Video Transcript:
Dr Hisham:
If teeth last forever, literally, not metaphorically, and they do, once the human or the animal is dead, what makes them dissolve in people's mouths while they're alive?
Recently, there was a study that was done by some marine biologists on shark teeth that analysed what they're made out of and why do they keep getting replaced, and all these things.
One of the reasons why sharks replace their teeth all the time is because they don't have roots. They're not actually sticking in their jawbone. So, they keep falling out, hence they need more new ones all the time. They don't decay, though. We'll talk about that soon.
Human teeth have enamel on the outside, which is exactly as hard as this enameloid on the outside of sharks' teeth.
That's what that research showed very clearly- That shark teeth are not harder or softer than human teeth. They're exactly the same hardness.
But human teeth have roots because they're supposed to stay in that jawbone for a hundred years or more.
So what actually happens during that life that is so common today where people are losing their teeth, teeth are decaying, teeth are dissolving, what is the cause?
What their research showed was that shark teeth are made out of fluorapatite, basically, mostly fluoride and calcium bonded together, 98%. Human teeth are mostly calcium and phosphate, bonded together and very little, if any fluorapatite.
What surprised me, and actually upset me a little bit was the amount of media and dentists putting it on their websites and blogging about it and people talking about it all over the web. You can actually Google what I'm talking about right now.
Making such a big fuss out of that research, not explaining it's findings as they are only, but making such strange conclusions, which are totally incorrect & unintelligent. Statements such as, "shark teeth have natural toothpaste in them" , "shark teeth do not decay" or "sharks do not have decay because they have fluoride in their teeth" and so on and so forth.
That is simply not true. It cannot be true.
Sharks don't have decay, and all fish, for that matter, cannot have decay because they live in seawater, which is alkaline. In an alkaline environment, you cannot dissolve mineral.
So what is it that dissolves human teeth or any kind of teeth, or any kind of mineral? It's acid. There’s only one thing that destroys teeth, acid.
And of course, Sharks don't eat or drink what we eat or drink today, mostly acidic junk! That's why we have more erosion, and more decay in developed countries than in what we call underdeveloped countries, because of the Western diet and of course.
The whole thing is a modern man disease anyway. A few hundred years ago, nobody had tooth decay and nobody had erosion. They had attrition.
Teeth wore down because of hard diets and sand in the food and all these things, but nobody had decay. Well, nobody... it was very rare and it was mostly in elite societies where they ate a lot of honey and ate a lot of things which the more common people didn't eat.
However, that's all changed, of course, as you know, in the last two, three hundred years. Everything has changed. And this is what we're talking about. It's only getting worse, by the way. All the statistics, globally, are showing it again and again.
The most common infectious and annoying disease of all humankind is tooth decay. And it's the most preventable disease.
The main thing to remember is: shark's tooth with fluoride, human tooth with calcium phosphate - hydroxyapatite is what we call it - it doesn't matter. You put any of these in acid and they will dissolve. Avoid the acid, or you neutralize the acid as soon as it comes in, you'll preserve.
That's it. It is really as simple as that.