How are caries formed?

In this world, there is not a single thing which is governed only by one factor. There will always be  a number of factors that govern a single happening. Same goes for caries or cavity. As I have previously discussed about the structure of teeth, and when RCT is important, and also about the optimal time for scaling or regular teeth cleaning. 

Today I am going to discuss about how and why are caries formed. For that we need to understand the external structure of teeth along with its surrounding. 

Here, I have inserted a occlusal surface of a teeth. Occlusal surface is the top view of posterior teeth. In these you can see some parts with protrusion while some parts with depression. The protuded part is known as cusp, I think most of you are aware of this part. But the depressed part is one of the main cause of all the bizzare occuring in our mouth. This part is known as groove. The groove are the location where the chewed food particles stucks. There are some bacterial which is by its own present in our oral cavity, these are good bacteria (streptococcus mutans). It is their function to digest all the remaining food particles stuck on the teeth. But during this process they produce some kind of acid, these acid releasd from the bacteria can cause our teeth to degrade. Thus, you might have seen black line present on the posterior teeth. If some are visible in your mouth and you are not having pain, firstly try to brush out that part. If it still remains then this is the best time to visit a dentist.

The left picture shows a teeth with caries while the right picture have a prepared cavity. Cavity preperation is a completely different topic. Right now we are talking about the main cause of caries formation.

So the reason being that we didn't brush well and the food get stuck in our mouth.

So, we can sum up that for a carie to form we need a host (tooth structure) , microorganism, sugar and time . The food stucked in between the teeth are digested by bacterias, this process releases acids that further damages the teeth structure and causes caries formation.

What can we do to prevent this. 

Properly rinse your mouth after every snack intake. It will rinse off the food from all the surfaces.

Food not only stuck into these grooves, but they can even get stuck into these spaces present in between the teeths. These are known as embrasures. 

These are few pictures presenting embrasures. Think what happens when we rinse off, the water enters and goes in through these spaces that removes the food particles stuck in between. Flossing is also really helpful in removing the food particles from these embrasures.

Now you would have understand one of the main reason why all these caries are formed, that decays our teeth and causes severe pain. 

To understand why and when we need RCT, you can read one of my blog posts.

These are just the basic information one must know to understand the importance of regular dental visit. I have started this vlog just to spread awareness about oral hygiene. And to make people believe that "Prevention is better than cure".