What’s Keeping You From Smiling?

I saw a patient at our Camarillo dental office today that came in to talk about straitening out her crooked teeth with Invisalign clear aligners. She went on to tell me that she never shows her teeth when she smiles because she is embarrassed to have such “messed up teeth”. I hear this several times a week. Some of those people do have what I would call esthetically challenged teeth, but most had, well not perfect smiles, but smiles that had just minor cosmetic issues.
When I hear that a person does not want to smile because their teeth are a bit out of alignment or they have chipped edges on their front teeth or they have teeth that aren’t quite as white as they could be, it gets me thinking- Do people think it is better to not smile than to smile even if their teeth are not perfect? That’s sad! Smiles are meant to be shared. If you are not happy with your smile, come talk to us.
Many fixes are really quite minor, and yes, some are more involved. Here are some examples of the ways we adjust smiles. Chipped front teeth are so visible but are one of the easiest fixes. We use a beautiful bonding material that fills in the missing part of the tooth. Color matching is done with extreme care and can take a few minutes to get it just right but it is worth the effort to have the chip disappear causing patients to hardly remember where the chip even was. Crooked teeth can be corrected by Invisalign clear braces often in less than a year but are also sometimes handled instantly by cosmetically bonding a couple of teeth to give the illusion of straighter teeth. No one needs to be unhappy with their yellow or discolored teeth. Yellow teeth can be treated by tooth whiteners here at our office or at home with our direction and support. To accomplish this, we custom fit a tray to patient’s teeth for phenomenal results using an incredibly easy process. We even have a special bleaching process for teeth that were previously untreatable by traditional products. It works! And we are one of only a couple of dentists in Camarillo that can offer this. Porcelain veneers and crowns are still the go to procedures for reconstructing the perfect smile. Sometimes just one or two teeth treated with veneers can make all the difference. Other times a smile benefits by have more. We have done as many as twenty veneers for a total makeover.
But, no matter what we do, the effects are dramatic. Time after time, we have seen patients come back into our office with big smiles on their faces. They hardly look like the same person. That is one of the most gratifying part of our job. We love to see people happy! Having a pretty smile can certainly be part of that.