Healthy Smiles Family Dental

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Myofascial Pain Syndrome (MPS)

If you’ve ever had an issue inside your mouth, you’re probably aware of the varying degrees of pain that come with it. Sometimes it can feel like your whole head is exploding just from a toothache and tenderness. Healthy Smiles Family Dental is committed to helping you correct your problem and manage any pain associated as well. Your Salem, OR, dentist also takes pride in educating patients about how to prevent future oral problems. Myofascial Pain Syndrome (MPS) commonly occurs in the temporomandibular joint (TMJ). The pain is caused by tension, fatigue, or spasms in the jaw muscles. MPS is usually triggered by bruxism, a condition where a person clenches or grinds their teeth during sleep. Nightguards are a great way to prevent bruxism and ultimately the jaw soreness that is felt in the morning. MPS is not limited to just the jaw muscles, it can occur anywhere in the body including the back and neck muscles. Other treatments/preventions of MPS include: - Splint guard, mout

What are Sealants?

Tooth decay is a common problem, especially among children and older people. Regular brushing and flossing is essential to preventing it, but their are supplementary measures people can take, too. At Healthy Smiles Family Dental in Salem, we offer our patients dental sealants for added protection. Our back teeth, the premolars and molars, are especially vulnerable to decay. Food debris can accumulate in the indentations between their pointy bits, which are called cusps. There, oral bacteria will feed and produce acid, causing demineralization of the enamel. This could lead to the formation of cavities, and if the decay gets bad enough, an infection could spread to the dental pulp. Sealants are invisible plastic shields on the teeth. After a dental cleaning, the patient is given a local anesthetic and the premolars and molars are etched with a mild acid to increase their surface area. The sealant is then painted on in liquid form and hardened with a blue light. By the next day, the pat

Gum Abscesses

Gum disease isn’t just a matter of a little swelling. It’s an infection that could spread elsewhere in the body and cause a lot of pain. But it is treatable, and the earlier people seek intervention, the better. At Healthy Smiles Family Dental in Salem, we help patients recover from gum abscesses, but we need people to know when to come see us. The early stage of gum disease is gingivitis. If allowed to progress, it becomes periodontitis, in which the walls of the gum pocket recede from around the root of a tooth. Abscesses are pockets filled with pus, a fluid made up of infectious bacteria, dead tissue, and acid. When an abscess forms near the gum line in a person with gingivitis, it is called a gingival abscess, and when it forms in the gum pocket of someone with periodontitis, it is a periodontal abscess. An abscess will cause persistent pain, a bad taste, and may prevent the patient from fully opening their mouth. It may also induce fever, as bacteria enters the bloodstream. We ca

Diabetes and Implants

If you’ve suffered from missing or damaged teeth, you may have considered implant-supported crowns to replace them. But if you also have diabetes, you may wonder whether implants are safe for you. People with diabetes are especially vulnerable to tooth loss, so we at Healthy Smiles Family Dental in Salem want them to be able to make informed decisions about their treatment. We thought it would be a good idea to pass along a review of the research into diabetes and implant survival . People with diabetes may suffer blood vessel damage. This not only makes them more vulnerable to gum inflammation, it also means they take longer to recover from injuries. Doctors historically feared that people with diabetes would have higher rates of short-term implant failure because they would not be able to recover from the incisions made to place the implant posts. But although the research found that it takes longer in diabetic patients for their implants to integrate with their jaw bones, as long a

Preventing Dry Sockets

Tooth extractions are ideally rare, but when they are necessary, we at Healthy Smiles Family Dental see our patients through safely. Many adolescents need to have their wisdom teeth removed to prevent alignment problems, and extractions are sometimes done on teeth with pulp infections after root canal treatment has proven unsuccessful. But in emergency situations, tooth extractions may not be preplanned, which is why we want our patients to be familiar with how to prevent a dry socket. A simple extraction is one in which the tooth is wiggled loose until it can be pulled out with pliers. A complex extraction is one requiring an incision to be made into the gum tissue. Dry sockets are likelier to result from complex extractions. When a tooth is removed, a blood clot ordinarily forms to seal off the socket, protecting it from pathogens and keeping moisture locked inside. A clot may have more difficulty forming over a surgical incision, or it may come loose more easily. Prior to the extrac

Types of Bridges

No matter what kind of dental history a patient has, modern dentists have more ways of restoring their teeth than ever before. We at Healthy Smiles Family Dental in Salem proudly provide our patients with crowns, bridges, and implants that help to maintain the integrity of their faces and allow them to chew and speak normally. But because dental prosthetics have advanced so much in recent years, some patients may be unclear about their options, which is why we wanted to describe some types of bridges. The classic bridge is one in which a Pontic crown is suspended between two crowns that slide over reshaped natural teeth. This type of bridge is favored when the supporting teeth have been damaged and need new crowns regardless. The fixed bridge is not prone to moving out of place as the teeth migrate naturally, and it can be cleaned by threading floss under it. But we try to avoid removing or reshaping teeth that are healthy, which is why a denture might be recommended. Partial dentures