POTENTIAL SIDE EFFECTS are a concern with pretty much every medication that exists. We can all hear the drug commercial voice rattling off a list of them in our heads. Unfortunately, side effects from medications often overlap with oral health concerns, even when the medications aren’t treating conditions related to teeth and gums.

How Medicine Interacts With Oral Chemistry

In some cases, medications (or even vitamins) can be directly harmful to our teeth. This is a problem particularly with children’s medication, which tend to come in the form of sugary syrups and candy-like multivitamins.

Adult medicine is usually in pill form so it doesn’t have a chance to directly interact with teeth or gums, but not always. Inhalers may lead to oral side effects like oral thrush (painful or irritating patches of white fungus that grow on the tongue, the roof of the mouth, and the inside of the cheeks). A good preventative measure adults and children alike can take to avoid these direct oral side effects is to rinse with water after taking any of these kinds of medications or vitamins.

The More Indirect Effects of Medicine on Oral Health

Medications that make it past the mouth without causing direct harm can still have mouth-related side effects. One example is blood thinners, which can make the gums more vulnerable to bleeding while brushing and flossing. Gum tissue inflammation is a common side effect that can increase the risk of gum disease.

The most common oral side effect of medications, both prescribed and over-the-counter, is dry mouth. Not only can dry mouth make chewing and swallowing more difficult and uncomfortable, it can also leave the teeth and gums vulnerable to harmful oral bacteria. Saliva is the first line of defense we have against that bacteria. Without it, it’s much harder to protect against tooth decay and gum disease.

Other Weird Oral Effects Medicine Can Cause

In rare cases, osteoporosis drugs have been associated with compromised bone tissue in the jaw, which increases the risk of gum recession and tooth loss. Some medications can do strange things to our sense of taste, even if they don’t cause any real harm to our oral health. There might be a weird bitter or metallic aftertaste that lingers.

Discuss Your Side Effects With the Dentist and Your Doctor

It’s important to keep your health care professionals in the loop where side effects are concerned. If those side effects are happening inside your mouth, then make sure to tell the dentist as well as your doctor! It may be possible to change your prescription or dosage to minimize or completely eliminate the negative effects while maintaining the benefits of the medication, but only if the doctor knows what’s going on!

Always remember that the dentist is a great resource!

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The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

MOUTH-BREATHING CAN cause all kinds of short-term issues, many of which are connected to poor sleep quality from getting insufficient oxygen by breathing through the mouth.

Short-Term Consequences of a Mouth-Breathing Habit

If a child exhibits the following symptoms, it could be due to mouth-breathing:

1. Impaired speech. When a child’s mouth is always open, certain sounds become more difficult to say.
2. Halitosis (chronic bad breath). An open mouth tends to be a dry mouth, which means there isn’t enough saliva to clean out the germs.
3. Tooth decay. Other serious byproducts of dry mouth are tooth decay and cavities.
4. Irritability, lethargy, and inattention. Less oxygen means worse sleep, which makes it much harder for kids to pay attention in school and to be their bright, happy selves.

How Mouth-Breathing Impacts Health Long-Term

While the above issues are bad enough, the problems that come from mouth-breathing don’t stop there. If left unchecked throughout childhood, mouth-breathing can cause the following:

1. Extended orthodontic treatment. Braces will take longer and there will be a higher chance of the teeth shifting back to their pre-braces position.
2. Altered facial structure. The bones in the face can actually develop differently because of mouth-breathing, resulting in flatter features, droopy eyes, a narrow jaw, and a smaller chin.
3. Sleep apnea. Mouth-breathing can increase a person’s risk for sleep apnea, a dangerous sleep disorder that makes it difficult to get a restful night’s sleep.

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The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

IT MIGHT BE CLICHÉD to say it, but it’s true that kids grow up fast. They’re constantly outgrowing their clothes, outsmarting your most ingenious baby-proofing techniques, and learning new things. We can’t help you with all of that, but we’re here with all the information you need about your child’s dental development, which is why it’s time to talk about how pacifier use or thumb/finger-sucking beyond the toddler years can negatively impact their teeth and jaws.

Thumbsucking and Pacifiers Are Good (to a Point)!

These habits don’t have a great reputation, but they’re perfectly healthy self-soothing habits for babies and toddlers. It helps them feel safe and happy when they encounter something new or stressful — which is often, considering that everything is new for babies and toddlers. There are a number of benefits, including:

• Making it easier for Baby to fall asleep and stay asleep (which also means fewer sleep interruptions for the parents)
• Keeping Baby from getting upset when separated from parents
• Reducing the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)

When Do They Stop Being Good?

Past a certain age, as adult teeth are developing in your child’s jaw, frequent and vigorous thumbsucking or pacifier use begin to have harmful effects on how those adult teeth will grow in, and they can even change the shape of the dental arch. There’s no need to preemptively worry about this, however; most children grow out of these self-soothing habits on their own before they turn four. If they’re showing no sign of stopping by then, it might be a good time to intervene.

Tips for Breaking a Thumbsucking Habit

Stopping your child from using their pacifier can be as simple as taking the pacifier away or trimming it down until they lose interest, but obviously that’s not possible for thumbsuckers. We wouldn’t recommend trying to stop them as toddlers because they aren’t mature enough to understand and will likely only be upset. Nasty-tasting topical aids also aren’t perfect, and sometimes they can be harmful.

Here are a few strategies we can get behind:

• Focus more on praising successes than scolding failures.
• Keep their hands too busy with engaging activities (like arts and crafts) for them to have a free thumb for sucking.
• Put socks over their hands while they sleep to prevent nighttime thumbsucking (you might have to tape the socks in place).

Ask Us for Advice!

If your child is getting closer to preschool age with no signs of stopping their pacifier or thumbsucking habit, feel free to bring us your concerns! We can work together to come up with a great strategy for helping your child outgrow this tendency to keep their healthy dental development on track!

Your child’s oral health is our top priority!

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The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

THERE WAS SOMETHING rotten in the state of England during the Early Modern Era: everyone’s sweet tooth! The English loved the expensive new commodity of sugar so much that the royalty and nobility were extremely prone to tooth decay and foul breath. Foul breath seems to have been on Shakespeare’s mind too because it got at least three mentions in his plays and sonnets.

A Class-Based Dental Health Crisis

The weirdest part is that having bad teeth was such a pervasive problem among the rich in particular that it became trendy among the lower classes to artificially blacken their teeth with soot. It was a great way for them to make themselves seem wealthy enough to afford sugar!

Early Modern Dental Health…Solutions?

How did the English try to keep their teeth healthy? They used herbs like cloves for their breath and toothpicks and cloths to clean their teeth. (We would much rather have our modern toothbrushes.)

When these methods proved insufficient to prevent cavities and a tooth became so painful that it needed to be pulled, they had a few options depending on budget. The most expensive choice was a surgeon, but a “tooth-drawer” was cheaper and a blacksmith would do it for a real bargain.

It’s Good to Have Modern Dentists

Isn’t it wonderful to live in a time when we have effective dental hygiene and access to twelve different specialties of dental professionals — everything from pediatric dentists to orthodontists to endodontists and more?

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The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

THE OLD LINE “it takes fewer muscles to smile than frown” isn’t actually true. It takes at least ten muscles to smile but as few as six to frown, so maybe the saying should be something like “you burn more calories when you smile than when you frown!” instead. However, getting a better workout isn’t the only benefit we get from smiling!

The Feedback Loop Between Smiling and Happiness

Obviously, we smile when we’re happy, but evidence shows that the very act of smiling might make us feel happier. Smiling is so closely linked to the feeling of happiness in our brains that even a fake smile can release endorphins — the feel-good hormone — and make us feel better. The next time you’re having a rough day, try flashing a smile and see if that helps a little!

We Reduce Pain and Stress by Smiling

Those endorphins we get from smiling can do a lot of helpful things besides just contributing to a better mood. Short-term, endorphins help to reduce pain and relieve stress because they function in a similar way to painkillers (except without the side effects).

A 2012 experiment tested how long it took subjects’ heart rates to return to normal after completing a stressful task, and the smiling subjects recovered faster. The way the experiment worked was that the non-smiling group had to hold a pencil between their lips while they did the task (forcing a more pout-like expression), while the smiling group had to hold the pencil between their teeth (forcing more of a smile).

The Long-Term Benefits of Smiling: A Better Immune System!

Those short-term endorphin effects are great, but it doesn’t even stop there! Over time, when we make a habit of smiling more, the effects compound into long-term health benefits like making us more resilient against illnesses and reducing our risk of getting cancer. The reason for this is that the better we manage our stress, the fewer stress-induced mutations our cells go through over the years.

Smile More, Live Longer

People typically perceive a smiling face as being more attractive and younger than a non-smiling face, and that’s not just about appearances. Over the course of a lifetime of smiling, we might accrue enough health benefits to actually live longer. One way to make it easier to smile more is to be proud of the way our smiles look because we have healthy teeth and gums. For that, we need great dental health habits and regular professional dental care.

Bring Your Beautiful Smile to the Dentist!

Don’t fight the battle for your smile’s health on your own; the dentist can help. Schedule regular cleaning appointments to get that professional deep clean and catch any problems while they are still small, and bring any questions you have about dental health with you!

Nothing makes us smile quite like our patients!

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The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

TWO OUT OF EVERY FIVE kids will end up with one or more cavities by their eleventh birthday. At those numbers, cavities are the most common childhood disease. What can parents do to fight these odds? We’re here to help by identifying the biggest childhood cavity culprits.

Sugary Snacks Are Cavity-Causers

Treats and snacks loaded with sugar are a big one, especially when kids are munching on them throughout the day. It takes saliva about thirty minutes to wash away food residue and neutralize acids produced by oral bacteria. When kids are in a continuous state of snacking, their saliva can’t do its job, leaving their teeth to be constantly bathed by acid, which erodes enamel and leads to decay. We recommend keeping the sugary treats to mealtimes and offering sliced fruits and veggies if they still want snacks between meals.

…And So Are Sugary Drinks!

Another big culprit is sugary drinks. We aren’t just talking about soda; fruit juice is a major cavity-causer too! When kids are able to sip fruit juice all day from a sippy cup or as they fall asleep, it produces the same result as continuous snacking. This is so damaging to teeth that we refer to it as “bottle rot.”

Try to limit the amount of sugary drinks your child consumes, and especially keep them to mealtimes!

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The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

TWO OF THE BIGGEST milestones of child development are when their baby teeth start coming in and when they start being replaced by adult teeth. First-time parents probably have a lot of questions about what’s normal and whether it’s time to worry, so we want to give you a quick guide to when you can start looking for the signs of incoming teeth and when they might start to get loose.

Our Teeth Start Growing Before We’re Born

By week six of pregnancy, tooth buds begin forming. They grow through the rest of the pregnancy and after birth in a process called odontogenesis. Even after the teeth begin to push through the gums, the roots still have some growing left to do.

Baby Teeth Tend to Erupt in Pairs

We don’t get full sets of teeth all at once; instead, we tend to get them two by two, alternating between top and bottom. The lower central incisors are the first to appear, which usually happens between month six and month ten. Next up are the upper central incisors (the two front teeth) between months eight and twelve. The lateral incisors appear next: first bottom, then top.

You might think the canines would come next because they’re the next teeth in the arch, but instead, it’s the first pair of lower molars, then the upper molars. Only then do the canine teeth catch up, and the second set of molars are the last to appear. By age three, most toddlers will have the full set of twenty baby teeth.

When to Bring Concerns to the Dentist

If you’re worried that your toddler’s teeth might not be arriving on schedule, feel free to get in touch with us. In most cases, there’s no cause for concern until month eighteen comes and goes and no teeth have appeared. But whether those teeth come in early or late, as soon as you see the first one, it’s a great time for baby’s first dental appointment!

Alert the Tooth Fairy!

On average, kids start losing baby teeth around age five or six. If it’s taking a little longer, they might start to feel left behind by their peers. Losing a tooth is a big rite of passage for kids. It’s a tangible symbol of maturity.

If no teeth are becoming loose by their seventh birthday, it could be time for the dentist to take a look to find out why. Most of the time, there’s nothing to worry about, and late-blooming teeth actually tend to be stronger and more cavity-resistant than the early ones!

What Are Natal Teeth?

In rare cases, a baby might be born already having one or two teeth. This doesn’t mean they’re way ahead of their developmental schedule, though; these teeth are natal teeth, and they aren’t part of the normal set of baby teeth. Most of the time, when they appear, they’re shaped oddly and have weak roots, making them very loose. Doctors might even remove them before the parents bring the baby home from the hospital.

Over the centuries, different cultures have had a wide range of reactions to these weird (but harmless) extra teeth, both positive and negative. They were considered bad luck in China but a sign of a wonderful future ahead in Europe. Some Ural-Altaic tribes considered natal teeth a sign that the child was a sorcerer.

Keep Brushing Teeth of All Ages!

Whether a child is six months old and just cut their very first tooth or they’re a teenager with nearly a full set of adult teeth, every tooth needs to be cleaned daily. Establishing healthy brushing habits in childhood while kids still have their baby teeth makes it much easier for them to continue those habits into adulthood.

Our patients are the best!

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The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

WHEN WE PICTURE people of earlier eras, particularly pre-industrial ones, we tend to assume that they must have had really bad teeth. While it definitely is easier to get high-quality dental care these days, not to mention modern orthodontics and modern root canal therapy, the people of the past didn’t always have terrible dental health. Especially in cultures with no access to refined sugar.

Food Played a Big Role for Native American Dental Health

The ancient Native Americans ate a diet mostly of corn (maize), beans, squash, fish, and game, as well as fresh fruit and nuts. Their high-fiber diet helped keep their teeth and gums healthy. The harmful bacteria in our mouths need plenty of sugar and starch to multiply. Foods high in fiber have the benefit of scrubbing our teeth as we eat them.

How Did Early Native Americans Clean Their Teeth?

Just because tooth decay was uncommon doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. One museum in Manitou Springs, Colorado, for example, has an exhibit of replica skulls with holes in the jaw bones from advanced gum disease. To fight against tooth decay, ancient Native Americans used chewsticks — twigs that have been frayed by a rock on one end and sharpened into a toothpick on the other. Chewing on the frayed ends cleans the teeth. They also kept their breath fresh by chewing herbs like sage, cucacua, and mint.

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The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

TO THE AVID swimmers out there, you may have noticed that your teeth are at their most sensitive after you get out of the pool. It’s not something that’s obvious after just one afternoon at the lap pool, but endless swimming time can take a toll on our teeth.

Swimmer’s Calculus: Enamel Erosion from Pool Chlorine

The term “swimmer’s calculus” might sound like something out of an advanced math class, but it actually refers to a dental health condition. After prolonged exposure to the acidic chlorine ions in pool water, a swimmer’s teeth can develop yellow or brown stains.

While chlorine is great for keeping the pool sanitary for all the people who enjoy swimming in it, it can cause the water’s pH levels to become more acidic if it isn’t monitored carefully. Because our teeth are so vulnerable to erosion from acid, even the mild acidity of pool water like this can increase the risk of developing these stains.

Scuba Divers Have Their Own Dental Health Concerns

Maybe you prefer scuba diving over swimming at the local pool. In your case, the risk to keep in mind isn’t swimmer’s calculus. Instead, you could be at risk of something called “tooth squeeze” or barodontalgia.

Have you ever felt the pressure building up in your ears when you dive to the bottom of the deep end? A similar pressure can build inside teeth — particularly teeth with untreated cavities or that have undergone faulty dental work. The pressure can grow to such a degree that it fractures the tooth, which is why we recommend starting your diving season off with a dental visit. That way you’ll know which teeth are more vulnerable.

Ear and sinus squeeze are other problems you may encounter while diving:

How Well Does Your Scuba Mouthpiece Fit?

A common struggle for divers is that those “one size fits all” mouthpieces are more like “one size fits none.” However, it’s rare for anyone who doesn’t dive a few times a week to own a custom-fitted mouthpiece. At our practice, we think they’re worth the investment, because a mouthpiece that doesn’t fit can lead to trouble for your teeth.

You might have to clench down on the mouthpiece to keep it from falling out during the dive, and that can put a lot of strain on the jaws, even causing temporomandibular joint disorder (TMD). If you don’t have your own mouthpiece, and especially if you dive at least a few times per year, consider getting a custom-fitted diving mouthpiece.

Any Other Teeth and Water Activities?

Whatever questions you have about dental health and how to protect it while diving and swimming, don’t hesitate to bring them to us! One final danger to watch out for is that the surfaces around pools are often slippery due to all the water, which is a major trip hazard. We minimize our risk of getting a dental injury at the pool by not running, coming out of the water carefully, and not diving into shallow water.

A fantastic summer break to all of our patients!

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The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

OUR TEETH CAN do a lot of things. They chew our food, they form a lot of the structure of our faces to make us look the way we do, they make it possible to speak clearly, and they’re the highlight of our smiles. These are good and healthy uses for teeth, but when we use them as tools for other jobs, we risk causing serious damage.

Teeth Are Not Substitute Nail Clippers or Scissors

The damage a nail-biting habit can do is a topic worthy of its own blog post, but we’ll summarize it here. Our fingernails are the least sanitary parts of our hands because the area underneath them is essentially impossible to keep clean. Germs love to grow there, and those same germs transfer to our mouths when we bite our nails. Nail-biting also puts a lot of unnecessary wear and tear on the front teeth and may even shift them out of place.

Nails aren’t the only things we might be tempted to bite through; sometimes it might seem very convenient to use our teeth to cut a piece of tape. Unlike chewing food, the sawing motion we do to cut tape involves a lot of grinding, which is bad for our teeth’s surfaces. Some people do this with much worse materials than tape, such as wire. Take the time to find the scissors or wire cutters instead of trying this!

Please Use an Actual Nutcracker

If you love eating walnuts, pecans, pistachios, or even half-popped popcorn kernels, don’t break them open with your teeth. Doing so is a great way to crack or chip a tooth, especially if that tooth has already undergone a dental procedure or if it has an untreated cavity. It’s much better to use a nutcracker.

Teeth Do Not Make Good Bottle Openers

Even though tooth enamel is the hardest substance in the human body, it’s far too brittle to be right for the job of popping a metal lid off a soda bottle. We could easily chip a tooth on that edge, and if we slip, that could mean a nasty gash to the lips or gums. No matter how cool you might think it will make you look to do it with your teeth, please use a real bottle opener.

Teeth Are Not a Third Hand

Sometimes when we’re in the middle of a busy task, we run out of hands to hold things, and it’s very easy to briefly stick a pencil, a few nails, or some sewing pins in our mouths for safekeeping.

Once again, the convenience isn’t worth the risks. Tripping or being hit with a sudden yawn, sneeze, cough, or hiccup could result in disaster. Even if nothing so dramatic happens, these objects can cause a lot of wear on teeth. For example, seamstresses have given themselves dents in their chewing surfaces from holding sewing pins in the same spot over and over.

Only Use Your Teeth for Their Intended Purposes!

Cracking and fracturing are the third-highest cause of tooth loss, and you can significantly reduce your risk of needing an emergency dental visit and a series of expensive procedures by only using your teeth for what they’re for. Don’t forget to keep up with twice-daily brushing, daily flossing, and regular dental visits!

We love seeing our patients use their teeth for smiles!

Top image used under CC0 Public Domain license. Image cropped and modified from original.

The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.