Ready to reclaim a healthy smile and improve dental aesthetics? Our Saint Louis dentists are here to help you achieve all of your dental health goals. Keep reading to get more information about how we restore smiles that have been damaged due to infection or trauma…

Clean & Refresh Your Smile

The first step in any treatment plan is a complete professional cleaning and oral health assessment. This step is so important because only once your smile is thoroughly cleaned can we really get pinpoint emerging oral health issues, disease, and decay. Additionally, our team does an oral cancer screening along with every cleaning.

Review Restorative Options

Once we know how and why your smile is damaged, we can start reviewing treatment options. Based on your specific situation, we may recommend that you move forward with any one of these treatments, or a combination thereof:

• Dental Bonding—with this treatment our team uses composite resin to rebuild missing tooth portions, fill in cracks or chips, resurface unsightly enamel, close gaps between your teeth, and even make your smile appear better aligned.
• Porcelain Restorations—dental crowns are affixed to teeth that have worn down, as well as teeth that have been treated for cavities. The crowns our team offers are high quality, custom-shaded ceramic restorations.
• Dentures—this option is great for patients who need to replace many consecutive missing teeth at once. Dentures are molded to fit snugly over your gum and jawbone tissue so that you can speak and eat confidently.
• Dental Implants—these state-of-the-art replacement teeth are held in place permanently by small titanium screws that extend from the restorations into the jawbone.
• Implant Smiles—combining the best of denture and dental implant technology, Implant Smiles allows our team to use just a few strategically placed implant roots to hold a full denture in place.

As you can see, there are a number of health-restoring treatments available to you. When you meet with our Saint Louis dentists, we will be able to give you a better idea of what type of treatment may meet your needs. Give us a call to get started!

No matter what type of oral health problem you’re dealing with—from missing teeth to cracked enamel to gum disease—our Saint Louis dentists are here to help you restore and even rebuild your smile. Here are some of the treatments and technologies that we utilize to help our patients overcome oral health issues:

• Root canal therapy: timely root canal treatment can literally save a tooth that would otherwise fall out or need to be pulled. Our dentist will go into the core of the tooth, to the dental pulp and nerves, and clear away this sensitive and vulnerable material. Once we have sterilized the remaining portions of your tooth we place a custom restoration, so that your smile looks natural and functions well.

• Custom crowns: when a tooth becomes infected or damaged, our team uses high-quality restorations to rebuild missing portions of the affected tooth. The crowns we use are shaded to match your smile and shaped to resemble the contours of your natural teeth.

• Dentures: these dental prostheses are designed to replace many consecutive teeth. Traditional dentures sit on top of your gum tissue; the base of a removable denture is molded to fit snugly over your gum and jawbone tissue.

• Dental implants: individual implant replacement teeth are permanently embedded in a patient’s jawbone with titanium roots, which fill the spaces where natural tooth roots used to sit. 

• Implant Smiles: our team uses implant roots in combination with dentures to permanently replace a number of teeth at once. A huge advantage of Implant Smiles treatment is that a full upper or lower denture can be secured with only a few mini dental implant roots.

If there is one thing that you take away from this article, let it be the reassuring truth that no smile is “too far gone” or “beyond health.” To learn more, please feel free to reach out to our Saint Louis dentists to schedule a personal consultation.

Are you already doing a great job cleaning your smile every morning and night, but you are still looking for a way to improve your oral health? It might be time to a look at what you are eating and drinking every day. Because these substances coat our teeth and oral tissues throughout the day, they are quite impactful when it comes to dental health. Keep reading to learn more from our Saint Louis dentists...

To get it started, let’s review what refined carbohydrates are; these are carbohydrates that have had the fiber, nutrients, and brans taken out of them. For example, white bread is a refined carbohydrate while wheat bread is less processed, and thus retains fiber and nutrients. If a bread, dough, or pastry is made with white flour, it is a refined carb. 

It is important to be aware of what your consuming, because oral bacteria use sugars and refined carbs as fuel. So, if you are eating a diet rich in sugar, you are providing an ideal environment for the very bacteria that cause dental cavities and gum disease.

There are some simple things that you can do to limit bacterial growth:

• Minimize your consumption of carbs and sugar
• Rinse your mouth with water after you eat or drink
• Switch out complex carbs for more refined carbohydrates
• Indulge in treats sparingly  
• Eat and drink all in one go, rather than continuously
• Clean dental debris from between your teeth using floss
• Wait 20 to 30 minutes after eating or drinking to brush your teeth; your enamel is temporarily softened during this period 

Try implementing a few of these tips into your regular routine to refresh your smile. As always, our Saint Louis dental team is here to provide you with any additional guidance or support you need. Together we can make sure that you reach your short-term and long-term dental goals!