The stark white waiting room, antiseptic smells, shiny white uniforms, glistening silver pointy instruments, patients with varying expression of pain and the sonic whine of the dental drill; everything just invokes a mental picture of terrific pain starting in a few minutes and guaranteed to torture you! A normal person is guaranteed to start you sweating in anxiety and distress!When teeth are damaged the pain can be severely debilitating, but the sheer terror of dental treatment can cause over 20% of patients to simply refuse or postpone treatment! In an effort to make the process of dental treatment more acceptable, London dentist’s tried to combine the relaxing effects of spas into the antiseptic environment of dental treatment.

The result: Voila! Dental spas in London!

Instead of the sterile purely functional environment of a clinic you will now have a “relaxation room” or waiting room with spa music floating in the background, scented candles, low watt bulbs and potpourri in lavender or chamomile. The brightly dressed attendant offers you fresh fruit juices with croissants as you wait for your appointment. The “therapy room” is colored a vivid green or azure blue with ergonomically designed dental chairs and freshly perfumed air. The walls and ceiling are brightly colored with mosaics of birds and animals. A heated perfume pillow is placed under your neck and a warm blanket covers you while the dentist works his specially designed soundless and well as painless drills. During treatment the patient has the option of undergoing a foot massage, manicure, hand paraffin bath or pedicure completely free!

A pipe dream? Definitely not! A combination of gentle dentistry and soothing spa treatment is guaranteed to calm your dental anxieties forever. Try it!

DO you have an appointment this week at your London dentist? Do you want to get a new denture or even a bridge done? As you very well know these procedures do require the doctor to take a measurement of your teeth to produce an accurate as well as precise individually tailored prosthesis.The feel of the dental goop, along with the wait required for the material to gel, to get an accurate impression is nauseating enough for any one to think twice about making a new denture or any prostheses! Don’t forget the lots of sticky goopy peppermint flavored stuff all down you face and throat along with half of the dentist’s fingers!

I’m gagging already! But you don’t have to do that now! With the latest advances in the field of digital impression technology called as iTero, 3-D images of teeth are clicked using a patient-friendly, non-invasive way. The measurement obtained is the same without having to sticking an impression tray as well as impression material in your mouth. Dentist and patient can view the image immediately and incorrect images are changed or retaken immediately. The 3-D model is can be sent to a specialized lab where you have a special computer manufacturing a three-dimensional model out of plastic. The dimensionally accurate images can produce bridges, dentures and crowns which fit much better than the conventional methods!

Patients are ultimately relieved of the need to sit still with the nauseating material in their mouth and are guaranteed a better fit of the resulting prosthesis!

Hmmm! I do need a cap; I think I’ll wait till this technology lands up in London!

Maintaining oral hygiene is really important and you can do it really well if you follow a few common tips and ticks like,
1. Avoid scrubbing away at your tooth surface with your toothbrush use minimal pressure and a sweeping motion from the gum towards the tooth surface. A soft multitufted rounded brush is the best for almost every one. Be sure to replace your tooth brush every two months.
2. Brush for at least 3-5minutes and time yourself with an egg timer or an alarm clock. Brush 3-4 minutes twice daily as a replacement for brushing speedily five or more times through the day.
3. Rinse your mouth after every snack or food you eat. Keep a toothbrush in your desk drawer to remind yourself to brush once in the day time.
4. Brush daily at least twice a day to avoid problems in the future.
5. Get a biannual cleaning done to maintain your gum condition
6. Sue a fluoridated toothpaste to keep your teeth healthy and use a fluoridate mouthwash to add to the benefits.
7. Eat more green leaf veggies and fiber to keep your mouth healthy.
8. Obviously don’t smoke or drink to keep your teeth perfectly healthy.

Here are a few simple tips to help you maintain your oral hygiene to the best of your ability.
1. Brush your teeth daily after you get up and before going to bed. Although this seems like a silly thing to tell someone it’s really important and you should follow it religiously.
2. Floss before you brush. Although brushing is pretty effective in cleaning your teeth .The bristles don’t really reach between your teeth. This is where flossing can preserve the health of your gums and clear out the interdental spaces of foul smelling gunk.
3. Limit the amount of soda, alcohol and sweet juices you drink. These drinks contain minute amounts of alcohol which can eat away the enamel causing erosion cavities. These erosion cavities also cause severe sensitivity in the teeth.
4. Sue a soft bristled tooth brush and preferably tilt your tooth brush at an angle to your gums .Aim your tooth brush like a brush sweeping away debris away from the gums towards the biting surface of the tooth.
5. Replace your brush ever two or three months to avoid getting infected with throat infections.
6. Consider an electric tooth brush and learn how to use them well.
7. Consider getting an oral irrigator to massage your gums and clean in interdental spaces.

We’ll have a Coke for a mid morning drink. Or you may like to have different types of commercial fruit juices, sports drinks, herbal teas, beer salts, and some types of Lucas brand of candy.All these products contain large amount of acids which can eat away or dissolve the surface enamel of your tooth. Shallow cavities can form all over the tooth surface called as dental erosion cavities. These acids strip away the hard enamel out coating of the teeth and expose the delicate inner dentine to the oral environment. Dentine is filled with a lot of nerves and these get exposed to the sudden changes in temperature or acidity causing severe sensitivity.

Sometimes it becomes difficult to locate exactly where the erosion cavities are located and treating the shallow saucer shaped cavities becomes difficult. Dental erosion creates a polished appearance to the enamel without any pain or sensitivity in the early stages. Most patients are not even aware of the problem until the situation becomes really bad.

A good ways to keep a close eye on your teeth is to get regular check up every two months at your London dentist and preferably avoid all drinks contain a large amount of acids.

I’ve got over 5 silver amalgam fillings in my mouth done in London and they’ve never given me a moment’s trouble. But the current news about the ill effects of silver amalgam filling is beginning to worry me and I decided to do a little further research.Silver amalgam fillings have been the mainstay of dentistry for over several years. Even today several people get regular dental fillings done in silver amalgam .So why the hoo-hah about something which is pretty routine for every one?
Even though silver amalgam fillings were introduced over 150 years ago the material has constantly been under a cloud of doubt. Recent claims by a new breed of holistic dentists have really scared everyone to the safety of silver amalgam fillings. Holistic dentistry claims that the mercury on silver amalgam is very dangerous and the older the filling the worse it is. They advise complete removal of old mercury fillings and replacement with newer white colored restorations

There are a whole group of patients who claim that mercury is hazardous and can cause a whole range of dangerous defects like brain damage, birth problems, multiple sclerosis, allergies, Alzheimer’s , as well as many chronic diseases. But the American Dental Association has vigorously supported the use of mercury amalgam fillings as secure. In fact it has advised against the removal of old amalgam fillings if the patient is not having any problems!

I just hope some one would clarify the problem for me!

Did you wear braces when you were small? Did you get tired of being mercilessly teased by friends and family as, “robot head, metal mouth” and so on? Well unfortunately I’ve got bad news, bad teeth and alignment is generally hereditary so there’s very god chance that your children will have to wear braces too! But there’s good news too!
London dentists have a new alterative to the old painful metal wires and brackets! Invisible braces are here to stay! Yes that’s right INVISLAIGN braces are a set of invisible plastic braces which are individually designed to move your teeth back to the original position as painlessly as possible.
Advantages-
1. These braces are made of invisible plastic moldable material not clearly visible to the eye.
2. Individual braces are manufactured by a computer so you get the best fit and alignment to tooth movement.
3. More efficient and take lesser time to achieve treatment results.
4. The unsightly metal braces and brackets are completely eliminated and the pains and aches of the metal poking gum tissue is completely done away with.Disadvantages-
1. Pretty expensive!
2. These braces can only be used for the simplest of cases and can’t be used with partially erupted teeth or severe crowding.
3. These braces need a special laboratory to manufacturer the braces and you will get a set of new 12 to 48 aligners to make the teeth move to new positions.
4. As the braces are removable the patient has to co-operate in wearing the braces or its no use.

Initially when the term cosmetic dentist was being bandied about, I was pretty skeptical. I thought, “Isn’t every dentist supposed to prepare his fillings cosmetically? All fillings are supposed to look good right? So what’s the big deal of being a cosmetic dentist?”
Well, that’s where almost every one goes wrong. Dentists do need to be artistically inclined to get the tiny procedures they do to be really accurate. In fact many dentists are really good with different artistic hobbies. But not every London dentist is a cosmetic dentist.
The situation is also slightly difficult with no professional degree as such awarded to only cosmetic dentists. Well here are a few ways by which you can recognize a professional cosmetic dentist from a general dentist.
1. Most cosmetic dentists carry specific recommendations or Dental Continued Education Degrees on their clinic walls. Make sure you take a look at them check out specialties. Ask for recommendations from friends and family who have had really good cosmetic dental stuff done.
2. Cosmetic dentist has to address the patients needs for the job .So patients needs do come first. A good cosmetic dentist will discuss the patients’ needs completely before even taking a look at the patients’ teeth.
3. Smile design is a really important study as related to cosmetic dentistry .For most dentists learning about tooth opacity and reflections of tooth color can take up to ten years of clinical experience. So it’s not just enough to attend lectures, clinical experience is a must. Ask the dentist you have selected for references and pictures before you star with the work.

I’ve heard of London blood banks, money banks, and even old clothes banks but this is the first I’ve heard of tooth banks? And why would any one want to save old teeth?
A Norwegian company is now requesting about 100, 000 teeth from children in Norway for their tooth bank.The Tooth Bank happens to be a research sub-project of the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa).It also happens to be a collaborative project between the Norwegian Institute of Public Health as well as the University of Bergen. The main objective of this project is to collect baby teeth to gain further information on the effect of environmental influences and nutrition in the fetus and early childhood.

The new Tooth Bank, MoBaTann, is planning to get parents to donate their children’s teeth for the research project on children’s nutrition as well as developmental influences on teeth. Parents are also encouraged to contribute further information about each mother’s diet and background through pregnancy with answering feedback forms, diet charts as well as complex blood and lab testing for references .The children are followed as they grow with questionnaires. This will be the largest project on collecting information on children teeth as well as the influences they have been exposed to during pregnancy.

Does getting a root canal sound really painful to you? Do you think you really need it? Why do you need it? Let’s take a look at a few commonly asked questions on root canals. What is a root canal and do I really need one?
Each tooth contains a sensitive living center called as a nerve. When your decay has finished burrowing through the entire tooth it then reaches the sensitive central living tissue and then starts irritating it. Ultimately due to the constant irritants the nerve just dies and rots away. The dead nerve and pus accumulate inside the tooth and generally cause flare ups every month with severe swelling and pain. In a root canal procedure the dentist will excavate the entire dead nerve, pus and leaves behind a hollow sterile pipe of the tooth. He then strengthens this hollow dead structure with a central filling of a really hard material and covers it with a cap to protect it.

What are the signs of needing endodontic treatment or a root canal?
When the decay reaches the central nerve of the tooth, you will experience severe pain swellings, sensitivity to heat or cold, discoloration of the tooth, etc

Does a root canal save a tooth?
Definitely, a retained tooth is much better than losing your natural tooth. After the root canal procedure the tooth does become really brittle so you have to be slightly careful on eating hard and sticky food. Otherwise a well-done root canal lasts for a really long, long, time.