Children have 20 teeth, that is, 20 deciduous teeth and 32 adult teeth. However, there are many people in China who can't grow their last four teeth. Many of these four teeth grow in adulthood, also known as wisdom teeth. Some people can't all grow out, so the number of adult teeth you can see ranges from 28 to 32, but an X-ray can show that normal adults have 32 teeth as long as they don't pull out their teeth.

Q: I am 60 years old. Not long ago, I had to pull out two teeth because of periodontitis. Excuse me, do I have to have my teeth pulled out? How many teeth does a person need to protect his health?

Reader Zhang Xinyuan

A: Chen Ruiyang, chief physician of the Municipal Stomatological Hospital, said that each person has 32 permanent teeth and 28 truly functional teeth. When one or two teeth fall off, it will not affect the whole body health, but when there are fewer than 20 teeth, it will begin to affect the functions of many systems in the body. At this time, if the lost teeth are repaired in time and more than 20 functional teeth are kept in the mouth, the aging speed of people will be slowed down, which is conducive to prolonging people's life. This is because people have less than 20 teeth, and food cannot be chewed fully, which affects digestive function; The pronunciation of speech will be adversely affected, and the appearance will look old, which will have a negative impact on people's psychology. In addition, teeth are an important balance organ in the body, and many physical activities and mental work with concentrated attention need teeth occlusion to cooperate. When there are less than 20 teeth, people's balance function is affected, and they are easy to make mistakes and fall down. At present, China is advocating a kind of "8020 Movement", that is, pay attention to dental health now, so that you can still have 20 teeth when you are 80 years old.