Is your jaw bone dissolving?

If you brushed your hair and you scalp started bleeding you would rush to the doctor to see what was wrong, and if you clipped your fingernails and they starting bleeding you would know it wasn't normal, yet somehow there is a wide held belief that if you brush your teeth and your gums bleed you don't need to panic, or at the very least you don;t need to worry. I don't know where this misconception came from but its time to clear it up! Your mouth is literally the gate to the rest of your body so it would only make sense that if it is unhealthy it will negatively affect the rest of your body. Periodontal disease (more commonly known as gum disease) doesn't usually get a lot of press, but it should! It has been linked to all kinds of systemic diseases including: diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, pregnancy complications, Alzheimer's pancreatic cancer (among others), respiratory diseases, tooth loss, and a dissolving jawbone! Yes people! It is very serious!

OK, so let's go through some symptoms together so you can identify if you have a problem.

The mildest form of gum disease is gingivitis. You will often experience little or no discomfort with this level but don't let that lull you into a false sense of security. If your gums are puffy, red, and bleed easily please take action. Talk to your hygienist. Get an action plan to get it under control. Don't let it get worse!
Next, if you start to feel a change in your bite, if your teeth start to feel loose, you have persistent bad breath, or your gums are very tender, run--don't walk--to your dental office. Most likely you are in need of a deep cleaning.

Now, of course some ways to prevent gum disease. FLOSS. I can not stress this enough. It is so important, to not only the health of your mouth, but the overall health of your body. FLOSS, FLOSS, FLOSS! regular hygiene maintenance appointments, and good home care are also important aspects in preventing gum disease.
Look closely at your gums in the mirror, they should be a soft pink color. Think of the inside of a seashell, and they should not bleed when you brush or floss. Next time you visit your dentist of hygienist, ask about the state of your gums. Take control of your health.
This was a bit of a scary post, visit again next week for a much funner topic!
love, your friendly dental assistant

Brace Face

Welcome to 2010 all my blog buddies. We haven’t spoken in some time, but don’t worry, now that all the excitement of Thanksgiving and Christmas and the New Year has passed I finally have time to blog again! You should be hearing from me about once a week.
I hope that your new year is bringing health and happiness prosperity to you and your family. It has brought changes for me. In my mouth that is. Yes boys and girls—I am wearing braces.
Now for some people the idea of wearing braces conjures up images of middle school, and acne, and years of being teased for being a “brace face” or metal mouth” but let me assuage those fears for you.
At our office we do adult ortho which is different from traditional ortho. For most adults you are in and out of braces in 6 months! Thats quick, by the time you are tired of having them, it's time to take them off! I was wondering how it is possible to do it this quickly as an adult, when for lots of kids it takes years to get out of braces. So of course I asked Dr. Parkin—the expert. Here is the answer.
With adult ortho you aren’t moving back teeth. You are moving just front teeth, which move more quickly than molars do. Another great thing about adult ortho is that it is cheaper than traditional ortho. Let me explain why this is. Our goal with 6 month braces is not to place each patient in a perfect bite relationship which can take several years and many thousands of dollars. We will maintain the relationship you have and perhaps improve it, what we will do is work to correct crowded teeth, spaced teeth, rotated teeth, tipped teeth, open bites and bites that are over closed. We will change anything that will affect the appearance of front teeth. We do not move molars around, the goal of 6 month braces is not skeletal or bite perfection, it is to give you a great smile in a reasonable amount of time.
I am excited to be in braces, and having a gorgeous smile 6 months from now! I would love to talk about it with you if you are interested in improving your smile.
Please give me a call at the office so we can talk about if you would benefit from adult ortho. 719-576-1730.

Sweet Fang!

We dressed up at work today for halloween. We each had a pair of fangs that we made. We thought that would be cute for a dental office. We had a lot of fun with it! After wearing the fangs all day I realized something. If you ever run into a vampire--He will probably have a lisp. Fangs are hard to speak with!
check out some of our pictures--it got a little crazy around the office! (Not sure that the rest of the staff know I posted these--enjoy!)
--your friendly dental assistant!

tricks or treats!

Its time for trick-or-treating once again! It's always fun to see those little goblins and ghouls out roaming the streets for treats, but you would never give them battery acid as a trick...or would you? Here is some interesting, and somewhat disturbing facts about some of the candy we are handing out to those little princesses and G.I. Joes. If you remember the PH scale from middle school science class you will recall that a zero is the most acidic you can get, like battery acid. a Seven is neutral, like pure water and a 14 is the most basic you can get, like liquid drain cleaner. Now listen to this: some of the candy we are handing out is nearing battery acid on the acidic scale!
sweet Tarts 3
sour punch straws 2.5
Starburst 2.4
lemonheads 2.4
sour skittles 2.2
pixie sticks 1.9
now and laters 1.9
fun dip powder 1.8
war heads 1.6
and battery acid is a ZERO!

We are doing our best to combat all that acid. Acid wears away enamel making teeth more susceptible to cavities. At Cheyenne Mountain Dental Center we are doing a Great Halloween Candy buy back. Kids can bring in their candy (after they pick out a few favorites to enjoy) and for each pound they bring in we will give them a dollar and some coupons to fun places around town. With all that candy that we collect we will be sending it to the troops overseas (along with toothbrushes!) as part of operation Gratitude. All the kids that bring in candy will get the chance to sign a card and tell the troops how much they appreciate them. This is the second year we will be doing this, and last year we collected over 200 pounds of candy. We will be collecting candy November 2nd through November 10th. Please bring in your kids and participate with us this year!

Royal Flush

Good Morning all my lovely blog readers. Happy October!
I love to think about inventions. I like to think about things that I could invent. Things that I should invent. Things that I wish I had invented. While thinking about things I wish I had invented it led me to those Scrubbing Bubble Toilet Wands.
You can switch out the brushes on the end and toss them because they collect so much bacteria that you don't even want to clean your toilet with the same one twice. Those were a great invention! I am guessing that you keep that great invention right next to your toilet, that flushes numerous times a day. Now how close to that toilet are you keeping your toothbrush? Every time that toilet flushes bacteria (and who knows what else!) is being thrown into the air and possibly and probably landing on your toothbrush. All together now....EEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW!!
Now we have all heard that you are supposed to change your toothbrush every three months, and that you should also change your toothbrush after you have a cold or flu, but what about all the bacteria that accumulates in between those times. What to do, what to do!
Well There is a toothbrush sanitizer that is perfect for those in between times!
All together now....YAY!
The toothbrush sanitizer is from Violight and can sanitize up to 4 toothbrushes at once in 6 minutes. There is also a travel size you can take on vacation with you. To sanitize it uses germicidal ultraviolet light to physically destroy the DNA of the offending microorganisms.
here is a link to check it out. http://violight.com/vitobrsa.html
Does anyone have one of these? Have you used one in the past? Comment and share what you think about it!

Say NO To Crack!

OK, Picture this. It's a hot and sweltering summer day. You have been working in the yard all afternoon and you are sweating and your lovely wife brings you a tall refreshing ice cold glass of tea, you toss down your rake and grab the glass and just as you start to take a drink, cold hits a tooth and instead of your thirst being quenched you feel like an ice pick is being stabbed into your tooth. Or maybe you are sitting down to watch a movie and you have a cup of milk and a plate of cookies and just as you get into a drama filled moment and take a bite of a cookie some of that sugar hits one tooth and suddenly you feel a sharp shooting pain that last longer than a Hollywood marriage. These are signs that a tooth may have a crack. A crack in a tooth is usually microscopic but to the germs in your mouth is may as well be the Grand Canyon and they take the opportunity to zip into the crack and wreak havoc. This commonly happens in teeth that have metal fillings. The metal expands and contracts with hot and cold (coffee and ice cream anyone?) Soon enough it doesn't have any room to expand anymore and it cracks! But if the cracks are microscopic and you can't see them with the naked eye, and even if you have an x-ray taken you can't see any sign of damage until the damage is quite large how do you know it's there? I have heard dentists say that cracked teeth is one of the most difficult problems to diagnose. They may just listen to your symptoms and then try to duplicate the pain you are describing (yikes!) yet Dr. Parkin doesn't seem to have any trouble finding these cracks. What is the difference between these dentists and Dr. Parkin. It is not that he eats lots of carrots and has perfect eyesight, it is because he uses an Intra-oral Camera.


The intra-oral camera has several benefits; it allows you as the patient to actually see what is happening in your own mouth and it allows Dr. Parkin to see a tooth magnified 30 times the actual size. That should help with seeing cracks, don't you think?





So, if you have a crack in a tooth what are the options for fixing it. If you catch it early enough you can have the old filling removed, the decay that is underneath removed and replace it with a composite (tooth colored) filling. Dr. Parkin doesn't use any metal fillings and hasn't since "When Doves Cry" was the number one song in the nation *1984* If you wait a bit longer, then the old filling and decay can be removed but the tooth may need a crown, and if you wait and wait and wait you can still have it fixed (although not cheaply) because small cavities turn into big cavities and eventually turn into root canals and then also need crowns. So, like most things, find the problem early and take care of it quickly!





Now, I know you are dying to see some cracked teeth--so at the top of the page there are some "before" pictures of teeth that we have fixed in our office. See if you can spot the cracks in them!

don't like getting headaches? me neither!

Good morning all my lovely blog readers. It has been a while since I have talked to you. I hope you all had a fun Labor Day weekend. Did you BBQ? Go out to the lake? Have some family visit? Ah….family visits. Does the simple thought of having relatives stay over for a 3 day weekend make your teeth clench? Well that is what we will be talking about today. Teeth clenching that is…not family visits.
Teeth clenching is often a habit you may have and not even know. It is especially common at night. So how do you know if you have this habit if you aren’t even aware of it? Well, do you ever wake up in the morning with a headache? Do you have a stiff or aching jaw, a sore neck, or sensitive teeth? If you said yes then you just may be clenching your teeth. The general rule is lips together teeth apart, if you find yourself with your teeth together during the day…catch yourself and quit doing it! But if you are doing it while you are sleeping, then how are you supposed to break that habit?
Well, the answer is an NTI. Technically, that means nocieptive trigeminal inhibition tension suppression system-but enough of that dental mumbo jumbo. What is an NTI in real words!

An NTI is a mouth guard of sorts. You wear it at night. It is a small piece about 1 inch in length and 2 centimeters in width that fits over your two front teeth. It is then fitted to YOUR teeth (so not the same as generic mouth guard you would buy at Wal-Mart) and it snaps into place nice and tight so you can’t remove it with your tongue or lips at night and choke on it (I was worried about that!) so once you have it in and you bite down your back teeth cannot touch. You just wear it at night and since those back teeth can now not touch, you can’t work those muscles that cause migraines, sore jaws, and sore necks. I have included 2 pictures at the bottom of the post. One without my NTI and one with my NTI so you can get a better picture of how and where it fits. I have been wearing my NTI for about a year now, (and since I was taught “never say never”) I will say that I very rarely get headaches anymore, when “pre-NTI” I would wake up with headaches 2-3 times a week. Not waking up with headaches that last all day makes me a very happy girl and keeps my co-workers very happy also!
If you would like more information on this wonderful device that I won’t sleep without anymore you can visit www.headacheprevention.com or you can call me at the office and we can talk some more about it.

love, your friendly dental assistant, Denise