Dr Kevin Ong

A similar question was asked and it is very common as many patients face the same problems due to the high levels of stress. TMJ is usually caused by the continual grinding/clenching (Bruxism) of teeth during your sleep. doctors can use medication such as Botox to treat TMJ symptoms to alleviate the pain temporarily, however you would still be left with the other symptoms. Unless you treat the reason why these muscles are cramping, it will keep coming back. However, in some cases as you are experiencing, even the botox is unable to alleviate this pain.

In order to determine how to improve your smile, we must first establish what we would like to change. The reason why the teeth appear to look small is due to the gum level, there is excess gum that can be removed in order to make the teeth bigger. There are options to correcting the shape of the teeth such as Dental Bonding or Dental Veneers.

Charcoal Powder is inherently safe to use for teeth whitening. Please note, that the charcoal powder does not actually change the colour of the teeth but only removes surface stains. However, it is important not to overuse these abrasive substances. The charcoal powder and most whitening toothpastes are able to get rid of the surface stains but when used excessively, results in thinning of the enamel of your teeth. This in turn would have an opposite effect, as it would make your teeth turn yellow faster as the enamel of the teeth continue to get worn down unnecessarily.

A narrow arch reduces the number of teeth that can be seen when you smile and creates very large shadows between your teeth and your cheeks. In addition, they can seem to make the teeth appear more protruding. There is an American concept called, "widening your smile". This can be done easily and quickly with dental veneers. The planning for such a procedure is critical as too narrow a final smile defeats the point too wide a smile will make you look extremely toothy. Ultimately, it is important that the smile the dentist achieves is one that suits you.

There is no way to know exactly how the teeth will look after the composite bonding as everything is built up directly on the teeth by hand. There is no pre-design involved. The result depends greatly on the skill of the operator. Composite bonding is typically used only to improve the colour of the teeth. Reshaping and repositioning of the teeth is not possible - should either of these be a significant issue, then other alternatives are advised.

We do not recommend Dental Veneers for patients below 16 years old (for girls) and 17 years old (for boys) as their jaws and teeth must be fully developed first. In addition, we should not do Dental Veneers on teeth that are weak and unhealthy. There is no upper age limit for Dental Veneers, we have treated patients from as young as 16 years old up until patients who are in their 70s. Here are some resources that you might find useful: You may refer here to our extensive guide on Dental Veneers: https://www. human. com.

Depending on the style of the dentist. It depends on the dentist; I do believe in a natural look when it comes to veneers, but if patients want Hollywood teeth I would do it.

They don't stain. I had a patient who’s a heavy smoker, his veneers were extremely white. They don't stain easily. Biting-wise, your veneers covered teeth are stronger than natural teeth. Eating-wise, eat normally and avoid hard food like crab claws.

The size of the teeth can be determined by the actual size of the teeth or by the teeth not having fully erupted(too much covered by the gums). To change the gum height, a gingivectomy can be done. This can be achieved by surgical means for more severe cases or, more typically, by just reshaping the gums. The results tend not to be completely stable so placement of dental veneers on the teeth will allow for long-term stability. The size of the teeth also depends on whether it is developmental or whether the teeth have worn out. Both can be corrected easily with dental veneers.

You can correct it up to a point, you need to shave more of the tooth and if you shave too much you might actually hit a nerve. There are cases where we need to shave a significant amount and we may have to do a root canal treatment. That might sound extreme but consider other methods for extracting teeth for braces or for false teeth, maybe it won’t seem extreme after all. Perhaps it just needs a bit more work to achieve the desired results.

Gum recession is gum recession. We can camouflage it with veneers but if it's too great it might be difficult. Prevention is key, not cure.

The closing of gaps between teeth depends on wether they are front teeth or back teeth. Also, it depends on the reason for the gaps, extracted teeth, missing teeth or a discrepancy between the size of the teeth and jaws. The options for missing or extracted teeth include, dentures, dental bridges, implants or orthodontics to pull the teeth together. For small gaps between front teeth, bonding of tooth coloured fillings between them is an excellent choice. They are cheap, quick to do and there is usually very little trimming of the teeth.

Crooked teeth tend to be more challenging to look after as cleaning them is difficult. With excellent cleaning by yourself and regular professional maintenance by your dentist you can manage long-term issues. If not cleaned immaculately, there is a danger of decayed teeth especially between the teeth, chronic gum disease, increased speed of gum recession and possibly loss of teeth.

A dental filling should not be completely resistant to wear but should have a wear coefficient as close to the natural tooth as possible. In terms of hardness, the order should be (from softest to hardest) glass ionomer, composite, yellow gold, amalgam, metal and, finally, dental ceramics. In answer to your question, Ceramic fillings are the most wear-resistant and inert filling material. However, do please note that the harder a material is the more brittle it is. Dental amalgam is historical, the oldest of the materials.

You can’t because you shave the teeth down. The process is to reverse it and anyway if you have straight teeth now why would you want to change it to crooked teeth again? The removal process for replacing is tedious to replace 6 front veneers. I would probably set aside 6 hours.