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50 Ways to Lose Your Enamel (Well, Actually Just 4-ish)
Aloha! Happy Spring everyone and a huge congrats on coming out the tail end of another NW Montana winter. You are all survivors am I right? I feel like the rest of the country thinks our winters are worse than they actually are. I imagine that Montana is the default comparable...”it could be colder, we could be in Montana right now.” It’s not that bad for me, especially if I can get some powder therapy every so often. However, I came to a realization about powder days that I wish I had never thought of. So, Smile Montana has three physical locations. The OG office in Columbia Falls, the Smile Montana Urgent Dental Center in Kalispell, and Smile Montana Whitefish. So, all my business shop owners reading this can say it with me: What do we have to do on most powder days? All together now...”we have to remove the snow from our parking lots and sidewalks.” And unless we get up really early and do it ourselves, we get the opportunity to pay someone to do it for us.
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by Dr. John F. Miller DDS - SMILE MONTANA And with 3 locations it can get spendy. Oh the irony, the “Dentist” complaining that something is expensive.
Anyways, I’m not complaining, and there is not an easier bill to pay than the bill to my snow removal guys, it’s just that sometimes when I’m up on Big Mountain enjoying new fresh snow I have to have the following conversation in my head, “This is awesome, but is it $250 awesome?” And the answer to that question is always...YES!! Life’s short. Say YES to life, and YES to fun, and YES to adventure, and YES to SMILING HUGE, and YES to paying someone to do the crappy stuff you suck at...like plowing snow or fixing teeth (I know a guy). Huge shout out to my snow removal dudes BTW.
We’re over it right? It’s almost summer now. We don’t even remember winter. It’s time to get focused. Make a plan. It’s gonna go fast. Maximize. Be efficient. Be with your loved ones. Go to bed exhausted. Obviously be safe and smart about it but get a little sunburnt you know.
If you’ve been following along (shout out to my die-hards) you know that today will be the 5th installment in my dumb-down-dentistry project. My effort to put in layman’s terms what we’re doing and why it is important. I’ve covered X-rays (it took 3 magazines) and last issue we discussed the types of dental cleanings and the different gum and bone conditions/diseases that they cure/prevent/reduce etc. Now, we are going to discuss the teeth themselves, the VIP’s if you will, and the conditions and diseases (layman’s term for pathologies) we are looking to cure/ prevent/reduce. Let’s start off with all the different ways we can lose tooth structure. Specifically enamel, the hardest and strongest human tissue.
1. Erosion (Acid)
This is far and away the most common cause of tooth enamel breakdown. We can say that a sugary diet causes cavities, but what directly causes cavities is acid. Just like gasoline provides the needed energy for a car’s mechanical components to drive, sugar is easily digested by bacteria with acid being the byproduct.