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How Do I Care For My Perfect Teeth After Visiting a Cosmetic Dentist?

Have you had esthetic enhancements to your teeth or just naturally have great looking, perfect teeth? Here are some tips to maintain your picture perfect smile.

In order to maintain a healthy smile, you have to know what types of things are damaging to the teeth. Identifying and eliminating bad oral habits is the key to retaining a great smile for many years. Sometimes we are not aware that we are harming the health of our teeth. Do you:

• Grind your teeth?
• Casually bite your fingernails or a pen?
• Crunch ice?
• Have a diet high in sugar (such as soda, chewing gum and candy)?
• Drink coffee, red wine and tea? Smoke or chew tobacco?
• Force your tongue against your upper teeth?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are in danger of causing a detrimental effect on your new smile.

How Detrimental Are the Effects?

No one can predict the exact effects that the habit will have on your newly perfect teeth, however, the longer the duration of the habit, the greater negative effect it will have on the longevity of your smile enhancements.

How Can I Eliminate My Bad Oral Habits and Protect My Perfect Teeth?

The first step to eliminating a bad habit is to identify and acknowledge that you have one. If your habit is crunching ice, you must alter or eliminate it from your day-to-day routine.

Other habits are harder to break like grinding your teeth. Grinding the teeth is generally an involuntary action and usually occurs when asleep. Because the habit is difficult to break, a plastic night guard is the best solution to prevent excessive wear of your teeth.

A night guard is a clear plastic mouthpiece that is custom-fitted to snap over your teeth, much like an athletic mouth guard. The night guard is designed so your teeth grind on the plastic, not your teeth. The night guard will wear out, but your teeth will not.

Do not neglect your teeth, especially if you have had esthetic enhancements. Your enhancements will not last forever, so in order to preserve your perfect teeth, visit your dentist regularly and do your best to eliminate bad oral habits.

By Benjamin O. Watkins, III, DDS

+Jim Du Molin is a leading Internet search expert helping individuals and families connect with the right dentist in their area. Visit his author page.

Replace a Missing Tooth: Restorative Dentistry

We've come a long way from the "yank 'em" philosophy of early dentistry, before techniques and materials gave us the wherewithal to save teeth. These days, there's rarely a case we can't salvage. It's a good time for dentists - saving teeth is why we get up in the morning.

The way we see it, a missing tooth is more than just a hindrance to normal chewing, more than a cosmetic bother. It's a threat to the entire architecture of your mouth.

The mouth is dynamic. Where there is a missing tooth, neighboring teeth drift, gum disease may crop up, even the unprotected bone ridge is susceptible to damage.

So we replace the missing tooth with a dental bridge, or rescue a broken down tooth with a dental crown.

Bridges are partnered with crowns to resolve gaps left by missing teeth. The idea is to replace teeth with false, or "pontic" teeth, anchored to crowns at either end, and fixed in place. Quality bridgework looks and feels very natural, one of dentistry's mainstays and our first restoration choice whenever possible.

Partial dentures, too, are dependent on your remaining teeth for support, but are attached by clasps or "precision attachments." Complicated partials can be engineering marvels, filling in for missing teeth on both sides of the dental arch. The success of partials depends in part on the strength of attachment teeth.

Complete dentures are not the end of the line, dentally speaking. A good, well-fitting denture can come close to a full complement of teeth, and contribute to a youthful aspect, as well.

Dental implants are the newest remedy for missing teeth, to replace a single tooth, or to support an overdenture. People who have implants all agree: why didn't I do this sooner?

Replace missing teeth with cosmetic dental work? Do it. Restorative dentistry has a way.

+Jim Du Molin is a leading Internet search expert helping individuals and families connect with the right dentist in their area. Visit his author page.