Category: Mouth Care

From your lungs to your skin to your teeth, smoking affects many aspects of your body. On May 31, 2014, there’s no time like the present to kick the habit and start on the path to stop smoking for good.

World No Tobacco Day is an effort from the World Health Organization to stop the more than 6 million deaths from tobacco use and secondhand smoke around the world. At The Dental Dimensions, Dr. Shetty and our entire South San Jose, CA dentist staff have an interest in keeping you smoke-free: It makes your teeth healthier too.

Smoking is associated with a number of dental problems. This includes tooth discoloration, increased risk for plaque and tartar, increased risk for gum disease and affected healing after a gum injury. If you smoke, you also are at increased for oral cancer, which can have deadly effects. All forms of nicotine use can result in harmful side effects, including smokeless tobacco products, which contain cancer-causing substances called carcinogens that can contribute to dental decay and harm.

In addition to improving your oral health, quitting smoking improves your health in general. From breathing better to reduced risk for lung cancer, quitting today or on World No Tobacco Day can make a world of difference in your health.

If you have tried to quit before, but were unsuccessful, we recommend calling the California Smokers’ Helpline at 1-800-NO-BUTTS. The helpline also offers language lines in Vietnamese, Spanish, Cantonese/Mandarin and Korean.

At our South San Jose, CA dentist office, Dr. Shetty and staff want to celebrate and encourage your decision and consideration in quitting smoking. Sometimes the first step is simply making the decision to make a change. By joining with people all around the globe to give up smoking, you are doing something for your health and to protect the health of those around you who could breathe in secondhand smoke.

For more information or to make an appointment at The Dental Dimension in San Jose, please call (408) 225-6815.

If a tooth has been damaged by trauma or decay, your San Jose dentist will try to restore the tooth with a filling, crown or root canal. In many cases, these procedures are successful in saving the tooth, but if enough tooth structure has been destroyed to render the tooth unsalvageable, extracting the tooth may be the only other option.

Other common reasons for the removal of teeth include:

There are two types of extractions performed: simple and surgical.  Simple extractions involve removing a tooth that can be seen in the mouth using a local anesthetic.  Your San Jose dentist will gently loosen the tooth so that it can be removed from the mouth.

Surgical extractions are used during more complex procedures, such as when a tooth is broken off at the gum line or has not grown into the mouth yet.  Because most surgical extractions involve a small incision in the gum, it is often performed by an oral surgeon and the patient is administered a general anesthesia.

Preserving and saving a patient’s natural tooth is always the main goal for a dentist, but in some cases, it is not always possible. Thanks to advances in modern dentistry, a patient has many options for replacing their tooth following extraction including dental implants, dentures and bridges—all of which produce a beautiful, natural smile.