Hi, I’m Dr. Brett Langston. I’m a prosthodontist and owner of a Dental Implant and Aesthetic Specialist here in Brookhaven, Georgia. I’m here to help you watch your mouth. So today, we’re going to talk about thirties and forties, what to expect, what’s going on, and how to keep it healthy.
Changes in Oral Health with Age
As you age, like the rest of your body, your mouth undergoes changes. The biggest change that we see as you progress through time is eventually your bone starts to kind of gradually creep away. And so as that bone tissue drops a little bit, the tissue goes with it. So what you might start to notice is right at the gum line, and usually, it starts in the back teeth. The gum starts to pull away from the tooth and the crown of the tooth where it was meeting flush with the gum tissue before. All of a sudden, that gum tissue is pulled down a little bit and exposes the root structure.
Impact of Gum Recession
And that can be problematic for a number of reasons. Primarily aesthetics. The root structure is yellower and darker, but also the root is not as preventative and protective of the nerve inside. And so cold food, hot foods occasionally, all of a sudden will start to be a lot more sensitive, causing and causing your teeth to get little zings and little hotspots. Now, if these are occasional, they don’t happen all the time, it’s not a big deal. But if you’re starting to notice in one area or generally speaking in your mouth that you’re getting a lot more sensitivity to cold food, definitely come in and see your dental professional. Let us take a look. And it may be something as simple as changing your toothpaste. It may be something as simple as giving you a prescription toothpaste. We have a handful of toothpaste that we use that are higher in fluoride content.
Fluoride and Sensitivity
What fluoride does is it helps the tooth build up a protective layer over the nerve, almost like a thermal protective layer over the nerve that the root structure doesn’t normally have. An interesting study came out recently that with the trend in people drinking bottled water and drinking filtered water, we’re getting away from tap water. And one of the problems with that is that without drinking tap water, a lot of people aren’t getting the fluoride that they need. So to combat that, we need to have more fluoridated toothpaste, drink more tap water, or some kind of combination of the two if the recession reaches the point where you have chronic sensitivity, which is always painful.
Treatment Options for Sensitivity
There are a couple of options we have from the minimally invasive, a small filling if you’ve got some tooth erosion to kind of fill where that tooth is worn away or all the way on the other end to a periodontal procedure, which is basically a gum procedure where our esteemed colleagues, the periodontist will take that tissue and raise it up over that exposed root structure and then put it back down so that you don’t have that cold or any kind of direct zing to the tooth structure.
Tooth Discoloration with Age
When you were 18, your teeth were nice, white, and bright, and everything was great. Now, you may start to notice that as you creep into your thirties and forties, your teeth are darker and have a little bit more tinge to them, whether it’s from just natural wear and tear or whether it’s from drinking and eating habits. I’m a big offender of that. I drink Diet Coke all the time. Diet Coke is rough on the teeth. All carbonated beverages are rough on the teeth. And because they’re a combination of acid, which is pH low, and carbonation, if you drink any kind of sugar beverages in association with all that, it can cause a lot of breakdown of that enamel structure.
Diet and Tooth Health
So it’s really important if you drink Diet Coke, or you drink regular Coke, or you drink anything along those lines, try not to sip on them all day. Being from the South sweet tea, love it. It’s a part of life. But unfortunately, if you’re constantly basing your teeth in that super sugar-saturated substrate, you’re going to start to see decay, and especially, you’re going to wear away that enamel and get sensitivity and issues, staining. There’s a handful of things that we do on a daily basis or weekly basis that cause staining worse. Number one, red wine is a big culprit. I like red wine. I think it’s great. Supposedly a glass a day is healthy for you, but the tannins and the grape can really stain the teeth, especially if the enamel is starting to be worn.
Preventing Tooth Staining
So again, I wouldn’t recommend brushing your teeth right after every glass of wine. That’d be weird. It would taste gross, but it might not be a bad idea to rinse with some water or alternate a glass of water in there so you’re not leaving that material on the surfaces of the teeth. Some other big things, dark chocolate, strawberries, blueberries, and tea can really stain teeth. So again, it’s important if you have these things in your diet, which, again, a lot of them have great health components. You need to alternate with some water or some kind of substrate that’ll rinse that off. Some of the other factors that really impact tooth color, smoking, nicotine in general, whether it’s tobacco, whether it’s smokeless tobacco, a lot of those things will stain teeth really bad.
Whitening Solutions
Some of the cool things we have nowadays are lots of whitening products, we’ve got lots of options to bleach your teeth to get ’em back to that color that you’re aiming for, but you have to be aware that your dietary habits don’t change, we can make your teeth look great, but it’s just going to go right back to where it was over time. So, the combination of the solution, I guess, is that we can bleach the teeth, and then we have to modify our behaviors so that we’re not constantly bathing those teeth in staining materials.
Dealing with Tooth Wear and Tear
Another problem that we start to encounter as we get into our thirties and forties is our teeth start to get a little bit of wear and tear on ’em, whether that’s through cracks, whether that’s through, they’re starting to break down and once the tooth has had a cavity and it has had to have a filling, that tooth structure’s automatically weakened. It’s not as strong and not as whole and intact. And so over time, a lot of times, small fillings are going to grow up to be big fillings, and then big fillings are going to grow up to be crowns. And so it’s just something to be aware of. Once you’ve had fillings done, you have to watch out for fractures and cracks.
Preventing Dental Trauma
The way you can prevent those or at least minimize the occurrence is by avoiding misusing your teeth. And what I mean by that is probably the number one factor for us, which is ice. Chewing ice is while it can be therapeutic, while people really like it, chewing ice is horrible for your teeth, and it’s because of two things. Number one, it freezes the teeth, so it makes ’em hard, it makes ’em a little bit more prone to cracking because of the temperature. And then, on top of that, you’ve got the hard ice. So when you’re crunching and grinding on the ice, you’re kind of setting your teeth up for failure. It’s good for business for us, but it’s bad for your teeth. So, I definitely wouldn’t recommend it.
Common Causes of Dental Injuries
Another factor that is kind of the biggest cause of dental trauma is popcorn; I’m a big fan of popcorn. I love popcorn, but we do see a lot of trauma from unpopped kernels. And the problem is when you’re eating popcorn, you’re usually preoccupied with something else. You’re watching a movie, you’re watching a game, and you put a bunch of popcorn in, and you bite down on that unpopped kernel, and the force just causes your teeth to crack or break. So, just be cautious eating. Avoid anything like chicken bones, anything really hard. A lot of it’s common sense, but if you just don’t think about it, you don’t put two and two together.
Importance of Replacing Missing Teeth
So again, cracks are very common as we get older, into our thirties and forties. And as I said, the teeth that we need to be worried about are your molars and your pre-molars, the back teeth that do all the force and all the chewing. And once they’ve had a filling, they’re a little bit more prone to breaking down. One thing also to consider is once you lose a tooth or multiple teeth, those remaining teeth all of a sudden are pulling a lot more weight. And so they’re going to be under a lot more duress. They’re going to be under a lot more strain. And so once you start losing teeth here or there, if you don’t replace them, it starts the slow process of the remaining teeth starting to break down. And something to consider, too, is your front teeth are just designed to cut the food and send it to the back for the big guys.
Impact of Front Teeth Overuse
Unfortunately, we have a lot of patients who, when they lose back teeth, have to do a lot of chewing on their front teeth, no fault of their own; they just don’t have anywhere else to chew. But unfortunately, those front teeth are not designed to handle that wear and tear. And so we start to see them break down quicker. So the lesson here, I guess, is it’s really important that as we age if we start to lose teeth, we really need to be on top of replacing those missing teeth. And we’ve got lots of ways to do that, whether it’s something removable, whether it’s something fixed, whether it’s a bridge or an implant, there’s lots of options. But if you don’t address the missing teeth, it’s going to make your mouth start to age and break down faster.
The Importance of Regular Checkups
And this is why regular checkups are so important. If you have a healthy mouth, you may think, why do I need to go to the dentist? They’re just going to do a cleaning that I could do on my own, and I’ve never had problems. Unfortunately, that’s only true for a really, really small percentage of the population. Some people are blessed with what I call the genetic lottery. They won the genes that don’t get periodontal disease, they don’t have the bacteria that caused decay. Very, very small subset of the population. Everybody else, it’s better to have a professional team working with you to make sure nothing sneaks up on you. So regularly scheduled hygiene appointments are very important, not only for us to get in there and do oral cancer screening to make sure there’s nothing amiss for us to find any kind of small problem before it gets bigger, but also there are areas where you can’t reach. There are nooks and crannies you can’t quite get into. And so it’s important to let a professional, our hygienists are amazing, get in there and really keep your teeth clean and tiptop shape.
Why Trust Your Dental Team
So it’s really important to have a dental team that you trust that will take care of you and have your best interest in mind. As the saying in dentistry goes, small problems never really go away in dentistry. They’re just going to get bigger. And if it’s something you can address today, it’s better to do that because it’s not going to get less expensive, and it’s not going to get less involved if you just ignore it.
Understanding the Genetic Lottery in Oral Health
Let me expand a little bit more on the genetic lottery. Basically, everybody’s got four types of bacteria makeup in their mouth. You’ve either got the bacteria that cause periodontal disease, which is where your bacteria actually attacks the bone cells, and the bone gets eaten away, and that causes tooth mobility and causes us to lose teeth earlier. Periodontal disease is very hard to fight. It is one of those things. If you catch it early and you can really work hard, you can minimize the damage, and you can slow down the bone loss, but eventually, it will lead to tooth loss and mobility.
Types of Oral Bacteria and Their Effects
The other type of genetic category is people that have bacteria in their mouth that cause cavities. They attack the teeth they can brush, they can do everything they can, but they keep getting cavities, and they keep having to lose teeth because of cavities. The third type of person, I call ’em the lucky winners, they have bacteria that don’t fall into either one of those categories. They’ve got good home care and rarely have dental problems. Everything is great. The fourth category is the really unlucky folks who have periodontal disease and cavity-causing bacteria and the combination of those two, and it’s a big uphill battle. That’s why it’s really important from an early age to really establish a relationship with your dental team so that we can catch anything early.
Advances in Periodontal Disease Treatment
Because of some of the advances and even periodontal disease as far as bacterial treatment and trying to figure out what you’ve got going on in your mouth and how to save your teeth and make your mouth healthy, we’re making leaps and bounds, we can’t help you if we don’t know you. So the most important thing is coming in, seeing us get that relationship started, and letting us help you take care of your mouth.
Don’t Delay Your Dental Visit
So if you find yourself in the category of, I haven’t been to a dentist in a while, don’t worry. We don’t go on guilt trips, and we don’t give people a hard time. We’re just glad you’re taking that initiative. So if you’re in that category, if you’re looking for a change, if you want to work with the dental team that looks after you and cares for you, please come see us. I’m Dr. Brett Langston. I’m a prosthodontist at Dental Implant and Aesthetic Specialist in Brookhaven, Georgia, and I’m here to help you watch your mouth.