I suddenly saw a video about traditional Chinese medicine, and there was a master of traditional Chinese medicine in the video, saying that the ancient Chinese did not brush their teeth, but their teeth were well maintained, and a very important reason was that the ancients used tea to rinse their mouths.
The master said that the daughter-in-law in ancient times was the first to get up every day, and she would make tea when she came together, and for nothing else, it was to prepare tea for the family to rinse her mouth. In ancient times Chinese there was no bad breath problem because Chinese drink tea, and it was even said that if Chinese did not drink tea now, the health of the body declined.
Did the ancients really not brush their teeth?
I do not deny that the composition of tea leaves has an inhibitory effect on bacteria, nor do I deny that tea gargling has the effect of cleaning the mouth. But it's better not to brush your teeth, and say that many people don't drink tea now, so the health index of Chinese has dropped significantly, which I probably don't agree with.
First of all, the absence of a toothbrush in ancient China does not mean that you do not brush your teeth, and rich people can use green salt powder to brush their teeth, which is similar to today's toothpaste. But salt at that time was very expensive and most of the people at the bottom could not afford it, so it is recorded that during the Tang Dynasty, people would chew a small willow branch as a toothbrush.
Similarly, tea is not affordable for everyone, and even tea costs more than salt. In the Song Dynasty, the most common tea and salt were about the same price, about 60 wen a catty, but drinking tea also required boiling water and firewood.
As early as the Warring States, there are relevant laws that from February to July every year, it is not allowed to go into the mountains to cut firewood, kill birds and their young, and kill fish and turtles. Therefore, before the firewood of the Song Dynasty, it ranged from 40 to 100 yuan per load. Usually, the firewood of ordinary people's households, it is not enough to keep cooking rice for heating and selling money, how can they use it to make tea.
The means of cleaning and treating teeth in ancient times were very limited, and although there was no data on the common dental disease of ancient people, there were many discoveries in archaeology. For example, the most famous Wanli Emperor was plagued by dental disease, not only lost ten teeth on his skull, but also suffered from caries, tartar, twisted teeth, periodontal disease, etc.
Dental problems in modern people
In fact, the ancient people's sugar intake was relatively small, mainly grains such as grains, and the diet was not as complex and diverse as it is now, so the damage to teeth would be relatively small. A clear example is that the mainland has much less dental caries than sugar-eating countries.
According to the fourth national oral health epidemiological survey in 2017, the average number of caries in 12-year-old children in the world was 1.86, including 1.2 in the United States, 1.4 in Japan, 1.8 in South Korea, and 0.86 in mainland 12-year-old children.
However, due to the increase in sugar intake, the caries rate of permanent teeth in 12-year-old children in mainland China has increased by 7.8 percentage points compared with ten years ago, and the incidence of caries in primary teeth in 5-year-old children has increased by 5.8 percentage points. This shows that modern teeth are more seriously damaged and more difficult to maintain.
It is doubtful that rinsing your mouth with simple tea will actually work better than modern brushing. The effect of brushing teeth has long been proven, and before 1989, the Chinese periodontitis disease was as high as 90%, and in recent years it has dropped to about 70%.
The direction of TCM
The question of TCM has always been very controversial, and I am not against TCM, nor Western medicine, but I am confused about the development direction of TCM. Everyone is saying that Chinese medicine is not welcomed by their own people at home, but it is valued by countries such as the United States, Japan and South Korea abroad, and there is even a video on the Internet saying that foreign Chinese medicine criticizes Chinese does not understand Chinese medicine.
But in fact, so far, none of the drugs of traditional Chinese medicine have passed the certification of the US FDA, nor have they been included in the European and American medical systems.
However, this does not mean that TCM is ineffective, and the advantages of TCM are clear to everyone, that is, in the long-term and lasting health preservation effect on the human body. Western medicine, on the other hand, is good at treating acute diseases and surgical procedures.
Many times, people have to compare the level of a certain TCM master, as if questioning the remarks of a certain TCM master is completely anti-TCM. This binary opposition brings extreme medical choices, but the human body and medicine have always been a complex issue, and the combination of Chinese and Western medicine may be the development direction of Chinese medicine in the future.