Everyone is concerned with exposure to X-rays.Dental X-ray examinations provide valuable information that helps your dentist evaluate your oral health. With the help of radiographs (the term for pictures taken with X-rays), your dentist can look at what is happening beneath the surface of your teeth.Radiographs allow your dentist to see hidden abnormalities, like tooth decay, infections and signs of gum disease, including changes in the bone and ligaments holding teeth in place

How often X-rays (radiographs) should be taken depends on your present oral health, your age, your risk for disease, and any signs and symptoms of oral disease you may be experiencing. For example, children may require X-rays more often than adults. This is because their teeth and jaws are still developing. Also their teeth are more likely to be affected by tooth decay than those of adults. Your dentist will review your history, examine your mouth and then decide whether or not you need radiographs.

If you are a new patient, the dentist may recommend radiographs to determine the present status of your oral health and to help identify changes that may occur later. A new set of X-rays may be needed to help your dentist detect any new cavities, determine the status of your gum health or evaluate the growth and development of your teeth.

Because many diseases of the teeth and surrounding tissues cannot be seen when your dentist examines your mouth, an X-ray examination can help reveal:

• small areas of decay between the teeth or below existing restorations (fillings);
• infections in the bone;
• periodontal (gum) disease;
• abscesses or cysts;
• developmental abnormalities;
• some types of tumors.

Finding and treating dental problems at an early stage can save time, money and unnecessary discomfort. Radiographs can help your dentist detect problems in your mouth that otherwise would not be seen.radiograph may be needed for dental treatment that can’t wait until after the baby is born. Because untreated dental infections can pose a risk to the fetus, dental treatment may be necessary to maintain the health of the mother and child. 

The amount of radiation that we are exposed to from dental X-rays is very small compared to our daily exposure from things like, cosmic radiation and naturally-occurring radioactive elements.the new digital technology can reduce exposure by up to 90% of traditional film X-rays. 

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 21:58 CST

We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact. I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labelled “opinion makers.” Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.

The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.

 It Is Not Working!

 These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated. The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, theconsequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.

Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before.

Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.

Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.

Inflammation is not complicated — it is quite simply your body’s natural defence to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process,a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.

What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully. The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity.

Let me repeat that: The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine. What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption ofomega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.

Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation.

While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.

How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?

Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works. When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.

What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it isexactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels.

While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator — inflammation in their arteries.

Let’s get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6′s are essential -they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell — they must be in the correct balance with omega-3′s.

 If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines

that directly cause inflammation.

Today’s mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That’s a tremendous amount of cytokines causinginflammation. In today’s food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.

To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high bloodsugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer’s disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.

There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils. There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state. To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables. Cut down on or eliminate inflammation- causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them.

One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef.

Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labelled polyunsaturated. Forget the “science” that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.

The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation. Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.

What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.

The determination of the type of veneer is determined by the dentist after an evaluation and conversation with the patient to clarify his goals. Underlying tooth color,existing wear patterns, length of the final veneer, position of existing teeth, lip position and facial symmetry are many aspects that must be taken into consideration before the procedure is started.

 Tooth preparation is the key to both beauty and longevity! For patients with mild to moderate color change and minimal wear patterns, preparations that remain in the enamel layer allow for the strongest, most beautiful, and most life-like result. For patients with tetracycline type staining or misaligned teeth, more aggressive tooth preparation may be needed to achieve the desired result. Many times these restorations must be finished in the dentin (second layer of the tooth) which slightly lowers the bond strength to the veneer.

  When considering treatment, it is important to ask the appropriate questions and communicate your expectations. Ask the dentist to show you photographs of their own completed treatment. Spend the time getting comfortable with the dentist’s protocol,especially the emphasis he or she places on the temporaries.

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 A Changing Caries Model

 Due to fluoridation, caries has gone “underground.” While helping to improve the oral health of many Americans, fluoridation has resulted in harder tooth enamel. Incipient caries lesions that once began on the tooth’s surface have now migrated below the surface.

 Proven Clinical Results

    Treatment decisions require a higher degree of certainty. The DIAGNOdent laser caries detection aid reduces the doubt from treatment decisions regarding hidden caries or questionable stained grooves. The device’s ability to aid in seeing into occlusal pits and fissures enables dentists to treat sub-surface caries lesions with confidence. The DIAGNOdent is a diagnostic device that aids the dentist in making treatment decisions with confidence. Unlike traditional diagnostic methods, DIAGNOdent is an extremely accurate and reliable adjunct for the detection of subsurface caries. It removes the guesswork that accompanies many treatment decisions regarding questionable areas, such as stained or discolored grooves. 

 • DIAGNOdent uses laser technology as an aid to detect and quantify hidden or sub-surface caries by measuring laser fluorescence within the tooth structure.

 • The device operates at a wavelength of 655 nm. At this specific wavelength, clean healthy tooth structure exhibits little or no fluorescence, resulting in very low scale readings on the display.

 • Altered tooth substances and bacteria, including caries, will fluoresce. The DIAGNOdent will react with elevated scale readings on the display• An audio tone allows the operator to hear changes in the scale values. This enables the user to focus on the patient — not solely on the device.  The DIAGNOdent is an extremely accurate, reliable and non-invasive method to aid in caries detection. The device is successfully used by more than 20,000 dental professionals in the United States and is integrated into the curriculum of a growing number of dental schools.

 DIAGNOdent offers the following benefits :

 • Accurate – Over 90% accurate to aid in the detection of lesions not detectable with an explorer or bitewing X-rays.*

• Conservative – Helps prevent “exploratory” excavation or undertreatment of suspect teeth.

• Quantifiable – Precise, reliable measurement allows objective monitoring of caries activity over time.

• Confidence Builder – Allows dentists and hygienists to treat questionable sites and sub-surface caries with confidence.

• Empowering – Allows hygienists to educate patients on caries disease process.

.• Easy to Use – Compact, portable device with user-friendly design.

• Safe – Uses light energy — NO XRAY exposure. Poses no danger to staff and patients. PAINLESS, non-invasive examination for patients.

If you have ever had a filling done, you
probably have noticed some type of lingering
sensitivity to the tooth for a period of time.
This discomfort with biting, or exposure
to certain temperatures will usually pass
within one to two weeks in most cases. This
sensitivity can be caused by several things.

The tooth is protected by enamel, which
has no nerve sensation. The next layer in
is dentin which consists of thousands of
tubules that conduct sensation to the nerve
or pulp of the tooth. upon cutting into the
dentin to remove decay, these tubules are
opened. once the decay is removed, the
tooth is thoroughly cleaned and conditioned
prior to placing the white resin filling. Care is
taken by precisely layering the filling, since
this material shrinks as it is cured by a dental
light. This contraction can set up internal
stresses on the tooth causing discomfort
when pressure is applied to the tooth during
chewing. The larger the filling, the greater
risk for post-operative discomfort.

The larger the filling, the
greater risk for post-operative
discomfort.

Proper technique when placing a filling
is critical to both the longevity of the restoration,
as well as post-operative comfort.
Proper isolation to keep saliva and blood
out of the field is of critical importance. The
advantage of these bonded white fillings is
that they truly adhere to the tooth giving
back some of the strength that had been lost
from the cavity. If properly handled, the tooth
can be restored to proper form and function.
If the sensitivity lasts longer than two weeks
it is important to return to your dentist for reevaluation.
Many times, a simple bite adjustment
is all that is needed. .