This lovely 90-year-old patient has kept most of her teeth her whole life. She flosses twice daily and uses fluoride every night! One day at a luncheon with friends, she accidentally bit a salad fork, and felt two of her lower front teeth become rather loose and painful to the touch. After determining that the…
Read MoreA large filling is frequently not strong enough to withstand biting pressure on a cracked or damaged tooth. In that case, it is customary for the tooth to be protected with a restoration called a crown. Crowns can be made of different materials: gold, porcelain, or some combination. This patient had a porcelain-metal crown on…
Read MoreConventional film X-rays would require chemical processing and did not have the capability of changing contrast and gain. With digital X-rays, we can see the earliest of decays, and thus treat decay conservatively. This patient was seen in our hygiene department for routine cleaning and check-up. The ultra low-radiation exposures did not initially show the…
Read MoreGeneral dentistry in the United States has been trending toward the discontinued use of silver-mercury alloy fillings, aka, amalgams. My own preference for tooth-colored resins is for several reasons, the most obvious being that as an aesthetic dentist, I like teeth to look like teeth. Additionally, resin is not affected by temperature the way metallic…
Read MoreOne of the most challenging types of “simple dentistry” is to accomplish a direct resin restoration (aka, white filling) that looks good, functions well, and seals out bacteria from re-entering the side of the tooth. Only a few years , which had been somewhat sensitive since being placed. An X-ray of the area shows where…
Read MorePeriodontal disease affects approximately 80% of adults in the USA and can show up differently across the spectrum. This patient had very little active infection evident, yet a very high susceptibility to losing the tooth attachment to the jaw bone. Visually, the teeth are very clean and the gums are a healthy light pink…
Read More
In his book The Power of Now, spiritual leader Eckhart Tolle discusses the concept of the pain body . . . Tolle: The pain-body is my term for the accumulation of old emotional pain that almost all people carry in their energy field. I see it as a semi-autonomous psychic entity. It consists of negative emotions that were…
Read More