A trip to the dentist.

Muddy Ground is having a bad day. I was going to have a sneaky ride out on my mountain bike up and over Reigate Hill but quite frankly the weather has turned awful; that fine rain we get here in the United Kingdom that goes through any waterproof clothing. So scratch the bike ride. To be fair it would have been pants anyway as I've just got back from a routine annual check at the dentist. A visit to the dentist is a bit like getting your car serviced; always some bad news no matter how normal things have been prior. It seems I've been brushing too hard and have knocked my gums back a full 2mm, so partially exposing the roots of my teeth. This is bad by dentist reasoning. This leads to gum disease so I've got to go back in a month to see the dental hygienist.

Now my dentist I like. He swears a lot, and says things as they are. He cuts right through to the point [now that's an unfortunate turn of phrase!]. He took X-rays of my teeth, then put a camera in there - now that was uncomfortable. One suspects this is to paint a worse picture of events, but if he wants me to stop brushing so hard then he certainly got the message over. I've just been into the supermarket and stocked up on new toothbrushes, inter dental cleaners and mouth wash. Stuff I have already in other words..... He didn't frighten me at all, nah not me a roughty, toughty mountain biker.

Chatting to the nurse it seems we are all in this doomed cycle. We think that to clean our teeth we need to brush hard. But this action is tough on the gums and they recede. This exposes the roots to disease, so resulting in a further yellowing of the teeth. So we brush harder to get rid of the yellowing. This doesn't help so the good old dentists scrape away, give us fillings or crowns, charging us enough in the process to run a light aircraft. One suspects dentists have known this for years and years but have been unwilling to remove their income stream and tell us the truth. It seems the government have stepped in to say it's all a bit silly; just educate people.

It also seems to be the case that a lot of rather vague illnesses right through to heart disease can be attributed to bad dental hygiene. In essence if you have a mouth full of disease, then so too is your body. So my dentist not only criticised my brushing, he more or less said I'd die if I didn't improve things. You'd think I had a moth full of rotten teeth, but I don't really. I'm normal for a 1960's child brought up on sink estates. I'm also pretty fit for my age, don't smoke at all or drink much.

So if you've bought into those adverts for toothpaste that desensitises your teeth, helping the enamel do its' job, then perhaps you ought to question the way you brush and revisit your dental hygiene program. Stop being so rough, clean between your teeth at the same time, and give them a rinse afterwards.

My routine visit by the way cost £80. That's a set of tyres. Poo.

The day has not been made better by my having to paint the bannister's white over white, finding out that Google has taken over my web browser so I can't find my favourites, or indeed me now coming down from a sugar rush - I bought a packet of biscuits on the way home as comfort food. Oh and I'm supposed to be doing a bit of home working but it's tedious Excel spread sheeting so I can't be bothered. Problem is the near constant e-mails asking for the data.

Really I should have said "sod it all" and just gone out for a spin on a mountain bike. That's what a real biker would have done.


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