I hadn't been to my dentist since May-2004 (normally I went on weekends, but since Sofia and the kids moved to Montreal, I am not in Ottawa on the weekends). Last night, as I was munching on some cashews, I felt a pain in one of my molars and then some grit in my mouth. I went and washed it out, assuming that maybe there had been a stone or something amount the cashews. Turns out I noticed a hole in the surface of the molar (top right, second from the back, my wisdom teeth were removed years ago). Fishing around for grit in my mouth, it looked like crumbled filling. So I assumed that my filling had cracked and crumbled and come out. Went to the dentist this morning, he took an x-ray and came back with bad news. I have a large cavity under the filling, which gave way. The filling did not fall out, but rather impacted into the space of the cavity. He did not rework the filling, since the cavity is very near the root - cleaning it out would likely result in exposing the root. As some
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MOI: I don't know. I could launch into a discussion of epigenetics (but not today, except briefly).
Epigenetics is the study of changes to your genetic expression (DNA). Normally, we are led to believe that our DNA is our destiny. However, researchers have shown that DNA does not have to influence us. You can read here about how researchers at Duke University got mice who were genetically predisposed to be fat and yellow, to give birth to slim, brown mice (who have the same genetic predisposition, but it seems to be turned off) by simply feeding them more vitamins.
Perhaps the heart attack (or his quitting smoking) has changed his behaviour in a similar way.
breal: lots of people seem to have some sort of obsessive-compulsive behaviour. I find it wierd.
anonymous: that is a pretty good idea.