Don't Brush Your Teeth? Men, Watch Out

Toothbrushes have been around since the Middle Ages, according to Pagan Kennedy, but we might not have recognized them back then.  Pre-plastic, those who wanted to save their teeth had to go out and find a boar or some other animal to get the bristles off their backs to "groom their teeth," as Kennedy put it.

Ironically, "the toothbrush is one of the most reinvented of human objects, with thousands of patents on file," Kennedy writes.

She notes that William Addis is generally thought to be the first to patent the toothbrush, where he whittled down a bone and stuck it full of bristles while serving time in prison.

Aren't you glad we don't have to worry about that anymore?  But a lot of people don't brush their teeth, and if you're a man, you have a lot more to worry about than just bad breath.  Try, raising your risk of a stroke or heart attack, and oh yeah, what's been so politely called "erectile dysfunction," according to the UK's dailymail.com.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/magazine/who-made-that-toothbrush.html?_r=0

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2242733/Men-dont-brush-teeth-regularly-likely-erection-problems.html

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