Redwood Dental Smiles: Blog

As a general dental office, preventing tooth decay is one of our top concerns at Redwood Dental Smiles in Castro Valley. Regular brushing and flossing is the best defense against tooth decay, but some parts of the teeth, especially the sides and the areas around orthodontic brackets, are particularly vulnerable. That’s why we want our patients to be able to recognize incipient lesions, also known as white spots. When teeth are exposed to acid, there will be a period before they form cavities when molecules are being dissolved and the enamel is weakening. This can happen when the acid is being regurgitated from the stomach, but on the front teeth, it is likelier to be caused by bacteria metabolizing food debris and excreting acid as a waste product. The more sugar is on the teeth, the more bacteria consume and the more acid they excrete. As enamel dissolves, it turns a chalky white that is noticeably different from enamel’s natural color. It only takes about thirty days for a white spot...

Regular dental cleanings aren’t just an important component of oral health. They’re crucial for a patient’s overall wellbeing, particularly if they suffer from a complicating condition such as diabetes. We at Redwood Dental Smiles in Castro Valley want our patients to feel comfortable coming to us for help, but we recognize that dental instruments can be a source of anxiety for some people. That’s why we want our patients to know their names and how they’re used. There are several metal hooks hygienists use along with the handheld mirror for basic cleanings and assessments. Explorers are hooks which are used to test the durability of enamel, the outermost layer of the teeth, and to break apart tartar. We may also use a longer hook called a probe while examining the health of gum pockets and one called a scaler to remove debris and decay from below the gum line. Patients doubtlessly remember at past visits being told to close their lips around a vacuum hose. It is called an evacuator, a...

Stores are full of Halloween candy, and the rest of the sugary treats of the holiday season will soon be upon us. So how do you protect your and your children’s teeth from decay without spoiling everyone’s fun? At Redwood Dental Smiles, we have some solutions, but first, we wanted to explain more about how tooth decay works. While consuming highly sugary snacks isn’t good for you, the amount of time teeth are exposed to sugar is the more relevant factor to decay than the sugar content of any particular thing. The riskiest Halloween candies for teeth are hard candies, which are sucked on for a long time, and toffees, which get caught in between teeth. But other risks come from drinks such as apple cider and creamy lattes, which will leave sugary residue on teeth if drunk slowly, and from high-starch vegetables such as winter squash. Brushing after eating sugar is the best way to prevent tooth decay, but this is sometimes unfeasible. Another tactic is to only eat candy with meals, when t...

If you’ve ever suffered from tooth decay, you know that fillings give you a second chance to have a healthy, comfortable bite. At Redwood Dental Smiles in Castro Valley, we use materials that are safe for the body and blend in with the patient’s natural teeth. When properly cared for, fillings can last for ten years. But patients should be aware of when something goes wrong and why it matters. Patients are numbed when their decayed enamel is drilled away, but it is normal for them to feel a bit sore for a few days after a filling is placed. However, if a filling seems to be leaking, what is really happening is that it was not contoured correctly and saliva is getting trapped. This means that decay-causing bacteria could also get trapped, so the filling would need to be redone. The filling would also need to be re-contoured if the patient is unable to close their teeth together fully. When a filling is near the end of its expected ten-year lifespan, the bonding holding it in may begin t...

Do you know the details of good oral hygiene maintenance? We provide deep cleanings at Redwood Dental Smiles in Castro Valley, but good hygiene will prevent most dental problems. If the details of brushing and flossing get a bit hazy there’s no better time than National Oral Hygiene Month for a brush-up. Toothbrushes should either be electric or have soft bristles. If using a non-electric toothbrush, brush your teeth for two minutes per session, twice a day. People with dentures will need to use specialized toothpaste on them, but ordinary toothpaste should meet the average person’s needs. Don’t forget to brush close to the gum line. Horizontal rotations are a good brushing motion to use on the outward-facing sides of the teeth, but you’ll need to move the toothbrush vertically to reach the inward-facing sides. Floss and Waterpiks are both approved by the American Dental Association, but you should never try to pick your teeth with anything that wasn’t specifically made for that purpos...

Among the many means by which we can restore teeth at Redwood Dental Smiles, one of the oldest is the dental bridge. This prosthetic is used when there are several teeth in a row that need new crowns or are missing entirely. A single implant supports an artificial crown for just one tooth, but a bridge is several crowns linked together. Typically, the crowns at the end would be supported and the crown in the middle would be suspended between them. The supported crowns may be attached to fixed implants or they may be removable in the form of a partial denture. It is also possible to have the crowns supported by reshaped natural teeth. Because natural teeth tend to have fewer problems, dentists would not usually want to reshape natural crowns to have bridges put over them unless they were already decayed. However, there may be an advantage to having a patient retain the natural roots of their supporting teeth, particularly if their jawbones may not be able to support implants. Modern bri...

Patients often come to Redwood Dental Smiles in Castro Valley with questions about the vast number of oral hygiene products available to them. A lot of people are considering whether to buy electric toothbrushes and we want to help our patients understand the benefits and drawbacks. With a manual toothbrush, people should brush for two full minutes twice a day. Studies have shown that electric toothbrushes do not get better results than manual toothbrushes that are being used properly, but most people do not use manual toothbrushes correctly. An electric toothbrush can be set to a timer and is able to brush thousands of times per minute. Some also come with settings to inform the user if they are brushing too hard. Electric toothbrushes are particularly beneficial to people with motor control problems or who have experienced tooth decay in the past. Many modern ones come with phone apps that reward children for improving their brushing or inform users if they are skipping over tooth su...

New parents naturally want to know what they need to do to care for their child’s oral health. Maintaining hygiene is indeed important from a very early age, and at Dr. Vijay Munagala’s Castro Valley office, we want parents to understand why Baby Bottle Tooth Decay is of particular concern. Tooth decay occurs when bacteria eat food debris and secrete acid, which gets stuck to our teeth. This can happen from the moment the first teeth push through a baby’s gum line. Typically, the incisors, or front teeth, erupt first. As babies drink from bottles, sugar gets stuck to the fronts of their incisors, resulting in a distinctive pattern of decay. What makes the use of bottles particularly risky is that babies are often left to drink from them for hours at a time. This means that their saliva never has an opportunity to remove sugar from their teeth for long before new sugar is applied. To lessen the likelihood of decay, don’t let babies have bottles for longer than about twenty minutes, give...

It’s no fun to have a broken or decayed molar. But at Redwood Dental Smiles in Castro Valley, our staff has the experience and technology to set things right. When a tooth gets damaged, we can mill a replacement crown for it. In cases where only a portion of a large tooth has been lost or needs to be removed, we can mill a partial crown to fill it in. Partial crowns are known as inlays or onlays, depending on their size. We’ve discussed on our blog before how the crowns of molars are made up of pointy cusps separated by indentations. An inlay would be used as a damaged indentation’s substitute. It can be thought of as being like a more permanent version of the sealants that are used to smooth indentations over and create less space for food debris to get trapped in. An onlay is a larger partial crown and would replace at least one missing cusp. Once the dentist has drilled away decayed material, we’ll have a better idea of how large a partial crown the patient needs. Normally, this pro...