A 2020 Cochrane review that assessed the two clinical trials concluded that “whether adults see their dentist for a check‐up every six months or at personalized intervals based on their dentist’s assessment of their risk of dental disease does not affect tooth decay, gum disease, or quality of life. Longer intervals (up to 24 months) between check‐ups may not negatively affect these outcomes.” The Cochrane reviewers reported that they were “confident” of little to no difference between six-month and risk-based check-ups and were “moderately confident” that going up to 24-month checkups would make little to no difference either.
Likewise, Nadanovsky and his colleagues highlight that there is no evidence supporting the benefit of common scaling and polishing treatments for adults without periodontitis. And for children, cavities in baby teeth are routinely filled, despite evidence from a randomized controlled trial that rates of pain and infections are similar—about 40 percent—whether the cavities are filled or not.
They should only be scraping the tartar not the enamel. I’d put it more like scraping an old gasket off of a car engine. You don’t want to scratch or gouge the metal but you have to remove all of the old gasket.
Except if you do it twice a year since your adult teeth come in, you’re going to have accumulated a lot of scratches by your 40s…
And this isn’t like scratching a gasket where you have to remove the old one so a new one seals better.
Our teeth didn’t evolve to last 80 years, but they evolved to last to our 50s/60s at least.
A hell of a lot more damage is caused by constantly consuming sugary drinks than a little bit of tarter stuck there for an extra 12 months till a cleaning. Hell, with just proper brushing or eating fiberours foods like apples, tartar really shouldn’t be accumulating to begin with.
Like, that’s literally what tartar is…
Just placque that wasn’t removed in a timely fashion and hardens over time.
I’m not sold that the dental tools can unintentionally damage enamel. Also I don’t think a sugar filled apple is going to clean teeth.
Source that even “hard” brushing can damage enamel:
https://www.webmd.com/oral-health/tooth-enamel-erosion-restoration
And here’s the source for high fiber foods like apples helping:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6051571/
If you brush too hard you can chip enamel, but apples are too soft/mushy to do so, while still neutralizing cavity forming bacteria.
Now, that study didn’t find that apples removed plaque, but it showed they prevent bacteria causing cavities and more importantly the study also required participants to only use apples as their sole dental hygiene regiment…
And I realize I said:
But I never imagined people would think I meant only brushing would be all the dental healthcare they needed.
But man…
After this thread I am fully prepared to say I drastically overestimated my audience.
I can admit that.
I’ll trust WebMD the day I’m dead.
The study you linked:
So it doesn’t actually help.