Broken Tooth

A piece of your tooth breaks off. Just like that — while eating, while biting down, sometimes even in your sleep. Perhaps a small fragment, perhaps an entire cusp. What was firm and taken for granted yesterday is suddenly broken. You feel the sharp edge with your tongue, the empty space, perhaps a pain that radiates into the jaw. Dentistry looks for causes: decay, bruxism, material fatigue, an unlucky bite on something hard.

But there is a level that lies deeper. A tooth that breaks tells something about the pressure prevailing within you — about an inner tension that has grown so large that even the hardest substance of your body can no longer withstand it. Your tooth enamel is the hardest tissue your organism can produce. When it breaks, it is not from weakness. It is from overload.