Anatomy of a Tooth

Spread the love

In order to understand some of the details of why it is important to clean your teeth or keep your pearly whites clean, you need to understand the physical makeup of our teeth and/or how our teeth are structured.  Without using too much dental jargon, I’ll try to give you a snapshot version of the makeup of our teeth.

So let’s build a tooth.

Our teeth have two sections, like a plant, there’s the top (crown) which sits above our gums and the roots which are underneath our gums.

Enamel:  This is most outer layer of each tooth, this is what we see when we look in the mirror.  It is considered the hardest substance in the human body, yes even harder than bone!

The enamel protects everything else within our tooth structure, and although it is the hardest part of our teeth it is also the most porous, believe it or not.  To the naked eye our tooth enamel appears very smooth almost glass like, but microscopically, it is porous.  One may even think all of those foods and tasty treats we eat just slide right off, but you’d be surprised to learn they really don’t.  The porosityf our teeth allows for bacteria to invade our enamel surface and this is beginning of cavities.

Dentin:  This is the next layer just underneath the enamel.   Think of the dentin as insulation like in your house.  The dentin is actually yellow in color and somewhat less harder than enamel.

Then comes what I call the heart of the teeth, the pulp, better known as the nerve to most.  This is what the enamel and the dentin protect, also without the pulp, our teeth would be like an empty shell, no life.  The pulp keeps the organic components of the surrounding mineralized tissue supplied with moisture and nutrients*.  Think of it as the sensory part of your teeth.  Without a pulp our teeth would be brittle and fragile.  When you get a toothache, the pulp (nerve) has been or gotten exposed to the outside world.  Once that happens your tooth (teeth) can become sensitive to hot, cold, and/pr pressure.

Cementum is best described as the substance which covers the roots of a tooth.  Without getting too technical, it’s main function is to anchor the roots of our to gums.

Next is the gingiva or gums, the soft tissue which surrounds our teeth and covers our jaw bone.

Then we have our the jaw bone which houses each tooth individually which is known in the dental world as the tooth socket.

So now that you have an idea of the structure of our teeth, it just might help to remember to brush and, of course floss, so that your teeth will remain the perfect structures they were design to be.

*Wikipedia

Roxie

We are passionate about promoting healthy, white smiles and hope you are too! What to know how to maintain and beautiful smile? That is what we are here to help you with!

You may also like...

Leave a Reply