The New Style of Dental Veneers

Most people think of dental veneers as a purely cosmetic endeavor, as a way to have a beautiful smile and not much else. The truth is that there are two very distinct uses for dental veneers. While it is also true that, in either case, the use of dental veneers makes your smile brighter and gives you better-looking teeth, the applications are slightly beyond being purely cosmetic. How many people ever consider that they might have a dental emergency, where they have broken or chipped a tooth? The answer is virtually no one. It is important for you to realize that if you have had an accident that has caused your teeth trauma, you need to get your tooth repaired immediately.

A broken or chipped tooth can result in you biting or damaging your lips or your gums, which can lead to an infection and further trauma. A cracked tooth provides an ideal breeding ground for bacterial infections and plaque to build up. Even if you can avoid these situations, a tooth cannot repair itself. Over time the tooth will continue to sustain damage, eventually you will lose the tooth. Virtually no one realizes that the best way to fix a tooth in this situation when it is not sufficiently damaged to warrant a full crown is to use a veneer. As such there are two kinds of patients that use dental veneers.

Today, couture dental veneers have become the fastest growing trend in dental veneers. The technology sprung from an idea that veneers should be made to look a lot more like actual teeth, with some of the same defects and flaws that are common in natural teeth. As such there is a growing market demand for veneers that have some color defects and are placed to mimic the challenges of normal teeth. With a growing market, 600,000 in 2006 alone, there is a huge demand for veneers, especially couture veneers.

Regardless of whether dental veneers are being used for emergency replacements or carefully thought out esthetic improvements to the teeth, veneers are now able to recreate your teeth with slight and measured improvements. Some of the techniques we employ to make veneers look extremely realistic are shading them to be slightly discolored around the gum line, attaching them at a slight angle so that there is some overlap among the teeth, and even using natural light to give them a luminescent quality common to natural teeth. By shading the dental veneers, shaping them, placing them, and giving them just the sufficient translucency, we can mimic your original teeth almost perfectly. Naturally there are some improvements made so that your veneers look better.

Whether you have had an accident and need dental veneers to replace the enamel of a badly chipped tooth, or if you simply have decided that you want better-looking teeth, couture veneers give you the option of an improved smile. The one word of caution, when you are selecting couture dental veneers is that they can be slightly more expensive than the traditional dentures. 

Teeth Whitening and Science - What You Should Know

Modern teeth whitening products are incredibly effective and they have to be.  Today, we have access to many different types of foods and tend to consume large quantities of things that can and often will influence the color of your teeth. From people who like to eat healthily and eat large quantities of berries to folks who like to drink that first perfect cup of coffee the morning, it is incredibly common and easy to stain teeth.

Over 68% of people who drink coffee in America claim to need to drink at least one cup within the first hour of waking up. This makes many of us feel “awake and normal”. Naturally this means that your coffee drinking is taking place shortly before or shortly after your morning oral hygiene routine. Coffee is rich in chromogens, which stain and discolor teeth so the fact that 54% of the adult population of the United States will partake in at least one cup every day, bought from one of the over 53 thousand coffee shops dotting the country, means that there is a tremendous risk for most people of ruining their perfectly white teeth. Access to inexpensive and effective teeth whitening has improved because of the demand for such services, possibly due to the proliferation of a laundry list of food and drinks that stain teeth.

The process of teeth whitening is a chemical process that depends heavily on the interaction and reaction between the whitening gel we use and the natural organic chemical composition of your mouth. The composition of your teeth's organic makeup creates a surface that reflects natural light. All substances do this, reflecting the light at a certain degree which makes the brain see them as a specific color. With teeth, the more colorless the teeth are, the brighter white they appear to the brain. We use a peroxide based formula to achieve this. The peroxide is designed to penetrate quickly below the surface of the enamel, essentially working from the inside out. There it releases free radicals which make the tooth go more colorless, thereby achieving the goal of whiter teeth. Stains and discoloration distort the way the light is reflected and are chemically removed during the teeth whitening process through oxidization. There are two basic types of whitening agents available, one over the counter, and the other you can only find in a dentist office.

The solutions you can buy over the counter are based on hydrogen peroxide, which is considered more stable for a longer shelf life. These formulas have between 3% and 20% hydrogen peroxide. The formulas that we use for teeth whitening is based on carbamide peroxide, and the strengths vary between 15% and 43%. Carbamide also contains 35% hydrogen peroxide, so you are getting more hydrogen peroxide in our solution as well. This means that the results will be more dramatic when you have your teeth whitened with us.  In either case, it is advisable to consult with a dentist before whitening your teeth, in the event that there are some underlying challenges with your teeth that should be addressed before teeth whitening begins.

Dental Veneers  >  Cosmetic Dentistry