Description

John Joseph, DMD, explains how plaque causes tooth decay and also whether calcium or fluoridated water is a necessity in maintaining good oral health.

Transcript

Plaque is just little bacteria that just stick and start to stick, that sticks from the bottom of your teeth. And what it does is it converts carbohydrates that we eat and has little and it converts—these bacteria convert sugar when carbohydrates it kind of breaks in the sugar and converts the acid and this acid call as tooth decay and it just ease the enamel way of the tooth. What the dentist does when he realizes decay he gets rid of this decay and replaces either a plastic filling, a tooth colored filling or a silver filling in there. But you have to get rid of all this decay that—this problem. So basically, what we try to do is we try to prevent that and we try as far as brushing and cleaning to get rid of this plaque and that’s flossing and all these things. The research is out, you know, the vast majority now of fillings replacing in are like composite or tooth colored fillings. They are statically more pleasing. They have fluoride in it. They actually bonds to the teeth. Still people use amount of which are silver fillings and basically what you do is you create an undercut in the teeth and you just pack the filling in place. But the research is out—but the vast majority of fillings we’re doing now are the white tube colored fillings. They statically look and it seems like now they hold as well as any other fillings. I think that the vast majority 99% of people will get calcium primarily through a good diet, you know, they take this calcium. I think they are just —I don’t believe in that, I just think if you have a balance diet, I think that will take care of it. Absolutely, absolutely, I’m a firm believer of fluoridated water. In Georgetown, we do have fluoridated water. They add one part—and so it doesn’t cause any problem but it does reduce tooth decay. You can do study—I mean they’ve done study that it helps decrease the incidents of tooth decay.