If you visit your dentist regularly, there’s a good chance you’ll find out you have a cavity during examination or x-rays. Frequent, professional dental care means you probably won’t experience any symptoms common to cavities before they are caught and treated.

If, however, you don’t visit the dentist as regularly as you should for checkup, cleaning, and x-rays, cavities could worsen to the point that you begin experiencing several unfortunate symptoms. Here are a few warning signs you should be aware of so that you can seek treatment immediately.

Discomfort

As cavities grow, you could experience worsening levels of discomfort that include tenderness or tooth sensitivity, sharp pains when biting down or when drinking hot or cold liquids, or a chronic ache that gets worse over time. If cavities go undiagnosed and untreated, tooth decay will spread, not only within the infected tooth, but potentially to other teeth, the jaw, and surrounding tissues.

If you start to feel discomfort or even pain, it’s a sign that something is wrong. It might not be a cavity, but there’s always a chance tooth decay could be to blame. Regardless, you’ll want to pinpoint the source so you can take steps to alleviate discomfort, and this means contacting your dentist.

Visible Symptoms

Most of us don’t look too closely at our teeth on a day-to-day basis, even if we practice good oral hygiene and brush, floss, and rinse with mouthwash after every meal. That said, if you start to notice brown or black staining on the surface of the tooth, or worse, visible pitting (small holes in teeth), you’ll definitely want to see your dentist for a professional diagnosis.

Foul Odor or Taste

If you suffer from bad breath or a bad taste in your mouth, there could be any number of causes, including the foods and beverages you consume (garlic onions, etc.), bad habits like smoking, diseases like diabetes, dry mouth related to medications, and so on. However, if none of these common causes apply to your situation, tooth decay could be to blame.

Any time you start to notice changes to your oral health, including the onset of discomfort or bad tastes or odors in the mouth, it’s best to consult with your dentists and schedule an appointment for examination. It’s always better to err on the side of caution – catching a cavity early could help to preserve your natural teeth and stave off further oral health concerns.

There’s no denying the power of a beautiful, perfect smile. It’s often cited as the most attractive attribute when meeting someone for the first time, and it can help you to feel confident and comfortable in social situations. Naturally, you also want to maintain good oral health for functional reasons.

So when a tooth is damaged by decay, trauma, or other causes, you probably want to see your dentist to fix the problem as soon as possible. Depending on the amount of damage, it may turn out that you need a crown. What can you expect during this process? How are porcelain crowns fitted?

Preparation

In most cases, you’ll have to schedule two visits to get a permanent crown placed. During the first visit, you’ll undergo preparations. This starts with x-rays to determine the extent of damage to the tooth, followed by appropriate treatment to remove decay or shape the tooth in preparation to receive a crown. You may need some drilling, filing, or even a root canal – it will depend on your particular situation.

If your tooth has suffered serious damage or decay, your dentist may need to apply some amount of filling material to create a stable base for the crown. When the tooth is ready, impressions can be taken to make the mold for the physical crown. In some cases, this is done with putty pressed onto the tooth; in others, a digital scanner is used. You will receive a temporary crown to protect your damaged tooth while the porcelain crown is being created.

Receiving a Crown

By the time you arrive for your second visit, your porcelain crown should be ready. It could take 2-3 weeks for a lab to create your crown. During your visit, your dentist will remove the temporary crown, check the fit of the new crown, and if all goes well, cement it permanently in place. In most case, you can expect the use of local anesthetic to ensure a comfortable experience.

After Care

With proper care, your porcelain crown could complete your smile and protect your tooth for up to 15 years. If you want to get the greatest longevity from your crown, you need to observe good oral hygiene and schedule regular dental visits to avoid further tooth decay.

You also need to avoid potential harm. Although porcelain crowns are designed to hold up to normal wear and tear, they can definitely be damaged by chewing on hard items (ice, candy, pen caps, etc.) or issues like bruxism (clenching or grinding teeth). Luckily, there are steps you can take to reduce risk factors and maintain your porcelain crown for years to come.

There’s no denying the benefit of traditional orthodontic braces to correct severe issues like misaligned teeth or jaws. That said, even teens interested in obtaining a straight smile aren’t terribly enthusiastic about the prospect of wearing metal braces for two years. As an adult that has had braces before, you’re probably even less interested in returning to this method of dental alignment.

Unfortunately, our teeth are not generally inclined to stay in their straight positions after braces are removed. This is why you have to faithfully wear retainers for years after braces to keep your smile looking as perfect as the day you got your braces off.

Raise your hand if you’re one of many adults that adhered to a strict regimen following braces, but over the years, your retainer usage fell by the wayside. Now you find yourself dealing with the consequences – teeth that have shifted somewhat – and you’re hesitant to return to braces. Don’t fret, there’s another option. With Invisalign you could straighten your smile without the many drawbacks of braces. Here’s what you need to know.

The Benefits of Invisalign

Invisalign offers some of the same benefits as traditional braces, insomuch as they help to correct smile and bite issues. However, the invisible trays are custom made for your mouth, and you’ll receive a series of trays that gradually correct your particular issues.

Although you’ll have to wear your Invisalign trays for the majority of each day, they are removable (unlike metal braces), which means you can take them off for the sake of convenience when you eat or clean your teeth. In addition, they are generally considered more comfortable than traditional braces, not least of all because they have no sharp, metal edges.

The kicker, however, is that Invisalign could deliver results in as little as about six months, which is significantly less than braces. At similar cost, you stand to gain a lot of benefits when you opt for Invisalign.

Invisalign after Braces

The big question, of course, is whether or not you’re a good candidate for Invisalign. In many cases, those who have had braces previously are ideal candidates because much of the hard work has already been done, and only minor adjustments are needed.

Invisalign can help to correct minor issues like gaps, crowding, underbite, overbite, and so on, but they may not work well for severe misalignment. If you want to find out if you’re a good candidate for Invisalign, simply contact your dentist to schedule a consultation.

The dawn of a new calendar year often spurs a time of reflection, whereby you assess your actions and outcomes from the previous year in order to reprioritize and create a plan to move forward. For many, this means setting New Year’s resolutions, including common goals like weight loss and debt reduction, just for example.

However, you don’t want to neglect other areas where you could stand to see some improvement, and if you’ve avoided the topic of oral health, now is the perfect time to plan for a healthier smile. Here are just a few resolutions to help you accomplish this goal.

1. Dental diet

The foods and beverages you consume can do more than affect your overall health – they can also have a marked impact on your oral health. When you ingest a lot of sugar, for example, you can do serious harm to your teeth. Sticky sugars cling to teeth and create the perfect breeding ground for harmful bacteria, leading to plaque and tarter buildup, and eventually, more serious issues like tooth decay and gum disease.

Make a resolution to cut back on sugary sodas, candy, and more and you could see reduction of cavities and other oral health issues as a result. Don’t forget, you can also introduce helpful foods into your diet. Adequate calcium supports good bone health, which includes healthy teeth, and snacking on crisp fruits and veggies like apples, carrots, celery, and so on can help to scrape harmful biofilm off teeth to keep them clean between brushing.

2. Upgrade oral hygiene

If you’ve relied mainly on brushing to keep your teeth clean, this is the year to commit to adding flossing and rinsing with mouthwash to your routine. These measures help to clean away food and bacteria stuck between teeth and under the gum line, reducing the risk of tooth decay and gum disease.

3. Visit the dentist

Plenty of adults skip the recommended annual dental visit for cleaning, checkup, and x-rays. However, this only allows oral health issues to fester. Good oral hygiene at home can do a lot to preserve oral health, but without professional examination, treatment, and preventive care, a minor issue could grow into something much more serious.

4. Address oral health issues

If you’ve been putting off deep cleaning or replacing old fillings, or you’ve simply grown used to cosmetic concerns like crowding or chipped or cracked teeth, it’s time to address these issues that could have a negative impact on oral health. Visit your dentist to discuss oral health and come up with a plan to move forward.

If you’ve never had gum boils before, there’s a good chance you’ve never even heard of them. Even if you experience the swelling, pain, redness, and other symptoms associated with these mouth sores, you might not know what they are.

Gum boils are bumps or swollen areas of the gum where abscesses have formed. They are often the result of food, plaque, or bacteria beneath gum tissue that have grown into an infection, irritating the gums and creating pus that leads to bulging gum tissue in certain areas of the mouth.

How does this happen? What causes gum boils and what can you do to get rid of them?

Causes

While gum boils are often the product of bacterial growth, the underlying issue is generally gum disease or tooth decay. There are cases in which infection is not necessarily involved, such as when poorly-fitted dentures rub and irritate gums until boils form.

Gum disease causes gums to become irritated and inflamed, which can lead to gaps between teeth and gums. This is often how food and bacteria are able to infiltrate below the gum line, causing abscesses and the appearance of boils. Tooth decay could also be to blame. Abscesses in teeth could extend infection to the gums, leading to boils.

Home Remedies

Because gum boils are often caused by bacteria below the gum line, there’s not a lot you can do on your own to improve the situation. You should never, never attempt to lance or otherwise treat gum boils on your own as you risk causing serious harm and spreading bacteria.

That said, there are a few ways to alleviate the pain symptoms associated with gum boils while you’re waiting to see your dentist or you’re undergoing professional treatment. Gargling with salt water could help to diminish symptoms, as can using an antibacterial mouthwash. Ask your doctor if products like Orajel Mouth Sore Gel could help with pain.

Professional Help

The only real way to rid yourself of gum boils is with the help of your dentist. If bacteria are present, your dentist will likely start with a course of antibiotics to treat the infection and prevent further bacterial growth.

In addition, you will have to undergo treatment for underlying causes of boils, which could include deep cleaning to remove tartar below the gum line and allow gums to recover. You might also have to go through a root canal or other procedures if tooth decay is to blame. If boils don’t respond to these treatments or they’re unrelated to infection, surgical removal is an option.

Temporomandibular Joint (or TMJ) disorders affect millions of people. The condition is characterized by symptoms like jaw pain, stiffness, or tenderness, pain in one or both joints, facial or ear aches, a clicking or locking jaw, and difficulty or pain when chewing.

As you can imagine, this could have an extreme impact on your life, impairing your ability to eat, drink, and communicate. What causes TMJ Disorder? What can you do to prevent precursors from turning into TMJ disorders? Here’s what you should know if you’re already experiencing a stiff jaw.

Causes

There are many potential causes for the onset of TMJ disorders, and it’s not always clear which is to blame. This can make the condition difficult to treat effectively. However, there are several potential causes.

What you need to understand is that the TMJ moves in two ways. It not only features a hinge action, which allows your jaw to open and close, but it can also slide, allowing your jaw a limited range of motion back and forth and side to side. This is all designed to help you chew a wide variety of foods.

Within the TMJ is cartilage and a cushioning disk. TMJ disorders occur when the cartilage, the disk, or the joint itself is damaged or out of alignment. This could be due to another condition like arthritis or bruxism (clenching and grinding teeth). It could be the result of injury or illness. The good news is there are treatment options that could help you to prevent TMJ disorders or treat them when they occur.

Prevention

Early detection is often essential in stopping one condition from ballooning into something more serious. If you’re experiencing stiffness or pain in your jaw, you need to see your dentist and/or your doctor for diagnosis and treatment. If you have arthritis, your doctor will help you to come up with a treatment plan, and in the meantime, you can watch what you eat (opting for soft instead of hard-to-chew foods), massage your jaw, treat it with hot or cold compresses, and use ibuprofen to relieve pain.

As for bruxism, your dentist can create a custom night guard for you to wear to prevent pain and other symptoms, as well as further damage. Unfortunately, bruxism is thought to be linked to high levels of stress, so you’ll also want to find ways to reduce stress in order to eliminate bruxism before it can cause TMJ disorders. If injury or illness is to blame, simply giving your body time to heal could do the trick.

When you receive a filling or crown meant to protect your tooth after treatment for a cavity or a root canal, you naturally expect the fixture to be permanent. If all goes well, your fillings and crowns could last indefinitely.

However, we can be pretty hard on our dental work. Some adults suffer from bruxism, or unconsciously clenching and grinding teeth. Some participate in sports that could result in trauma to the mouth and teeth. Or maybe you make the mistake of chewing hard candy, ice cubes, or pen caps. Even normal wear and tear could lead to lost or broken fillings or crowns.

In fact, it’s a fairly common occurrence. Is it an emergency, though? What should you do when you lose a filling or crown? Here are a few tips to get you through this understandably upsetting situation.

Don’t Go to the ER

In the vast majority of cases, losing a filling or crown is not an emergency. If you’ve been in an accident that resulted in trauma to your mouth, you may be dealing with an emergency situation on another level, but having a filling or crown break or pop out is probably not an emergency in and of itself.

In other words, you don’t need to head to the ER or wake your dentist in the middle of the night. While you definitely want to correct the situation, you can wait until morning to call your dentist’s office to schedule an appointment for repair or replacement.

What Should You Do in the Meantime?

The biggest issues when you lose a filling or crown is that your exposed tooth could be subject to further damage. You may also experience some pain, particularly in relation to hot or cold foods, beverages, or even air. Dabbing on some clove oil or Anbesol could help to ease discomfort, but what you really need to do is protect your tooth until your dentist can replace the filling or crown.

There are a couple of options to consider. If a dental fixture pops out intact, you may be able to clean your tooth, clean the fixture, and temporarily put it back in place with some dental cement. If not, you could simply coat the exposed tooth surface with dental cement or dental wax. These are not long-term solutions, but they could prevent further harm until you can get in to see your dentist for professional help.

The phrase “you are what you eat” is not meant to be taken literally. Eating a cupcake does not make you a cupcake any more than eating a string bean makes you a string bean. That said, eating a diet laden with sugars and fats will certainly affect your health in different ways than eating a diet high in fruits and veggies, just for example. There is a strong correlation between nutrition and health.

What you may not realize is just how much the foods and beverages you consume could affect your teeth. Sugar is particularly nasty because it clings to teeth, creating a breeding ground for harmful bacteria. While acidic substances don’t have the same sticky properties, they can be harmful to your teeth in different ways, and you should be aware of the damage they can cause.
What do acidic foods and beverages do to your teeth, and how can you avoid the harm associated with them? Here’s what you need to know.

Acid Damage

When acids in foods and beverages come into contact with your teeth, they attack the enamel directly, unlike sugar, which tends to cause damage because it lingers and feeds bacteria. Acids leach away the calcium that makes your teeth strong and erodes the hard enamel shell that protects teeth from bacteria, infection, and ultimately, decay. In other words, you want to avoid exposure to acid as much as possible in order to prevent erosion and subsequent harm.

Know What You’re Eating

One of the best ways to avoid acid erosion is to understand where it’s coming from. Some foods, like citrus fruits, are well-known sources of acid. However, you might not realize that acids could be lurking in your soda, pasta sauce, pickles, salad dressing, coffee, and many other foods and beverages. If you want to avoid the damage these foods can cause, it’s best to take the time to learn which foods are most harmful so that you can cut back.

Hedge Your Bets

It’s understandable that you wouldn’t want to give up on some of your favorite foods and beverages, even if they are acidic. In this case, you should learn how to combat the ill effects. For beverages, try drinking with a straw to limit contact with teeth. Don’t suck on limes or other citrus fruits. Get plenty of calcium in your diet to keep teeth healthy and strong. And of course, make sure to brush, floss, and rinse with mouthwash after every meal, and visit your dentist regularly to maintain the best possible oral health.

No matter how your teeth or your jaws fit together, you’ve probably found ways to make your bite work so that you can eat regularly. However, just because you can speak and chew your food doesn’t necessarily mean your bite is properly aligned, and the longer you go without correcting the issue, the more chance you have to suffer lasting damage as a result.

How can you tell if you have proper bite alignment? What could happen if you don’t? And what can you do to correct the issue? Here’s what you need to know.

What’s in a Smile?

It’s easy to be taken off guard when your dentist informs you that your bite is off. Looking at the front of your teeth, or even the inside of your mouth, you might think your teeth are perfectly straight. However, bite alignment is not necessarily about the state of your smile, but rather how your upper and lower teeth fit together. This can be seen best from the side of the mouth, which most of us can’t get a good look at on our own.

When your bite is properly aligned, the top and bottom teeth will fit together perfectly, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. If there are gaps between upper and lower teeth, or you suffer a serious overbite or underbite, you can bet your bite is somehow misaligned. This could be due to either jaw or tooth misalignment, or both.

What’s Wrong with Improper Bite Alignment?

Some amount of overlap is acceptable when it comes to your bite, but if alignment issues are severe enough, they could cause a slew of problems over time. For example, bite misalignment could be responsible for speech impediments like lisps.

It could also cause problems with chewing, lead to discomfort or pain, result in frequent biting of the tongue or cheeks, or even alter the appearance of your face. Bite issues could also make it difficult to properly brush and floss teeth, leading to problems like tooth decay and gum disease. Rarely is improper bite alignment merely a cosmetic issue. If not corrected, it is likely to cause functional issues, as well.

What Can You Do?

When you find that your bite is off, you may be understandably concerned. The good news is that there are solutions. The most common is the use of orthodontic braces to properly align your teeth and jaws. You should speak with your dentist or orthodontist about the options available to you based on your particular needs.

You might find the thought of itchy gums confounding, but it’s actually a fairly common occurrence that many people experience at different times in life. This is because there are several common causes of itchy gums. What could cause irritation and itchiness in your gums? Here are some of the causes you should know about.

Poor Oral Hygiene

When you brush, floss, and rinse with mouthwash daily and see your dentist regularly for check-up and cleaning, you’re giving yourself the best chance to keep your mouth healthy and well. If you neglect these essential steps you could end up with tartar and plaque buildup that causes all kinds of discomfort and harm.

Sticky plaque can build up on teeth and extend below the gum line when you fail to practice proper oral care. Over time, this can lead to infection, gingivitis, periodontitis, and extremely serious oral health issues. In the meantime, plaque buildup and related infections can irritate your gums and cause you to experience an itching sensation, among other potential symptoms.

Allergies

Not everybody has allergies, but for those that do, there could be a number of symptoms. Whether you have food, seasonal, pharmaceutical, or other allergies, you might experience indigestion, hives, or even anaphylaxis when exposed to allergens. You could also have swelling, burning, or itching sensations in the gums. If you’re allergic to certain metals, make sure to let your dentist know before you get fillings so appropriate filling materials can be used.

Hormones

You know that hormonal fluctuations can cause you to feel tired, achy, irritable, or even overheated. What you might not know is that your hormones can affect your oral health. It’s not uncommon for people to experience itchy gums during puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, menopause, or other periods of hormonal shift.

Although such symptoms may fade over time, it’s always best to see your dentist when you experience itchy gums. Even if you think they’re related to temporary hormonal changes, they could still be harmful to your health if there are other causes involved.

Trauma

Any time you experience trauma to your mouth, you could end up dealing with a variety of associated symptoms. Itchy gums could result from an accident, injury, or illness, but this symptom could also be related to unseen trauma like bruxism (teeth grinding and jaw clenching). You might not even realize you’re suffering from bruxism. This is why it’s always best to visit your dentist when your gums start to itch so you can receive a proper diagnosis and treatment.