A luxury of being a dentist is that I get to see patients of all ages. What continues to fascinate me is the opportunity to see the same oral condition in different mouths at different ages. This gives me a clearer picture of the future consequence if the problem in the mouth is left untreated. I would like to take you through a journey of one. It’s called a crossbite…
As I pointed out in the previous blog, gum diseases are caused by bacteria around the gum. So the solution to this problem is to remove bacteria. A dentist’s job is to remove hard deposit while the patient’s job is to remove the soft plaque that build up every day so that it doesn’t sit around long enough to become hard.
Previously, I explained the significance of gum diseases and what can happen if left untreated. In this post, I would like to help patients understand what gum disease is because medical terms such as gingivitis often leave people confused. Gum diseases always involve bacteria…
On any given day, I would turn up at my practice and look at my appointment book. It’s not uncommon to see a new patient booking in for a ‘clean of their teeth’. After talking to many of these patients, the majority haven’t had professional cleaning done by a dentist for many years, even though they have an impression they probably need one. The tragic thing in my opinion is that they had been told by a dentist in the past that they have ‘gum disease’ but none of them understood what it was, why do they have them or what can be done about it.
There’s a good chance that at least once in your life, you may experience a severe toothache. By far the most common cause of toothache is dental decay, which is when bacteria have damaged into the inner part of your teeth where the nerve lives. By this time, the treatment to rectify the problem is more extensive because the bacteria invaded deep inside the tooth. To remove these bacteria
I get these comments from my patients all the time and here’s the truth.
“My wisdom tooth doesn’t hurt me now so why do anything about it?”
“My front teeth used to be straight but my wisdom teeth pushed and made them all crooked”
“My wisdom tooth pushed and created a hole in the tooth in front of it”
and here’s the truth…
One of the most frustrating things for my patients is that they continued to have bleeding gum and tooth decay for many years despite doing the right thing and cleaning their teeth religiously. Sometimes it can feel helpless, like there’s nothing that can be done. But when I looked into patients’ mouths, I can almost always see plaque or film of bacteria around the gum. So why is that?
I’ve been meaning to do this video for a long time as my patients asked me this question a lot. A few friends who saw the original version liked it and found it useful so here’s the official video.
Not too long ago I wrote about the difficulty my patients had in terms of cleaning behind their lower front teeth and I showed them how a bent toothbrush can be made to help with this hard-to-reach area. Although better than nothing, these were not made specifically for the job.
Today I came across a “Brushy ball” on the internet which I thought was very cool. Basically it’s a counter-top brushing coach designed to train young kids to brush their teeth for 2 minutes following the voice prompting of the toy. The unique feature is the fact that the toy’s teeth light up, training the child to clean the whole mouth as he/she follows the flashing light.
