Speaking of thumbsucking

[conuly]

I have a long-standing rule that the more people assert a thing, the more likely it is that I should look it up for my own self.

This rule has never steered me wrong, and this is what I found out when I tried to trace the source of the claim that thumbsucking will inevitably do immense damage to your teeth and jaw: lots of sites claim this, but few of them offer any citations. Those that do all cite the same few studies, the last of which was done in the 1960s. For the record, that study states that the risk of causing damage is highest in children, whose teeth are still coming in and whose palates are still growing, and in those who actively suck on their thumbs rather than simply sticking them in their mouths and keeping them there, and, unsurprisingly, in those who spend a lot of time daily on thumbsucking instead of just a few minutes here and there.

However... it's weird that they all cite such an old article, isn't it? Thumbsucking hasn't gone away. Orthodontia is still a booming business. Surely somebody's done some new research, right? I'm not just being performatively shocked here, I actually think it's strange.

Comments

[redbird]

A likely reason why there's no recent research is that there's little or no incentive for researchers to study something that seems to have been established: even if someone dug up funds and did the research, who would publish it? And how do you recruit subjects for a study of the form "we want to determine how harmful thumb-sucking is," when the parents are starting from the assumption that thumb-sucking should be prevented?

A study of the form "does X intervention stop children from sucking their thumbs more effectively than Y?" or how X compares to doing nothing, might be doable. But as long as they're sure thumb-sucking is bad, the researchers can't ethically test whether just letting children suck their thumbs is better than telling them not to.

I don't remember whether you're the person who told me about the (lack of) good evidence that flossing is good for dental health. There's good evidence for fluoridation, at least: but the packages of fluoride toothpaste that list multiple health benefits turn out, in the fine print, to be pointing out that the fluoride has three health benefits. (The unfluoridated toothpaste has labels like "for people who prefer to avoid fluoride" and no health claims.)

[conuly]

At the very least, without dragging ethics into it, you'd think somebody would've done a survey of late elementary kids to establish a. how many of them had extended thumbsucking (past the age of 5) and b. how many of them had orthodontia, if only to establish if the correlation in that earlier study holds up.

I did know that about flossing, though I don't remember if I shared it with you or anybody. Turns out that a lot of dentistry is a black box with a veneer of medicine over it.

[kareina]

When I was little the adults in my mom's hometown (where we lived the year my parents split) would tell us kids "Don't suck your thumb--Aunt Dorothy used to suck her thumb, and she sucked it right off!". Even though I couldn't have been more than 4 or 5, I was really doubtful--I was totally convinced that if she had sucked the thumb off she wouldn't have had that sort of scar, with stitch marks visible around it (I didn't know what sort of scar she would have had, but not like that). However, even so, I didn't suck my thumb--not worth the risk!

[ayebydan]

Excellent points, all well made.

[cactuswatcher]

My parents were very worried about my thumbsucking when I was small, especially when I went to sleep. They tried all sorts of things to get me to stop which didn't work. I just grew out of it. I've had a dentist compliment me on my occlusion, in other words, the way my teeth fit together. I have other dental problems, but none of the orthodontic sort.

An uncle on my mother's side was an orthodontist. Among other things he convinced an aunt and uncle on my father's side to get orthodontic help for a homely, younger cousin of mine. It worked very well, as he grew into a very handsome young man. One of my high school girlfriends had horrifyingly twisted teeth in grade school that were being fixed when I met her. In both of those cases I suspect there were genetic problems.

[hafnia]

There are newer studies (I found one from 2019 specifically :) ). I'm guessing that the older studies get cited because they're easy to find and are widely cited already, whereas newer articles aren't as well-known.

Might also be what you were looking up specifically and where you did the search — I did a lit search for "thumbsucking and malocclusions" and turned up new stuff 'cos that's what the technical term is.

[conuly]

I did not, in fact, use technical terms, so maybe I should. Do you have a link to the one you found, since I'm a bit lazy?

[hafnia]

This is one of the ones that was available just as a PDF: https://jprsolutions.info/files/final-file-5cb419fdbd4466.32700908.pdf

There's a bunch of them, though — Google Scholar was helpful using "oral habits and malocclusion" as a search term, but I imagine that "thumbsucking orthodontics" would also turn stuff up.

[ayebydan]

My best friend is a Dentist so this is secondhand information but from a reliable source though of course as it comes from a dw friend you can take it as you like. We ended up having a huge conversation over this because my friend actually has....not great teeth and I was like huh.

Anyway. As redbird pointed out a huge issue is that no one wants to do another big research project into 'water is wet' when so many things are scrapping over so little funding.

Also, Dentists tend to be trusted professionals who face less wariness than others in the medical realm. And they have never wavered from the stance that sucking your thumb is not great and you need to get rid of that dummy/pacifier I think you call it? by X age. Despite her own father being a dentist and her mother a school teacher my friend never did. She still sucks her thumb. At 29. And it has deformed her jaw and mouth. If she was not the kid of a dentist willing to do the work on her for free she would be thousands to fix her jaw, rotate her teeth back into the right positions and in general get traintrack braces.

But yeah she explained to me it is the same way that prolonged drug amuse and tensing the muscles in your jaw etc deformed it. It is forcing things to sit in an unnatural way. That is why tension headaches form sitting your jaw a certain way and bad things happen when you grind your teeth at night.

But she assures me that a dentist can tell from one glance in your mouth, sometimes don't even need you to open your mouth, that you suck your thumb either now or that you did prolonged as a child. It isn't talked about now because it is as obvious to most as saying 'you need to brush your teeth'.


And as my friend hasn't cracked her thumb habit....no braces or wires or surgery yet. But her dad retires soon so her clock is ticking for sure.