How Dental Professionals Handle Patient Anxiety

As a dental professional myself, one of the common reasons people of all ages are afraid to come to the dentist, or don’t like coming to the dentist is because the experience is uncomfortable for them. From x-rays, cleanings, extractions, and fillings there seems to be a common discomfort with the dentist that many people feel. My job is to make the patient feel as comfortable as possible. The last thing we want is people being scared to come to the dentist for any kind of cleaning or procedure they may need done. The reason being? Great oral care leads to a prolonged life ten out of ten times. Therefore, we want our patients to view our dental office as a place of comfort and care.

This longing of ours, however, is not the simplest thing to achieve because certain procedures are definitely more uncomfortable than others. For instance, a simple cleaning for the average person produces no pain or discomfort at all. However, there are patients that have an overarching fear of any kind of dental work (even cleanings), so we have to make sure we can accommodate such patients to make them feel comfortable even while receiving a simple cleaning. We use sedation dentistry for these types of people. They’re given a pill to take 15 minutes before their appointment begins to help relax them while in the chair. These particular pills aren’t near as strong as what we’d use for that of a root canal procedure because they don’t have to be. In all honesty, these pills are more for the patient’s ease of mind. It definitely puts an affect on them, but it’s all in all not that strong.

As far as more severe procedures like fillings, root canals, and extractions we use a heavier dose of a pill that the patient takes before their appointment. In addition to these pills, we also use nitrous oxide, otherwise known as laughing gas, in order to further sedate our patients while in the chair as the operation is being performed. If you’re not familiar with dentistry, we also give numbing shots that will go into the cheeks and gums of the patient in order to keep the entire experience as pain free as possible. Our patients are our priority and their comfort, in our opinion, is crucial to their overall well being because if they take care of their teeth, they’ll take care of the rest of their bodies.

Common Q&A for Dental Hygiene

We often hear that we should brush our teeth twice per day for at least a minute each time. Along with brushing, though, we should also floss our teeth. But, this seems to be the standard for tooth brushing for most people. However, I’ve often wondered what is the maximum amount of times you should brush your teeth per day? Luckily for me, I live with and am married to a dental hygienist. Therefore, I didn’t have to go far to find my answer. Here is a little Q&A I had with my hygienist.

Q. How many times should you brush your teeth per day?

A. “The standard amount of times you should brush your teeth per day is twice. However, we honestly throw this number out because we believe it is attainable for everyone. Brush once in the morning, brush once at night.”

Q. Should you actually brush your teeth more than twice per day?

A. “That honestly depends. In addition to the morning and evening brush, a quick brush after you eat a meal would not hurt at all. But, we definitely don’t want to be over brushing.”

Q. Speaking of which, what is the maximum times someone should brush their teeth? And what constitutes as over brushing?

A. “The maximum amount of times someone should brush their teeth is two good brushings, the morning and evening brush, and then a few quick brushes after a meal. This usually results in 3 good brushings per day. As far as over brushing, brushing too long or too hard is what we call over brushing. You could over brush if you only brush twice per day depending on how hard you’re pressing the bristles to your teeth and gums and for how long you’re doing that. This can lead to damage of the outer tooth layer, and also to severe gum damage.”

Q. In order to avoid over brushing, how hard must you grip the tooth brush to lessen the chance of brushing too hard?

A. “You should grip the tooth brush no harder than you would grip an open bottle of toothpaste if you were trying not to squeeze the paste out. This type of grip will ensure you’re allowing the bristle tips to do the job they were created to do, and not damaging teeth and gums at the same time. Your toothbrush was created a certain way, and that certain way was to be held lightly as opposed to choking it.”

Be Careful With Charcoal Toothpaste

If you have just started to jump on board with the newest trend then welcome to charcoal.  The trend of using charcoal for just about everything has taken our TikToc and social media by storm.  One thing it has also done is whiten our teeth all while not using harmful chemicals. But there is a downside to everything and I want to go over a few things that have to deal with Charcoal.  I also want to go over how successful it has been in my own experience.

 

This began in my own family by watching social media. There were so many pranks and funny things that kept popping up that it actually grabbed my attention.  I decided along with my wife to look into actually using charcoal for our teeth.  After seeing enough non paid advertising on Instagram I wondered if it was actually a real dental hygiene tool that we could use. This was interesting to me because I have had such problems with whitening strips in the past.  On special occasions like weddings and vacations, I have used Crest White Strips and had some painful results.

 

It says on the package that sensitive teeth are possible side effects, but for my mouth, that is really painful.  It is so painful that I have not done them in years and don't plan on ever going back.  The strips do work and they work very well.  I always ended up with a really bright and white smile and that was something that I at least appreciated.  But now that there was a possible alternative to the pain-filled days and night I decided to give it a try. 

My first experience with it made me a little uncertain.  I really didn't want to trust my teeth to a non-main branded toothpaste. So I decided to start slow, and only use the charcoal for one brushing at a time.  I noticed that it was meant to absorb stains on your teeth and the more I read I saw that it was a light abrasive so it did actually scrape off plaque in a very small way.  So I ended up adding the black toothpaste to my nightly brush.

 

It turns out that my brush ended up black and so did my teeth.  It was a bit of a fun smile and reminded me of a scene in the movie the Patriot.  The one thing is that it does stain your toothbrush and leave your sink a bit black.  Be very careful spitting this stuff and I would really not suggest giving it to kids.  I can only imagine what my kids would have done with this.  But my wife and I have had a good experience.

 

With our brushing with it once a day for a few months our teeth have brightened many shades.  I have experienced no sensitivity as I did with the white strips.  I am so glad about that and I still feel like it is protecting our teeth at night while brightening our smile. So if you are careful with it and are able to brush your teeth several times a day I would suggest it.  I still like to have a fluoride main brand toothpaste for the morning, but just in case I like the idea of it.