Save A Smile With A Custom Mouthguard

This time of year is the time to enjoy the outdoors and participating in sports is a common activity during the warmer months.  We are absolutely committed to the prevention of one of the most common injuries among sports participants.  Dental injuries can be painful, expensive, and damaging to appearance and self-esteem, yet most are preventable with a custom-fitted mouthguard.  If you’ve ever had a mouth injury, you’ll know how important this is.

Think about it: people of all ages don helmets, knee pads, shin pads, and elbow pads because they know the risks if they don’t.  But despite the mouth injury statistics that make us wince, many don’t use mouthguards.  We don’t understand why, and that’s why we want to spread the word.

A custom mouthguard is easy to get and easy to use and can save thousands of dollars and a lot of time by preventing damage to your teeth.  An impression is taken of your teeth so that the laboratory can fabricate an appliance that fits exactly to your teeth.  The mouthguard totally covers and cushions your teeth to prevent fractured teeth, chipped teeth, or the worst dental sports injury of all, dislodged teeth.  It’s definitely worth the time to invest in the protection custom mouthguards offer.  A custom mouthguard can really give you something to smile about!

For information about other dental topics visit www.TavorminaDentistry.com

Fitness Is As Fitness Does!

Numerous reports, including the Surgeon General’s Report, recommend thirty minutes of moderate physical activity a day for better physical and cardiovascular health.  Did you know that can be accumulated activity, such as three bouts of ten minutes each?  So maybe you can rescue those fitness resolutions you made earlier this year.  The Surgeon General says you can benefit your cardiovascular health in another way – by taking care of your oral health.

Heart disease and strokes have been linked to gum disease.  For some reason, people find that difficult to believe.  But if you think of your mouth as the gateway to your body, you might find it easier to visualize how oral bacteria can have the potential to affect the rest of you.  Your gums form a natural barrier against bacteria migrating into your bloodstream.  If your gums are wounded due to injury or gum disease, your natural protection will be compromised.

Science is still investigating the precise dynamics between oral disease and overall health, but the Surgeon General went so far as to say that “you cannot be healthy without oral health.”

Thirty minutes of daily physical activity can help to protect you against cardiovascular diseases.  So can the few minutes a day it takes to brush, floss, and rinse.

So get going and pay attention to your smile!  It’s really one of the easiest fitness routines out there!

For information about other dental topics visit DrTav.com

What Are The Pros & Cons Of Removable Partial Dentures?

You can derive many benefits from replacing missing teeth with removable partials. Replacement teeth help fill out your smile by giving support to the cheeks and lips. Replacement teeth create a more youthful, vibrant appearance by holding up facial muscles and aiding in speaking, chewing, swallowing, and smiling.

An important benefit that removable partial dentures provide is that of maintaining teeth in position. When you have a full complement of teeth, each tooth serves to keep the others in position. The teeth touching each other prevents teeth from moving from side to side.  The teeth touching each other by opposing each other keeps them from extruding (basically keeps them from growing more into the mouth). 

When a tooth is extracted, the teeth on either side of the space start collapsing into the space.  When this happens the teeth tilt at an angle and this angle makes those teeth more susceptible to bone loss from gum disease.  The tooth opposite the extracted tooth site moves up or down into the space created by the missing tooth.  This can be so extreme that the tooth opposing the extraction site can touch the opposite gums, thus interfering with chewing.

A con to replacing missing teeth with removable partial dentures is that the partial denture is usually kept in place by metal hooks that go around the remaining teeth on either side of the extraction site.  These hooks act like forceps and slowly weaken the teeth holding the partial and many times lead to the slow extraction of the supporting teeth. The clasps also make the supporting teeth more susceptible to decay. Removable partials generally move in function, which means they are uncomfortable to chew with.

It’s best to rely on removable partials as a temporary solution to tooth loss if finances are insufficient to do the more stable replacement of missing teeth with dental implants.

For more information about dental implants visit our blog or our website: www.tavorminadentistry.com

What's The Best Kind Of Dental Floss To Use?

The hardest thing to accomplish regarding daily use of dental floss is establishing the daily habit of flossing.  Flossing only needs to be done once a day carefully, making sure that the dental floss goes below the gumline and that the sides of the teeth are scraped clean with the floss, removing all disease causing plaque.  The best time to do this is at night before you go to sleep.

There are several types of dental floss you can use.  There is waxed and unwaxed floss, weave dental floss, and there’s expanding dental floss.  Some dental flosses are fine.  The qualities of each floss will help you determine what type of floss best handles your dental condition.

Traditionally waxed floss has been preferred for people whose teeth touch very tightly and for whom it is difficult to get the floss to go between the teeth.  There is now expanding floss which glides easily between even the tightest contacts.  It expands during use to clean more tooth surface and has multiple filaments and texturized fibers for exceptional cleaning.  It’s gentle on gums and is ideal for patients with tooth and/or gum sensitivity and gum recession.

Weave floss has a unique woven design that effectively removes plaque between teeth and under the gumline.  The interlacing process produces strong, smooth, and shred-resistant floss.

Fine floss is sometimes needed to clean between tightly spaced teeth.

The best approach is to experiment with the different types of floss until you find the one that most easily glides between the teeth and seems to remove the plaque best.

For information about other dental topics visit www.DrTav.com

Healthy Gums Can Lead To A Healthier Body

Inflammation is a major risk factor for heart disease, and periodontal (gum) disease increases the inflammation level throughout the body.  Since several studies show that people with gum or teeth problems also have an increased risk for heart disease, more cardiologists and dentists are joining forces for the improved health of their patients.  Dentists can serve as your first line of defense against future heart disease.

One study, looking at women with periodontal bacteria in their mouths, reported that they were more likely to have jawbone loss resulting in tooth loss. 

Scientists have found that bacteria growing in the mouth can be inhaled into the lungs to cause serious respiratory illness such as pneumonia, especially in people with periodontal disease. 

This discovery has led to the belief that such a mouth-body link can cause infections like chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD).  The question now is, “To what extend does oral hygiene play a part of reducing the frequency of COPD?”

Bacteria in the mouth through the exchange of saliva can also be shared amongst couples, children, and families, spreading the risk of periodontal disease more quickly.

Premature and underweight babies are seven times more likely from women with periodontal disease than from those without.  For a long time risk factors such as smoking, alcohol, and drug use were known to contribute to risky pregnancies.  Now periodontal disease can be added to the list.

The increase in blood sugar that often accompanies periodontal disease contributes to the higher risk for diabetic complications.  Therefore, patients with both diseases should be treated to eliminate the infections of the gums.  In addition, it’s been found that poorly controlled Type 2 diabetic patients are more likely to develop periodontal disease than are well-controlled diabetics.

The connection between oral disease and systemic disease is backed by scientific findings, and it makes common sense.  After all, the mouth is a part of the body – it’s the gateway to the entire body.

For information about other dental topics visit www.TavorminaDentistry.com

Should I Extract My Impacted Wisdom Teeth?

You’ve gone to your dentist for your routine checkup.  You have no pain, no discomfort in your mouth.  It’s time for you to have some x-rays.  After the dentist evaluates the x-rays, he tells you that you have impacted wisdom teeth and you need to go to an oral surgeon to have them extracted.  What do you do?

You have a lot to consider.  This kind of recommendation is especially made to younger people (usually the recommendation comes before it’s time to go off to college).  It is easier to have wisdom teeth that are impacted extracted when people are younger, because the wisdom teeth roots aren’t fully developed and the dental bone is not as dense as it is in older patients.  If the teeth are easier to remove, then the recovery is easier as well.

An impacted wisdom tooth is stuck under the gum, usually embedded in the jawbone.  Even though you have no symptoms, there are reasons to justify extracting them.  When a wisdom tooth is partially embedded in the gums and part of the crown is exposed in the mouth, there is a pocket between the gums and the tooth and this area can easily get infected.  When this happens, it usually keeps getting infected (this is called a pericoronitis), and this is very painful.  It makes sense to extract a tooth such as this when there isn’t room for the tooth to fully erupt into the mouth.

Other reasons for extracting a wisdom tooth are irreparable tooth decay, an abscess, cysts, tumors, or damage to the nearby teeth or bone.

It usually is advisable to have all four wisdom teeth extracted at the same time if you are going forward with the surgery, because it is usually painful after the procedure, so if you do only one or two extractions and you need others, you may not want to go back, fearing a repeat performance of pain and swelling.  The extractions can be several thousands of dollars at an oral surgeon’s office, and you have to consider, there always is some risk involved in any surgical procedure.  You have to consider how proactive and preventive you want to be to avoid possible problems in the future.

For information about other dental topics visit our website: www.TavorminaDentistry.com

Why Are Regular Dental Checkups Important?

In most cases when there is a problem with our health we feel a symptom in our body. When we get a symptom, such as pain for example, it’s a signal for us to do something about it. Most of us go to the physician to find out what’s going on.  We want to find out what’s causing the pain/problem.

I don’t know why it is this way, but we have seen advanced dental disease in people who never had pain. There were signs and symptoms, but no pain in many instances. This isn’t unusual with dental disease. The signs were bleeding gums, loose teeth, gaps forming between teeth, bad taste or odor in the mouth, discoloration of teeth.  However, without any pain, it is often easy for some people to ignore or be unaware of the signs before it’s too late.

We have seen people with teeth so loose, the teeth come out by themselves – but the person didn’t have pain during the entire time the dental bone holding their teeth in their mouth was being destroyed by infectious bacteria.  We have also seen people with the entire crown of the tooth destroyed by decay, and there never was any pain.

Regular dental checkups are important so that we have an opportunity as dental professionals to find any problems that may be present at the earliest time during the disease process. We want to diagnose gum disease early, before there is any bone loss around the teeth and subsequent tooth loss. We want to discover any decay that might be present before it goes deeper into the tooth, destroys more tooth structure, and continues to enter the nerve of the tooth causing the need for root canal therapy in order to save the tooth. Finding any dental disease early takes less time and money and helps people to maintain their teeth for a lifetime. Dentures are not an inevitable result of aging. They can totally be avoided with regular dental checkups and necessary care when problems are minor.

For information about other dental topics visit www.TavorminaDentistry.com