The Key Reasons Why I Suggest You Avoid Dental Caps

0
Digg me

Does it surprise you to hear a holistic dentist with more than 25 years experience tell you to avoid dental crowns and caps? After all, caps and dentists go together like salt and pepper. Dental crowns are put on a pedestal as being the most permanent of all dental restorations. So why am I telling you to never let a dentist cap your tooth?

Most adults are familiar with the following scenario:

* You get a cavity in a tooth

* The dentist restores the decay with a filling … dental amalgam or composite

* After a while the restoration fails or the tooth fractures

* A crown (ceramic, gold or ceramic fused to metal) will finally be installed

* The procedure of capping the tooth destroys the tooth’s nerve

* A dead nerve causes pain and then you must have a root canal or an extraction

The tooth nerve often dies as a consequence of the traumatic and aggressive crown procedure. To crown a tooth, the dentist must grind away all of the enamel and a significant amount of the dentin that makes up the inner tooth core. Studies have shown that as many as 15% of crowned teeth will experience complications serious enough to kill the tooth nerve. If you’re lucky enough to dodge the root canal / extraction bullet, you may think you’ve won the battle.

Even though caps are usually called “permanent”, they don’t last for ever. In reality, the normal life-span of a crown is actually around 10 years. Just about all insurance plans will pay for a new cap if it fails after only 5 years. Most dental consumers don’t understand how a crown can decay … how does something composed of ceramic or metal get a cavity? No one wants to fork out another considerable chunk of money to re-fix a tooth that they believed had been restored in a permanent way.

For the most part, your dentist won’t have good answers to why caps break down. They will often make analogies to repairing your pearly whites and fixing your auto … that absolutely nothing mechanical lasts forever. They may actually indicate that things that you did or did not do allowed the cap to break down. The most common justification is that your inadequate dental hygiene as well as sporadic dental hygiene cleanings are the cause. Some may convince you that because you permitted microbial plaque to amass along the gum line, decay developed and then the crown failed. However your other teeth are all right, so this does not make any sense–unless of course if you just forgot to clean this one tooth … the capped one.

Is it just me or is does this story seem full of holes? Well guess what … no matter how well you take care of a crown, it is going to fail in due time. You see, natural teeth flex under pressure … however, crowns made from gold or porcelain do not. So, each and every time you close your pearly whites together, your tooth tries to flex along the gum line, but it’s restrained because of the circular encasing effect of the crown.

So each time you chew, the ensuing tug-of-war generates tension and strain at the gum-line, causing the seal between the tooth and cap to weaken. In the absence of a proper seal, harmful bacteria can get in between the tooth and crown–causing decay. The dentist will likely refer to this as a leaking crown. You call it a total bummer!

There is a small division of dental art referred to as biomimetic dentistry that comprehends and tackles the issue of crown leakage. To begin with, biomimetically trained dentists rarely if ever place caps on teeth. Secondly, biomimetic dentists don’t ever put rigid, inflexible materials at the gum-line when rebuilding your teeth. By simply fixing your teeth in ways that imitate nature, leaking caps as well as “surprise root canals” are typically prevented.

Biomimetic dental techniques are excellent alternatives to crowns, simulate the un-restored tooth under function, deliver long-lasting dental treatments and also significantly reduce the need for root canal treatment.

Curt Eastin DDS, ND is a holistic dentist and a naturopathic physician. He earned his doctorates at the University of Washington School of Dentistry and the National College of Naturopathic Medicine. His dental website is a rich resource for holistic dentistry.


bookmark The Key Reasons Why I Suggest You Avoid Dental Caps

August 31, 2011 · Filed Under Medicine

Comment 

Next Page →