If you have teeth or you know someone with teeth, then some day, you may have to deal with a dental emergency.

Most of us have basic first aid supplies to handle small injuries, but would you know what to do if someone’s tooth was knocked loose or if someone broke a wire on his or her braces?

If you don’t know, that’s OK. In today’s blog, we will review the kind of dental first aid you can provide.

You should also remember to call the nearest Sunrise Dental office  to get help as soon as you can. You can reach us at:

• Chapel Hill – 919-914-0844
• Raleigh – 919-578-9923
• Durham – 919-213-9757
• Cary  – 919-902-5121

If you are calling outside of our regular hours, listen for the emergency contact number on our answering machine. In a life-threatening situation, always call 911.

Dealing With Different Types Of Dental Emergencies

Dental emergencies can happen at any time. How you handle it will vary depending on what type of emergency you are facing.

Here’s a short review of what to do in some common dental emergencies.

► Braces With A Broken Wire

What you will need: Vinyl or rubber gloves, gauze, dental wax, a pencil with an eraser on one end

What you should do: First, put on the gloves. Any time you may be touching another person’s blood or saliva, you need to protect your skin.

If there is any blood, use the gauze to clean the mouth.

Place a piece of dental wax on the exposed ends of the broken wire. Then, use the eraser end of the pencil to gently push the wire flat against the person’s teeth.

If you need to eat before you are able to see one of our dentists, stick to soft foods like eggs or yogurt.

► A Tooth Has Been Knocked Out

What you will need: Vinyl or rubber gloves, gauze, milk and a container

What you should do: Try to find the tooth. If you do find it, be careful to pick the tooth up by the crown. Avoid touching the root.

Rinse the tooth to remove any blood or dirt. Also, have the person who lost a tooth rinse his or her mouth to remove any blood.

Gauze can help with the cleaning, and gauze can soak up blood if the bleeding continues.

If possible, try to carefully place the tooth where it was. If the tooth will stay in place, leave it there until you can see a dentist.

If the tooth will not stay in place, you need to keep it moist. Do this by placing the tooth in a container with milk. If milk is not available, use saliva from the person who lost the tooth.

In some cases, it is possible to re-place the tooth. In other cases, the tooth will need to be replaced in another way.

► A Tooth Has Been Broken Or Chipped

What you will need: Vinyl or rubber gloves, gauze, dental wax, milk and a container, ice pack

What you should do: As with the knocked out tooth, try to find any piece or pieces of the chipped or broken tooth.

Rinse the tooth to remove dirt. The person with the chipped tooth should also rinse his or her mouth to remove any blood. Gauze can be used to clean blood and stop bleeding.

Place the pieces of the tooth in a container with milk or saliva.

It’s possible that the chipped tooth may have a sharp edge or point. While wearing gloves, cover the chipped tooth with gauze or dental wax to reduce the risk of accidental cuts.

Ice packs can be used to reduce swelling.

► A Severe Toothache

What you will need: Vinyl or rubber gloves, dental floss, warm water

What to do: The toothache may be because something is stuck between the person’s tooth. If needed, wear gloves and use dental floss if it appears something may be stuck.

If this does not work, gargle with warm water and take an over-the-counter pain reliever, and call our office.

However, do NOT place aspirin directly against the gums or other soft tissues. Aspirin can burn these tissue and create new problems.

There When You Need Help

At Sunrise Dental, we understand that emergencies don’t happen on a convenient schedule. If you or someone you love is having a dental emergency, call us at any time at the office closest to you:

• Chapel Hill – 919-914-0844
• Raleigh – 919-578-9923
• Durham – 919-213-9757
• Cary  – 919-902-5121

During routine cleanings and examinations, dentists check for tooth decay and gum disease. How much to do you know about gum disease? Do you know how to prevent it? Do you know how it can be treated at any of the four Sunrise Dental locations in the Triangle? Find out the fun with today’s quiz.

Right or wrong, Americans are obsessed with looking younger.

One indication of that is the fact that Americans have spent more than $12 billion (that is with a B) annually on cosmetic surgery in recent years, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

If you would like to look younger, we have a much simpler suggestion. It requires no surgery, and you can have it done at any Sunrise Dental location in the Triangle.

What is this wonderful treatment, you may ask? It is professional teeth whitening.

Skeptical? We understand, but stick with us and we will explain how fixing your stained teeth can change how old other people think you are.

To learn more or to find out for yourself, call any of our dentist offices in Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, or Raleigh.

Yellow Teeth And Getting Older

Almost everything that you eat contributes to the stains on your teeth.

Every coffee that you drink …

Every iced tea you enjoy on a hot summer afternoon …

Every delicious barbecue sandwich you eat has a tiny effect on your teeth.

After 30, 40, 50 years of eating and drinking, every little bit adds up. Your teeth will naturally lose their pearly white quality. Your stained teeth are just another example of the wear and tear our bodies go through as we get older.

Now, we can do things to slow down this staining, but we won’t ever stop it completely.

You also can do things that speed up the staining, like ignoring your dental hygiene or using tobacco. That, too, can affect how old people think you are (but necessarily in a way you would like).

The Photo Test

A British newspaper, The Daily Mail, tested how our teeth color affects the way others perceive our age.

Using photo editing software, they lightened and darkened the teeth color in photos of celebrities and ordinary people. They asked volunteers to guess the ages of the people in the photos.

Here’s a sample of what they found:

• A picture of a woman was presented with white, lightly stained, and heavily stained teeth.

People who saw the picture with the whitest teeth thought the woman was 31 years old. People who saw the mild stains thought she was 37, and people who saw the darkest stains said she was 43 years old.

That’s a 12-year difference just by changing the color of her teeth.

• A picture of a male was shown with three different shadings, white, lightly stained, and heavily stained.

Volunteers who saw the heavy stains thought the man was 38 years old. People who saw the light stains guessed that he was 32, and people who saw the whitest teeth said he was 28 years old.

A decade was wiped away with whiter teeth.

• Model Kate Moss was shown with two different shades of teeth.

People who saw her natural teeth thought she was 41 years old, but people who saw her photo with white teeth said that she was 35.

How You Can Look Younger

We know instinctively that our teeth become yellower, darker, and more stained as we get older. This may be why we consider people who have whiter teeth to be younger.

You may be able to experience this effect for yourself with our professional teeth whitening service. This is one of the simplest forms of cosmetic dentistry, and whitening remains one of the most popular cosmetic services.

We use Sinsational Smile® for our in-office whitening treatments. In a single visit to our office, this product can remove layers of stains from your teeth. Your smile could be multiple shades whiter in as little as 20 minutes in one of our chairs.

There are many professional teeth whitening products on the market, but one of the advantages of Sinsational Smile® is that it does not increase teeth sensitivity the way other products can.

This is the fastest and most effective method we offer for changing your teeth from stained to white.

In some cases, it’s a quick way to improve your self-confidence as well. We’ve treated many patients who were ashamed by their yellow teeth when they walked through our door but who left with their heads held high and big smiles on their faces.

Reclaim Your Smile

Your smile says a lot about how you feel about yourself. If you want to feel better, and maybe a little more youthful, professional teeth whitening at Sunrise Dental could be just what you need.

To make an appointment, contact the dentist office closest to you in Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham or Raleigh. Your new and improved smile is waiting.

A human adult has 32 teeth. If his or her wisdom teeth have been removed, then he or she has 28 teeth.

And yet the average American adult between the ages of 20 and 64 has just 24.9 teeth, according to data from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.

Even using the small starting figure, this means the average American will lose three teeth in his or her lifetime.

As we get older, tooth loss becomes more likely. Indeed, 1 in 10 adults over 50 years old is missing all their original teeth.

This makes our team at Sunrise Dental think about what life is like for people with no teeth. More importantly, it makes us think about how we can help.

If you are one of those people who is missing a tooth or teeth, then we encourage you to talk to us about dental implants. Our dentists offer this service at each of our locations in Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh, and Cary.

The Downsides Of Edentulism

People who are edentulous have lost all their teeth.

If you are not one of those people, try to imagine what it would be like. Odds are, you don’t remember much about what your life was like before you had teeth.

Back then you were eating nothing but liquids and mushy foods like pureed peaches, peas, and sweet potatoes. We are guessing that your would prefer to not have to return to that kind of diet.

In addition to the flavors, there’s just something satisfying about biting into a juicy steak or some fried chicken. When you don’t have teeth, that’s a lot harder to do.

And don’t forget about the psychological impact of losing your teeth.

When people ask to see your smile, they mean they want to see the real thing. This means showing your teeth comfortably and naturally. If you don’t have teeth, your smile is different.

But it’s not just your smile that’s affected. You may become hesitant to introduce yourself to new people or the speak to them out of fear that they will just you by your (lack of) teeth.

Restore Your Smile With Dental Implants

Let’s assume for a minute that you have lost every tooth on one arch of your mouth. What would change about your life? If you could bring your mouth back to its full function, would you want to do that?

We know that we would, and dental implants can help you regain your quality of life.

Dental implants are meant to replace the roots of your lost teeth. Like the roots, your implants serve as anchors. With implants, they support the replacements for the crowns of your missing teeth.

In this scenario, we would encourage you to consider implant-supported dentures.

Thanks to the technology available in our offices, we can precisely plan the placement of a series of implants in your jaw. Those implants can be used to support a set of dentures, that are more secure and much more stable than traditional dentures.

In fact, implant-supported dentures are so strong that many patients regain close to 100 percent of their original bite force.

In other words, you can keep eating the hamburgers, fried chicken, and any other food that you enjoy eating.

Protect Your Teeth With Implants

Now, let’s go to the other end of this spectrum. You were playing a game of pickup basketball when you got caught in the mouth with an accidental elbow. One of your teeth falls out and can’t be put back in place.

What should you do?

In this case, we would encourage you to get a dental implant with a dental crown.

You may think a single tooth isn’t worth worrying about. Then again, you may change your mind as more and more people ask what happened.

Plus, that single missing tooth can cause you to lose up to 25 percent of your bone density in that part your mouth in just 12 months. If you allow the space in your mouth to remain vacant, then you risk more bone loss and eventually more lost teeth, too.

A dental implant can help to preserve the health of your jawbone, and a dental crown will provide the mutual support that your old tooth once provided to its neighbors.

Keep Smiling

Our goal is to help you keep as many teeth as you can for as long as you can. Even so, we know that many people will lose one or more teeth.

If you do lose a tooth or teeth or you already have, Sunrise Dental and our dental implants can help you maintain your confidence in your smile and in your ability to eat the foods that you like.

You can learn more by visiting or calling any of our dentist offices in Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh, or Cary. Request an appointment to get started.

The Research Triangle is a great place to live and work, which is why it never surprises us to learn that new families have moved into our community.

If you are new to our part of the Tar Heel State, then the staff at Sunrise Dental wants to be among the first to welcome you here. We hope you and your family find our part of North Carolina as pleasant as we do.

We also hope you will consider us for your family and general dentistry needs. With four locations — Durham, Raleigh, Cary, and Chapel Hill — our dentists are probably close to where you live or work.

Today, we will be discussing what you can expect from us.

A Caring Environment

One of the things we believe is that care should be an important part of family dentistry.

The team at each of our locations strives to make our offices as inviting and relaxing as we can. When you enter any Sunrise Dental, you’ll find a friendly staff who are happy to see you.

We also want you to feel comfortable while you are visiting us. We provide refreshments and televisions. We have a number of comfort options in our spacious facilities.

We also know that children (and some adults) get nervous when they stop by for dental care. For them (or you), we provide sedation dentistry.

If you have any suggestions for how we can help you feel more comfortable, please let us know.

Comprehensive Care

No matter why you need dental care, we can handle it.

Our office is built on a foundation of quality general dentistry. We encourage all our patients to visit us a few times each year for routine cleanings and examinations.

During those visits, we will check the condition of your teeth and gums, and we will pay particular attentions to anything that may have changed inside your mouth.

We will remove any plaque or tartar buildup that we find, and we will polish your teeth to help them look their best.

If we see signs of gum disease, we can advise you about the best way to treat it. For more advanced cases, we can provide a deep cleaning procedure known as scaling and root planing.

Many patients want to do more than maintain the appearance of their teeth, which is why we also offer a number of cosmetic dental services.

We can whiten your smile, straighten your teeth, make your smile less “gummy,” and replace your worn down metallic fillings with new, tooth-colored ones.

If you lose or injure a tooth or teeth, our office can provide emergency dental care, too. Just call us as soon as you are able, and we will do our best to see you as soon as possible.

One of the other benefits of coming to a Sunrise Dental office is we have multiple dentists at each location. This means our dentists can consult with one another to make sure you are getting the best treatment possible.

Technology In Action

From the beginning, Sunrise Dental has been committed to providing the highest quality care that we can. All our dentists go through continuing education so we are as up-to-date as we can be about the latest techniques and technology.

At our offices, we incorporate that technology into what we do for our patients. This starts with the computers we have in all of our patient treatment rooms, but it goes far beyond that.

We have intraoral cameras. These allow our dentists to have a magnified view of your teeth and mouth. This helps us spot problems sooner when they are easier to treat.

We have cone beam CT scanners. If you are unfamiliar with this technology, it is like a miniaturized CAT scan machine. By taking images of your head, we are able to construct a three-dimensional model of your teeth and the supporting bone structure.

This is beneficial both as a diagnostic tool and as a planning tool if you should need a tooth removed or replaced.

Guaranteed Quality

If you do need restorative work, we offer a five-year guarantee as long as you maintain your routine visits to our office. Routine cleanings and examinations are invaluable for your oral health.

Please visit us if you are looking for a new dentist in Durham, Raleigh, Cary, Chapel Hill, or the surrounding area.

To make your first appointment, call or fill out the online form for the office that is most convenient for you. We look forward to meeting you, and we hope to continue seeing you for years to come.

Is something missing from your smile? Do you wish you had a full set of teeth, or, at least, something that felt like a full set of teeth again?

Sunrise Dental can help, and a dental bridge may be the solution you are seeking. Dental bridges are comfortable means of replacing the teeth that you are missing, and they can provide comparable function to healthy teeth.

If you would like to learn more about what dental bridges are and what they can do for you, keep reading. If you would like to find out how to get a dental bridge, just contact any of our dentists in Raleigh, Cary, Chapel Hill, or Durham.

What Is a Dental Bridge?

A dental bridge is one kind of restorative dentistry. A bridge can be used to replace multiple teeth at the same time. Dental bridges are composed of dental crowns that have been connected to one another.

You may already be aware that your teeth are divided into two parts the crown (which is visible) and the roots (which are hidden below your gums). Dental crowns and bridges are designed to replace the crowns of your missing or lost teeth.

Crowns can be used to replace missing teeth, but bridges are a good option for this as well, depending on the type of bridge you receive.

Kinds Of Bridges

Just like bridges used in transportation, there is more than one kind of dental bridge. At Sunrise Dental, you are likely to receive one of three kinds of bridges. We’ll describe each of them below.

◆ The Traditional Bridge

This kind of bridge is supported by the two teeth on each side of the space in your smile. This starts by reshaping those teeth in the same way we prepare a tooth for a dental crown.

With a dental crown, we remove decayed or damaged parts of a tooth. By doing this, we are creating an abutment where we can bond the dental crown to the tooth.

For a traditional dental bridge, we are creating two abutments. The bridge will be bonded to those teeth for support.

A traditional bridge consists of two types of crowns. The abutment crowns are located on either end, and one or more pontics are located between them, depending on the number of teeth that need to be replaced.

◆ The Cantilever Bridge

This is similar to a traditional bridge except that it only has one abutment crown. These kinds of bridges are less common than traditional bridges.

A cantilever bridge is one option for replacing a missing tooth in the back of your mouth. (However, you may want to consider a dental implant and crown instead.)

The abutment crown is placed on the tooth nearest to the space once occupied by your lost tooth. The pontic rests over that space.

◆ The Implant-Supported Bridge

In many cases, this is the most stable and secure dental bridge you can receive. Unlike the other bridges, this kind of bridge does not require removing parts of a tooth that may be healthy to serve as part of the support system.

Instead, this bridge is placed on one or more dental implants. Earlier we mentioned that bridges replace the crowns of your missing teeth. Dental implants are used to replace the roots.

Like roots, dental implants are placed into your jawbone. They also help to keep that bone healthy and strong by providing stimulation to the bone.

The bone will bond to your implants, which keeps them firmly in place. The implant or implants have an abutment on the end so we can attach a dental crown or bridge onto them.

Smile Again

Our teeth have a big impact on our self-perception and on how other people perceive us. If you are missing multiple teeth, you may feel embarrassed. This may make you hesitant to speak or to smile at other people.

You may worry that they will judge you because of your missing teeth. This may not be fair, but unfortunately, it may be true.

We know people who won’t judge you — our staff at Sunrise Dental. If you come to use seeking help, we will do what we can to help you regain the confident smile you used to have and want to have again.

Our dentists in Raleigh, Cary, Chapel Hill, and Durham want you to feel comfortable with your smile, so you can let it shine for everyone to see. Call or use the online form for the office closest to you to make your appointment.

If you have followed this blog, you have probably read more than one reference to dental implants. These are one of the most important inventions in modern dentistry.

They help us provide complete teeth replacements, and they have helped many of our patients regain the ability to eat the foods that they enjoy.

As long as you can support implants, they are one of the best (if not the best) option for replacing a missing tooth or teeth. Unfortunately, we have learned from our experience at Sunrise Dental that not everyone with missing teeth can support dental implants.

Fortunately, there are ways to change that. Bone grafts can help, and we offer them at our dentist offices in Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh.

When Implants Won’t Work

We often discuss the benefit of dental implants with regard to implant-supported dentures.

Traditional dentures rest over your gums. They can look like natural teeth (as long as they don’t slip out of position). They can help you chew a little better than you could without any teeth, but it’s not the same as eating with a full set of natural teeth.

Dental implants are anchored in your jawbone. This provides a more stable foundation to support your dentures. Implants help your dentures remain in place (so your smile looks natural), and implants help you to regain most of your original bite force.

Problems occur when you don’t have enough bone mass to hold the implants. There are a couple reasons that can happen.

Why You Lose Bone Mass

Bone loss can occur as a result of losing your teeth, and it can occur as a result of gum disease. We’ll start by discussing how tooth loss affects your jawbone.

The roots of your teeth and your jaw have a mutually beneficial relationship. Your jawbone holds your roots in position while your roots help your jawbone remain healthy and strong.

In a way, these effects are activated when you eat. As you bite and chew your food, your roots press into your jawbone. This pressure stimulates the jawbone, and that leads to new growth, which keeps the jawbone healthy. The healthy jawbone holds onto your roots so your teeth remain where they are supposed to be.

When you lose your teeth, your jawbone loses the stimulation it needs to remain healthy. In fact, if you lose one tooth, you may lose up to 25 percent of the bone mass in that part of your mouth within 12 months.

If you are missing several teeth, the bone will continue to deteriorate unless you find a way to stimulate it. Traditional dentures rest over your gums, so they provide little if any stimulation. Even with traditional dentures, you can continue losing bone density.

Gum disease is more a direct attack on your bone. In the advanced stages of gum disease, bacteria can start to eat away at the bone around your roots. (This is part of the reason gum disease is the leading cause of tooth loss in the United States.)

You can develop gum disease even if you don’t have teeth, and this can make the bone loss you are already experiencing go even faster.

How To Replace Your Lost Bone

Dental implants will provide the kind of stimulation your bones need to maintain their density. Implants will not cause your bone to regrow what has been lost, however.

If you don’t have enough bone left to hold an implant, then we will need to get some bone from somewhere else.

This bone is transplanted into your jaw where it is needed. The transplanted bone and your existing bone will fuse together, and after you have healed, we will be able to place your dental implants where they are needed.

The bone for your transplant can come from a few different sources. One type of bone graft is done by removing bone from part of your mouth to the place where it is most needed. Another type of bone graft is done by removing bone from a donor.

If you should need a bone graft, we can discuss the specifics and the options available to complete this procedure.

Solid Start

We believe any patient who comes to Sunrise Dental should get the best results possible. We want your treatment to be as successful as possible, and we are proud that our staff is capable of providing bone grafts and other procedures in our office.

If you are interested in dental implants, talk to any of our dentists. With offices in Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh, we may be closer than you realize. Call or fill out our online form to make an appointment today.

In our modern world, many patients have options about how to straighten their teeth and improve the appearance of their smiles. Have you hear of Invisalign? Do you know how it is different than traditional braces? Today’s post includes an infographic to help you understand the differences and to help decide which is the right option for you.

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Do you have odontophobia? Do you know someone with odontophobia?

This is a fear of the dentist, and it is one of the most common fears in the United States. According to some experts as much as 75 percent of the population experiences some dental anxiety while between 9 and 20 percent of people afraid to set foot in a dentist office.

We promise that we don’t bite, and we will do everything we can to make your dental care as pain-free and worry-free as we can.

Still not convinced? We understand, but we also hope you will keep reading so you can learn how we help many patients with dental anxiety and dental fear receive the oral care that they need.

When you are finished reading, we invite you to visit any of the four Sunrise Dental locations in Durham, Raleigh, Cary, and Chapel Hill. Our dentists and our staff will be happy to meet you.

A Three-Step Approach

If you are afraid of the dentist, we encourage you to talk to your family and friends about it. You will probably find that many of them get nervous about going to the dentist, too. They may be able to share some of the ways they manage their anxiety.

Another good place to get tips on managing your fear is dentalfearcentral.org. This is a website created by people with dental anxiety for other people with dental anxiety.

They point out that it’s a good idea to understand the source of your fear.

Are you afraid of the drill? Are you afraid of needles?

Are you worried that dental care will hurt? Are you concerned that the dentist will lecture you if your teeth aren’t perfect?

Did you have a bad experience with another dentist?

Answering these questions may help you identify the source of your anxiety, which is helpful information to share with any dentist you may visit in the future.

Dentalfearcentral.org also recommends three steps to “tackle” your dental fear.

Step One: The Psychological Approach

The way a dental staff treats its patients is very important. Are you just a number, or are you an individual who deserves personal attention and care?

At Sunrise Dental, we promote a personal approach in an effort to provide our patients with the best experience we can offer. This starts when you call or visit one of our offices. We want you to feel welcome whether you are stopping in to say hi, getting a routine cleaning, or having another procedure. This is why we provide refreshments in our office.

We also want you to feel comfortable. Let us know if there is anything we can do to help you feel more cozy.

Step Two: Technology

This is important for us because we want to provide the best care that we can for you and all our patients. This includes incorporating the latest technology into what we do.

We have digital X-rays so we can see them faster. We have a cone beam CT scanner to generate three-dimensional images of your teeth and the surrounding structures.

We also use intraoral cameras to get a magnified look at your teeth. This allows us to find problems early, which means your treatment is less invasive and easier to handle.

Using technology in combination with the latest techniques allows us to provide dental care that is as pain-free as possible.

Step Three: Sedation Dentistry

Everyone is afraid of something, and for some people, it won’t matter how nice our staff is or what kind of technology we use. We are aware that some people need a little more help to sit down in a dentist’s chair.

This is where sedation dentistry comes into play. Dental sedation can help patients in a lot of ways.

If you are afraid that you might gag, sedation dentistry will keep you relaxed so that won’t be a concern.

If you are worried about feeling pain, dental sedation has an analgesic effect that prevents you from feeling anything during your procedure.

If you are bothered by the sounds of dental care, sedation dentistry can make it so you don’t remember anything about your treatment.

We offer three kinds of sedation dentistry — nitrous oxide, oral conscious sedation, and IV sedation. Whether you have moderate or severe anxiety, we believe we have an option that can help you.

Visit Us First

Before you do anything else we encourage you to visit one of our dentist offices in person. If you live near Durham, Raleigh, Cary, or Chapel Hill, just stop in to say hi. Introduce yourself and talk to our staff.

When you feel ready, then you can return for a cleaning and examination. We don’t want to rush you or pressure you. We want Sunrise Dental to be a place where you feel comfortable and relaxed.

If you have any questions, just call the office closest to you. We hope to hear from you.

If you live with someone who snores constantly, you probably find it pretty annoying. Whether you share a bed, a room, or the same hallway, you may be disturbed — nightly — by the sounds that come from your family member or friend.

It’s one thing to snore from time to time (everyone does that), but this snoring is so loud. If this person’s snoring is interrupted only when he or she seems to stop breathing, then your loved one may have sleep apnea.

We can help. Sunrise Dental offers sleep apnea treatment at each of our dentist offices, located in Raleigh, Cary, Chapel Hill, and Durham.

What Is Sleep Apnea?

First and foremost, it is a sleep disorder. This is a condition that interferes with someone’s normal pattern of sleep.

Sleep is necessary for our long-term health, and healthy sleep includes four stages. We have three stages of non-REM sleep and one stage of REM sleep. (REM is short for rapid eye movement.)

The third stage of non-REM sleep and the REM stage are the deepest levels of sleep.

In the third non-REM stage, our brain patterns change. Our breathing and heart rates slow, and our blood pressure is at its lowest. Scientists believe this stage of sleep is important to help us recover from the previous days activity.

REM is the stage when we dream.

People with sleep apnea may never reach these deeper stages of sleep. The reason is that their bodies have difficulty breathing when they are asleep.

People with obstructive sleep apnea (the most common type of sleep apnea) have trouble breathing because their airways become blocked. The muscles around their airways relax to a point that soft tissue can restrict their airways.

To fight this, their bodies will wake them up dozens of times every hour just long enough so they can breathe. These awakenings are so brief that the individuals usually have no memory that they occur.

Nevertheless, every time they wake, they are effectively resetting their sleep cycle. If they never or rarely reach the deep stages of sleep, they can wake up feeling just as tired as they felt when they went to bed.

Health Risks And Sleep Apnea

The symptoms of sleep apnea can include morning headaches, irritability, and daytime fatigue. These symptoms may give us clues about other health risks that are closely associated with untreated sleep apnea, such as:

• Accidents — This can include small accidents, but we are more concerned about automobile accidents. A study published last year in the journal Sleep found that people with sleep apnea were 2.5 times more likely to be involved in a car crash than people without sleep apnea.

Due to their sleep deprivation (from not getting enough healthy sleep), people with sleep apnea are more likely to fall asleep during the day. If this happens at a desk, it might be embarrassing. If this happens behind the wheel … well, you understand.

• Heart problems — Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. People with sleep apnea are more likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes, and they are more likely to have high blood pressure, which can contribute to cardiovascular problems.
• Diabetes — People with sleep apnea are more likely to have diabetes. Waking up frequently throughout the night can make it harder for someone’s body to control his or her blood sugar levels.

Treating Sleep Apnea

To alleviate the effects of sleep apnea, a person with this disorder needs to be able to breathe easier at night.

The first step is having a sleep study done. Sunrise Dental can help your family member or friend arrange one of these studies.

Once his or her sleep apnea has been confirmed, he or she may be prescribed a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine. To use this, he or she will wear a mask at night. This allows the CPAP to push air into his or her airway to keep them open.

Many people find this an effective treatment, but many others find the CPAP problematic. The mask can be irritating. The noise of the machine may keep him or her awake. Other people take their masks off in their sleep.

As an alternative, our dentists can create an oral appliance for him or her to wear overnight. This is like a mouthguard that adjusts the position of his or her jaw. That change keeps his or her airways open so he or she can breathe.

Help Your Loved One So You Both Sleep Better

Your loved one’s snoring may be just that, or it may be a symptom of sleep apnea. In either case, it’s preventing him or her from getting healthy sleep, and it’s interfering with your sleep, too.

If you live near Raleigh, Cary, Chapel Hill, or Durham, encourage your loved one to talk to one of our dentists soon. We can be reached by phone or by filling out an online form.

Many people feel their hearts beat a little faster and notice their blood pressure rise when they learn the news. You may have felt it, too, if you have been told that you need a root canal.

Unfortunately, root canals may conjure images (possibly from movies) of a dentist taking pleasure inflicting pain upon a patient. We don’t know any dentists who are like this, and we can assure you that the dentists of Sunrise Dental in Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh do everything that we can to prevent our patients from feeling any pain.

That’s true for routine care, and it’s true for root canal treatments, too.

If your tooth hurts, then our staff is here to alleviate your pain as soon as we are able.

When You May Have A Root Canal Infection

Most of the time when we discuss a root canal, what we really mean is a root canal procedure. The root canal is actually a part of a tooth.

Our teeth are divided into crowns (the part we can see) and roots (the part under our gums). Inside our roots are openings (canals), which are where blood vessels and nerves enter our tooth.

A vast majority of the time, you won’t feel a thing inside our teeth. Your nerves are protected by the outer layers of our teeth, and even in the center of our teeth, the nerves are cushioned by soft pulp.

If you are feeling something, such as sensitivity to heat, cold, or sweets, then you may have damage to your tooth. This could be the result of an injury, gum disease, or tooth decay.

In any case, you have an opening that allows bacteria to infect the inside of your tooth, it can cause inflammation. This can put pressure on the nerves. This can cause your toothache.

It’s also a good sign that you need to get to the dentist.

What Happens During A Root Canal

When you come to any of our offices for a root canal procedure, the first step is making sure you are comfortable.

For some patients, this might mean some local anesthetic to numb the infected tooth and the surrounding gum tissue. For other patients, this may mean nitrous oxide or oral sedation. No matter what route you choose, we will not begin working on your tooth until we are confident that you won’t feel anything during the treatment.

The infection is on the inside of your tooth, so your dentist needs to be able to access the inside of your tooth to remove the infected parts. We create an opening in your tooth do we can remove the pulp, the nerves, and the blood vessels.

At this point, we clean the interior of the tooth and sanitize it. Then, we fill the tooth with a special rubbery material so it can hold its shape and to reduce the risk of reinfection.

The last step is sealing the tooth to add one more barrier for bacteria and to restore the shape and function of your tooth. This may involve a simple overlay or it could require a dental crown.

How To Avoid Root Canal Problems

The best way to avoid needing a root canal treatment is to practice good oral hygiene. This includes your day-to-day dental care and routine visits to the nearest Sunrise Dental office.

At home, you need to brush your teeth twice each day for two minutes each time. This is enough time to scrub all your teeth on all sides to remove as many bacteria and as much plaque as you can. Remember to use a soft-bristled toothbrush and a fluoride toothpaste.

And scrub your tongue when you are finished to remove a few more bacteria. (This also helps to freshen your breath.)

You also need to floss daily. Flossing is how you remove bacteria and plaque between your teeth and between your teeth and gums. Brushing can’t reach these places.

Last, but certainly not least, you need to make and keep your routine dental appointments. During your visits, we will remove the plaque and tartar buildup on your teeth. We will watch for signs of developing problems so they can be treated early, and sometimes we even find an infection before your tooth pain begins.

In other words, we may recommend a root canal procedure to prevent you from ever feeling the pain of a toothache, or we may recommend the treatment to end your pain.

We have dentist offices in Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh. If you have not yet scheduled your next appointment at our nearest office, please call or contact us online.

An alligator can regrow a single tooth up to 50 times in its lifetime.

Some species of shark can regrow their teeth up to 24,000 times.

Humans can regrow their teeth … once. When we lose our primary or baby teeth, our permanent or adult teeth will replace them.

When our adult teeth are gone. That’s it. There’s nothing else coming …

But there is something you can do to replace your missing or lost teeth. You can get dental implants to restore your smile, your chewing ability, and maybe your confidence, too.

Sunrise Dental offers dental implants at each of our four locations in Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh, and Cary, and our dentists would be glad to evaluate your mouth to find out if dental implants could help you.

Why You Should Consider Implants

We understand oral health much better than we used to thousands of years or hundreds of years ago. Even in the past few decades, dental researchers have improved on the things we already knew to make tooth replacements better than they have ever been.

Dentures and dental bridges can help, but they are missing a crucial element to be full tooth replacements. One their own, they don’t have a substitute for the roots of your teeth.

Over time, this can cause your face to sink, and this can make you appear older than you really are. How is this possible?

Because you need to replace the roots of your teeth, too.

Your roots and your jaw have something akin to a symbiotic relationship. Crocodiles (the cousins of the alligators we mentioned earlier) are a good example of this kind of relationship.

In Africa, birds called Egyptian plovers frequently can be seen sitting inside the open mouths of Nile crocodiles. This seems like a free meal for the crocodiles, and yet they do not eat the plovers.

The plovers help by removing food that has become stuck in crocodile teeth. This keeps the crocodiles’ mouths healthy, and it provides the plovers with food.

The symbiotic relationship inside your mouth starts with your roots helping your jaw by pressing into the jawbone whenever you bite or chew. This stimulates the jaw, which encourages new growth. This keeps the bone healthy and strong, so it can hold the roots firmly in place.

If you lose your tooth due to gum disease, tooth decay, or an injury, then your jaw loses the stimulation it once received. Instead of growing new bone to replace the cells that die, you jaw will continue to lose mass without replacing it.

This can lead to additional tooth loss. As your jaw slowly shrinks, it can change the shape of your face, too.

How Can Implants Help?

Dental implants were created to replace the roots of your missing teeth. Implants can be used in many ways, all of which are good for your oral health.

A single implant can support a dental crown. When this duo is placed, your smile will look complete and natural. The crown is functionally indistinguishable from your remaining real teeth.

A dental bridge can be used to replace multiple teeth. By placing it on one or more dental implants you regain the appearance of a full set of teeth, and you continue to be able to eat all the foods that you love.

Dentures have been the standard treatment for replacing a full arch of teeth for centuries. The material has become more lifelike, which is great for your smile, but dentures are not particularly secure, even with a dental adhesive.

Implant-secured dentures provide all the benefits of traditional implants, and the implants can rebuild your bite force as your mouth heals from the placement procedure.

With a series of dental implants to support your dentures, you won’t have to worry when you dine out with your family or friends. You can order anything from the menu secure in the knowledge that your dentures will remain in place.

Smile With Confidence

Often, people focus on the aesthetic and physical effects of losing a tooth. We have also become aware of the emotional repercussions of tooth loss.

Many patients with missing teeth come to Sunrise Dental because they are embarrassed by the look of their new smiles. This can hurt you at work and in social situations.

Having a full set of teeth can restore your self-confidence and address the physical issues that come with losing a tooth or teeth.

Make an appointment by calling or filling out our online form to visit a dentist near you in Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh, or Cary.

Sam* stepped into the machine. The people in the white coats assured him it would be OK.

As he waited, lights appeared on Sam’s face. The machine started to spin around him. Sam wondered what was happening. When the machine was finished, the white coats told Sam he could get up.

This isn’t part of a scene in a science fiction movie. It’s something that happens at Sunrise Dental offices every day.

The machine is a cone beam CT scanner, and it has proven to be an incredibly useful tool in diagnosing and treating problems for our patients.

* Sam isn’t a real person, but many of our patients are scanned this way during their visits to our dentist offices in Durham, Raleigh, Cary, and Chapel Hill.

What Is A Cone Beam Scanner?

Cone beam scanners are basically smaller versions of a CAT scan. In fact, cone beam scanners are based on the same technology that was used to develop CAT scans.

The difference is that CAT scans can be used to examine your whole body, while our cone beam scanners are focused on your mouth and the surrounding structures.

The cone beam machine takes hundreds of images of individual “slices” of your mouth. With computers, those individual images are combined to create three-dimensional models of your teeth, jaw, and other bones in your face.

This gives us a greater understanding of the condition of your mouth than we can give with two-dimensional X-rays.

Here are a few ways we use the cone beam images to help patients like you.

Implant Placement

Dental implant placement is a surgical procedure. We don’t often talk about it in that way, but it is a kind of surgery.

Now, dentists can make educated guesses about the best possible placement locations for a dental implant. Many time this works out fine.

However, we can take out a lot of that guesswork if we can get a better view of what is where inside your mouth.

For instance, you have several nerves in your jaw. With a cone beam scanner, we can get a much better view of the shape, size and depth of your jaw. Knowing this, we are able to place dental implants where they will provide the most benefit (without causing pain) to patients like you.

Identifying Alignment Problems

Another concern for many patients is tooth alignment.

This may affect your bite, which can cause pain in your teeth or in your jaw. Specifically, it can cause pain in your TMJ, or temporomandibular joint.

This joint is located close to your ears at the point where your mandible (the lower jaw) connects to your skull. This joint allows your mouth to open and close.

If you have a TMJ problem, we can examine if the issue has something to do with the alignment of your teeth with one another.

In other cases, your TMJ may be perfectly fine, but your tooth alignment is causing other problems with your smile. We can use the information collected with our cone beam scanner to help plan orthodontic care to straighten your teeth.

Finding Other Problems

Cone beam images help us in a variety of ways.

If your wisdom teeth are starting to erupt or become impacted, we may be able to spot the problem before it starts to cause you pain or increase your risk for gum infections.

The three-dimensional model could also reveal tooth decay where it may not have been detected with the naked eye. These images may be invaluable in planning a root canal treatment.

They can reveal if you have suffered bone loss when compared to previous images.

Our cone beam scanner is just one of the ways we are incorporating technology into our treatment to help our patients receive the best care that we can provide.

Better Dental Care

The dentists at the Sunrise Dental offices in Durham, Raleigh, Cary, and Chapel Hill believe that our patients deserve the best care that we can provide. One of the ways we do this is through the use of proven technologies.

But having the technology is one thing. Knowing how and why to use it is just as if not more important. This is why all our dentists take part in continuing education so they understand the practical applications of the technology that we have in our offices.

If you would like to know more about our cone beam scanner the other technology we have in our practice, please make an appointment at the office closest to you.

In the art world, minimalism was a movement that emerged in the 1950s. The artwork included sculptures and paintings that used single techniques to create or imply shapes and objects.

Some people have applied this approach to decorating. Some people would argue that Apple computers have used a minimalist approach in its advertising and packaging for its products.

In cosmetic dentistry, there is a minimalist approach to improving smiles, too. They are called Lumineers, and if you live in or near the Triangle, you can get them at any Sunrise Dental location.

What Lumineers Are

Lumineers are the thinnest veneers on the market today.

Veneers are a kind of cover that can be bonded to your teeth to transform their appearance. Some people have compared this to putting new siding onto a house.

The house itself remains in place, but siding can alter the appearance of the house in dramatic ways. Veneers can do something similar for your teeth.

Here are some of the ways veneers may be able to help you:

► Your teeth can look straighter.

If have crooked teeth, your smile may not look the way you want it to look. You may have considered orthodontic care because you don’t like your smile. You also may have decided that the time commitment to complete this treatment (two years or more in some cases) is not worth it.

What if you could fix the aesthetics of your smile in a matter of weeks instead of a matter of years? This isn’t a hypothetical question. With veneers, getting a new smile is possible in just a few visits to our office.

► You can fix the spacing issues with your teeth.

Our teeth don’t always come in the way we would like.

You may have a small jaw. This can cause your teeth to appear crowded. Some may turn sideways just to fit inside your mouth.

In other cases, your teeth may have been fine … until your wisdom teeth came in. Wisdom teeth can push into your existing teeth to create alignment problems where there weren’t any issues before.

Other people have extra space between their teeth. These gaps may make you self-conscious when meeting new people or when smiling for photos.

Veneers can be used to make your teeth appear parallel to one another and perfectly spaced inside your mouth.

► You can have a brighter smile.

Professional teeth whitening is a fast and effective way to remove stains from your teeth. However, teeth whitening may have little or no effect on teeth that turned colors due to medical issues or from the medicines prescribed to treat some medical problems.

Veneers can make your teeth as white as you would like them to be. It’s up to you if you would prefer a smile that is a little whiter than your natural teeth or one that is dazzlingly white.

► You can correct a combination of problems.

Let’s say you have all of the issues we have listed above. Veneers can fix each problem at the same.

You can have the kind of smile that you have seen in celebrity magazines, on televisions shows, and on the big screen at the movies. (There’s a good chance many of the people you’ve seen in those images have veneers, too.)

How Lumineers Are Different Than Other Veneers

Before we continue, we want to reiterate that Lumineers can do all the things we mentioned above. The difference is how the veneers are attached to your teeth.

With porcelain veneers, we will need to remove a portion of your teeth in most cases. Specifically, we will need to remove a section of enamel from the front of your teeth. Then we make an impression of your teeth.

By doing this, we create space for your veneers to be bonded in place without changing your profile. Each set of veneers is custom-made to fit your teeth.

Many patients require no preparation in order to receive Lumineers. We clean your teeth before making an impression of them.

Lumineers are so thin, that they will have hardly any effect on your profile. They can be bonded to the front of your teeth, which also means they can be removed years from now if you decide to pursue another treatment.

A Smile That Shines

Lumineers derives it’s name from luminescence, which is a measure of the light emitted from an object. Lumineers can give you a smile that will light up a room.

To see the results for yourself, schedule a consultation with an of our dentists in Durham, Raleigh, Cary, or Chapel Hill.

We are a little concerned about the growing diabetes problem in North Carolina.

In 1997, 4.4 percent of Tar Heel State residents had been told that they have diabetes. In 2015, they rose to 10.8 percent of our state population, according to data provided for America’s Health Rankings.

Why does that have us, the dentists at Sunrise Dental, concerned? Because people with diabetes are more likely to develop gum disease.

And gum disease is the leading cause of tooth loss in the United States.

Periodontal disease already affects a majority of American adults. Having diabetes only increases your odds of developing oral health problems as well.

Today we want to look at what researchers have learned — and what they are still trying to figure out — about the connection between these two diseases.

What We Know

Diabetes and gum disease are connected. Multiple studies have shown that people with diabetes are more likely to develop periodontal disease than other people who are not diabetic.

This is so common that some experts consider gum disease to be a possible symptom of diabetes.

To be clear, you can have diabetes without having gum disease, and you can develop gum disease even if you don’t have diabetes. It’s just that having diabetes makes it more likely that you will develop gum disease at some point.

So what are the symptoms you need to know?

The first signs of gum disease are swollen, red gums that bleed when you brush or floss your teeth. These are the symptoms of a mild form of periodontal disease called gingivitis.

You may be able to reverse this by brushing (twice a day) and flossing (every day) according to the American Dental Association guidelines.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume you ignore these signs and continue doing whatever you’ve been doing.

As your gum disease gets worse, you may develop periodontitis. It’s symptoms include:

• Sore, tender, or painful gums
• Receding gums (gums that pull away from your teeth)
• Pus leaking from your gums
• Loose teeth

As the disease progresses, it may create pockets inside your gums, which makes it harder to remove. This can allow bacteria to attack the bones that hold your teeth in your mouth, which is why your teeth can feel loose or fall out.

Treating Gum Disease

If you have periodontitis, then you will need treatment from a dental professional to stop it. Our preference is to treat gum disease without surgery.

We will watch for the symptoms of gum disease whenever you come to our office for a routine cleaning. If we notice advanced periodontal disease, then we may suggest scaling and root planing.

Some people describe scaling and root planing as a deep cleaning procedure. It is a step beyond what we do during a routine cleaning and examination.

For this, we will need to get underneath your gumline. This allows us to remove bacteria, plaque, and tartar that has built up around the roots of your teeth.

If this isn’t enough to resolve your problem, we will look into other options for treatment, such as perio laser treatment.

What We Don’t Know

This may come as a surprise, but experts don’t know for certain why people with diabetes are more likely to develop gum disease.

In spite of the connection between these conditions, the cause is still being studied. Experts do have a few ideas about possible causes, however.

As you may know, people with diabetes have trouble controlling their blood sugar levels. The bacteria that cause gum disease live on the sugars that are in the foods that we eat.

Diabetes can cause your blood vessels to become thicker. This is problematic because it may slow down the delivery of nutrients to your gums. This can make it harder for the soft tissues in your mouth to fight off infections.

Another possibility has to do with another common symptom of diabetes — dry mouth. The saliva in your mouth helps to remove bacteria. When your mouth is dry, the bacteria can grow more easily, and the more bacteria in your mouth, the more likely you are to have gum disease.

Watch Your Mouth

In this case, we mean that you should stay alert. If you notice the symptoms of gum disease, take the proper steps to treat it. Brush, floss, and visit the Sunrise Dental location closest to you. We have dentist offices in Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh.

You can make an appointment by filling out an online form or by calling the location nearest to you.

College students are wrapping up their spring semesters, and some are already finished. In that spirit, we are offering a “final” of sorts for you. The answers can be found by reviewing this month’s blogs. (You may want to open this link — http://dinahvice-sunrisedental.com/blogs/ — in a separate tab if you need help finding the answers.) Good luck!

Losing your teeth can change your life in a lot of ways.

Emotionally and psychologically, it can make you feel self-conscious about speaking, smiling, and socializing. This can be true for someone who is missing a single tooth or every tooth in their mouth.

Physically, it can change how you speak because your teeth (or lack thereof) affect how you pronounce words. It clearly affects your ability to eat certain foods, since missing teeth make it harder to bite into and chew food.

Hearing that your teeth need to be removed can be hard news to accept. At Sunrise Dental, our preference is to protect and preserve teeth whenever possible. Even so, we recognize that the best long-term solution in certain situations is to remove a tooth or teeth.

It’s not a decision you or any of our dentists take lightly, which is why we are glad to have multiple dentists at each of our offices in Durham, Raleigh, Cary, and Chapel Hill. Our staff is comfortable consulting with one another to make the best recommendations for each of our patients.

Reasons For Extracting Teeth

More often than not we will do everything we reasonably can to keep your teeth in your mouth, which is where they should be.

Nevertheless, every patient and every patient’s situation are different. Here are some of the reasons we may determine that removing a tooth or teeth is the best option for you to keep your mouth as healthy as possible:

✦ You still have your baby teeth.

Your primary teeth start coming in before you reach your first birthday. The rest of these “baby” teeth erupt during the early years of your life.

In a real sense, they are placeholders that fill space until your permanent teeth begin to emerge. Primary teeth play an important role in creating room for your adult teeth and by acting as a guide for where your adult teeth will go.

That’s all well and good until your baby teeth don’t fall out in a timely fashion. In some cases, the adult teeth will erupt behind the stubborn baby teeth. This can complicate teeth alignment, and it can affect the effectiveness of orthodontic care.

In those situations, it may be advisable to remove the baby teeth that have overstayed their welcome.

✦ You don’t have enough room for your adult teeth.

This isn’t always because of baby teeth that don’t want to leave. Some people’s mouths are simply too small to accommodate all of their permanent teeth.

This is another situation that can arise before orthodontic treatment begins. To straighten your teeth, you need enough room in that arch for your teeth to fit. If you have an overly crowded arch, then removing a tooth or a few teeth may be the best solution to create a healthy, straight smile.

✦ You are undergoing cancer treatment.

We don’t want to make anyone feel down. Cancer is a terrible disease, but modern medicine has made it possible for more people to beat cancer than ever before.

In some cases, tooth removal may be needed prior to starting radiation treatment or treatment with certain cancer drugs.

It may advisable to remove teeth in areas of your mouth that may be exposed to higher doses of radiation. In other cases, removing infected teeth may be needed because of the effects certain drugs could have on your immune system. This potentially could increase the risk of an infection spreading.

✦ Wisdom teeth need to be removed.

This may be the most common teeth removal procedure performed in the United States. From looking at skulls of our ancestors, scientists know that modern humans have mouths that are smaller than our predecessors.

As a result, few people actually have enough room for their wisdom teeth to erupt cleanly. Dentists often recommend removing wisdom teeth to avoid long-term complications.

When wisdom teeth don’t have room to erupt, they can be partially or completely impacted. This means they remain (in whole or in part) below the gumline.

This can cause your existing teeth to press into one another. This also can increase your risk for gum disease and other infections.

Removing the wisdom teeth often can save you from those matters.

Remove Only When Necessary

Our Sunrise Dental team wants to preserve your oral health. On rare occasions, this does mean removing a tooth to protect the rest of your mouth.

If you are concerned about your teeth or the teeth of someone you love, please contact any of our dentist offices in and near the Triangle by calling or filling out our online form.

The pain in your jaw is absolutely unbearable.

You can’t speak, you can’t eat, you can’t yawn without feeling the pain pulsing through your jaw into your face and neck.

You can barely work, and when you are home, the pain interferes with the time that you want to spend with your family.

You want to figure out what is causing your pain, and more importantly, you want it to stop. 

Sunrise Dental may be able to help, particularly if you have been grinding your teeth. Our dentists help patients throughout North Carolina at our offices in Raleigh, Cary, Chapel Hill, and Durham.

The Nightly Grind

If you habitually clench or grind your teeth together, this is called bruxism. It’s quite common for this to occur when people are sleeping, and it may be the source of the pains that you have been feeling when you are awake.

Teeth grinding is sometimes a response to stress. We all have stress at times. If you are more prone to feel stressed or your stress has increased due to issues with family or at work, then grinding your teeth could be one way your body is trying to deal with the situations.

As dental professionals, we don’t think this is good for you in the long-term.

If you sleep eight hours a night and spend any significant portion of that time grinding your teeth into one another, then you will understand the symptoms of the problem. These include headaches, earaches, jaw and facial pain, and neck and shoulder pains. Your teeth grinding also may affect the mobility of your jaw. You may not be able to open or close your jaw completely at times.

We will try to explain why. An average human bite can generate 200 to 250 pounds of force. That’s more than enough to eat the foods that we eat on a regular basis.

People who grind their teeth have been measured producing 500 pounds of pressure and more. That’s pressure that is being absorbed one way or another by temporomandibular joint (TMJ) and the surrounding muscle tissue that controls the movement of your jaw.

Over the long-term, teeth grinding can lead to other problems, like:

• Wearing down the protective enamel on the outside of your teeth.
• Cause teeth, dental crowns, and bridges to crack or chip.
• Increased facial sensitivity.
• Teeth that feel loose or painful.

Treating The Symptoms

One way to cope with TMJ problems is to deal with the symptoms.

This may mean taking pain relievers when the pain is particularly bad.

You may try applying heat to increase jaw movement and reduce pain. You also may try ice packs to numb the pain and reduce swelling around the TMJ.

Eating softer foods for a few days may alleviate the pain as well.

If your symptoms don’t return, great. If your symptoms recur, however, it may be time to seek our assistance.

Treating The Cause

Everyone at Sunrise Dental — doctors, dental hygienists, and other staff — take our patients’ pain very seriously. We want you to be comfortable whether you are in one of our chairs or sitting at home with your family.

This is why we offer treatment for teeth grinding and TMJ disorders at each of our four locations.

If you come to our office complaining of the symptoms of bruxism or TMJ problems, we will examine your mouth for signs of teeth grinding. This is about protecting your teeth and about alleviating your pain.

If we determine that you are grinding your teeth, we can design a special mouthguard for you to wear at night.

The first step in making this mouthguard is to take impressions of your teeth. This allows the lab to create a custom-fitted mouthpiece that will provide the most benefit for you.

The mouthpiece works by changing the resting position of your jaw. Part of the purpose is to train your jaw to relax in this new position, which will reduce the pressure on the TMJ and surrounding muscles.

The other benefit of the mouthpiece may be more obvious. With the mouthpiece in place, your top and bottom teeth can’t touch. That’s means you can grind them into one another either.

Don’t Grind When You Unwind

Sleep should be the time when your body is relaxed and recovering from the previous day’s activities. Grinding your teeth may be affecting how well your sleep.

To find out more about how we can help call any of offices or fill out our online form to schedule a consultation with one of our dentists.

Most of the time if patients come to our office looking to restore their white smiles, they are interested in professional teeth whitening. If you are looking to remove stains, that is an excellent solution.

However, tooth decay can cause your teeth or parts of your tooth to turn colors, too. This isn’t a stain, so whitening products aren’t going to be helpful in this situation. 

But we do offer a solution at Sunrise Dental, tooth-colored fillings.

The patients at our offices in Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh don’t have to settle for metallic-looking amalgam fillings. Instead, they can have their cavities filled and their smiles restored at the same time.

What Are Amalgam Fillings?

Dental amalgam has been used for 150 years to repair and protect teeth that were damaged by cavities.

From a functional standpoint, amalgam did its job. It filled the hole created when tooth decay damaged a tooth. After the decay was removed from the tooth, the dentist would use the mixture to occupy that space.

By doing this, the dentist preserved the function of the tooth and sealed the tooth. This reduced the odds that bacteria would be able to attack the tooth again in the same place.

One of the benefits of amalgam was that it was (and still is) less expensive than gold to use as a filling material.

What Is Amalgam?

This is where some people have become more concerned in recent years.

Amalgam is made with a mixture of metals. About half of the amalgam blend is mercury. The other half may be a combination of copper, silver, and tin.

Now matter how you mix it, they are 100 percent metal and it shows when you have them on your teeth.

Many people are alarmed to learn that mercury has been placed directly into a tooth and that it remains there for the life of the filling.

The Food and Drug Administration has noted that high levels of mercury vapor exposure can have harmful effects on the brain and kidneys. However, the FDA has also reported that no studies have shown any harm as a result of amalgam fillings. The American Dental Association also has issued a statement noting that current research has not found evidence of health hazards from having mercury fillings.

Nevertheless, we know that many patients would prefer to avoid mercury completely.

What Are White Fillings?

Regardless of whatever health risk mercury fillings may or may not pose, we know our patients may not want to broadcast to the world that they had a cavity. In a sense, that’s what the distinctive silvery shine of amalgam fillings does.

Tooth-colored fillings use no metals whatsoever. White fillings are made of a composite material, which is a blend of glass and plastic. These can be created to closely match the color of natural teeth.

When you receive a white filling, it will blend with your tooth. Many people will never notice it since it looks so much like part of your tooth.

Should You Replace Your Amalgam Fillings?

This is a decision you have to make for yourself.

We’ve shared the FDA and ADA opinions that amalgam fillings are safe. From a cosmetic standpoint, only you can decide if you are OK with the contrast of the silver fillings next to your white teeth.

We are more than willing to replace your fillings to ease any concerns you may have or to improve the overall appearance of your smile.

That said, there are times when any dentist will agree that fillings need to be replaced. As useful as they are, no one has yet designed a permanent filling.

Over time, all fillings will become worn down and worn out.

Sometimes, this will cause them to chip and small pieces will fall off. Other times, a crack will form in the filling which will slowly spread. Another risk is that the filling will start to separate from the tooth or even fall out.

Don’t Take Chances With An Old Filling

Any of these situations could expose your tooth to a new attack from the bacteria that cause cavities. If you see signs that your filling is on its last legs, then you should contact any Sunrise Dental location to schedule an appointment for a new filling.

We have four offices in the Triangle, so you can probably find one that close to home or where you work. You can reach us through our website or by calling whichever office you prefer.

No matter which location you choose, our staff will treat you with the courtesy and care that you deserve.

It’s a nice day for a  … white smile!

(Our apologies to any fans of rock singer Billy Idol.)

If there is one thing that has never gone out of style — no matter the season, no matter the fleeting trends of the fashion industry — it’s a bright, white, healthy-looking smile.

Depending on your age and your habits, your teeth may have lost some of their shine. You can reclaim it with a professional teeth whitening treatment at Sunrise Dental.

Our dentists have whitened smiles for patients in and around the Triangle for years, and we can help you, too. Just make an appointment at one of our offices in Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh, or Cary.

Fast And Effective

There are a lot of teeth whitening products on the market.

You’ve seen the commercial stuff whenever you walk down the toothpaste aisle, but none of them can match the improvement you will see with a professional teeth whitening treatment at a dentist’s office.

Even among professional products your results can vary. We believe we have found a product in Sinsational Smile® that will give you the kind of results that will make you proud to show your pearly whites the next time someone asks you to pose for a “selfie.”

In as little as 20 minutes, you can remove years of stains from your teeth during an in-office treatment.

What Makes Sinsational Smile So Great?

We have met people who wanted their teeth whitened, but had concerns that led them to avoid getting the treatment that they wanted. Part of the reason we offer Sinsational Smile is to address some of the biggest concerns.

The first concern is one that people don’t like to discuss. It’s cost. Depending on where you go, some offices will charge hundreds of dollars for a single teeth whitening treatment.

At Sunrise Dental, the cost of a whitening treatment is closer to the cost of something you might buy at the grocery store but with the power of the more expensive professional treatments.

That was important to us when we were looking for a product. We wanted something that was affordable and effective. We feel confident that we have found it.

The second concern is time. Some people may have trouble finding the time to complete whitening treatments with other products. Some may even require multiple visits.

We know you value your time as much as anything, so we are glad to have a product that can work in as little as 20 minutes.

As a quick aside, we also know that some people would rather handle their teeth whitening on their own time. For you, we can create custom trays that you can take home.

We can provide you with Opalescence whitening gel. You place this gel in the trays and wear them while you sleep. It takes longer to complete this treatment, but after a few weeks, you will see a marked improvement in the color of your teeth.

Now, the third concern for many people is teeth sensitivity. Many whitening products can cause your teeth to feel sensitive during or after you have completed your treatment.

The makers of Sinsational Smile understand this, and they created a product that is less likely to cause this problem. If you do notice any increased sensitivity, it should go away when you rinse the gel from your teeth.

Will Sinsational Smile Work On All Discolored Teeth?

No, it won’t, but neither will any other teeth whitening product. Sinsational Smile is designed to remove stains from your teeth, but stains are not the only reason your teeth change colors.

Injuries can affect the color of your teeth. Illnesses and some medications can affect the whiteness of your teeth, too. If your teeth are discolored for those reasons, you can still get a white smile again.

In those situations, we recommend veneers instead. Veneers are like a shell that can be bonded to the front of your teeth.

They can make your smile look as white as you want it to be. At the same time, veneers can be used to repair chipped, broken, and worn down teeth. They can make your teeth look straighter and evenly spaced, so no more gaps or crowded teeth when you smile.

Reclaim Your Smile

You deserve to be happy with your smile. You deserve to have a smile that is as white and bright as you would like it to be.

Sunrise Dental can help you achieve that with the help of Sinsational Smile or veneers. All you need to do is call the office closest to you or make an appointment online. We look forward to seeing you and your new smile soon.