Have you ever had a good look at your fillings? Next time you come in for a check-up and the dentist turns on the camera, ask for a close up of your fillings. Can you see how with amalgam, you have a flat, grey area? Your tooth has not only lost its colour, it has also lost its shape.
If you have lots of fillings, not having those mounds and valleys means that you have lost a little of bit of your ability to grind up your food. So, not only do your teeth bear the scars of past decay, they don’t work so well either.
Getting amalgam fillings replaced with white composite resin fillings is easy at Sandown Dental & Implant Clinic in Belfast. We can replace them all in a series of appointments, or you can have them replaced one by one as the amalgam filings wear out.
White fillings are different in a number of ways from amalgam. Both start off as paste that we pack into the cavity. However, with white fillings, we pack the cavity in layers and each layer is hardened with a UV light before we put in the next.
Because we can harden the composite resin, which is resin with glass or ceramic in it, we can also shape it to give you back your chewing surfaces. Amalgam can’t be shaped.
Also, white fillings can be bonded to the tooth, which means that decay-causing bacteria can’t get in round the edges of the filling and decay the tooth material beneath it. Amalgam can be tightly packed into the cavity, but it doesn’t bond to the tooth. Look at an old amalgam filling and you can see the ring round the edge of it where there’s a tiny gap.
If you are worried about the toxic effects of mercury getting into your system when we remove amalgam fillings, please don’t be. We isolate the tooth with a piece of flat rubber, called rubber dam, around it, to catch any pieces of mercury and stop you swallowing or inhaling them.
If you’d like to know more, please call us, or ask about white fillings at your next check-up.
The dark ring means that there is a tiny, tiny gap between the filling and the tooth it is meant to be protecting against decay.
The good news about these teeth is that they are the biting teeth and, as such, they only have one root. The teeth at the sides and back of your mouth, the ones you use for chewing, have 3 roots each. They need a lot more force to get them to shift in your jaw than the one-rooted social six at the front.
Yes, it is entirely possible to get some mild to moderate misalignment issues corrected within a year, especially if you come to us at Sandown Dental & Implant Clinic in Belfast for Six Month Smiles.
It wasn’t until the 1950s, and the advent of great dental cements, that veneers as a dental treatment, really took off…in Hollywood. Getting veneers was expensive and so only the famous and the very rich could afford them. Over the decades, veneers have become much thinner and now they are almost wafer-like, albeit very robust.
Here at Sandown Dental & Implant Clinic in Belfast, we see time and again how just one or two veneers can hugely improve someone’s smile. And it only takes 2 appointments to do so.
And yet, if you need to get your teeth replaced, this is the only treatment that will give you back the full functionality of your mouth, and keep your jaw in good condition, all without compromising any of your remaining natural teeth.
Secured into your jawbone
Out with the old
Tooth decay is common in children because their tooth enamel has not yet hardened properly, they haven’t yet developed ace toothbrushing skills and they are eating a lot of sugar. No wonder that by the time most of us reach adulthood we bear the scars of our youth in our mouths, with most of molars filled with amalgam.