Dental Exams and Cleanings in Indianapolis, IN: Questions Asked by Patients Coming Back After Years Away

Good morning, everyone. Hope you’re having a great week so far. Happy Tuesday, and thank you for joining me on today’s episode of Tooth Teacher Tuesday. Hope your New Year is off to a great start, and you know, with it being New Year’s, a lot of people have made New Year’s resolutions to get healthier, you hopefully, dental health is included in that. But kind of along those lines of thinking, today’s topic is a question that we get asked quite a bit related to our health, which is essentially something along the lines of, why does my dentist need to know about the rest of my medical history? You know, dentists, you’re just looking at our teeth, checking for cavities. Why do you need to know about, you know, medications and other health conditions?
And you know, I hope it goes without saying that even though, yes, as dentists, our primary focus is the health of the teeth and the mouth overall, you know, our best interest is your overall health, and we may be just one part of that, but not only does oral health impact the rest of our body’s Health, but at the same same time, your overall health, certain conditions or medications can be, you know, vice versa affecting your oral health, which is why when you go to your dentist, you’re probably periodically asked to update your medical history for any new conditions or surgeries or medications, so that we have the most current data, most current information, so that we can help to proper diagnose and and maintain your oral health.
So, a couple of examples of some things that are of particular important importance in dentistry are, you know, we need to know about things such as, you know, if you’re taking any medications that are, you know, affect your ability to clot, you know, various blood thinners out there, which becomes important if you know, say we need to take a tooth out, where it’s normal and expected to be some bleeding. For someone on blood thinners, that’s going to be excessive, and we need to be able to plan ahead for that and know, you know, whether or not we should take you off the blood thinner for a couple days, or if we should just, you know, have extra wound dressings available to to help that to clot quickly. That’s just one example.
Other examples would be, you know, if you’ve had any major surgeries recently that could affect, you know, say, like surgery for a joint replacement. We’ve talked about that in the past, why sometimes antibiotics are needed before dental work with artificial joints or artificial, you know, heart valves or, you know, organ transplants. So it’s also very important for us to know that.
And then there’s also just certain health conditions that, again, we’ve talked about in the past, that have symptoms that present in the oral cavity. You know, one example would be, if someone’s diabetic, they’re going to be more prone to Bone and gum disease. And so, you know, if we see that, could be, if diabetes is undiagnosed, it could be a sign that we have someone who should get in with their doctor to be screened for diabetes. But on the flip side, if we know someone’s diabetic and they’ve, you know, traditionally had good oral health, and then suddenly we start seeing bone and gum disease, that could be a sign that their diabetes is worsening, or it could also just be a sign that they’re starting to slip up with their home care as well.
So, the list goes on and on. You know, certainly when we’re gathering data and asking our patients for accurate Health histories, it’s not to be nosy. It’s just so that we can best serve you. And I’ll leave you with a final one, which is, I’ll go into more in depth next week, but another thing that we’re screening for is patients that take certain medications that affect the ability of the bone to heal, which again becomes very important when we do any kind of extractions or implants or anything else that manipulates the bone. But again, that’s a little preview for next week’s video.
But in the meantime, I hope that kind of clears the air as to why your dentist is asking about your heart and your lungs and everything else in the body. But thank you for the privilege of your time, and until next week, I hope everyone is well, and we will see you then. Thank you.

Good morning everybody and happy Halloween to you I am coming to you today not as Dr Z but is Dr Jones Indiana Jones one of my favorite alltime movie characters and so celebrating Halloween the right way welcome to this special Halloween edition of tooth teacher Tuesday with it being Halloween I thought it’d be appropriate to talk about cavities since it is a sugar season between now and Halloween or excuse me between Halloween now and you know all the other holidays between now and Christmas a lot of us consuming a lot of sugar which means it’s it’s cavities season for us dentists so again thought it’d be appropriate to talk about what causes cavities question we asked all the time is that a snake oh I hate snakes so what causes cavities it’s what it really boils down to is acids cavities are caused by some form of acid getting on your teeth the most common acid we get exposed to is oh there’s that snake again so we think of cavi is being caused by bacteria and that’s true because essentially anytime you consume something something sugary the bacteria in your mouth convert that sugar into acid which which if not properly brushed off your teeth that acid will eventually eat away at your tooth and cause a cavity that’s the most common cause for a cavity but other acids can do it too you think of acidic drinks like you know pop would be the main one but also even juices like orange juice apple juice they’re high in in acids themselves and also high in sugar which is why you know as delicious as they may be pops and juices are actually some of the worst thing for your teeth so just natural acids in our diet are another thing that can cause cavities and then other one other common form of acid we’re exposed to is anybody that has acid reflux as that stomach acid comes up and gets on the teeth it can eat away at your teeth teeth and so basically any kind of acid on your teeth any kind of acid attack is going to start to cause a cavity and essentially it it causes the tooth to undergo something called demineralization which basically means all that hard mineral in your teeth starts to break down until it eventually caves in becomes a soft mushy cavity good thing is at early stages your body is capable of combating that through a process called remineralization where those minerals start to harden up again and that’s why I always say that not every cavity is the same some cavities can heal themselves and that’s why we in dentistry nowadays don’t typically aggressively diagnose cavities because we have so many great fluoride products like we’ve previously talked about that fluoride AIDS the body in achieving that REM generalization and okay the snake is found a spider to play with that seems appropriate for Halloween too so that’s that’s lovely but yeah so the body can heal itself through remineralization fluoride is an excellent supplement for that and so that’s that’s all there is to it basically you know the body also has other ways of of neutralizing acids naturally main one would be your saliva helps kind of buffer against acids and that’s why people with low saliva and dry mouth tend to be more cavity prone as well and that’ll be a topic we’ll get into down the road is dry mouth but that about wraps things up for today but I want to thank you for tuning in to this special Halloween edition of tooth teacher Tuesday for anybody who’s celebrating Halloween be safe out there you know be safe trick-or-treating and brush your teeth after you get your candy consumed have a great week everybody