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.”