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Fixing Tooth Decay Without Drilling

If you or a loved one have a cavity, it’s absolutely necessary that your dentist drill a hole in your tooth to fill the cavity, right?

Maybe not.

New technologies are becoming available to your dentist that help him identify the start of tooth decay so that he may catch the tooth as it starts to lose some of its minerals, but before it starts to form a cavity.

If there’s no hole, there may not be a need to drill/fill it.

Believe it or not, you and your dentist just may be able to say “No!” to drilling cavities.

Most tooth decay actually can take up to three years (!) to move from the early signs of decay (which appears on the surface of a tooth) to a major cavity that goes all the way to the center of the tooth (the pulp, where the tooth’s blood vessels and nerves are located). Cavities in the early part of the 20^th century often could reach a tooth’s pulp in just a few months.*

If your dentist finds decay on your tooth enamel (the start of a cavity), you may not need a filling (unless you’re in pain or the cavity’s hole is obvious).

In fact, if there’s no hole and you’re not in pain, the decay may be able to heal itself!

Decay starts when your mouth’s acids trigger your tooth’s enamel to leach minerals, breaking the enamel down and forming a cavity.

But treatments and technologies today can help reverse decay with dental office fluoride treatments, changes to your diet (watch the sugar, starches, etc.) and making sure you floss and brush twice daily. This helps minerals build up in your mouth once again, strengthening tooth enamel.

In addition, “drill-free fillings” may be coming, in which a dentist can use electrical currents to repair your tooth’s minerals. The British newspaper Independent.com.uk reported in June that the procedure (developed at King’s College in London), is called Electrically Accelerated and Enhanced Remineralisation (EAER). It could be offered on the market within three years.

Until then, go to your dentist regularly for checkups, and so that he can look to see if you have the start of tooth decay on your tooth enamel. If so, work with him and take the steps he recommends to help you re-mineralize your enamel and possibly repair it naturally.

*Interesting side note: we can thank the addition of fluoride to toothpaste and public drinking water to delaying the full-blown onset of tooth decay. Tooth decay in the early years of the 20^th century could make its way to the pulp in a matter of just months. The American Dental Association approved the addition fluoride to toothpaste in the mid-1950s; adding fluoride to public drinking water took off after the 1940s and water fluoridation now benefits more than 200 million Americans in cities across the country.

In fact, so beneficial is fluoride to delaying the formation of cavities that the Centers for Disease Control in 1999 named water fluoridation as one of the ten top public health achievements of the 20^th century.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net