dentistry
Your Guide to Common Dental Terminology
If you are planning a visit to your dentist, or even if you are just curious about what all that chicken scratch in your dental chart means, you might be interested in brushing up on some common dental terminology. Here are some of the terms you may hear in the dentist’s office, along with their everyday definitions.
Dental Terminology
Abscess: An infection of a tooth, bone, or tissue.
How to Teach Your Child to Look Forward to Visiting a Kids Dentist
Many adults and quite a few children cringe at the mention of the word “dentist”. However, you can help your child learn to look forward to visiting the kid’s dentist by incorporating a few steps into your daily routine a few days before your scheduled appointment. Here’s how:
What You Need to Know About Dental Insurance
Good dental insurance is a lot like most other things in life, there are many policies available, but good ones are difficult to find. If your employer offers dental insurance, you may be wondering if it’s worth the cost and the hassle to sign up. The answer is generally yes, especially if you have children.
Determining the value of Dental Insurance
Dental Hygiene Tips for Kids
Getting your kids to take an interest in good dental hygiene can be a challenge. Brushing and flossing just aren’t as interesting as that cartoon on TV, mom’s make up, or that kickball begging for some attention.
Kids consume large quantities of sugary snacks every day like fruit juices, popsicles, jelly, and cereal. These high-sugar foods all pose a threat to your child’s good dental health. Here are a few tips to help you get your child to make dental hygiene a priority.
Tips For Parents Who Have Kids In Braces
Twenty years ago having braces was more embarrassing than anything else for a child. However, today braces are being seen as a fashion statement with people in Asia even buying prosthetic braces kits to apply at home for fashion reasons only. Although Invisalign does offer clear orthodontic care without the will need for wires, most kids are still wearing traditional metal braces.
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.
Flossing Braces
Keeping braces clean is so important to moving teeth that it bears repeating. Keeping braces clean is so important to moving teeth.
Why is it important you ask? To completely correct a badly positioned tooth, the tooth must slide the brace along the wire in the brace only a few millimeters.
That is NOT very far! Two years to move something the thickness of a pencil!
Tears & Fears
As a pediatric dentist, I specialize in children and special needs patients. Nevertheless, a large part of my job is overcoming parental fears.
Parents have an incredible influence on their children; both positively and negatively.
Kids are so tuned into parental non-verbal communication that even if a mother does not say anything negative about an upcoming dental visit, their own worries and fears will cause their child to worry too.
Tartar or Calculus
You know that hard stuff that seems to grow on your teeth and that sounds screechy but makes your teeth feel nice and smooth when the dental hygienist scrapes it off?
That is calculus (Greek for ‘small stone’) and also called tartar (but has nothing to do with the sauce).
Tartar forms by many days of mineral-containing saliva or spit washing over your teeth and calcifying any plaque on your teeth. Because plaque forms continuously, people who have lots of minerals in their saliva make more tartar.
Filling Materials
When a tooth gets a cavity it must be filled or it will continue to decay and get worse – even to the point of death.
What kind of materials are available to fix holes in teeth?
The most common material for about a century has been silver and copper mixed with mercury with a little tin. This mixture is called amalgam or simply silver filling.
- Dental Health Lessons For Young Children
- Kids and Teens Can Benefit From Orthodontic Treatments
- The Best Toothpaste
- Choosing the Best Dental Products for Kids
- What You Need to Know About Instant Orthodontics
- Pediatric Shark Teeth – What Are They
- Your Guide to Common Dental Terminology
- How to Teach Your Child to Look Forward to Visiting a Kids Dentist
- What You Need to Know About Dental Insurance
- Dental Hygiene Tips for Kids
- Getting Kids to Brush Properly
- Dietary Supplements for Dental Health
- Tips For Parents Who Have Kids In Braces
- Things to Know about Invisalign Braces
- Baby Juice Bottles
