Hey everyone! This is Dr. Thomas at Integrity Dental in Pueblo, Colorado. Thanks for joining us! Today we want to answer some common questions about how to maintain your teeth and general dentistry.
How often should I visit the dentist for check-ups?
We recommend every 6 months. We like to do cleanings on 6-month intervals and typically do x-rays once per year and we also will do exams or check-ups. If you are not healthy, orally speaking, or you have gum disease or periodontitis, you will have check-ups more often. We call those periodontal maintenance visits or gum maintenance visits. We typically recommend those every 3 months until we get on top of the gum disease.
What are the benefits of Fluoride treatments?
Fluoride is a bit of a controversial topic right now. But according to the research, fluoride is still a highly effective treatment for helping prevent tooth decay. Most of the controversy comes from the idea of ingesting fluoride on a regular basis in our water, and that is a different topic for a different time. Fluoride is very effective in toothpastes and in treatments we do here in our office. We do recommend fluoride treatments during certain appointments here. Fluoride works in a way that is unique. Our teeth are always in the process of being broken down and built back up. We have lots of calcium in our teeth, that is why we tell people to drink their milk. Kids need lots of calcium, moms need lots of calcium and that is because our body uses calcium a lot. It uses it to create the network of our teeth and that’s part of what makes them so hard. Calcium on a molecular level is very similar to fluoride, and fluoride will work very similarly to calcium in our saliva. If you drink orange juice in the morning, the surface level of calcium gradually will get worn away by the acid from the orange juice. Throughout the day that needs surface level of calcium needs to be repaired so the calcium in our saliva and from our diet helps us to resurface our teeth with a new layer of calcium before we eat with our teeth again. If you have fluoride in your saliva from a treatment or from brushing your teeth, the fluoride molecules can also get into the surface of the tooth. The advantage of fluoride is that it is much more resistant to bad bacteria and acid and cavities. So that is where the real advantage is. It makes the surface of our teeth more impenetrable to bacteria and the acid that they produce to make cavities.
How can I protect my teeth from decay?
Brush your teeth at least twice per day! If you brush your teeth two times per day for 2 minutes each time and you do a thorough job, the chances of you getting a cavity are very minimal. If you have a dry mouth or have other related health issues, you may want to brush them even more. You may want to help your mouth be more moisturized or lubricated with certain products because that is important. To take adequate care of our teeth, you need to;
- Brush twice per day
- Floss once per day
- I recommend a fluoride toothpaste
- A mouthrinse.
Does our diet affect protecting our teeth?
Absolutely, 100%. Sugar, while tasting good and is something that we all enjoy at times, feeds bacteria in our mouths and turns into acid very quickly. That acid eats away at the surface level of calcium and makes our teeth softer for more acid and when we get enough acid eventually the tooth will flake away and cause cavities. So yes, our diet affects that quite a bit. There are other things we can eat, foods rich in calcium, milk and cheese and things like that which are much less likely to cause decay. Even processed carbohydrates, like chips, granola bars and gummy snacks have sugar. The more processing that we have in our food, the more likely we are to have sugar which feeds the bacteria that causes issues. So, our diet is extremely important to how well we are able to maintain our teeth.
Why do people need dental x-rays and are x-rays safe?
Dental x-rays allow us to see in between the teeth where we cannot see with our eyes, and we cannot reach with our dental instruments to check for cavities. They also look underneath the gums and into the bone to see if there is infection. So, x-rays are an especially important and useful tool for dentists to figure out what problems are bothering our patients or to see a problem before it bothers the patient and deal with a problem before it becomes a big cavity or toothache. Dental x-rays are absolutely necessary. Are x-rays safe? The answer is yes, but it is always better to have less radiation than more radiation. In the dental community we have a saying that is “as low as is reasonable.” We always want to use as little radiation as we can. Digital x-rays have made a significant difference in how much radiation we expose patients to compared to even 15 years ago when film was much more prominent. Since I have owned Integrity Dental, we have never used film x-rays. That means that we expose at least half the radiation and, in many cases, one tenth the radiation of traditional film x-rays. But it is still always better to have less radiation, less x-rays, than more. We do take that very seriously. We are very careful with what we recommend, and I would say on average that is about once per year. Once a year we want to take a good look at the teeth for the checkup.
What causes gum disease and how can I prevent it?
Gum disease, just like tooth decay, is caused by bacteria in our mouths. The bacteria that cause gum disease are like vampires, they get little meals each time our gums bleed. So, if you have bleeding gums, often that can be an early warning sign that you have gum disease. Anybody can have gums bleed if you get in there and you scrub at it too hard with floss. That is not what I am talking about, I am talking about if you brush easily or floss gently and are noticing a lot of bleeding, you should get the checked out. That is a sign that you have too many bad bacteria. There are lots of things that we can do to help with that like high powered mouth rinses, but most importantly is your regular dental cleaning where we can clean off tarter that is stuck on your teeth that harbor or hold onto bacteria right along the gum line or underneath the gums that we can’t see. Gum disease happens when bacteria set up shop in our gums and they make the gums very tender or inflamed to the extent that they bleed easily. That makes it so that when you eat a meal or even brush your teeth, you are feeding that bacteria because they get a meal every time you bleed. Our goal is to get rid of as much of that bacteria as possible so that you have fewer causing your gums to bleed when you go through your normal everyday routine.
How can I get scheduled?
So, I hope this information has been useful and helpful for you to understand what is happening in our mouths, and how important cleaning your mouth is, both at home and at your regular dental cleanings at the office. Also, how important it is to get your exams and x-rays to check for gum disease and bone levels. I hope that you get some good tidbits on how to take better care of your teeth out of this talk and that if you notice any of the warning signs that we talked about you will give us a call at Integrity Dental so we can get you checked out and get you a cleaning. Our number is 719-545-2468. Gum disease will build up itself and could eventually lead to big problems. So, if we can help you get on top of that early, we want to! Early detection and prevention are so important in dentistry. Let us help you today!
Dental Services
Hi! This is Dr. Thomas at Integrity Dental in Pueblo, Colorado. Today we are going to be talking about questions we have received about what services we provide. So, we wanted to take some time and make a little video and expand on all of the different services that Integrity Dental provides.
Why is dental health important?
A lot of people tend to think of the mouth as separate from the rest of the body. But the more we find out about the human body, the more we realize that it is all very connected. If you have a good healthy mouth, you tend to have a good healthy body. So, dental health has ramifications for other things. Just going off some of the basic research out there, the more teeth you have in your mouth, the longer you live. Plain and simple. If you have a full set of teeth, the research is quite dramatic in showing that you will likely live 15-20 years more than people who don’t. So, there are a lot of things that go into that and we don’t need to get into that in this video, but the bottom line is that dental health is important and can lead to longevity of life and a better quality of life. Dentistry is a big deal.
What is a healthy Dental Routine?
Let’s start with the home routine! For your home routine, you should be brushing at least twice per day and flossing once per day. Mouth rinses are somewhat effective, but there are some that are better than others (that’s probably another topic for another time) but you can add a mouth rinse if you want. I am also often asked about water flossers and if they are effective. I just want to add right now that water flossers are not as effective as traditional floss at cleaning the in between surfaces of the teeth. What is also very important here is getting a routine dental cleaning. The current industry standard is to see patients at least twice per year. One of those two appointments will include a set of x-rays and both of those appointments will include time with your hygienist so that they can go in and take off a lot of the tartar and buildup that we get on our teeth, myself included! This is important because stuff can build up quickly and that’s how gum disease and other things get started. These regular appointments also help us find issues like cavities or other issues early on. It is so much less expensive and so much less invasive to fix them when they are small than when we let them get bigger.
What are the most common dental problems?
That’s pretty easy! You are all probably aware of gum disease and gum problems. There are also cavities. Another big one that I would put in the top three would be the fracturing and breaking of teeth. We see a lot of that these days, maybe because of the stressful society and culture that we live in, but people are really grinding on their teeth, wearing things down and chipping and breaking their teeth. So, those are the big three! Gum disease, cavities, and fracturing and breaking of teeth.
What services are offered at Integrity Dental?
People often ask me, “what kind of dentistry do you do at Integrity Dental” and there are a lot of dental specialties out there which is where a lot of the confusion comes from. You can go to a specialist for surgery, root canals, prosthodontics (they make dentures and things like that), or you can go to a general dentist practice who can often do a lot of those things but also will tend to specialize a little bit into different niches of their own like just doing restorative work like crowns. But I am happy and proud to say that at Integrity Dental we are a very comprehensive office. We refer less than 1% of the work that comes in through our doors out to specialists because we have done a lot of extra training. We have several different doctors here that help us to provide several different treatments! We do our best to be so comprehensive that we can treat everyone, but there are obviously some cases that do warrant a specialist.
Dental Wellness Care
Dental Wellness Care is the foundation for any dental office. We do wellness check-ups on 6-month intervals because ideally, we will see our patients at least every 6 months to keep a close eye. The one exception is in cases of gum disease we increase that frequency to 3-month intervals and do specials cleanings on 3-month intervals to get that disease controlled.
Cosmetic Dentistry
Cosmetic Dentistry is something that I personally really enjoy doing. That’s when we restore smiles and that takes several different forms. One of the most notable ones would be crowns or veneers for front teeth. It can also come in the form of a complete rebuild where we are making crowns or veneers on all the teeth in the mouth. It can even involve taking teeth out and putting implants in and then putting in a cosmetic denture or a permanent denture, where we use implants to hold the dentures in place and they stay permanently and do not come out for eating or anything like that. We do all of that here. For a dentist that is some of the most rewarding work because to take someone who is not used to smiling and they can leave with a big smile on their face, unafraid to show their teeth, you know that you are making a huge difference in their life. We know that when you smile at someone, they are much more likely to smile back. So, it effects your mental wellbeing as well.
Restorative Dentistry
Restorative Dentistry can go into several different areas. We are very heavy on restorative dentistry here at Integrity Dental and probably most general dentistry practices are as well. Restorative dentistry mostly refers to filling cavities. All that we do here for that are white fillings. The cosmetic side of things comes into play with that. We don’t do any metal or silver fillings in the mouth. When it comes to crowns, we only use porcelain for them to try and best match the color of the existing teeth. They’re all white and look very natural. Restorative Dentistry can also go into other areas because it is technically restorative to do dentures (removeable or permanent). Restorative essentially means taking someone whose teeth are somewhat broken down and restoring them to normal function and hopefully to very normal and nice-looking aesthetics as well.
TMJD (Temporomandibular Joint Dysfunction)
This is becoming a pretty big issue and again I think it could be related to the amount of stress that a lot of people are under. We can do a lot of different therapies now to deal with issues in the jaw joint which is right back by your ear. We have patients who will come to us after seeing an ENT doctor because they thought their ear was infected and then it turned out that they just had joint inflammation. So, we deal with that in several different ways. We try to help patients stop grinding, clenching, and putting wear and tear on joints. We also can treat the problems acutely like with Botox. We can put Botox in jaw muscles that are overactive to help those calm down so that we aren’t doing so much of that grinding. We can also use Platelet Rich Fibrin and inject into the joints to provide lubrication and healing into the joint. So, we have some exciting and new therapies that can help people that have been miserable for a long time.
Sleep Dentistry
Sleep Dentistry can be a catch all for two different things. One is for sedation, but sedation dentistry is a little different. The sleep dentistry I want to focus on here is sleep apnea treatment. There is a device called a Mandibular Advancement Device (MAD) that dentists are tasked to make for patients that have mild to moderate cases of sleep apnea. It advances the jaw forward and opens the airway as a treatment for sleep apnea. It also helps with snoring and things like that. Dentists cannot diagnose sleep apnea, but we certainly help with some of the treatment.
Sedation and Distraction Dentistry
This is when we put people to sleep! One of the doctors here has the formal training to give IV sedation. He will give you the proper drugs, you go to sleep, and sometimes you wake up a little wacky, but we allow you to be asleep for your dental work! We even have a Nurse Anesthetist that comes in and can do a deeper level of sedation if you just want to go to sleep and wake up when all the dentistry is done. We also have drugs that we can give orally now called Halcion, or Valium, that allow you to be very, very calm which helps those of you who may be on the anxious side at the dentist (and that’s how a lot of people are!). So, we have several options there like the pill you can take, IV sedation, or deeper sedation. We also have nitrous oxide or better known as laughing gas. The advantage of nitrous oxide is that you can drive yourself to and from the appointment. If you don’t have a ride, nitrous oxide is a good alternative for you. And finally, we have several distraction techniques, and the best one is television! We have monitors in all our rooms that allow you to put on some headphones and watch any show you may like to watch on Netflix if you have a long procedure. It makes it possible for you to focus on your show and let us focus on the dental work. It makes the time pass and helps distract you.
Treatment of Specific Conditions
Dentistry is not as “cookie cutter” as some people think. It is not all about drilling and filling. There are many different dental problems out there and I will say that I personally and kind of the philosophy of us at Integrity Dental is that we like to be able to treat all those different things. It gets boring doing the same things over and over so I like being able to branch out to so many different areas and treat so many different things to people. We are comprehensive here, we do implants, surgery, and other things even up to facial aesthetics. Because of that it really keeps me on my toes since there is a lot to learn all the time. As far as specifics are concerned, everyone is a little different and we like to be able to tailor our treatment to each individual person for what they may want or need.
Pediatric and Family Dentistry
We love families here. I personally am a family man with five children and a lovely wife, and my partner Dr. Andrew Comerci has 3 kids of this own and a wife as well and we value them immensely. We love to be able to pass that on to our patients and we love to be able to treat everybody from grandparents all the way down to their grandbabies. We have several of those situations here, relationships that we have built with our patient population and those relationships are some of the most rewarding things that we get out of our jobs. To be able to see people grow up and then see their kids and someday their kids is special and fun.
Oral Surgery
Like I said, we are very comprehensive here. So, we offer the ability to do most procedures all under one roof. That includes wisdom tooth removals, that includes placing implants, and that includes many other surgical procedures. We enjoy doing these! We have done extensive and extended training so that we can offer a full range of these procedures and surgeries at Integrity Dental.
How long does a full Dental Exam take?
At Integrity Dental, we ask patients to allow a full hour for their appointments. There are some instances where there is extensive dental work that needs to be done and the time it takes to make those treatment plans accurately may take longer than an hour, but that is an exception. For those situations we usually will bring the patient back in for a free consultation to talk about their treatment options after we have had time to work it up with insurance estimates and such. But the average amount of time is one hour to come in, take a set of photos, a full set of x-rays, measure gums to see how healthy the gums are, and have the dentist come in to do an evaluation and exam to put together a proper treatment plan for all required work.
How often should the average person go to the dentist?
On average, it should be at least twice per year. If you have gum disease though it will end up being 4 times per year. So, it really depends on the patient and their oral health. Across the board in the dental industry, the standard is twice per year and potentially more than that if you have issues that need more frequent evaluation.
What is a Routine Dental Cleaning?
A Routine Dental Cleaning is when you may have some bleeding, you may be in a category of minor gum disease called gingivitis, but you do not have periodontitis. That means you don’t have bone loss, and you don’t have extensive tartar buildup to where we can accomplish sufficient cleaning in a one-hour time slot. There are other types of cleanings that we perform. One is called a debridement which takes more time and would require longer than a cleaning. There is also a deep cleaning and that typically takes up to an hour and a half for one half of the mouth, so three hours in total. There are even certain types of gum surgeries that take two hours for half of the mouth. So, there are several different levels of cleanings that can be done. But for routine cleanings on a healthy mouth that does not require us to go below the gumline to clean, and that all depends on your periodontal measurements, along with routine x-rays and an exam with the doctor, we can accomplish that all within one hour.
What does dental insurance cover?
We have received many questions about insurance. Unfortunately, it is a very complicated topic, and they are only getting more complicated. We take insurances very seriously and we try to help our patients in every way that we can to help our patients know ahead of time how much their insurance is going to pay. It is important to us to give you our best estimate of how much out of pocket expenses you could have. Our front office staff is excellent at helping patients to know that information. But just so you know, it is very challenging to get that information, and it is not getting any better. I personally feel like insurances create that confusion on purpose so that they can make more money. We try to help you cut through the red tape and the confusing stories that you get and make it very simple. But ultimately, it is very specific to your insurance plan. There are hundreds of different insurance plans. And many insurance companies have multiple variations of similar plans. So again, we always do our best in the insurance industry to get you the best information. But we also appreciate you guys working with us as far as allowing us to do our job there and trying to give you the very best estimate.
Along that same line, more and more people are finding that the insurance game is not one that they want to play and they are looking at alternatives. At Integrity Dental we do offer a very competitive alternative in the savings plan that we offer. We have 2; one for your basic routine dental cleaning that covers your cleanings, imaging, and exams as well as a discount on treatment, and a second plan for if you have gum disease and you need to come see us more often than twice per year. So, if you have any questions about that information, please let us know. Many people have found that it is very competitive with what their insurance plans offer and it makes things much simpler.
How can I schedule an appointment?
Well, there are several different ways to schedule with us. We would encourage you to pick up a phone and give us a call, we like a personal touch at Integrity Dental. Our office phone number is 719-545-2468 and one of our friendly front office staff would be happy to help you weed through whatever information you need to get scheduled. We look forward to seeing you here are Integrity Dental! We truly enjoy getting to know new people and also seeing families and such like I talked about earlier and building those relationships.