Thanksgiving, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and the New Year. A time for reflection, year-end, a year anew. . . . Sparkling colored lights, gaily festive parties, gifts given and received. HOLIDAY TIME IS HERE and it’s time to PARTY!

Your bright welcoming smile is a great gift for family and friends. And your smile stays brighter and healthier with good dental home care (remember, this is your dentist writing) and a regularly scheduled cleaning with our dental hygienist.

In the spirit of the holidays and as our thank you for making us your dental home, we offer you a fun raffle and money savings; a gift to support you in having excellent year end dental health and a bright smile.

You think you have bad breath (Halitosis) or a bad taste?

It can be really unpleasant, for you, and others near you.  Phew! 

OK.  So you have it.  That’s part of your life story.  What causes it?  What can you do about it?  How good will you feel when you have nice sweet breath? 

The dentist-patient relationship is interesting and complex. People often come with dental anxiety generated from difficult dental histories, problem dental experiences as well as practical issues such as time and cost needed for dental treatment. To get past this, one important factor is that the person understands what they want for their dental future. If a person with a dental problem(s) and issues about dealing with these problems can answer the following questions they and their dentist can become clearer about what they want for their  dental health and start dealing with some of the concerns that causes the issues.

What is it?  Most of us are infected by it, some of us are seriously affected by and it can lead to difficult quality of life issues.  It is periodontal disease.

For decades, the American Heart Association (AHA) recommended that patients with certain heart conditions take antibiotics shortly before dental treatment. This was done with the belief that antibiotics would prevent infective endocarditis (IE), previously referred to as bacterial endocarditis. IE is an infection of the heart’s inner lining or valves, which results when bacteria enter the bloodstream and travel to the heart. Bacteria normally are found in various sites of the body including on the skin and in the mouth.

The AHA’s latest guidelines were published in its scientific journal, Circulation, in April 2007 and there is good news: the AHA recommends that most of these patients no longer need short-term antibiotics as a preventive measure before their dental treatment.

The American Dental Association participated in the development of the new guidelines and has approved those portions relevant to dentistry. The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society endorsed the guidelines.

Article Date: 03 Apr 2007 - 23:00 PDT

Who would have guessed that when the Star Trek medical diagnostic tool known as the tricorder makes its appearance in real life, the first user might be ... your dentist.

According to a paper in the March 27 issue of PNAS (the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), a recently completed pilot study conducted with the University of Michigan shows that a Sandia National Laboratories handheld device determined in minutes - from a tiny sample of saliva alone - not only if a patient has gum disease but quantitatively how advanced the disease is.

"The gold standard for any medical test is when instruments are used to examine human patients," says Sandia researcher Amy Herr. "The pilot study allowed us to compare our results to accepted clinical measurements. Then we could statistically validate both the periodontal disease biomarker and the new microfluidic instrument.

"We achieved faster and more reproducible results because we combined steps that ordinarily require time-consuming manual handling by many people, into a single automated device."

Sandia is a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) laboratory.

From predicting heart disease, diabetes, and premature birth to revealing leukemia, eating disorders, and vitamin deficiencies, your teeth and gums say a mouthful about your health

Quitting can be easy.  It doesn’t require going cold turkey.  It doesn’t require willpower.  What it does require is that you are clear about the reasons you want to quit.  And it requires you to list those reasons, keep the list accessible and frequently review and give thought to the reasons you want to quit.

My guess is most smokers would like to stop. Scary medical, dental and social reasons are aplenty.  Many smokers try to stop.  I know that some of you ‘wanna-be-quitters’ stop for varying periods of time but get back to smoking.  Now you are a ‘Stop Smoking Failure’.   

It really isn’t hard to stop smoking.  The beauty of my method is that you NEVER HAVE TO DENY YOURSELF a cigarette when you want one.  Consequently…NO WITHDRAWAL!  In fact, don’t ever tell yourself “Don’t Smoke” with this system.  For a lot of reasons both your body and unconscious your responds to the word ‘Smoke’ and ignores the word ‘Don’t’.  The more you say “Don’t Smoke” the more you’ll want to smoke.

One-in-five adults, including half of the over-55 generation, wear some type of dentures and many denture-wearers may think regularly using an over-the-counter cleanser would keep dentures pearly white and more importantly, germ-free.

Yet, traditional denture soaking methods often do not leave dentures completely bacteria-free. Combining the soaking cleaning program with a two-minute microwave treatment was overwhelmingly more effective to eliminate germs on the inside and outside of dentures worn from 12 days to 48 years, according to a recent study published in a 2003 issue of General Dentistry, the clinical, peer-reviewed journal of the Academy of General Dentistry.