respublica

Shopping for dental items

This is a good article from Washingtonian Magazine in which a reporter went shopping in a CVS dental product aisle with an actual dentist. The idea was to learn what is worth buying and what isn't. This is good to know since the dental product aisles in every store are crammed with more varieties of tooth pastes, mouth washes, floss and brushes than we can take in.

This was interesting to me since I've dealt with an extracted tooth and 6 months of work on the gap left behind. All kinds of products were advised including a stronger Crest mouthwash to help with the exposed gum. This stuff burns. Also softer brushes and on and on. This dentist in the article recommends a floss that is woven because it is more able to grab more plaque and small food bits. He doesn't like Glide (which we have always used) because it is too smooth which makes easy to use, but it misses what it's supposed to pick up.

There is lots more info in this story link and worth a look.

Last tooth visit

This morning I went over to Collinsville to have the final crown put in where a tooth was extracted back in March. This has been a long slug, not painful, but just weird to have to be careful about what I ate and how I chewed. Almost 6 months of eating from one side of my mouth. The temporary metal seat that was put into the bum a few weeks ago, came out and a permanent seat was screwed in by way of what I believe was a tiny Allen wrench. Then the cap or crown was put over and into that and looks like a normal tooth.

But, my heart sank when the oral surgeon told me to eat only soft foods for 24 hours so that the cement holding the new tooth things would harden well. I went through the soft foods for two weeks when the tooth was taken out and all I can remember is how hungry I was back then. Today I was told to stick to mashed potatoes and scrambled eggs and anything else soft like that. I spoke up and said, "Kruta Bakery donuts are soft, are they ok?" He sort of laughed and said, "Kruta's has the softest donuts I've ever eaten, so yes."

Kruta's for the win again. And, luckily for me, Kruta's was only half a block away from the dental office.

Another trip to the dentist

This has been a year of new beginnings medically speaking. First, our long time dentist retired and sold his practice to a dental medical group. Then a week ago when I went in to see about getting a new pair of glasses I learned our long time eye doctor had retired and sold his practice to a eye "group" and can't get new glasses without another exam.  We are pretty much losing our familiar family doctors for any medical type and landing in a "group".

Today I have to go to the dental group again, something I've been doing every month since early February. At first it was a root canal that turned out to not be completed because the tooth was fractured. So I was sent back to my long time dentist who I found had left and a medical dental group was manning the office. I had to have a tooth extraction which happened in early spring and the follow up has gone on forever. Today, supposedly, the tooth will begin to be crowned.

What gives me some uneasiness about all the dental work and follow-ups is their practice of having to have a full head x-ray each time. This is where you bite down on a piece of the equipment and a helmet type machine covers the head. It sends a camera or something in a circle around the head. I have had one of these every month since February and I am not at all sure how safe this is. If it was benign, the tech person doing the filming would not head out the door and around a wall before she turned the machine on.

But, it's a new day in medicine for sure.

 

 

More food warnings

I guess we may as well just stock up on beans and other vegetables because now some new study has found that white meat chicken is just as bad for your cholesterol as red meat. Saturated fats increase the concentration of LDL, or "bad" cholesterol, in your bloodstream and if this harmful waxy substance builds up in your arteries, the result could be a heart attack or stroke. Saturated fats, most of which come from animal sources, include butter, beef fat and poultry skin.

Now they have included chicken white meat as one of the villains.

It never ends. Plant proteins are great with the healthiest impact on blood cholesterol. No mention of fish, but that's probably on the horizon.

Stressed? Eat Blueberries

Another study. Research at the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies found 1 cup of blueberries a day helps fight stress and reduces anxiety as well as many anti-anxiety medications and without the annoying side effects. Why? Blueberries contain high levels of the antioxidant ellagic acid and soothes the brain like valium.

It doesn't matter whether the blueberries are fresh or frozen.

Rinse 3-4 times daily for 7 days

 It's probably boring to have to read about someone else's dental or other medical issue, but with this recent tooth extraction and implant, I have found too many variations on how to deal with the aftermath. Each bit of advice is slightly different from another expert.

Here is the thing. The list of things to do or not do from our oral surgeon isn't really explanatory. Take what I'm supposed to do beginning later today. Rinse the mouth with salt water 3-4 times daily for 7 days. It has long been known that salt water mouth rinses kill mouth bacteria and also help ease swelling and inflammation after tooth extraction.

Ok. But I'm an obsessive type and maybe slightly rigid and I need to know more. How much salt in how much water? Will Kosher salt be ok or do I have to run out and get the other table salt? I decided to do a search on this salt rinse thing.

One doctor's site goes along with our dentist, 3-4 times a day. But a couple of other sites warn that doing this too frequently can damage the tooth enamel and cause tooth decay. So do I meet in the middle and go for 2 times a day? Maybe.

I did get a kick out of this repository advice: Swish the salt water in your mouth for around thirty seconds and then spit it into the sink or our repository of choice.

My biggest frustration with this tooth extraction is how long the healing process will take-up to 4 months or more and the lack of any real information on what I can eat or drink and when. At the moment, 48 hours after the extraction all I want to do is eat something besides a bit of ice cream or soft microwave macaroni. When I can I have cracker? Or coffee or a glass of wine. I'd give anything for some triscuits and cream cheese tonight. Soft foods are so boring and mostly tasteless. I need some benign crunch.

The information of all of this is varied and somewhat vague. If nothing else I'd like to know the why's of all this. And, I'd like to not have to just sit around. When can I get out and work the gardens?

I wish I had my old tooth back

As I wrote the other day, I had a tooth extraction and titanium implant put into the vacated gum areayesterday. This tooth is on the upper left, a couple teeth in from the front. It's an eating helper tooth.

The hardest part is how many food/drinks etc are not allowed for quite a long time. And, what is allowed is soft food (after a couple of days) and liquids but not alcohol liquids like wine or beer, and not hot or very cold liquids. Food particles cannot find their way into the vacated area for some time and that time could be weeks or next week. The vacated area has to form a blood clot which can be torn out by certain foods or alcohol which is a blood thinner. Hot temperature food or spicy seasoned soft food has the same issue. Forget the coffee.

Frankly this goes on for sometime and even though this is only 24 hours after, I am really hungry in a way I haven't ever been before. No straws or any sucking motion like using a straw is allowed. Dangerous for the clot. But I noticed last night even eating ice cream uses a mouth motion similar to sucking on a straw. I'm pretty paranoid right now about eating and also doing anything physical because physical exertion is also forbidden.

If you are even given an option to have tooth extracted, take a good long time to think it over. And if you do it, make sure you eat and eat and eat the days before you go in to have it done.

 

Good-bye tooth

I wish there was a tooth fairy, at least the tooth fairy who came to my bedroom in the dark of night when I was a kid and left a quarter. Today I have to have a tooth extracted after having had several dental appointments which tried one thing after another including root canal. But in the end the tooth was fractured and has to come out. I'm headed to the 3rd dental professional to see there is an end in sight after being pulled. What this involves must be kind of dramatic considering the 3 prescriptions I was told to get filled before today. An antibiotic, an extra strength Ibuprofen-800 MG when normal motrin is 200- and an even stronger pain tablet which had the pharmacist giving me some advice on that one. Be careful with this one, it's very strong. Make sure you take this with food and stay home.

So I am already planning to ignore that pain med. If an 800mg of Ibuprofen won't ease the pain, than I'll suffer it. Which just nags at me that this is going to be an ugly procedure and one I'd like to avoid. It looks like this is only part one of a tooth extraction, more to come with implants. And little eating most things in between.  I don't have any pain, never have had with this tooth and would gladly live with the way it is now.

A kissing bug

There are always news scares about the possibility of something or other which could make us sick. Today it's a warning about a blood-sucking kissing bug which, according to the lead in a KMOV story, "causes Chagas Disease which can have serious cardiac and gastrointestinal complications."

Now, read the actual story.

"A bloodsucking "kissing bug" bit a Delaware girl on the face last summer while she was watching television. When the girl was bitten, her family contacted the Delaware Division of Public Health and the Delaware Department of Agriculture for help in identifying the creature. They were concerned about possible disease transmission from the insect.

The girl who was bitten had no ill effects, although the bug's presence was confirmed in Delaware at the time, there is no current evidence of Trypanosoma cruzi in the state.

Plus, Although the risk of Trypanosoma cruzi transmitted by kissing bugs is minimal, parasite transmission could increase because of climate change, according to a paper in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. The old "blame it on Climate Change" meme.

So an alarm headline to get us to click on the story.

The adult coloring fad

For the past few years many adults have taken to coloring to relieve stress or just enjoy some free time. These coloring pages are everywhere and the images to color are so small and intricate that is makes my eyes grow dim. Rather than relieve stress, I'm afraid I'd loses my mind trying to complete one. So here is how I would go about coloring these things.