“Cavities are a communicable disease, and if you’re among the 90 percent of Americans who’s ever had one, you probably got them from your mother.”So begins “The Rise and Impending Fall of the Dental Cavity,” a remarkably engrossing and, for me, genuinely eye-opening survey of the history and science of tooth decay, published last week by the pseudonymous Cremieux Recueil on his Substack.
The bacterium Streptococcus mutans might not seem like the likeliest subject for a 7,600-word general-interest deep-dive, but Cremieux takes detours into the immaculate teeth of dinosaurs, the practice of Neolithic dentistry, the agricultural and industrial revolutions and their effect on our diets, and the dental agony of America’s founding fathers.
Probably, you remember admonitions from childhood that eating candy will rot your teeth, but that story turns out to be a bit simplistic — the problem isn’t that your teeth hate sugar but that Streptococcus mutans loves it.
And when it consumes sugar, the byproduct is lactic acid, which is what really starts to eat away at your dental enamel.
Not everyone has an oral microbiome dominated by Streptococcus mutans, but chances are if you do, it was passed to you by your parents, very early on — and if you eat any sugar, you’re very likely to suffer tooth decay.
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