November 26, 2013 • 22 mins
While your stomach may rumble at the thought of Thanksgiving's bounty, your mouth is trembling in fear. Join Robert and Julie as they discuss the oral health battle that takes place between Streptococcus mutans and teeth enamel and find out why our distant ancestors may have had better chompers than ours.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind somehow stuff works
dot com. Hey wasn't a stuff with about your mind?
My name is Robert lamb in um Julie Douglas and
on the podcast table today, we have the full Thanksgiving
arrangement of food. We have. We have the turkey, we
(00:24):
have the toe freaky and the tofurkey. We have both
ones inside the other. Sorry I didn't clue you in
about that the to furky young can yes, yeah, so
you if you cut through the turkey to get to
the tough fur key? Youn Can you know how I
feel about to furkey? Do you like it? You don't
like it? I know, the taste, or the idea that
it's it's fake meat and needs to take on the
form of meat to be edible, all of the above.
(00:46):
I think that is just an abomination on the tables
of I'm sorry for anybody he likes it and brings
it to Thanksgiving to it. I think it's a nice alternative,
but I just thinks she's not something I did. I
have to say, you know, I was looking at a
study a couple of weeks ago two thousand and ten,
study from mcgel University's Department of psychology, and they they
(01:08):
entered into their research thinking that the idea of you
look at meat, you see a picture of meat, you
see some meat at a table, it's gonna make you aggressive.
It's gonna like tap into that hind brain and you're
gonna you're gonna get all ravenous and defensive and start
fighting off your your fellow family members or or your
friends at a restaurant to get a sweet piece of
that meat. But they found the opposite. They found that
(01:29):
just seeing meat provoked a sense of non aggression. Uh.
And the theory here is that it could in some way,
shape or form relate to our ancestral primate family feastings.
So the idea is, you know, okay, you're out there
scoring the meat, you know, getting a big you know,
putting a spear into the side of an animal and
blood's going everywhere, and you know, okay, maybe that's gonna
(01:51):
make you more aggressive. But by the time you get
it back to camp, by the time it's cooked up
ready to eat, you're probably surrounded by your friends and family.
You're probably surrounded by people you trust, and therefore the
experience of this meat is going to be one that's
more peaceful. I wonder if the same would be true
if it were a toe furky, if that would provoke aggression?
(02:15):
My kid, you think you think that the toe furkey
would provoke aggression rather than making a peaceful Well, here's
the thing about that example. What's really interesting is that
the turkey has come to symbolize this communal cooperation, this
this tradition. So it's not as they had suspected, this
idea of oh, you know, each man for himself and
(02:36):
trying to get that coveted source of protein. It's really
about the act. Okay, I think it's very interesting. But
it seems like like that's why the toe furkey would work,
because even if it's as an aggressor no no, no,
as a as a piece piece loving centerpiece on the table,
because you look at it, it looks like turkey. And
then maybe you're tapping into some sort of ancestral longing
(02:59):
for a piece of meat that has been cooked and
and and you're all experiencing it together as a family.
Or maybe it comes to symbolize this um this sham
of family dynamics. Possibly that's that's in our argument as well.
That's the whole other we could do a whole other
psychological profile of Thanksgiving. And I should say that that
steady is like a lot of these involved button smashing
(03:21):
subjects that we're looking at random pictures of cooked meat
and then and then they would they would punch the
button and uh and uh, and they were determining, you know,
what pictures raised aggression and raised the hackles, and which
one's created a more peaceful five. Okay, so they had
some neutral pictures and they have pictures of meat, and
they were just kind of trying to figure out what
level of aggressivity they were approaching that button mashing with. Yeah,
(03:44):
and and they're looking to do more research in it
later on. But it is interesting to take with us
into this Thanksgiving a feast, which of course involves far
more than just the turkey. And that's the thing for
me anytime. I'm not a huge fan of Thanksgiving dinner,
and part of it is because there's just so much food.
Even when I was a kid, even when I had
this ferocious appetite, I would often be in the mindset
(04:05):
it's like, well, I've really only got room on my
plate to eat as much broccoli cast role as I want.
Maybe a little turkey and maybe like one other dish,
but there's no way I'm getting all these dishes in
on the action. Well, this is from Jessica Toothman's House
supports article tales of turkey Americans eating estimated six and
seventy five million pounds of the stuff. We're talking about
(04:27):
three hundred six million kilograms and that's on Thanksgiving, with
each bird wing in an average of fifteen pounds or
seven kilograms, and that comes out to be about forty
five million turkeys who get the acts except that one
that the President always pardons. I really want them to
to not pardon one some year whoever the president is
to just say, you know what, times are tough, I'm
(04:49):
not doing it, and then they do like the public
execution of the turkey on TV. Yes, alright, President, does
it least like Ned Stark up there, you know, honorable? Yeah,
Like I'm you know, I'm in a man of my word.
I'm going to do the acts myself. Oh dear, okay, um,
all right. So there is a massive amount of gluttony
(05:09):
that is associated with Thanksgiving. As you said, as a child,
You're like, WHOA, I can eat, but not all of that. Uh,
turns out that according to the Calorie Control Council, that
the Thanksgiving meal, including appetizers, the average meal is about
hundred calories rich in two hundred and fat packed into it. Yeah,
(05:33):
that's insane. So then it becomes this idea of Okay, fine,
you can eat that much, but what is all of
that doing to your teeth, to your oral hygiene. So
we're gonna present this sort of this this sort of
like appetizer to you guys before Thanksgiving actually rolls around
in a couple of days with this idea of sort
(05:53):
of the voyaging into the mouth and looking at the
lovely bacterial secrets that dwell inside, because so much of
it is just so unnecessarily sugary, Like sweet potatoes. They'll
love sweet potatoes, but the the the sort of default
sweet potato dish that I grew up on as part
of a Thanksgiving or holiday meal. Is that really sweet
(06:13):
sweet potato? What is it? Marshmallow? Marshmallows all over the
top of it, and it's just it's and it's in
that in itself as a dessert item, Like I remember
loving it, and and you know, it's like this is
even at a young age when when I'm still eating
lots of sweets. I would like, this is delicious, This
would make a good dessert, except it's not a dessert.
You eat it during the meal and then you have
a piece of three different pies for dessert instead. Yeah,
(06:37):
and everything. There's just a massive amount of starch, in
sugar and carbohydrates all packed into this. And this turns
out to be really the recipe for disaster for your teeth.
But first, let's take a look at prehistoric human teeth
and the prehistoric human diet. Because if I were to
say to you, hey, man, do you would you rather
(06:57):
have a teeth a prehistoric human or a modern human?
And what would you say? I guess one would tend
to think what modern teeth? Not caveman teeth? Caveman teeth
who probably stupid and crooked and fell out and all.
But yeah, they didn't have toothpaste, they didn't have toothbrushes
or minty fresh gump. They did have a secret weapon,
which turns out to be their diets. Because what did
(07:18):
prehistoric people do. They were hunters and gathers. They went around,
they they gathered berries or whatever they could find to eat.
They killed what they were able to find a lot
of it was seasonal and you know, depending on what
was available, and they went from one meal to the next,
until eventually the grarian revolution comes around and we start
(07:38):
growing crops, we start creating surpluses of crops, and then
of course human culture as we know it sort of
swells up from there. Yeah. This was published in Nature Genetics.
Alan Cooper, the director of the Australian Center for Ancient DNA,
and his research team looked at calcified plaque on ancient
teeth from thirty four prehistoric human skeletons and just as
(07:59):
you said, you found that as diets changed over time,
shifting from meat and vegetables to sugar and carbohydrates, that
the composition of bacteria and our mouths also changed. And
this turns out to be really, as I said, devastating
the teeth. Yeah, we talked before about especially recently, we've
done a lot of work talking about the bacteria that
lives inside us, and there's a lot of it that
(08:20):
lives inside of us, there's a lot of it lives
in our mouth, and we really come to under we're
really beginning to understand the human body is not merely
a single organism. But this this sort of crude ship,
this uh, this amalgam of various different species that make
us who and what we are. A lot of those
bacteria are beneficial, but especially according to this day, especially
(08:40):
when you when the diet shifts, suddenly we're eating things
and quantities that we didn't eat before. We're eating things
we didn't necessarily eat before all that often, and it
shifts that bacterial population. Yeah, and all of a sudden
you start to get huge amounts of gum disease and cavities,
particularly if you fast forward from prehistoric humans to the
industrial age and you've got processed flour and sugar, because
(09:04):
these these guys really sort of add to that bacterial
profile or the the bad bacterial profile, and things just
run rampant in the mouth. Yeah. The really it was
just troubling. Quote from Cooper in this, uh, he said,
you're walking around with a permanent immune response, which is
not a good thing. It causes problems all over the place.
(09:24):
A permanent immune response, Like just imagine that that situation.
Compared to our our ancestors and prehistoric times, their their
teeth were more or less their their whole dental hygiene
was more or less in a state of readiness for
what it was intended to consume. But since the Agrade
and Revolution, we have regularly consumed things that we were
not built to consume, and build and consume them quality
(09:46):
quantities we weren't built to consume. And therefore our mouths
are in this constant state of disorder. Things are out
of whack from the very beginning. And there's no wonder
we have all these problems with our with our teeth
and plaque and and uh, the whole cascade of issues
that follow you into the grave. Yeah. I mean, it's
chilling when he puts it in the context of an
immune response, because we don't tend to think of cavities
(10:08):
as being in sort of this immune response of our
bodies being broken down by all this bacteria. But that
is the case. Let's take a quick break, and when
we get back, we're going to talk about something that
is very dastardly the s Utahon's all right, we're back,
(10:33):
And if you live here in the United States, in
a couple of days, it's going to be Thanksgiving, and uh, well,
what's going to happen is your teeth are going to
gear up for one of the biggest assaults of the
year on its enamel. Yeah, this is like Lord of
the Rings orcs attacking the walls kind of a situation.
Just a massive horde like things that that are normally
(10:54):
fought off, you know, in varying degrees throughout the year.
Now they have rallied and now all the try have
come together to tear down the civilization of Man, or
in this case, all the fatty, starchy, sugary foods have
come together in a massive army to destroy your mouth.
And they are hanging out with something called Streptococcus mutants.
(11:15):
This is also known as S mutants on the street
or mutans, and they delight that the S mutants at
all the lovely starches, carbs, and sugar com mingling on
your tongue and then sticking to your teeth enamel where S.
Mutans turns out acid and creates plaque. Yes, so you've
(11:36):
provided the S mutans with everything it needs to just
really get to reproduce it in your mouth and really
start carrying stuff down. Yeah, I mean, what kind of
looks like sticky white gunk? You know, if you're partial
to looking at the white gunk on your teeth is um.
It's really a fortress of molecules known as glucans, and
(11:56):
those are building blocks of plaques. So think of them
as like extact in a wall and there's a rife
with bacteria, and that's what gives a safe haven to
this bacteria and helps it to turn out acid. So
think about that as you're as you're consuming any kind
of Thanksgiving feast this year, and do not skip on
the brushing afterwards. I know I sound like an old
(12:17):
person and a mom saying that, but seriously, brush your
teeth if you think about it. If you have a
piece of pie, it has all the starches in the
carbs and the sugar, which is the worst combination you
could have for your teeth. Yeah, and you know you're
sitting there all day long sort of lolling them around
the house, You're probably not brushing your teeth. This stuff
is really going to town. And I'm gonna throw this
(12:38):
out too. If there's a good chance you're in a
situation where you want a little alone time to get
away from the family members. I mean, even if you
love them all, it can be a bit much. So
this is the perfect excuse if someone says, hey, why
are you going away to brush your teeth like five
times a day? You say, this is why listen to
this podcast. Look at this study. This stuff is horrible
for my mouth. I have to up my defenses today.
(13:01):
And that's why I keep disappearing. And I'm not listening
to podcasts in the bathroom on my iPhone. I swear
I'm vanquishing the s mutants that are taking over my
mouth exactly. Yeah, but you know it's not all you know,
orcs attacking your mouth and so so forth. A Thanksgiving
there is a little um, there's a little silver lining. Yeah,
(13:21):
and it comes in the form of cranberry sauce. Where
did you like me? That was the one thing I
didn't eat and Thanksgiving I was like, all right, you know,
I'll eat this all this, I'll pile this of them
in plate. I guess cranberry sous now I'll pass. Yeah,
I passed on it. Not anymore, it's certainly not anymore
now that we have this information with well, it's tarred
as acidic. It really cuts through the more fatty items
like stuffing. That's why it might go to But according
(13:44):
to dentist food scientists in microbiologists, Hyuen Kuhn. He discovered
that compounds within the cranberry disrupt enzymes known as glucostal
transfer raises that bacteria used to build those glucons, that
those that fortress that gunk on your teeth. So yeah,
there's two thousand seven study. They list out a number
of different benefits to the cranberries, to the cranberries in
(14:06):
your diet at Thanksgiving or any other time. They found
that chemical changes caused by cranberry juice create an energy
barrier that keeps back here from getting close to the
urinary track lining and as a recent suffer of of
a U t I uh, I definitely agree with that
defensive method. Also, direct measure measurements show that the adhesive
forces between ecoli and cells of the urinary track are
(14:29):
greatly reduced when at least five percent solution of cranberry
juice cocktail is present. They found that cranberry juice causes
tiny tendrils on the surface of the type of E.
Coli bacteria responsible for the most serious types of U.
T I s. They become compressed, they reduce the bacteria's
ability to latch onto the lining of the urinary tract
and they found the ecoid grown in the cranberry juice
(14:51):
or the isolated P A C s are unable to
form biofilms. Biofilms are clusters containing high concentrations of bacteria,
and those are required for infections develop. Finally, when E.
Coli is cultured over over extended periods in solutions containing
various concentrations of cranberry juice, their cell membranes undergo changes.
They hinder the bacterious ability to attach those urinary tracts cells.
(15:13):
So it was all of that research that really informed
Q and the other researchers to say, maybe, um, this cranberry,
the molecules of the cranb cranberry can act on the
teeth in a beneficial way, in the same beneficial way actually,
And so what they did is they isolated those molecules
and they apply them to the teeth of rats. Uh.
(15:33):
And they found that glucon again that the white gunky
stuff fortress in acid production by S mutans was reduced
by up to seventy in cavity formation and rats was
slashed by up to So Ku would probably say to you, hey,
I'm not advocating that you eat that whole gelatanous role
of cranberry sauce at the dinner table. But what he
(15:57):
is proposing is that they might be able to extract
this moll kills and come up with some sort of
product to bring to market, like you know, smutimes be gone. Yeah,
because of course the cranberries have cranberry extract and various
concentrations have been a part of a ut I prevention
and treatment for a while. So indeed, moving forward to
what extent might be able to utilize that for dental
(16:18):
hygiene as well. Yeah, and you have to also consider
that a lot of cranberry sauces also have sugar in them,
so that negates the whole thing. So sadly, it isn't
just a situation where you can just say, well, I
just put enough cranberry sauce on it heathen out. No.
But but but just in there's a lot of good
stuff and all those other dishes on the Thanksgiving table,
the cranberry sauce does have a lot of good in it.
(16:40):
So now you know all the stuff that is attacking
the enamel of your teeth, and you have found excuses
to leave the table and vanquish that bacteria. But you
probably need another excuse, because but at this time you've
probably prush your teeth up five times, right, right, and
you want to get outside of the house, if only
for a minute, if only for just a minute, just
to just to breathe some ash air, look up at
(17:01):
the sky, and if you do look up at the sky,
you might just see something special. It is a Thanksgiving miracle. Actually, yes, yeah,
it is a comment. The comments Iceland, this is a
visitor from the outer Solar system and it will skim
the Sun's outer atmosphere. And if it survives, that's the
big question mark. It could emerge as one of the
brightest comments in years. And uh, it will of course
(17:24):
have to fly by Mars first. But that's on Thanksgiving Day, folks. Yes, so,
I mean you can have multiple excuses there. Hey, there's
gonna be this, Uh, there's gonna be this comment. I
need to go outside and look for it. See if
it's there, See if it's in the sky. Choose who
you want to bring with you, say, hey, you should
come with me. Let's go look at it. Let's go
see if it's there. And if the talk it gets
particularly heated with religion and politics, you could always interject
(17:46):
this little factoid, which is that the comment Island is
a much interest because it is actually originating from the
ort cloud, and this is a distant reservoir of icy
bodies and leftover material from the time the solar was formed.
WHOA yeah, And if that doesn't get them, this will
(18:07):
what happened when the turkey got into a fight? Robert,
I don't know, Julie, what happened when the turkey got
into a fight. It had the stuffing knocked out of them.
That's a good one. That's a good one. Let's call
over our robit here, bring him up to the dinner
table and see if we have any listener mail. All right,
this is another one that came to us in response
(18:28):
to the Science of Uncanny Music. M Rebecca writes in
and says, hi, Robert and Julie just finished listening to
the Science Macanny Music podcast and wanted to respond. Regarding
film scores, My favorite film, He Has No Country for
Old Men by the Coen Brothers, which of course based
on Correy McCarthy's novel It's wonderful. It's yeah, it's wonderful.
It's certainly uh stands uh tall as the best cinematic
(18:49):
adaptation of Corea McCarthy to date. Anyway, she continues, so
what I love about the music score at the film
is that there is no music, well almost. I find
that the scenes are far more tense when there is
an absence of music. This preference could be because of
a sensitivity. I have a sound in a film where
there's jarring music intended to scare the audience, I'm more
likely to think, uh, think, will you keep it quiet
(19:10):
down there? I'm trying to watch a movie. Thank you
for all the podcasting hours you put on. Otherwise my
own work would be woefully incomplete. Uh. And that's from
Rebecca in New Zealand. Yeah, I do think that she's
right that the lack of sound, the lack of music,
adds this idea of alienation and isolation. Yes, and you
(19:31):
know we talked about the sounds and the visuals working together.
This is an example. Um No Country Rolement as an example,
if you can think of the horror movie or in
this case, it's just a very suspensibul movie as the
as the as the meal on the plate, and then
the sound design is the gravy. Now there are cases
where the gravy perfectly compliments what you're eating. And there
(19:52):
are cases where the gravy is just covering up the
foulness of the food on the plate. And there are
certainly situations where you have, like a bad movie, an
uneven movie, and you feel more manipulated by the sound,
like you're just making some noises at me and showing
me something, uh, you know, flash out of a corner
and expecting to scare me or expecting to make me
feel tense. Where's the film like No Country Will Furled
(20:13):
then by the Cohen Brothers. It does all of that
without the the benefit or the addition of music. All right,
here's another bit of mail that we uh that we received.
This is from Zoe Zoe right, and it says, good day,
Julian Robert. I've wondered if that means she's from Australia.
A lot of you are. I just listened to the
in Clothed Cognition episode and it explains something that happens
to be on a regular basis. I volunteer with the
(20:35):
Marine Rescue Organization here in Australia and I wear a
uniform when I'm on duty. It's similar uniform to what
ambos here wear blue within big reflective letters quote marine
rescue unquote on the back. I've noticed that as soon
as I put on the uniform, I'm more business like,
more professional of you will, and more on the ball.
I'm more assertive to I'm normally quite shy but the uniform,
(20:57):
But with the uniform, I'm on all there and not
afraid to do you or ask what I need to do. Finally,
I've also noticed that when I'm a bit off color
under the weather, with a cold or something I feel,
I feel it a lot less when I put my
uniform on. I've been noticing this effect for a while,
uh now, but that had to put it down to
my own quirkiness. But your podcast now makes me feel
(21:17):
quite normal. So thanks. I'm still sort of real at
the fact that the in clothes cognition study came out
of a Simpsons episode. Yeah, that's crazy. So if you
want to contribute, if you want to share stuff with us,
or get a taste of some more of the stuff
that we're doing, head on over to stuff to All
your Mind dot com. You'll find all the podcast episodes there.
I mean all of them, not just the ones that
(21:38):
are on iTunes, but the entire backlog. You also find
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(21:58):
and batands of other topics. Is it hostaff work dot
com h
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind somehow stuff works
dot com. Hey wasn't a stuff with about your mind?
My name is Robert lamb in um Julie Douglas and
on the podcast table today, we have the full Thanksgiving
arrangement of food. We have. We have the turkey, we
(00:24):
have the toe freaky and the tofurkey. We have both
ones inside the other. Sorry I didn't clue you in
about that the to furky young can yes, yeah, so
you if you cut through the turkey to get to
the tough fur key? Youn Can you know how I
feel about to furkey? Do you like it? You don't
like it? I know, the taste, or the idea that
it's it's fake meat and needs to take on the
form of meat to be edible, all of the above.
(00:46):
I think that is just an abomination on the tables
of I'm sorry for anybody he likes it and brings
it to Thanksgiving to it. I think it's a nice alternative,
but I just thinks she's not something I did. I
have to say, you know, I was looking at a
study a couple of weeks ago two thousand and ten,
study from mcgel University's Department of psychology, and they they
(01:08):
entered into their research thinking that the idea of you
look at meat, you see a picture of meat, you
see some meat at a table, it's gonna make you aggressive.
It's gonna like tap into that hind brain and you're
gonna you're gonna get all ravenous and defensive and start
fighting off your your fellow family members or or your
friends at a restaurant to get a sweet piece of
that meat. But they found the opposite. They found that
(01:29):
just seeing meat provoked a sense of non aggression. Uh.
And the theory here is that it could in some way,
shape or form relate to our ancestral primate family feastings.
So the idea is, you know, okay, you're out there
scoring the meat, you know, getting a big you know,
putting a spear into the side of an animal and
blood's going everywhere, and you know, okay, maybe that's gonna
(01:51):
make you more aggressive. But by the time you get
it back to camp, by the time it's cooked up
ready to eat, you're probably surrounded by your friends and family.
You're probably surrounded by people you trust, and therefore the
experience of this meat is going to be one that's
more peaceful. I wonder if the same would be true
if it were a toe furky, if that would provoke aggression?
(02:15):
My kid, you think you think that the toe furkey
would provoke aggression rather than making a peaceful Well, here's
the thing about that example. What's really interesting is that
the turkey has come to symbolize this communal cooperation, this
this tradition. So it's not as they had suspected, this
idea of oh, you know, each man for himself and
(02:36):
trying to get that coveted source of protein. It's really
about the act. Okay, I think it's very interesting. But
it seems like like that's why the toe furkey would work,
because even if it's as an aggressor no no, no,
as a as a piece piece loving centerpiece on the table,
because you look at it, it looks like turkey. And
then maybe you're tapping into some sort of ancestral longing
(02:59):
for a piece of meat that has been cooked and
and and you're all experiencing it together as a family.
Or maybe it comes to symbolize this um this sham
of family dynamics. Possibly that's that's in our argument as well.
That's the whole other we could do a whole other
psychological profile of Thanksgiving. And I should say that that
steady is like a lot of these involved button smashing
(03:21):
subjects that we're looking at random pictures of cooked meat
and then and then they would they would punch the
button and uh and uh, and they were determining, you know,
what pictures raised aggression and raised the hackles, and which
one's created a more peaceful five. Okay, so they had
some neutral pictures and they have pictures of meat, and
they were just kind of trying to figure out what
level of aggressivity they were approaching that button mashing with. Yeah,
(03:44):
and and they're looking to do more research in it
later on. But it is interesting to take with us
into this Thanksgiving a feast, which of course involves far
more than just the turkey. And that's the thing for
me anytime. I'm not a huge fan of Thanksgiving dinner,
and part of it is because there's just so much food.
Even when I was a kid, even when I had
this ferocious appetite, I would often be in the mindset
(04:05):
it's like, well, I've really only got room on my
plate to eat as much broccoli cast role as I want.
Maybe a little turkey and maybe like one other dish,
but there's no way I'm getting all these dishes in
on the action. Well, this is from Jessica Toothman's House
supports article tales of turkey Americans eating estimated six and
seventy five million pounds of the stuff. We're talking about
(04:27):
three hundred six million kilograms and that's on Thanksgiving, with
each bird wing in an average of fifteen pounds or
seven kilograms, and that comes out to be about forty
five million turkeys who get the acts except that one
that the President always pardons. I really want them to
to not pardon one some year whoever the president is
to just say, you know what, times are tough, I'm
(04:49):
not doing it, and then they do like the public
execution of the turkey on TV. Yes, alright, President, does
it least like Ned Stark up there, you know, honorable? Yeah,
Like I'm you know, I'm in a man of my word.
I'm going to do the acts myself. Oh dear, okay, um,
all right. So there is a massive amount of gluttony
(05:09):
that is associated with Thanksgiving. As you said, as a child,
You're like, WHOA, I can eat, but not all of that. Uh,
turns out that according to the Calorie Control Council, that
the Thanksgiving meal, including appetizers, the average meal is about
hundred calories rich in two hundred and fat packed into it. Yeah,
(05:33):
that's insane. So then it becomes this idea of Okay, fine,
you can eat that much, but what is all of
that doing to your teeth, to your oral hygiene. So
we're gonna present this sort of this this sort of
like appetizer to you guys before Thanksgiving actually rolls around
in a couple of days with this idea of sort
(05:53):
of the voyaging into the mouth and looking at the
lovely bacterial secrets that dwell inside, because so much of
it is just so unnecessarily sugary, Like sweet potatoes. They'll
love sweet potatoes, but the the the sort of default
sweet potato dish that I grew up on as part
of a Thanksgiving or holiday meal. Is that really sweet
(06:13):
sweet potato? What is it? Marshmallow? Marshmallows all over the
top of it, and it's just it's and it's in
that in itself as a dessert item, Like I remember
loving it, and and you know, it's like this is
even at a young age when when I'm still eating
lots of sweets. I would like, this is delicious, This
would make a good dessert, except it's not a dessert.
You eat it during the meal and then you have
a piece of three different pies for dessert instead. Yeah,
(06:37):
and everything. There's just a massive amount of starch, in
sugar and carbohydrates all packed into this. And this turns
out to be really the recipe for disaster for your teeth.
But first, let's take a look at prehistoric human teeth
and the prehistoric human diet. Because if I were to
say to you, hey, man, do you would you rather
(06:57):
have a teeth a prehistoric human or a modern human?
And what would you say? I guess one would tend
to think what modern teeth? Not caveman teeth? Caveman teeth
who probably stupid and crooked and fell out and all.
But yeah, they didn't have toothpaste, they didn't have toothbrushes
or minty fresh gump. They did have a secret weapon,
which turns out to be their diets. Because what did
(07:18):
prehistoric people do. They were hunters and gathers. They went around,
they they gathered berries or whatever they could find to eat.
They killed what they were able to find a lot
of it was seasonal and you know, depending on what
was available, and they went from one meal to the next,
until eventually the grarian revolution comes around and we start
(07:38):
growing crops, we start creating surpluses of crops, and then
of course human culture as we know it sort of
swells up from there. Yeah. This was published in Nature Genetics.
Alan Cooper, the director of the Australian Center for Ancient DNA,
and his research team looked at calcified plaque on ancient
teeth from thirty four prehistoric human skeletons and just as
(07:59):
you said, you found that as diets changed over time,
shifting from meat and vegetables to sugar and carbohydrates, that
the composition of bacteria and our mouths also changed. And
this turns out to be really, as I said, devastating
the teeth. Yeah, we talked before about especially recently, we've
done a lot of work talking about the bacteria that
lives inside us, and there's a lot of it that
(08:20):
lives inside of us, there's a lot of it lives
in our mouth, and we really come to under we're
really beginning to understand the human body is not merely
a single organism. But this this sort of crude ship,
this uh, this amalgam of various different species that make
us who and what we are. A lot of those
bacteria are beneficial, but especially according to this day, especially
(08:40):
when you when the diet shifts, suddenly we're eating things
and quantities that we didn't eat before. We're eating things
we didn't necessarily eat before all that often, and it
shifts that bacterial population. Yeah, and all of a sudden
you start to get huge amounts of gum disease and cavities,
particularly if you fast forward from prehistoric humans to the
industrial age and you've got processed flour and sugar, because
(09:04):
these these guys really sort of add to that bacterial
profile or the the bad bacterial profile, and things just
run rampant in the mouth. Yeah. The really it was
just troubling. Quote from Cooper in this, uh, he said,
you're walking around with a permanent immune response, which is
not a good thing. It causes problems all over the place.
(09:24):
A permanent immune response, Like just imagine that that situation.
Compared to our our ancestors and prehistoric times, their their
teeth were more or less their their whole dental hygiene
was more or less in a state of readiness for
what it was intended to consume. But since the Agrade
and Revolution, we have regularly consumed things that we were
not built to consume, and build and consume them quality
(09:46):
quantities we weren't built to consume. And therefore our mouths
are in this constant state of disorder. Things are out
of whack from the very beginning. And there's no wonder
we have all these problems with our with our teeth
and plaque and and uh, the whole cascade of issues
that follow you into the grave. Yeah. I mean, it's
chilling when he puts it in the context of an
immune response, because we don't tend to think of cavities
(10:08):
as being in sort of this immune response of our
bodies being broken down by all this bacteria. But that
is the case. Let's take a quick break, and when
we get back, we're going to talk about something that
is very dastardly the s Utahon's all right, we're back,
(10:33):
And if you live here in the United States, in
a couple of days, it's going to be Thanksgiving, and uh, well,
what's going to happen is your teeth are going to
gear up for one of the biggest assaults of the
year on its enamel. Yeah, this is like Lord of
the Rings orcs attacking the walls kind of a situation.
Just a massive horde like things that that are normally
(10:54):
fought off, you know, in varying degrees throughout the year.
Now they have rallied and now all the try have
come together to tear down the civilization of Man, or
in this case, all the fatty, starchy, sugary foods have
come together in a massive army to destroy your mouth.
And they are hanging out with something called Streptococcus mutants.
(11:15):
This is also known as S mutants on the street
or mutans, and they delight that the S mutants at
all the lovely starches, carbs, and sugar com mingling on
your tongue and then sticking to your teeth enamel where S.
Mutans turns out acid and creates plaque. Yes, so you've
(11:36):
provided the S mutans with everything it needs to just
really get to reproduce it in your mouth and really
start carrying stuff down. Yeah, I mean, what kind of
looks like sticky white gunk? You know, if you're partial
to looking at the white gunk on your teeth is um.
It's really a fortress of molecules known as glucans, and
(11:56):
those are building blocks of plaques. So think of them
as like extact in a wall and there's a rife
with bacteria, and that's what gives a safe haven to
this bacteria and helps it to turn out acid. So
think about that as you're as you're consuming any kind
of Thanksgiving feast this year, and do not skip on
the brushing afterwards. I know I sound like an old
(12:17):
person and a mom saying that, but seriously, brush your
teeth if you think about it. If you have a
piece of pie, it has all the starches in the
carbs and the sugar, which is the worst combination you
could have for your teeth. Yeah, and you know you're
sitting there all day long sort of lolling them around
the house, You're probably not brushing your teeth. This stuff
is really going to town. And I'm gonna throw this
(12:38):
out too. If there's a good chance you're in a
situation where you want a little alone time to get
away from the family members. I mean, even if you
love them all, it can be a bit much. So
this is the perfect excuse if someone says, hey, why
are you going away to brush your teeth like five
times a day? You say, this is why listen to
this podcast. Look at this study. This stuff is horrible
for my mouth. I have to up my defenses today.
(13:01):
And that's why I keep disappearing. And I'm not listening
to podcasts in the bathroom on my iPhone. I swear
I'm vanquishing the s mutants that are taking over my
mouth exactly. Yeah, but you know it's not all you know,
orcs attacking your mouth and so so forth. A Thanksgiving
there is a little um, there's a little silver lining. Yeah,
(13:21):
and it comes in the form of cranberry sauce. Where
did you like me? That was the one thing I
didn't eat and Thanksgiving I was like, all right, you know,
I'll eat this all this, I'll pile this of them
in plate. I guess cranberry sous now I'll pass. Yeah,
I passed on it. Not anymore, it's certainly not anymore
now that we have this information with well, it's tarred
as acidic. It really cuts through the more fatty items
like stuffing. That's why it might go to But according
(13:44):
to dentist food scientists in microbiologists, Hyuen Kuhn. He discovered
that compounds within the cranberry disrupt enzymes known as glucostal
transfer raises that bacteria used to build those glucons, that
those that fortress that gunk on your teeth. So yeah,
there's two thousand seven study. They list out a number
of different benefits to the cranberries, to the cranberries in
(14:06):
your diet at Thanksgiving or any other time. They found
that chemical changes caused by cranberry juice create an energy
barrier that keeps back here from getting close to the
urinary track lining and as a recent suffer of of
a U t I uh, I definitely agree with that
defensive method. Also, direct measure measurements show that the adhesive
forces between ecoli and cells of the urinary track are
(14:29):
greatly reduced when at least five percent solution of cranberry
juice cocktail is present. They found that cranberry juice causes
tiny tendrils on the surface of the type of E.
Coli bacteria responsible for the most serious types of U.
T I s. They become compressed, they reduce the bacteria's
ability to latch onto the lining of the urinary tract
and they found the ecoid grown in the cranberry juice
(14:51):
or the isolated P A C s are unable to
form biofilms. Biofilms are clusters containing high concentrations of bacteria,
and those are required for infections develop. Finally, when E.
Coli is cultured over over extended periods in solutions containing
various concentrations of cranberry juice, their cell membranes undergo changes.
They hinder the bacterious ability to attach those urinary tracts cells.
(15:13):
So it was all of that research that really informed
Q and the other researchers to say, maybe, um, this cranberry,
the molecules of the cranb cranberry can act on the
teeth in a beneficial way, in the same beneficial way actually,
And so what they did is they isolated those molecules
and they apply them to the teeth of rats. Uh.
(15:33):
And they found that glucon again that the white gunky
stuff fortress in acid production by S mutans was reduced
by up to seventy in cavity formation and rats was
slashed by up to So Ku would probably say to you, hey,
I'm not advocating that you eat that whole gelatanous role
of cranberry sauce at the dinner table. But what he
(15:57):
is proposing is that they might be able to extract
this moll kills and come up with some sort of
product to bring to market, like you know, smutimes be gone. Yeah,
because of course the cranberries have cranberry extract and various
concentrations have been a part of a ut I prevention
and treatment for a while. So indeed, moving forward to
what extent might be able to utilize that for dental
(16:18):
hygiene as well. Yeah, and you have to also consider
that a lot of cranberry sauces also have sugar in them,
so that negates the whole thing. So sadly, it isn't
just a situation where you can just say, well, I
just put enough cranberry sauce on it heathen out. No.
But but but just in there's a lot of good
stuff and all those other dishes on the Thanksgiving table,
the cranberry sauce does have a lot of good in it.
(16:40):
So now you know all the stuff that is attacking
the enamel of your teeth, and you have found excuses
to leave the table and vanquish that bacteria. But you
probably need another excuse, because but at this time you've
probably prush your teeth up five times, right, right, and
you want to get outside of the house, if only
for a minute, if only for just a minute, just
to just to breathe some ash air, look up at
(17:01):
the sky, and if you do look up at the sky,
you might just see something special. It is a Thanksgiving miracle. Actually, yes, yeah,
it is a comment. The comments Iceland, this is a
visitor from the outer Solar system and it will skim
the Sun's outer atmosphere. And if it survives, that's the
big question mark. It could emerge as one of the
brightest comments in years. And uh, it will of course
(17:24):
have to fly by Mars first. But that's on Thanksgiving Day, folks. Yes, so,
I mean you can have multiple excuses there. Hey, there's
gonna be this, Uh, there's gonna be this comment. I
need to go outside and look for it. See if
it's there, See if it's in the sky. Choose who
you want to bring with you, say, hey, you should
come with me. Let's go look at it. Let's go
see if it's there. And if the talk it gets
particularly heated with religion and politics, you could always interject
(17:46):
this little factoid, which is that the comment Island is
a much interest because it is actually originating from the
ort cloud, and this is a distant reservoir of icy
bodies and leftover material from the time the solar was formed.
WHOA yeah, And if that doesn't get them, this will
(18:07):
what happened when the turkey got into a fight? Robert,
I don't know, Julie, what happened when the turkey got
into a fight. It had the stuffing knocked out of them.
That's a good one. That's a good one. Let's call
over our robit here, bring him up to the dinner
table and see if we have any listener mail. All right,
this is another one that came to us in response
(18:28):
to the Science of Uncanny Music. M Rebecca writes in
and says, hi, Robert and Julie just finished listening to
the Science Macanny Music podcast and wanted to respond. Regarding
film scores, My favorite film, He Has No Country for
Old Men by the Coen Brothers, which of course based
on Correy McCarthy's novel It's wonderful. It's yeah, it's wonderful.
It's certainly uh stands uh tall as the best cinematic
(18:49):
adaptation of Corea McCarthy to date. Anyway, she continues, so
what I love about the music score at the film
is that there is no music, well almost. I find
that the scenes are far more tense when there is
an absence of music. This preference could be because of
a sensitivity. I have a sound in a film where
there's jarring music intended to scare the audience, I'm more
likely to think, uh, think, will you keep it quiet
(19:10):
down there? I'm trying to watch a movie. Thank you
for all the podcasting hours you put on. Otherwise my
own work would be woefully incomplete. Uh. And that's from
Rebecca in New Zealand. Yeah, I do think that she's
right that the lack of sound, the lack of music,
adds this idea of alienation and isolation. Yes, and you
(19:31):
know we talked about the sounds and the visuals working together.
This is an example. Um No Country Rolement as an example,
if you can think of the horror movie or in
this case, it's just a very suspensibul movie as the
as the as the meal on the plate, and then
the sound design is the gravy. Now there are cases
where the gravy perfectly compliments what you're eating. And there
(19:52):
are cases where the gravy is just covering up the
foulness of the food on the plate. And there are
certainly situations where you have, like a bad movie, an
uneven movie, and you feel more manipulated by the sound,
like you're just making some noises at me and showing
me something, uh, you know, flash out of a corner
and expecting to scare me or expecting to make me
feel tense. Where's the film like No Country Will Furled
(20:13):
then by the Cohen Brothers. It does all of that
without the the benefit or the addition of music. All right,
here's another bit of mail that we uh that we received.
This is from Zoe Zoe right, and it says, good day,
Julian Robert. I've wondered if that means she's from Australia.
A lot of you are. I just listened to the
in Clothed Cognition episode and it explains something that happens
to be on a regular basis. I volunteer with the
(20:35):
Marine Rescue Organization here in Australia and I wear a
uniform when I'm on duty. It's similar uniform to what
ambos here wear blue within big reflective letters quote marine
rescue unquote on the back. I've noticed that as soon
as I put on the uniform, I'm more business like,
more professional of you will, and more on the ball.
I'm more assertive to I'm normally quite shy but the uniform,
(20:57):
But with the uniform, I'm on all there and not
afraid to do you or ask what I need to do. Finally,
I've also noticed that when I'm a bit off color
under the weather, with a cold or something I feel,
I feel it a lot less when I put my
uniform on. I've been noticing this effect for a while,
uh now, but that had to put it down to
my own quirkiness. But your podcast now makes me feel
(21:17):
quite normal. So thanks. I'm still sort of real at
the fact that the in clothes cognition study came out
of a Simpsons episode. Yeah, that's crazy. So if you
want to contribute, if you want to share stuff with us,
or get a taste of some more of the stuff
that we're doing, head on over to stuff to All
your Mind dot com. You'll find all the podcast episodes there.
I mean all of them, not just the ones that
(21:38):
are on iTunes, but the entire backlog. You also find
blog post videos, everything you can want from its pictures
of what we look like imagine that. And you can
find us on Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, and Google Plus as well.
And you can always drop us a line at below
the mind at discovery dot com for more on this
(21:58):
and batands of other topics. Is it hostaff work dot
com h
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