Did You Know More Than 700 Million Bacteria Live In Your Mouth?

Ever wondered how many bacteria live inside your mouth? Well the numbers will blow your mind and would probably make you brush your teeth right now. There are probably around 700-750 species of bacteria brimming inside your mouth right now. According to some experts; the number, shape and size of the mouth bacteria are surprisingly horrific and unbelievable. Scientist have a fancy name for your mouth's wild ecosystem- they call it the "Human Oral Microbiome". Going by the recent report, a single mouth can be home to more than 6 million bacteria, an impressive number when compared to 7.3 billion total human population of earth.

Here are some interesting facts about the strange species that live inside you!

1. Full-fledged Community

It is difficult to believe this but those billions of bacteria live in diverse communities and follow the same process of living as humans, such as being born, feeding, defecating, mating. While Streptococcus (often dubbed as bad guys) feed on sugar and starchy carbs and produce toxic acids which harm your tooth enamel, probiotic bacteria support your oral health. Other members are neither harmful nor helpful.

Also Read Are you taking care of your teeth?

2. Mind Blowing In Numbers

According to researchers, 1 mg of saliva in your mouth typically contains about 100 million microbes. By multiplying the number of microbes in 1 mg by 20, we get the total number of germs in the mouth which is around 20 billion.

Brush it off multiple times in a day if you don't want to trouble your friends and partners with your smelly odour produced by the germs.

Also Read 5 easy ways to get rid of tooth sensitivity

3. Grows at Fast Pace

Interestingly some species of oral bacteria can double their numbers every 20 minutes under ideal conditions. Dr Loesche showed that one could calculate it indirectly with the help of some known data. An average person swallows about 1 litre of saliva on daily basis. Multiplying 1000 ml of saliva by 100 million (microbes per ml) gives us 100 billion. And that is the number of microbes/ germs in the saliva that we swallow every 24 hours.

4. Can sneak into your blood

Although restricted to your mouth, but these strange beings can also sneak into your blood through certain transfusion which is often not under your control. And once the bacteria gets into the blood stream they can travel anywhere around the body.
The bacteria works by releasing a chemical which is picked up by the cells that make up blood vessels and causes the cells to become more permeable.

These strange beings are invisibly small but are shockingly large in numbers. Hence, brush your teeth on regular and keep yourself hydrated so that the bad bacteria washes out of your mouth and you are keep yourself safe from the harmful effects of some deadly bacteria.