Dr. Michelle discusses the most common and prevalent challenges in dental health today. Learn more and schedule your appointment with Dr. Michelle at jacksonvillebeachdentist.com.
Dr. Michelle discusses the most common and prevalent challenges in dental health today. Learn more and schedule your appointment with Dr. Michelle at jacksonvillebeachdentist.com.
Kevin (00:03):
We are live from St. Augustine. Hope you're having a good day so far, nine minutes after 11 o'clock, and maybe you're tooling around A one A in Avira at the moment. And if you are, we'd like to get your attention for just a second. Dr. Michelle Dei is here with me from Jack Beach's Family Dentistry. And indeed, you are accepting new patients, correct?
Dr. Michelle (00:24):
Absolutely. I have lots of patients that live in Ponte Vedra.
Kevin (00:27):
Yeah. So Dr. Michelle, of course, has been a part of our community here in St. John's County for a very, very long time. And you can learn more about her and the practice. The other dentists and professionals at Jack's Beach, family Dentistry where I get my teeth taken care. Of course, they're perfect.
Dr. Michelle (00:43):
They're getting there.
Kevin (00:44):
They're getting there. It's a work in progress. Dr. Michelle's been working on my teeth, gosh, since 2006. Still a work in progress, right?
Dr. Michelle (00:52):
It's getting there though. Yeah.
Kevin (00:54):
I wear these periodontal trays now every night for 15 minutes.
Dr. Michelle (00:58):
And your teeth are getting really white.
Kevin (01:00):
Yeah, I smiled there for a minute. And Dr. Michelle had to turn her head quickly, grab her sunglasses. The smile was so bright she had to wear shades. That's right. But seriously, we're going to talk about all sorts of issues dealing with your teeth. We wanted to talk about three of the biggest dental health challenges that we all face. What are three of the biggest problems in dentistry or challenges, I guess is the better way to put it when you see patients, I did some research online and Dr. Google says
Dr. Michelle (01:30):
He did the Google,
Kevin (01:31):
Dr. Google says the three biggest challenges in dental health are number one, tooth decay. Shocker there, that's just a good old fashioned cavity, right?
Dr. Michelle (01:42):
Yes. Well, and also recurrent decay around old restorations. So think silver fillings or Now we're at the point too, where a lot of people had their silver fillings replaced with composite resin fillings. And those resin fillings are now breaking down. And then, yeah, just
Kevin (02:01):
So when we get a filling, it's not for life.
Dr. Michelle (02:05):
No.
Kevin (02:06):
Alright. And these silver fillings, which I had a bunch of these and I fought like crazy not to have them replaced. I'm a baby. It's not that I was cheap, it's just I'm a baby and Dr. Michelle gently prodded me. So now they've all been removed. They were in effect, cracking my teeth. They were making things worse.
Dr. Michelle (02:24):
Well, the way that fillings work is that you have decay. And once you have a cavity or decay, which is really the same thing, we have to get you numb, drill that out, and guess what? That causes a hole in your tooth.
(02:41):
So when we have a hole in our tooth, we have to put something in the hole. We can't leave it exposed. So long time ago, we used to put silver in there. Now we put composite resin. We still have a tooth though, in our mouth with a hole in it. So the hole is still there, it's just filled with something. And as you chew on a tooth day after day after day, and you clench and grind at night on a tooth that has a hole in it, it's fragile. So it cracks over time from flexing from all that activity, no matter what the hole is filled with.
Kevin (03:18):
Right. Hey, if you're just hopping in your vehicle, that's the voice of Dr. Michelle DeFelice Hucke. And of course she is a dentist and has been practicing for a long time. You can learn more about her and the team by going to jacksonvillebeachdentist.com. So these new resins, those were, that's what replaced the silver that was in my mouth from cavities. And that doesn't last forever either.
Dr. Michelle (03:39):
No, it doesn't. Resin has some advantages if they're placed properly, they do have a little more of a technical, so silver filling was easier to place. The material itself is very easy to place. It doesn't matter if it gets wet or not. So it has very little user error with the resin fillings. The area has to be very well isolated. If any saliva gets on it and contaminates it, it doesn't bond to the tooth. So one of the advantages of resin if it's placed in a dry environment is that it does actually bond to the tooth and seals things. And it's also flexible where silver fillings are very rigid. So as you're clenching and grinding, the silver's not really moving with the tooth so it can crack. It can create situations where the tooth is more likely to crack, where resin is flexible. So that's as a material, we're always looking at materials. We're always inventing new materials, always trying to find better materials. One of the advantages of any material that's flexible is that as the tooth is flexing, it is also flexing.
Kevin (04:57):
So that obviously is a product of tooth decay when you have to have a filling. And we're learning about how we do that with these composite resins as we move forward. So I have to ask you, in your many years of being a dentist, have you ever seen someone who was in their fifties who didn't have any cavities ever?
Dr. Michelle (05:16):
Yeah. Me.
Kevin (05:17):
You've never had a cavity?
Dr. Michelle (05:18):
No.
Kevin (05:19):
Really? Yeah. No, I didn't know that. Well, good for you.
Dr. Michelle (05:23):
Oh, well thanks. My dad's a dentist, so
Kevin (05:26):
Yeah. But still, I mean, you're a human I
Dr. Michelle (05:29):
Diet. Yeah,
Kevin (05:30):
Absolutely. But that's pretty rare, right?
Dr. Michelle (05:33):
It's relatively unusual. Yes. Okay. Yeah, I mean, we had hopes, right? When I was in college, I thought, oh, I'm not going to be a dentist. There's not going to be anymore. There's not going to be any more tooth K
Kevin (05:45):
Because of fluoride in the water,
Dr. Michelle (05:45):
Right? Yeah. It's going to be cured. So yeah, I was definitely a child that was raised at a time when a lot of water was. So there were a lot of people my age that didn't have decay for a long time. Now, of course, there's still sugar on the planet. So yeah, we've managed to reverse that whole trend of no decay thing as a society.
Kevin (06:12):
Right. So job security is okay.
Dr. Michelle (06:15):
Absolutely. No, we're fine.
Kevin (06:16):
Yeah, we're fine on that.
Dr. Michelle (06:18):
Alright. No, I actually don't like though it upsets me when people get new decay. People make fun of me all the time. They're like, well, you should like sugar because it keeps you in business. But it's my least favorite thing to do is when someone comes in and they have a whole new batch of decay, especially as an adult, because honestly, you generally get decay as a teenager and then you don't have decay as an adult unless you have a medical challenge and you end up on multiple medications and your saliva changes, or you inadvertently do something really weird with your diet, you take up some new athletic thing and you start sipping on energy drinks or you just do something new and unusual with your diet that you don't realize can negatively impact your teeth.
Kevin (07:07):
Okay. We're talking about three of the biggest challenges that we face with our teeth with Dr. Michelle DeFelice Huey, and of course she's with Jack Speeches, family dentistry. Go to jacksonvillebeachdentist.com for more information. Number two, gum disease. That's when our gums start bleeding
Dr. Michelle (07:23):
It. That's one of the symptoms. However, you can have gum disease and not have bleeding gums.
Kevin (07:29):
So when you see somebody's gums and they're not bleeding, how do you tell that they have gum disease? Puffy?
Dr. Michelle (07:36):
Well, they're puffy or they have pockets, which means that the height of the gum and the height of the bone level is beyond a normal pocket depth. So the pocket lives between the tooth and that cuff of gum tissue that's around your tooth, how we measure the pocket. So you're measuring to the bone.
Kevin (07:57):
Gotcha. I never actually fully understood that when you're
Dr. Michelle (08:01):
Like, what is he doing?
Kevin (08:02):
EM'S been my hygienist for a long time, and of course he's part of the great team at Jack's Beaches Family Dentistry, and he does that measurement in my mouth and always says, I'm doing great afterwards. That's
Dr. Michelle (08:12):
Good, but you don't know what he's talking about.
Kevin (08:14):
I didn't know what he was talking about. I'm like, okay, thank you. I'll take a compliment even if I don't understand why I deserved it.
Dr. Michelle (08:20):
And for those of you out there, when you're at your hygienist appoint, you're at the appointment with the hygienist, you do want to make sure that they're measuring your pocket depths at least once a year. And that's what we're measuring is the height of the gum in comparison to where the bone level is. Because gum disease, the main thing that happens is the bone that's holding the tooth into your body needs to be close to the same height as the gum when the bone starts to erode. And first of all, it's painless. That's the biggest problem with gum disease. There's often no symptoms. So that's why we have to check them because out of the blue, you could go from having a three millimeter pocket to a five millimeter pocket. Once we get beyond three millimeters, you can't maintain that pocket depth at home and it can quickly head in the wrong direction.
Kevin (09:12):
There you go. Alright, another problem. And then finally, probably the most frightening challenge for dental health would be oral cancer. But indeed that's out there.
Dr. Michelle (09:22):
Yeah. The biggest problem with oral cancer is that as a society, we're not doing a really good job with it. There are a lot of cancers where we're turning the corner heading in a really good direction. For example, with breast cancer, with the advent of mammograms and ultrasound and different ways to diagnose it early, the morbidity rates are going down and people are getting treatment sooner. And so when you look at a graph, say from 1950 to now, you can see morbidity levels improving in oral cancer, it's almost changed. Not at all. And that's primarily because by the time you see an oral cancer visually in the mouth, even with magnification, it's already at a stage four. And also the problem with oral cancer, head and neck cancer in general is all the different structures that are in your head. So oral cancer is really upsetting because of that.
(10:28):
So one of the things that we do at Jack Speech is family dentistry. And if you're a dentist and you happen to be listening, I would love to have you send me a message. We have a technology called Oral id. There are lots of early detection methods out there. The beauty of the oral id, light and visualization system is that we can see the oral cancer when it's a stage one or two. There are no disposables. We don't have to pay for anything once we buy the light. And we just screen every single patient annually just as part of our regular exam. So instead of doing an oral cancer screening or exam visually, we do all the visualization with the light. And so we can cut attempt to contribute in our society to catching oral cancer early. Yeah.
Kevin (11:29):
There you have it. Three of the biggest issues, and of course that and many, many more issues they address on a daily basis at Jack Beach's Family Dentistry. Right, Dr. Michelle? Yes, sir. Yeah. Learn more by going to jacksonville beach dentist.com. That's jacksonville beach dentist.com.