It’s never too early to encourage your children to have a great healthy teeth routine. Julie Mitchell is elleven’s Paediatric Dental Specialist and is dedicated to providing our younger patients with a positive experience of dental care by creating a comfortable and relaxed environment.

Teeth are amazing – if you look after them!

  • While humans have around 52 teeth in their lifetimes, some sharks can get through as many as 50,000!
  • Venomous snakes’ teeth have holes in them; this is where the venom comes out and is injected into the snake’s prey.
  • Human teeth are harder than steel but more brittle; this is why you don’t scratch your teeth with your cutlery, but you can chip teeth if you use them to break open a Lego spaceship!
  • It is estimated that, between us, humans own around 111 billion teeth in the world today. Laid out, they would cover an area the size of Bolivia (with a few left over).
  • Early false teeth were made from wood – not great if you got a splinter!
  • In the 18th Century, rich people would pay the poor for their pearly-whites and then have them made into dentures.
  • Rich Tudors would clean their teeth using a sugar paste (if you were poor you used brick dust or soot).
  • Even as recently as the early 20th Century, people would have all their teeth removed as a 21st birthday or wedding present to avoid later visits to a dentist… luckily not something we advise now!

So there are lots of reasons to be cheerful that we live in an age where dentistry uses advanced technology with the needs of the patient at its heart!

Julie aims to encourage children to make the transition to adulthood with an excellent attitude to dental care: “I’m passionate about making sure visits to the dentist are very positive experiences for children, and making the oral health routine fun so that they really do enjoy looking after their teeth.”