Dental Plus+ Dental Group
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Office News
Our goal is to develop a strong partnership with every patient. When you understand the importance of your dental health, we can help you maintain a healthy mouth, as well as treat the causes and symptoms of any dental condition.
We invite you to read our latest SmileLink newsletter and to check out our website often for new information, or contact our office with any questions or concerns. Working together, we can help you achieve a lifetime of healthy and attractive teeth and gums.
Featured Article |
SmileLink Articles |
No Wobble Dentures
1979 was an exciting year when two researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize for inventing CT radiography. In dentistry, one of the greatest benefits of this invention is for placing implants.
An implant is a small metal post that looks similar to a tiny screw you would find on a garage workbench. The post is embedded into your jawbone and has a small nub on the top that sticks above the gumline.
We need precise measurements before we can begin an implant procedure, and that is where the CT scan is valuable. A CT scan is a 3-dimensional photograph that shows depth, height and width. The 3-D scan lets us see all your bony facial structures including your teeth and jawbones.
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Good Battles Evil to Protect Your Teeth
Who would have thought we would encourage you to eat candy or chew gum to protect your teeth? Well, we are. There is a surge of new products that fall into two decay-fighting categories: functional and probiotic.
A functional product uses extracts or essential oils from cinnamon, cranberries, raisins, licorice root, birch trees or magnolia bark, for example, to fight harmful decay-causing bacteria that live in your mouth. Probiotic means that “good” bacteria are added to a food or dietary supplement to battle “bad” bacteria in your mouth.
Functional and probiotic products do not take the place of your oral homecare. They are meant to help protect your teeth between regular brushings and flossing.
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Sports and Tooth Injuries
There will be an estimated 15 million dental injuries this year. Dental injuries caused by sports and leisure activities are common, and there is one simple piece of protection you should never leave home without: a mouthguard.
A mouthguard protects your lips, teeth, jaws and cheeks whether you strap on a bike helmet or step into a ski boot. A mouthguard provides equal opportunity protection for everyone: children and adults, men and women. There is no such thing as a “safe” sport or leisure activity.
For example, water-related accidents are the number one dental emergency. A swimmer surfacing quickly next to the pool side can collide with the edge, fall on the slippery surface or dive into shallow water. SCUBA divers can experience intense TMJ pain from the air tank mouthpiece.
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Tongue Thrusting is Bad News for Braces
Watching a child drift off to dreamful sleep while sucking on a tiny thumb is like being in a Norman Rockwell painting. Thumb sucking might seriously affect a child's developing teeth and result in a bad bite that could require braces later in life. Braces can permanently adjust a bad bite only if other conditions like tongue thrusting are not also present.
Tongue thrusting means a baby did not transition from the sucking motion to the normal swallowing motion when baby began to use a sippy cup or glass. Considering that you swallow 2000 times every day, proper swallowing motion is vital to your health.
A child or adult tongue thruster is typically identified only after braces are removed when teeth mysteriously begin to shift back to their protruded state. The tongue thrust must be corrected before braces are put on teeth; otherwise, all that time, effort and investment are wasted and will need to be redone!
Here are a few symptoms that may indicate a tongue thrust problem; the person:
- makes strange faces while swallowing.
- breathes through the mouth.
- has difficulty pronouncing the letters "s" and "z".
- has an open bite [bottom photo: the upper teeth stick farther out than the lower teeth].
- has a receding chin.
If you or someone in your family is a candidate for braces and you suspect there might be a tongue thrust problem, let's discuss it during your ...