5 Ways Cosmetic Dentistry Can Help

A lot of people are afraid to smile due to cosmetic problems in their teeth that they perceive as unattractive. While these problems might have no influence on the person’s health whatsoever, they may still affect the person and how they see themselves. Most dental problems can be fixed nowadays thanks to cosmetic dentistry.

This subset of dentistry can be performed by most professional dentists. It mainly involves adding or removing material from the teeth or installing an apparatus to the teeth to help correct their position. The following are a few ways cosmetic dentistry helps correct teeth.

Bonding, Crowns, Veneers

There are probably some of the most common cosmetic corrections done to teeth. They usually consist of adding material to a tooth that has been damaged or weakened from age. Bonds are the simplest form of this procedure and involve using porcelain or a plastic resin to attach to the tooth.

Coloring

This procedure is simpler and only involves changing the color of teeth. It is probably the most common procedure in cosmetic dentistry because it is easy to do and relatively cheap. People often go to a cosmetic dentist to get their teeth whitened or bleached, but there are other procedures that involve coloring your teeth.

Straightening

These procedures usually fall under orthodontics and require adding appliances to the person’s teeth to allow them to be straightened or rearranged for a desired final result. The most common apparatus that is used is braces, which are brackets and wires affixed to the person’s teeth. The majority of people get braces when they are younger.

Reshaping

This kind of cosmetic procedure is much less common than the above and involves breaking down a tooth’s structure. It is usually prescribed if the tooth is overgrown or poking into the gums above or below it. The tooth is ground down and then sometimes given a new surface through bonding.

False Teeth

As people age, they tend to lose their teeth naturally. This type of decay is completely normal and usually has no connection to oral health but, rather, genetics. Within cosmetic dentistry, a dentist will use bridges and other types of false teeth to fill in the area that is left from the teeth that fell out.

Within the above categories, there are hundreds of different procedures that involve the teeth and gums. People usually need some form of cosmetic dentistry at some point in their lives, and therefore, it is completely normal. If you don’t like the look of your smile, or if something in your teeth is bothering you, you should talk it over with your dentist.

Even if your dentist finds no real health problem with the tooth itself, you can still ask your dentist if there is any way you might get a cosmetic correction for your tooth. After weighing your options, you may find that you can get the smile you have always wanted thanks to cosmetic dentistry.