Dental Blog - Farnham Road Dental Practice

All you need to know about Six Month Smiles in Guilford

If you wish your teeth were straighter, but are discouraged by the prospect of wearing traditional metal braces, you may be interested in alternative teeth straightening options. Luckily, dentistry has evolved in recent years and there are now many teeth straightening treatment options that are more discreet than metal braces.

Six Month Smiles in Guilford If you are conscious about your smile, but do not want to wear braces for months on end, then Six Month Smiles at Farnham Road Dental Practice may be the ideal treatment for you. Six Month Smiles is a fixed braces system that straightens your front teeth in six months or less. Our experienced dentists will examine your teeth and help you determine whether this is the right treatment for you.

How is this treatment different from traditional braces?

In addition to being more discreet than metal braces because they are made of tooth-coloured brackets and wires, Six Month Smiles provide additional advantages. Using traditional and modern teeth straightening techniques, Six Month Smiles braces will try to gently guide your teeth into place, without altering your bite. For this reason, they are more comfortable than traditional braces.

More importantly, treatment with Six Month Smiles braces can also be completed in a shorter period of time than treatment with regular braces. Since these braces focus only on certain teeth, they require less time than metal braces.

Is there any risk of tooth damage?

Straightening your teeth with Six Month Smiles braces is not riskier than treatment with regular braces. The faster movement of the teeth is the result of a very light force for a gentler adjustment.

Are Six Month Smiles braces right for me?

The best way to find out if you are a good candidate for Six Month Smiles in Guilford, is to get in touch with our dental team and schedule a consultation. Most people can have this type of treatment as long as they have mild alignment issues. However, patients with severely crooked teeth and bite problems will not benefit from this treatment.

For more information about Six Month Smiles in Guilford, feel free to call us today and we will book a consultation appointment for you.

Fast-acting braces in Guilford

Do you want to improve your smile, but are worried about the time required for traditional braces to work? Are you also concerned about the look of metal brackets and wires? Six Month Smiles could be the ideal treatment for you.

At Farnham Road Dental Practice, we appreciate that some patients do not want to wear metal braces for years or they are concerned that other teeth straightening procedures could be too invasive or too expensive. For this reason, we offer Six Month Smiles in Guilford, an effective, safe and affordable cosmetic solution that fits your lifestyle.

Six Month Smiles in Guilford Using a combination of traditional techniques and high-quality materials, Six Month Smiles clear braces can straighten your teeth in an average time of just six months. Virtually invisible, Six Month Smiles braces allow you to smile while undergoing treatment.

How does Six Month Smiles work?

Unlike regular braces, Six Month Smiles uses low force to move teeth more comfortably. Many people think that the accelerated treatment means added discomfort, but that is not true. This treatment takes advantage of standard teeth straightening mechanics, but with an emphasis on the cosmetic appearance of your teeth rather than the position of your bite. For this reason, discomfort is minimal as your teeth are gently repositioned.

Am I a good candidate for Six Month Smiles braces?

Six Month Smiles braces are specifically designed to straighten the front six teeth. This type of short-term teeth straightening treatment is appropriate for treating mild dental problems such as mild crowding of the front teeth, closing gaps between teeth, aligning the gum line and alignment of flared teeth. Severely crooked teeth and bite issues can only be treated with regular braces.

Does Six Month Smiles treatment hurt?

When you first have your braces fitted, it is normal to experience mild discomfort, while your mouth adjusts to them. However, this is usually gone within a couple of weeks and can be managed with common painkillers. It is also common to feel some discomfort following adjustment appointments as the teeth adapt to their new position, but this usually goes away after a few hours.

Why dental implants are so fantastic

Since dental implants first came on the market for dental patients over 30 years ago, implant dentists have been experimenting with them to find new ways to make this method of tooth restoration more versatile and therefore available to more people.

What makes dental implants so important is that their invention marked the first time in modern dentistry that there was a way to replace the root of the tooth as well as the crown.

Dental Implants in Guildford This may not sound like a big deal, until, that is, you lose enough teeth to have to have dentures. That’s when you get the list of foods to avoid, and foods that need to be cut up because your dentures may stay stuck in them. Roots hold the teeth in place so that they can withstand the multidirectional forces created by biting and chewing. For the average male, these forces are about 97kg or 200lbs. That’s a lot of force. Dentures rely on suction to the gums for stability and therefore can only deliver about 25% of that force.

And that’s not the only thing that dental implants do that dentures and bridges can’t. They can also maintain a strong, healthy jawbone. Roots have another job, which is to transmit tremors created when the crowns meet in biting and chewing down into the jawbone. These tremors tell the surrounding bone cells that the jawbone is still in use, triggering cell renewal. If those signals cease, very quickly the jawbone actually starts to dissolve itself, thinking it’s no longer in use. From the outside, this appears as the chin seeming to get pointier and nearer to the nose, and a collapse inwards of the cheeks. Unless you’re into gurning, it’s not a good look.

At Farnham Road Dental Practice in Guildford, dental implants can replace more than one tooth at a time. That would cost a fortune. One implant can hold up to three teeth. A whole jaw of teeth can be inserted on between four and six implants. Another option is to get your dentures customised so they can be stabilised with mini implants.

A youthful smile is easier than you think

One of the simplest ways to bring back a youthful look is not through any type of temporary or permanent treatment with facial aesthetics. Such treatments are great too, but if you want a less invasive way to recapture some lost years, get your teeth whitened.

As a rule, ageing teeth lose their whiteness, and there are numerous causes for this. Even though they look like impenetrable solids, tooth enamel is porous and stains can sink into it.

Teeth Whitening in Guildford Yellowing can partly be blamed on what we eat and drink. The tannins in tea, black coffee, red wines and colas all discolour the teeth. You have only to look at your fingers after eating blackberries or blueberries to understand that they stain the teeth too. Is it even worth mentioning that tobacco is terrible for the teeth, turning them shades of yellow, grey and dark brown over time. Also, some antibiotics stain the teeth.

You can see that none of these causes is much to do with your age. However, discoloured teeth can make you look older than you are. We correctly associate yellowing teeth with advancing years. Over the years, brushing gradually wears away the outer layer of enamel, allowing the yellower dentin below to show through.

Thankfully, teeth whitening works on everyone, no matter their age. At Farnham Road Dental Practice in Guildford, we use the Enlighten home tooth whitening system. This is the only system that allows you to choose the shade of your teeth after two weeks of home whitening. In the 10 years that we have been using Enlighten, we have never had a disappointed patient who has used our teeth whitening in Guildford.

Your treatment process

You come in to see us so that we can take impressions of your teeth, from which we make bespoke whitening mouth trays. You take these home, along with the whitening gel. You put the gel in the trays and wear them overnight, or during the day for several hours, for about two or three weeks. After which you will have a guaranteed B1 shade of white, the brightest there is.

To maintain it, you need to wear the gel trays overnight for a night or two every three to four months.

Health benefits of straighter teeth

Many adults seek our help to get straighter teeth for cosmetic reasons, but having straight teeth actually makes your whole mouth healthier. Even having minor adjustments to our teeth can help us keep our teeth into later life.

Of course, the cosmetic reasons are still important. Having confidence in the way we look can open many doors to us in our social lives, love lives and even careers.

Six Month Smiles in Guildford With modern dental treatments, it’s easier than ever for us to straighten our teeth. Because of the new wave of treatments, we also have much more choice on how we straighten our teeth.

Which treatment you choose mainly depends on how much adjustment you want to make to your teeth. Here at Farnham Road Dental Practice in Guildford, we’re here to help you start your journey to perfect teeth.

Options: cosmetic braces

For those of us who want to straighten our teeth to perfect our smiles, there are cosmetic braces. These treatments generally act faster than traditional braces.

In Guildford, Six Month Smiles can, as the name suggests, straighten your teeth in just six months. This also depends on the amount of adjustment you want and how your teeth react to treatment. Most treatments take between four and nine months, which is much faster than any traditional brace treatment.

Six Month Smiles treatment acts so fast because it focuses on just the front six teeth. These are the teeth that are visible when we smile. Because the rear teeth aren’t involved, the treatment time is drastically reduced.

Treatment is also much more subtle than dental treatment in the past. Six Month Smiles uses clear ceramic brackets and tooth-coloured wires that blend in with the teeth.

Options: aligners

There are more kinds of braces available now than ever. Invisalign treatment uses clear plastic tooth trays that, in succession, change in shape.

The tooth trays are transparent, making them almost completely undetectable and are removable, making meal times much less of a hassle. Invisalign can achieve drastic results without the big impact on your normal lifestyle.

Both treatments can improve your quality of life by giving you a big confidence boost.

Choosing an alternative to traditional braces

Many adults want to have straighter teeth but are put off by the reputation and look of traditional ‘train track’ braces commonly worn by teenagers. These types of braces are the most tried and tested method of straightening teeth, but come with disadvantages.

One of the most common issues people have with traditional braces is how they look when the treatment is underway. They are also difficult to keep clean. Combine these issues with long treatment times (around two years) and you can understand why people are seeking alternatives.

Six Month Smiles in Guildford Luckily, due to the huge amount of demand for alternative treatments, there has been a boom in treatments that can offer many different advantages.

Cosmetic braces

For adults who wish to adjust their teeth for mainly cosmetic reasons, there has been a wave of what are known as cosmetic braces. These types of treatments generally have shorter treatment times, and more subtle appliances but can only achieve cosmetic adjustments.

Practices like Farnham Road Dental Practice offer Six Month Smiles. In Guildford, your teeth could be adjusted to perfection in just six months, a huge improvement on traditional braces.

Your treatment with Six Month Smiles is also much more subtle, utilising tooth-coloured wires and brackets. This doesn’t sound like much of a difference, but when the braces are being used, they are hardly noticeable.

How does it work?

Six Month Smiles works so fast because the treatment only adjusts the ‘social six’ – the front six teeth that are visible when you smile.

Because the treatment doesn’t affect the rear teeth, it can act much faster, getting you results in no time.

One of the main cosmetic complaints we hear from adults is that they would like their teeth to be straighter. Now, this is possible with more modern treatments that have much less effect on your everyday lifestyle.

In the social world, confidence is key. Having a warm and welcoming smile could open many doors in our social lives, love lives and even our careers. So, why wait to get the smile you’ve always dreamt of?

Call for an appointment with us at Farnham Road Dental Practice to begin your journey.

Teeth whitening with Enlighten technology in Guilford

In our modern world, where TV, magazines and social media are the centre of attention, we are constantly bombarded with people sporting the most impressive set of pearly white teeth. It’s common knowledge that most celebrities have had work done on their teeth to make them white, yet this doesn’t stop us from feeling inadequate about our own teeth.

Teeth whitening is a popular, painless and effective cosmetic dentist procedure carried at many dental practices in the UK. At Farnham Road Dental Practice we use teeth whitening with Enlighten technology, which has been around for at least 10 years with highly reliable results.

How teeth become discoloured

As we grow older, our teeth tend to become yellow and discoloured. There are several causes behind this process and most are not usually immediate oral health concerns. However, yellow and discoloured teeth can affect the aesthetics of your smile and make you look older than you actually are.

Teeth are subject to wear and, as the enamel wears away, the inner layer of the tooth is exposed, causing teeth to appear yellow. Certain medications can also make teeth appear yellow and cause stains. Moreover, some people are genetically predisposed to have yellow and stained teeth, though in most cases it is a matter of diet and lifestyle. If you drink too much tea, coffee and red wine, you may have yellow and discoloured teeth. Finally, patients who smoke or use tobacco products are also more likely to experience tooth discolouration.

How can Enlighten help?

There are now many teeth whitening products on the market, but we always recommend whitening your teeth with the help of a dentist, as this is the only safe method and has been proven to produce the best and most long-lasting results. At Farnham Road Dental Practice, we use the Enlighten system. This treatment involves wearing custom-made whitening trays to gradually improve the shade of your teeth. You wear the trays overnight or for a few hours during the day for two to three weeks, depending on the shade of whiteness you wish to achieve. At the end of the treatment, you can proudly display your new smile.

Oral health prevention with mouth cancer screening in Guilford

A diagnosis of any form of cancer can be very disturbing. However, what most people fail to understand is that cancer can be fought off and treated, especially if it is diagnosed at an early stage. Mouth cancer, in particular, may appear in any part of the mouth including the lips, the interior of the cheeks, the gums, the roof or floor of your mouth, as well as the tongue and tonsils. Early diagnosis is the main reason why oral cancer screenings are essential.

Mouth Cancer Screening in Guilford Mouth cancer, tends to affect people who are over 40 and statistically, men are more prone to be diagnosed with mouth cancer than women. Smokers and heavy drinkers are also more likely to develop mouth cancer, but a lot of cases will not have any previous risk factors, which is why you need to schedule for regular mouth cancer screenings at Farnham Road Dental Practice.

The earliest signs of mouth cancer may be mistaken for other problems, such as a toothache or cold. If symptoms persist for several days or weeks, it is important to see your dentist so that, if mouth cancer is present, it can be diagnosed as soon as possible. Many of these symptoms can be due to other, less serious problems, but this can only be determined by your dentist.

What to expect during a typical mouth cancer screening

A mouth cancer screening is a painless, non-invasive test that can be compared to similar screening tools used for other cancers, such as the mammogram for breast cancer. During a mouth cancer screening examination, your dentist looks inside your mouth and throat to check for red or white patches or mouth sores. Your dentist will also touch the tissues in your mouth to check for lumps or other skin and tissue abnormalities. Mouth cancer screening is really important and it is recommended to be performed at least once a year, especially if you are at high risk of developing mouth cancer. When detected and treated early, oral cancer is curable in most cases.

Get in touch

If you feel that you would benefit from a mouth cancer screening in Guilford, contact our friendly team today.

Keeping hold of life’s great pleasures

As we age and bits of our bodies no longer work as well as they once did, life can get pretty limited. But if we work on our bodies, keeping fit and healthy for as long as we can, then we have a good chance of enjoying our later years rather than enduring them.

Thankfully, modern dentistry means that we can entirely replace teeth and what they do — no half measures and soft food diets any more, when you choose dental implants at Farnham Road Dental Practice in Guildford.

Why do we say half measures?

This is because traditional methods for replacing lost teeth — flexible dentures and bridges — only replace the crowns of the teeth, and not the roots. Imagine if you try to replace a tree by sticking one without roots on top of the ground. It’s not going to do a very good job of staying upright in the even the slightest breeze. And that is also the thing with teeth, they need their roots to do their job of biting and chewing properly.

The roots hold the teeth stable when you bite and chew. You can get that stability with a bridge, but you have to lose the use of two perfectly good healthy teeth to do so. These teeth are ground down to create abutments to fix the bridge onto. You can never have them back as normal teeth again.

Dentures rely on suction to the gums, and this works pretty well for a while, if you want to spend the rest of your life on a soft food diet. The gums give about a quarter of the stability of tooth roots, so really interesting chewy, crunchy foods are off the menu. Goodbye apples, goodbye steaks, hello soft mushy foods and fewer nutrients.

The other thing about implants is they keep your jawbone strong and healthy, acting as transmitter of the vibrations from biting and chewing that tells the jawbone to renew itself. Dentures and bridges can’t do this, and the jawbone quickly starts to resorb, shrinking in size and density. Before too long, dentures no longer fit and are even less good at chewing food. For food fans, surely implants are the only way to go.

Brackets or aligners?

In 21^st century Guildford, at Farnham Road Dental Practice, orthodontics has a variety of systems that can straighten teeth, each with its own virtues. It can be hard to know which to choose. Let’s take a look at two of our most popular systems for adults who want simple misalignments corrected: Invisalign and Six Month Smiles.

Invisalign

Orthodontics in Guildford This is one of the big success stories of the digital age. Invisalign came into being at the start of the millennium thanks to a man who’d just had his teeth straightened and was wearing his overnight removable retainer. He wondered if it would be possible to actually straighten teeth with retainer-like aligners that could be removed for eating and tooth cleaning. And, with the advent of 3D printing, there was suddenly a way to produce precision-made aligners for each patient. Fast forward to 2017 and over four million people across the globe have now had their teeth straightened with Invisalign.

It takes between 12 and 48 aligners to move the teeth, each one an incremental step that doesn’t quite fit, producing the pressure that nudges the teeth gently along to alignment. The aligners must be worn for at least 20 hours a day, so discipline is required for this straightening system. One pleasing bonus for many people is that because Invisalign aligners discolour easily, wearers can only drink water when they are in place, and so often find that by the end of treatment they have lost quite a bit of weight from having to cut out mindless snacking and coffees.

Six Month Smiles

This system makes use of the tried and trusted bracket and wire system, but because the braces are making smaller corrections to the front teeth only, which have fewer roots than the back teeth, gentler forces are required.

This means the brackets can be smaller, and also made of clear ceramic. The wires are thinner too and are made of tooth-coloured nickel titanium. The braces blend in with the teeth rather than dominating them. Six Month Smiles get the done job in an average of six months, and a retainer must be worn afterwards to keep the teeth in place.