Fluoride has been a topic of debate for as long as anyone can remember. It has also been a very emotive issue. What most people don’t realise is that fluoride is a naturally occurring element and is present all around us.
Some things that contain Fluoride:
So basically, all of us have some of it every day and will continue living with it forever.
Melbourne water has been fluoridated since the 1970s. The concentration in our water is 1 part per million (ppm) (1 milligram/1 litre). This is the recommendation by the World Health Organisation. Added to the water is one of the simplest, cheapest health initiatives that governments have ever done with great results. It is witnessed by the difference between children’s teeth in Melbourne compared to Queensland cities. Queensland hasn’t had water fluoridation for a long time and the oral health of the kids in Queensland is much worse!
Having fluoride in the water allows teeth to develop an even stronger outer layer of enamel called ‘fluorapatite’ which is much more resistant to decay than teeth that haven’t had fluoride exposure. This is so important when kids’ teeth are developing and erupting! When teeth are first erupted, they are at a higher risk of developing decay so the fluoride will help strengthen the tooth.
Misinformation! There are organisations involved in spreading incorrect statistics and deliberating misleading to win their cause. Others mistakenly think that it does damage to your body. There is absolutely no scientific basis to claim that a low dose of fluoride in the water does anything harmful. Some councils have to bear the cost of water fluoridation so they prefer to run a campaign to take it out of the water because they don’t have the money to fund it!
Other than that, rest easy, drink up and smile! Water is the healthiest drink for your body and your teeth!
CALL US or BOOK ONLINE NOW! Click here to go to our contact page to contact us directly.
It’s time for the school holidays soon. Have you started noticing that kids are getting braces and plates younger and younger than when you were at school. Why is this?
There is a big push towards early intervention orthodontic treatment. Lots of fancy words but it essentially means that when kids have problems with crowding/bite that they can be seen earlier and hopefully get the problems corrected earlier too.
As with all things, it’s not suitable for every cases and needs to assessed by the dentist.
The most common problem is crowding of the teeth where it looks like there are too many teeth for such a little mouth! In cases like these, sometimes a plate is fixed to open up the mouth and slowly expand to make room for the teeth.
Another problem is when a bottom tooth bites on the outside of the top tooth! This can create a lot of permanent damage on the top tooth so early treatment moves the tooth back where it is meant to be!
If you’re not sure about your kid’s teeth and have any questions, let us know.
Dr Bruno does early intervention orthodontics at Dental at Keys so he can do a consult for you!
CALL US or BOOK ONLINE NOW! Click here to go to our contact page to contact us directly.
Are you wondering How can you whiten teeth for Summer?
Summer is the best time to flash your pearly white smile for those weddings, birthdays or events that everyone seems to be having! Here at Dental at Keys, we offer take-home and in-chair whitening.
The in-chair whitening has a much stronger concentration and is perfect if you’ve got a wedding or another special event coming up and you want a white smile quickly! You will still need to do a take home whitening to maintain the shade over time, which we offer with our all-inclusive price for in-chair whitening.
The take-home whitening is a kit that includes 2 custom made whitening trays (we take moulds your teeth) and product as well and you can whiten yourself in the comfort of your own home. You generally need to do it every day at the start and once you’re at the shade you’re happy with, we recommend doing a top up once in a while depending on your diet and lifestyle. E.g. if you drink a lot of coffee/tea or wine, you may need to top up more often!
Other whitening include: whitening toothpastes, kiosks at shopping centres, beauticians, online whitening packs.
The main thing to remember is that whitening is a medical procedure done in your mouth. If done incorrectly, it can cause a lot of damage including chemical burns to your face and mouth and extreme sensitivity. The only person trained professionally to do whitening is a dentist. So make sure you ONLY get it done at your dentist. Also don’t use standard (non-fitted) trays to do whitening- it doesn’t work as well and the whitening product can get all over your gums!
Now onto whitening toothpaste -> it’s a gimmick! It will barely do anything to whiten your teeth. It has a minimal concentration of the whitening product so it doesn’t have any noticeable effect. It does work well to keep stains off your teeth but you don’t want to use it too often as it is quite abrasive and can wear out your enamel with daily use.
So as with anything, you definitely only get what you pay for! So please be careful and make sure you see a dentist if you want to whiten your teeth.
If you want any more information about whitening, call us now or book online for a consult! You can also contact us here.
Do your kids snore? Watch a short clip below to find out more on how snoring and the lack of good sleep can affect your child’s health!
If you are worried about the poor sleep/snoring or possibility that your child may have any of the issues outlined in the video – please feel free to contact us to discuss what we can do to help!
If you have what is popularly known as “extras” cover – your fund officially calls it either general or ancillary treatment cover – which includes things like dentistry, optometry and physiotherapy, you could be forgiven for thinking there is no rhyme or reason behind the rebate amount you receive when you make a claim.
After all, your fund isn’t exactly rushing to tell you how they calculate the amount and they are more apt than not to lay the blame at the foot of your dentist (or other healthcare providers) than their own policies.
There are a number of factors that shape your rebate amount, and contrary to what your fund may tell you, your dentist is not the issue.
For example, from March 2012 to March 2017, average dental fees per service only rose by 3%, with dental fees overall just keeping pace with the Consumer Price Index; by way of contrast, while the average rebate fees paid out rose 4%, it was dwarfed by a staggering increase in premiums of 38%.
You are, in other words, considerably worse off and it’s not the doing of your dentist, who has effectively capped their fee increases well below those of premium increases by your fund.
Quite a number of insurers are trying to direct policy holders like you to their own contracted dentists (they may use the warm-and-fuzzy term “preferred providers”, which is misleading since they are no more or less qualified than your own highly-skilled dentist) or their own clinics with the promise of higher rebates.
Sounds like an easy decision, right? They’re offering you more money if you use their dentist. The sting in the tail though is that it means leaving your dentist behind, someone who knows your treatment history and the best way to treat you. If you choose to stay with your own dentist, then you are effectively being discriminated against by your own fund.
So the next time you’re staring into the yawning chasm between the fee you’ve paid to your dentist, and the rebate your fund has handed back to you, remember that your dentist is in your corner. If your insurer ever tells you that you are getting back such-and-such an amount solely because of the fees charged by your dentist, remember that the amount you receive back as a rebate is entirely at the discretion of your fund.
Would you like to take some concrete action? You can file a complaint with the Private Health Industry Ombudsman and also add your voice to our Time2Switch campaign, where we are working to restore balance to the relationship between patients like yourself, the dental profession and private health insurers.
Still wondering Why is my Health rebate low?
Feel free to call or email us if you have any questions in regards to your health insurance. You can also contact us here. We may not know all the answers but we will try our best to see if you can help you!
To all our patients,
We will be closed from Friday, 29th Sept 2017 till Sunday 1st Oct 2017 for the AFL Grand Final Public Holiday.
We will reopen on Monday, 2nd Oct 2017 at 9am.
Have a great long weekend everyone!
Clear aligners are an invisible and simple alternative to braces. A few brand examples include Invisalign, Spark and Angel Aligner.
It’s a series of clear, custom-made, removable aligners that gradually straighten your teeth as you wear them, each aligner moving your teeth just a little bit at a time.
They’re practically invisible, so most people won’t even know you’re in treatment, they fit around your teeth perfectly, so are usually more comfortable than regular braces, and they’re removable, so you can eat whatever you like and clean your teeth normally.
No, it’s not magic – invisible braces are a term we dentist use to describe Clear Aligners – which is a form of Orthodontic Treatment – and are not braces AT ALL! Sadly, they are not invisible per se – but they are close to invisible as one could be!
The best way to determine whether you can get Invisible Braces is to book online for a consult now. We will do a thorough assessment of your teeth and gums to ensure that you are a suitable candidate for them.
Here at Dental at Keys – we offer clear aligners to those who wish to straighten their teeth – but without the look of those pesky tiny rectangular braces that you normally see in kids! In fact, they are so invisible we bet you didn’t notice it on one of our nurses – Tamsin (who is mainly at our other practice in Cranbourne)!
In fact, these clear aligners is the most popular way for our adult patients to straighten their teeth.
Why not head to ClearCorrect.com to see some sample cases. If you are interested – all you have to do is call or email us so we can have an assessment of your teeth to see if you are suitable!
We also offer Invisalign™ as another brand of clear aligner treatment for patients.
“Dental conditions (eg. tooth decay) are the leading cause of preventable hospitalisations for children and teenagers, ahead of asthma and ear, nose and throat infections.
While you might expect to find most emergency rooms busy with broken bones and disease, experts say a surprisingly large number of people are turning up with painful swollen mouths, a telltale sign of decay.”
If you think you have a problem with a tooth – please remember to see your dentist! Ending up in hospital for something that can be easily fixed early on is the key!
https://www.theage.com.au/victoria/horrifying-this-still-occurs-extreme-tooth-decay-lands-thousands-of-victorians-in-hospital-20170914-gyhssk.html
Deciduous teeth are also known as baby teeth, milk teeth, first teeth, or primary teeth.
We get this question so often from kids and their parents. They are so desperate to see the tooth fairy (teeth to fall out)!
So what’s the timeline you should be looking for before getting worried?
Hopefully the table below helps:
This is another reason we mention to start bringing kids earlier. There are some situations where kids may be missing certain adult teeth OR the adult teeth could be impacted. Situations like this are best found sooner rather than later so we can plan proper treatment for the future.
Generally if we are having any doubts, we take a full mouth X-ray. “X-ray on a kid?”, I hear you ask, “Is it necessary?”.
Definitely! The dose of dental x-rays are so low nowadays and the benefits are so great. The OPG (full mouth x-ray) shows up all the adult and baby teeth so we can ensure all the teeth are present and that there are no other abnormalities. We can also check the tooth positions at that time and see if any intervention is required. It’s generally a good idea to take an OPG as a screening when they’re in their mixed dentition phase (which means when they have a mix of both adult and baby teeth), which is about 7-9 years old.
At the end of the day, if you’re not sure, come in and have a chat to us. It’s always better to be sure 🙂
Call or email us to check your child’s eligibility for the $1095 Kids Dental under the Medicare Child Dental Benefits Scheme! Contact us here.
We often get told by our patients that a toothache can cause one of the worst pain that they can experience. Some have even told us that it is worse than giving birth! You must be thinking – surely a toothache can’t be that bad?
So the question is – how can such a small toothache cause so much pain?
The most common reason for a toothache is that bacteria had spread to the nerve of the tooth. This then spreads to be an infection around the roots of the tooth which can cause a lot of pain. If this infection is left untreated, in most cases it destroys the bone around the tooth, affect your general health and sometimes you can end up with a life threatening infection. In some cases, the infection is so slow growing that you won’t notice it until it is huge!
How does the bacteria spread to the nerve of the tooth? The bulk of the time it happens because there has been decay (a cavity) in the tooth for too long. At the start the decay eats through the enamel, then it gets to the next layer, called dentine. Unfortunately, after that all roads lead to the nerve.
Most of the time people have had symptoms on a particular tooth, on and off for a long time. Because it never consistently troubled them, most people don’t do anything about it. Those little symptoms were all hints from the tooth that something is wrong. Then miraculously, the tooth stops hurting completely and they leave it. This is their biggest mistake. When you don’t feel any pain on a tooth like that, it is because the nerve has died and the tooth is just slowly being infected. Best way to describe it would be a ticking time bomb!
Even if you don’t know the causes of your toothache – don’t worry! We have kept aside specific appointments for same-day emergency appointments. Will will try our best to get you in! So give us a call as soon as you can!
