January 27th, 2012
Bruxism or teeth grinding in layman’s term is a very dangerous condition to have and seeing as the problem is borne out of a lot of stress related factors, there is a very good chance that you might have problems in a place as demanding as London’s W1. The first signs of it may become apparent when you start suffering from jaw or earache and the jaw itself clicks when you open and close it. Left unattended, the problem could cause damage to the neck, interfere with the spinal chord, and cause problems in the upper back. You will also be doing untold damage to your teeth- which although can be countered by having a mouth-guard fitted, will not get to the bottom of the problem behind why you are grinding teeth in the first place. It normally arises from stress and anger which you may be contending with throughout the day, and it doesn’t help if you do not know how to unwind when you get home. Solving this will require you to take up a stress and anger management course- to first attend to why you get worked up so much and then teach you how not to. Then you can be taught how to relax as well. By doing so you are truly saving your teeth and jaws from serious complications in the future.
January 26th, 2012
So hands up if you know what sleep apnoea is in the city of London? There is a good chance that many of you will not have a clue but it is a very nasty little condition that you may well not know you have until you heart fails you. It is a condition that crop up during your sleep. When you retire at night and go to sleep, your body then starts an automatic process that keeps all your vital organs operating as they should. The mouth and nose take air into the lungs whilst the brain helps to regulate your breathing and in turn, your heart will keep beating to help the blood flow around the body. Now, interfere with either of these and the rest become strained and things like breathing and heart rate become very disjointed. Over a sustained period of time, this can also affect your breathing during the day without you probably noticing it, but which puts extra strain on the heart. People most at risk are the heavy drinkers, the obese, or those who have had some form of damage in their spinal chord. But fixing the problem is not that easy. A dentist can supply you with a breathing apparatus to wear to keep the airways open during sleeping, but the order of the day is a complete lifestyle change and to get yourself fit and healthy to help regulate your breathing and to exercise the heart.
January 25th, 2012
It is a pretty open and shut case that most of us busy types in west London do our absolute best to maintain our oral hygiene in the time we have to ourselves during the day. But in a busy environment as the city, you could be forgiven for forgetting to look after your teeth constantly and even putting back the odd dental appointment, but you may not find your mouth so forgiving when things start to go wrong, and by skipping appointments, your dentist won’t be able to diagnose and repair the problems and the worst condition is gum disease which acts as a springboard to even more serious conditions. The gums are delicate and require lots of TLC to keep them healthy, but if they pick-up a disease, they can decline very quickly, leading to tooth loss. If your gums bleed or weep after cleaning, you will need to turn your hygiene around and watch what products you are using, especially alcohol based mouthwashes. Turning to herbal remedies can re-stimulate life into the gums and by rinsing your mouth with salt water will help stop the bleeding from your gums. But you really do need to get along to the dentist for further advice on stopping the problem. The can deep clean the teeth below the gum line and keep a close eye on any further development in the disease. But it’s beatable and often reversible if you’re willing to apply yourself to the scenario.
January 24th, 2012
It is very easy to hit the panic button and go overboard when something starts to go wrong in our mouths in central London. We can quite easily get carried away and try to rectify the problem overnight by throwing all of the dental products on the shop shelves at it- as it is when we discover we have bad breath. But what a situation like this needs is not a knee jerk reaction but a calm plan and a cool head in order to reverse it. Things need to be worked out, such as your diet and lifestyle. Then you need a hygienist to come in and analyse the state of your mouth, repair you and then inform you where you have been going wrong in the past. There is a pretty good chance that gum disease is involved in some way and has been contributing to the cause of your bad breath by helping to dry up the saliva in your mouth. By throwing an over zealous attack at the problem with dental products can only lead to further problems, you need subtlety not ferocity. Some of the agents that you find in toothpastes can add to the drying out process so you need to be careful at what you choose, and harsh brushing needs to stop as well as you can do more damage than good to the gums. The worst things you can use though are alcohol based mouthwashes as these only mask the smell whilst the alcohol heaps further dryness to the mouth and gums.
January 23rd, 2012
Getting the news that you have oral cancer can literally stop the city of London from moving around you and bring your world tumbling down. Such is the nature of the word cancer and it has ghastly terminal overtones to it. But you can take heart from the fact that all the money that has been thrown at it is starting to pay dividends and more and more people are recovering successfully form treatment. But on a dour note, there are a lot more reported cases of oral cancer throughout the city as well- what causes it is still a grey area, but people know a hell of a lot more about treating it. But, if you smoke and drink a lot, have a woeful diet, poor oral hygiene and are constantly stressed out and run down, this isn’t going to help your cause in anyway whatsoever. The things to watch out for are constant sore throats and ulcer, neck and earache and lumps in the mouth that come and stay. It’s at this point you need to get along to the dentist or doctor and get some tests done and if the news come back as bad, you then need to take your life by the horns and prepare yourself for treatment. What form this takes is determined by how bad the problem is, but afterwards, you are going to alter your philosophy towards life and turn things upside. Having good friends, family and healthcare around you will help you to make a full recovery.
January 20th, 2012
There is a road map to disaster in the mouth and if you don’t watch out for the signs early on in central London, you can be setting yourself up for major oral fallout. Oral hygiene is key here for a healthy mouth, but let’s just consider for a moment that you are rather lazy when it comes to caring for your mouth and that you don’t look after your teeth. Within 24 hrs, plaque will build up around the teeth and the acids that form on the surface of the teeth and start burning their way through the enamel and into the inside- tooth decay. Whilst this is going on tartar will have formed around the base of the teeth and then the gums will become infected- gum disease. Not long after that, periodontal disease will set in, eat away at the jaw bone and ‘hey presto’, your teeth drop out. Gum disease needs radical action and your dentist and hygienist are the first people you should call on to ascertain the depth of the problem. They can patch you up, deep scale your teeth below the gum-line and then advise you what to be wary of in the future in regards to what you eat, what you do and how you clean your teeth. But beating gum disease takes a lot of work, you must spread your hygiene methods further a-field and into the realms of natural remedies. Salt is wonderful for fighting this disease and rinsing and brushing with warm salty water will help calm the problem down. The to soothe the problem down, the use of such oils as Echinacea tincture and tea tree oil are superb for soothing the gums and putting life back into them. It is never going to be easy to treat this condition, but you can stop it and in some cases, even reverse it.
January 19th, 2012
We all strive hard to look after our teeth in west London and from a very early age, we have had it drilled into us the importance of brushing at least three times a day and then rinsing. Brushing will remove acids and film from the surface of the teeth and keep the enamel free of tooth decay. But one thing you may not have been told about is the importance of flossing. You see, a big old brush is all very well, but it won’t delve into the darker areas between the gums and teeth where food love to congregate: removing this needs extra consideration and effort. Dental floss is designed to be worked between the teeth and up around the gums so that the residue left over after a meal is removed. By doing so, you will be drastically cutting down the chances of plaque, gum disease and tooth decay developing in the mouth. You can also buy tiny little brushes that are just ideal for getting between the teeth and again, removing the problem of lodged food. And the final icing on the cake in all of this is a decent mouthwash. These have really com on over the years and are specifically aimed at fighting plaque, regenerating your teeth with fluoride and killing bacteria. By backing up your brushing with all this will keep your mouth in total harmony, keep the teeth in your mouth for a very long time and help you to avoid complications in later life.
January 18th, 2012
It’s all very well equipping ourselves with the best toothbrushes that money can buy, but as we have no doubt learnt by now and probably been told by our dentist in London W1, just brushing is no longer good enough on its own, which is why you can find shelves stacked in shops with products to compliment the brushing process. You may have noticed on your way down the isles packets of tiny little brushes- these are inter-dental brushes and designed to get between the teeth and remove the food that your normal brush can’t. Such as it is with dental floss, though with this, you can work it up into the gum line as well for a really thorough clean. Then you can top the process of with a jolly good mouthwash and then you have done the ultimate clean on your mouth. There is a footnote to all of this however: if you pop into a natural foods shop, the shelves here will be full or herbal and essential oils such as tea tree, aloe vera and Echinacea tincture. A drop of one these on your dental floss and if you massage the gums afterwards with such alternatives, it has the affect of soothing and regenerating life into the gums and keeping the blood going.
January 17th, 2012
If you a one of the unlucky ones to suffer from halitosis in west London, one of the causes of it may be linked to gum disease as well. Bad breath is a complex issue to sort out; it can be caused by bad diet, bad lifestyle and bad oral hygiene and all of these issues have to be looked into, as if something smells bad in the mouth, it could mean that something is drastically wrong somewhere within you. But one of the major causes of this is having a parched mouth which can leave your mouth very vulnerable to gum disease and this alone can leak toxins into the mouth and leave pungency in the air: the saliva is life’s natural defender against bacteria and without it, said bacteria is free to run amok. Throwing the obvious products at the problem can help with keeping your mouth clean, but they won’t address the problem of dry mouth overall, though they will help ease the gum disease. Once you have got the balance fired up again with your diet and curbed your bad habits a little, it will kick start you immune system and slowly the saliva will return. In the meantime, it is important to regenerate the fluid in your mouth by drinking lots of water, chewing lots of sugarless gum and sucking on lots of sugarless sweets as well- anything that will hydrate the mouth. Nipping the gum disease in the bud can also be aided with such alternatives as aloe vera, Echinacea, tea tree oil and clove oil: if worked into the gums by dropping your floss into the oils before hand can help sooth the gums and regenerate blood flow. Massaging the gums is also a good way to put life back into your gums.
January 16th, 2012
If you are looking to rebuild your mouth and kick-start your smile once more in central London after tooth loss, possible the most delicate and durable way of doing so is to get yourself fitted with a dainty little dental implant. This was once a very intricate operation once upon a time that could take months to recover from and being exclusive, it was damned expensive too. But you can rest easy on that front because modern technology- with all its computers and lasers, have made this procedure easy enough for your kids to perform. The small titanium ‘root’ can be placed in the jaw bone with absolute precision, and by carrying it out with lasers, it can be done with the minimum of fuss and damage to the rest of the mouth, making healing faster afterwards. Then once you get the green light, a crown can be attached to the new ‘root’ and you once again look the person you once were. Such a rise in its availability in surgeries all over the city has also brought down the cost dramatically, and if you can set yourself up with some type of staggered payments, you’ll hardly notice the hole in your bank account each month- and it is precisely this new attitude of ‘let’s get the work done and you pay later’ in modern dentistry the reason the dental implant become so popular when facing up to tooth loss and readily affordable for everyone.
