Ever think about how everything connects in our body? It’s crazy how a nerve in your hand could control some sort of nerve in your foot. Or, shown by a new study from universities in Norway and Sweden, how the sensory impulses of a person’s natural teeth are fed to the hippocampus, or in other words: your memory part of the brain.

The study tested 273 people from the ages of 55 to 80, to see if the lack of teeth, natural teeth, impacted one’s memory. The people were examined with multiple memory tests conducted by the researchers. The average number of natural teeth within the people tested was 22, ten shy from a natural 32 count, and 70% were missing their molars, which added further evidence onto the hypothesis: the lack of natural teeth taking a toll on your memory.

The results were as expected. It showed that the number of natural teeth could “account for 20% of episodic recall, 15% of variance in episodic cognition, and 14% in semantic memory.” This may also tie in the with the other study that’s been conducted earlier. The idea that chewing increased the blood flow to your brain and with people wearing dentures or non-natural teeth, a lack good vitamins and proteins; which all could ultimately relate to the lack in memory. Not to say that dentures and fake teeth don’t do the trick because they do, but they don’t it as well as one’s natural teeth.

Moral: Take care of your teeth and listen to your dentist when he says floss and brush twice a day, your memory depends on it!