Braces or veneers? What’s the 21st Century answer?

In a world that is increasingly image conscious, we all want to look our best.

Good hair, great clothes, gorgeous skin, what about your smile?

5-10 years ago, the solution would be to place maybe 8-10 porcelain veneers on the upper teeth and maybe the same on the lower teeth. A porcelain veneer is a thin layer of porcelain that is made by a skilled technician that is stuck to the front surface of the tooth. It can make a discoloured tooth or heavily filled tooth look like a natural tooth and no one would know that they aren’t your natural teeth.

Many thousands of smiles have been transformed by porcelain veneers and they certainly have a place in modern dentistry. However, a set of veneers don’t last forever and will need to be replaced about every 10 years. Every time this is done a little bit more of your tooth may be removed, in the end, you may need more extensive treatment.

Many people who want to improve their smile already have lovely teeth, just not in the right place and increasingly we have to ask ourselves if cutting these teeth is the right thing to do. The move is now away from veneers if the teeth have no fillings, are a good shape and good colour, it is much better to move the teeth into the right position and maybe whiten and tidy up the edges.

Oh no, not ugly metal braces????????

No, not anymore, there are many systems that can be used to straighten your teeth that are either discrete or invisible, no one needs to know that you are wearing a brace.

These include:

• Ceramic braces
• Braces on the inside of your teeth such as Incognito
• Clear braces such as Invisalign
• Rapid removable braces such as the Inman Aligner
• Short term braces such as 6 Months Smiles

You could have straight teeth before you know it, just think, a beautiful smile with all your own teeth, now that is a truly 21st Century solution.

The way to pain-free dentistry?

I have a belief that all dentistry should be pain free and stress free for all involved. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case and this can result in anxiety or even a phobia developing. I often see the result of someone being so anxious about dental treatment that they put it off until they have no option than to attend and then, usually in pain. This results in a continually negative experience as they never can associate a trip to the dentist without pain and stress.

There are a few reasons that most people will cite for being scared of the dentist and usually in my experience they are:

• not liking injections or needles
• having pain during treatment
• worrying about feeling pain during the appointment
• not being listened to
• a bad experience as a child or adult

I find that just a good conversation can go a long way to allay some of these fears with plenty of reassurance. Most people think that they are the only ones who feel this way and are often embarrassed, but studies have shown that between 30-60% of the British population have some level of anxiety when visiting the dentist. I think that there is no need to do any treatment unless a patient is completely numb and comfortable and this is a promise that I make to my patients. We also use a stop signal if someone needs me to stop for ANY reason, a cough, sneeze, to nip to the loo, have rinse etc

I want our patients to experience the best possible experience that they could have in a dental practice when they visit us at Evolve. We do this in many ways, we don’t really look like a dental practice, we don’t smell like a dental practice, we serve proper coffee, amazing tea, we even serve champagne,  we listen to our patients and we invest in equipment and skills to ensure that we are as up to date as possible. Recently I invested in a piece of kit call The Wand STA.

A pain free injection system

This is an amazing system that delivers the local anaesthetic in a pain free method. The advantage of being able to do this allows me to inject into sites that I would normally avoid as they can be painful but why would I want to do this? It results in far less local anaesthetic being used and only the tooth or teeth that I am working on being made numb.

What else is good about this?  No more numb tongue or lips for hours after your appointment, you can get on with your day without the risk of dribbling, biting or burning yourself.

We have been using this for a few days and the results are amazing, everyone who has tried it has said it’s been a better experience that any other that they had previously experienced. Happy patients make for a happy dental team.

If you want to find out more about how The Wand can transform your dental experience, why not give us a call?

The trek to the ladies loos…

I’m back on two of my favourite subjects, customer service and the loos, in particular the ladies loo.

We’ve all been there, we are in a beautiful restaurant or hotel or bar and are having a great time, after a while you need to spend a penny and head off to the loo. The sign is easy to find but when you go through the double doors, the men’s loo is right in front of you, but there is an arrow pointing upstairs for the ladies.

Start trekking...

You climb the stairs, take a right, second left, go down 2 steps,  by now you are beginning to get a bit more desperate, you had not realised that you were going to need supplies for this journey, on you go as you can’t go back now, up another flight of stairs, get a bit lost in a maze of corridors and finally find the loo, identified by the queue of ladies outside the ONE loo available. Need I say more?

Great customer service is not just about what you can see, it’s about the experience that person has from the moment they enter the establishment to the moment they leave. It can look good, it can smell good, but how did it make the person feel being there?

For anyone who has been desperate for the loo, it’s not a good feeling.

How does this relate to dentistry, well it doesn’t directly, but when someone visits us at Evolve, we want them to feel good the whole time they are with us and not feel uncomfortable at any point during their time with us, does your dentist make you feel good?

Would you like some good news?

I am not sure about the rest of you, but I have got to a point where I don’t really want to listen to the news or read the papers as it’s all bad news. If it’s not about the eurozone, it’s about the bad and unseasonable weather, if it’s not about the weather, it’a about some other disaster.

We all need a bit of good news in our lives so here’s a picture that I took recently, guess where the rainbow ends?

The answer isn’t Waitrose, but for those of you not lucky enough to have yet visited Evolve, we are situated just behind Waitrose on this picture, and that’s where the rainbow ends. Why have I posted this picture in relation to good news?

It’s very simple really, it you want to have a better life, smile more. Many studies have shown that people who smile are more likely to be trusted, to earn more, to find a life partner and be happy. However, this is easier said than done, in a recent BACD study 32% of respondents said that they didn’t like their smile or hid it in photos, not much smiling going on there.

There are some really simple ways to improve your smile:

• Brush your teeth twice a day and floss once a day
• See a dentist and a dental hygienist regularly
• If you wear lipstick, wear pink rather than red, it makes you teeth appear whiter
• Have old, discoloured fillings replaced
• Consider having some minor reshaping done, rounded edges to teeth look younger than sharp corners
• Have some bonding done to smooth out little chips
• Talk to your dentist about tooth whitening, either home or in-surgery whitening, just make sure that home trays are included
• Use one of the many rapid or invisible brace systems to move your teeth into the right position

There are many ways to improve your smile, you just need to talk to your dentist.

Start smiling today and notice the difference.

How nice is the loo?

If you have ever read this blog before, you may have noticed that I am keen on customer  service in any industry, I am also interested in how other companies generate business as Evolve is a relatively new dental practice and we are still growing, so monitor where all our patients come from. This week we has an interesting experience as we are looking for a new contractor to carry out our general cleaning.

We have used a local company pretty much since we opened and have been very happy with the service that we have received. When we ask our patients what they like about Evolve, often the response is that we are nice and clean. We are looking for a new contractor as our regular cleaner is retiring so it’s a good opportunity to see if there is a more competitive service available. As it happened a cleaning company cold called us and we arranged a meeting.

It became apparent after a short time that their sales strategy was to be fairly derogatory about our current cleaner. At no point did we say that we were unhappy with our current situation and they didn’t take the time to find out why we were looking for a new contractor. There was an incorrect assumption that we are unhappy with our current cleaner and so want a new one. After a while, I started to become insulted  by suggesting the cleaner was not doing a good job, thus suggesting that we have been fools to continue to employ them. I would like to stress that I have incredibly high standards in the care we deliver to all our patients, this includes the level of cleaning in the general areas. After all is the loo isn’t clean, how do you know our hands and instruments are clean? I strongly believe you can judge an establishment by the quality of it’s loo. How many times have you been to a wonderful restaurant and been disappointed by the lack of attention when it comes to the loo?

So  my take home message this week is never make assumptions about someone else’s work, and if you really want to gauge the quality of an establishment, check out their loo.

What do you do with your toothbrush?

The British Dental Health Foundation is a charity that promotes oral health to the nation. They regularly carry out surveys and this one about toothbrushes I thought was quite amusing. What do you do with your toothbrush? Here’s what they found:

The national survey uncovered that more than four in every five of us go on to reuse our old toothbrushes for another purpose.

Results showed that four in ten people use an old toothbrush for scrubbing bathroom tiles, making it by far the most popular activity. Almost a third (28 percent) of us use our past toothbrushes to assist in cleaning various kitchen appliances, more than a quarter (26 per cent) use them to give an extra glimmer to our jewellery and roughly one in every five (18 per cent) of adults use the versatile oral hygiene product to shine shoes.

More uses included cleaning bikes, computer keyboards, toilets and toilets seats, fish tanks and finger nails. A clean sweep all-round!

Chief Executive of the British Dental Health Foundation, Dr Nigel Carter, says a toothbrush is able to perform many functions around the home after it’s time cleaning teeth and gums are over.

Dr Carter said: “We all should get through around four toothbrushes every year if we are to keep our oral health in tip-top condition. Generally people don’t change their toothbrushes often enough, but there are still plenty lying around the house and our survey has shown that people realise that a toothbrush has a value and role to play beyond their normal life and use.”

Results from the comprehensive survey found that the age of the owner plays a significant part in what happens to a toothbrush after it is too old to care for the teeth and gums.

Those of us over 75 are three times more likely to re-use their toothbrush for a different purpose than those between the ages of 16 and 34 and twice more likely than those between 35 and 44.

Additionally, women are a third more likely to reuse their toothbrush for chores and other uses than their male counterparts.

Combing eyebrows, dusting archaeological artefacts, children’s painting and other various art projects also featured in what we do with an old toothbrush, while more cleaning alternatives included taps and plugholes, tools, silverware, car batteries and wheels, football boots and bird cages.

Bizarrely, other uses for the oral hygiene product ranged from women who admit to using it to apply their hair dye to those who use the object as a hair chopstick while some men who choose to use an old toothbrush to clean the dog’s teeth or give the golf clubs a sharp polish.

The take home message here is that you should change your toothbrush every 3 months or so to maintain excellent oral hygiene, when did you last buy a new toothbrush for you and the whole family?

Who wants a Hollywood smile?

Is this your idea of a perfect Hollywood smile?

For years the Americans have laughed at us for having awful teeth this side of the pond, the British teeth are a joke. I have just come back from my fifth British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry conference and I know that here in England we are leading the way in many areas of dentistry, and we understand that most of our patients want a natural smile, not a perfect smile.

Or  is this your idea of a “natural” Hollywood smile?

This patient has a natural beautiful smile, not a veneer in sight!! This was carried out using an Inman Aligner in about 12 weeks, though this case was not done by me at Evolve. We do offer the Inman Aligner, which is a removable brace that moves teeth very quickly using gently forces. There are lots of other ways to create a beautiful natural smile, whitening, bonding, braces or simply reshaping.

Increasingly in the 21st century, we dentists are very conscious that we don’t want to cut teeth to place veneers on them until all other options are explored, you may not realise what the options are available.

• Tooth whitening, this should always be done by a dental professional
• Braces, they can be tooth coloured, invisible, or removable and sometimes treatment only takes a few weeks
• Reshaping, this is a simple process that slightly  changes the shape of your teeth but can make a dramatic difference
• Bonding, this is when small amounts of tooth coloured filling is bonded to your teeth, again making a big difference

Maybe you should ask your dentist how you can get your own natural “Hollywood” smile.

Who cares about good customer service? You??

Customer service, it’s everywhere isn’t it? We all want you to know that we care about YOU.

In my blogs, I always try to share something useful with you, mainly on dentistry, but today, I want to tell you about a customer service experience that I had recently.

I have wanted a particular pair of shoes ( I am a girl after all) for some time now. I had coveted them from afar, I had actually touched  them in a shop, and finally decided the time was right to buy the red soled shoes.

There is only one place in Bristol that I know of to buy these shoes, a famous up market department store in Cabot Circus. I made a special trip there and in anticipation of my purchase, sailed to the designer shoe department in a state of great excitement, to be met by 2 disinterested members of staff. I plough on, I find the shoes and look hopefully for some assistance, reluctantly, one of the sales assistants stopped chatting to her colleague and wandered over to me. I asked for my size, at which point the other assistant piped up from the other side of the shop ” I think that our last pair”.

Optimistically I waited for her to come back, and so she did, with no shoes. No suggestion of any alternatives, so I, in desperation, asked about another pair, she had to check my size again, and then returned with no shoes. Very reluctantly, she said she could order some for me, but it would take AT LEAST 2 weeks!! At that point I left, very disappointed.

I have since decided that I won’t be spending any money on the shoes I have wanted for a long time as it’s just not worth it. After all, what makes these shoes worth several hundred pounds? OK, they are immediately recognisable as they have red soles, and any shoe lover would recognise them immediately, but the whole process of buying the shoes should be an experience, choosing them, the interaction with the sales team, their enthusiasm for their product, the admiration of the product, their comments when you try them on ( luckily your feet don’t put on weight), the packaging, the box that  they come in, I had already had requests just for the box, the bag, the anticipation of wearing them and admiring them at home. I am sure you get the picture.

During this recession, and I am daring to use the word, recession, studies have shown that spending has generally gone down, except on experiential shopping which has gone up by 11%. You generally have an “experience”  when purchasing luxury goods.

When I set up Evolve Dentistry, I wanted to be able to offer something different, but how? Whilst Steven, Lisa, Joanne and I all work to the highest standards, I have no reason to believe that all other dentists don’t work to an equally high standard, so it has to be about how we care for you, from the moment you contact Evolve until the moment you leave until the next time. We remember your name, we smile, we want you to enjoy visiting us. We serve proper coffee, exceptional tea and delicious champagne, we even make your teeth look nice. It’s the Evolve experience, so if you want to enjoy a trip to the dentist, and I believe it is more than possible, call us now.

How can I get a celebrity smile?

All the celebrities are doing it, can I get a celebrity smile? Braces, veneers, crowns, whitening,  what should I do?  When is the perfect time to wear a brace or get your teeth fixed?

The answer is easy really, anytime you want to. It’s a myth that braces are the realm of the teenage world, maybe metal train tracks are more commonly worn by teenagers, but in the adult world there are many systems that are very discreet or invisible so no one would know that you are wearing a brace.

Many celebrities decide to have their teeth fixed as they are increasingly in the eye of the media, some have veneers such as Tulisa on the X Factor recently, others wear an invisible brace such as Chris Evans, but it’s not just for celebrities getting the smile they’ve always wanted.

At Evolve we have patients in their 70′s who decide to wear a brace to straighten their teeth and it changes their life, they no longer feel self conscious about their teeth and their confidence increases massively. However, I would not advocate that everyone waits until their 70′s, wearing a brace as a teenager is an ideal time as it’s more likely that their friends are wearing them as well. Unfortunately in this day and age, with waiting times in the NHS sometimes taking up to 2 years before treatment is started, your teenager is no longer prepared to wear a brace as they have other priorities now in their lives such as girlfriends or boyfriends. So the window of opportunity is missed. With reduced funding within the NHS, not everyone is treated free of charge anymore, so there is no guarantee that you would get treatment once you have been for the consultation. The alternative is private treatment.

Before you think, well that’s really expensive, it may not be as expensive as you think, straight forward treatment can cost from £1500 and as orthodontics takes usually a few months, payment can be spread out over a few months to ease the burden.

Everyone can have a celebrity smile, your smile is the most important part of you face with 87% of people noticing your smile first, so don’t delay, do something today!!

The Power of a Beautiful Smile

What a difference a smile makes……
Everyone has a different reason to get up in the morning and go to work. It might be for the money, to escape the children, to relieve the boredom, or maybe because you love what you do. I am often asked why I became a dentist, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea to be honest, and the reason I love my job is because I can really change someone’s life for the better.
This doesn’t happen everyday in a big way, but most days, I can do something that makes someone’s life better, get them out of pain, make sure I don’t hurt them, give them options they
hadn’t thought of, and some days, I can give someone back their confidence.
I have a great job!!
I recently saw a lovely lady who I really enjoyed treating, it’s so nice when someone takes the time to tell me what they thought of their time here at Evolve. This is what Pat wrote to me:
“Dear Carol
As one of you “older” patients, I was concerned that I may be too late for being considered for treatment. I have always been self conscious about my teeth to the point that I would cover my mouth with my hand when I smiled. I needn’t have worried, you were so patient and put my mind at rest at every stage, answering all my questions and making sure I was happy with the progress.

The result has been life changing. I have so much more confidence and can not be at the front of family photographs instead of hiding at the back.

My only regret – I didn’t do it years ago!

Many thanks

Pat”
Obviously I am blowing my own trumpet here, but the real point is that is that you never underestimate the confidence a beautiful smile can give you, and you are never too old to do something about it.