With the increase on life expectancy the need for dental care also increases in order to keep our teeth in good condition. As we get older we may find ourselves at a greater risk of needing major dental work even if we take good daily care of our teeth.

Having dental insurance in place become important in order to save money on our dental care needs. Even if you think you do not need dental insurance now it is best to get dental insurance before there is a need for major dental services. 

That’s because many dental insurance plans have waiting periods for larger dental care needs and waiting to buy the plan does not normally workout to your advantage.

Question: Whenever I brush my teeth my gums bleed. I brush twice day with a regular toothbrush so I am not sure why my gums are bleeding.

Answer: It is possible that you may have gingivitis. Gingivitis is a form of periodontal disease. Gingivitis is due to the long-term effects of plaque deposits on your teeth. Plaque is a sticky material made of bacteria, mucus, and food debris that develops on the exposed parts of the teeth. It is also a major cause of tooth decay. One of the signs of gingivitis is bleeding gums while brushing.  Talk to your dentist and get a complete dental check up.

Leukoplakia causes thick, raised, plaque-like white patches on the mucous membranes of the mouth. Patches may also appear transparent or gray and usually have at least one area with a clear margin. Cracking may also occur.  Although they can be bothersome depending on the type, leukoplakia patches are often painless.

Commonly affected regions include:

* Inner lining of the cheeks
* Gums
* Bottom of the mouth under the tongue
* Tongue

In some cases, leukoplakia patches also affect other regions of the body aside from the mouth. Of these areas, the genitals are most frequently affected.

Question: I seem to get bad breath late at night. I do not know why when I brush my teeth all the time. It is starting to make me feel insecure.

Answer: People can have bad breath for many different reasons. Even though you are brushing your teeth at night your bad breath can be due to other reasons such as what you are eating throughout the day, dental decay, medications you may be taking, your diet, dry mouth and any ongoing illnesses. If you are not already, make sure that during your dental habits routine to brush not only your teeth but your tongue as well. Your tongue holds onto many bad breath causing germs. Try using an alcohol free mouthwash. If your bad breath continues talk to your dentist and see what they can advise.

Leukoplakia is more of a clinical term than a specific condition, used to describe a wide range of white mouth sores. Leukoplakia is a condition that causes thick, plaque-like white patches on the tongue, gums, and lining of the mouth.  Mouth irritants and irritating activities, such as smoking, often cause leukoplakia. Typically, cases of white patches in the mouth are harmless and symptoms resolve on their own. However, if the condition is leukoplakia, it can be associated with oral cancer.

Over half of all patients who visited their GP with a dental problem in the last 10 years were not offered a long-term treatment for their pain and were instead prescribed antibiotics, often unnecessarily, new research has found.

The study found many patients are visiting their GP rather than their dentist, and that over half of these consultations resulted in antibiotic prescribing, which is likely to be unhelpful, and potentially harmful.

Publish Study On Dental Caries Vaccine. Published in the Journal of Dental Research is a report on a preclinical investigation titled “Flagellin Enhances Saliva IgA Response and Protection of Anti-caries DNA Vaccine,”  Wei Shi the leading Author at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his team of researchers demonstrate that anti-caries DNA vaccines, including pGJA-P/VAX, are promising for preventing dental caries. However, challenges remain because of the low immunogenicity of DNA vaccines.

Smoking significantly changes the mouth’s microbiome, with potential implications for tooth decay and the ability to break down toxins, according to results published in the ISME (International Society for Microbial Ecology) Journal.

There are around 600 species of bacteria in the human mouth. Over 75% of oral cancers are thought to be linked to smoking, but it remains unclear whether microbial differences in the mouth affect the risk for cancer.

Study done by Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine researchers found the human body is better at fighting gum disease when fat cells, which trigger inflammation, disappear.  The pilot study of 31 obese people with gum disease. Half of the group with an average body mass index (BMI) of 39 had gastric bypass surgery and had fat cells from the abdomen removed. That half fared better than a control group of obese people with a BMI of 35 who also were treated for gum disease but did not have the gastric bypass surgery or fat removed.

Scientists report in ACS’ journal Analytical Chemistry a simple, paper-based test that could help detect pathogens hitchhiking on food before they reach store shelves, restaurants and, most importantly, our stomachs.

According to one estimate by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the foodborne bacteria Salmonella alone led to nearly 20,000 hospitalizations and almost 400 deaths in 2013. Economists estimate that the treatment of all these patients and the related productivity losses cost more than $3 billion annually. And those numbers account for just one of the 15 pathogens responsible for most of the food poisoning cases. Current testing for pathogens in food requires complicated machinery and trained personnel. But these tests don’t provide the simple results needed in large-scale food manufacturing. So Je-Kyun Park and colleagues set out to find a more practical way to detect foodborne pathogens.

Periodontitis is a serious, chronic, non-communicable gum disease, that damages the soft tissue and bone that support the teeth. Estimates suggest it affects 15-20% of middle-aged (35-44 years) adults.

The disease starts when the bacterium Porphyromonas gingivalis infects the tissue around the teeth, giving rise to gum inflammation. If this is not treated, the condition progresses and the bacteria begin to eat away at the bone around the teeth.

Having untreated gum disease not only leads to tooth loss, but it also raises risk of heart attack or stroke.

Gum disease is a major cause of tooth loss and a challenge to treat. Now, new research suggests why silicon nitride – a ceramic material used in spinal implants – could lead to effective, new types of gum disease treatmen

A new toothpaste ingredient which puts back the lost minerals from tooth enamel and helps prevent decay and treat sensitivity while you sleep is available online and from specialist dental distributors now. It is expected to be available through high street stores by the end of the year.

A recent study suggest that no enough dentist are using dental sealants to help protect back teeth.  Temple University’s dental school researchers who did the study, surveyed 595 general dentists and 176 pediatric dentists. The dentist were asked about whether they would use sealants on teeth with different signs of early decay. They also were asked how they felt about using sealants in different groups of people.

In 2008 the ADA endorsed the use of sealants n teeth with the earliest stages of decay. In these stages, a molar or premolar is discolored on its chewing surface, but there is no cavity in the tooth yet. Research has shown that sealing teeth like this can prevent cavities. However the new survey found that many dentist do not either know about the ADA panel’s advise or the dentist that do know do not agree with it.  It also show that Pediatric dentist were more likely to follow the recommendations then general dentist. This study appears in the September issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association.

The Local Government Association has today published a report that states that around 100 children and teenagers a day are being admitted to hospital for surgery to remove rotten teeth.

The report says that £35 million was spent in 2014-15 on removing children’s rotten teeth, a 66 per cent increase since 2010-11. In all, 40,970 surgical procedures were carried out on children for their teeth in 2014-15, as opposed to 32,457 in 2010-11.

They are NOT Dental Discount Plans

Also included with discount dental plans, these are not dental insurance, but can provide you with the freedom to visit any dentists at considerable discounts over their standard charge, though they are seemingly rare, but the indemnity dental insurance plans are also available to provide freedom to choose the dentist from your choice on a higher out of pocket expenditure.  The lack of benefits has rendered traditional indemnity dental insurance little more than two inexpensive continuing care visits, consisting of an examination, prophylaxis (cleaning) and radiographs (X-rays) per year and help with minor restorative treatment, such as a few direct restorations (fillings).

The presence of certain bacteria in the mouth may indicate a raised risk for pancreatic cancer – a disease that often begins with no symptoms and for which there is no routine screening test

This was the main conclusion of a study led by NYU Langone in New York, NY, presented at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in New Orleans, LA, April 16-20, 2016.

100% Preventive Care Options

There are several features of indemnity dental insurance plans for individuals that make these plans different from many other types of dental coverage: Insurance providers will pay up to 100% of preventative dental care.

Although they are becoming increasingly rare, indemnity dental insurance plans are also still available and provide the freedom to choose the dentist of your choice at a higher out-of-pocket expense.  In indemnity dental insurance plans, the insured has to pay all the costs for services directly and then submit a claim for reimbursement once a deductible has been met.

The findings, by a team of researchers from the University of Oslo, the Forsyth Institute, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, appeared last week in the American Society for Microbiology’s new open-access journal, mSystems.

The researchers wanted to know precisely which metabolic pathways in the bacterial cell must be activated for the bacteria to become “competent,” or able to acquire genes from DNA in the environment. They focused on Streptococcus mutans, a strain involved in tooth decay.

Periodontitis comprises a group of multifactorial diseases in which periodontopathogens accumulate in dental plaque and trigger host chronic inflammatory and immune responses against periodontal structures, which are determinant to the disease outcome. Although unusual cases of non-inflammatory destructive periodontal disease (NIDPD) are described, their pathogenesis remains unknown. A unique NIDPD case was investigated by clinical, microbiological, immunological and genetic tools. The patient, a non-smoking dental surgeon with excessive oral hygiene practice, presented a generalized bone resorption and tooth mobility, but not gingival inflammation or occlusion problems. No hematological, immunological or endocrine alterations were found. No periodontopathogens (A. actinomycetemcomitans, P. gingivalis, F. nucleatum and T. denticola) or viruses (HCMV, EBV-1 and HSV-1) were detected, along with levels of IL-1β and TNF-a in GCF compatible with healthy tissues. Conversely ALP, ACP and RANKL GCF levels were similar to diseased periodontal sites. Genetic investigation demonstrated that the patient carried some SNPs, as well HLA-DR4 (*0404) and HLA-B27 alleles, considered risk factors for bone loss. Then, a less vigorous and diminished frequency of toothbrushing was recommended to the patient, resulting in the arrest of alveolar bone loss, associated with the return of ALP, ACP and RANKL in GCF to normality levels. In conclusion, the unusual case presented here is compatible with the previous description of NIDPD, and the results that a possible combination of excessive force and frequency of mechanical stimulation with a potentially bone loss prone genotype could result in the alveolar bone loss seen in NIDPD.