Adults or children with diabetes can experience multiple health risks that affect their daily life. Diabetes affects more than just your insulin levels and can actually impact your oral health. Our bodies are interconnected and need each part to communicate effectively to stay healthy. Mountain View Dental has worked with patients with diabetes and wants to help educate all patients about the risks that come to your oral health because of diabetes. Below are some of the risks, how you can help keep your teeth and gums healthy at home, and what your dentist may recommend if you struggle with diabetes.

Increased Risk Of Cavities

Cavities are fairly easy to avoid with proper brushing, flossing, and regular dental check-ups. However, those with diabetes may need to visit the dentist more regularly. Talking to your dentist about your specific health conditions and factors will give you an accurate look at how often you should see them.

Diabetes patients also experience dry mouth and have less saliva than others. This means that acidic foods and drinks are extra harmful to your teeth. Limiting these substances, brushing with fluoride toothpaste, and visiting the dentist every 6 months can help limit the spread of cavities. 

Decreased Saliva

As mentioned above, less saliva puts you at risk for cavities and plaque build-up. A dry mouth can often lead to sores, ulcers, and tooth decay. 

One way to increase saliva production without harming your teeth is to chew sugarless gum. This helps stimulate saliva without adding harmful sugar to your teeth. Salvia helps clean your enamel and keep you from having irritated gums from leftover food particles. Drinking more water can also help with saliva, but if you are taking medications that cause dry mouth, water may not be enough. 

Brushing your teeth after meals and flossing regularly will help keep your teeth clean and prevent tooth decay. Since your saliva isn’t there to do some of the work for you, you may have to work a little harder to protect your oral health.

Metallic Tongue Or Bad Taste Of Food

Patients with diabetes may also experience trouble tasting food properly. Known as diabetic tongue, a metallic taste can form in the mouth and cause eating or drinking to become unpleasant. This is an oral health problem with diabetes because it occurs when there is an excess of sugar in your saliva that is combined with the dry mouth disease known as thrush.

If you start to notice this bad taste, talk to your dentist to see if you have thrush. They can help you kill the bacteria and possibly improve dry mouth symptoms. 

Bleeding Gums

Gum inflammation and infection are common oral health problems for patients with diabetes. Diabetes can limit the amount of blood that flows to the gums. It can also cause blood cells to thicken and make it difficult for waste or bacteria to exit the gums 

Inflamed gums are painful and can often bleed or become sores. Taking care of infected gums as quickly as possible will help limit pain and prevent gum disease or other oral cancers. Diabetes patients have to be extra cautious about their oral health because even if a disease is caught and treated early, it takes longer to heal. The lack of blood flow to parts of your body plays a large role in why it takes significantly longer to heal. 

Longer Healing Time

After you receive treatment for cavities, surgery for wisdom teeth or tooth decay, root canals, implants, or other dental procedures, you will take longer to heal. Those with diabetes will see a longer healing period than other dental patients. Because open wounds or sores will take longer to heal, be sure to keep them clean and avoid smoking to avoid furthering the severity of the wound. 

Better Oral Health With Mountain View Dental

Our Pleasant View dental office is proud to serve a variety of patients. Our team of dentists loves their job and loves working with patients. Our goal is to help you stay healthy and be confident in your smile. Oral health is important as you age, but good habits formed early on will set you up for success.

Whether you just need a simple dental check-up or are looking for cosmetic dentistry services Mountain View Dental has it all. Contact our office or fill out a contact form on our website to get started!

Having your wisdom teeth removed is a common procedure in the dental world. Each patient reacts differently to wisdom teeth extractions and anesthesia which may cause some anxiety. Mountain View Dental wants to help patients know what each dental procedure will entail and provide peace of mind. When you need a wisdom tooth extraction here are all the things you need to know before going in. 

1- Why Have Wisdom Teeth Removed?

If you are thinking about getting your wisdom teeth removed you have often heard about terrible experiences people have had. Reasons for having wisdom teeth removed often proceed these stories with other pain or uncomfortable aches or sensitivity. Most people don’t have room in their mouth to fit 4 wisdom teeth so when these teeth start to break through your gums, they put pressure on your other teeth. As time goes on, this pressure on your teeth can cause your jaw to shift and cause pain while chewing or talking. 

Wisdom teeth also don’t grow straight like the rest of your teeth. Since your wisdom teeth come in after your other teeth, they can rotate and shift to an unnatural position and cause problems to the nerves and bones of your other teeth. When your wisdom teeth grow in at an angle or become trapped in your gums or jaw, they are called impacted. This makes the wisdom teeth procedure more intense and can cause major issues in your mouth when not removed. 

Because your wisdom teeth are the farthest teeth in the back of your mouth, reaching them without a toothbrush or dental floss can be difficult. This may lead to cavities, gum disease, or other infections that will lead to wisdom teeth extractions, even if your wisdom teeth fit comfortably in your mouth. 

2- Impacted Teeth

When your wisdom teeth become impacted, the process of removing your wisdom teeth becomes a little bit more complicated. Impacted teeth often require an oral surgeon and anesthesia. 

Impacted teeth usually require a dentist or oral surgeon to cut your gums in order to remove the tooth. This will also cause you to have stitches and a longer healing process. Even if your wisdom teeth are not impacted, you will need time to recover and rest after the tooth extraction. 

3- Different Types Of Anesthesia 

Local: The use of local anesthetics usually starts with the dentist numbing your mouth with a shot or novocaine, lidocaine, or mepivacaine. They may also give you nitrous oxide or laughing gas to help reduce the anxiety you may experience during the procedure. This means you are awake during wisdom teeth extraction but may feel hazy. You will feel alert soon after the extraction is complete. 

IV Sedation: Using sedation will require you to go to a surgeon over your regular dentist for wisdom teeth extractions. The IV will be given through a vein (most likely in your arm) and will lead to you being asleep or extremely drowsy during the surgery. 

General: General anesthesia is given either through an IV or by breathing in a gas. You will be asleep the whole time during your extraction and may even take over an hour to wake up after the procedure is over and anesthesia is no longer given to you.

4- Healing After Surgery

Dealing with pain and concerns after wisdom teeth extractions is common. Because you have empty holes in your mouth, eating and drinking can be difficult. It is best for patients to take time off school, work, exercise routines, and strenuous hobbies for a while. If you are having the extraction done under anesthesia, you will need a loved one or friend to provide transportation home. 

It is also important to protect your mouth from getting infected after the surgery. A dry socket is extremely common for wisdom teeth patients and can be painful. Limiting drinking through a straw or breathing with your mouth open will help prevent dry sockets. 

5- Infections To Watch For

Along with dry sockets, some patients can also experience other infections or side effects after wisdom teeth extraction. Drinking through a straw could loosen blood clots that help your mouth to heal from wisdom teeth extraction.

Smoking after a wisdom teeth extraction will slow the healing process and can cause other infections and cancers in your mouth. Avoid smoking or chewing tobacco until after your surgery sites have healed. 

Your dentist will also recommend looking out for infections from food bacteria, or nerve damage. Common signs of infections or nerve damage are fever, numbness, trouble swallowing or breathing, blood or pus coming out of your nose, or bleeding in your mouth that will not stop with applying pressure. If you experience any of these symptoms call your dentist or doctor immediately. 

Wisdom Teeth Extractions With Mountain View Dental

Mountain View Dental offers general dentistry, cosmetic dentistry, and orthodontics. Our dentists can help improve your smile in just a few sessions. Let us help you make a great first impression with a healthy smile.