How to eliminate decay for a lifetime

The most cost-effective approach to prevent decay and dental disease for a lifetime is to understand why it happens and start early to prevent it in our youngest population to improve both systemic and dental health for a lifetime.

 

Most common dental diseases, problems, and expenses are totally preventable.

Common dental disease, decay, and periodontal disease is communicable bacterial disease. You cannot be born with it because these bacteria require teeth to survive. At a young age, you become infected, transferring these bacteria from your parents, grandparents, siblings, caregivers, or playground playmates. If you want to stop this transfer you must eliminate the reservoirs or carriers of these bacterial diseases. Everyone in the family must be disease-free, not just in a controlled state or being long-term observed with these diseases. 

 

Almost all decay starts in enamel defects in the chewing surfaces of the teeth.

Everyone has these developmental defects called pits and fissures in their enamel, the hard and resistant outer layer of the tooth.

 

These defects cannot be brushed, flossed, cleaned, or prevented with any educational or outside technique.

 

The normal professional technique of sealing these holes with a type of bonding glue as early as possible fails over 50% of the time in three to five years. Pit and fissure sealing slows down the rate of decay but does not stop decay for a lifetime as effectively or completely as opening and removing the bacterial contamination already in the inside of the tooth.

 

The key to stopping this early first stage in the lifetime of destruction we call decay is to use high magnification to minimally open, completely cleanout and seal or fill with a well-done durable restorable filling material. When these early interventive obliterations of these penetrating bacterial contaminated reservoirs are done well they can easily last for 40 years and prevent 95% of all future dental diseases.

 

This is not achieved by having a billable insurance code. It is achieved by performing at an easily obtained standard that has a predictable and durable long-term result or outcome.

 

Education: Parents who do not know to keep their own teeth clean cannot teach their children.

Parents who can’t read do not transfer early reading skills to their children. Patents who do not know how to keep their own teeth clean or who are unable to evaluate how well they clean their own teeth can not transfer those skills to their children.

 

How to do this?

Start early; make it a special time like reading a bedtime story. Do it together, make it fun. Let them check your teeth, and then you check theirs. Know how to clean your own teeth, know how to evaluate that cleaning technique.