Manrina Rhode shares the critical role overall health and wellbeing plays in aesthetic dentistry, and how they are connected.
Today I want to talk to you about health and wellbeing within aesthetic dentistry. So, let’s start off by talking about health and wellbeing within the very important oral cavity, which is the place that we spend a lot of our time working on.
There are way too many patients asking for aesthetic treatments who don’t want to repair the health issues that they have in their mouth. They’ll have a broken molar or have raging gum disease, and they’ll say to you, ‘Can you whiten my teeth and and give me 10 upper porcelain veneers?’. The answer to that is no, we cannot.
As dentists, it’s very important that we look after our patients’ health, and that we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet, saying that health comes first and aesthetics comes second.
Health first, aesthetics second
It’s actually almost impossible to get a great aesthetic result without considering the health implications.
To that dentist who says, ‘You’ve got gum disease, but you don’t want to fix it – I’ll still do your 10 veneers’, good luck to you. I have done over 14,000 veneers in my career, and I can tell you right now that you’re not going to enjoy that process one bit.
Firstly, once you have prepped these teeth and the gums are bleeding, how are you going to get a crisp impression for good fitting veneers? I’ll tell you right now, you’re not. And once the patient is in temporaries, they will have blood underneath their temporaries which will make them look black, and the patient will be unhappy. Then, when you come to cement, there will be blood in your cavity and there will be blood underneath your veneers.
And even if you think you got away with it and you cemented them, either the veneers will debond because you didn’t have a dry environment to cement to, or the blood will seep in underneath your cement, and the patient will come back a month later and say there’s a black area underneath one of my veneers and you will have to take it off.
Long-term, at some point, the patient will address their oral health for whatever reason, or when they go to a dentist who does make them realise the importance of it, and they will decide to start brushing better and seeing a hygienist.
And then, as their gums become healthy, they will shrink and you will have margins around all of your porcelain veneers.
So, don’t do it. Just say to your patients that those are the rules, and that you understand that they want the work done, but that you need to work on getting a good, healthy base. Ask the patient to work together, or work with your hygienist to get their mouth really healthy. And then once you’re there, we will go ahead with the aesthetic work.
Health and aesthetics are connected
Interestingly within the human body, the things that are healthy for us also make us look better. In our bodies, when we work out or we go to the gym, we look better. It’s something that’s very healthy for us but that also looks great.
And it’s the same thing in the mouth with aligning teeth automatically. We could be telling our patients to align their teeth for aesthetic reasons, but in reality there’s also real health benefits to the patient.
For example, there could be some areas that are almost impossible for a patient to keep clean, so they they retain plaque and food in those areas. By correcting that crowding, it becomes a much area easier surface for them to clean, and it also looks great. So, there are benefits between both.
The relationship between oral and systemic health
Going one one step further, there is an undeniable connection between your oral health and your systemic health. There is so much research behind that now, and I really believe that’s the way forward.
That is the way dentistry is going forward – putting the mouth back in the body – and it’s really something we’re looking very heavily into at DRMR as a full body transformation clinic.
We don’t only want to look after your mouth, here we have a dietician, we have a personal trainer, we do a DNA testing, and we’re always bringing in different techniques to try and support our patients in looking and feeling their very best and and exploring that further though that connection between oral inflammation and systemic inflammation.
This is just another reason why patients really need to have perfect oral health, because health and wellbeing is really important. If they have got cavities, just put that in with their cosmetic plan. So, I’ll do your cosmetic work for you, but we’ll have to correct the decay in your mouth as well. This cannot be done without that.
Health and wellbeing in the profession
As dental professionals, we have to think about our own health and wellbeing. We work and live in a massively stressful environment.
I hate that dentistry is so stressful because I love dentistry. I love being a dentist, and I love my job, and I love coming in every day. But there’s no doubt that, as much as I leave my day feeling really good about what I’ve done, I also leave it physically and mentally exhausted.
It’s very tiring on our backs, the work that we do. It’s also tiring on our eyes, on our brain and on our hands and our joints.
And so, we should all be working out because as human beings, we should be doing that anyway. We don’t want to just be sat stagnant. I think it’s important to bring your heart rate up at least three times a week, and it’s important to build strong muscle, especially as we get older, that’s really going to support us.
As we get older, making sure we have got good muscle mass will also help you mentally. It helps to release stress, and so it allows us to be our better selves.
We all say that we are too busy and don’t have the time, but I think that’s something that we need to prioritise. We need to prioritise our own health and wellbeing, and I think the first step in that is scheduling exercise into our diary just as we book in our patients’ appointments.
That’s my take home message for you today.
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Visit Manrina’s website here: www.drmrlondon.co.uk.
