Microscopic plant stones can cause permanent damage to tooth enamel

Chewing tooth enamel, the most difficult substances in the human body, chewing vegetables can cause a prostration and permanent wear.

While plant-based foods are an essential part of a healthy diet, as they provide fiber, vitamins and minerals, an international team of researchers found that microscopic plants, known as phytoliths, can contribute to dental wearing over time, potentially leading to more frequent visits for the dentist.

They designed embedded artificial leaves with these Microscopic particles And mounted them on a device that simulates the pressure and sliding speed of chewing against the dental enamel samples provided by local scientists.

Experimental results Published In Journal of the Royal Society InterfaceEven soft plant tissue caused permanent enamel damage and mineral loss on interaction with enamel.

It is quite common for archaeologists to find fossil residues of teeth because they are very well preserved due to their incredible rigidity and durability that can cross the best of modern engineering materials.

tooth enamel Strong, but it is also brittle, which makes prone to mechanical erosion due to fracture that suddenly occurs when cutting forces spreads cracks, and wear, which is the slow loss of material over the years.

Scientists have studied extensively on how human teeth breaks enamel and wear down, what causes damage and how much force it is to crack it. However, an area that is still not fully understood is the effect that can occur on enamel from outside sources such as dust or food we eat.

Phytoliths are microscopic, silica particles that are formed within many plant tissues when the roots raise soluble silica from the soil and the vascular system accumulates it in other parts of the body.

Previous studies have noticed wearing enamel due to plant phytolith, but the results were often conflicting. Furthermore, these studies fail to realize how many phytoliths, embedded in case of soft plant, interact with enamel of teeth during chewing.

For this study, scientists designed artificial leaves made of a polydmethylsyloxen (PDMS)-in-laws with embedded opline phytoliths obtained from wheat stems and leaves.

The resulting leaf, with a real leaf similar to a thickness and hardness, was then fixed to a holder and the healthy human knowledge collected from the dentists was controlled with dental samples, brought in repeated exposure to the chewing, chewing and imitating the pressure.

Physical and chemical changes The leaf and dental enamel was analyzed using high-resolution microscopy and spectroscopic techniques.

They found that even though phytolith themselves break up after repeated contact, they spoil the existing wear on the tooth enamel and reduce it. Mineral material,

A stunning result was the main mechanism of wearing, which came out of a semi-plastic or permanent deformation arising out of weakness in the subtle structure of enamel, not in the classic brittle fracture.

Researchers believe that new insight into enamel failure can help scientists act as an interdisciplinary interface between physical and life science to help better understand animal feed, behavior, movement and environment.

© 2025 Science X Network