big screens and numerous hand held smaller screens. Therefore, the loss of teeth is, perhaps, a bigger thing now than ever before, especially on the emotional plane. The individual human being has perceived value in the modern consumer economy. We can buy oral health if we can afford it. Dentists sell us their services to repair and maintain our dental health. The bright white smile is both a cultural standard and a major marketing strategy for the dental sector to ply its trade. The dental business has actively pushed this trope of the perfect smile knowing its deep roots within our emotional psyches. Successful sales strategies are invariably based on narratives with strong links to feeling states.
The Bitter Taste Of Oral Failure
This writer can share the personal experience of losing teeth and the emotional trauma it triggers. Feeling that gap with my tongue in the arches of my teeth engenders an emotional sense of failure. What is missing emanates shame and bad feeling. Of course, I can rationalise it away via cognitive therapy techniques but the instinctive raw emotions remain. The gaps are growing with age and the loss of more teeth – it is a depressing process to witness and experience.
“Lead researcher Barry Gibson, Professor in Medical Sociology at the University of Sheffield said “Tooth loss can be hugely traumatic and this study has uncovered just how challenging it is for people needing partial dentures. Feelings such as embarrassment or shame can significantly affect the process of having dentures made and fitted. On top of this if they don’t fit properly this can make everyday activities such as speaking, eating and drinking very difficult which affects a person’s quality of life. The impact can be so dramatic that it can impact their confidence to leave the house. This can have a devastating and lasting impact.’
– Science Daily.
Humankind is perpetually losing teeth, and the emerging black hole of emotions are registering on our public radar. For the longest time, we as a society did not talk about the confronting stuff that happens via ageing. The famous movie star of the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s, Bette Davis, wisely said, “old age ain’t no place for sissies!” Collectively we celebrate the beauty of youth in its many guises. Teeth represent our ability to take a bite out of life. The loss of teeth is a very real reduction of our vigour at a primal level. There is no escaping from this in real terms. What we have done, up to this time, is apply cosmetic things to disguise this loss of youthfulness. False teeth, generally, look better than they structurally perform. However, we are entering a new phase of dentistry’s battle with old age and the loss of natural teeth. Implants are being screwed into mouths to provide permanent dentures at great expense. Human beings are living much longer and if you are going to spend half of your life span minus your natural teeth, then we had to come up with better options for those who can afford it.
Dentistry A Growing Big Business
“The market size, measured by revenue, of the Dental Services industry was $9.6bn in 2023. What was the growth rate of the Dental Services industry in Australia in 2023? The market size of the Dental Services industry increased 11.7% in 2023.”
– Ibis World
Recently there was an interview on the ABC with a fellow who had used his entire superannuation of some $53K to replace his rotten teeth with implants. The bloke seemed genuinely pleased to have made this decision and expensive purchase. The emotions he expressed about living with the shame of having missing and rotten teeth were profoundly felt in all estimations. Whether he was now being paid as a poster child for this segment of the dental industry in Australia we do not know. The truth of the shame resonates with many Australians’ own experience, however. The question is whether individual Australians in this situation should have to resort to draining their superannuation to remedy an awful state of oral health.
“Australian Tax Office (ATO) statistics show that in 2022-23 more than $313 million was removed from superannuation to pay for dental care, up from $108.2 million just two years earlier. It’s allowed under the ATO’s Compassionate Release of Superannuation program.”
– ABC.net.au
Dentists and the industry are doing brilliant new things to assist us with our oral health. Whether it should be a ‘user pays’ model for the treatment of such important and major health problems is the pertinent question in Australia. The dental sector via this consumer health company funded study seeks to validate the emotional trauma spurred by tooth loss in human beings. That it is now okay to say – this stuff hurts and it matters. Where it leads – we will have to wait and see.
Note: All content and media on the Sunbury Dental House website and social media channels are created and published online for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice.
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