Dental Implant Recovery

by Fox-AdminPosted on October 7, 2020 Posted in Advice

Looking after yourself and your new implants!

There are many good reasons to choose dental implants as a replacement when you have lost a tooth, or a number of teeth.

Unlike dentures which sit above the gums, implants are placed, at our Ipswich practice, into the jawbone and act as a substitute tooth root. This means that they are more stable than a denture and also offer a degree of strength that will enable you to eat any food that you want without worrying if they will become loose in your mouth.

We have covered the procedure surrounding the placing of implants on our Ipswich dentist blog before. This time, we look at what you need to do when you are recovering from the procedure. This will not only help to make things more comfortable for you but will also minimise any risk of damage to your new implant.

Smoking

If you smoke, it is very important that you stop, not only before your procedure, as you will have been instructed, but also afterwards, especially whilst the implant fuses with the bone. Studies have shown that smoking significantly increases the risk of implant failure. This is due, in part, to it being a significant contributor to periodontal diseases that can lead to bone loss. If the bone holding your implant degrades, the implant may become unstable and even come out.

Individual implant placement recovery

Although this very successful procedure will leave you with strong and long lasting replacement teeth, it is still a minor surgical procedure and patients should expect a degree of discomfort in the area of the treatment for a short while afterwards. This is usually quite manageable by taking your usual pain killing medication for a few days. Any rare cases of significant pain should be discussed with your dentist and, of course, we are also available for any other aftercare advice as well.

There are things that you can do to help yourself though and which will also help your new implants to get off to a good start.

Immediate aftercare

Read more ›

Sharing A Toothbrush And Other Bad Bathroom Habits

by Fox-AdminPosted on September 14, 2020 Posted in Advice

A little carelessness could create problems for your oral health

Most of us have probably built our oral health regime based on what others, most likely our parents, have taught us. We may believe that this is perfectly fine as we haven’t really known any other way.

Whilst some of these habits may have sound foundations, some are also likely to be out of date and could even be affecting your teeth and gums.

This blog will hopefully also be useful to those Ipswich students who will be returning to university in this unusual year. Although there may not be the parties of previous years, student living can be quite chaotic initially and until people start to settle into a new routine. Hopefully, our suggestions will at least help to avoid some common errors.

We asked some of the Foxhall Dental Practice team to name some of the poor habits in the bathroom that might be most damaging to oral health. Here are some of their suggestions.

Never share a toothbrush

There are no circumstances when it is OK to share your toothbrush. This applies whether it is with your family, friends or complete strangers, although the latter is obviously the most risky. Your toothbrush should be yours alone and sharing another person’s toothbrush is almost certain to mean the transference of bacteria from mouth to mouth. Regular readers of our blogs will be aware of the potential harm that some bacteria can cause. As well as the possibility of tooth decay, periodontal diseases can occur which can not only be uncomfortable and unpleasant (bad breath anyone?) but can also, ultimately, result in tooth loss if not treated effectively and in time.

It isn’t just oral health problems that can be passed on in this way either. Serious health issues such as hepatitis and HIV can also be passed on by sharing your toothbrush. This is obviously a higher risk if you share with strangers but it is best to eliminate the risk altogether by not sharing your toothbrush with anyone at all.

If you do find yourself in a position where you have forgotten or lost your own toothbrush, use something such as kitchen towel with some toothpaste on, or if all else fails use your finger. This is better than sharing a brush although you should replace your lost/missing brush as soon as you can.

Chewing sugar free chewing gum can also be useful to help keep your teeth clean on a temporary basis so it is always a good idea to keep some handy. Do remember though that this should never replace brushing your teeth and you should return to this (with your own brush) as soon as you can.

Keep your toothbrush away from the toilet

Read more ›

Is A Coffee Habit Harming Your Teeth?

by Fox-AdminPosted on July 29, 2020 Posted in Advice

With coffee shops open again, many are gradually returning to daily visits

It is not so long ago that having a coffee outside your own home would invariably mean a mug of ‘instant’ at a cafe, especially if you lived outside the major towns and cities.

These days though, coffee shops are everywhere in the UK; indeed, there are estimated to be in the region of 30,000 of them and they appear to be gaining in popularity by the day.

Coffee shops have been popular in the past and were often frequented by artists and intellectuals. These days they are more accessible to the rest of us and may provide an alternative meeting place for those who don’t wish to drink alcohol, whether for health or religious reasons.

Whilst coffee itself is not directly harmful to our teeth, the speciality drinks and snacks that often go with it, can be.

The ‘problem’ with coffee

As mentioned above, coffee itself will not cause any actual harm to our teeth. It can stain them though and a frequent espresso drinker may find that their teeth become quite badly discoloured over time. This can be treated at the Foxhall Dental Practice by using our popular teeth whitening procedure, but if the staining is too heavy, you may need to consider having porcelain dental veneers fitted instead.

The real issue with coffee is that few of us drink a non sugar version, and indeed, many of the ‘speciality coffees’ offered in these premises are likely to contain very high quantities of sugar. To take just one example, a ‘Mocha Latte’ in one of the well known coffee chain stores, contains 14 teaspoons of sugar, and that isn’t the worst offender! As we add creams and syrups to our drinks, the amount of quantity we consume increases. If we also add a blueberry muffin from the same store, we add another 10 teaspoons of sugar. In total then, one of these coffees and a muffin will give us 24 teaspoons of sugar, an incredible amount. To put it into perspective, a can of coca cola contains around 9 teaspoons, so our coffee habit there is the equivalent in sugar of drinking just under 3 cans of cola.

If this were an occasional treat, we could perhaps let this go as long as we generally look after our teeth well. As we know though, many people do this almost every day, or at least a few times each week and this habit is likely to lead to a great deal of tooth decay and gum disease.

Whilst our Ipswich dental team can help to restore teeth damaged in this way, it is better to be aware of the damage that our coffee habit can cause and make choices that help to prevent these problems from occurring in the first place.

Obesity

Read more ›

Dental Care In The Near Future

by Fox-AdminPosted on June 8, 2020 Posted in Advice

Dental practices in the UK are able to open again from June 8th, but what should you expect when they do?

Most of you will have seen the news that dental practices in the UK are able to open again following our closure because of the Covid-19 situation.

On the surface, it may appear to some patients that this means that everything is more or less back to normal. Much as we wish this were the case, it isn’t unfortunately.

When the government announced this, we heard about it at the same time that patients did. As you can probably understand, running a dental practice means not only performing treatments but also ensuring that the whole practice environment is safe for both staff and patients. This is even more important at this particular time for obvious reasons.

As the announcement came with no real forewarning, dentists and their staff have been doing all that they can to get things ready to open again as soon as possible. Unfortunately, this is not as simple as just unlocking the doors. The most obvious thing to note is that we have to plan for the new ‘normal’, at least until such a time that the virus is no longer such a threat or a vaccine is widely available.

PPE and staff training

Most of you will have now heard of PPE, the protective equipment that keeps both patient and staff safe. Due to the worldwide demand, it is challenging to source this in sufficient quantity to be able to operate safely. Our Ipswich dental patients can rest assured that we are doing all that we can to source this as quickly as possible.

Systems are also being put into place to make the practice a safe environment. This stems right from how patients can safely wait in the reception areas to how we thoroughly clean the environment after each treatment.

What should patients expect?

Read more ›

Wobbly Teeth In Children And Adults

by Fox-AdminPosted on May 20, 2020 Posted in Advice

Why teeth become loose and where it requires professional advice.

Most of us can probably remember having a wobbly tooth or two when we were younger. Some of us may even be unfortunate enough to remember the traumatic experience of a parent tying all sorts of ways to remove them? We will discuss why you shouldn’t do this a little later on in this blog, but first, let’s take a look at what causes wobbly teeth both in children and adults, and the potential consequences.

Children and wobbly teeth

Our patients who are parents of young children may already have experienced their child having a wobbly tooth. This is usually nothing to be concerned about and is quite natural as their first teeth will eventually fall out so that their adult teeth can erupt in their place. The temporary nature of the first teeth can, unfortunately, cause some parents to pay less attention to them as they will come out anyway. Even though these are temporary teeth, it is still important to make sure that your child cleans them well, and also the gums. Anyone who has had a severe toothache would not want to put their child through that, and, although temporary, these teeth still play an important role.

The first teeth, or milk or baby teeth as they are sometimes known, enable a young child to progress from soft foods to a more normal diet. If the teeth are not looked after and have to be extracted, this can cause problems in this transitional stage that could have long lasting effects. In addition to this, confidence and speech development can also be affected and can cause problems during a child’s developmental years.

Just a word of caution here; if your child has a wobbly tooth, even if it has been ‘hanging on’ for a little while, please don’t forcefully try to pull it out by the ‘door handle’ or any similar technique. Gentle and gradual pressing on it with the tongue should see it soon fall out. If you have one that is particularly problematic, please contact our Ipswich dental team for advice. Using a more forceful method may cause not only discomfort to the child but also possible damage to the gum tissue.

Try to keep your children’s teeth healthy and make sure that they brush them well, ideally supervised by yourself or another responsible adult.

Loose teeth in adults

Read more ›