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Amalgam Free Dentistry

WHY OUR DENTAL TEAM DECIDED ON DENTAL CARE WITHOUT AMALGAM

With advanced technologies of dental adhesion, resins and state-of-the-art ceramics, the newest bonded restorations are actually close to matching nature in strength, wear, function and look. With these brand new materials, it is easy to bond your teeth back together, virtually restoring them to their original strength minus the invasiveness of full-coverage crowns. In most instances, metal fillings may be replaced by approaches that are a better solution to mercury/silver amalgam fillings. It can be, therefore, possible to maintain the healthy, leftover tooth composition, as opposed to grinding it down for a crown.

Everything wears away, and your silver fillings are no different. They withstand stressful and significant biting forces daily, and as they get older, they split, leak and can bring about damaging fractures in teeth. Over time, metal amalgam fillings have the ability to absorb water, causing them to swell and break free from the teeth. When this happens, your tooth is much more susceptible to decay and tenderness.

Mercury/Silver fillings share some negatives worth listing that need to be considered when it’s time to swap your restorations:

  • Silver fillings are much less attractive than tooth-colored fillings. Think about it, they’re about as beautiful as large hunks of broccoli lodged in your smile.
  • Amalgam grows and shrinks whenever exposed to cold and hot extremes in your mouth. The continuous growth and shrinkage with temperature might set off cracks as well as fractures in your teeth. There will not be any symptoms for a while, yet these teeth could become hypersensitive as the fracture expands or opens when you bite down or chew. It isn’t unusual for patients to come in questioning how they broke their own tooth when they were eating something soft similar to bread or a banana. What they don’t realize is that the tooth probably had a fracture in it long before it ultimately came apart.
  • Silver fillings under constant chewing stress are at risk of metal weakness or flexing and bending failure, a concept which can be understood and shown by repeatedly bending a paperclip until it breaks.
  • Metal fillings are harder and less flexible than the teeth they are molded into. The longer they are in the teeth, the more force they place on the rest of the weakened surfaces of the tooth resulting in cracks and fractures.
  • Metal fillings aren’t glued in the cavity. They merely sit in the tooth and react under pressure to wedge the tooth apart, similar to how a metal wedge is used to split logs for firewood.
  • A microscopic gap around the filling edge exists as soon as the silver filling is plugged into the tooth, and in this gap, normal leakage and corrosion occurs. This unnoticeable gap is large enough to allow bacteria and food particles to enter in with time and bring about decay at the joint between the filling and the tooth. Composite fillings, however, are actually glued to the tooth preparation area and seal the borders closed from invading bacteria.
  • To be able to get a tooth ready for a composite filling, the tooth can usually be treated considerably more gently and with less healthy tooth structure needing to be removed. And thus, the dentist can retain the greatest amount of original tooth structure as is possible. Silver fillings call for drilling undercuts (think carving out a pumpkin) and the removal of more substantial good parts from the tooth to be able to keep the mercury amalgam filling from falling out since it is not bonded directly to the tooth. These undercuts also can weaken the tooth as fillings get bigger and sentence that tooth to upcoming fracture down the road. These fractures can be substantial leading to crowning the tooth to repair it or perhaps major fractures resulting in removal of the tooth.
  • Composites, utilizing their chance to be conservative and using their glue-like qualities, may strengthen and protect against fracture. By simply intercepting the opportunity for fracture before experiencing the signs and symptoms of hot/cold sensitivity and biting pain, new conservative treatment options such as tooth-colored fillings or porcelain-bonded restorations are actually preventing the negative effects of toothaches and damaged teeth.
  • Finally, many dentists say that, bonded natural-colored restoratives are considered safer compared to standard fillings, since they do not contain any mercury. While the American Dental Association (ADA) claims the use of mercury in metal fillings is safe, there’s an ongoing discussion inside the dental sector concerning the adverse effects of these mercury amalgam fillings. Many European countries have prohibited the use of mercury amalgam fillings to avoid any risks connected with mercury.

Considering the amount of negatives associated, and potentially associated, with mercury amalgam fillings, it becomes clear why patients are telling us to be PROACTIVE about extraction of mercury fillings instead of being REACTIVE and holding off until the tooth cracks or develops decay under the amalgam plug.

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Tuesday:

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Thursday:

7:40 am-1:00 pm

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