upper teeth should also overlap the lower teeth by 1 millimeter.
Your jaw should be level. How can you tell? Take a double-wide Popsicle stick and bite on it. If your jaw is asymmetrical, the stick will tilt.
Stink Mouth
We all know the nasty feeling of holding a conversation with a person whose breath smells like three-week-old leftovers. And we all pray that we’re never the source of such stench. Bad breath (or halitosis) comes from lots of places: Some stems from food getting trapped in pockets in the tonsils, some comes from the stomach, and still more originates from the tongue—where the stench from bacteria buildup can clear a room. Some even comes as a side effect of medication (as is the case with Benadryl). One good way to handle bad breath: a tongue scraper, which removes bacteria and takes some of the stink away. Some research shows that the tongue scraper reduces nasty compounds on the tongue by 75 percent (compared to only 45 percent by toothbrush alone). You need only about ten seconds. Just take the scraper and run it over your tongue. If your breath is just relentlessly offensive, talk to your dentist, who might even prescribe a few days of antibiotics. Your dates (and coworkers and subway companions) will thank you.
Now, we’re not suggesting that you go in, cut around, and move your facial features a smidge here or smidge there (though there’s more on cosmetic procedures in the appendix), but we are suggesting that there are objective standards to beauty (and you automatically calculate those when you look at others—almost instantly, even if you got a C in algebra). And if your mouth’s features don’t measure up to a perfect score along these scientific standards, there are still plenty of other ways that you can make the most of your mouth. Let’s take a closer look at the anatomy of the mouth when it comes to ideal standards of beauty (we’ll talk about health implications in a few pages).
Lips: We all know the main things we use lips for, so we’ll leave the sexy details to your imagination. (OK, back with us now? Good.) If you’ll allow us to go from sultry to scientific for just a moment, there’s more to know about your pinkish pucker. In the ideal scenario, the upper lip should be slightly larger than the lower with a gentle curve that peaks at what’s called a Cupid’s bow. The upper lip is divided symmetrically in two by two vertical lines under your nose called the central philtrum. The color of the lips also reflects what’s going on inside, as pale lips reflect anemia (lack of red cells or abnormalities of red cell contents) and blue reflects lack of oxygenation of blood (which can come from many causes). As we all know by now, lips—like faces, fat, and breasts—are a supreme target of the beauty counter and the plastic surgeon’s tools, and we’ll talk in more detail about these options in our YOU Tips.
Teeth: One thing we know for sure about mouth beauty: If your teeth look more like randomly shaped shards of glass than perfectly aligned chompers, then it’s a pretty good bet that those malformed biters can overshadow other beautiful body parts. Research shows that women tend to prefer upper front teeth that are rounded and men like a more square look, but it does seem that most of us prefer the height of the two front teeth to be about 1.6 times the width (phi ratio!). The front six teeth also should follow the golden rule that we discussed earlier—with the larger ones being 1.6 times the size of each successive smaller one.
Smile. Normally, we think of muscles as giving us the power to push, to pull, to heave, and to haul. But of the seven zillion cool things about the human body, here’s one of our favorites: The ever-so-subtle muscles in your mouth (and how you use them) determine exactly how you communicate with the world (see Figure 3.1). To do so, your mouth is controlled by a dozen or so muscles that all connect with the circular muscle around your mouth. Amazed that you have that many? That’s just a fraction of those around your eyes. Some pucker the lips, some suck in the cheeks, others lift or lower the lips. Just fire a few neurons that instruct your mouth to move a certain way, and depending on which direction those muscles pull, you can convey rage, sadness, happiness, sarcasm, excitement, fear, arousal, confidence, and on and on and on. Even smiles can be categorized by their beauty. The prettier the teeth, the more a person smiles. And the more a person expresses emotion by using the muscles of the face (especially around the eyes and mouth), the younger she looks.
FACTOID
Our wisdom teeth were nature’s version of a backup system—giving us one last set of teeth that would come out by the age we would’ve destroyed our molars when we lived in the wild. Why are they called wisdom teeth? Hopefully, we would get them at the age when we were wise enough to take care of them properly, usually by our mid teens. But unlike for your relatives 10,000 years ago, hopefully your molars haven’t fallen out yet. Because of this, crowding often occurs when wisdom teeth erupt, causing them to come in sideways. Cockeyed teeth can’t be cleaned and will destroy adjacent teeth—which is why they’re often removed.
Sore Sport
Surely, there are plenty of places on your body where you love a little tingling, but not right above your lip before a first date, an interview, or your reality show tryout. What starts as a tingle and ends as a full-blown cold sore can be as painful as it is embarrassing. The leading cause: herpes infections, which are transmitted through saliva, kissing, or sharing other people’s cups. This is called type 1, not to be confused with the genital variety, called type 2. The best treatment is a short course of virus-killing drugs like acyclovir (Zovirax) or valacyclovir (Valtrex) combined with hydrocortisone cream. By the way, these infections aren’t just painful or embarrassing; they seem to relate to an increase in cancers of the mouth. If you know the sore is on its way, you’d do better to start the drug sooner, to try to shorten the nearly two weeks of suffering (they can come back when you have a cold, which is why they’re called cold sores). An over-the-counter drug called Abreva seems to superpower your cells to resist this type of herpes infection. Give it a try if you don’t have the prescription stuff, and eat a soft, bland diet while you have the sores. If you figure that out on your own, your family won’t have to scrape you off the ceiling if you eat pickles.
The other type of mouth sore happens on the inside; they’re called aphthous ulcers (otherwise known as canker sores). People with iron, folate, and vitamin B12 deficiencies are more likely to get these sores, and sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) in toothpaste triggers them. It takes about ten days for these to go away, but hydrocortisone ointment and keeping the sores clean with antibacterial mouthwash can reduce the duration.
Safari Secrets:
Lessons from the animal kingdom
Elephants replace their teeth five times and then they die. Great white sharks? They spit out new teeth as if they’re on a conveyor belt. Both are signs that the animal kingdom knows the true value of our munchers. Without them, you can’t survive.
FACTOID
Mercury fillings may not have gotten more bad press than conniving government officials, but they certainly have taken their own share of hits. The fact is that there’s nothing that shows that mercury in fillings causes any neurological damage, but there are better alternatives than having a mine in your mouth. (Note, however, that if you’re pregnant or nursing or plan to be, you should avoid any new mercury fillings because potentially damaging toxins can be released during the procedure that are toxic to incubating infants.) Fillings made of composite resin or ceramic are aesthetically more pleasing and may last longer. Also, there’s no need to have a silver filling removed and replaced unless there’s leaking, there’s decay under the filling, or it has a rough surface that keeps you from being able to floss.
Figure
