Carolina Dental Arts Blog

1.  Tell your dentist your have a severe phobia.  A good dentist will know what techniques to implement to make your visit easier.  Informing your dentist will give you a feeling of more control therefore easing your fears during treatment.
2.  Improvements, dental science has greatly improved since the 70′s and even more so in the last decade.
3. Ask, ask about the procedure so you know what is coming up next.  A lot of phobia stems from the unknown
4.  Relaxation medications, consider using an anti anxiety drug or nitrous oxide.  Anti anxiety drugs will need a driver home form your appointment while nitrous oxide will wear off 5 minutes after the procedure.
5. Communication, find a dentist who will openly communicate with you, good communication will help develop trust.  If there is trust between you and your dentist then you will feel much more comfortable.
6.  Relaxation techniques like breathing exercises or bringing your portable music player so you can focus on.  Also try to schedule your appointments in the morning, you not have all day to think about your appointment .
7. Take a break, raise your hand to take inform your dentist that you want to take a break, most dental procedures can be stopped at anytime to give you a chance to sit up and catch your breathe.
8.  Prevention, with good brushing and flossing techniques as taught to you by your dental hygienist can help you avoid lengthy dental treatments.
9.  Start small, have your first appointment be an exam, then ramp up to a professional dental cleaning, then you can move onto more complex procedures.
10.  Stop by and meet the dental team in order to discuss any fears you have.

Don’t be afraid the dentists at Carolina Dental Arts are here to help you.

Your new born will have their teeth soon, but you need to start taking care of them before that. Even though your child will lose their teeth, it is very important  to set the ground work for their permanent teeth.  To have a healthy happy baby here are some easy tips to take care of them.

1. Start Before Baby’s Teeth Come In

Start cleaning your child’s mouth even before her teeth come in. Wipe the gums off after each feeding with a warm, wet washcloth or a dampened piece of gauze wrapped around your finger. This gets them in the habit early of brushing their teeth and it help reduce bacteria in their mouth.

2.  Take Care of Them Right Away

Once the teeth begin coming in, start taking care of them right away. Many parents think baby teeth aren’t important because they’re eventually replaced by permanent ones. But these first teeth preserve the spacing for the permanent ones and help Baby chew and talk. If they’re not cared for properly they can decay, leading to a gum infection called gingivitis, which can affect the spacing of permanent teeth.

3.  Avoid Cavities

The first signs of cavities in baby teeth are a white chalky discoloration and minor pitting. Putting Baby to bed with a bottle of milk (or worse, juice) is notorious for causing cavities. Don’t leave your infant with a bottle for long periods of time, especially if you notice he’s no longer feeding and is just using the bottle for comfort

4.  Follow Meals with Water

Most infant foods easily wash off Baby’s teeth with just a drink of water after meals. But it’s good to introduce a toothbrush (choose a very soft one) as soon as possible, so baby can get used to having it in his mouth. You probably won’t need to use the brush to actually clean Baby’s teeth until he’s eating only table foods (and has a significant number of teeth), at around 18 months. However, you’ll want to gently clean your child’s teeth with a toothbrush or thimble-like cleaner and some bicarbonate of soda if your toddler has eaten sticky, sugary foods.

5.  Brush With Toothpaste At Age 1

Begin using a grain of rice size amount of toothpaste once Baby is about 1.   I know a grain of rice is small but your child is at risk for Fluorosis until 3 years.  Wait until at least 3, when your child is old enough not to swallow the toothpaste before increasing the size of the tooth paste to the size of a pea.

6.  Regulate Baby’s Fluoride Intake

Even though your baby isn’t using a fluoride toothpaste, he should get enough fluoride — important for preventing tooth decay — from drinking tap water. Most communal water supplies have it added just for this beneficial purpose. Ask your doctor about fluoride supplements Baby can take once he’s 6 months old if your tap water is not fluoridated or your child doesn’t drink any tap water.  If you are on a well North Carolina has free testing for well water.  Contact your County Health Department for a free testing kit.

 7.  Schedule a Dental Exam

The American Dental Association recommends that Baby get his first dental exam at age 1, but most pediatricians agree that the first visit can wait until age 3, as long as you practice good home care.  It is a great idea to bring your child with you to see Mommy getting her teeth cleaned.  I will make your first dental appointment go more smoothly.

If you take good care of this first set of pearly whites, you can establish good dental habits for years to come.  So please call one of Carolina Dental Arts Raleigh locations to make your first appointment with one of our Dentists.

Last Month John Lennon’s extracted molar fetched over $31,000 at auction.

To continue peoples excessive spending on crazy artifacts, this week a perfectly preserved T-Rex tooth got over $56,000!  This was the biggest T-Rex tooth every found and is well over 5 inches long.

This relic is over 65 million years old and was found earlier in the summer in Montana.

If you’re famous and would like to donate a tooth to be sold at auction for charity, any one of the Raleigh Dentists at Carolina Dental Arts can help you!

Here is some weird dental news from your Raleigh dentist.

John Lennon’s Molar was sold for over $31,000!

The tooth fairy must have been feeling pretty generous
last week because John Lennon’s molar was sold at
an England auction for $31,200!
The tooth was given to Lennon’s former housekeeper, Dot Jarlett,
between 1964 and 1968.  Lennon joked that Dot should
keep the tooth to give to her daughter, who was a big
beatles fan.

The tooth cannot be DNA tested but the owner of the
auction house does not doubt the authenticity since the
tooth came directly from Jarlett.

A dentist in Canada was the winning bidder, which was
expected to sell for around $16,000 but went for almost
double that!

There is a certain Internet advertisement going around with claims to “Learn the trick, discovered by a mom, to turn yellow teeth white for under $5,”

Five dollars sounds like a great deal, and seems pretty legit.  “Cathy Anderson” at www.myteethtrick.com (who just happens to be from Raleigh, North Carolina – wow! what a cool coincidence!) advises you to hit your teeth with a combination of two different teeth-whitening products, one right after the other.  And, because the company provides  free samples of their products, you only have to pay for the shipping.
Why this is a scam and how the scam works:

1. “Cathy’s” story is completely made up.   Photos, details and testomonials have been “modified.”  Cathy is not really from Raleigh. They have a program that says Cathy is from whatever city you are searching from. Do a search from a different city and bang, Cathy is from that city too!  That girl really gets around!
2. What is in these products?  There is no real evidence that they have ever been checked out by a dentist.  If Cathy isn’t even real, it puts the other “facts” in question!
3. They have a deceptive offer–order two trial samples then they have your credit card info and will charge an average of $200 every month until you cancel the card.
I am sure they will send you something, but here is the fine print buried deep on the Web sites:

“In the event you do not cancel within ten days after you order your trial product, you will be automatically enrolled in our convenient home delivery plan and your credit card will be
charged $92.37. Thereafter, 30 days from your initial order, you will be billed the monthly charge of $92.37 each month when product is sent to you.”

Multiple reports say that even when you call to cancel with in the ten days they will continue to charge your credit card.  Consumers who’ve been duped have said online that the only way to get rid of these blood sucking vampires is to cancel the card completely.

The moral of this story is: If it is to good to be true, it probably is.

Before you jump into a possible scam, please go see a dentist in Raleigh to get the real scoop.
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Carolina Dental Arts provides a wide variety of services including teeth whitening, Invisalign, orthodontics, including Six Month Smiles and dental restorations.  For your convenience, we have multiple locations serving patients near Raleigh,  NC. Our entire staff hopes that when you choose your Raleigh area dentist, you choose Carolina Dental Arts.

Yellowing and discoloration of teeth is a persistent problem people that many people grapple with. While there can be many reasons for the yellowing, some very common and can be dealt with by simple lifestyle changes and alterations. To provide expertise on this subject, Raleigh dentists at Carolina Dental Arts, offered guidance and insight into the reasons for yellowing and how it can be avoided.

• As you get older, the chemical composition of your body changes, causing minor changes in teeth color. These are natural changes and shouldn’t be a source of concern.
• A more worrisome cause is smoking and the use of tobacco, which both cause major tooth decay and yellowing.
• Carbonated beverages also are bad for teeth due to their color, which can dye teeth, and their sugary and acidic nature, which breaks down tooth enamel.
• A more damaging and troublesome cause of tooth yellowing could be a damaged nerve in the root canal, which would also cause significant pain as it progressed.
• Another cause of yellow teeth is the possible presence of excessive amounts of iron in the body.
• Any food that will stain a white shirt will also stain your teeth, (curry, mustard, red wine, blueberries, coffee, etc).

Whatever the cause might be, for whitening yellow teeth it is always a good idea to consult your Raleigh dentist at Carolina Dental Arts.

Thank you for visiting the Carolina Dental Arts blog.  We will be updating it weekly with dental related topics for our friends, family, and patients in the Raleigh, NC area.  We plan of both informing and entertaining you, as well as keeping you updated on our outreach to the community.  We also plan to answer common questions and debunk myths.   If you have any specific topics you would like addressed, please feel free to leave a comment.   Since we have multiple dentists/hygienists/office managers/and assistant with decades of experience, you can bet you will get an answer that you can trust!    Stay tuned…..

Welcome to our new Blog. Stay in touch with our team to find out more about Carolina Dental Arts, and other topics in the field of dentistry.