Healthy Smiles Family Dental

At Healthy Smiles Family Dental, we advise our patients who are experiencing a toothache to visit us for a consultation straightaway. Some causes of toothaches include tooth decay, infected gums, teeth grinding, and a tooth fracture. More often than not you can prevent toothaches by practicing good oral hygiene. Our patients that grind their teeth at night are encouraged to get a mouth guard to prevent damage to their teeth and jaws. If you are experiencing sharp or throbbing pain when you eat for more than two days, you should see one of our doctors for further examination. Any swelling around a tooth could be a sign of a more serious issue that needs to be fixed. Treatment for toothaches is usually a filling for a decay-related cavity. In more serious cases where you have an infected tooth, extraction may be necessary, but many teeth can be saved by root canal therapy. For any questions about toothaches, give us a call. To learn about our services provided at our practice, visit  www

At Healthy Smiles Family Dental, we are always treating patients who play sports and have suffered a broken or knocked out a tooth. Injuries are going to happen when you play sports and there is no way around it.  However, to help prevent facial injuries, our doctors encourage our patients to invest in a custom mouth guard. We advise our patients to avoid using mouth guards from sporting good and department stores. Store bought mouth guards offer less protection for your teeth because they are bulky, harder to breathe in, and don’t fit properly to your mouth.  When mouth guards don’t fit your mouth, they offer less protection against oral injuries and tooth damage. Regardless of the sport you play, we want all of our patients to wear custom-fitted mouth guards that are designed to fit your mouth and offer maximum protection and comfort. When you’re not playing sports, we encourage our patients to rinse their mouth guard’s and store them in a perforated container to prevent damage.  Dr.

Cracking a tooth is a dental emergency. If this happens to one of our patients, they should call us at Healthy Smiles Family Dental in Salem unless they also have series facial lacerations, in which case they should go to an emergency room. The good news is that we can usually save cracked teeth, but we thought our patients would be calmer if they knew ahead of time what usually happens. Our molars distribute bite force over their wide surfaces. Other teeth are likelier to crack or be pushed outward if used for chewing, while molars can withstand incredible force. But they are also the likeliest teeth to crack or chip a cuspid. A patient should swish salt water in their mouth if they have a dental emergency and should cover a broken tooth with orthodontic wax if they have any available. If not, sugar-free gum will do. The smallest cracks, called craze lines, can be fixed with bonding or covered with a veneer. When a larger part of a tooth chips off, it may be fixable with a partial cro

Night guards have saved many people’s teeth. We at Healthy Smiles Family Dental in Salem commonly treat people who have compromised enamel and jaw pain from nighttime teeth grinding, and we’re happy when people find a way to protect themselves. A custom-fitted night guard not only prevents teeth from rubbing together, it can also help people to breathe more easily. But like any oral appliance, a night guard had to be kept clean or it will contribute to halitosis and become a home for bacteria. Night guard manufacturers make their own cleaning products and advise patients on how to care for individual products. Their websites often feature cleaning solutions or dissolvable tablets, and people can get good results with these, but they are still advised to scrub their night guards daily. Only soft-bristled toothbrushes should be used and toothpaste should be avoided. Plastic is not as resilient as enamel and can be scratched by fluoride and other minerals in toothpaste. It is a good idea