What Happens to Your Teeth when You Grind Them Too Much?

Your healthy, natural teeth are the strongest parts of your body, but that strength can sometimes be compromised by a variety of factors. For some patients, one of these factors includes the constant grinding of their teeth, which indicates a condition known as bruxism. When you have bruxism, the grinding of your teeth is more than just an occasional occurrence, and the frequency of it can lead to a wide range of serious concerns for your teeth and oral health. (more…)

How Some Children Can Benefit from Fluoride Treatment

It’s no secret that everyone, including children, can benefit greatly from consistent preventive dental care on top of their consistent daily dental hygiene routines. However, regular dental checkups and cleanings aren’t always all that your child might need to keep their teeth strong and healthy. In some cases, children can also benefit from additional preventive measures, such as the application of fluoride treatment to the surfaces of their teeth. Fluoride is able to strengthen your child’s tooth enamel, which is their teeth’s main line of defense against harmful oral bacteria, and it may be an important step in lowering your child’s risk of developing cavities. (more…)

What Can Go Wrong If You Miss Your Routine Examination

Tooth and dentist mirrorStaying up-to-date with your routine check-ups and examinations is an important half of the standard oral health regimen, followed by daily brushing and flossing. While you may believe that you are on top of your smile’s health, skipping your examination and cleaning puts it at a disadvantage for multiple reasons and can result in threats from oral bacteria, disease, and even tooth loss. At Cedar Dental in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, we emphasize the importance of having a professional tend to your smile to keep it healthy and welcome you to our office for a regular cleaning and check-up.

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Good Reasons to Choose Custom Porcelain Veneers

There are many different reasons why you might need to improve the appearance of your smile or restore one or more of your natural teeth. Choosing the right treatment depends largely on what your specific concerns are, which is why the most effective dental treatments are those that are custom-designed specifically to meet your smile’s needs. Today, we examine a few good reasons why patients often choose porcelain veneers to address their smile needs, and how the custom-designed shells of porcelain can offer substantial results while keeping your treatment process minimally invasive. (more…)

Things that Bonding Might Fix for Your Tooth

For many cosmetic dental concerns, the most appropriate treatment is the one that offers maximum results with minimal changes to your healthy, natural tooth structure. With cosmetic tooth bonding, many patients can achieve this with optimal results. Designed to address a multitude of different tooth concerns, bonding consists of applying tooth-colored composite resin to the surface of a tooth, then sculpting and hardening it to match the tooth’s healthy size, shape, contour, and appearance. In addition to improving the tooth’s appearance, this can also be a highly effective and conservative way to restore a tooth when its structure is damaged. (more…)

How to Properly Deal with the Effects of Tooth Loss

For many people, tooth loss isn’t something that has to occur. With proper care and maintenance, along with proactive treatment to address developing concerns early, they have an excellent chance at preventing it. However, tooth loss isn’t always the result of a preventable condition, and even when it is, several other factors may complicate the issue before tooth loss can be prevented. Fortunately, you can successfully deal with tooth loss and its potential effects if it does occur, preserving your healthy smile and bite function. (more…)

Things You Can Do to Avoid Tooth Extraction

Besides routine dental checkups and cleanings, which are necessary for keeping your smile clean and healthy, most dental treatments are designed to address a specific concern. For treatments that are made for specific tooth problems, such as structural damage or progressive decay, the best way to avoid them is to prevent the specific concern from developing. The same is true for tooth extraction. While the procedure isn’t a routine treatment for any specific dental concern, it can become necessary when a variety of oral health problems become severe enough. Today, we examine why tooth extraction can sometimes be necessary, and how you can improve your chances of avoiding ever having to have a tooth extracted. (more…)

Why Choose a Dental Crown for Your Tooth?

You often have several different options for addressing specific types of concerns with your teeth and oral health. For many people, however, a dental crown offers an ideal solution for restoring teeth that have been significantly damaged, or that experience severe blemishing on their surfaces. In some cases, dental crowns can even be part of a more lifelike tooth replacement plan along with a root-like dental implant post. Today, we examine some of the more common reasons why people choose dental crowns, and what the right crown can do to restore or replace your tooth with optimal results. (more…)

What You Might Prevent with Better Preventive Care

As the name suggests, the point of preventive dental care is to help you avoid serious trouble with your oral health. However, that generalization doesn’t always highlight just how important the success of your preventive oral health care routine really is. Today, we examine what, exactly, you might be able to avoid with a consistent and effective preventive care routine, and why it’s important to your long-term oral health. (more…)

What Therapy for Your Root Canal Means

The condition that root canal therapy is meant to treat, known as tooth decay, is the most common chronic dental concern for patients of all ages. However, root canal therapy isn’t that frequently recommended, and for good reason. Tooth decay is progressive, and in most cases, it’s treated before it has a chance to infect your tooth’s root canals. However, if it does, then personalized therapy for the root canal could be necessary to stop the infection and reduce your risk of further complications with your oral health. (more…)