Protect Your Teeth from Staining

If you’ve gotten whitening treatment in our office, you’ve noticed your teeth are several shades lighter. With good oral hygiene, they should stay that way for years. But tooth discoloration is a normal part of life, and everybody’s smiles fade over time. Nonetheless, there are some things you can do to protect natural teeth from stains. At the South Carthay dental office of Dr. Suzanne Haeri, we specialize in cosmetic care, and to protect our patients’ investment, we wanted to pass along some information about enamel and extrinsic stains.

 

An extrinsic stain is one which forms on the outside of the tooth. While intrinsic stains are often indicative of a health problem that may require significant intervention, extrinsic stains are usually only a cosmetic issue. For the most part, they can be blamed on tannins. These organic substances are present in some plant tissues, and are the reason why coffee, tea, and red wine are dark colored. They also build up on a person’s teeth, and cause the same stains. Dark colored soda and juice can have a similar effect, and their sugar is causing dark-colored substances to get stuck on the teeth. Other sources of tooth discoloration are smoking, soy sauce, and tomato sauce.

 

Although cutting back on staining substances can keep teeth whiter for longer, patients may not need to abandon coffee and tea entirely. Sipping these drinks through a straw can significantly reduce the teeth’s exposure to tannins. Regular brushing and flossing will also remove the sticky plaque that traps dark substances. If you do notice your teeth fading, we can provide a whitening touch-up in the form of in-office whitening or a refill for a take-home tray.

 

The dental office of Suzanne Haeri, DDS, is located at 1100 S La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, California, 90035. To schedule an appointment, call 310-657-2200 or visit our website at Suzanne Haeri DDS.

Dental Bonding

Do you find yourself running your lips over a small chip in one of your teeth? Are you reluctant to smile in pictures because one of the gaps between your teeth seems too large, or one of your crowns isn’t as long as the others? We hope that’s not the case; everyone deserves a smile they’re proud of. But at the South Carthay dental office of Dr. Suzanne Haeri, we provide dental bonding that can be used for cosmetic improvements as well as minor repairs. The process is quick and far less invasive than replacing a whole crown.

 

Bonding is made out of a composite resin the same color as your teeth. (If you are also unhappy with your teeth’s color, we can whiten them before making any adjustments to their shape.) We use bonding to smooth over tiny cracks, called craze lines, and to add a bit more material to a crown that is uneven or where gum tissue has receded around, but the tooth is stable. Bonding can reduce the sensitivity of an exposed tooth root and may be able to replace a patient’s old metal fillings. To place it, we’ll first cover the tooth in a mild etching acid to increase its surface area. We’ll then apply the wet bonding material and harden it with a blue light.

 

When a patient makes a reservation just to have bonding placed on a tooth, they can usually be out of the office in less than an hour. If the patient is not suffering from sensitivity, placing bonding may not even require anesthetic. Although patients have to be careful not to overtax bonding by biting down on anything too hard, they should find it easy to care for. If a patient brushes and flosses their teeth regularly, bonding can stay in place and retain its original color for over five years.

 

The dental office of Suzanne Haeri, DDS, is located at 1100 S La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, California, 90035. To schedule an appointment, call 310-657-2200 or visit our website at Suzanne Haeri DDS.

Halitosis

We specialize in cosmetic dental care at the South Carthay office of Dr. Suzanne Haeri. Maintaining a smile that you're proud of isn’t just a function of how it looks, but also of how it smells. We’ve all had moments when we suddenly realized that something we’d eaten was causing us to have bad breath. But what about halitosis, the chronic, lingering unpleasant smell that sometimes seems to come from our mouths for days on end? This week, we’ll take a closer look at the reasons for halitosis, and what can be done about it.

 

Halitosis can generally be traced to oral pathogens. Certain species of bacteria produce an odor when they metabolize food debris left over in the mouth. When those bacteria are on the teeth, they may contribute to tooth decay and gum recession, but there are a lot more of them hiding in the bumps on the tongue. They may not do much substantive harm there, but the white coat they form is probably responsible for a patient’s bad breath. People who wear dentures or retainers may also experience outbreaks of fungus, which emit bad odors for similar reasons, and people with nasal infections may experience discharge leaking onto the backs of their tongues.

 

One of the most effective things you can do to eliminate halitosis is to drink more water. Increasing your saliva output won’t just rinse away food particles and bacteria, it will also counteract the effects of acid. Saliva also contains antimicrobial enzymes for additional protection from infection. Scraping your tongue once a day will also remove build-up, and you can use mouthwash to scour the back of it. Following meals, you might also want to try sugar-free gum or candy to stimulate more saliva production and remove a small amount of debris if you can’t use a toothbrush, floss, or scraper right away.

 

The dental office of Suzanne Haeri, DDS, is located at 1100 S La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, California, 90035. To schedule an appointment, call 310-657-2200 or visit our website at Suzanne Haeri DDS.

Bite Checks

You may be familiar with twice-annual dental check-ups as a way to get your teeth cleaned and your fillings inspected. But that’s not all that happens at a check-up, and even if you think your mouth is free of decay, there are good reasons to keep your appointments. One of the most important aspects of a dental examination is the bite check. At Dr. Suzanne Haeri’s South Carthay dental office, we provide for our patients’ general and cosmetic dental needs, and both of those depend on their teeth closing comfortably and completely together.

 

Bite checks are an opportunity for the dentist to check for malocclusions and damage from temporomandibular joint disorders (tmd). Malocclusions, which are misalignments in the teeth, may also be evident through x-rays, but a bite check would alert us if the patient’s jaws are coming together at an angle. TMD both results from and contributes to swelling in the joints where the lower jaw connects to the rest of the skull. Damage to those joints can result in difficulty opening the mouth, pain radiating from the head to the shoulders, and increased pressure on the teeth, causing them to move out of place, lose enamel, or crack.

 

During a bite check, we would ask a patient to demonstrate closing their teeth together. They should be able to close with the back teeth on both sides fitting into each other, and without the front teeth tilting outward. We can provide veneers to fix minor malocclusions on the front teeth, but teeth grinding induced by tmd will leave distinctive wear patterns, and a patient may need to wear a night guard during sleep to protect themselves from it. Correcting more serious malocclusions may require referral to an orthodontist, but we can still teach patients jaw stretching exercises to reduce the strain in their joints in the meantime.

 

The dental office of Suzanne Haeri, DDS, is located at 1100 S La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, California, 90035. To schedule an appointment, call 310-657-2200 or visit our website at Suzanne Haeri DDS.

Cracked Teeth

As a dental practice that specializes in cosmetics, we at Dr. Suzanne Haeri’s South Carthay office have restored a lot of teeth with minor cracks and chips. But we also take good care of patients who have a more serious injury. We hope that our patients wear mouthguards when playing contact sports or doing anything dangerous, but if they do break a tooth, we can probably fix it.

Our molars are the only teeth that should be used for chewing. They have multiple roots and wide surfaces to distribute the force of a patient’s bite. The smaller teeth are vulnerable to breaking or tilting when they are repeatedly subjected to force. But even the molars can crack against something harder, such as ice. If a patient breaks a tooth, they should rinse their mouth with warm salt water. For their safety, they should cover the crack or chip with orthodontic wax or sugar-free gum.

We offer a vast array of restorative services. Small cracks in the surface of the front teeth can be covered with veneers, and minor chips may be repairable with bonding. If a molar is broken, we may fabricate a partial crown to fill in the crack or replace a missing cusp. But if a tooth is cracked down to the pulp, we may need to do a root canal procedure to protect against infection. When teeth are broken all the way down to the root, they need to be replaced. In those cases, we offer implants and partial dentures and will discuss a patient’s options after relieving their pain. We also offer Snap-On Smiles for patients who have widespread chipping and discoloration.

Suzanne Haeri, DDS, is located at 1100 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, California, 90035. To set up an appointment, call 310-647-2200 or visit Suzanne Haeri DDS and fill out a request.