Education
Pediatric Shark Teeth – What Are They
While pediatric shark teeth sound scary, it really looks worse than it is. When permanent teeth grow behind baby teeth, instead of pushing them up and out, this is known as pediatric shark teeth.
This is a common occurrence in children and generally happens to the front lower or front upper teeth around the age of six in most children. Some kids can begin getting adult teeth earlier, while others wait until eight years of age to lose a first tooth. pediatric shark teeth can also occur in molars and incisors as well.
Dietary Supplements for Dental Health
Today a mother of a six year old girl from West Linn told me that she would not give her daughter any food that had aspartame in it because it accumulated in brain cells and could not be removed. Since only natural sugar would do, naturally her daughter has many cavities.
In addition to regular sucrose sugar, she also used Stevia - a very sweet plant with leaves 300 times sweeter than regular sugar! Now that got my attention.
Baby Juice Bottles
Parents who come into my Portland, Oregon pediatric dental practice often tell me, “My baby loves juice and I just cannot take it away, so I water it down.”
These parents love their babies and want them to have all the good things in life. Juice is sweet and delicious and healthy too. Right?
How Braces Move Teeth
Kids that suck their thumbs often have buck-teeth. Why?
A girl from Gladstone, Oregon asked me why her front teeth stuck out so far. She was a first grader who found it very hard to stop being a thumb sucker.
Teeth are connected to jaw bones by thousands of tiny fibers that surround the roots and permit slight movements of the teeth during chewing and prevent the teeth from being dissolved away by the bone cells called osteoclasts.
Expanding Your Palate
If you are an artist, your palatte may be very messy and colorful. If you are a gourmand, then your palate describes your appreciation of smell and taste. Anatomically, your palate as the roof of your mouth.
Some people have a narrow palate for a variety of reasons:
- thumbsucking
- pacificer use
- low tongue posture
- birth defects like a cleft
- mouth breathing
- unknown reasons
Crossbites
Let’s get some definitions out of the way. Upper teeth that bite inside lower teeth are called:
- crossbite
- cross-bite
- cross bite
An anterior crossbite involves the front teeth and a posterior crossbite involves the back teeth.
Rarely, the upper posterior teeth bite completely outside the lower teeth in a condition called a scissor bite.
A posterior crossbite can involve either one side, called a unilateral crossbite, or both sides, called a bilateral crossbite.
Treating Portland Pulps & Root Canals
“Root canal? Ouch!” That is what most of my Portland patients tell me, but luckily root canal treatments take away toothaches to make you feel better.
Usually dentists prefer to treat infected root canal pulps before they start to hurt because this is the most comfortable way to go. Waiting for a tooth to hurt before starting root canal treatment is usually less comfortable.
Permanent teeth with infected pulps need root canal treatment.
When to Start Kids Braces?
Most of my Portland patients ask me when to start braces for their kids. I have been practicing orthodontics in Portland since 1995 and so I have seen many of my pediatric dental patients grow up from infancy through their teens.
Some orthodontists recommend treating crooked teeth or teeth that do not occlude (bite together properly) in two phases or treatment steps. The first phase usually starts around second or third grade and a second phase around sixth grade.
Icy Tooth Accidents in Oregon
With winter coming to Oregon, it is time to think about preventing falls that damage teeth.
Icy hills are lots of fun to slide down but those smiles can quickly turn to frowns and tears with a bad fall.
If your child gets into an accident that damages teeth, follow these steps:
- Check that there are no skull, neck, or back injuries first.
Plaque in Portland
Most people have heard about dental plaque but not everyone knows what it is.
Dental plaque is a thick sticky waterproof cream-colored coating that develops on teeth over time. It is made up of bacteria and their wastes with saliva components.
Sticky mucopolysaccharides are the mortar of dental plaque. They protect the bacteria by gluing the whole colony to tooth enamel and making them resistant to washing off with normal eating and drinking.
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