To help protect your smile, and to fight cavities and gum disease, you need preventive dentistry. This could help kids too! Which is why the whole family needs preventive dentistry, so you can all hopefully avoid the need for fillings or crowns down the road. In today’s blog, Delightful Dental Care in Kansas City, MO, talks about how to safeguard smiles with preventive dentistry.
Your Checkup and Cleaning
A key part of our approach to preventive dentistry is a routine visit for a checkup and cleaning, which should happen every six months. The dental exam portion allows our team to carefully examine the teeth with digital x-rays and intraoral cameras, making a diagnosis with comfort and precision. We can then identify areas of concern and for care to address them, hopefully in their earliest stages before you experience discomfort.
In the same visit, we can conduct a simple procedure that can fight the onset of cavities and gum disease! With a dental cleaning, we can gently remove all plaque and tartar from smiles of all ages, which helps prevent enamel erosion and gum inflammation. This also brightens the teeth and helps prevent bad breath too. We complete the process by thoroughly polishing your teeth, so you leave with a healthier smile.
Children’s Dental Care
We also offer treatments designed to help kids in particular. Along with checkups and cleanings, every six months we can apply fluoride to the teeth in a varnish form, which coats the exterior of the teeth to keep the outer enamel strong and to prevent the risk of tooth decay. Applying this only takes a few seconds and kids just need to avoid food and drink for about a half-hour as the material cures. We also recommend kids use a fluoride toothpaste for the same reason!
We know that even if kids brush and floss daily, they often have trouble reaching the rear teeth, which can leave them vulnerable to cavities. But with dental sealants, we can coat these rear teeth with a thin layer of acrylic, which prevents food and drink from being caught there. Once applied, this can last for years to come, as long as ten in some cases, to fight cavity risk. Again, the application only takes a few seconds, and kids just need to avoid food and drink for about 30 minutes.
Treatment for Bruxism
Bruxism refers to chronic teeth grinding, which can impact all ages and eventually, wear down or damage teeth. For kids, teeth grinding is usually a temporary issue. But for adults, this can persist until teeth are damaged and at risk for decay or infection. This could also alter the appearance of your smile! But we can help. Our team will take detailed images and impressions of your bite from multiple angles, which we use to custom-fit an oral appliance that is worn while you sleep. The device then repositions the jaw to ease underlying stress, and can provide a soft barrier that sits between the upper and lower sets of teeth to prevent additional damage. A simple and convenient way to stop the damage of bruxism!
Counseling for Our Patients
We want to help you understand your smile, from the possible threats to stability to how you can take steps to protect them. With counseling on proper oral hygiene and diet habits, you can know how to keep your teeth strong and avoid the need for disease treatment or restoration in the future. For people of all ages, we want to help boost overall oral health!
Prevention at Home
You can take steps from home to better care for your smile. For example, as part of our counseling services, we will discuss how to properly brush twice a day and then floss every evening to fight tooth decay and gum disease. Selecting snacks and meals low in sugar and starch could be helpful, as could avoiding tobacco products. Between visits to our office every few months to better actions at home, we can all work together to ensure proper oral health and beautiful smiles! If you have any questions about how we help smiles with preventive dentistry, or if you want to schedule a preventive visit with a checkup and cleaning, then contact our team today to learn more.
Schedule Your Preventive Visit From Delightful Dental Care
If you want to enjoy good oral health, then seek preventive dentistry with Dr. Diana Tabakh, DDS. To schedule your appointment, please call Delightful Dental Care in Kansas City, MO at (816) 942-7669 today. A smile that shines and provides better oral health and stability is possible, and we want to help.