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Q: I’m a youngish adult, early thirties. I have family in Canada and the US so one year it seems I’m getting my teeth cleaned in one country and then the next year the other. In one place they just clean my teeth, the dentist comes in and says, “Looks good, see ya.” In the other place the hygienist talks to me about the fact that I am wearing my teeth quite aggressively. The dentist picked this up independently and said, “We’ve got to do a bite work up.” I know it’s happenin

Question: Dear Dr. Crapo: I’m forty-five and have started a company that’s looking successful. I love the work and we’re growing. Up to this point I’ve had some good business training and decent jobs but not anything that gave me benefits or extra money to spend on myself. A month ago I had a terrible toothache so I saw a dentist. He said I needed a root canal so I said “let’s do it and I think we need to look around because I know there are other things not right”. When he g

Q: When it comes to teeth, I’m a bad boy. I think it stems from the fact that I have a tremendous gag reflex. I mean, when a dentist gets his mirror or other tools past my front teeth, I lose my lunch. Really, I can’t have anybody put something in my mouth. Funny thing, it doesn’t affect my eating but if I start getting into my mouth with a toothbrush and touch my tongue, look out baby, I can heave lunch farther than an Olympian can put the shot. You can see where I’m going

Q: I have excellent health, at least I did until about eighteen months ago. I saw a dentist for some dental work and had two crowns done then another dentist and he did three more crowns. They were to hold together teeth breaking down. I thought after having them done that I could now forget my teeth as everything was fixed. However, I began noticing something that became constant after the crowns had been placed. I began having headaches and jaw ache. That’s the only way I

Q: I recently went to the dentist because I felt things in my mouth weren’t right. I hadn’t seen a dentist for eight years. He wanted to do implants and I thought he just wanted to line his pockets, so I saw another dentist and insisted he make me a partial denture instead. I must say that at the time my teeth were a bit loose, but I thought the partial would strengthen them. As he was making my partial, he said the upper right molars were too loose to use for support, so I

Q: I just visited the dentist and I’m nervous, confused, and angry. I guess at myself. I’m nearly fifty and I go to the dentist because I have a feeling of sensitivity in one of my teeth – first check-up for a while, and he takes a look and says we need several x-rays. “Ok,” I say. So, after he gets the x-rays, he asks, “How long has it been since you’ve been to the dentist?” I think and say, “Just over a year, I guess.” Then he says, “Did you have cavities that needed fillin

Q: I have a tooth problem. My wife says this to me all too often. My retort is, “I have all my teeth,” to which she says, “Really? I can’t see them they’re so worn down.” In reality, she’s mostly right. I had my upper front teeth capped a number of years ago and since then it seems like my lowers are getting smaller and shorter. So, they’ve gotten shorter with some spaces between. My wife says she hears me grind my teeth and so I guess I do. I don’t get headaches or have sor

Q: I have a beautiful daughter, she’s twenty-one. When her permanent teeth were coming in as a child, we found that she was not going to get the upper lateral incisors (the ones just beside her front teeth). Our dentist said when the rest of her teeth came in, she should have braces. One idea was to move her eye teeth into these spaces, but we didn’t want her to have fangs beside her two front teeth. We chose the route where the teeth were straightened and gaps for those late

Q: Dr.Crapo: I was raised in a country where all dental decay meant the tooth was coming out. I have no back teeth on my upper right side and no bottom teeth on my lower left side. So as you can tell, I can’t use the remaining back teeth for grinding my food. The problem gets worse, as I saw a dentist to get some teeth put in the upper right and lower left but he said he couldn’t help me because the lower right teeth have grown all the way up to my upper right gums. He won

Q: Dr. Crapo: I’m seventy-two years old and thank goodness, I’ve had great health all my life. I feel much younger than my age. I have no health issues at all, but for the last six months I’ve noticed my teeth (I have just a few missing) are loose. I saw a dentist in a mall and he said I have gum disease and that I’d start to lose my teeth over the next few months, perhaps a couple of years. He also said that the disease could get into my blood stream and cause problems with

Q: One of the unspoken but hard rules I learned as a child was that of personal sacrifice. So, as our children needed things we counted their needs more important than our own. This guided our spending so if we as parents had a need it was taken care of in the most economic way. I give you this background because as my wife and I had tooth concerns we often put them off till the tooth had to be pulled. I have only a few teeth left up top and on the bottom. I saw a dentist a

Q: Dr.Crapo: I just turned 80. I’m in great health but I’m really unhappy with my teeth. Four years ago I had my upper teeth taken out and now have an upper denture. At the time, and to this day, I had nine teeth left on the bottom. The upper denture is just fine and I like the way I look but my lower teeth look terrible – in fact they looked bad four years ago. At that time, I asked what could be done. The dentist who took out my top teeth said I could have bonding but it pr

Q: Dr. Crapo: In the last article, the question dealt with maintenance; how to make certain one could prevent decay and gum disease from setting in, especially when a large investment had been made to preserve the teeth with crowns and implants? A: In response to the question last week, I pointed out the need to clean the sulcus (remember your “dental cuticle”) with a special tool called a sulcabrush. Its purpose is to sweep out plaque and debris from the groove formed as too

Q: Over my adult life I have had a lot of dentistry. I’ve been well looked after and everything looks and feels good. I can eat anything I need or want without discomfort or sensitivity to my teeth. I have bridgework in the front of my mouth, lots of crowns and two implants with crowns on my lower left side replacing teeth I lost ten years ago. The problem I have is maintenance. My hygienist always has lots to say about the build up I get and bleeding in some spots that seem

Q: I try to avoid the dental profession as much as possible. Despite that, I do have my share of crowns, root canals, etc. About fifteen years ago I had two veneers done on my two lower front teeth because of severe chipping. They lasted about twelve years before they began to chip away and my upper front teeth started to wear badly, so the veneers were replaced. In the past year my upper front teeth chipped beyond minor filling repair, so I had to go in for that. The denti

Q: A year and a half ago, I had to have my right upper front tooth pulled. I had previously, some years before, had my molars pulled, so after the front tooth was pulled, I have nine upper teeth left. The dentist decided to give me a partial denture to replace the front tooth and the molars. It didn’t feel quite right when he put it in so he adjusted it the best he could and told me I’d get used to it. My problem is that after a year and a half I can’t eat with it. I have to

Q: What do you do when you wear your teeth down? I’m retiring soon and I realize now I’ve got big-time wear on my front teeth as well as my back teeth, though it’s my front teeth I’m worried about. I’ve gone to the dentist fairly regularly and he’s done fillings, some crowns on my back teeth – even a root canal, all in the past 10 years. I’ve moved to a different city so I looked around to find a dentist to make sure I was leaving my employment with all my dental work up to d

Q: I was born and raised on a ranch. Horses and cattle with enough farming to raise feed for the animals. My father and grandfather died with their boots on working in the field. It’s true that we’re pretty independent. We do about everything we can to avoid downtime and that includes seeing the docs of all kinds. We get most of our advice from the vet that takes care of our horses and cattle so it shouldn’t surprise you that when I lost all but my front teeth and my back cru

Q: Years ago I said to my dentist, “I’m losing my back teeth. You Just had to pull another one. Is it just me or what – my genes, my diet, or something?” He told me that I was a grinder and that was contributing to my loss. I said to him I had pretty good teeth as a child and young teenager and then, in my late teens and early twenties, I had some decay and had to have fillings. After the fillings, my teeth were so sensitive I couldn’t stand it, so I had to have root canals.

Q: As a kid up till I was out of university I saw the dentist and hygienist regularly – Mom insisted. Even in university Mom made sure, when we got home, we saw the dentist. I had great teeth. Once I was off the plan and on my own it wasn’t as important to me. I worked at a number of outdoor jobs; I was too busy for my teeth to be a priority. One day as I was visiting home, mom asked how long it had been since I’d seen the dentist. It had been five years. I had started smokin