11/16/2023 0 Comments Keep it clean routine crosswordLots of dentists also push veneers (artificial tooth surfaces) on many patients, because they're extremely lucrative. 5) Veneers are often purely cosmetic - like plastic surgery Sealants are similar: a product that can be useful in some cases (mainly among kids, who don't brush as well), but definitely shouldn't be prescribed for everyone. Unless you're doing so at an especially fast rate, you're fine. But not everyone needs one - and even though a dentist will often tell you that you're grinding down your teeth as evidence that you do need one, all people gradually wear down their teeth over the course of their lifetimes. It's certainly true that some people genuinely need a night guard, especially if they have jaw pain. Two other products that are often used as moneymakers are night guards (which stop you from grinding your teeth at night) and sealants (which cover a tooth's surface so plaque doesn't accumulate). 4) Night guards and sealants are often unnecessary That's because there's already enough fluoride in our drinking water and in over-the-counter toothpastes to prevent cavities in most people. These sorts of products might be helpful for someone who gets a ton of cavities - especially a child, who has teeth that are more capable of absorbing fluoride - but for the vast majority of adults, they're entirely unnecessary. Unethical dentists rely on all sorts of products and treatments to upsell patients, but two common ones are special fluoride treatments and prescription toothpastes. 3) Fluoride treatments and prescription toothpastes are generally useless Most of the dentists I interviewed recommended finding a dentist through word-of-mouth, rather than relying on advertisements. Ultimately, it's usually cheaper to get a cleaning or whitening from a practice that doesn't offer deals - so you're more likely to just pay for what you need, and nothing else. "They're the ones that give you the free cleaning, and the free exam, then they tell you that you need $3,000 worth of dental work." "These big chains are kind of dental mills," Mindy Weinman, a Buffalo dentist and dental school professor, told me for my previous article. Disproportionately, they're corporate-owned, national chains, like Aspen Dental. The dental practices that advertise heavily and offer deals - like a free cleaning or free whitening - often do so simply to get you in the door, so they can prescribe you a big treatment plan for work you may or may not need. 2) Beware practices that offer deals to get you in the door Some will claim that old silver fillings need to be removed for safety reasons - specifically, because they leech mercury - but that idea is a total myth. And though fillings do crack and decay over time, you rarely need all of them replaced at once. Frequently, this involves ripping out all existing fillings and replacing them with new ones.īut the dentists I interviewed told me that you should doubt any new dentist that prescribes a ton of work, unless you're going in due to pain. Oftentimes, someone visiting a new (and unscrupulous) dentist will be told that he or she needs a ton of work done. 1) You probably don't need all your fillings ripped out and replaced Last year, I interviewed eight dentists for tips on how to avoid this sort of thing. Due to a few different factors - a lack of oversight, rising debt incurred during dental school, and the rise of quota-driven corporate dental chains - there's a decent chance that you might visit a dentist who's making decisions based on profit, not the work you really need. There isn't hard data on how often this occurs, but it's clear that it's a big issue - as highlighted by an op-ed by a dentist in American Dental Association News. There's an invisible problem in dentistry: some dentists using "creative diagnosis" to perform unnecessary work in the interest of making extra money.
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