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In this episode Dr. Marvin is looking at the world, and the fact that more and more people are getting sick each and every day, and everyone is pointing in different directions for the cause, but ultimately it comes down to one thing, and that’s Toxicity. So with that, lets get going on this week’s episode of Let’s Talk Dentistry!
— Transcript of Today’s Show —
Hello, you’re listening to Dr. Marvin. Thank you for tuning in. This is Let’s Talk Dentistry live every week here on KPRAISE AM1210. Thank you for joining us; if this is your first time listening, you’re in for a treat today. We’re going to be talking about bridges. If you missed last week’s show, we had a great show talking about technology and some digital impression taking.
Find us online at trynaturaldentistry.com. There’s a lot of great information about what we do and why we’re different. That’s right. Our office is completely different from most dental offices because of what we believe in. Let me tell you what we believe in. We believe in treating the person, not treating the tooth. We want to make sure that whatever we do is healthier for you.
In other words, we don’t want to put anything in your mouth permanently that is going to cause you harm. That’s very important, because we don’t want to cause harm. The Hippocratic oath says “Do no harm.” As a dentist, we don’t want to do any harm. The difference between us and other dentists is that they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know that the materials they’re using is harmful to someone. They don’t know that the procedure that they’re doing grinds away so much of the tooth that they’re doing harm to someone. They’re not identifying true causes of chronic health illnesses which can be found in the mouth. They’re not looking at you from the whole picture. They look at you like a mechanic looks at a problem when there’s something wrong with the car. The problem is that a car is a lot easier to fix than something that’s in the mouth, because the mouth, teeth and gums are connected to your body. The way that your teeth come together when you open and close your mouth and the materials you put in your mouth is an integral part of your whole body.
That’s what we focus on at the Center for Natural Dentistry. If you want to schedule an appointment with us, you want to call our number. 760-536-1199. Go online and find out more about us at trynaturaldentistry.com. If you like facebook, I would encourage you to like our page at facebook.com/naturaldentistry. You’ll find a lot about our updates, a lot of specials we provide, a lot of great information, just food for thought, you could say.
Today’s show! Let’s get down to it. By they way, this is our last show of the year. This is completing our fourth year here. We’re just so happy that you are here tuning in with us. Just call other people around, you’ll find out that in these next twenty minutes you’ll learn more about dentistry than you ever have if you were to just ask your dentist.
We do natural dentistry at our office. We do comprehensive work, we do full treatment plans when you come in. We do three dimensional x-rays. We use advanced technology, advanced knowledge, and advanced techniques in order to do the best dentistry. Really the dentistry that I would do for myself, hands down. I only propose and only do what I would do for myself. Plain and simple, we’ve had plenty of happy customers, happy patients in the past that have not only had the great dentistry done, but also gotten healthier because of it. Maybe it’s some health issue that they’ve been dealing with. They’ve become healthier, and they’re amazed by what we can do.
One of our principles is that Dr. Godes and myself are removing toxins from your body. When we remove toxins from your body, your body has an innate, natural, god-given ability to heal itself. If you believe in that statement, then you should go to a dentist that identifies what problems are going on inside the mouth.
At our office, we also believe in pathways. There are certain pathways in our body that go from the top of our head all the way to the bottom of our foot. These pathways can be broken, and when they’re broken it’s like your body is not paying particular attention to that pathway, and that can lead to disease or to stress. When you have stress or disease in that pathway, it can affect other parts of that pathway. These pathways need to be identified, they need to be tested, and then they have to be solved. If there’s an obstruction or there’s a blockage in the pathways, we need to figure out where that blockage is, so that the rest of the pathway works. All pathways go through the mouth, and we as natural, holistic dentists look at these pathways. If your distant problem– let’s say you have a knee problem, ankle problem, hip problem, stomach problem, digestive problem, neck problem, back problem, these can all be because you have blockages in the mouth.
It’s not blockages that come naturally. Sometimes these blockages can be caused by a dentist using a bad material or allowing disease to continue. It’s very important, if you resonate, if you jive, if you think what I’m saying makes sense, then you should be going to a natural dentist like myself or Dr. Godes, because most dentists are not taught this in school. Most dentists don’t go out an search for this knowledge base, and if you were to share this idea with them, they will cringe up, they will close their eyes or they would roll them at you. They would say, “That’s bogus. That’s quackery. That’s not what we were taught in school. Don’t listen to that stuff. Only listen to what I say, because what I say is proven.” The fact is that they don’t know what they don’t know, and they don’t want you, the patient, the radio listener to tell them otherwise. They think that dentistry is a set science, that it’s an exact science. It’s very easy to solve, easy to identify, and there are very simple procedures and treatments that can solve the problem. The reality is that most dentists are like doctors. They don’t really know how the whole body is connected, how it all works.
That’s what we do at the Center for Natural Dentistry, so I encourage you to give us a call. Make 2014 the best year possible. Make it the year where you kind of brush everything that you know aside and realize that people’s health is at risk here. A lot of people. You know them; you have family members, you have friends, you just hear it in the news. People are getting sicker and sicker. We as society are not identifying the true causes. I’ve identified the true cause, and you should too.
The true cause is toxicity. We have a lot of toxins in the world. This can be in what you drink, what you eat, what you breathe, what you’re surrounded by, the people that you’re around, your job or occupation. We live in a toxic world, and if you don’t make a conscious, deliberate effort to remove those toxins from your body, you too will be subject to the ill effects of all of these toxins. That includes disease, cancer, mental illness, all of this together. We as a society have to work together, and you as an individual need to take that next step. I think in 2014 we’re going to see huge growth and a step toward alternative healthcare and alternative, natural dentistry is just one portion of that, but a very important portion.
If you’re going to be making 2014 the year, I want to encourage you to go to a natural, holistic dentist. We’re not all the same. We have different views, principles and ideas, but I like to say that we are on the cutting edge, on the bleeding edge of this. If you want a holistic approach, if you want to keep your teeth, if you want to avoid disease, if you want to be healthy for a very long time, I encourage you to come see us, because most people that come to see us are taken aback by all the great information we provide. They are taken aback, because they’ve already done all of these problems, like gotten teeth pulled out when they were a kid, had braces done, had bridges done where they grind down on all the teeth, they’ve already had root canals, they’ve had infections, they’ve had their wisdom teeth taken out, they’ve had metal in their mouth, they’ve had mercury fillings in their mouth, they’ve had fluoride. All of these things, if you add them all up, they come to see us, and they feel bad, because they didn’t come to see us sooner. Do not delay, now is as great a time as ever. You don’t need to have a problem, you don’t need to have pain, you don’t need to have soreness in your mouth in order to come see us.
Do not wait until the last second, because your options could be limited. For instance if you have a cavity and you had it filled when it’s only half a millimeter deep, it’s a lot easier to fill that and a lot more predictable than to wait until that cavity is three millimeters deep, it’s close to the nerve, the nerve is dying, then your options are limited and it’s more expensive. It’s as simple as that. You wait, you go to then wrong dentist, then you’ve got problems. It’s more expensive, you’re going to kick yourself in the butt and say, “Man, I wish I woulda, coulda done that.” Do not be like that. Turn over a new leaf. Make a New Year’s resolution that your health is going to be priority number one, and you’re going to chose newer providers. Providers that think like this, try to be proactive in eliminating problems before they occur and to get knowledgeable. Stop trying to go on the internet and trying to figure this out yourself. It’s just way too much. You haven’t gone to school, you haven’t had the expertise, knowledge or experience that we have. It’s just a simple investment of a few hundred dollars, you find out what your x-rays are, what’s going on in your x-rays, you get tested, you figure out how your bite works, how your teeth are, check your gums, check your teeth, check for oral cancers. It’s just well worth it. It’s time for you to spend your money and invest in your health. 760-536-1199.
Today’s show is about bridges. It’s a funny topic, because I ask patients, “Have you have heard of bridges before?”
A lot of them will say, “Yes.” Or they will say, “Yes, I think.” Or they will say, “I’ve heard of it, but I don’t really know what it is.”
That’s what today’s show is about; it’s about bridges. The official name with dentists was fixed, partial dentures. Dentures, meaning prosthesis. A lot of times dentures means replacing of teeth. It’s fixed, meaning it stays in your mouth. It’s glued permanently in your mouth. A partial denture means that it’s only for a few teeth, not for your whole teeth. Though it’s called fixed, partial denture, do not think of it as a denture that goes in your mouth like your parents or grandparents have that they can take in and out of their mouth. Those are called removable, partial dentures or removable, complete dentures. For our sake, fixed partial dentures means bridges, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about today.
What is a bridge? In order to know what a bridge is, a lot of people have heard of caps and crowns. If you don’t know what a cap or a crown is, we’re going to talk about that too. A cap and a crown is something that is a prosthesis, something that is fake or is a restoration that goes over you teeth. In order for the new tooth or the new prosthesis to have the same size, feel and function as a natural tooth, you have to grind away part of the natural tooth. Part of your natural tooth could have been ground away because there’s a cavity in it, or it could have decayed away, or a dentist has to drill away the enamel and the dentin, so you have the space to have that prosthesis made. There is a lot of process to go through, the technique and all of that. There are a lot of materials that are used out there. There’s a lot of different designs. There are 3/4 crowns, where it’s just part of the tooth. You have all the way into inlays and enlays, where even less of the tooth is missing, but for the most part they have taken away all of the enamel from your tooth. 360 degrees, all the way down to the gum line, sometimes below the gum line. They take a mold of that tooth, take an impression, send that impression to a laboratory, the laboratory will make a mold. Once they make the mold, they’ll fabricate the crown or restoration, they’ll send it back to the dentist, the dentist will schedule a visit with the patient, they’ll take off the temporary, they’ll fit the crown, and if it fits well, they’ll go ahead and cement it into place.
A bridge is very similar to a crown, however it’s bigger, and it spans more teeth. If I say the word ‘bridge,’ what is the idea? You probably think of a car driving over a bridge. Say for instance the Golden Gate Bridge. A bridge has two sides and a little platform that goes across. A bridge in terms of dentistry means to replace a missing tooth or several missing teeth, and you have to have two teeth on opposite sides of that space in order to trim down and form one prosthesis or one restoration that is connected, all in one piece, where it anchors one tooth and anchors the other tooth. If you’ve got that picture in your brain, it’s a fake tooth in the middle with two crowns on the side that is all fused together. It uses the two neighboring teeth as anchors, so that when the bridge is glued permanently, you have something to chew with. It’s nice and strong, because it’s anchored by the two neighboring teeth.
This used to be the standard of care until implants started coming out. We’re not going to talk about implants, but implants are typically more preferred than bridges these days, because you don’t have to trim or anchor to neighboring teeth. You don’t need those neighboring teeth to help out for the tooth that is now missing. Implants have come around, but implants have their own disadvantages and indications, and we don’t want to get into that today. We’ll just stick with bridges.
One of the biggest problems with bridges that people start realizing when they’re making the decision whether they want to replace the tooth with a bridge or not, is how to clean under the bridge. You simply cannot floss through the top of the bridge because it’s all connected. One of the problems with bridges is that it requires more work from the patient in order to keep the plaque, tarter, and the gums clean underneath the bridge. It will require maybe a special tool, maybe a water pick, maybe a special flosser, maybe special toothbrush, maybe an electric toothbrush, maybe a floss threader where they have to kind of floss underneath the bridge. It just requires a lot more work, and some people are not willing to put the extra time and money into saving the tooth and keeping the bridge clean. That’s one key problem with these bridges; it’s hard to clean underneath them. That’s why people prefer to have a removable partial denture, or a partial, or they prefer an implant, because you don’t have that problem there.
The other problem with bridges (I mentioned it earlier) is that you have to remove all the enamel of the neighboring teeth. When deciding on a bridge, one of the conditions that you have to figure out is what the condition of the two neighboring teeth is. If the two neighboring teeth need crowns or have crowns that are old or are made out of material that’s not good for you, and you’re going to replace those two neighboring crowns or you have to do work on the two neighboring teeth, then it may be OK to do a bridge. You have to crown those anyway. If one or both of those neighboring teeth have not had a lot of dentistry done, if they haven’t been ground down, then it’s not very biological or smart, and it’s not what I would do to ground down all the enamel just to make a bridge. It’s a problem these days, because dentists do not talk about the destruction of the teeth. They look at teeth like rocks. At our office, we look at teeth like organs, like body parts. You just don’t want to grind on your teeth haphazardly, because you can damage the teeth. Why would you want to get rid of all that strong enamel if you can avoid it? That’s the problem that we have at the Center for Natural Dentistry. We would rather conserve and preserve as much tooth as possible. That’s why bridges are not that common in our office. We don’t want to cause any damage to the teeth, and we don’t want to drill more than necessary.
If you feel like a bridge is the best option, you should know how much tooth is being removed. Dentists don’t want you to see what the tooth looks like after they drill it, because you’re going to see a little toothpick, a little stump. Dentists know about that. That’s why they put temporaries on and hope that they stay. They don’t want you to know that you’ve allowed the dentist to remove that much tooth. With a lot of these newer, aesthetic bridges, they have to remove even more tooth structure. Every time you remove tooth structure, you’re putting your tooth at risk. The teeth are going to start to hurt, they’re going to be painful. They’re going to start recommending root canal therapy, and then that just goes down another rabbit hole.
Another problem with bridges is, because they’re hard to clean around, they tend to have more cavities, especially around the gum line. If the bridges are not made and adjusted properly, and they’re not bonded into place, they’re just cemented, the cement can wash away. When the cement washes away, it just adds a whole new dimension of cavities. The number one reason bridges fail is because of cavities that form in between the teeth, where you can’t really see it. That’s why you have to get check ups and x-rays every six to twelve months, in order to see if there’s any decay under them. If there’s decay under the bridge, you may lose the tooth, you may lose the bridge that you spent thousands of dollars on. You would either have to do a new bridge that would be even longer and attach to a tooth in the back, or you might have to consider implants at that time.
Lots of decision making when it comes to bridges. The other problem that people don’t talk about with bridges is that you need to have a tooth on both sides of the space. Let’s say it’s the last tooth in your mouth; let’s say it’s the back, lower right of your mouth. If you don’t have another tooth behind it, then you can’t do a bridge. That’s why we do not recommend wisdom teeth to be pulled out automatically, because you may need to have that wisdom tooth in order to do a bridge.
Again, we treat individuals. We treat people. We don’t think one size fits all. We don’t recommend that everyone who has a missing space get it replaced. Not everyone that has crowding in there mouth do we recommend having their wisdom teeth being removed. Not everyone that has a messed up bite do we recommend braces. Everyone is different. You need to go to a dentist that gives you a second opinion or a third opinion, so that you understand the whole body approach when it comes down to it.
These are the major problems with bridges. Let me repeat. One, they’re hard to clean. Two, they’re destructive to the neighboring teeth. Three, you have to have teeth in order to do these bridges. Four, you develop a lot of cavities. A lot of dentists can’t see these cavities, because they’re hard to detect, unless you come in with x-rays and you get check ups all the time. Bridges are a great solution, however it is not always the only solution. You need to get this information before you make these decisions. Do not let a dentist pressure you into getting a bridge. Like I said, once you drill on the tooth, you can’t get it back. A lot of people have regret when it comes to bridges.
What are some of the alternatives to these bridges? Some of the alternatives could be dental implants, we mentioned that a little bit earlier, but every situation is different with dental implants.
Another option is to do a removable partial denture. There are lots of different types out there. You may have seen the metal ones with the fake tooth in them. That’s very common. In our office we don’t do those, because we’re not fans of all the metals being used. There are certain plastics that used that we’re not a big fan of, so we don’t really do those kind. There are a lot of different designs, different materials, and different limitations when it comes to these partials. You have to have all that information before you decide on what time of partial you’re going to use.
The other option is that you do not have to replace every missing tooth. If you replace the missing tooth, you may like it from the aesthetic point of view, but it may be uncomfortable, and you can’t eat with it. It may be more cumbersome and more of a headache, so that you don’t even use it. There’s no point in purchasing something you don’t use. One of the options I give my patients is that you don’t have to replace it. If you don’t replace it, what are the problems? Teeth may move, you may have gum problems, you may get cavities, your bite can get screwed up. There are other options, but you need to know all of the options before you make a decision.
When you come to our office, I want to explain all of these options for you, because I don’t want you, because I don’t want you banging your head about bridges if bridges aren’t even an option. It’s very important. If you want to schedule an appointment with me or Dr. Godes, I encourage you. It’s 2014. If you are thinking about a bridge, or if a dentist is trying to get you to do a bridge or an implant or a partial or whatever, come see us. It’s well worth the money. It’s well worth the trip. I’m going to give you an incentive right now to come visit us. If you call right now and are one of the first three callers, we’re going to give you ten percent off a bridge, removable partial denture, or dental implant, if you decide to replace that missing tooth. That’s right, ten percent off. That could mean hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars. Call right now. It’s for the first three callers. You do have to do an exam and x-rays first. This works for new patients and existing patients.
Thank you so much for joining us. I want everyone listening to have a wonderful, happy New Year, and really make 2014 the best year ever. Give us a call, 760-536-1199.