Dr. Jeffery Clair Platt, DDS

There can be a couple of reasons that your gums can become red and inflamed and each may have a different treatment to resolve the problem. First, it may simply time to get your teeth cleaned. The process of tarter and calculus depositing on the teeth will make the gums irritated and removing that irritation will often solve the problem. Second, there may be a more severe form of gum disease that can be attacking the gums and bone, called periodontal disease. That disease will also cause redness and inflammation around the mouth in the gums and will need specific treatments. I prefer to use two forms of treatment combined together, scaling of the teeth to remove bacteria from the teeth surfaces and the use of a specific laser to remove bacteria form the gum and bone. By killing the bacteria on the teeth, gum and bone levels the treatments are generally very effective at treating the redness and inflammation caused by gum disease. Third, occasionally females will have some redness and inflammation of the gums temporarily associated with their cycle that resolves on its own after the cycle has completed. Pregnancy can cause the gums to be irritated, puffy and red during the time you are pregnant and if you nurse your baby afterwards they may become red and inflamed during that phase.
Respectfully
Dr. Platt

When a tooth has a lot of decay, traditionally, a dentist does a root canal to treat the bacteria buildup inside the tooth. There are other options if the nerve of the tooth is not dead. For example, the dentist can remove most of the decay and kill the remaining bacteria with a couple of different substances like: silver iodine, MTA or Biodentin. My favorite is to use Ozone gas on the tooth. By using some of these, I have had successfully cut down the number of roof canals I did 20 years ago by about 75% and the teeth remain alive for years and even decades without further need for a root canal therapy. A Bio-mimetic dentist usually has the knowledge to treat a tooth that has a lot of decay without having to always do a root canal to treat infection.

Respectfully,

Dr. Platt

There are a couple of ways that a dentist can remove decay without having to numb you. They could use a laser or air abrasion. With either of these options, the majority of time (90%+) I don’t need to numb my patients to place fillings. If you already have a silver amalgam filling in your tooth, these options do not work; you will need to be numbed up and have the filling drilled out.

Respectfully,

Dr. Platt

My experience has been that there is usually more of a connection between siblings than generations. There are definite ways to treat this disorder and make you free from pain and not have to be married to a piece of plastic or a splint for the rest of your life. Some patients have sleep apnea that is part of the TMJ problem. I treat that with a DNA appliance to expand the airway and the upper and lower jaw in adults and children then the expansion can help with the symptoms of TMJ. The other way I treat TMJ is by using a computer to evaluate the amount of pressure you have to exert from your muscles to close your teeth together to chew. When there is too much pressure on any given tooth and your bite is not perfectly balanced, your muscles are required to squeeze harder to try to get all of the teeth to make contact. That increased force causes muscle tension and pain that is called TMJ. I use a computer aided instrument called T-scan to help identify which teeth are hitting too hard and which teeth are not making enough contact. Combining that with a Bio EMG to evaluate the muscle exertion allows the dentist to balance your bite and make sure the muscles are firing efficiently.

Respectfully,

Dr. Platt

Great question and I completely understand because seeing cracks on teeth can be very disconcerting! A couple of things about cracks, first: it is normal to have some very small cracks on teeth that is only in the enamel or outer layer of a tooth. Those small superficial cracks usually do not mean anything major, they come from normal hot and cold cycles in our mouth plus the chewing that we normally do each day that we eat. This type of crack is not serious and usually doesn’t require any treatment unless they get deeper and into the next layer deeper of the tooth or the dentin. Which leads me to the second type of crack on teeth. This type of crack goes through the enamel layer into the deeper dentin layer and can be destructive and weaken the tooth and lead to actual fracturing or breaking of a portion of the tooth and become an emergency. This type of crack can be verified by a dentist to be either a major crack or a minor crack. This type of crack, unfortunately can not have vitamins, minerals or any supplement that you would rub on, rinse or bathe the tooth in or swallow to get it to heal. There are a lot of things that you can find on Dr. Google where people have tried to fix or repair their fractured tooth and through the miracle of video it manically appears to be healed. I have seen many patients try many of these remedies all to no avail and no improvement.
My advice would be to have your dentist check the crack and see which one of the two types it actually is, and what the recommendations may be for treatment. They may include any of the following: some form of bonding with composite, something in the crown family like a partial crown, a Bio-mimetic approach to repair the fractured portion of the tooth, or a thin shell of porcelain veneer to cover and hold the crack together.
Thank you for the question!!
Dr. Platt