Showing posts with label Dental. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dental. Show all posts

Apr 23, 2013

Toothache - Causes, Symptoms, Treatment

A toothache, also known as odontalgia or, less frequently, as odontalgy, is an aching pain in or around a tooth. In most cases toothaches are caused by problems in the tooth or jaw, such as cavities, gum disease, the emergence of wisdom teeth, a cracked tooth, infected dental pulp, jaw disease, or exposed tooth root. Causes of a toothache may also be a symptom of diseases of the heart, such as angina or a myocardial infarction, due to referred pain. After having one or more teeth extracted a condition known as dry socket can develop, leading to extreme pain.

Toothache or tooth pain is caused when the nerve root of a tooth is irritated. Dental (tooth) infection, decay, injury, or loss of a tooth are the most common causes of dental pain. Pain may also occur after an extraction (tooth is pulled out). Pain sometimes originates from other areas and radiates to the jaw, thus appearing to be tooth pain. The most common areas include the jaw joint (temporomandibular joint or TMJ), ear pain, and even occasional heart problems.

Toothache Causes

Toothache or any other tooth-related problem is really painful and disturbing. It affects our life and our daily activities completely. The main causes of tooth decay are germs in tooth, cavity in tooth, excess consumption of junk foods and sweets and chocolates. Improper brushing, poor quality of toothpaste and toothbrush is also responsible for toothache. Some study shows that stress and mental tension and anxiety worsen the toothache and other problems.

Common dental causes of toothache include dental cavities, dental abscess, gum disease, irritation of the tooth root, cracked tooth syndrome, temporomandibular disease, impaction, and eruption.

Toothache Symptoms

Toothache and jaw pain are common complaints. There may be severe pain to pressure, or to hot or cold stimuli. The pain may persist for longer than 15 seconds after the stimulus is removed. As the area of inflammation increases, the pain becomes more severe. It may radiate to the cheek, the ear, or the jaw.

Toothache Treatment

Be it a child or an adult everybody has experienced toothache at some point of their life. It is a temporary, scathing pain occurring in and around the teeth and in the jaws. The pain can either be minimal, sharp, searing or burning. It can come and go at intervals or can be continuous. The throbbing increases in contact with cold, sweet or hot sensation. A fever can follow a toothache.

In most cases, dental or jaw pain can be cared for with pain medications and antibiotics. A referral to a dentist for follow-up will usually be arranged. In some cases, the doctor may try an injection around the tooth for pain control. If there is swelling in the gums or face, or you have fever, antibiotics may be prescribed.

Treatment will depend on the underlying cause of the toothache. If the pain is due to tooth decay, the dentist will remove the decayed area and restore the tooth with a filling of silver amalgam or composite resin. Loose or broken fillings are removed, new decay cleaned out, and a new filling is placed. If the pulp of the tooth is damaged, root canal therapy is needed. The dentist or a specialist called an endodontist removes the decayed pulp, fills the space left behind with a soothing paste, and covers the tooth with a crown to protect and seal it.

A Guide to Finding a Proper Dentist

If it turns out that you have been trying to find a really good dentist for quite some time now then you might want to try and make a search online, where you will find that it is indeed possible to find a wide variety of excellent dental clinics in your area. The reality is that there are a lot of habits you should learn to develop on your own regarding tooth care, such as brushing your teeth and flossing them as much as possible, but you should also know that going to the dentist is something to do frequently as well.

A lot of people seem to think that they can avoid having to go to the dentist just because they are fairly consistent with their tooth care. This is a mistake more often than not and the result can be tooth decay and a variety of other tooth problems, so you will definitely want to spend some time learning more about where to find a good dental clinic in your area if you want to ensure that your teeth remain in good condition for as long as possible.

Learning more about the basics of cosmetic dentistry will make it clear to you that there are a lot of dental procedures out there that you could choose to do, whether you want to make your teeth look a little bit whiter or straighten them out. As you might imagine, there are also a lot of dental clinics out there and it can take some time to find a really good one in your area. With all of the options that you have out there to choose from it would make sense to try and find a really good dentist that has been around for a long time and that has plenty of experience. If you happen to be on a tight budget at this point in time then it would be a good idea to avoid spending too much money on the more expensive dentists around although it is also true that some dentists can do better jobs than others.

What you will want to do in any case is a bit of research online, making sure to keep your search local so that all of the good dental clinics in your immediate area or somewhat close to where you happen to be living at this point in time can easily be found. Like this you will know that you have a great dental clinic just around the corner and you can go there for treatment whenever you feel that it happens to be necessary.

As you can see, when it comes to seeking out a good dentist there are a lot of things that you will want to take into consideration and with all of the dental clinics out there make sure that you know what you are getting into. Good tooth care habits in addition to regular visits to the dental clinic will ensure proper tooth care for many more years.

Pay Attention to Details: For Good Oral Hygiene

But when it comes to our dental and oral health, many of us are scared of paying the doctor a visit. The scare of the dentist stems from older times when there were limited means and pain caused by dental procedures was beyond bearing. With change in time and technology, much has changed when it comes to the field of dentistry. This holds true globally in the field of dentistry and dentist Melbourne is no exception.

New technology to attend to the finer nuances of oral hygiene

With the developments in technology and customer willingness to pay for good health and health care, there is no dearth of services one can solicit and enjoy. Often people think that these technologically advanced services cost a bomb which is not the case anymore. With extra detailed x-ray now available for teeth to the transparent braces available for kids who are socially conscious of how they look. Nothing is a painful procedure anymore, thanks to specialized local anesthesia. The root canal treatment is longer a procedure that we most often do. Technology has advanced and put smarter, more efficient and effective tools in place of rudimentary dentistry tools and made each visit to the doctor, one worth looking forward to.

What can you do for good oral hygiene?

While the services of a dentist Melbourne is amongst the best in the world, it is very important for an individual to pay attention to the smaller changes they notice on a daily basis. Sometimes, paying attention to the smaller details and changes saves a great deal of trouble later on. There is no sure shot way to ensure that you do not face any problems, but a few tips are good to know and follow.
  • Visit your dental doctor regularly for checkups, cleaning and regular smile shine services
  • Spend some time each day to ensure your brush your teeth well, floss and clean the mouth well
  • Eat healthy and maintain a balanced diet
  • Above all, discuss all your dental problems with your doctor and follow the advice that the professionals offer.
  • More often than not, the smaller things our doctors recommend and we chose to ignore are the ones that make the biggest difference.

Oral Thrush – Causes, Symptoms and Treatment

Oral candidiasis is an infection of yeast fungi of the genus Candida on the mucous membranes of the mouth. It is frequently caused by Candida albicans, or less commonly by Candida glabrata or Candida tropicalis. Oral thrush may refers to candidiasis in the mouths of babies, while if occurring in the mouth or throat of adults it may also be termed candidosis or moniliasis.

Thrush refers to candida infection of the mouth and oral areas. The term "thrush" is sometimes also used incorrectly to describe a Candida infection of the genital area; see vaginal candiasis or penile candidiasis. Thrush is common in infants, and can arise particularly after a course of antibiotics. Otherwise, oral thrush usually affects only the ill, particularly those with a weakened immune system.

What causes thrush?

Small amounts of the candida fungus are present in the mouth, digestive tract, and skin of most healthy people and are normally kept in check by other bacteria and microorganisms in the body. However, certain illnesses, stress, or medications can disturb the delicate balance, causing the fungus candida to grow out of control, causing infection. Medications that upset the balance of microorganisms in the mouth and may cause thrush include corticosteroids, antibiotics, and birth control pills.

Signs and Symptoms:

Thrush is easily identified as white spots or raised clusters on the surface of the tongue. These patches are often curd-like, and can be found on the roof of the mouth, inside the cheeks and on the back of the throat. Thrush on the tongue can cause dry mouth. When the clusters are coating the throat, swallowing becomes difficult and painful. Some foods, such as carbonated beverages, may aggravate the pain.

The symptoms of oral thrush include clusters of raised, white, patches on the tongue, roof of the mouth and cheeks. When bushing the teeth the white film can be brushed off and the inflamed area may bleed. If this is left untreated it can cause serious problems. Thrush can spread all through the mouth, down the esophagus into the stomach and the lungs. Thrush can cause mouth ulcers and bad breath. People that take antibiotic treatments, such as people with anemia, HIV patients, and people with immune system problems are at a high risk of oral thrush.

The Facts

Oral thrush is a yeast infection of the mouth caused by uncontrolled growth of an organism called Candida albicans.Candida albicans is an organism that normally makes a quiet home for itself on your skin and doesn't bother anyone. We all carry this organism on our skin, in our mouth, in our gastrointestinal tract (gut), and, in the case of women, in the vagina. Occasionally the yeast multiplies uncontrollably, causing pain and inflammation. When this occurs, it is called candidiasis. It is also known as moniliasis or a yeast infection.

Treatment

There are two goals when treating oral thrush in adults. The first is to improve your immune system's ability to function. For example, in diabetics, good control of diabetes may be enough to clear the infection without other treatment. The second is to directly treat the infection. For this purpose, your doctor may prescribe an antifungal mouthwash or lozenges to suck on. These are usually used for 5-10 days. If they don't work, other medication may be prescribed.

Why Teeth Implants Are Better

Dental implants are permanent teeth used to replace your lost teeth. The inserted tooth can be placed in to the jaw in order to hold the replacement bridge or even tooth. For many individuals, absent teeth can cause the unappealing grin, soreness, unpleasantness due to lose dentures, much less active way of life, and also problem in consuming. Teeth implants could be the best option for people who lost one or more teeth due to an accident, or even gum disease, or even some other cause.

Teeth implants may offer the strong base for detachable or fixed teeth, that are created to match the normal teeth.Dental implants are connected with gum tissue cells as well as root bone in the mouth area. This procedure is the team effort in between you, your periodontist as well as your dental professional. The dental professional as well as periodontist will certainly talk to you in order to figure out how as well as where your dental implant ought to be done. Depending on your situation and also the kind of dental implant chosen, the periodontist will certainly build the plan for treatment developed to meet your needs.

Teeth Implants Can Be Carried Out For:

Replacing Lost Tooth: When you have shed the tooth, then a crown or even one implant can put it back.

Replacing Several Teeth: If you have lost more than one teeth, then you can certainly get implant helped bridges in order to substitute them.

Replacing All Of Your Teeth: If you have dropped all of your teeth, then total denture or an implant supported full bridge could possibly replace all of them.

Ridge Modification: Deformities within the upper or lower jaw could leave a person with inadequate bone tissue structure in which to replace teeth implants. As a way to fix this particular problem your gum can be raised away from ridge to expose bony problem. And after that the defect could be filled with bone tissue substitute or bone tissue to develop the jaw bone ridge. This will enhance your look significantly as well as increase your chances to get successful implants for many years.

Sinus Augmentation: Owning a quality bone tissue can influence the achievements of implant. The upper jaw continues to be proven one of the difficult places to completely place the dental implants due to insufficient quality and quantity of bone tissue as well as closeness towards the nasal. This sinus augmentation treatment might help in solving this condition by raising sinus surface and also building up the bone tissue for dental implants placement.

After completing the treatment, the periodontist will probably work along with you and your dentist carefully to develop the best oral care strategy for you. Follow-up visits could be scheduled as a way to see your teeth implants, gums as well as teeth in order to ensure that they're healthful.

Some common myths about teeth whitening

As you grow old, your teeth start appearing discolored, slightly light greyish or light yellowish. With time, it is quite normal for your teeth to get darker, especially if you intake too much caffeine, have some certain drinks or foods, or smoke tobacco. To get rid of such embarrassing stained and discolored appearance of teeth, people especially in Mississauga have started opting for the services for Teeth Whitening. The services can be availed either ways, by visiting a gentle dental clinic in Mississauga or by doing it yourself in the comfort zone of your home. As this particular odontic solution is gaining immense popularity, number of myths has also originated with the fame. Let's discuss some of the myths and debunk them.

Myth 1: All are same

The most common fable about the dental solution is that every treatment which is related to Teeth Whitening is same. Whereas the fact is, the service provided for this odontic cure by an expert dentist with effective gentle dental care in Mississauga are much efficacious than do it yourself methods. In fact, different treatments available in the market such as Zoom tooth whitening in Mississaugaoffer different strengths and results, thus no method is same at all.

Myth 2: Every tooth whiten equally

This is another most common myth. However in reality, the results of this dental cure vary from an individual to individual and in fact from tooth to tooth. Thus you may get little variation in Teeth Whitening results. Yellowish teeth respond better to the solution than the greyish ones. However, if you got yellowish teeth as a result of excess coffee or tobacco consumption, then you may get more dramatic results.

Myth 3: The more it costs, the better results it offer

It is a common belief that the most expensive Teeth Whitening treatment can only offer the effective and desired outcomes. While the reality is far away from this myth, if you choose to get the services at a gentle dental clinic in Oakvilleor Mississauga instead of using the whitening gels and strips you get superior results, indeed. You can ask your dentist to know which method and product will suit you the best.

Myth 4: It takes weeks to show the results

Although this myth is partially true as well. Actually there are chances that you may need to undergo weeks of treatment to get cured depending on your case severity and results you want. However there are also many patients get preferred outcomes within few hours of the procedure. The concept relies on the method you choose as well as on the discolored conditions of your teeth.

So, these are some of the common myths about the dental cure that you can also debunk in detail by discussing the same with your dentist. Furthermore, if you have some other dental problem such as improper bite or misaligned teeth then it is suggestible to ask your Invisalign dentist in Mississauga to know all facts about it prior to availing the services.

Things You Need To Know About Dental Sedation

Serious pain and misery: these represent the words people usually bring to mind when talk involves dental professionals. That is why even older people dislike dental meetings. A person who is virtually a stranger jabbing the internal parts of your mouth can be quite a relatively uncomfortable moment. Many men and women overcome their fear of dentists but then again there are a few individuals who have never outgrown that feeling. Thankfully to get rid of all traces of discomfort specific dental procedures can bring, there's always dental sedation to put patients' minds comfortable. Dentists in Austin Texas see to it that they supply adequate sedation so their patients won't sense even the littlest chunk of pain.

Dental sedation is the procedure of employing particular remedies to calm down patients before a certain dental process. It can also indicate utilizing general anesthesia that can influence the mental shape of the patient in an effort to induce security in the course of procedures like tooth extraction or surgery. A lot of dentists make use of local anesthesia on their patients. Its function is to provide relaxation for patients who have weakened gag reflexes and are afraid of dental procedures without the pain it delivers. Dental sedation helps de-stress patients and it also makes the memory of the dental meeting fuzzy.

There are two varieties of dental sedation accessible. Nitrous oxide is available in inhalant form and there are also intravenous drugs or oral sedatives. Dental consultants prefer the latter, and before a treatment, the dentist advocates patients to consume benzodiazepine pills. It can't induce drowsiness among patients but it does bring them to a mellow and unagitated emotional condition. After the session, the patient typically has modest memory of what took place within the clinic. Just to be safe, the patient should go with a person who can drive him or her home. The sedative properties of the medicine usually wears off after 4 hours.

Dental sedation is provided to patients who have delayed seeing the dentist for an extended period of time. These patients must have plenty of dental complications occurring in one fell swoop thus the dentist will implement dental sedation in order to handle those issues in unison. Dental sedation will also push dentist-phobic individuals to make habitual appointments after the treatment.

Dental sedation is normally safe however there are some threats involved in dental sedation as well. There are patients who might be hypersensitive to the offered sedatives. It can also bring about serious reactions to a few a patients. Because of this issue, patients are encouraged to decide on a dentist with rigorous training in terms of sedation procedures. The sedatives provided might not also be too powerful if you have not calmed down a bit prior to taking the sedatives, or if you have a very domineering personality.

Some dental clinics do not have dental sedation procedures but with a little research, you will find a clinic that gives this sedating technique. Dental sedation before treatments to teeth whitening in Austin Texas are established and offered by dental clinics in that area so if you live close by, you can test them and hopefully, it will dispose of your dental fears.

Jan 25, 2013

What are the Causes of Malocclusion?

Although we in the United States have access to the most advanced dental care in the world, there is at least one area where we seem to be among the worst in the world: malocclusion. The consensus among comprehensive dentists is that the majority of the population suffers from bad bite. In other words, our teeth do not properly line up, leading to functional dental problems in chewing, inordinate tooth wear, and accelerated dental decay, in addition to cosmetic problems in our smile.


Thus, while most of the population of non-industrialized countries has appropriate bite alignment, those of us in industrialized countries generally suffer from a misalignment of our jaw. The biggest question is why would this be so? Why would countries with such expensive and advanced dental care systems suffer from so many problems in our teeth? A recent editorial in the trade journal for specialists in neuromuscular dentistry, LVI Visions, explains why.

Breathe Easy

The primary causative factor in the development of bad bite is airway obstruction during childhood. Exposure to allergens during childhood, including food allergies like chocolate, milk, and wheat, as well as environmental allergies like dust and pet dander that build up in the enclosed air systems utilized in Western societies, causes children to produce excess mucous, leading to runny noses and, more importantly, to a buildup of mucous in the back of the throat. This mucous impairs the functionality of cilia, tiny tentacles that line the throat, beating 10 to 20 times a second to drive bacteria and other foreign bodies down the throat to be swallowed.

When the cilia can't do their job, foreign matter accumulates in the back of the throat, and bacteria grow into large colonies, forcing the tonsils and adenoids to work harder to fight this incipient infection. When the tonsils and adenoids work this hard, they overdevelop, or hypertrophy, making it difficult for people to breathe through their nose and causing them to become mouth-breathers.

Mouth Breathing and Malocclusion

Mouth breathing is the immediate culprit in the development of malocclusion. During development, the body is seeking the appropriate balance between the sphincter action of the buccinator muscles, which flatten our cheeks and push our jaws inward, and the outward pushing of our tongue, the strongest muscle in the human body. When children breathe through their mouths, their tongue is often placed out of position for supporting its side of the conflict. This leads to a constriction of the arch of the child's jaw.

In addition, the tongue can rest over where the back teeth are supposed to erupt, hampering the process and forcing the body to move the jaw back in order to properly get the rear teeth together, leading to a general overbite tendency in the population.

Furthermore, the development fostered by this process leads to mouth-breathing for the rest of that child's life in two ways. First, the tongue that now has insufficient room in the arch of the jaw is forced backward into the throat, leading to more constriction of the airway that is rectified with mouth-breathing. Second, the constriction of the arch of the jaw also leads to a high palate that constructs the turbinate space in the airways. This means that any swelling in the sinuses can restrict or block the airway, again forcing mouth breathing.

What Can Be Done

Neuromuscular dentists are already doing their part. They have made a commitment to recognizing the early stages of malocclusion and trying to rectify it before it causes too many serious problems for a child. This includes not only dental treatment, but correction of snoring problems as well. You can do your part by making sure your child sees a dentist as early as age 2, but definitely by age 3. Whenever possible, take preventive actions, not only following your dentist's advice, but working to reduce allergens around the home. Some ways to reduce allergens in your home include:
  • Reduce carpeting and soft furniture
  • Improve ventilation
  • Use a dehumidifier
  • Keep Central heating low
  • Use High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters and vacuum cleaners
  • Try to reduce dust mites and pet dander without introducing unnecessary chemicals
If you do these things, you can help your children avoid the lifelong problems that come with malocclusion, including not only dental problems, but facial pain, headaches, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), and unexplained tingling in the arms and hands.