Cosmetic Dentistry has become an extremely popular topic in the past few years since there are a lot more options for achieving that ‘smiley face’ being made available. There are more people that are wanting a clean crisp brighter smile, since a nice smile will also give you a much more youthful appearance as well as increasing your self-confidence.
Although it may be obvious, but having a great smile really exudes having… a healthy smile. Anyone who may be seeking advanced procedures to brighten or straightening out their teeth, also needs to be practicing excellent dental hygiene habits at home, followed up with routine visits to the dentist.
As just common good oral health will instantly give you a better genuine smile, it’s also vital for your overall body health as well. Bone and Gum disease as well as cavities forming in your teeth has been known to be associated with triggering health problems such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke, as well as different forms of oral cancer. This is caused by unwanted and unhealthy bacteria that forms in the mouth which can quickly get into the bloodstream, which may affect the overall health of your body.
That is why some experts will constantly urge patients to be extremely cautious of some dentists who will be eager to immediately begin advanced dental work without doing a proper basic dental evaluation, as well as dental cleaning.
For Example: Someone who hasn’t had say even a dental check-up for over six years, cannot expect to walk into a dentist’s office and instantly get laser whitening done the same day. If you are offered that type of service immediately, don’t walk but run out of that office!
Once you and your dentist know that your teeth and mouth are healthy as well as being free of any cavities, then and only then opens up virtually endless options to visibly improving the aesthetics of your teeth and thus your smile. The most popular solutions are straightening your teeth, whitening, veneering or crowning and gum augmentation. Here is a look at each of your options.
Four Methods Of Cosmetic Dentistry For A Better Smile
Whitening Your Teeth Provides For A Youthful Look
It’s amazing how whitening and brightening your teeth can seem to take away years off your appearance while producing a brilliant smile. Obviously, teeth whitening is one of the most effective ways to rid of yellowing teeth. Unfortunately, contrary to common belief, there are really no safe or real “at home” products that you can buy from the drugstore that works in giving you visible results.
The closest is beginning with a bleaching kit which you can take home to use. The bleaching trays which are used are personalized to the individuals teeth, which enables the ‘industrial strength’ bleach to stick closer to the front of the teeth. The concentration of this office or industrial strength bleach is around 29% percent, where store bought bleach is around 10% percent in concentration.
The maximum results of shiny whiter teeth are usually achieved in around two weeks of bleaching on a daily basis. If you are looking for better bleaching results, and provided you didn’t have teeth sensitivity issue with the take-home bleaching kit, then laser bleaching or light-accelerated bleaching can be performed at a dental office.
What the light source does is it “excites” the molecules in the bleach while rapidly bleaching the teeth, all during a single appointment. You must carefully prepare the teeth before the actual bleaching, as the bleach can easily cause painful chemical burns on the gums.
Straighten Your Teeth And Smile
Straightening your teeth will instantly give you a much more beautiful smile by giving you the confidence and radiance to showing off that straighter teeth when smiling.
These days, teeth straightening has become an extremely practical option for a much youthful sparkling smile, this by using an invisible orthodontic straightening system. These systems will typically involve wearing custom clear trays that are worn for a few months, which will straighten the front teeth alignment. There will also usually be minimal reduction when it comes to the width of the teeth, which may often be required to allow room for the teeth to align back into the arch.
If an invisible orthodontic system is not an option for you, then conventional braces are available, which are placed on the back of the front teeth. What this does is it allows for a strong force of movement without using those visible bulky brackets in the front of the teeth.
Crowns Of Glory
There is another possible alternative to whitening or straightening teeth, which is to having veneers or crowns placed on your teeth that are visible when you smile. When a veneer is placed, a shell will be cemented onto the visible surface of the tooth, with very minimal reduction to the natural teeth. One of the largest downfalls of using veneers is that they have a short life-span. Usually, veneers may start to crack as well as discolor at the edges in as soon as three to five years. Installing caps or crowns are usually a better, much longer lasting restoration project, as they are cemented firmly around the entire surface of the tooth. This however requires the tooth to be reduced to a much smaller version of itself or be completely removed, to be able to provide for full coverage of the cap around the tooth.
There can be a bit more sensitivity that can occur with a crown when compared to a veneer, but crowns will offer a few more options such as changing the shape of the tooth as well as changing the actual color of as well, which provides for a longer life span. Well crafted crowns can last up to 20 years or longer, so they are well worth the time and investment.
Are You Getting Long In he Tooth?
There is another method, which may be a bit of an understated procedure, which can visibly improve the look of your smile as well as taking away years off your appearance. This is known as gum augmentation. Those who happen to have long teeth will often appear older, as you may of heard “long in the tooth” which may ring a bit true. By a procedure of actually pulling the gums further down over the tooth, the smile can then appear literally years younger.
Patients may initially tend to stay away from this procedure since there is a bit of blood as well as stitches that are involved. But, a gummy smile can make someone feel a bit self-conscious about their appearance. There is also another procedure known as gingival removal, that can be performed as well. Periodontists are usually the specialists who will usually perform these procedures and will be able to achieve outstanding results.