As modern dentistry continues to improve, children can expect entirely different dental experiences than Mom and Dad remember from childhood. Fluorides and sealants have virtually eliminated rampant decay problems. For kids nowadays, dental care is be a piece of cake. Baby teeth do grown-up duty Primary teeth work hard. Those 20 teeth pave the way [...]
Osteoporosis, the loss of bone mass as we age, could affect half of all Americans over 50 by 2020. It is defined as bone loss of about 25 percent, which results in fragile bones that fracture easily. Its reputation as an old person's disease stems from the fact that bone loss doesn't hurt and osteoporosis [...]
If You Have a Dental Fear Let's say you visit the dentist faithfully, and enjoy a high level of health. And yet, just before an appointment, you experience sweaty palms, increased heart rate, and you feel jittery and nervous. You—and 150 million other people—have a touch of dental fear. Dentistry today, with all the benefits [...]
Get Your Vitamins! Vitamin C is an extremely important in dentistry (and nutrition in general) because of how it helps control periodontal disease and other problems in the mouth. For one thing, Vitamin C—ascorbic acid—seems to help calcium do its job of halting the loss of bone. Animal studies at the Harvard School of Dental [...]
Skill, Technology, and a little "Magic" With the wonderful age of dental bonding, teeth can be made healthy and beautiful in most cases without multiple appointments, anesthesia, temporaries and at less expense than crowns. Magic? Not really. Bonding techniques have been around for years, and improvements in dental materials have made it one of the [...]
Are You Subconsciously Grinding? Sensitivity to heat and cold. Loosened teeth, fractures, and debilitating headaches. All this can occur while you sleep—from grinding your teeth. Dentistry calls it bruxism. Talk about shell shock. Dentists see evidence of life in the fast lane everyday. As many as 90 percent of us grind our teeth each night, [...]
Custom Dental Care for Your Needs No two of us are alike. We all have our own smiles, speech patterns, eye and hair colorings. But we're just now beginning to learn how unique our mouth environments really are. Turns out, they're as distinctively different as fingerprints. One patient can go a year between checkups, while [...]
Oral Health can be Compromised During Pregnancy It used to be conventional wisdom that a woman would lose a tooth for each child that she had. Thankfully with modern dentistry this is no longer true, but there's some factual basis for it. Your teeth and gums are affected by pregnancy, just as other tissues in [...]
A healthy, beautiful smile should be part of your everyday wardrobe. If you're looking for some self-improvement, don't forget that your smile is a vital part of your total image. Your smile is often the first impression people have of you. Psychological studies have shown that a person's physical attractiveness is judged by "the mouth, [...]
Identifying (and Responding to) Sleep Apnea Besides the sound of your house being sawed in half, what happens when you snore? Your tongue's so relaxed, it caves in to the throat, blocking air passages. In rare cases, when snoring is extreme, sleep apnea is the diagnosis. The Greek word apnea literally means without breath. Three [...]
