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Pimple and cyst-popping videos have ruled YouTube for years now, but they're just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the world of medically supervised grossness. The latest fixation seems to be dental cleaning videos—and, as Refinery29 reports, people are truly fascinated by them.
In one video, which has earned more than 1.2 million views, a person has a “long overdue” plaque removal done. In another, which has been watched nearly 3 million times, a patient with an “extreme” case of tartar buildup has it virtually eliminated.
Like pimple-popping videos, these are nasty but bizarrely satisfying—especially when you get the relief of seeing the “after” results. Of course, this is nothing new for dentists and dental hygienists (cleanings are part of what they do every day, after all). But they have unique insight into what's actually happening in the videos. With that in mind, we got several dentists to weigh in on viral dental cleaning videos, what’s going on there, and why we’re so captivated by them.
“We do see these types of patients in our practice,” Mazen Natour, D.M.D., a Manhattan-based dentist and prosthodontist, tells SELF. People may put a lot of time between dental visits due to neglect, a fear of the dentist, or being on a budget, he says.
But it’s important to try to see your dentist for regular cleanings, if possible. For the record, the American Dental Association recommends seeing your dentist at least once a year—and more often than that if you have dental issues. Getting buildup this bad can cause advanced gum problems that, if you let them go untreated, can even cause you to lose your teeth, Dr. Natour says.
He suspects the fascination with the videos largely comes from how the dentist’s ultrasonic cleaner breaks through the blocks of tartar (a.k.a. "calculus") to reveal the tooth underneath. “It’s like unwrapping layers to reveal the tooth,” he says. Plus, it just looks really, really cool.
Obviously, they wish your teeth were already clean for your health, but it can also be fun for them to take on a new challenge, Susan Maples, D.D.S., author of Blabber Mouth! 77 Secrets Only Your Mouth Can Tell You to Live a Healthier, Happier, Sexier Life, tells SELF. In her office, dental hygienists do the cleanings and “they kind of fight over new patients with a lot of tartar because it’s fun,” she says. “It’s like popping a zit—you get to see amazing results so fast.”
Her team even has a term for these cleanings: “de-gaking.”
Dr. Maples calls the videos “cool and fascinating” and says they give her the immediate urge to do a cleaning. “As a dentist, it’s so tempting for me,” she says. “I’m like, ‘Give me an instrument! I just want to de-gak.’ It’s so fun.”
You’d think that dentists wouldn’t be that into these videos, given that they deal with this kind of thing all the time, but Julie Cho, D.M.D., a general dentist in New York City, tells SELF that she finds the videos pretty interesting. “Every case and every individual is different,” she explains.
Although the videos make even severe cleanings seem quick and easy, it's not always that simple. "Depending on the tenacity of the calculus and how sensitive the patient is, it could take a while," she says. Although the videos are usually under 10 minutes long, a (rare) procedure like this in real life would take about an hour from beginning to end.
For those patients, dentists will often break things up by quadrants (like the upper right quadrant, lower left quadrant, etc.) and do cleanings in separate appointments, she explains. And those severe cases may require a separate appointment to tackle each quadrant, usually spaced two weeks apart. "The goal is to get the patients on a regular hygiene recall (i.e. every 3 months, 4 months, or 6 months) so that their mouths never get back to this condition," she says.
Dr. Cho says she hopes the videos will inspire people to get to the dentist more. Some people are more prone to severe plaque build-up than others, and can even require a dentist’s care every three months, Dr. Cho says. “Thankfully in most cases, this is reversible,” she says.
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