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Archives for October 2012

No more freedom flossers

October 27, 2012 By Trish Walraven Leave a Comment

The Wall Street Journal must have been having a slow day yesterday when they published this article about all the ways that dental floss has been used as a weapon or as a means of escape by inmates over the years. Seems that last month a group of New York prisoners decided to sue because they were getting cavities from not flossing.

What an excuse for American ingenuity to strike – let’s make a floss out of those annoying rubber bands that are sewn into new clothes to keep them on the hanger in the store! By the way, here’s how to break those off of your T-shirts:

Notice how he’s wearing a white dress shirt backwards to make him look like a mental patient…err… dentist. And wrapping the floss professionally around HIS INDEX FINGERS. Every dental professional knows that the middle finger is the way to go. Flip the bird, double flip, point ’em high. That’s the way to break it. Otherwise you’re also suggesting that users should cut their circulation off when they floss. Next thing you know the inmates will be suing because they’ve got gangrene in their nailbeds.

So anyways, here’s the Floss Loops website. The guy who owns the patent also sells inmate-safe soft toothbrushes so if you’re curious about those go take a look. At this posting all the brochures are 404-not-found, but at least you can get an idea of the toothbrush and floss you might have to use when you do finally go all “insane dentist” on the last patient that just really has it coming.

 

Filed Under: News, Preventive Care, Products Tagged With: dental care for inmates, Floss loops, prison dentistry

Patients: Floss Your $%#*^@# Teeth!

October 17, 2012 By Eva Watson 10 Comments

Now… don’t let the title of this piece make you cower into your stinky underpants drawer.

My intention is to simply explain the importance of why you lovely patients must floss your teeth.  After seven years of clinical experience and seeing the outcome of a non-flossing lifestyle, my hope is that those reading this highly important dental topic will gain the vital understanding of flossing and how gum disease will affect your life.

Let’s start by me asking for your full attention by you getting your crusty, Starbucks-stained teeth out of your $8.00 latte you really can’t afford but feel the urge to economically consume every, single morning before you go to your soon-to-be outsourced job that just increased your dental insurance premium for a minute because here’s what I have to tell you.

Are you ready?  Good.

If you don’t floss your gums will become a festering, disease-ridden, smorgasbord of unrelenting bacteria that will ultimately make your gingivae bleed in buckets every, single day of your life.  If you don’t floss your gums you will spend thousands (I’m not kidding) of dollars to simply control the incurable disease (and it is a disease) that you have let build up over years and years of utter neglect.

Exudate will ooze out from underneath your gums and after questioning by the clinical professional (How YOU doin’?) the finding(s) will be defined as ‘asymptomatic’.  That is, you will feel no pain.  What you will feel is the false sense of dental health with the perpetual lie you keep telling yourself when you think, “It doesn’t hurt,” while the blood-filled pus continues to bubble and percolate underneath your gums.

Allow me to continue.

Your social life will remain that of the lonely-lived bachelor/bachelorette whose breath completely, I mean, completely reeks so intensely, you will have no realistic chance of any dating prospects.  You will continue to waste money on the premium whitening kits at your local store to give off the illusion of a healthy mouth in the hopes of attracting a mate.  Your highly offensive, (Not  joking. It’s awful.) metallic-smelling breath from your lack of flossing is so oppressive no one will want to kiss you nor come within five feet of you.  (Yes.  The odor is that strong.)  And we can still smell it through the masks we wear.  Sorry.

Once your teeth become mobile, or loose, from the lack of flossing and the prolific bacteria eating away at your bone that supports your teeth, then, and only then, will you notice and mention the finding to your dentist and/or dental hygienist. (Hey, that’s me!)  You will hear the word ‘unsalvageable’.  You may even hear the word ‘hopeless’.  That means your loose tooth/teeth will have to be pulled out from your rotting mouth because you were lazy and didn’t floss.

You’ve just lost your tooth… which could have been prevented if you only had used that little piece of string.

Sleep tight.

 

Filed Under: Humor, Preventive Care Tagged With: dental humor, dental hygiene

The gum whisperer

October 13, 2012 By Trish Walraven 4 Comments

First things first: yes, this “whispering” phenomenon has invaded every niche of our well-being. It all started in a novel with just this one guy, he whispered to horses, then Cesar Millan got famous shushing dogs on TV. There are book whisperers, baby whisperers, ghost whisperers. OMG, there’s even a Bra Whisperer if you need someone to speak quietly with you or your wife’s upper anatomy.

So I just realized the other day that, I am, in fact, the gum whisperer.

Is it because I’m the world’s utmost authority on periodontal disease? Do I have such a kingdom of knowledge that it only makes sense to become an intellectual philanthropist to my patients and can cure them of every infirmity that sits just inside their lip line? Do my mad hand skills mean that I can strip only the glue off of a postage stamp with a Gracey 13/14 while it’s still stuck to an envelope behind my back as PROOF of my superior subgingival scaling abilities?

No.

I am the gum whisperer because… I actually whisper to people’s gums.

“Hang in there, interproximal gingiva! Give that #5 an extra squeeze for me today because that class II mobility is making my probe shake.”

When you’ve given up trying to convince the lifelong smoker that nicotine is his enemy, sometimes it’s just time to try a new approach. Maybe the person attached to those gums will think you’ve gone a little cray-cray, or maybe, just maybe, they might realize that you’ve started digging into your bag of desperation because they just don’t want to hear what you have to say. They’d like to give you their problem instead of dealing with it themselves.

Years ago, I took care of a patient that was into visualization, in a new-agey kind of way. She asked me to paint pictures and describe what healing needed to take place in her gums, so that she could create a pathway for sending her healing energy into the periodontium. I dunno, it was kind of soothing for me, too.

So occasionally I’ll speak softly to a patient as I’m nudging their gums, kind of like scratching a dog’s belly, “You like that, yes you do, yes you do!” Well, not that silly — definitely more clinical-minded because really, I don’t want people to start asking me to read their auras or anything like that.

Please let me know if you’ve found yourself talking to teeth, tongues, whatever body parts have engaged your healing linguistics, so that I don’t feel so all alone in this situation. And if I really am crazy, then it’s probably best not to let me in on the truth.

 

 

Filed Under: Anecdotes, Operative Dentistry, Preventive Care Tagged With: dental hygiene, gum whisperer, periodontal disease

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DentalBuzz explores rising trends in dentistry with its own slant. The speed at which new products and ideas enter the dental field can often outpace our ability to understand just exactly the direction in which we are heading. But somehow, by being a little less serious about dentistry and dental care, we might get closer to making sense of it all.

So yeah, a tongue-in-cheek pun would fit really nicely here, but that would be in bad taste. Never mind, it just happened anyways. Stop reading sidebars already and click on some content instead.

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