Why are dental cleanings important?
To provide a little bit of background, bacteria in your mouth are always creating a sticky material called plaque that helps them stick to your teeth. They don't want to be washed away in your saliva. This plaque starts kind of at the gum line. It grows up the flat surface of the tooth, and it even grows down beneath the tissue as far as it can go. This is what we are trying to clean away every day when we're flossing and we're brushing very consistently. If this sticky plaque is left in place, over time, the minerals from your saliva will start to harden it into a cement-like material called calculus or tartar. And eventually, this starts to cause a very severe inflammatory response from the tissues and the bone around the tooth. If left unchecked, it will progress into what is called periodontal disease. And this creates a progressive loss of the bone and tissue around your tooth. If it goes far enough, the tooth itself is lost. So why are dental cleanings important? Well, they're important locally because we don't want you to lose all the bone support for your teeth and your teeth. We want you to keep them for a very, very long time. But it's also super important systemically. There are an endless number of studies, and the evidence is growing every day, that connect increasing levels of bad bacteria in your mouth to systemic health problems, major problems, like diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, on and on and on. There are over 120 major health disease problems that have direct links to bad bacteria in your mouth. There are also a very long list of studies that show people that have good oral health live on average 15 years longer. So if you want to live quite a bit longer, and you want to be really healthy in that longer span of life, you have got to make keeping your mouth really healthy a top priority. And unfortunately, as far as we all try, we all miss spots. We all need coaching, and we need help. And so that is where the dental hygienist, who helps with professional cleanings, and with education, and with coaching, that is where that becomes so critical, not only to help keep your teeth, but to live a long and healthy life.
What is the difference between a routine cleaning, and what you may be advised occasionally to do, a deep cleaning?
A routine cleaning, we're helping you remove any deposits of that soft plaque that we find at the gum line, or up the sides of the tooth, or a little bit down beneath the surface, and polishing the teeth, and just getting them all really nice and healthy. A deeper cleaning, or scaling and root planning, is where we use instruments to go down beneath the tissues, and remove those hardened deposits, so that you do not progress into periodontal disease, and start losing bone and tissue around your tooth. During the deep cleaning process, the hygienist will also smooth the roots of your teeth, so that it is easier for you to keep those areas really nice and clean, harder for the calculus deposits to start building up in the first place.
What happens if the teeth are not cleaned regularly?
Well, we all do our best, but we also all miss spots, even me. And the hygienist's job, beyond cleaning those teeth, is to help you identify locations where you could do a better job, and coach you as to the best ways to manage those tough areas for you. The longer we go without a cleaning, the more of those deposits will build up, the higher the probability you start developing periodontal disease, and the higher the probability that you start to lose bone and tissue around those teeth. So we obviously don't want that whole process to start. So if I could get people to do anything for their oral health care, it would be to be super consistent with your cleanings. Fixing form and function of teeth where they have problems, yes, we want to do that as well, but it all has to start with keeping your mouth clean.
How painful is a dental cleaning?
We have many tools at our disposal to make cleanings comfortable for people. And so it really comes down to whether the team is willing to invest in those steps, and whether the patient is willing to let us provide them for them. We can make cleanings very, very comfortable. A quick note though, the more frequently you have cleanings, the less debris you build up, the less involved the cleanings need to be, and therefore frequently, the more comfortable the process is without even having to use some of those additional comfort tools. So consistency is king.
How long can people go between cleanings?
That depends on a number of variables. How well you do your cleaning at home and how frequently, how fast you build up plaque, which does vary between people, the mineral content of your saliva, the higher the mineral content, the faster it hardens into calculus, and many other factors. So for most people, six months is a good time frame within which you should have a cleaning every six months. Some people need them more frequently. Some people need them as often as every three months. This is one of the things that your hygienist will be working with you at each appointment to kind of fine tune for you, meaning that if you've been doing a really good job at home and we're really not seeing any accumulation, we can put it out a little farther to six months. If you tell us, I have been trying at home, but we're still seeing a lot of tissue irritation or debris collection, then we know we might need to see you more frequently to help you achieve that clean mouth.
How long do dental cleanings take?
Your average routine dental cleaning will usually be scheduled for 60 minutes. That is not all treatment time. We spend a fair amount of time checking to see if there have been any changes to your health and what impact that could have on your teeth. We do education. We do coaching. At least once a year, a dentist should come through and do an examination of your teeth.
Do gums heal after calculus removal at a cleaning?
Yes, they do. The degree to which they heal and how quickly is strongly influenced by the consistency and quality of your home care and by whether you are coming to your follow-up care appointments as we continue to help you move towards a healthy state.
Do teeth cleanings include fixing cavities?
No. The focus in cleanings is on removing the bacterial deposits and polishing the teeth. If you're having any problems with your teeth, sensitive spots, cavities, things like that, of course mention that to your hygienist. She'll grab the doctor. The doctor will come and take a look, see what's going on, and then schedule you as soon as possible in their schedule to do the actual surgical treatment.
Do dental cleanings make the teeth whiter?
Well, the bacterial deposits that are collecting on the teeth that we are removing when we clean the teeth, they stain very rapidly. So people's teeth can start to look darker and darker and dirtier as those stains accumulate. When we clean everything away from the teeth, it definitely brightens your smile. We polish the teeth, makes them look nice and smooth and clean.
How do I keep my teeth clean after a cleaning?
Well, there's a multi-step process that I want everyone to use. The first step is to scrape your tongue. The second step is to floss. This is critical. When we say floss, we mean getting the floss between the teeth and then vertically scrubbing the side of the tooth. It's not just snapping it in there, kind of pulling out any food debris that you may have noticed. It is wrapping that floss around the side of the tooth and vertically scrubbing a couple of times to peel the plaque and food debris off the side of the tooth. Third thing is to use an antibacterial mouth rinse. I like Listerine for a number of reasons and contrary to popular myth and or opinion, the alcohol-based Listerine does the best job and its increase to your risk in oral cancer is almost negligible. A lot of studies to back that up. Last thing we want you to do is to brush with a prescription level fluoride toothpaste. For a lot of reasons, higher levels of fluoride are really important for all of us that want to keep our teeth over a lifetime. Without a doubt, based on massive studies, the winner in that game is Colgate's Prevident 5000 Booster Plus Prescription Toothpaste. Your dentist has to prescribe it, but it does a phenomenal job at hardening or armoring our tooth structure, slowing down bacterial damage, and just helping us keep the areas much more clean. When you use the toothpaste, we want you to put a pea-sized amount of toothpaste on your toothbrush, brush for two to three minutes, spit the excess toothpaste out, but don't rinse your mouth out, eat or drink for 30 minutes. We want that film of fluoride to be able to absorb into the tooth structure.
How do I treat sensitive teeth after a cleaning?
These sensitive areas are almost always related to exposed root surfaces that just with wear and tear over time will always become a little bit more sensitive to hot, cold sugars or touching with a metallic object. So it's kind of a two-step process that works very, very well. The first step is to start using a prescription fluoride toothpaste. This will harden the root surfaces, almost armor them. It does take a couple of months. It's a progressive process, but if you stick with it, you will notice slow but steady decrease in your sensitivity levels. The second thing that we can do, if that first step by itself is not managing things, is called Sensodyne. You can get it at your drugstore. Sensodyne uses a chemical called potassium nitrate, and it basically temporarily numbs the sensitive areas on the surface of your tooth. So it is not a long-term solution, but it does provide temporary relief. Some people, if their sensitivity levels are high, can combine the two.