We all know to avoid candy to avoid cavities.  But how about some healthy, nutritious snacks that actually help prevent cavities as well?  Here are some easy munchies your kids will eat:

1. Carrot sticks (with ranch if necessary) - vitamins, minerals and fiber
2. Celery sticks (with ranch, not peanut butter) - vitamins, minerals and fiber
3. String cheese - calcium, oils which prevent cavities

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Making your child's dental visit easier is simple:

1. Schedule their appointment first thing in the morning.  A tired, cranky child will tend to be more fearful and irritable.
2. Feed your child a light meal an hour before coming.  Even blood sugar helps reduce epinephrine in the body, which amplifies anxiety and fear

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Personal, Quality Dental Care...for less. We invite all families to come in for a friendly and through cleaning and exam.The first visit, for adults or children, a $200+ value is $79. Other dentists may play the $39 loss-leader game, but our patients prefer the relaxed, no pressure, no upsell experience. Call us today at 949-600-7777, and see what a difference conservative dentistry makes.

Let's take the "scare" out of dental care. Giving children a positive early impression of the dentist can lead to better motivation, more thorough hygiene, and fewer dental problems. When the dental team are perceived as "the good guys," we break the multi-generational cycle of fear, neglect and tooth decay. That's our goal at Dr. Le's office: make YOUR kids love going to the dentist, and give them a healthy jumpstart for their oral health.

Our family dental team uses personal chairside TV's, movies, magic tricks, toys, whatever it takes to make your child feel comfortable and safe. Dr. Le has a natural rapport with children. "If they don't come in the door crying, they won't leave the office crying." Our focus is on helping you raise a generation of happy, healthy kids using conservative dentistry.

Did your dentist recommend a lot of porcelain inlays, onlays or crowns? It's like replacing shoes...everyone's got a different opinion on when is a good time to make a change.

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We get the occasional request for Zoom whitening from Discus Dental.  Xoom (and it's corporate cousin, Britesmile) is a trademark of Discus Dental, recently acquired by Philips, the owner of the Sonicare brand.  Because of their extraordinary marketing expense, Zoom has been a tremendous commercial success, reaching household name recognition.  Our office does not use Zoom lights.  Here's why:

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As a practicing dentist for 9 years, I empathize with patients wanting to get the best deal on care.  Small practices like mine provide dental care at reduced, but not rock bottom prices.  On a pure price basis, we cannot price compete with larger volume practices.

When you go for your $29 cleaning and get pressured into $5,000 of unnecessary treatment, it's no bargain at all.  I can't tell you how many times I hear about  fear mongering dentists, followed by high pressure "closers."  Don't even get me started on the quality of the work I sometimes see...sloppy fit, no attention to detail, refusal to grant re-dos or even refunds.  Even with our higher fees, our patients almost always come out with a lower total cost of treatment, because we don't upsell them on work of questionable necessity.  Goodwill and trust are hard to factor into an algorithm.

Sites like Brighter and Pricedoc may help people find dentists, but they may have the unintended consequence of commoditizing dentistry.   If it helps consumers do more homework and make smarter decisions, that's a positive.  If it drives the growth of discount dental chop shop chains at the expense of small family practices, that's a loss for everyone.   If I want to price shop for a laptop, it's the same laptop at the BigBox as it is at the MegaMart, and customer experience is a very small part of the equation.  But in service businesses like auto-repair, hair salons, or dentistry, trust, integrity, the quality of worksmanship and friendly customer service should count for much more than the price.  --VL

While entertaining to read, The SoCalSmiles offer is factually incorrect. Zoom works primarily by dehydrating teeth with a combination of forcing the mouth open for forty minutes, and a high power halogen light...not a laser as the text describes. Because the effect is mostly from dehydration, it is mostly gone within 24 hours without using more conventional home whitening trays as a follow up.  (teeth rehydrate once you close your mouth and leave the chair)

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Saw a patient today with excellent home care.  Here's someone who knows how to brush and floss.

Notice how the gums wrap tightly to the teeth like spandex.  Note the bright coral pink color.  (people of darker skin may have harmless patches of pigmentation in covering some of the pink areas)  They are not red and puffy from gingivitis, and they do not bleed when prodded with dental probes or floss.  This is what your gums can look like if you take great care of them with daily flossing and brushing.  It doesn't matter if you're 9 or 99, it can look like this.

What makes this case even more remarkable, however, is that this is not some 21 year old Swedish model's teeth.  They belong to a very smart 14 year old high school freshman:

Braces make it really, really hard to clean your teeth.  Most weaker minded teenagers just don't bother.  The result is them a bloody, swollen red mess full of tartar, plaque and germs.   My own two front teeth have permanent white scars (train tracks) from not taking care of my teeth during braces.   Oh, to be a teenager again, but perhaps a smarter one.  Kudos to JS for having some seriously good hygiene habits at a very young age.  This guy is going to go far. 

It's never too late to start, either.

 

 

A legal analysis of the healthcare reform bill has found language that imposes a tax on medical appliances that likely applies to dental appliances as well.  These could include crowns, implants, brides, dentures, orthodontic brackets, retainers, nightguards and more.

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We've noticed over the years that almost everyone with healthy gums had a power toothbrush.   While it's no substitute for flossing, anything that gives you better results with less effort is worth it.  Our office is now carrying the Sonicare Elite and Xtreme power toothbrush models.

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Gum disease, like diabetes, is incurable, but very treatable.  Most of our patients get better after treatment, but a few don't.  Here's the three most common reasons people can't beat gum disease...

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In the current issue of the CDA Journal, Dr. Bradley Lewis calls for a worldwide ban on formocresol, a dental medicament commonly on children during pulpotomies (baby root canals).    We have never stocked this at our practice, and after reading this thorough literature review, we never will.  All the component ingredients are carcinogenic, and what's worse, we place it DIRECTLY on the live inner cells of your child's teeth, where it's free to circulate throughout the body.  I call on all dentists to stop using this cheap, outmoded, smelly substance and put our pediatric patients' health above our supply costs.     MTA, ferric sulfate, and calcium hydroxide are all alternatives, with MTA having the most clinical success.

Okay, dental appliances are not the best for your love life.  But for many of us, nightguards are the best way to prevent damage from clenching and grinding, also known as bruxism.  For others, they also help with TMD related jaw pain.

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Sometimes a recent cold or flu can cause sinusitis, an inflammation of the lining of your sinus cavities.  Swelling and irritation are often symptoms.  The maxillary sinuses happen to be directly over the upper back teeth.  The swelling can bear down on the teeth, creating a dull toothache.  Sometimes the sinus literally elevates the teeth a tiny bit out of socket, creating a high bite and chewing difficulties.

If your dentist is not careful, you can end up with an unnecessary root canal treatment.  A proper diagnosis of every toothache usually includes an x-ray, cold test, percussion (tapping test), biting test, and periodontal probing (gum check).   A positive biting or tapping test during or after a recent cold or allergy event may just indicate sinusitis, not a dental problem.  If dental findings are inconsistent or inconclusive, you can be referred to your medical doctor for a consult.  We had one or two such cases last year, and possibly one this morning.  I routinely ask my patients with dull toothaches, especially on upper teeth, if they've had recent sinus infections, colds, flu, or allergies.  The best way to get correct diagnosis, as always, is to be thorough (collect a lot of data), and look at all the facts, not just the dental ones.

This is the first comparison case I am doing to test a new crown technology. Glidewell Labs has a new type of crown for back teeth made out of zirconia, a high strength ceramic. Like gold crowns, they are virtually unbreakable, don't require a lot of tooth height. Unlike gold crowns, they are tooth colored.

Many people know about 3M's Lava crowns. They are porcelain fused to zirconia. They are beautiful in the front, but they are expensive to produce, and the porcelain is relatively fracture prone. Few problems on front teeth, but using them on high-load molars is risky; I've actually had a couple of them break myself. In every documented case of failure, (I'm talking the published clinical studies) the outer porcelain breaks off, leaving the inner zirconia intact. So the folks at Glidewell decided to make the entire crown out of zirconia.

The benefit is a lower cost, more conservative tooth reduction (dental colleagues, they're claiming 1mm occlusal reduction), and better appearance than a gold crown. The tradeoffs: harder for the dentist to adjust, harder for the dentist to repolish, and poor translucency. (which is why they are meant for back teeth) I decided to ask my friends at Glidewell to make me two crowns: a PFM, the tried and true porcelain fused to metal crown, and a new Bruxzir, the all-zirconia crown.

Here's the photos:

As you can see, the zirconia crowns hold up very well to the PFM crowns that go on 90% of my patients. And compared to a gold crown, they are hugely better. As a matter of fact, this patient chose the zirconia crown. She said it fit like a glove, and she loved the appearance much better. We agree. We're doing another case to confirm our very positive initial findings.

The Australian Dental Journal reports that milk fortified with amorphous calcium phosphate (marketed here in the US as ACP or Recaldent) remineralizes enamel 81-164% more than your standard milk.  I've seen firsthand how amorphous calcium phosphate can remineralize damaged teeth .   If ACP-fortfied milk ever makes it to the states, it could have a greater effect on preventing cavities than any municipal water fluoridation effort.  (and with less angry anti-fluoride comments on my blogs, too.)

The FDA just released an updated statement declaring that amalgam is safe and effective as a filling material.  While we routinely place white, composite resin fillings, Dr. Le keeps amalgam around for the specific (and very rare) situations where it's still the filling material of choice.  It is Dr. Le's position that amalgam is a safe, viable, long lasting material when used properly in the right situations.  Amalgam is also a necessary material to maintain the low cost and higher availability of dentistry to underserved populations, such as inner city or rural free clinics.  We invite all our patients to discuss the pros and cons of the different fillings with us at their next visit.  There is NO such thing as a perfect filling material.  Read on for a comparison of amalgam and silver filling materials.

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Some people have concerns about new power toothbrushes wearing away enamel excessively.   Most of our high-end powerbrush users have excellent gingival health, so we highly recommend the faster, more powerful brushes.  The slower power toothbrushes (the $30 and under crowd) simply don't have the RPM to make a big difference above brushing by hand.   For OralB and Sonicare, the high speed motors start around $60.  You can find excellent family packs for these two brands at your big warehouse store for $120 or less.  We would easily recommend either one.

We do not notice a higher rate of enamel wear with power toothbrushes, nor did Consumer Reports in their recent article on whitening toothpastes.  The best way to use any toothbrush is with very light hand pressure and small circular strokes.  If you're using a power toothbrush, check your manual to see if there is a reduced power setting that will help you get used to it.

CDA has just issued a statement announcing that nitrous oxide must be added to the Prop 65 list.  That means nitrous oxide, otherwise known as laughing gas, is "known to the state of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm."  Our office does not administer nitrous oxide, but we want the public to consult with their dentists or specialists before using nitrous oxide, especially if pregnant.  For the great majority of people, nitrous oxide has been a safe form of conscious sedation to relieve anxiety.  While most people totally disregard Prop 65 warnings at the dentist AND at the gas station, but we must always consider the risks and benefits of ALL procedures.