Mead Family Dental

The dentist and the apple

One of my top 10 favorite foods is an apple.  I'm partial to Jazz or Honeycrisp.  In fact, you don't want to be standing between me and a Jazz apple.

Why should you care?  This is the blog of a Saginaw dentist, not a fruit market, right?  Well let me tell you a little story.

I got up this morning early.  I mean really early.  Like 4:30am.  It snowed like crazy last night.  Schools were cancelled and the roads were terrible.  My routine is to get up in the morning and feed the horses.  At the moment we have 12 horses and a miniature donkey that I feed a couple times each day.  Also two dogs.  So it takes a while. And with snow, it takes even longer. 

So I knew I was going to be trudging through the snow as well as shovelling, so I needed a breakfast on the go.  And since I'm such a huge fan of apples, it made perfect sense.  I grabbed my apple and hopped in the truck. This is when the trouble started.

When I bit into this beautiful, shiny apple I didn't have any idea the problem I was about to experience. On the very first bite I felt a heavy pressure and sharp pain by my lower left canine. WOW! It lit up my morning like fireworks!  This is the part where you revel in the irony of a dentist explaining his toothache, so enjoy it!

What had happened to me has probably happened to anyone who's ever eaten a really crispy apple.  I had jammed a little bit of the skin of that apple right between two of my teeth.  And it really stuck!  It was a ton of pressure on that one little spot and wow did it hurt!  

So what was I to do?  It just so happens that I keep a small spool of floss, just like the ones that we give to our patients at their cleaning appointments, in my truck.  I reached into the center console, grabbed my floss and I was as good as new in 2 seconds flat.  

So I had a happy ending to my story.  I tell you this tale because I can offer you a happy ending if you were to ever have such a tragedy.  Come get your teeth cleaned here at the office.  Not only will we treat you really nicely but we'll look over your teeth and make sure everything is O.K.  If there are problems, we'll offer you solutions.  We'll tell you how much it will cost to fix them.  If you've got insurance, we'll help you sort out how much they'll kick in for your treatment.  If you don't have insurance, we can help you find ways to save some money on dental care costs.  

And most importantly...we'll give you some floss that you can carry with you.  You know, to help out with those tragic apple accidents.

Give us a call at (989) 799-9133 or email me at alan@meadfamilydental.com.  We'll give you a dental office experience that you'll want to tell your friends about!

On chewing gum

Chewing gum can be good for your teeth.  It also can be bad for your teeth and your jaw joint.  Chewing gum will stimulate saliva, which is the major natural defense your teeth have against cavities.  

There are two rules that I have for chewing gum.  Two and a half, really.  They are simple and they are to be followed.  Failure to follow them may cause this Saginaw dentist to hunt you down, call you silly names and revoke your license to chew.

1. Chew sugarless gum.  Preferably containing Xylitol.  There are so many foods and drinks that have an insane amount of sugar in them and many of these don't have good sugarless options.  There are a ton of really good sugarless gums.  They'll stimulate saliva flow after meals and make your mouth feel fresh but they don't give cavity bugs anything to eat.  Win-win.
2. Chew for 5 minutes or when the flavor is gone, whichever is shorter.  The hard core gum chewers hate this.  Your jaw joints suffer wear and tear like any other joints.  I recommend that you don't overuse them.  I would compare gum chewing all day long with cracking your knuckles.  It's a kind of nervous habit.  My evidence is completely anecdotal, but patients that are heavy gum chewers often have a "jaw pop."  It doesn't necessarily lead to problems or pathology, but it can be annoying.  So don't chew too long.

     2.5. If you have braces or an orthodontic appliance, don't chew gum.

These are the rules.  You know the consequences.  Chew wisely.

 

Questions?  Comments?  Do hard core gum chewers want to send me angry emails?  Email me at: alan@meadfamilydental.com.  I return all of my own email and would be happy to answer questions!

diet pop, obesity and stroke: evaluating medical claims critically

Recent headlines suggest that those who drink diet soda are more likely to have cardiovascular problems, specifically stroke.  Let's review some of the headlines:

"Diet pop can be hard on your heart"

"Want to have a stroke?  Keep drinking diet sodas"

"Diet Drinks Help Waist, But Still Lead to Heart Problems, Stroke"

"Drinking diet pop might increase risk or stroke"

If you don't look any harder you could walk away with the idea that drinking diet soda will lead to strokes.  And if you're anything like me, this will lodge in your mind until the next sensational headline tells you something else that many people do on a regular basis is unhealthy and damaging.

Does drinking diet soda really make you more likely to have a stroke?  A stroke is damage to the brain due to a temporary interruption of the blood supply.  It's very similar to the damage to the heart during a heart attack.  What exactly is it in diet soda that makes it more likely for a stroke to happen?  According to the articles this same risk isn't found in people who drink regular soda.  So are we to assume that it's the artificial sweeteners?  

This is a perfect example of preliminary "science" prevented as fact used as a scare tactic.  Many news sources have gotten honest about the source of this information, but many others have not.  Retractions or good explanations of the methods don't make headlines, but scare tactics do.  

The correlation between diet soda and stroke was made in a poster presentation at the "International Stroke Conference."  Poster presentations are not the same as peer reviewed medical journals and definitely do not carry the weight of medical consensus.  This misinterpretation is not the fault of the scientists presenting the poster so much as the media drawing unsupported conclusions.  Simply stated, the connection presented has not been studied enough to make the statements that a lot of news sources are making.

Most news stories do not bother to mention that correlation isn't the same thing as causation.  There very well could be a correlation between intake of diet soda and stroke, but by no means does that mean drinking diet soda causes strokes.  It's that the individual data points of stroke risk and diet soda intake are often found together.   Perhaps overweight and obese people, who are clearly more likely to have strokes and heart attacks, are more likely to report drinking diet soda because they are attempting to lose weight.  Perhaps there really is some stroke inducing ingredient in diet soda.  The study that is referred to really doesn't make that evident.  There needs to be a lot of research and verification to reach a point where causation of disease can be determined.

The news media and others reporting the "drinking diet soda = greater stroke risk" are jumping the gun.  They're not interested in reality as much as a good story.  A story that might frighten you, but will hopefully be forgotten until the next scary headline.  

Is this ever done in dentistry?  I think it is.  I'll discuss that in another blog soon!

 

What are we thankful for?

We're thankful for our patients!  

We hope you have a warm and wonderful Thanksgiving!