Tag: dental-health

Your Jaw joint and you

Posted on by adminvpdc in dental care

Your jaw joint is a complicated joint incorporating your skull, lower jaw, ligaments, muscle attachments, a disc and fluid spaces. It has the ability to make tiny movements with only slight pressure to sip through a straw, or strong pressure when biting into hard food or wide opening with a yawn. All of these movements are coordinated through the facial, head and neck muscles.

Your lower jaw is cushioned in a hollow in the base of the skull with a boney prominence in front of it to stop the jaw joint disarticulating forward.  In between the head of your lower jaw and the base of the skull is a series of ligaments and a disc.  The disc slides with the lower jaw forward and backward protecting the joint with the ligaments holding it in place.  The muscles attach to the lower jaw allowing it to move.  Some muscles are more obvious that others!  The muscle on your cheek connects to the outside base of the lower jaw and up to your temple area where it joins with the muscle that fans across your head to the midline on both sides.  You can feel these muscles bulge and lengthen when opening and closing your jaw.  There is also a long muscle down the side of your neck that connects to the skull behind the jaw joint and down your neck to your collar bone.  This muscle connects to muscles inside the back of your mouth to the skull and ligaments for finer movements.

Your jaw joint can click and grate as we age, but also when we are stressing it out.  When we clench and grind our teeth, we are constantly making the joint move so we stretch the ligaments.  When the ligaments stretch, we can make the disc move erratically because it doesn’t slide as well with the lower jaw and the jaw will clunk and click over it. The jaw can also go over the boney prominence at the front with quite a clunk! Often though the first symptoms are from your large muscles on the cheek, neck and head resulting in headaches, muscle aches, stiffness in the neck, tenderness in the ear and sometimes also in the eye.

Treatment for issues with your facial, head and neck muscles and jaw joint range from physiotherapy, to daytime awareness of clenching and grinding, to making a nightguard to help prevent damage at night.  If you are having issues, please contact us and we will see what we need to do to help you.

In clinic news we are booked in for the upcoming Infection Control Day with the Australian Dental Association SA branch to go over the new Australian Standard for Infection Control.  There will be photos on our socials!  Adelaide Oval here we come!  Dr Nick Heide, Trudy and Sarah have moved clinics south of the city and we wish them well with their new roles.  We have adjusted the clinic days to Tuesday to Thursday.  Dr Stone on Tuesday and Dr Nguyen on Wednesday and Thursday. Zakia has joined us to assist you with your dental hygiene needs and she is available on Tuesday and Thursday. 

See you in the clinic!  The Victoria Park Dental Care team.

PS:  check out our socials (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram) for top tips for teeth, mouth and gums and dental family snaps!  Maybe even the latest video on YouTube. 

It’s mouthguard time!

Posted on by adminvpdc in dental care

It is mouthguard time!  Footy is back, hockey is back, basketball/netball are ongoing. Winter sports time is here.  We remind all patients of the terrible impact a sporting injury can have on our teeth, jaw and soft tissues.  A knock to the mouth can result in losing teeth as well as significant long-term damage.  Teeth do not repair themselves. Most sports are now no mouthguard, no play; an initiative which we fully support.  Here at Victoria Park Dental Care, we make professional mouthguards for both junior and senior sport. 

Our mouthguards are custom-made here in Adelaide supporting another locally owned and run business, Adelaide Laboratories.  They are comfortable and firm fitting to ensure maximum protection for you or your child.  They come with a case to keep them clean going to and from sport.  (They should never go in your footy socks! Gross!).  Our mouthguards are coloured in the design of your choice and even have your name in them.  We love the choice Michelle made for her custom mouthguard. 😊 

We are running a competition on the daggiest mouthguard.  Please see our socials this month and enter your daggiest mouthguard to win a new one as voted by our staff.

Should you or your child knock a tooth out, we would recommend the following steps:

•          Find the tooth, be careful to only pick it up by the crown or shiny part of the tooth

•          If it is an adult tooth and fairly clean, put the tooth back where it came from (if you can)

•          Gently bite on a tissue to support the replaced tooth and get to the Dentist for assistance

•          If you are unable to put the tooth back in, store it in milk or saliva in a container and get to the Dentist immediately.

It is not only sport that can injure teeth or mouths.  Falls, accidents, crashes etc can also play a part.  A chipped or broken tooth may also need to be assessed quickly.  Call and advise the clinic you have a mouth trauma and we will assess the tooth and decide on the best course of treatment with you.  We are here to support you in any emergency situation.  Call the clinic on 8332 1188 and will we assist you.

In clinic news everyone has updated their medical emergency training with CPR and we are booked in for the upcoming Infection Control Day with the Australian Dental Association.  It is great that the CPR trainer does simulations in our clinic to make it real world!  Erin has been accepted into Speech Pathology at University and Lana has joined us in reception.  Dr Nick Heide, Trudy and Sarah have moved clinics south of the city and we wish them well with their new roles.  We have adjusted the clinic days to Tuesday to Thursday.  Dr Stone on Tuesday and Dr Nguyen on Wednesday and Thursday. Zakia has joined us to assist you with your dental hygiene needs and she is available on Tuesday and Thursday.  We know you will welcome our new team members to our dental family.

See you in the clinic!  The Victoria Park Dental Care team.

PS:  check out our socials (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram) for top tips for teeth, mouth and gums and dental family snaps!  Maybe even the latest video on YouTube. 

entertaining and your teeth.

Posted on by adminvpdc in dental care

February and March are such great times of the year in Adelaide with so many events, festivals and entertaining.  These often are celebrated with beverages such as soft drinks with lemon or lime to jazz them up, power drinks, electrolytic drinks, cocktails, sangria, sparklings, rose, red, moscato, white, beer, ale, cider and all either sweet or dry and nearly always acidic.

Teeth and alcohol do have some issues.  Most alcohols are acidic and the acid can remove the surface layers of enamel from teeth and can erode exposed root surface areas.   Recommendations for wine makers and professional wine tasters have been in use for almost a decade in relation to acidity and their teeth.  The recommendation is to use a remineralising creme regularly to prevent loss of tooth structure.  We have the GC products containing the peptide complex CPP-ACP (casein phosphopeptide amorphous calcium phosphate) at the clinic available for purchase to assist in remineralising teeth from acid erosion and to help prevent further erosion.  This product, called Tooth Mousse and Tooth Mousse Plus (added Fluoride) is derived from milk protein. They come in a variety of flavours.

Sugary drinks will always cause issues with teeth and once you add in the acid the issues are compounded. Soft drinks have a significant amount of sugar in them which sticks around the teeth creating an environment that the oral bad bacteria love.  The stickiness increases the depth of the plaque on the teeth changing the environment, so that the dynamic effect of the calcium and fluoride molecules going in and out of teeth to going more out and in.  Acids increase the process so more tooth structure demineralizes and doesn’t remineralise again.  When it doesn’t remineralise it creates a cavity that the oral bad bacteria can enter, the sugars feed them and they create further demineralization of the tooth and a bigger cavity.  The more frequent the sugar and acid are in the same place the more likelihood of a cavity occurring.  Dr Stone always tells the children that her most hated sugary thing is a lollipop, because they stay in the mouth for 45 mins bathing the teeth in sugar.

To help prevent this loss of tooth structure it is best not to keep sipping sugary, acidic drinks; use a straw so they don’t bath the teeth; use tooth mousse if required; see your dentist regularly for xrays of the areas between your teeth where the tooth structure is more vulnerable; make sure you floss and brush effectively especially prior to bed and no sugar and acid after brushing before bed.

See you in the clinic!  The Victoria Park Dental Care team.

PS:  check out our socials (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram) for top tips for teeth, mouth and gums and dental family snaps!  Maybe even the latest video on YouTube. 

Why you should have your teeth, gums and mouth checked regularly.

Posted on by adminvpdc in dental care

We hope you are all set for back to school, work and the multitude of after school activities that start the year.  Dr Stone has set up her Guiding events calendar for the year with the State Girl Guide Camp coming up in October 2024.  Our staff are all organised for the continuing education courses we love doing to keep us all up to date.  It is all go!  We hope that you have found the time to organise your important preventative care appointments and comprehensive hygiene appointments in your calendar too.

Our receptionists will always ask you when you have completed your appointment with your dentist, oral health therapist or hygienist to book in for your next preventative care appointment.  There are a number of reasons why we ask them to do this.  One reason is that we want to keep a check on any or all of the following clinical situations such as:

  • areas we are watching such as gum pockets, cracks, edges of fillings or demineralization areas that we want to keep an eye on,
  • to make sure that the calculus build-up that happens on your teeth over the 6 months isn’t affecting your gum tissues,
  • reviewing any bleeding or bad breath
  • to review wear facets on your teeth from clenching and grinding or natural wear
  • reviewing wisdom teeth
  • we disrupt the biofilm around your teeth while we are cleaning which reduces the bad bacteria that can cause gum disease, tooth decay, heart and lung disease and inflammation
  • Making sure the fillings you have are working properly,
  • Checking your facial muscles are not strained
  • Reviewing the mouth tissues for mouth cancers.
  • Checking your jaw joints are moving correctly
  • Finding solutions for any issues you might have

It is much easier (and cheaper) to look after and fix small things before they become large things!

Booking your next appointment at the time gives you the best option for finding an appointment that suits you.  Leaving it until you receive your reminder email or letter could make it tricky to find a spot in our appointment book easily.

See you in the clinic!  The Victoria Park Dental Care team.

PS:  check out our socials (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram) for top tips for teeth, mouth and gums and dental family snaps!  Maybe even the latest video on YouTube. 

Dental Specialist – why we would refer you.

Posted on by adminvpdc in dental care

We do lots of different dental procedures at our clinic. They range from simple fillings to complex bridges, root canal treatment, deep cleaning under the gums, tooth removal and implant crowns.  For all of these procedures it is important to us that we give you the best treatment for you.  At times we will refer you to a specialist dental provider to view your teeth, gums, mouth and bone and complete treatment that is outside of our scope of practice, more tricky than we wish to complete, or some treatment we are not set up to do or treatment that needs a general anaesthetic or IV sedation to make sure you have the best options for your care.  For a referral to a specialist dental provider you do require a consultation with a dentist first for the dentist to write the referral to the specialist.  Our dental management software allows us to directly and securely email the referral letter and relevant xrays to the specialist dental provider with the details of your problem so they can provide the best solution for you.

We use a range of specialist dental providers that we all know professionally and in some cases they have treated us or our families.

  • We will refer you to an oral surgeon for difficult tooth removals, mouth lesions that could be mouth cancers (or not), for placement of implants (we will do the implant crowns), for bone fractures etc. We will especially do this if you have compromised medical conditions. The oral surgeon has extensive extra dental training as well as having both a dental degree and a medical degree.
  • We will refer you to a periodontist (gum specialist) if you have periodontal disease that is not responding to treatment by our dentists and hygienists, or to assist in maintaining your gum disease in a stable manner.  We will also refer you to a periodontist for implant placements and possible all on four implant treatment. We will complete the treatment with implant crowns, bridges or dentures.
  • We will refer you to an endodontist (root canal specialist) if the roots of the offending tooth are tricky to get into, or be able to get down the end of, or to review cracks to see if root canal treatment will be effective.
  • We will refer you to a Prosthodontist (crown and bridge specialist) if you have a difficult tooth we need to crown or bridge a space or for implant placement with a temporary crown and possible all on four implant treatment.
  • We will refer you to an orthodontist for specialist treatment of crowded teeth or mismatched jaw position and teeth with the likely treatment being ‘bands’, orthodontic wires and clear aligners.
  • We are also likely to refer you to a physiotherapist for exercises and treatment of facial pain from clenching and grinding your teeth and for reduced mouth opening.  This is likely to be an adjunctive treatment with a nightguard.

With all of the above in mind we wish you a Happy New Year!  We hope everyone had a lovely holiday period and if you were working everything went smoothly! Our work family had time with their family and friends visiting, entertaining, seeing the sights of SA or going interstate.

See you in the clinic!  The Victoria Park Dental Care team.

PS:  check out our socials (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram) for top tips for teeth, mouth and gums and dental family snaps!  Maybe even the latest video on YouTube.