Preventing Injuries With Help From our Santa Cruz Family Dentistry Office

Imagine if after years of treatment and quality care from our Santa Cruz family dentistry office, you suddenly find yourself with a missing tooth due to a sports injury and sitting in our office awaiting a replacement. A missing tooth can be an incredibly frustrating experience that can cause immense discomfort. We want to encourage you to avoid an injury like this by wearing a mouth guard when you play sports. We can replace your missing tooth or repair your oral tissues after an accident, but we care for our patients and want them to avoid detrimental situations like these by making their dental protection a priority.

Why should I wear a mouthguard?
When you play sports, you could sustain a variety of injuries. Some of the most common injuries are lip and cheek punctures, gum damage, teeth loss, teeth chips and breaks, and jawbone fractures. You could also injure other people when you don't wear a mouthguard. Teeth are sharp and strong so they can cause extensive damage. They are also not immune to becoming cracked or chipped. Dental injuries can cause discomfort and require a restoration in order to heal. To protect yourself and others, and to avoid these complications, you should get fitted for a mouth guard and start wearing one immediately.

When should I wear a mouthguard?
You should wear a mouthguard while playing or practicing most sports. Hockey, baseball, softball, basketball, volleyball, football and even skateboarding are sports that could cause damage to your dental structure. The American Dental Association has estimated that the use of mouth guards prevents about 200,000 injuries every single year in high school and college football alone. This is just one example of how a mouthguard can prevent harm. To learn more, visit our family dentistry office.

What is the best type of mouthguard?
There are a few types of mouthguards including a stock mouthguard, a boil and bite mouthguard and a custom-created mouthguard. A stock mouthguard is the least expensive option. It can be purchased at most popular stores and is pre-packaged and ready to wear. Most people complain that this option is bulky and fits too loosely in their mouth. It does not provide the best protection against injury. A boil and bite mouthguard is a little better. When boiled, this mouthguard can be molded to fit your teeth. It provides more coverage, but it is also bulky and can easily fall out of your mouth. The best option available is a custom-fitted mouthguard created by our family dentistry office.   This mouthguard will fit securely in place, and it will provide the best level of protection. It can be a little more costly, but it is worth the present affordable cost to avoid future dental bills due to injury.
We hope that this article about what a mouthguard does and how it will protect you has helped you to understand the importance of using dental protection during contact sports and non-contact sports alike. Avoid the cost of repairs, the time constraints, and discomfort by employing proper dental protection habits when you play sports and contact our family dentistry office for more information.

General Dentist  >  Dentist

The New Type of Natural-Looking Dental Veneers in Santa Cruz

For too long dental veneers have been considered a purely aesthetic solution, and therefore purely commercial application. Most patients have never considered that they might break or crack a tooth and be in need of an urgent repair on the tooth. Dental veneers in Santa Cruz are literally the best option when you have this kind of damage, that does not rise to the level of needing a full crown, but still needs repair.

One cannot argue that there are clear cosmetic applications for veneers, after all, they clearly make your teeth better. However, it is also true that when you have had an accident and damaged a tooth, you will need to get it repaired before it causes additional problems. A damaged tooth does not have the means to heal itself so typically, as you continue to use the tooth, you will increase the level of damage. When you have a cracked tooth, you provide an excellent place for bacteria to breed which could lead to infections or gum disease. A chipped or broken tooth is hard to manage, which means you always run the risk of biting your lip or injuring your gums and this could lead to an additional infection. There are, therefore, two distinct groups of patients that used veneers for their teeth.
The use of dental veneers is growing rapidly. In 2006 alone there were over 600,000 people using dental veneers, either to fix defects or because they had to have an emergency replacement of the enamel. In either case, there is now a growing trend among users to have couture dental veneers instead of the traditional iteration of the product. As with any evolving product, the veneers needed today have increased the amount of skill that goes into making them, since our patients now want veneers that reflect a better version of their teeth instead of a fake looking replacement block of perfectly white pearly whites.

This has led to a number of innovative methods in shading, placing, and creating dental veneers so that they look as realistic as possible. Some of the methods being used are shading the veneers in a manner that creates an illusion of slight discoloration around the gum line, gradually getting whiter as the tooth extends into the mouth, angling the placement of the veneers so that they create a less than perfect space and even overlap slightly with an adjacent tooth, and the use of natural lighting by improving the translucency of the veneers to allow light to pass through. All of these are direct imitations of the qualities of your naturally occurring teeth and cause the dental veneers to seem much more normal.

Whether you need dental veneers for replacing damaged enamel on a tooth that has been through trauma or whether you want veneers to simply improve your teeth, you have multiple options from which to choose. The one word of caution when selecting couture is that they can be slightly more expensive that normal veneers. Traditional veneers will cost less so we will give you both options during your consultation.

Cosmetic Dentistry  >  Teeth Whitening