Root Canal Treatment Alleviates Pain and Saves Your Tooth

Root Canal Treatment Alleviates Pain and Saves Your Tooth

If you’re undergoing your first root canal treatment, it’s understandable if you’re apprehensive. So, let’s cut to the chase about your biggest fear: a root canal treatment doesn’t cause pain, it relieves it — and saves your tooth too. You need this procedure because decay has spread deep into your tooth’s inner pulp. The infection has already attacked the nerves bundled within the pulp chamber, the source of the pain that led you to us in the first place. The real concern, though, is the infection continuing to travel through the canals of the tooth root. If that happens, you’re … Continue reading

Regenerating Lost Bone Can Make Dental Implants a Reality

Regenerating Lost Bone Can Make Dental Implants a Reality

Every day the forces you generate when you bite or chew can exert enormous pressure on your teeth. And day after day your teeth remain stable and secure, thanks to an intricate system of periodontal ligaments, attaching gum tissue and bone. The latter element is especially important — healthy bone makes healthy teeth. And vice-versa — the same biting forces are transmitted through the tooth root to the bone via the periodontal ligament to stimulate new bone growth to replace older bone that has dissolved (resorbed). If a tooth’s missing, however, the bone doesn’t receive that stimulation, and the resorbed … Continue reading

Reduce Your Oral Cancer Risk with Better Diet and Lifestyle Choices

Reduce Your Oral Cancer Risk with Better Diet and Lifestyle Choices

You probably know practicing healthy dietary and lifestyle habits can help prevent tooth decay and periodontal (gum) disease. But good habits could also lower your risk for a more dangerous type of disease — oral cancer. There are several risk factors for oral cancer, including those you can’t do much about like your genetic makeup or unknown elements in the environment. But there are factors you can influence with your actions. You’re probably familiar with the links between tobacco use (both smoked and smokeless) and oral cancer. But excessive alcohol use could also increase your risk, as can risky sexual … Continue reading

Proper Brushing and Flossing Removes Disease-Causing Plaque

Proper Brushing and Flossing Removes Disease-Causing Plaque

You’ve been brushing your teeth since you were big enough to look over the bathroom sink: now you brush and floss every day. You do it because you know it’s important — but do you know why? It’s because your teeth and gums have enemies: oral bacteria in particular, the major cause for tooth decay and periodontal (gum) disease. The vehicle for these infections is a thin-film of food particles on tooth surfaces called plaque. Daily brushing removes plaque from broad tooth surfaces, while flossing removes it from between teeth. If you don’t brush or floss every day — or … Continue reading

Professional Whitening Offers an Effective Way to Restore Your Smile’s Luster

Professional Whitening Offers an Effective Way to Restore Your Smile's Luster

Your teeth were meant to shine! Tooth enamel’s polished translucence, framed by the dentin layer beneath it, has a way of vibrantly catching the light when you smile. But tooth wear and structural changes as you age can dim that shine. Add to that staining caused by foods and beverages or disease and your smile could further lose its luster. On your supermarket or pharmacy oral hygiene aisle you’ll find dozens of products promising to restore that lost luster, including toothpastes, whitening kits or even chewing gum. While such products work to some degree, our dental office may have the … Continue reading

Porcelain Veneers Could Change Your Appearance for the Better

Porcelain Veneers Could Change Your Appearance for the Better

We now have an amazing repertoire in dentistry to restore the look and function of damaged or missing teeth. From tooth-colored crowns to life-like dental implants, we can turn an embarrassing smile into one you’re confident to show the world. But what if your teeth are visually unappealing but structurally sound? Perhaps they’re slightly irregular or discolored — do you still need the “heavy artillery” in our arsenal of restoration options? Not at all — dental veneers that provide amazing aesthetic results with minimal tooth preparation may be an appropriate restoration choice for you. As the name implies, veneers are … Continue reading

Noah Galloway’s Dentally Dangerous Dancing

Noah Galloway's Dentally Dangerous Dancing

For anyone else, having a tooth accidentally knocked out while practicing a dance routine would be a very big deal. But not for Dancing With The Stars contestant Noah Galloway. Galloway, an Iraq War veteran and a double amputee, took a kick to the face from his partner during a recent practice session, which knocked out a front tooth. As his horrified partner looked on, Galloway picked the missing tooth up from the floor, rinsed out his mouth, and quickly assessed his injury. “No big deal,” he told a cameraman capturing the scene. Of course, not everyone would have the … Continue reading

No “Glee” in Tooth Grinding

No "Glee" in Tooth Grinding

Sure, it’s big news when celebs tweet selfies from the dental office… if you’re still living in the 20th century. But in Hollywood today, it’s harder to say who hasn’t posted snaps of themselves in the dentist’s chair than who has. Yet the pictures recently uploaded to Twitter by Mark Salling, the actor and singer who regularly appears as Noah “Puck” Puckerman on the popular TV series Glee, made us sit up and take notice. “Getting my chipped tooth fixed. Also, apparently, I’m a big grinder,” read the caption. The photo showed a set of upper front teeth with visible … Continue reading

New Saliva Test may Help Identify Oral Cancer Earlier

New Saliva Test may Help Identify Oral Cancer Earlier

A half million people are diagnosed every year with oral cancer. While other cancers are more prevalent, oral cancer is among the most dangerous with only a fifty percent five-year survival rate. A major reason for this low rate is because this fast growing cancer is difficult to detect early — diagnosis comes far too often after the disease has already well advanced. In an effort to detect cancer earlier many dentists visually screen for oral abnormalities during checkups, especially patients over fifty, tobacco or heavy alcohol users, patients with a family history of cancer or a medical history of … Continue reading

Neil Patrick Harris: What the Oscars Host Treasures Most

Neil Patrick Harris: What the Oscars Host Treasures Most

A few days before the Oscars, Vanity Fair magazine asked Academy Awards host Neil Patrick Harris to name his most treasured possession. Was it his Tony award statuette for best leading actor in a musical? His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? The stethoscope he wore while playing teenaged doctor Doogie Howser on TV? No, as it turns out, the 41-year-old actor’s most treasured possession is… his wisdom teeth. Yes, you read that correctly. “Oddly, I still have my four wisdom teeth,” Harris said. “I refuse to let them go or I’ll lose my wise parts.” How odd is … Continue reading