How do old people lose all their teeth? How can I prevent this for myself?

John Fenn, Trained by the best, Dr Janet Travell, the first female white house physician.

Two days ago I retired from a 50 year association with dentistry. I started dental school at 17 and I retired on my 67th birthday.

There are only three ways to keep your teeth throughout life. Be one of the .083% or die early. Or get everything crowned.

One of the reasons that I retired is that as an old person practicing dentistry most of my patients were old too. And the village I live in has an average age of around 60 and rising. So every day I went to work to see patients with loose teeth, massive plaque buildups, broken teeth and failed teeth with great fillings. Failing dentistry and failing teeth.

The simple fact is that old teeth fall to bits, old gums get inflamed and old people do not have the manual dexterity to clean their teeth and floss their teeth daily. And carers at retirement villages and aged care facilities cannot clean their clients teeth for them. They are resisted at every turn due to dementia or because it is uncomfortable to have your teeth cleaned every day.

If you go to an aged care facility and walk around you will find that the only people with reasonable looking teeth are either crowns or dentures. And as the person ages then these too will fail. Most people with natural teeth entering an aged care facility or developing dementia will have no teeth left within 6 to 12 months. And for the denture patients there comes a time when they can no longer wear their teeth and they take them out for good. Carers tell me that from the day they take their dentures out they have 3 months to live.

So you see the biggest failing of dentistry is that it is a futile exercise to say you can keep your teeth for life. Because we live too long these days and there is only so much abuse that glorified chalk can withstand.

I did have maybe 5 patients out of 6000 who have great teeth into their 80’s. I observed a number of similarities with these people.

They have all of their teeth, yes wisdom teeth also.

They had really good occlusion.

They make lots of good quality saliva, not the this watery stuff of most elderly people.

they have very few if any fillings

they do not brux and they do not do a lot of hard chewing. Their teeth do not show wear facets and chips and cracks, they look like they are brand new. Except for the darker colouration.

they are not genetically coded for gum disease.

So if you are one of the .08% of my patients you may indeed keep your teeth for life. But for the other 99.916% sorry, you are fresh out of luck.

牙齿：老年人是如何没了自己的牙齿的，我们应该如何防止