New Breakthrough Offers Hope of a Future Without Fillings
Few patients go looking for a dentist in Vancouver, WA hoping to have a cavity filled or implants placed. Unless a cavity has severely deteriorated the structure of a tooth, Dr. Nelson will generally treat the problem by removing the damaged part of the tooth before filling the hole with a porcelain or composite filling. While most fillings will last a lifetime, they do occasionally need replacing. But this asks the question – If filling a tooth with an artificial material really the best option? What if a tooth could actually repair itself using its own natural material – dentine? This is the question researcher from King’s College London asked themselves when researching how they could attempt to cause teeth to self-repair. Now it seems they may have found a process that could actually help teeth repair themselves, which could lead to a future where dental fillings join rotary phones as a relic of the past. The Future of Self-Repairing Teeth Researchers from King’s College say their new treatment for repairing cavities is remarkably simple. It involves the use of a drug that causes the tooth to fill in the hole caused by a cavity naturally with dentine. “[The process] involves putting a drug on a little sponge that goes inside the tooth, in the hole that the dentist made. It stimulates this natural process, which is starting to occur anyway following the damage, but it over-activates the process so you actually get the big hole repaired and the repair is a production of the natural material, the dentine,” says Paul Sharpe, lead research involved in the study, in a paper published in Scientific Reports. In most cases, a new drug requires repeated testing before it meets with approval from oversight agencies like the Food and Drug Administration or the American Dental Association. However, the drug used by researchers to regrow tooth enamel – Tideglusib – has already earned approval for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other nervous system disorder. While the drug will still need additional approval to be used to treat tooth decay, the fact that it has already been cleared for use means that the days of dental fillings could be coming to an end sooner than anyone would have predicted. Researchers explain that the process for using Tideglusib to repair teeth requires only a small amount of the drug. Researchers have developed a technique for applying the drug directly to the area of the tooth affected by decay. Using a biodegradable collagen sponge to deliver treatment, the team applied low doses of the drug to the tooth. They discovered that the sponge degraded over time and as the sponge dissolved it was replaced by newly grown dentin, leading to a natural and complete self-repair. Collagen sponges are clinically-approved and commercially-available, another factor in why this new form of treatment may become the preferred way for a dentist in Vancouver, WA to repair cavities in the near future. “The simplicity of our approach makes it ideal as a clinical dental product for the natural treatment of large cavities, by providing both pulp protection and restoring dentine,” says professor Sharpe. Importance of Preventative Care While dental fillings may become a thing of the past, you shouldn’t consider this type of breakthrough a reason for ignoring your oral health. Daily brushing and flossing significantly lowers your risk for a variety of long-term health issues that carry far more of a lasting impact than a simple cavity. Studies have shown that patients suffering from tooth decay and gum disease have a higher risk of heart attack, stroke, dementia, and diabetes. So even if you no longer need to worry about visiting a dentist in Vancouver, WA for a filling, that doesn’t mean protecting your oral health should become less important now or in the future.
Drinking Soda May Cause Kidney Disease
In recent years, soft drinks have come under intense scrutiny. Whether from states like California trying to pass a tax on soda or critics that blame so called “Mountain Dew Mouth” – a condition commonly found in the Appalachian region of the U.S. and named after the area’s most popular beverage – as destroying the oral health of individuals too poor to receive regular Salmon Creek dental care, soft drinks have started to develop a poor reputation among health experts across the globe. Studies have already found frequent soda consumption dramatically increases an individual’s risk of developing a number of chronic diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, and gum disease. Now two new studies suggest that a soda habit may increase a person’s risk of developing kidney disease. Troubling Evidence Employees at a Japanese university who consumed over two sodas a day were more likely to have protein in their urine when compared to individuals that drank two or fewer or no soda on a daily basis. It’s viewed as an early, but reversible, marker of kidney damage when protein is found in urine. While this new study found a link between soda consumption and an increased risk of kidney damage, it didn’t prove conclusively that soda was responsible. The study involved over 12,000 university personnel who participated in yearly checkups at the school’s health center. As part of the checkup, each employee had his or her urine screened for protein. Researchers found that of the university employees who admitted consuming more than two sodas a day, 11 percent tested positive for protein in their urine during the three years the study was conducted. In contrast, 8.4 percent of participants who reported not drinking soda daily and nearly 9 percent of those who reported drinking an average of one soda a day tested positive for protein in their urine. A second related study involving rats found that moderate consumption of the sugar fructose – found in most brands of soda – increased the kidney’s sensitivity to a specific protein that helps to regulate salt in the body. According to researchers at Case Western Reserve University who led the study, this leads to kidney cells absorbing more salt, which could explain why drinking soda has been linked to high blood pressure, kidney failure, obesity, gum disease, and diabetes. Commenting on the study’s findings, researchers at Ohio State University weighed in to say that the affects of soda consumption seem to threaten even healthy individuals and not just those with an increased risk of developing kidney disease. Researchers suspect sodas that contain high-fructose corn syrup present the biggest health risk to consumers. Because fructose is sweeter than glucose, and since it doesn’t satisfy cravings – leading people to consume more – fructose may harm the body differently than glucose, damaging the kidneys instead of raising blood sugar levels. No Safe Solution Due to the high levels of sugar these types of beverages contain, researchers warn that no amount of soda consumption should be considered safe or acceptable. Guidelines that set forth acceptable levels of sugar consumption fall well below the amount of sugar just one bottle of soda contains. Guidelines set by the American Heart Association, for example, limit daily sugar intake to nine teaspoons for adult males, five teaspoons for female adults, and three teaspoons for children. A 20-ounce bottle of soda contains nearly 12 teaspoons of sugar, 33 percent more than recommended for adult men and four times the amount children should ingest daily. The high levels of sugar and acid soda contains also make a daily soda habit detrimental to an individual’s oral health, in addition to increasing the risk of several chronic diseases. The bottom line according to researchers is that most people need to start drinking more water instead of soda, unless they want to receive more Salmon Creek dental care then they’re used to needing.
How Biofilms Impact Our Oral Health
As a family dentist in Salmon Creek, Dr. Nelson fully understands the risks his patients’ oral health face from harmful oral bacteria. While most of our patients at Salmon Creek Family Dental know the important role brushing and flossing play in protecting the long-term health of our teeth and gums, many still don’t fully understand why these habits are so invaluable. The old adage is that sugar rots your teeth. While the notion offers a rough overview of why cutting back on sugar can mean healthier teeth and gums, it’s not entirely accurate. Sugar doesn’t actually do anything to your oral health by itself. What eating sugar does do is provide the harmful oral bacteria that thrives on our mouths with the fuel it needs to produce acids that slowly dissolve away the hard outer shell of our teeth called enamel. Plaque – a sticky biofilm – clings to the surface of our teeth using the foods we consume as a fuel source to wreak havoc on our long-term oral and overall health. To better understand how plaque functions and why brushing and flossing are so important, we need to gain a better understanding of what exactly a biofilm is and why it’s so hard to remove from our teeth. What is a Biofilm? Plaque is a common example of a biofilm, and certainly the most common type we encounter daily. Run your nail over the surface of a front tooth and – depending how long it’s been since you last brushed – you may pull away a slimy, whitish substances that constitutes an oral biofilm. When left unremoved, the biofilm produces dental plaque and tartar, both of which increase your risk of tooth decay and gum disease. Other forms of biofilm – such as tenacious biofilm – can contaminate household appliances like ice makers, humidifiers and coffee makers if not frequently cleaned. What makes biofilms so tricky is their ability to provide strong protection to the harmful bacteria that lies within. It’s useful to think of a biofilm like a protective shell that keeps the bacteria inside safe from healthy bacteria and other agents that would otherwise neutralize these substances. Even disinfectants do not seem to have a big impact on biofilm, as you can see from the slime that accumulates on the walls of swimming pools despite the aggressive chlorination and the use of chemical retardants. In medicine, biofilms clog and contaminate medical devices, where they form dense layers that stick to artificial surfaces. Studies suggest that most if not all implant infections are due to biofilms, including infections in artificial heart valves, dental appliance, cardiac pacemakers, contact lenses and much more. As often is the case when harmful bacteria are allowed to gather, biofilms have been linked to a wide variety of chronic infections. Researchers even estimate that biofilms complicate the majority of bacterial infections in humans. Overall, biofilms make the control and eradication of harmful bacteria far more difficult for patients and doctors to handle. The Role of Brushing & Flossing So why do we need to brush and floss? Simple, it all has to do with biofilms. Since biofilms provide such strong protection to harmful oral bacteria, we actually need to scrub these substances from the surface of our teeth. If it wasn’t for biofilms, we could probably adequately protect our oral health simply by rinsing with a mouthwash containing fluoride after every meal. However, biofilms actually insulate oral bacteria, protecting these substances from antibacterial mouthwashes that would otherwise protect our teeth and gums. This makes brushing and flossing the most effective ways of eliminating biofilms from the surface of our teeth. By physically scrubbing the biofilms from the surface of our teeth, we offer additional protection to our long-term oral health. This is also why patients who fail to brush and floss daily have a higher risk for developing tooth decay and gum disease when compared to those who take their oral hygiene more seriously. So that’s it! Your family dentist in Salmon Creek hopes you’ve gained a little more insight into why brushing and flossing mean so much to your oral health and why it’s necessary to so vigorous attack the biofilms that can negatively impact your teeth and gums now and into the future.