The patient’s tooth shade before treatment was A2.  Following Kör Whitening Treatment, the patient’s tooth shade is OM1, the lightest shade dentists have available.

A toothbrush is a simple but powerful device we use (hopefully) multiple times a day for all of our lives.  Few objects have such permanence!  Or are so crucial to dental health.  Owning a good toothbrush and using it is essential to maintaining a healthy smile and dental condition. 

So, the question I hear often is “what’s the best toothbrush?” – there are widely varying opinions on the topic, and maybe the most important point is that any toothbrush will do the job so long as it is utilized properly.  Please find below some additional considerations as well as tips on picking a toothbrush.

From EverydayHealth: “The electric toothbrush has become very popular in recent years — some even say it provides superior dental care. But how does it actually compare to manual brushing?

“The idea of a toothbrush is to remove plaque and to stimulate the gums,” explains John Ictech-Cassis, DDS, DMD, clinical associate professor at the Boston University Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine. “Most toothbrushes will keep the teeth clean if you know how to use them.”

“There are many advantages to the manual toothbrush,” says Dr. Ictech-Cassis. “We’ve been using this toothbrush for many years. It has a good track record.” Advantages include:

• Cost and availability. “It’s inexpensive and accessible,” says Ictech-Cassis. “This is the toothbrush that the majority of dentists give away.” Electric toothbrushes may simply be too expensive for many people, so it’s nice to know that you can do a great job brushing with a manual toothbrush.
• Easy to travel with. “It’s easy to take a manual toothbrush with you when you travel. It’s not bulky like an electric toothbrush,” says Ictech-Cassis. You’ll be less likely to let your good dental care habits lapse on vacation with a toothbrush that you can easily bring along, he adds.
• Puts less pressure on teeth and gums. “You can feel [how much pressure you're using] as you grasp the toothbrush,” Ictech-Cassis notes. “This helps you to avoid putting too much pressure on your teeth. With an electrical model you can’t feel that as well.” Placing too much pressure on your teeth can wear away at the tooth enamel, causing pain, sensitivity, and an increased risk of tooth decay.
• Good for kids. Even young children can use manual brushes safely and effectively once they’ve learned how, Ictech-Cassis points out.

Nevertheless, Ictech-Cassis admits that there are some situations where an electric toothbrush has clear advantages. “We recommend it for people who can’t do a good job with a manual toothbrush,” he says. For older people or people who have less manual dexterity, like those who have arthritis, the electric toothbrush may clean more effectively, he says. According to the American Dental Association (AMA), people with limited ability to move their shoulders, arms, and hands can benefit from the larger handle and powered brush of an electric model.

Today, electric toothbrushes are outfitted with a variety of features. Though they make nice additions, pressure sensors that tell you if you’re brushing too hard or timers that indicate when you’ve brushed long enough don’t directly affect how well the toothbrush actually cleans your teeth.

Electric toothbrushes “try to stimulate the gums and teeth with different configurations of the bristles,” Ictech-Cassis says. “Even the most inexpensive electric models will keep your teeth clean, but you may have to move them a little more to reach the difficult areas.”

Although almost any toothbrush can do an effective job, research suggests there is one electronic toothbrush bristle configuration that seems to be better at removing plaque and preventing gum disease. Electric toothbrushes with bristles that rotate together in one direction, and then switch and rotate in the opposite direction — a process known as rotating-oscillating — appear to be more effective than manual brushes and other electric brushes that spin in only one direction. If you do opt for an electronic toothbrush, a model with rotating-oscillating bristles is probably your best bet.

From Dental Health Site:

• A soft bristled tooth brush should be chosen as hard bristles tend to cause gingival recession. Soft bristles are more flexible, clean beneath the gingival margin and do not damage your gums.
• The head should be small allowing it to effectively clean hard-to-reach areas of the teeth.
• The handle should allow comfortable gripping by the user.
• The shape of the neck or handle does not play any significant role (as claimed by manufacturers) in improving the effectiveness of a tooth brush and should be chosen on your preference.

Brushes need to be replaced every three months or when the bristles are no longer straight and firm. In that condition, they will not clean the teeth as well as they should.

Most of us know how important it is to have regular cleanings of our teeth every three to six months. But I am often asked when a child should start seeing a dentist and why it is important to focus on the dental health of your young child.  Some may believe that since the child will lose their first teeth that dental health during that time is not essential. Here are some key points for your consideration…

So why should we worry about cavities in baby teeth when these teeth will be replaced by permanent teeth later?

The answer is that baby teeth serve important functions. Neglect of baby teeth can cause severe problems. Consequently, it is important to make sure that even these “temporary” baby teeth remain healthy and cavity free.

• Healthy baby teeth are crucial in helping the baby learn how to speak properly.
• Healthy and nice looking teeth are important in building self-confidence and self-esteem. This is especially important at such an early age. Unfortunately, small children can be cruel to one another quick to tease peers about ugly looking or decayed teeth. Furthermore, bad breath resulting from poor dental hygiene can make your child an outcast among peers.
• Baby teeth serve as spacers which maintain the proper spacing and alignment of the teeth so that permanent teeth have enough room to come in.
• Baby teeth are important in proper feeding and nutrition. A recent study has illustrated a potential link between the number of cavities a child has and the probability of the child being underweight.

  It is crucial to note that the proper care of baby teeth is not only important now but for the future as well.You see, early dental care gets a child accustomed to a clean cavity free mouth. Because children become accustomed to clean teeth they will continue with the proper habits to ensure this clean feeling in the future as well.

  Poor dental care can easily lead to childhood periodontal disease. This is a condition in which bacteria invade the gums and ligaments supporting the teeth. Unchecked, periodontal disease can cause teeth to fall out and bone to erode, creating major problems for permanent teeth if and when they do come in.

  Remember to wipe a baby’s mouth with a clean gauze pad or washcloth to remove plaque. If your child is old enough get them in the habit of brushing their own teeth but always remember to brush their teeth after they are finished brushing.

  Finally make sure your child sees a dentist regularly starting by the age of 1.

Source : SaveYourSmile

Source : Science Daily

ScienceDaily (Feb. 26, 2012) — Japanese scientists have found that the odorous compound responsible for halitosis — otherwise known as bad breath — is ideal for harvesting stem cells taken from human dental pulp.

In a study published 27 February, in IOP Publishing’s Journal of Breath Research, researchers showed that hydrogen sulphide (H2S) increased the ability of adult stem cells to differentiate into hepatic (liver) cells, furthering their reputation as a reliable source for future liver-cell therapy.

This is the first time that liver cells have been produced from human dental pulp and, even more impressively, have been produced in high numbers of high purity. “High purity means there are less ‘wrong cells’ that are being differentiated to other tissues, or remaining as stem cells. Moreover, these facts suggest that patients undergoing transplantation with the hepatic cells may have almost no possibility of developing teratomas or cancers, as can be the case when using bone marrow stem cells,” said lead author of the study Dr. Ken Yaegaki.

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Source : Fox News Latino

An anesthetic gel made from a plant found in the Peruvian rainforest is set to revolutionize dental treatment.

Indigenous tribes in Peru discovered the pain-killing properties of the Acmella Oleracea plant centuries ago and used it to treat toothache, ulcers and abscesses.

A Cambridge University anthropologist, Francoise Freedman, experienced the plant’s anesthetic properties first hand while living with the Keshwa Lamas tribe in the Amazon in 1975.

She said, “We were trekking through the rainforest and I was having terrible trouble with my wisdom teeth. One of the men with me noticed and prepared a little wad of plants to bite on to. The pain went away.”

Pisco Wars: Chile vs. Peru

Freedman was able to continue with her work and forgot about the experience until a Cambridge-based neuroscientist asked her to bring some medicinal plant samples back to test them for neurological research.

“Almost as an afterthought I remembered to include the one I’d used on my teeth. It was added to the bottom of the list, but somehow the list got reversed and it was the first one tested back in the UK. It was immediately successful and we’ve never looked back,” Freedman said.

The remedy has since performed well during the first two phases of clinical trials and is about to enter late-stage trials. If successful, the remedy may hasten the end of the present reliance on synthetic anesthetics in dental use and non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, in specific applications.

“This treatment for toothache means we could be looking at the end of some injections in the dentist’s surgery,” Freedman added.

She has founded a company called Ampika Ltd, a spin-off from Cambridge Enterprise, the University’s commercialization arm. The business will be able to channel a percentage of any future profits back to the Keshwa Lamas community who agreed to share their expertise with her. If successful, Ampika plans to bring the product to market in 2014 or 2015.

Expedition’s Quest for Mayan Gold Finds…a Pot, Stirs Outrage

More than 50 percent of prescription drugs are derived from chemicals first identified in plants, experts say. For example, the herb commonly used for cooking and grown in China, Star Anise, is the main ingredient of Roche Holding AG’s anti-bird-flu drug Tamiflu.

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Scientists in Japan said on Wednesday they have created teeth — complete with connective fibers and bones — by using mouse stem cells and successfully transplanted them into mice, a step they hope will lead to progress in stem cell research.

The entire tooth units, which were inserted into lower jaws of mice, attached successfully with jaw bones and the rats were able to chew normally, the researchers wrote in a paper in PLoS One (Public Library of Science).

“The bioengineered teeth were fully functional … there was no trouble (with) biting and eating food after transplantation,” wrote Masamitsu Oshima, assistant professor at the Research Institute for Science and Technology, Tokyo University of Science.

The researchers hope this is a step to help the development of new human organs grown from a patient’s own cells.

“At present, researchers worldwide do not have the method to culture three-dimensional organs in vitro (outside the body),” Professor Takashi Tsuji, who led the research, wrote in his reply to questions from Reuters.

“It is important to develop technologies for the culture of the bioengineered organ … for the realization of future organ replacement regenerative therapy.”

Stem cells are the body’s master cells and source of all cells and tissues. They are undifferentiated and experts believe they can generate all the cell types of the organ from which they originate.

Because of their ability to generate different types of cells and multiply and self-renew, scientists hope to harness stem cells to treat a variety of diseases and disorders, including cancer, diabetes and injuries.

FROM STEM CELLS TO WHOLE TOOTH UNITS

Tsuji’s team removed two types of stem cells from the molar teeth of mice and grew them in the laboratory. To control the length and shape of the teeth, the cells were placed in a mold, where they grew into entire tooth units.

The entire tooth units were then transplanted into the lower jaws of one-month-old mice. They fused with the tissues and jaw bones around them after about 40 days, Tsuji said. Nerve fibers too could be detected in the new teeth.

Tsuji stressed the importance of finding the right “seed cells” for reparative therapy. In this case, entire tooth units could be grown because the stem cells were taken from molar teeth of mice — where they later grew into enamel, dental bones and other parts that comprised a regular tooth unit.

In 2010, U.S. researchers created an artificial lung that rats used to breathe for several hours.

(Editing by Yoko Nishikawa)

Source : PopSci

The loss of a tooth is a minor deformity and a major pain. Although dental implants are available, the healing process can take months on end, and implants that fail to align with the ever-growing jawbone tend to fall out. If only adult teeth could be regenerated, right?

According to a study published in the latest Journal of Dental Research, a new tissue regeneration technique may allow people to simply regrow a new set of pearly whites. Dr. Jeremy Mao, the Edward V. Zegarelli Professor of Dental Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, has unveiled a growth factor-infused, three-dimensional scaffold with the potential to regenerate an anatomically correct tooth in just nine weeks from implantation. By using a procedure developed in the university’s Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory, Dr. Mao can direct the body’s own stem cells toward the scaffold, which is made of natural materials. Once the stem cells have colonized the scaffold, a tooth can grow in the socket and then merge with the surrounding tissue.

Dr. Mao’s technique not only eliminates the need to grow teeth in a Petri dish, but it is the first to achieve regeneration of anatomically correct teeth by using the body’s own resources. Factor in the faster recovery time and the comparatively natural process of regrowth (as opposed to implantation), and you have a massively appealing dental treatment.

Columbia University has already filed patent applications in regard to the technology and is seeking associates to aid in its commercialization. In the meantime, Dr. Mao is considering the best approach for applying his technique to cost-effective clinical therapies.

[Columbia University Medical Center]

Source: Natural Life Magazine

Sweden has banned mercury amalgam dental fillings, effective January, 1997, after determining that at least 250,000 Swedes have immune and other health disorders directly related to the mercury in their teeth. Denmark will ban amalgams beginning in January 1999.

In 1991, Germany’s Health Ministry recommended to the German Dental Association that no further amalgam fillings be placed in children, pregnant women, or people with kidney disease, and in 1993 this was extended to include all women of child-bearing age, pregnant or not. Austria is also phasing out mercury fillings.

By contrast, the American Dental Association (ADA) says replacing amalgam fillings from non-allergic patients for the purpose of removing toxic substances from the body is “improper and unethical.” The Canadian Dental Association (CDA) insists that there is no scientific evidence linking medical illness symptoms to mercury fillings, except relatively rare allergic sensitivity to mercury. (The number of persons with a specific and detectable sensitivity to mercury may not be so small. According to a Health Canada report, as many as 15 percent of people with amalgam fillings show signs of sensitivity to mercury. Some American researchers claim that at least 20 percent of people with amalgam fillings are “mercury toxic.”)

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Source : Medical News Today

Women who want to have a baby should look after their oral health, a fertility expert told a meeting in Sweden yesterday. During the meeting, delegates heard about preliminary research that found for the first time, from when she starts trying to conceive, a woman’s chances of falling pregnant can depend on how well she looks after her teeth and gums.

Roger Hart, a professor at the University of Western Australia in Perth, told the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Stockholm, that the effect of gum disease on conception is about the same order of magnitude as the effect of obesity.

Hart, who is Professor of Reproductive Medicine at the University and Medical Director of Fertility Specialists of Western Australia, said their study was the first to be published that investigates links between gum disease and women’s chances of getting pregnant, so it is the:

“… first report to suggest that gum disease might be one of several factors that could be modified to improve the chances of a pregnancy.”

He says women who want to become pregnant should visit their dentist and brush their teeth regularly.

For their research, Hart and colleagues analyzed data on over 3,400 pregnant women from Western Australia who were taking part in a study called SMILE that was investigating how treatment for gum disease affects pregnancy outcomes.

They found that women with gum disease took on average two months longer to conceive than women without gum disease (seven months instead of five).

Non-Caucasian women appeared to be the group most affected: they were likely to take more than 12 months to become pregnant if they had gum disease.

Gum disease, also known as periodontal disease, is where the gums and supporting tissue are chronically infected and inflamed.

Our mouths are full of bacteria, which stick to mucus and bits of food and form a sticky “plaque” on our teeth. Brushing and flossing gets rid of plaque, but if this is not done regularly, then the plaque goes hard and turns into “tartar”, that is much harder to get rid of. You should then visit the dentist or hygienist to have it removed properly.

If you leave it too long before removing plaque and tartar, the bacteria causes an inflammation called “gingivitis”, where the gums appear red and swollen, and bleed. At this stage, daily brushing and flossing and visits to the dentist can restore oral health. But eventually, if not attended to, the disease moves to a stage where tissue and bone are affected: this is periodontitis, which literally means “inflammation around the tooth”.

In periodontitis the gums pull away from the teeth and little pockets develop that become infected. The bacteria and plaque starts to grow below the gum line, causing the immune system to respond. Toxins from the bacteria and immune system activity start to attack the tissue and bone that hold teeth in place, and they become loose.

But these destructive agents also get into the bloodstream, which may explain why gum disease is linked to increased risk of a number of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, respiratory and kidney disease, and also, miscarriage and premature birth.

About one in ten people is thought to have severe periodontal disease. The best way to prevent it is to brush and floss your teeth regularly.

Hart suggests the reason the non-Caucasian women were the most affected was because they appeared to have the highest level of inflammatory response when suffering from gum disease.

He also said that receiving treatment for gum disease while pregnant does not affect the health of the foetus or the mother.

Source : Medical News Today

Professional tooth scaling was associated with fewer heart attacks and strokes in a study (Abstract 17704) from Taiwan presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2011.

Among more than 100,000 people, those who had their teeth scraped and cleaned (tooth scaling) by a dentist or dental hygienist had a 24 percent lower risk of heart attack and 13 percent lower risk of stroke compared to those who had never had a dental cleaning. The participants were followed for an average of seven years.

Scientists considered tooth scaling frequent if it occurred at least twice or more in two years; occasional tooth scaling was once or less in two years.

The study included more than 51,000 adults who had received at least one full or partial tooth scaling and a similar number of people matched with gender and health conditions who had no tooth scaling. None of the participants had a history of heart attack or stroke at the beginning of the study.

The study didn’t adjust for heart attack and stroke risk factors – such as weight, smoking and race – that weren’t included in the Taiwan National Health insurance data base, the source of the information used in the analysis.

“Protection from heart disease and stroke was more pronounced in participants who got tooth scaling at least once a year,” said Emily (Zu-Yin) Chen, M.D., cardiology fellow at the Veterans General Hospital in Taipei, Taiwan.

Professional tooth scaling appears to reduce inflammation-causing bacterial growth that can lead to heart disease or stroke, she said.

Type of periodontal disease predicts degree of risk for heart attack, stroke, and heart failure.

In a separate study (abstract 10576), researchers found that the value of markers for gum disease predict heart attack, congestive heart failure and stroke in different ways and to different degrees.

Anders Holmlund, D.D.S., Ph.D. Centre for Research and Development of the County Council of Gävleborg, Sweden, and senior consultant; Specialized Dentistry, studied 7,999 participants with periodontal disease and found people with:

• Fewer than 21 teeth had a 69 percent increased risk of heart attack compared to those with the most teeth.
• A higher number of deepened periodontal pockets (infection of the gum around the base of the tooth) had a 53 percent increased risk of heart attack compared to those with the fewest pockets.
• The least amount of teeth had a 2.5 increased risk of congestive heart failure compared to those with the most teeth.
• The highest incidence of gum bleeding had a 2.1 increased risk of stroke compared to those with the lowest incidence.