When that occurs, instead of your teeth all sharing equally in the function of chewng, some are forced to work overtime to compensate for missing, broken or shorter teeth.

If you were driving your car with two bald tires and two new tires, it would create a rough ride.The analogy is comparable when it comes to your teeth. If you chew on an uneven surface a tooth can crack, resulting in more chewing force on the remaining teeth.

It’s not only for cosmetic reasons that you straighten your teeth position, get crowns or implants. These treatments improve the way your teeth mesh together. They also balance your bite. They can even enhance or even create entire body balance. You may not notice an immediate effect from imbalance and uneven chewing, but like the “perfect storm,” many health conditions are the result of long-term, non-optimum conditions that have been ignored.

Rather Than Dread Dentures, View Them as a Chance to Design Your Own Smile

Morton came in as a new patient asking for a new set of dentures. In collaborating with him so we

could make him dentures he would be proud to wear, I asked him questions such as:

Do you want spaces between your front teeth?

What type of smiles do you like?

Who do you want to look like?

Do you want big teeth, little teeth, long teeth, wide teeth?

Do you want personalization, such as little character flaws built into your teeth?

Do you want perfect alignment?

Morton told me he’d never been consulted to that degree like when getting dentures made previously.

He said for the first time ever, he was excited to get his new denture appliance.

According to the Center for Disease Control, 1 out of every 4 adults over 60 have lost all of their natural teeth due to gum disease and tooth decay. Another CDC report says 1 out of every 5 adults over 65 have lost all of their teeth. Once that occurs, your choices are dentures or implants.

Although dental implants are an excellent alternative to dentures, not everyone can get them. This doesn’t mean you have to dread dentures. The biggest reason denture wearers switch to implants is:

• Their dentures are ill-fitting and uncomfortable;

• They don’t like how their dentures look.

You can dread dentures or view them as an opportunity to design your smile. If you want to pay $99 and get “teeth-on-a-plate” then the old adage “you get what you pay for” applies.

On the other hand, if you want someone to craft an appliance that feels and looks natural, you can spend the money and get something that will make you feel confident.

As an Art Minor in college, I see beyond the science of dentistry. Although an appliance needs to be engineered perfectly, the aesthetic appeal must also be present.

If you need a denture, view it as an opportunity to design the smile you’ve always wanted.

Well … your dental condition has some similarities. Once it starts to deteriorate, you face a crossroads: do you want to keep your teeth for your natural life or lose them?

If you catch up on your dental work before it’s too late, you can sidestep many procedures that “older” people wind up getting. For example, a 45 year old woman came into my office requesting her thirty-year old silver fillings be removed, since they were dark and detracted from her beautiful smile.

Lurking underneath were cracked teeth which, left alone for another year or so, would have required extraction and replacement with implants and crowns. She was lucky that we treated the situation in time and was able to restore the teeth with buildups. Had they deteriorated even slightly more, she would have been faced with having to replace her teeth.

I see people neglect simple fillings, which over time get bigger and, in some cases, lead to infection and root canal therapy. It’s just not a good idea to neglect needed dental treatment. Teeth and gums don’t get better by themselves.

Normally, the motivation to catch up on years of backlogged treatment is cosmetic. There’s a romantic or professional reason. Or, the person recognizes the role a smile plays in maintaining a youthful appearance. Whatever the motivation, if you already know you want to keep your teeth for the rest of your life – or you want to get some cosmetic procedures to brighten up your appearance, the first step is to restore the health of your teeth and gums. Neglected treatment always results in more expense, unless you’re content to wind up with dentures.

You heard me right. A sore ligament around your tooth is like stepping on an ankle that’s been sprained. If you let it heal, it will be fine. If you don’t, you’ll unnecessarily be extracting or doing a root canal on a good tooth.

That’s one reason I take the time for diagnoses. If there’s uncertainty as to the source of the pain, I might adjust your bite to see if that corrects the problem. If it doesn’t we can always do an extraction or a root canal. But, if you’re willing to try the less invasive (and less expensive) procedure first, it just might fix the problem.

In this issue, I talk about making decisions that affect your long term health. This is exactly the type of decision I make every day about your treatment. I only choose procedures that I would do on myself, given the same situation.

As you age, your facial skin begins to sag and wrinkle. Much of this is actually caused by what’s happening inside your mouth! For starters, your teeth get shorter as you get older. You don’t always notice it because it happens gradually. At the same time, your teeth position are shifting incrementally each year.

By the time you surpass the age of fifty, your teeth will most likely be in a different position than when you were twenty years old.

The good news is that strategic dental work can soften folds and wrinkles and perk up sagging. You can erase five to ten years off your face with dental minilift procedures.

Interested? Call for a free consultation with Doc.

My dad, Dr. Sam Pagano, practiced dentistry in St Louis for over 50 years. Many of his techniques are lost today. Yet, his techniques resulted in quality dental work that lasts.

Case in point: My dad and I were having breakfast at Sunrise Café on 141 and Olive Blvd. A 91 year old woman by the name of Josephine came up to our table. She looked at my dad, waiting for him to recognize her. Turns out, he filled her teeth 40 years ago. She proudly announced that she still had those same fillings and that her current dentist wanted to know (and I quote): “Who did all of this beautiful work in your mouth?”

In another outing, my dad and I ran into a former patient of his who proudly displayed the dentures my dad had made for him – IN 1953! Over 50 years later, these dentures were still working for this patient.

In earlier times artisans and craftsmen spent years as apprentices in order to Master their skills. I was fortunate enough to get an apprenticeship fresh out of dental school, working with my dad for nearly ten years. I learned as much from him as I did in school, if not more. By mastering the fundamentals of dentistry and focusing on quality, I had a strong foundation on which to embrace the technological advancements that have been made in dentistry.

Despite my excitement at learning new procedures and acquiring the latest technology, I know that these aren’t substitutes for a firm grounding in the skills of providing quality dentistry that will last.

The same woman I just mentioned was looking to invest a sizeable amount on dental procedures in several different offices around town. She was recommended to me for a second opinion.

After examining her I knew she suffered from headaches, neck aches and low back pain. She was shocked that I knew this. All of the treatment other doctors had advised was correct — EXCEPT — there was one key component missing. She had a jaw joint that was out of place and no one addressed that.

Over time, this condition had created other dental problems, which included missing teeth on the side where the jaw joint was out of place. And of course, she had pain as a result of her condition.

Her proposed treatment addressed every aspect of her dental health — except her jaw joint problem. By individually consulting different doctors for various aspects of her treatment, she was trying to renovate her mouth without an overall coordinated plan.