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I am Maria, I don't answer inbox questions (with very few exceptions, for example those people that use proper grammar and spelling). I try my best to point people in the right direction when I am answering questions.



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I was at work the other day and someone came through my line at the store (yeah, I'm a cashier). Anyway, he was buying some toothbrushes and toothpaste and I asked him if the toothpaste tasted good because I am trying to find something new to switch to because the one I'm using right now really sucks, I think. So, he started telling me that brushing my teeth helps to prevent heart attacks when I am older and stuff. I don't know if this is true though and it sounds a little weird. I don't want to ask someone around me and sound really stupid though because I mean...your teeth? Brushing preventing HEART attacks? Uhmmm...

Does anyone know if there was any truth to that or was he just talking?

I have heard this as well, but it doesn't mean that there is a causal relationship between the two. They could be correlated, meaning they occur together, but it doesn't mean that one thing causes another.

To give you an example, when ice cream rates go up in the summer, crime rates go up as well. This is a correlational relationship: ice cream sales go up in the summer when it is hot, and when it is hot people tend to leave their car windows open or the windows to their homes open, thus causing crime rates to go up.

So does that mean if we stop buying ice cream, crime rates go down? Or the weather cools? Most likely not.

Same thing with the heart attacks and brushing your teeth. People who have heart attacks tend to be overweight, so they probably don't eat the best of foods, for example lots of sugary foods. So maybe someone said having cavities causes heart attacks, and someone just assumed that well if cavities cause them, then we need to prevent cavities by brushing our teeth, but really at the end of the day its really the food (as well as other factors such as genetics and lifestyle, but I won't get into that for the sake of proving my point).

Hope that made sense lol.

~MAK, 19

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(Rating: 5) Great example. I understand that completely. Thank you so much for answering.
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