Dental Blog - Farnham Road Dental Practice

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.

Braces that won’t steal your show

If you could get your teeth straightened in half a year or so, and not look like the nerdy kid at the front of the class while you did it, would you make braces a priority for 2019?

Having straighter teeth has several great benefits.

Cleaning

Even mildly misaligned teeth can be difficult to keep clean. Plaque builds up in nooks and crevices where the toothbrush finds it hard to get into. Plaque gives off acids that eat away at tooth enamel and gums, so misaligned teeth are more likely to develop decay and gum disease. This means that these teeth may not last as long as others.

Eating

If you have misalignments, there may be a chance that some of your teeth are bearing more of the brunt of chewing and eating than others. After years of taking all the strain, there is more chance they will crack and crumble in mid to later years of life. Straight teeth work as a team, spreading out the powerful forces that are created by chewing and biting.

Smiling

If you feel good about your teeth and how they look, you are more likely to smile. And every timey you smile, your body releases tiny amounts of serotonin, the happiness neuropeptide, making you feel happier and therefore more likely to smile. It’s an upward spiral.

Also, people respond to smiles with smiles of their own, and feelings of warmth and generosity.

Six Month Smiles

This system of braces uses brackets made of clear ceramic and fine tooth-coloured wires to straighten out the social six teeth at the front of the mouth, the ones most visible when we smile.

The average treatment time is only 6 months, hence the name. These teeth have only one root, which makes them easier to move with gentler forces, so the braces are smaller than your average metal train track braces.

After treatment with us at Farnham Road Dental Practice in Guildford, you will need to wear a retainer for some time while your jawbone hardens around the teeth in their new positions. You can have one bonded to the back of your teeth, or wear a removable retainer at night.

Is your smile ready for summer?

It might seem like we are being a bit previous here, but how is your smile going to look this summer? If you think the opportunities for selfies are endless during the winter months, summer is the time when you might find your smile on the other end of a professional photographer’s camera.

Six Month Smiles in Guildford Wedding season will soon be upon us, and there will be endless opportunities for your smile to end up on someone’s mantlepiece, or at the very least, in a photo album. If you are in your late 20s, it might even be the year of the wedding. Most of us have one year when it feels like every weekend one friend or another is tying the knot, so get your smile ready for being recorded for posterity.

One great way you can do this, especially if you are going to be playing an important role in a wedding, is to get your teeth straightened. It’s amazing how even the tiniest misalignments stand out in these days when perfect teeth have become obligatory. But there is a way you can get mild to moderate misalignments of the front 6-8 teeth sorted out in time for the summer wedding season. It’s called Six Month Smiles.

Six Month Smiles

Here at Farnham Road Dental Practice in Guildford, we love the way Six Month Smiles allows our patients to get the straight teeth they have been longing for without the embarrassment of having to go through months of metal train track braces. It’s not that metal braces don’t do a good job, it’s just that they are associated with being an adolescent. And many adults can’t afford to not look grown up while they are at work.

Discreet straightening

Six Months Smiles braces still have brackets and wires, but the brackets are smaller and made of clear ceramic. The wires are finer and coated in a tooth-coloured material, so the whole device blends in with the teeth rather than obscuring them. And these braces only need 6 months on average to straighten your teeth.

What’s not to love? Why not book a consultation to find out more?

The choices between replacement teeth

Now that most or all of your teeth have failed, what kind of replacement teeth will you have? Will be dentures, those tried, trusted and comparatively inexpensive replacement teeth? Or will it be a way of replacing teeth that may be completely new to you – dental implants?

Dental Implants in Guildford In Guildford, at Farnham Road Dental Practice, we know that our patients need a bit of time to think about the right way to replace their teeth. You need time to weigh up the pros and cons of the 2 methods. You may need to talk them over with us more than once, and that’s understandable too. This is a decision that will affect the rest of your life.

We are always happy to talk about the benefits our various treatments, and we won’t pressure you to decide on one method over the other. Let’s kick off that conversation now, with a look at what dental implants are and their benefits as replacement teeth.

Get your roots back

There is one important difference with dental implants and that is that they replace your tooth roots, not just the crowns of your teeth. Dentures, on the other hand, use suction to the gums and jawbone for their stability, so they need to fit really well.

Fusing with your jawbone

When you get dental implants put into your jawbone, they then fuse with it over the following 2-6 months. They can then withstand chewing pressures of 97kg or 200lbs, which is more pressure than the average male adult exerts when chewing. You can once again eat whatever takes your fancy, from toffee apples at the fair, to nuts and roast potatoes. Nothing is out of bounds due to lack of stability or fear of breakage.

Disappearing jawbone

Without tooth roots to stimulate cell renewal, the jawbone rapidly starts to disappear. The chin looks pointier, the face starts to collapse in on itself, and all of a sudden, you look older. Dental implants stop this happening.

Price

Although they have a high initial outlay compared to dentures, dental implants can last for decades and so end up costing about the same as dentures, which must be replaced every few years.

Is your tooth colour letting you down?

You may be one of Guildford’s most diligent tooth brushes and flossers, but no matter how on it you are with the oral hygiene, if your teeth are discoloured, they are never going to look amazing.

And that feeling that everyone notices what colour your teeth are? Well, it’s real. Human beings evolved to hone in each other’s smiles, firstly as a way as telling if someone is a friend or an enemy, but also as a way of assessing their general health. We can’t help but look.

Good news: teeth whitening is easy

The good news is that most discolouration is just surface. Staining builds up over the years after minute traces of drinks such as red wine, tea or coffee and foods such as rich tomato sauces get trapped in the pores of our tooth enamel.

It can be easily removed with a good teeth-whitening gel, such as Enlighten, which is what we use here at Farnham Road Dental Practice. In all the time we have been using the Enlighten system, we have had 100% success.

The active ingredient in teeth whitening gel is hydrogen peroxide. This whitener has been around for a couple of hundred years and is also used to bleach hair. It comes in different strengths. The gel we use is stronger by far than the gels you can buy in a supermarket or on the internet.

Whitening at home

If you’d like to get your teeth whitened, you need to come into the dental clinic so that we can take impressions of your teeth and use them to make you a pair of whitening trays that exactly fit your teeth. The trays ensure that there is maximum contact between the gel and your teeth.

You put the gel in the trays and wear them every day for a short period every day for 2-3 weeks. We also supply you with a desensitising gel as sensitivity can be an issue when you get your teeth whitened.

Whitening is not permanent, but you can top up your treatment every 3-4 months by wearing the gel trays overnight.

Six Month Smiles for discreet straightening

How much do you hate the idea of having braces on your teeth? Is it so much that you can only bear to get your teeth straightened if your braces are either completely hidden or almost invisible? Or do you not mind the world knowing you are having braces treatment as long as you don’t end up looking like a cross between a James Bond baddie and a large railway interchange?

If it’s the latter, then, at Farnham Road Dental Practice, we think we have got just the braces for you. They are called Six Month Smiles.

What are Six Month Smiles?

We could call these braces discreet rather than invisible. They are bracket and wire braces, but the brackets are smaller and are made of clear ceramic. The wires are finer and are coated with a tooth-coloured material. All in all, the braces blend in with your teeth rather than totally disappearing from view. Some even say they are rather attractive, like jewellery for the teeth.

Who can have Six Month Smiles?

These discreet braces are aimed at people who want mild to moderate misalignments on their front 6-8 teeth fixing. These teeth are the ones that are easiest to see in the mouth, and they have only one root each. This means that they are easier to move and therefore gentler forces can be used. Gentler forces mean smaller brackets and finer wires, plus more comfort.

How long do they take to work?

As the name suggests, these braces don’t take long to correct your teeth. Depending on your alignment issues, they can take as little as 4 months to do their job, or as long as 9 months, with 6 months being the average treatment time.

What about maintenance

After your teeth have reached their final position, you will need to wear a retainer to keep them in place while the newly formed bone hardens around them. You can have a retainer bonded to the back of your teeth, or you can wear a mouth guard-style retainer at night. If you lose things, go for the first option. After all, you don’t want your teeth to wander out of place after all that hard work.

You could have straighter teeth in time for your next summer holiday

If you have had enough of living with your wonky teeth, maybe now is the time to get started on the road to alignment. It doesn’t have to take forever, and your braces don’t have to be huge, clunky metal train tracks that take over your whole mouth. Modern braces treatments can be fast and discreet, especially if your alignment issues are related only to your teeth, and not to your jaw.

Six Month Smiles in Guildford If you are an adult with wonky teeth, it’s highly likely that your issues are in the mild to moderate bracket of wonkiness. Such issues can be sorted out relatively quickly.

Depending on how your teeth are right now, you could even have them straightened out by early summer next year.

That’s right, getting your teeth straightened doesn’t have to take forever. Here at Farnham Road Dental Practice in Guildford, we have a kind of brace that can take as little as 4 months to realign your teeth. It’s called Six Month Smiles, which is the average amount of time it takes to do its work.

Brackets and wires, but with a twist

Six Month Smiles uses the tried and trusted bracket and wire technology that steadily pulls teeth into their correct positions. However, with this make of braces, the brackets are smaller and made of clear ceramic, and the wire is finer and coated in a tooth-coloured material. As such, the braces blend in with the teeth rather than overwhelming them. They won’t be noticeable from across the room, and as people get closer it will take a while for them to spot your braces. They can even look rather good, like a necklace of glass for your teeth.

Who can have Six Month Smiles?

Here at Farnham Road Dental Practice, we use Six Month Smiles to treat people who want their front 6-8 teeth straightened. These are the teeth most on view when we speak and smile. They have only one root, which makes them easier and quicker to move.

Why not come in and find out if Six Month Smiles are your investment for 2019?

When were you last screened for mouth cancer?

One of the sad facts about cancer is that often people die from it because it was not detected early enough. Not all cancers have good survival rates but mouth and throat cancers do, provided they are detected in their early stages. Most cases of mouth cancer occur in older adults aged 50 to 74.

Detecting mouth cancers is not difficult. All that is required is a visual check of the mouth, and feel around in the neck, once a year. We carry out mouth cancer screening in Guildford here at Farnham Road Dental Practice, and we want to make sure that every one of our patients over about the age of 35 receives an annual screening. This is easy to achieve as long as our patients book a check-up twice a year; we just add a mouth cancer screening onto the check-up. It only takes a few minutes.

Taking a good look round

There are no complicated requirements for mouth cancer screening. All we have to do is take a careful look at your lips and inside your mouth, using a mirror for those hard-to-see places, such as under your tongue. We are on the look out for lumps and bumps that seem to have no reasons, red or white patches, and lesions that don’t heal.

We also use our fingertips to feel gently around in your neck and through your neck to your throat for anything that should not be there.

We will also have a chat with you and ask if you have noticed anything odd. You may have had tingling sensations that don’t go away, for example.

When we catch mouth cancer early, it is easy to treat. It is also fast growing, which is why, if you are worried about a lump or any hoarseness that hasn’t gone away after 3 weeks, you need to come in and get it checked out by your dental practice.

You are more at risk of mouth cancers if you are over 40, have been a smoker, drink alcohol, are obese or have the HPV virus. November is Mouth Cancer Action Month, come into to us to find out more.

Get screened for mouth cancer

When you think of cancer, which ones do you worry about? Breast cancer? Prostate? Bowel? How about mouth and throat cancers? It probably never crossed your mind that you might get cancer in your mouth or throat, but mouth cancers account for 2% of all cancers in the UK. Each year 6,800 people are diagnosed with mouth cancer.

Mouth Cancer Screening in Guildford Scientists say that these numbers are on the rise. What’s driving the rise in mouth and throat cancers? Well, it’s a lifestyle thing. This means that you are more likely to develop mouth and throat cancers as you get older and your lifestyle catches up with you. Smoking and drinking play a large part in people developing mouth cancers. Being overweight also makes it more likely you will develop mouth cancers and so does not eating plenty of fruit and veg.

The good news is that, if it caught early, mouth cancer is easily treated. So, to stay on top of mouth cancer, you need to come for a mouth cancer screening in Guildford once a year. We can tack it onto one of your 6-monthly check-ups.

What to expect in your mouth cancer screening

We will be looking for visual evidence of mouth cancer by carefully examining your lips and the inside of your mouth. We will use a mirror to make sure we can see everywhere:

Your tongue and under your tongue
The back of your throat
Your palate
Inside your cheeks
All around your gums.

Then we will use our fingertips to have a good, but gentle, feel of your throat through your neck, probing for any lumps and bumps that shouldn’t be there.

We will also want to know if you have been aware of any odd things like developing a hoarse voice or a cough or a tingle that won’t go away.

If we do find something and it’s in its early stage, simply having it removed in a minor surgery should be enough. As long as you come every year for a mouth cancer screening, there is no need for any problems to develop beyond the early stages.