Why you shouldn’t wait with dental problems.
Why should you not wait when something is bothering you?
Dental problems in your mouth, quite simply, do not get better by themselves. That’s a general rule. You wouldn’t, for instance, allow a rotting support beam in your house to go un-repaired for very long. Nor would you go too long with brakes that don’t work in your car. These issues obviously have nothing to do with your mouth, but, they lend as an example to show that problems in the mouth won’t just go away if you leave them alone. They will become worse.
If we take gum disease as an example, we can see that the affects of gum disease will become more and more prevalent. Some of the symptoms of gum disease include: puffy, swollen and red gums, bleeding gums, loss of jawbone from the bacterial infection, and receding gums that create “pockets” around teeth infected by the bacteria causing the gum disease. Without treatment or care, these symptoms of course are going to continue to get worse. Antibiotics, deep, professional cleanings, and more regular care would be required to rid these symptoms.
The teeth are similar. If there is infection in the tooth (for instance if bacteria, which eat through the enamel in your teeth), and a cavity is created, leaving it alone will only allow the bacteria to cause more damage and decay to your teeth. Enamel, at this point in human evolution, cannot repair damaged enamel. Fluoride can help, but again, it does not repair enamel, it can only help strengthen existing enamel. To remove infection, the dentist would have to: clean all of the infection out of the tooth (removing the bacteria), they would then use either a tooth colored material to fill the hole created by the bacteria, or, in more severe cases, they would have to create a porcelain (or other material) crown to place over a tooth.
Infected roots will also only get worse over time. In fact, since it is bacteria infecting the nerve inside your tooth, pain is often accompanied. If left unhandled, the infection moves down the tooth root and to the base of the tooth itself, where the tip of the root of the tooth is in the jaw. The bacteria, after some time, can actually start to form abscesses in the jaw bone itself, these are very painful usually. So, in the case of infected roots the doctor would need to: open up the tooth, remove the infected nerve and the bacteria, seal the roots of the teeth again, close the tooth up and place a crown over the tooth. Your body can’t do that by itself, it needs external help.
As you can see…
The amount of work required to repair teeth, especially untreated teeth, becomes more and more involved, and inevitably costs more and more money.
Treating dental problems as they arise, as opposed to waiting to repair problems, is a very cost saving, and proactive way of stopping these infections. Dental problems can cause pain in left unchecked, and I don’t think anyone likes dental pain. In our dental office in DC, we see this a lot; individuals trying to “wait it out” and only come when something is really bothering them. It’s much easier to nip it in the bud, as these dental problems arise.
Stay healthy my friends!
