Smile! It’s National Smile Month

June is National Smile Month! It’s one more great reason for all of us here at the South Florida Center for Periodontics & Implant Dentistry to remind you of just how important it is to protect the health of your smile by treating gum disease promptly.

Your Oral and Overall Health Are Linked

Known as gingivitis in its initial stages and periodontal disease or periodontitis in its most severe stage, gum disease needs to be treated by oral health professionals like periodontists, experts in the prevention and treatment of gum disease. We recognize that your oral health is closely related to your overall health. In recent decades, severe gum disease has been linked to numerous “systemic” diseases like heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, respiratory issues and, unfortunately, much more.

Treating Gum Disease

Some of our many procedures not only help control gum disease but can provide numerous cosmetic benefits to improve your smile. If gum disease isn’t advanced, we can often start treating you with minimally invasive procedures like scaling and root planing. Topical or oral antibiotics may also be prescribed to address infection-causing bacteria.

For more advanced gum disease, a variety of treatments include pocket reduction (flap) surgery, soft tissue or bone grafting and guided tissue regeneration. With procedures like the FDA-approved LANAP® laser protocol, we tackle gum disease by zapping away diseased gum tissue and leaving behind only healthy gum tissue. The process, often accomplished in one visit, controls periodontal disease with less pain, less downtime, and decreased bleeding and swelling. Also, LANAP is a safer treatment compared to many other more traditional procedures for patients with bleeding disorders, HIV or diabetes.

Dental Implants

While keeping your natural teeth if possible is ideal, and we’ll do everything in our power to help you, dental implants offer the best tooth or teeth replacement solution.  Individuals with multiple missing teeth often have difficulties when it comes to eating the foods they love and even speaking properly. They may feel self-conscious about smiling, leading to low self-esteem. Furthermore, even the loss of one tooth can lead to jaw bone atrophy, shifting teeth, altered bites and more chances of decay.

Dental Implants solve all these issues and more. Should you need one or more dental implants, we offer some of today’s most advanced procedures to make sure your experience is a great one. We can’t stress enough the many benefits of dental implants, an overall improved quality of life that will mean:

• Restoring your appearance
• Not needing glue to keep your “teeth” in place, like with dentures
• Being able to chew and enjoy any foods you like
• Helping to keep the jawbone from shrinking because of bone loss
• Keeping adjacent teeth in place
• Offering, in most instances, lifetime support

We want you to smile with confidence, whether by treating your gum disease, assisting in cosmetic procedures or replacing missing teeth.

If you’re ready to improve your smile, contact us today to see how we can help you either regain oral health with gum disease treatments or replace teeth to create a healthy new smile.