Category: Uncategorized

Caring for your children’s teeth

Often I find parents present to the clinic with their young children after noticing something “different” in their developing mouth. It’s useful to have some basic knowledge about your children’s, and how to care for their developing mouth.

Baby Teeth Development

Baby teeth start to form in the jaw bone before birth, but usually erupts at about six months of age, but can occur as early as birth or as late as the child’s first birthday. Children usually have a total of 20 primary teeth- with the first adult tooth usually erupting at the age of six.

Tongue Piercings… are they safe?

As people are running out of body parts to pierce, many are turning to eye brows, cheeks, lips and commonly, the tongue.

Like with piercing different parts of the body, piercing the tongue involves a needle going through the midline of the tongue, to insert a stud, hoop and or barbell shaped piece of jewellery. This is usually done without anaesthetic, and recovers after 4-6 weeks.

If you already have a tongue piercing and don’t want to know the detrimental effects of them… then stop reading here…

…however…

please consider what it means for the state of your teeth and oral health.

Q & As from the ADA website

It’s been a while since my last post- things have been flat out here in surgery.
Something that has been brought to my attention recently though were patients’ continual concern towards amalgam in their mouth (silver fillings).

An exert taken from the Australian Dental Association website has some very useful information towards this topic as well as many other topics.

Below are some useful Q&A’s from the ADA website:

1) Question
What’s all the fuss about amalgam fillings?

Answer
The ADA policy remains, on the basis of the research available, that the use of dental amalgam produces no harmful effects.

There has been much publicity regarding the safety of dental amalgam. The World Health Organisation and the International Dental Federation have released a joint statement confirming the safety of dental amalgam as a filling material.

The Association believes there is no positive gain in having dental amalgam fillings replaced with other materials, other than for aesthetic reasons.

Special Offer for a free check up and clean*

Many patients have asked us about this so I’ll make a quick note of it here.

Underwood Dental Care’s current promotion is that if you are a new patient to our clinic, we would like to welcome you by offering a free dental check and clean. The offer applies to all new patients who have private health insurance with our preferred providers. They are- Commonwealth Bank Health Insurance, MBF, Manchester Unity, HCF and HBA.

What that means to you is that you will not pay a gap fee for your check up and clean.

If you’d like to know further details about this offer, please feel free to contact us.

Why do we floss? And are there any alternatives?

Let’s face it… many of us know we need to floss, but many of us do not floss.

Why is that the case? Is it because we don’t know how? It’s too hard to reach the back areas? Or is it because we just don’t think we need to as mouthwash will “blast away” all the plaque like “dynamite against germs”?

Why do we floss?

Firstly, we floss because it enables us to remove plaque and food particles in places where a toothbrush cannot easily reach — under the gumline and between your teeth. Because plaque build-up can lead to tooth decay and gum disease, daily flossing is highly recommended.

One of my university lecturers once told me “you don’t have to floss… you just floss the teeth you want to keep!”

Do yourself a favour and let’s get flossing! brushing alone is only doing half the job!