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Joan
Published in TIC, February 1948.
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Today I had a real thrill which made me feel good all over. A beautiful young lady 17 years old came into my office to have her teeth cleaned by my dental hygienist and Bite Wing X-rays taken (the kind that show cavities).
It has been a year since this young lady moved away from Altoona. She has been my patient since she was three years old. She was always a very difficult child to handle in a dental chair. She always cried and we had to use novocain for every cavity preparation. She dreaded to come and was very apprehensive about every phase of dental operative procedure.
A Case History
Her very lovely mother tried so hard to do the right things regarding her food but she had many dislikes for the kinds of food that would build her a healthy body. She was a sufferer from intestinal conditions and stomach disturbances that upset the program. Her physician told me recently of her early troubles and that she was a difficult child to raise. She was a bottle-fed infant, had great difficulty with her formulas, was fed too much refined cereal and got off to a very bad start as so many children do. Then, when they develop a finicky stomach and an upset in intestinal function, they become pampered children and are frequently given foods that satisfy their hunger or their acquired tastes but do not prevent hidden hunger, and fail to supply the body with the necessary protective food factors so essential in building and maintaining a healthy body.
But today Joan is a changed young lady. For a year she has been on a very sane dietary and her mother said to me: “If Joan has any new cavities in her teeth we are going to be disappointed.” Well, the point is, she hasn’t any new cavities. Her teeth are beautiful and they have that very healthy look–beautiful enamel, clean, hard and dense. You can tell just to look at them that they are highly resistant to decay. This in contrast to the “chalky” looking enamel, with no glaze or sheen, that looks like soft, susceptible-to-decay tooth structure which Joan had had for so many years and which was held in check only by rigid prophylaxis, many cavities filled, and good home care. There were several fissures in her teeth that needed filling (they had been there for some time), so they were prepared and here is the thrill–no novocain was used and the teeth were not sensitive, as they had always been before. Joan did not once complain and she was not apprehensive; she was perfectly calm and composed. She did not mind at all my grinding out these cavities, and the tooth structure was hard, dense and sclerotic in contrast to the soft, malacotic, highly sensitive tooth structure she had always had. The gum tissue is firm, pink, healthy, resilient tissue, with fine tissue tone and, of course, underlying this splendid gum tissue is sound, healthy bone, a firm foundation for this splendid grinding mechanism.
A Year of Good Habits
Now, let me tell you, just as she and her mother told me, about her daily good habits for the past year: For breakfast she eats three whole oranges, an egg, a slice of whole wheat toast and a glass of milk. For lunch she eats an apple, an orange, a banana, carrot strips, a sandwich, of whole wheat bread, with meat or cheese and lots of lettuce, and a glass of milk. For dinner she has meat, a baked potato (skin and all with butter), two vegetables–broccoli and carrots or green beans, a fruit salad or a banana and an apple, and a glass of milk–no dessert. At bedtime she eats an orange.
Wherein does this dietary differ from the average? First, it contains no white flour or white flour products, no cookies, pies, cakes, pastries, no refined or processed cereals, no white sugar or products made from it, no candy, no soft drinks. Fruit and milk replace candy and cake.
Of course, another factor is that Joan has been in the ocean or on the beach for two or three hours a day since she moved to the seashore, so she has had plenty of natural Vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin (all other essential vitamins come from natural sources, too).
Joan is thrilled, her mother is thrilled, I, her dentist, am thrilled. No doctor bills, no dental bills, a healthy, vital, active, charming, beautiful, young lady who got off to a very bad start.
A Dentist’s Philosophy
Well, every once in a while some kid comes through as Joan did and believe me, it is the thing that I get the most kick out of in my dental practice, for I know it can be done. We have seen this happen many, many times. But, I really do become discouraged at times because we see so many dental cripples, and I think that maybe it isn’t worth all the talking and harping I do on right daily habits of eating and that maybe I should just keep my big mouth shut and put in inlays and bridges and extract teeth and make dentures and make a lot of money, but heck, I wouldn’t get any fun out of just that.
I do not believe in panaceas. Mother Nature knows best and when you try to violate her laws, you just can’t get away with it.
Do you think this is the end of this story? Well, I don’t think so. I believe Joan has learned a lesson that will carry her through a healthy life and that her children and her children’s children will profit by her experiences–at least I hope so. I’d bet on it.
Joan at age 6–a scrawny kid, malnourished.
Joan was very fortunate to inherit a beautiful tooth form, get the significance of that, we do not inherit “good teeth”. They are all built and maintained after birth. We do inherit the shape of the teeth. “The price of good teeth is eternal vigilance”–they are worth all the effort.
Joan’s teeth at age 6½. Deciduous teeth were all badly decayed but had been kept “patched up.” Joan always had dental care. She started Orthodontic treatment age 7 because radiographs taken at age 5½ showed these very large centrals coming and no room for them.