Dental Blog - Farnham Road Dental Practice

It is time to renew your chew?

It’s great to know that you have a new set of dentures which will allow you to smile again…. But how well are you chewing your food? If you had your dentures fitted a while ago, they may have started to move around your mouth a little, and this could mean you are not eating everything you want to.

If this is the case it could be time for denture stabilisation in Guildford and we have all the information you need on how to proceed here at Farnham Road Dental Practice!

Oh no, this sounds complicated?

There really is no need to panic! This is very common as over time when wearing dentures, you can lose the support of the bones underneath. Soft tissue will also start to recede and this is why many people are in a constant state of discomfort when trying to accomplish everyday functions such as eating or even laughing and smiling. This is why you need extra support for your dentures and the modern solution of denture stabilisation in Guildford really comes into its own.

But how is denture stabilisation achieved?

This process is extremely simple, quick and safe and also the perfect alternative for those who do not want to undertake the procedure of having individual implants. Our dental professionals will discuss the whole process fully with you beforehand, so you know exactly what will take place.

Implants will be surgically placed in your jaw and over a period time will naturally start to join with the bone and tissue. Once full integration has taken place the dentures will be fixed securely to the implants, however, this means that the dentures will not be able to be taken out for cleaning purposes, as previously.

So how should I clean my dentures when they are fixed?

It is most important to ensure that any food has been cleaned away, using a soft toothbrush is preferable, as harder bristles can scratch the denture material.

What will the result of this procedure be?

Your dentures will have much more support and be fixed securely so that you can eat what you want and smile when you want! It will stop your jaws receding and therefore keep the natural shape of your face. It will assist you in regaining your confidence in social situations.

Welcome back normal life

It will be a relief for you to know that with this simple procedure your teeth will no longer be moving around your mouth, making everyday tasks so hard. Once you have spoken to one of our team and started on the road to a more stable set of teeth you really won’t look back.

At Farnham Road Dental Practice we have all the knowledge and experience needed to make your treatment as comfortable as possible, ensuring that you can enjoy all the benefits of your denture stabilisation in Guildford. So say goodbye to teeth in a glass every night and hello to apples, pears, chatting, smiling and laughing!

Do you need dental implants in Guildford to brighten up your smile?

If you dread any social interaction because you are embarrassed about your teeth and hide your mouth with your hand when talking or smiling, then a trip to see us at Farnham Road Dental Practice could just be the thing for you!

One of our many different solutions for a whole array of dental problems is that of dental implants in Guildford. As we get older it can become harder and harder to grow old gracefully with a beautiful smile if you have teeth missing from decay or from a sporting accident. But just how do implants work and are they the best option for your needs?

How dental implants work

If you have knocked out a tooth by accident or even have one missing due to gum disease, your dental practitioner may suggest dental implants in Guildford as a solution for you. Modern day implants look like natural teeth and can last, if looked after well, for a very, very long time.

Vintage is the groovy trend at the moment, but not when it comes to a nice set of pearlies! But don’t panic, super modern implants are in fashion now! And the procedure couldn’t be any simpler. A small, strong post, generally made from titanium, is placed into the jaw bone and then the artificial tooth is connected to it. Even if you have a number of teeth missing, it is possible to attach more than one tooth onto the implant, so that you get your normal functioning teeth and happy smile back. You will also need to be prepared to make regular trips back to your dentist before the actual implant is finally secured in your mouth, as our technicians will need a little time to craft the parts that are needed.

Oral health is the name of the game!

Everyone should have a good home oral health care regime and this is no different after you have had implants. Artificial teeth actually promote healthy bone growth and caring for them couldn’t be simpler. It’s easy, just make sure that you floss to prevent bacteria and plaque building up and brush your teeth twice a day.

Goodbye gaps and hello new pearly whites!

Once you have come and discussed your needs with us and we have laid all your options out on the table, you will be at the beginning of your new dental journey. We will ensure that we are with you every step of the way, this support will ultimately help you to reach your goal, allowing you to regain your confidence and boost your self-esteem.

With a regime of good home oral health care, combined with regular check-ups on your artificial teeth from your dentist, a brand new smile should last for many years to come.

So get with the trend of modern, magnificent dentistry and enjoy your life again, laughing and chatting…and all without your hand in front of your mouth!

Reinventing the visit to the dentist

Are you one of those people who have had a lifetime of having to steel yourself every time you go to the dentist? Of shaking, sweating with anxiety when you get there, maybe not even being able to go over the threshold of the clinic?

Nervous Patients in Guildford Being scared of the dentist may be entirely irrational, but no amount of logic can help solve a phobia. And about 13% of the world’s population suffers from dental phobia. This is the extreme end of being scared to visit the dentist.

What’s so scary about the dentist?

There are so many aspects of dentistry that can frighten people. Some people are scared of needles. Others have developed a phobia about the drill. Some have had their fears passed onto them from watching parents who were also scared of the dentist. For others, their fears stem from an unfortunate experience in their childhood, back when dentistry was more brutal than today. Now dentists are routinely trained to calm and soothe nervous patients.

The knock-on effects of being a nervous patient

If you keep trying and failing to get to the dentist because of your fears, it could be years since you had a check-up, let alone any treatment. It’s not uncommon for nervous patients to have waited until things have gotten very bad inside their mouths before the pain finally drives them into the dentist for emergency treatment.

The trouble with putting off check-ups and treatments is that any treatments are always going to be driven by an emergency. That means more pain, more anaesthetic, and more time in the chair.

It’s far better to find a way to reduce the anxiety. One way is to tell us about your fears and then we can work together to help to reduce them. Of course, sedation is available. We also suggest coming in to view the practice and having a chat with us before you even think about booking an appointment for a check-up or treatment. We can talk about what makes you anxious and find ways to enable you to relax. Just getting to know us will take some of your anxiety away.

Nervous? You’re not the only one

Being scared of the dentist used to be thought of as something a bit silly. Few people liked to own up to it, especially if they were big, strong, capable people who weren’t scared of anything else. Nowadays, however, fear of the dentist has been recognised as being very common. Even extreme fear of the dentist, that which is so bad as to be termed a phobia, is not unusual. Around 13% of the world’s population are classified as suffering from dental phobia.

Nervous Patients in Guildford It’s nice to know you are not alone, but even nicer if you know that your dentist knows all about dental phobia and has trained in ways to make it easier to bear.

What does dental phobia feel like?

Dental phobia is more than just being a bit nervous. You may experience panic attacks, shakiness and sweating, just at the thought of going to the dentist. This level of fear often leads patients to cancel appointments, if they manage to make them in the first place.

The vicious cycle of dental phobia

Suffering from dental phobia can lead to a vicious cycle of avoiding check-ups, ignoring mild symptoms of decay and gum disease, cancelling or just not showing up for more appointments, and then finally only coming along when the pain in the mouth is stronger than the discomfort of extreme anxiety.

By this stage, treatments are more likely to be invasive and lengthy, involving local anaesthetics, which for those of us who are scared of needles is a particular nightmare. Long, involved treatments only serve to reinforce the fear, no matter how gentle and caring the dental staff have been.

Are you a sufferer of dental phobia?

If you think you might be dental phobic, it’s important that you tell the staff at Farnham Road Dental Practice when you first come and register with us. Or, if you have been too scared in the past to tell us, then tell us now. We won’t laugh at you or scold you. We just want to make sure that we offer you all the knowledge and experience we have in dealing with nervous patients, so that we can make your next experience a positive one.

The road to dental implants

Some dental treatments are done in a matter of minutes. Others take as much as a year to complete. The treatment is a journey of several stages and sometimes long periods between those stages. But the destination is well worth the trek. One of those treatments is dental implants, the modern way to replace lost teeth.

Dental Implants in Guildford Let’s take a look at the stages involved in getting dental implants here at Farnham Road Dental Practice is Guildford:

Consultation

This is much more than a chat. We take an in-depth look at your mouth and particularly at your jawbone. We need to make sure that your jawbone is robust enough for treatment and to sustain the dental implants once you start chewing on them with full power.

Preparatory work

If we think your jawbone has deteriorated, we can suggest getting bone grafts, or sinus lifts, or, if it’s the upper jaw, having extra-long dental implants that anchor into your cheekbone.

If you have had gaps for a while, your remaining teeth may have wandered a bit and you may need to wear braces for a while to put them back into alignment so there is enough space to fit your implants.

All this can extra months to your treatment journey.

You may also need to have other failing teeth extracted.

Implant surgery

This is a minor surgical operation that takes place under local anaesthetic. We are usually done in a morning or an afternoon.

Healing time

This is the important bit. You need to allow 2-6 months, depending on your individual healing speed, for your dental implants to integrate with your jawbone. During this time, the jawbone grows new bone tissue, including blood vessels, all over the surface of the dental implant.

Fitting the crowns

The final part is fitting the hand-crafted porcelain crowns. Once they are in place, you can eat whatever you like.

Maintenance

This is the easy part. A diligent oral health care routine and regular hygienist sessions to remove plaque is all you need to take care of your dental implants.

Want to know more? Why not book a chat with our implant dentist?

Modern options for replacing lost teeth

Back in the day of your grandparents, if you lost all your teeth, you’d only get one option for replacing them and that would be with dentures. Dentures are replacement crowns set on a plate that is gum-coloured and fits over the gums, relying on suction for stability.

Dental Implants in Guildford Dentures were big news in their day in the mid-20^th century. In fact, for a couple of decades, there was a big trend to have all your teeth removed as a young adult and replace them with dentures; the idea being that it would give you great teeth for life and save on dental costs.

People didn’t know how much dentures were going to wobble around.

However, that was then, and this is now. Now, we have more choices and one of those is replacement teeth that are firmly anchored into the jawbone and never wobble.

This latest generation of replacement teeth are called dental implants and they work so well because they replace the root of the tooth too, which dentures don’t.

At Farnham Road Dental Practice in Guildford, more and more of our patients are having dental implants fitted because they are the best way to mimic the teeth that have been lost.

Imagine how hard it is to get a good chew going using teeth that are resting on the gums and don’t always fit so well after a while. You can see that you might be reduced to living on soft foods only and having to cut your food into small pieces before you eat.

With dental implants, you get your full chewing power back and with it, the full range of food choices return too. If you want to bite into a toffee apple at the fair, go right ahead. You won’t need to worry that you’ll become one of the comedy acts when your teeth stay in the apple.

Getting dental implants starts with coming in for a consultation. We need to find out how strong your jawbone is, and whether or not it will be able to hold onto the implant once you start chewing on it.

Give the clinic a call and let’s get going on your new set of teeth.

What to expect with dental implant surgery

If you have been thinking about replacing your lost or failing teeth with dental implants, you may have been talking to friends and colleagues about the process. You may even have heard stories of terrible pain endured and long healing processes suffered through.

Dental Implants in Guildford If you have, please don’t take them all as gospel. Human beings have a habit of making medical procedures sound worse than they actually are. It’s better to find out from us at Farnham Road Dental Practice in Guildford than from someone who may be subconsciously trying to make themselves sound heroic.

So, here’s quick heads-up of what to expect if you decide to get dental implants fitted.

Which teeth?

It all starts with an in-depth consultation. Our implant dentist will carry out a thorough examination of your teeth, to be clear about what needs to be replaced. You may have teeth that are starting to fail, and it might be easier to take them out now and replace them with crowns on a dental implant. For example, if you have a gap and one or both teeth either side of it are looking likely to fail in the near-ish future, you can get them taken out now and have the whole lot replaced on one dental implant.

Your jawbone

The implant surgeon will also need to take a good look at your jawbone with x-rays and scans. This is to see if it is strong and dense enough to sustain dental implants. If it has deteriorated, you might need to have preparatory work done, in the shape of bone grafts or sinus lifts. Or you could have extra-long implants that anchor into your cheekbones.

The procedure

This takes place under local anaesthetic, which is more than enough to numb the jawbone, which has very few nerves in it to transmit pain signals. If you are nervous, you can also have sedation so that you can deeply relax.

Afterwards

We recommend a day in bed to recover. Any pain can be treated with over-the-counter painkillers. Plus, a liquid diet for a week or so and soft food until your implants have integrated with your jawbone, in 2-6 months.

Give us a call for an exploratory chat.

Keep your youthful profile with dental implants

What is it about people that tells us how old they are? There are signs that we associate with age. Silver hair is one. Mottled skin is another. Stiffness of movement one more. And lastly, there is the pointy chin that seems to come up to the end of the nose.

Dental Implants in Guildford This last one is not caused by age, but by loss of teeth. When a tooth is lost, the bone around where the tooth used to be starts to disappear. It literally melts away, and it doesn’t take very long to do so either.

Resorption

This is the technical term for when the body dissolves part of itself. This is what it does with the jawbone when a tooth has come out. The jawbone can lose up to 25% of its size and density in the first year alone after tooth loss. If you have lost a tooth, you can probably feel quite an arch in the bone where it used to be if you run your tongue over it.

Tipping over

As the bone melts away, the nutrients are sent for use elsewhere in the body, which is efficient. But the effect is that the neighbouring teeth are no longer held so securely in their sockets and they can start to tip into the gap and may even fall out, and so a domino effect can start to take place.

Stop resorption

It is possible to stop resorption, but it means having to replace the lost tooth root as well as the crown. Dentures and fixed bridgework won’t stop it, but dental implants will. Dental implants, which are available from us at Farnham Road Dental Practice in Guildford, are the only tooth replacement method that replaces the root of the tooth as well as the crown.

One dental implant can replace up to 3 teeth on a bridge. Dental implants last for a long time, maybe even the rest of your life, so they are a great investment.

Find out more

If you’d like to know more, please call us and come in for a chat and a consultation. You can keep your youthful profile with dental implants in your jaw.

Teeth whitening is not just for the young

It may seem like the young are mad for perfect teeth, and that if you are over 40, you have better things to spend your money on. If that’s the case, then at the Guildford Dentist in Guildford, we’d like you to think again.

Teeth Whitening in Guildford Teeth whitening is the world’s most popular cosmetic dental treatment and with good reason. White teeth are indicative of youth and good health. And smiles are the way that evolution programmed us to suss out other people’s health.

Think about what you notice about someone when you meet them for the first time. You notice whether or not they smile at you. If they give you a big smile, you will think they are very friendly, but you will also notice what state their teeth are in. If they are yellow or grey with stains, if they are broken or wonky, you may find yourself drawing back a little on the inside. This is your evolutionary programming telling you that while this person is not an enemy, you won’t want to get too close to them in case they carry infection.

That’s how smiles work, so you need to make sure yours is working to your advantage and not against you.

Getting your teeth whitened is one easy step to improving all your social interactions, no matter how old you are. In fact, the older you are, the more likely you are to need teeth whitening.

This is because stains build up on the teeth over time, and cannot always be removed with toothbrushing or a session with the hygienist. If you have spent a lifetime enjoying tea, coffee, red wine, tomato sauces, maybe even smoking, then the pores in your tooth enamel will be clogged with the residues.

Teeth whitening lifts out these stains and also oxidises the tooth enamel to lighten it, transforming your teeth and taking years off your visual impact.

Whitening with us is easy to do at home with one of our kits. It’s not a permanent treatment but once the main whitening is done, you can top up your treatment easily at home every few months.

Teeth whitening: it couldn’t be simpler

Ever wondered how teeth whitening works? It’s quite simple really. Teeth whitening gel contains hydrogen peroxide as its active ingredient. Hydrogen peroxide is water with an extra oxygen atom.

Teeth Whitenin in Guildford Hydrogen peroxide was discovered a couple of centuries ago and since then it has been used mostly for cleaning cuts and wounds and also for whitening things.

It works by reacting with the stains on the teeth and gently lifting them out of the pores of the tooth enamel. These stains are the residue of highly pigmented foods and drinks that you have consumed. Typically, they include:

coffee
tea
red wine
tomato sauces
tobacco smoke
certain medications.

The build-up of these stains causes your tooth enamel to lose its light reflecting qualities and over time, they can start to look dull and discoloured.

At the Guildford Dentist in Guildford, we use the Enlighten whitening system. This is the only system that guarantees you a B1 shade of white, which is the whitest shade there is. Of course, you do not have go that white if you don’t want to.

Here’s how it works:

You come into the clinic and we make you a pair of bespoke gel trays that fit your teeth exactly. We do this by taking impressions of your teeth. Once they are ready for you, we give you a whitening kit containing the gel and the trays, and you take it home.

Every day, you put the gel in the trays and pop them on over your teeth for a short period. The gel will lift out the stains over the next 2-3 weeks.

Unfortunately, the stains build up again, so you need to maintain the treatment by wearing your gel-filled trays once or twice a month.

You can also extend the life of your treatment by avoiding the foods and drinks mentioned above, or by brushing your teeth after you have them.

If you find you get sensitive teeth from whitening them, there are special toothpastes available to reduce the sensitivity.

Now that winter is drawing to a close, it’s time to get rid of the evidence of all those hot drinks and red wines. Book an appointment today.