Avoid Chipping and Staining your Teeth: Gordon Dental Kansas City

Everyday Things We Do that Can Stain and Chip Our Teeth

If you’re visiting the dentist regularly and staying on top of your oral care routine, it’s pretty easy to keep your teeth strong, healthy, and white. Habit and misfortune, however, can derail even the best-laid plan, leaving you with either chipped or stained teeth instead of the set you’d like to parade around the neighborhood. And, while every tooth-related calamity isn’t preventable, many can be avoided by simply thinking smart, watching our surroundings, and avoiding habits that can literally take a “bite” out of our beautiful smiles. Let us share some wisdom!

Outstepping a Chipped Tooth

• Falls: If you’re the type of person who seems to have a sixth sense when it comes to your surroundings, always overstepping the obstacles in your path, your teeth owe you a lifetime of gratitude. However, if you’re prone to step on, and trip over anything that’s not four feet off the ground and in plain view, you may find yourself in the dental chair at some point, firming up your knowledge on modern bonding techniques. So, please watch your step! Oh, and cyclists too! There’s nothing worse than flying headfirst over your handle bars because you failed to notice the pothole in your path while riding. In fact, did you know cycling is a leading cause of tooth LOSS? Yikes!
• Face trauma: Occasionally, a hard elbow to the face just happens: a friend turns around to speak with you when you’re not looking, or that can of beans drops from the top shelf of your cabinet at just the right angle to take half a front tooth out. Not fun. For the rest of us though (barring major accidents), most face trauma comes as the result of our participation in sports.  For this reason, a sports mouth guard, is your best form of prevention. If you participate in sports, ask your dentist to get fitted today … they’re more affordable and more comfortable than you think!
• Food Mishaps: We’ve all been there: the un-popped kernel of popcorn; the small rock in the fresh bag of lentils, those startling occasions when we bite down on the fork at the oddest of angles. With food-related concerns, you mainly have to think smart to avoid trouble: feel around in the popcorn bag for what you’re putting into your mouth before you start chewing; rinse and examine that bag of beans, and be conscious of how you’re holding your fork – especially if you often bounce back and forth between chopsticks and western cutlery. Also, hard candies, ice, and other things that pack a crunch can take a chunk out of a tooth with ease, and can also lead to fractures if you find yourself repeatedly enjoying too much of a “good thing.” Don’t chew on these things …
• Piercings: Tongue and lip piercings may be trendy, but they can also take a toll on your teeth. Something to keep in mind.
• Bad Habits: If you enjoy using your mouth as if it were a crescent wrench, pair of pliers, or bottle opener, the luck on your desire to maintain a perfect smile might soon run out. Just say no to the silliness, be patient, and find the right tool. Remember, your teeth do not come with a Craftsman^® lifetime warranty.

Keeping Your Teeth White 

Save for intrinsic staining resulting from antibiotic use as a child, or other more serious causes, staining can often be avoided by reducing our consumption of the main offenders, using a straw when possible, and rinsing after eating foods that tend to stain our teeth. The best tip we can give is: if the food item in question can stain fabric, it’s likely to be able to stain your teeth as well.

Here are some of the biggest offenders (in no particular order):

• Black teas
• Deeply colored sauces (soy, tomato, curry)
• Wine
• Colored Sodas
• Coffee
• Some dark fruits and vegetables like beets and berries (typically transient in nature, however)
• Tobacco

So, there you go! Be careful out there, and protect those pearly whites!

Call 913-649-5017 for a Dental Visit at Gordon Dental

www.kcgordondental.com

Banish That Canker Sore! Gordon Dental Kansas City

Banish That Canker Sore!

There’s hardly anything more irritating than a canker sore. Sure, they’re tiny and only last a few days, but wow, when you’ve got one, just about every word spoken and every bite taken hurts like “all get-out.” You know that feeling, right? Now, imagine how they feel in your youngster’s mouth! So, what exactly are those little buggers, and how in the world can you ease the pain fast? We’ll fill you in, and share our “canker-sore-be-gone” grocery list that’ll help save the day.

What Exactly is a Canker Sore?

To know the medically proper name for a canker sore is to understand why it hurts so much. A canker sore is actually an ulcer. An “Aphthous Ulcer” to be exact. These mighty painful ulcers come in two forms, minor and major, and are surprisingly experienced by only about 20% of the U.S. population. Aren’t we lucky?!

Minor cankers (common in people between the ages of 10 and 20), are the smaller of the two, as the name would suggest, and last about 7-10 days. Major cankers can last from two to six weeks, have noticeable depth, and often have irregular borders. This type of sore is more common after the age of 20, and is essentially a recurrent canker, returning to a site previously impacted by a minor canker.

Who Gets Cankers?

While cankers affect both genders, girls tend to get them more often, likely because of hormonal fluctuations. Aside from that, the vast majority of people in general are believed to get cankers due to genetic tendencies – and the condition is triggered by spicy, salty or abrasive foods.
If your kids are among those unlucky people gifted with canker sore genetics, there is hope!

Arrest the pain and speed up the healing process with this short shopping list:

Rinses (use one of the below rinses four times a day)–

• Hydrogen Peroxide – Equal parts peroxide and water
• Salt and baking soda – Add a half teaspoon of both to 4oz. of water

Numbing Agents

• Brands like Orajel® and Kank-A® can provide relief

Protective Pastes

• Milk of Magnesia – dab on a cotton swab and use four times daily after the hydrogen peroxide rinse.
• Baking Soda and Water Paste

Antimicrobial Mouthwashes

If your children have a sore lasting beyond the two-week mark, make an appointment to see your doctor to evaluate their case. Prescription medications might be necessary to bring them much-needed relief.

Call Gordon Dental for a free consult at 913-649-5017

www.kcgordondental.com

Gummy Smiles Can Be Easliy Corrected: Gordon Dental Kansas City

Stressed Out about a Gummy Smile? Did You Know it Can Be Corrected?

The amount of gum tissue we possess, just like how much hair we have on our heads, is merely a matter of personal anatomy - some of us just have more of it than others. If you are unhappy with your smile though, and consider yourself to have "too much" gum tissue, there are a few ways to relieve you of a gummy smile. Let's take a look at the three most common options:

Gingivectomy (Gum Lift, Gum Contouring)

The most common and speediest solution for revitalizing a gummy smile is a gingivectomy.  A gingivectomy is the medical term for the surgical removal of gum tissue from the crown of the tooth. It can be done with a scalpel, an electrosurgery unit, lasers or diamond dental burs. There's some art to this procedure, since your dentist effectively "carves" away the excessive tissue, reshaping the landscape of your smile so it conforms to your desired result. The procedure is done under local anesthetic and takes only a few minutes to an hour to complete depending on the number of teeth to be done. 

Lip Repositioning

This one might sound a bit scary, but other than post surgical swelling and some initial tightness, it can be a good solution if your gumminess comes from how high your lip raises when smiling, instead of excessive gingiva.

In this procedure, a small horizontal section of tissue inside your upper lip is removed, then stitched back together in what is effectively a "lower" position. If you can imagine having a cut in your skin where some of the skin tissue in the middle of the cut is lost, and the remaining "ends" of the skin are stitched back together, that is essentially what happens in a lip positioning. Your lip isn't actually lowered, it’s just that some of the movement of your top lip is restricted so it doesn't raise too high and show too much gum. Surgery only lasts about 45 minutes, and the results are immediate.

Crown Lengthening

With the word “lengthening” in the name of this procedure, you may think it requires some sort of painful stretching of the tooth's crown to make it longer. Thankfully, that's not what happens. Instead, in this surgery a dentist would make an incision in the gum tissue, creating a “flap” that can be folded downward, exposing the bone that encases your teeth. A portion of that bone would then be shaved down few millimeters and the gum flap sutured back into place. At this point, however, because the bone height is lower than it was previously, the gum tissue would rest at a lower height, leaving more of the crown visible when smiling. This would make it appear as though the crown were “longer” and thus the name – “crown lengthening” is given to this procedure. While crown lengthening is a means to correct a gummy smile, many dentists recommend orthodontic treatment, instead (which, over time actually does pull the crown down a few millimeters), because it doesn't require surgery, or the permanent removal of bone tissue.

Modern dental surgery can really do wonders for our smiles in a multitude of ways. If you're concerned about how much gum you are flashing each time you smile, or have stopped smiling all together, have a chat with your dentist. You might be surprised at just how quickly we can get you back to smiling widely again!

Gordon Dental 913-649-5017

www.kcgordondental.com

Missing a Tooth? We have A Solution, Gordon Dental Kansas City

Born Without a Tooth, or Lose One Along the Way?

Sometimes in life, the tooth fairy leaves us with the short end of the stick. If you're missing a tooth due to trauma, or decay, medication or hypodontia (meaning, one or two of your permanent teeth never arrived), then you'll know exactly what we mean. And, while the imaginary tooth fairy might have left you hanging without a replacement tooth, your real life dentist can help provide an affordable and cosmetically appropriate solution in the form of a dental bridge. Let's find out more about how they work!

Why You Might Need a Bridge

With 69% of adults experiencing the loss of a tooth between the ages of 35-44, if you're in the missing tooth camp, you're certainly not alone. A “bridge,” then, is a form of dental prosthetic that allows for the placement of an artificial tooth in an area where a healthy tooth used to exist.

When an entire tooth is lost, a bridge acts as a unifying device that supports the artificial tooth, and eliminates the gap between adjacent teeth. To accomplish this, the artificial tooth (known as a pontic), needs to be joined to these adjacent teeth in order to stay in place.

How Do They Work?

This can be done by using a crown as a connecting anchor for the artificial tooth, or a type of tooth colored filling known as an “inlay” or “onlay,” can be used in the same fashion. An onlay is used when support is needed along a "cusp" (the raised points on the biting surface), and an inlay is used when support is required between these cusps. To visualize how this type of filling functions, it might help to think of them as the raised pins on upside-down version of a Lego® block. Essentially, like a Lego block, they help to keep the bridge secure once cemented to your healthy teeth.

How Are They Installed?

To prepare for a two-surface bridge onlay, a dentist will first remove the portion of your healthy tooth that will act as the anchor (or, abutment). Then, depending on the process used by your dentist, either a physical impression of the tooth will be made, or 3D imaging will be used to render a digital impression. Next, your dentist will likely fit you with a temporary bridge until your custom bridge has been completed.

In total, you should expect to visit your dentist once to sort out all of the diagnostics and abutment tooth preparation, and then again to sort out all of the customization details. Once your custom bridge has returned from the lab, it would be laid into the excavated areas of your abutment teeth, and then either bonded or cemented into place.

And, that's it! With the kind of care you already provide to your other teeth, your bridge should last anywhere from 10-15 years. So, if you're concerned about what you look like without a tooth, or several teeth, check with your dentist. A bridge may be a great option for you.

Call Gordon Dental For a Free Consult 913-649-5017

www.kcgordondental.com

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