60秒科学:小舌钉引发大牙缝（在线收听）

给舌头打洞装舌钉常常会导致口腔感染，牙齿的磨损与破损，或是口腔外伤。那位女生后来呢？ 她戴上了牙套用以把两颗门牙重新矫正回去，这可没舌钉那么帅了吧。

That’s what it might sound like if I had a tongue stud, hitting my teeth. Maybe you’ve seen people with studs in their tongue clicking it up against their front teeth, a move known as “playing.” But it turns out that the habit may destroy some smiles.

University of Buffalo researchers noticed that local high school students who had a barbell-type tongue stud commonly pushed the piercings against their front teeth. Then they examined a 26-year-old patient at the school’s dental clinic. She’d had been complaining about a large gap that had developed between her front two teeth. Seven years previously, she got a tongue stud. And every day, for seven years, she pushed that stud up against her teeth.

The researchers say tongues are strong, and it makes sense that the force of “playing” will move teeth, even forcing them apart. The case was written up in the Journal of Clinical Orthodontics.

Tongue piercings have also been associated with infections, chipped or broken teeth, and gum trauma. And the patient? She got braces to push her teeth back together. Which probably didn’t look quite as cool as she thought the tongue stud was.

—Cynthia Graber