Soda and cavities:

Normal pH in our mouth is about 7.0, which is slightly more acidic than water. When we drink sugar-sweetened soda, the bacteria in our mouths get exposed to sugar; they metabolize it and produce acid. The acid causes the pH in our mouth to drop. At a pH of 5.2 or below, the acid begins to dissolve the hard enamel, the hard outer protective coating of our teeth. Over time this leads to erosion of our teeth that causes cavities and painful toothaches!

The best way to prevent cavities induced by sugar-sweetened soda is to drink it at one sitting along with the meal than sipping it throughout the day. Better yet, drink it through a straw in one sitting, this will help bypass contact of soda to your teeth and reduce exposure. Reducing the amount of frequent sugary beverages and brushing after meals and before bed will reduce risk of cavities significantly.

How to Raise Cavity-Free Kids,Part 3: Baby-Bottle Tooth Decay

What is baby-bottle tooth decay?

“Baby-bottle tooth decay” is a particular kind of tooth decay that occurs in infants and children. Although all teeth can also be affected, this kind of decay is seen mostly in the upper front teeth.

What causes baby-bottle tooth decay?

This type of decay occurs when a child is given a bottle of a sweetened liquid, like milk, formula, or fruit juice, and the liquid is left clinging to his or her teeth for long periods of time. These sugars feed the bacteria in the mouth, which then produce acids that attack the teeth for 20 minutes or more. After the teeth have been subjected to many such attacks, they can decay. Often, parents don’t even realize that the teeth are vulnerable to decay so soon after they appear in the child’s mouth.

Also, it’s not just what is in a child’s bottle that can cause decay; it also depends on how often and for how long a child sucks on the bottle. Sucking on a sweet liquid many times a day isn’t a good idea, but allowing a child to fall asleep with a bottle during naps or at night can be especially harmful. Unfortunately, by the time decay is noticed, it may be too late to save the teeth.

How Can Baby-Bottle Tooth Decay Be Prevented?

You can help protect your child from baby-bottle tooth decay by following a few simple suggestions:

•  Clean your baby’s teeth and gums after each feeding . (as discussed in a previous post on this blog: HowToCleanBaby’sTeeth)
• Don’t allow your child to fall asleep with a bottle containing milk, formula, fruit juice, or any other sweetened liquid.
• If you must give your baby a bottle to get him to fall asleep at bedtime, make sure it contains only water.
• Don’t dip your child’s pacifier into sugar or honey. 
• Avoid filling your child’s bottle with liquids such as sugar water and soft drinks.
• If your local water supply doesn’t contain fluoride (a substance that helps prevent tooth decay), ask your dentist how else fluoride can be administered to your child.
• Begin your child’s dental visits by his or her first birthday, and continue them regularly.
• If you suspect your child has a problem with his teeth, take him to the dentist as soon as possible—even if you don’t have a visit scheduled. 

There’s nothing more beautiful than a baby’s smile. Make sure you do everything you can to keep your baby’s baby teeth bright and healthy!

A Black Tea a Day Keeps the Dentist Away?

Black tea—keeps the dentist away? Well, not really, but it will certainly help reduce cavities and fight gum disease!

Not too long ago, a group of students from the University of Illinois uncovered a truth about black tea: that it can help fight cavities. Americans love their coffee, but we all know that, worldwide, many people prefer having a cup of tea to having a cup of coffee. Now it seems that those tea-drinkers may, unknowingly, be protecting their pearly whites from a dreaded cavity invasion.

Another study, this one by Japanese scientists, has suggested that consumption of green tea helped to reduce dental cavities and improve oral hygiene.

Let’s explore the results of these studies.

What is the effect of black tea in your mouth?

• Black tea has been found to be able to suppress, or even kill, the plaque bacteria that produce harmful acids that weaken and destroy the teeth.
• Black tea targets a specific enzyme, glucosyltransferase, which is responsible for converting sugars into the sticky matrix material that makes plaque stick to the teeth.
• Black tea causes other types of bacteria in the mouth to lose their ability to combine with plaque, thereby lessening its buildup.

Both these discoveries confirm another Swedish study that concluded that there were beneficial results to be derived from rinsing the mouth with black tea for 30 seconds at some time during the day, because the tea prevented plaque buildup.

These dental benefits of drinking tea—whether black or green—can now be added to the list of tea’s many other favorable effects, like being a good source of antioxidants, helping to boost the immune system, lowering the blood pressure, preventing heart disease, fighting cancer, losing weight, and so forth.

So, next time you’re at your local barista’s, you might consider foregoing that “cappuccino grande” and asking her to make you a “chai”—a cup of tea—instead.

Please call our office at 510-796-1656 if you have any questions regarding this or any other topics.

Attention, Men: Looking to Advance Your Career? You May Want to Start with a Visit to the Dentist. . . .

A recent online poll of 289 general dentists and consumers reported that men were far less likely to visit the dentist than were their female counterparts.* Why should that be? Here are the reasons the poll’s respondents gave for this rather startling figure:

• Approximately 45 percent said that men just did not see a need to visit the dentist;
• About 30 percent said that men were afraid or embarrassed to go;
• Almost 18 percent said that men just didn’t have the time for a dental visit; and
• About 5 percent said that men didn’t visit the dentist regularly, because most of them didn’t even have a regular dentist.

Not so very long ago, most men worked for only one or two employers over the whole span of their working lives, and so perhaps they didn’t need to think so much about how their overall appearance might affect their professional lives. Today, however, the environment is much more competitive. The unfortunate reality is that, with lay-offs and continuing business closures across the nation, middle-aged men seeking positions in higher management have to compete with their much-younger colleagues, and so they’re looking for an edge, and they realize that having a presentable, attractive appearance can give them that edge. Suddenly, looks matter.

Dentists today are seeing more and more men sitting back in their dental chairs for more than just maintenance. Now they’re inquiring about procedures that used to be looked upon as “only” cosmetic dentistry and have begun to consider the serious side of time and money invested in such procedures as teeth-whitening, veneers, Invisalign, and cosmetic bonding.

An impressive smile has value in the business world, and men are seeking a return on investment—in terms of jobs available to them or promotions that open up within an organization. Then, once men get into the routine of regular dentist visits, they begin to see the importance of overall oral health and biannual check-ups.

We dentists are not complaining. Whether they’re concerned about health, good looks, or their careers, it doesn’t matter to us. Whatever their reasons for coming in, we’re just happy to see them, and we’re happy, too, to see that more men are taking care of their oral health than ever before.

*Poll conducted by the Academy of General Dentistry (AGD), an organization of general dentists dedicated to continuing dental education.

What Your Smile Says about Your Gender and Personality

You may not realize it, but people “read” a smile as an indication of more than proper orthodontia or good dental care. A smile is also an indication of personality. Does your smile tell the truth about who you are or want to be?

 Lateral Incisors as an Indication of Gender Traits

Did you know that your smile can be designed to give your face a more feminine or more masculine appearance? It’s true: Your lateral incisors, the teeth on either side of your center teeth, have some distinct characteristics that give you a gender-specific “look.”

• Smaller lateral Incisors make your smile look more feminine, while larger lateral incisors (more similar in size to the front two teeth) make your smile look more masculine.
• Lateral incisors that are tilted slightly toward the middle and tucked in slightly behind the middle teeth look more feminine, while straighter lateral incisors look more masculine.
• Lateral incisors that have rounded edges and are shorter than the middle teeth look more feminine, while lateral incisors that are the same length as the middle teeth look more masculine.
• Lateral incisors that are more triangular in shape (narrower at the gumline) look more feminine, while side teeth that are squarer in shape look more masculine.

Canines as an Indication of Disposition and Personality Traits

Since the time of the caveman, canine teeth have been the mark of the carnivore. In contemporary times, people “read” the shape and position of the canine, or “fang tooth,” as an indication of either an aggressive or an agreeable disposition, or a more dominant or passive personality.

• Canine teeth that are prominent, longer, and larger than the surrounding teeth suggest an aggressive personality, while canines that are more similar in length and size to the surrounding teeth suggest a more agreeable or benign personality.
• Canine teeth that have pointed tips give the impression of a personality that is more dominant, while canine teeth that are smaller, rounder, and less pointed give the impression of a personality that is more passive.

A smile that has been designed to take these factors into consideration can help you to express the traits you find desirable. When you meet someone for the first time, and smile, your smile makes an important first impression, one that people will use to “read” your personality. Sometimes Nature has been unfair, and your smile gives people a negative impression of who you really are or want to be. A “smile designer” can work with you to ensure that you will leave the positive impression you want to leave.

Don’t let your smile give people the wrong idea about your personality.

How Smile Design Can Reveal (or Conceal) Your Age

The term “smile design” is a term the dental profession has adopted recently to describe the modern approach to cosmetic dentistry. The term is an apt one, because today’s cosmetic dentistry goes well beyond the basic training given in dental school.

 Good “smile design” requires extensive training and knowledge in several distinct areas:

• Principles of design regarding the “architecture” of the teeth,
• Usage of dental “white materials”(composites, porcelains, bonding agents, tints, and opaquers), which are the building blocks and colorants of the dental architecture, and
• Understanding of facial and oral musculature.

In addition to special training, a good cosmetic dentist needs experience in implementing his or her training in a way that will create healthy and beautiful smiles.

In cosmetic dentistry, one size definitely does not fit all. What is considered appropriate and attractive can differ according to personal preference, cultural differences, and facial structure. Artistic principles of “smile design” determine what shape, size, and color teeth will harmonize most naturally with a person’s own face, gender, age, and personality.

How a Person’s Smile Can Reveal His Age

If you compare the smile of a sixteen-year-old to that of a sixty-year-old, you will notice that not only are all the sixteen-year-old’s teeth lighter in color, but also that his top two front teeth (the central incisors) exhibit some significant differences in shape:

• Younger teeth are longer than they are wide (more rectangular than square),
• Younger teeth are longer than the teeth on either side of them (the lateral incisors), and
• Younger teeth have irregular bottom edges and rounded corners (rather than sharp).

The reason a person’s smile changes as he ages is that, with time and use, the central incisors wear down to the length of the other top teeth; their shape becomes squarer, their edges flatter, their corners sharper. Also, with age, the muscles of the upper lip lose elasticity, which means that an older person’s smile shows less of his upper teeth and more of his lower teeth.

A good cosmetic dentist must consider all these factors when applying the principles of smile design, because a well-designed smile must harmonize with your face in a way that is age appropriate and natural, and it must position your teeth in a way that will provide proper lip support.

You can see that good smile design is far more than just a dental improvement—it gives your whole face an instant “lift” and shaves years off your age.

 Aren’t you worth it?

Our next post will discuss how gender and personality factors also play an important role in “smile design.”

SmilePlus Dentistry provides a “smile design” consultation to help you discover your most natural and beautiful smile. Please contact our office for more information or to schedule an evaluation.

Dental Implants as Replacements for Missing Teeth

Aren’t Dental Implants a Fairly New Procedure?

Surprisingly, no, but you might not have heard much about them until recent years. It used to be that, about a generation ago, if you lost a tooth, you had only two choices: Your dentist could either make you a removable bridge or fit you with a fixed bridge. Neither solution was ideal.

 A removable bridge could collect food and would need to be removed and cleaned after every meal. That could be managed fairly easily at home, but was not a pleasant prospect when ducking into the rest room in the office or at a restaurant!

 A fixed bridge was perhaps a better solution, but still required very meticulous cleaning and usually damaged the two perfectly good teeth on either side of the missing tooth, in order to anchor the bridge. Why would you want to damage otherwise-good teeth?

Then, fortunately, about twenty-five years ago, a solution came along that did not require the removal of any apparatus, did not damage other good teeth, and looked and felt just like your natural tooth. The solution was the dental implant.

In the beginning, implants were not done very widely, for several reasons: First of all, just as with any new technology or medical procedure, longer-term studies were required. Second, not many dentists were trained to do implants. Third, the procedure was prohibitively expensive.

All those things have changed.  In the last five to ten years, as longer-term studies on implants began showing high success rates, more and more dentists and oral surgeons became interested in the procedure, and dental schools began including implant training in their students’ curricula. With wider use, implants’ costs have come down.

So, no, implants are not new—but far more people have access to dental implants now than in the procedure’s early days.

How Does a Dental Implant Work?

A dental implant comprises three components—your own bone, a titanium post, and a synthetic replacement tooth. Working together, these three components replace both the root and crown of your lost tooth.

Here’s how the procedure works:

• In a minor surgical procedure, a post, usually made out of titanium, is inserted into the bone and secured.
• In time–about three to six months–the bone grows and integrates with the post, in a process called osteointegration. Proper osteointegration means that the bone and post have established a successful structural and functional connection, which is vital to the success of an implant.
• A restorative dentist works with a dental laboratory to fabricate a crown that looks very much like a real tooth, and customizes it to the post,
• The crown is then is screwed into the post above the gum, concluding the procedure.  The patient now has a “new” tooth!

 Isn’t an Implant More Expensive Than a Fixed Bridge?

Though implants are far less expensive than they once were, but they might still seem  expensive—until you look realistically at the long-term picture. Then you will realize it is usually less expensive and less damaging than a permanent fixed bridge. Here’s why:

• A fixed bridge usually requires grinding down the two side teeth to create support for the synthetic tooth that will “bridge,” or span, the two natural teeth. Because a bridge is difficult to maintain properly, it often requires repeated visits to the dentist.
• An implant can be cleaned, brushed, and flossed just like any natural tooth, is much easier to maintain, and, according to many studies, lasts years longer than a bridge.

Today, if you want to replace a missing tooth and want to save money over the long run, an implant is probably your best bet!

SmilePlus Dentistry offers advanced solutions for replacement of a missing tooth such as Dental Implant for a single tooth, Implant supported Fixed Bridges and Implant supported Overdentures. Please call our office at 510-796-1656 to schedule a consultation if you think an Implant is a right choice for you or your loved one.