did you know that you never actually need a crown or a root canal this is something that really bothers me it's one of my pet peeves when a patient comes in and tells me a dentist told them you need a root canal well let's talk a little bit about what both of them are why or why not you might need them or want to get one and what's so bad about them why you would maybe want to avoid them and what your options are there is something called biomatic Dentistry biomimic Dentistry means that we're mimicking
nature we're recreating what nature gave us well both the root canal and a crown are actually not mimicking nature we want to increase the strength of the tooth we want to increase the resilience in the longevity of the tooth we want to improve the function of the tooth and if possible we'd like to make it even look a little bit better so there are issues with both root canals and crowns in this Arena let's talk about root canals first when a root canal is done the inside of the tooth where the nerve and the blood
vessel lives is cleaned out and filled up unfortunately there are all sorts of little tubes that go off of that main Canal that's cleaned and filled that cannot be cleaned or filled so dead tissue remains what this does is leads an area that is very susceptible to infection that dead tissue always attracts bugs and those bugs start to create little communities all around the dead tissue which we call an infection that infection then starts to destroy the bone in the area this is especially problematic for root canals because the nerve is gone you can't feel
it your early warning system about these problems is actually missing so a lot of times the infection spreads throughout your body but particularly into the jaw bone and you don't actually even know it's happening this is going to jeopardize the longevity of the tooth it's going to affect your overall health and a ranal procedure all on its own actually weakens the tooth the tooth is hollowed out there's kind of a core drilled through the center of it it's more brittle it's not alive anymore there's no blood flow and it's very prone to Breaking which is
why after a root canal is done typically it's recommended to do a crown because you have this hollowed out brittle tooth left that has to have something over it to support it and strengthen it if a tooth that has had a root canal doesn't have a crown frequently the tooth ends up breaking and often it breaks in a way that it's no longer restorable you can't actually put a crown on a later so these are two bed Fells basically when a root canal is done pretty much always the crown is done after so ideally we
would avoid the root canal entirely right I'm going to tell you how we can do that let's talk about the crown second sometimes it is on a tooth that has had a root canal but often times it's on a tooth that just has an old big filling it has a big cavity it has something that's broken off you know let's say a front tooth that lost a chunk because you fell and broke the tooth so then a dentist again tells you you need a crown well let's talk about do you really need it or not
a crown is a little different than a root canal a crown is meant to be supportive or to strengthen the tooth however if the tooth still has enough strength on its own if there's still enough tooth structure there's still enough enamel there's still enough left there's still cusps left there's still enough there then my preference is not to do a crown because let me explain what we do when we do a crown the tooth is here to do a crown we have to make space all the way around 360 around the tooth for the material
for the porcelain that the crown is made of as well as room on the top of the tooth for the material so in order to do that we have to remove tooth structure all the way around and all the way across to the top and it's a fairly significant amount of tooth structure that we have to remove a millimet to a millimet half of enamel is removed from the tooth all the way around well on most teeth that's all the enamel they have so I like to think of this as removing all the insulation all
the protection and all that's left behind is the Dentin and the nerve which is going to be sensitive first of all this is why it has to be covered over but it's also going to be more prone to being sensitive even that trauma alone may kill the tooth the tooth may end up dying because of the crown procedure that's done not only that but bonding or the way that we glue the crown on works best if we can glue it to enamel but remember I told you we just removed all the enamel so what are
we gluing it to we're gluing it to the Denton and those bonds the gluing potential or strength between Denton and a material a dental material is much less than it is to an anel so you're chewing with this Crown it's rocking around doing these kinds of of things and often a little leak will form a seal will break because that Bond or that glue isn't very strong the seal will break it will start to leak and you get new cavities underneath the crown you can't clean underneath there we can't see underneath there and we don't
know tell the cavities is quite large these are the issues with crowns and root canals it often leads down a typical path a tooth goes from healthy tooth nothing wrong small cavity small filling bigger cavity bigger filling Crown root canal tooth is lost and you end up doing a replacement of some variety this is shown in literature over and over and over again the life cycle of a tooth once a crown or a root canal has started most likely that tooth will be lost at some point in that tooth's future can we avoid all of
this the answer is yes this is such great information and I will love that I'm able to share it with you this biomimetic Dentistry that we're talking about we we want to mimic nature so let's go back to the root canal what can we do instead well a root canal is usually done when the nerve is affected or infected now what are the difference between those two things affected means let's say you've had a break on your tooth a crack on the tooth and the nerve is hypers sensitive now because it's exposed the nerve itself
isn't exposed but there's tooth structure there that's exposed and that tooth structure has little tubes that go directly to the nerve so it's hyp sensitized it hurts it's sensitive it's hot cold sensitive those kinds of things well in that case if the tooth is just affected there's something we can do about it the other side of the coin is if the tooth is infected what that means is a cavity or something has gone all the way to the nerve of the tooth and it's actually already killed the nerve inside of the tooth and there is
already bacteria growth inside of that nerve tissue and that root canal area so once a tooth is infected it's already dead and it already has bacteria growing there the option of choice is going to be to remove and replace that tooth now you might think that that sounds really drastic but I told you if you do a root canal it's heading that direction anyway but you may be very ill because of it in between the time that the root canal was done and the tooth was removed so what we say is let's just remove it
now before that impact has happened to the rest of your body remove and replace it the right way because your body is healthier now than it's going to be down the road if this is reinfected so that's the infected side the other side is the one that we really want to talk about if the tooth is just affected it's sensitive it's cold it's hot sensitive it hurts a little to bite on but the tooth is still alive we know it's still alive this may because of a break it may because of a deep cavity most
commonly it's going to be because of a deep cavity well this is we are able to do a tooth that has the nerve exposed meaning we can actually see the nerve inside of the tooth will often lead to death that tooth will die the idea is we don't want to expose the nerve tissue if at all possible so what we do is we remove the cavity down to the point where the nerve is right there but we haven't exposed it yet we haven't uncovered it yet now there might still be a little layer of decayed
tooth right on top of it we can treat that we use ozone and ozone kills all bacteria doesn't matter what it is it'll it'll kill it we use ozone to treat that little thin layer of decayed tooth right on top of the nerve treat right there and kill all the bacteria what that does is it makes that tooth structure no longer infected there's no bacteria in it anymore it's not going to spread any further we treat it we kill it and then we fill on top of it the beautiful thing is now we preserved the
tooth the nerve is exposed and the tooth is able to heal itself and continue living once it continues living we have other options for how to replace the missing part if you have a lot missing we have a lot of people come to us just for this one thing alone they say my dentist told me I needed remember I hate that word I need a root canal what do you say my first question always out of my mouth is does the tooth still hurt is it still sensitive if it is I am so happy yes
I'm so glad that tooth is so sensitive why because that means the tooth's still alive we also have ways to check the Vitality to see if the tooth is still alive or not we take the x-rays of course if it's still alive we have a great shot of saving it we do what I just explained to you we remove the cavity down to the deepest part don't expose the nerve ozone it fill over top of it and rebuild the tooth we have about a 95% success rate in this instance that we don't have to kill
the tooth in order to save the tooth which is amazing and you know it's interesting 60 to 80% of traditional crowns and root canals can actually be avoided just because that tooth is affected doesn't mean it needs a root canal let's save the tooth now once the tooth is saved you've rebuilt it with a filling material it might not be enough so then a dentist might say you need a crown at this point because there's not a lot of tooth structure left here's the key how much is left if there's still a cusp tip meaning
if one of those bumps on the tooth is still alive is still there if there's still a front or a back of the tooth that the cavity hasn't extended onto if there's still a significant amount of tooth left then it doesn't need a crown we do something called an onlay that's much more conservative what an onlay is is we remove just the affected portion of the tooth we clean it out we strengthen it and then we cover over just that portion so rather than taking off tooth all the way around and all the way acoss
Ross the top to put a crown over the whole thing we just clean up and shape the parts that are already missing because of the cavity because of the break whatever it might be and we just cover over Those portions so it's more conservative and you keep the enamel remember the enamel is that insulation it's that protective piece that you really need we're able to prevent you needing a crown which often prevents the tooth from dying in the future and then that whole downward spiral that we talked about this is absolutely huge so this kind
of Dentistry what it really does is it intervenes between what Nature has given you what you know what uh you were presented with and what will do a tooth to being lost in the future we stop it here we say what can we do can we treat it with ozone we keep the tooth alive can we cover it with an onlay and keep it healthy I love doing this kind of Dentistry it preserves the natural tooth structure it minimize the stress on the tooth it's presenting you with a lot of long-term benefits including keeping this
tooth around so how do you find a qualified biomic dentist somebody that can do this kind of thing well first of all ask these questions do you do onls is that something you do do you use ozone in your office can you do that you do need some specialized training and that's why I have my directory to direct you to people that have more of the training that's going to qualify them to be able to do this kind of Dentistry this is the sort of thing that gets us excited here at Total Care Dental because
we're able to save teeth that other people said were impossible to save and if we can save teeth then a lot of times it's going to save your health as well learn about these different things that you can be asking dentists for and ways to save your teeth by just mimicking Nature's design we are able to rebuild your tooth preserve your tooth preserve its function its structure its strength and the way it looks for hopefully the rest of your life thank you for allowing me to share about B medic Dentistry this is something you need
to know about [Music]
