Do dentists know what they're doing?

Wow this hits hard

Massive amount of pseudoscience in the comments here. There is science to everything they do. There also is variance in reliability and honesty which is omnipresent in our culture. There are specific criteria and cutoffs for basically every diagnosable point and condition in the mouth. You just need to find someone you can trust.

A good test of a dentist is whether they’ve heard of silver diamine fluoride.

All my life I've been cavity prone. A few years ago I started swishing with salt 2x a day. Once in the morning, once at night. Also retrained myself to nose breathe when sleeping.

No new cavities in 4+ years.

The salt is extremely easy. Just take a like 1/4 of a teaspoon of salt crystals, swish gently in your mouth for about 30 seconds or so.

Salt has been well documented to kill cavity-causing bacteria: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7793524/

Just my 2 cents: never pay for any "teeth grinding protection" plaques. I have severe bruxism, and when I was a teenager was taken by my parents to a dentist that made one for me. It sucks, and is a waste of money. Just buy a good boxing mouth guard, silicon based ones are the best, and use it. No need to complicate things, what destroys your teeth is the friction between the upper teeh and the lower ones. Just put a softer barrier between them, and voila. The best teeth protection money can buy for 10 dollars.

This hits close to home.

As a kid, my milk teeth often had cavities. The dentist didn't apply anesthesia when drilling them, which wasn't fun, but wasn't all too horrible.

When I got my first cavity in my adult teeth, the dentist wanted to drill it, again without anesthesia because "The needle to apply anesthesia hurts worse than the drilling and also you're a man, right? Only women need anesthesia". It hurt so much that it left me traumatised.

I avoided going to the dentist for many years, until my parents forced me to.

Cut to ten years ago, my dentist told me my wisdom tooth was growing problematically, so she'd extract it. My wisdom tooth was so close against the molar beside it that I couldn't properly brush there, so I had a pretty bad cavity there. She drilled it, at least she used anesthesia this time.

Few years later, I started getting this horrible toothache. Some of the worst pain I've ever felt, like someone was sticking a white-hot knife into my jaw. Apparently that molar was abscessed. Went to an emergency dentist that wanted to do a root canal, but I got a panic attack before he even started.

Eventually, the pain went away. I still got a root canal, kept calm by some Diazepam.

This year, I visited the dentist again. My jaw has been feeling kind of weird for a year or two, but it never hurt too much, so I never looked into it. The dentist told me I have a pretty bad infection in my jaw, and my bone has visibly deteriorated.

I've had three root canal treatments on the same molar this year alone. All done while being kept chill by Xanax. The problem still hasn't been solved. My jaw still feels weird and uncomfortable.

I will see the dentist again in a few months. At that point, we'll see whether the bone has recovered. If not, they just might need to extract it.

Fuck dentists, man.

Is it safe?

Dentistry is closer to social science than it is to regular medicine. Placebo and maintenance carry the field.

Most dentists aren't scammers.

Dentistry is just hard.

Dentists always show up in weird statistics lists. Most frequent profession among Scientologists. The leading profession among adult suicide victims. I have always questioned whether they are the best medical professionals. This article helps to answer that question.

Yes, money.

Never let them drill the sides of your teeth. They may tell you they can put in a filling, but they're lying. They're hoping that you will be back in 6 weeks to get the crown... which they know that insurance won't pay for, so you're reluctant to get it right away.

The "soft spots" they found aren't cavities. They're lying.

Looking at the title, I guessed what this was about.

Finding a decent dentist is fucking hard. I travel 40 minutes to my dentist because he's solid and I don't want to switch if I don't have to.

You want someone who is going to identify problems and correct them, but not try and make everything a problem. Basically, look at where they spend their money and listen to what they recommend.

You don't want a dirty office, but you also don't need crown molding and gold leaf to fill a cavity.

I had a wisdom tooth issue and went to a dentist. He extracted it, said I had a number of cavities, etc. Never scheduled a follow up with him. Went to a different dentist, he said I had considerable plaque, but couldn't really tell on the cavities until he cleaned that up. So I did that and then he said I only had one or two.

They recommended I get a Sonicare. While they sold them, they also said I could get them anywhere, but to make sure I get one as it would help with plaque.

My current dentist had to extract one of my teeth because my wisdom tooth cracked it. He had also wanted to remove the wisdom tooth because the gap could be problematic, but after extracting the cracked tooth, he had to tap out. He told me that my roots are apparently the longest he's ever seen. So unless an actual problem develops, he was going to leave the wisdom tooth. And if I ever need another extraction, he was going to refer me to a surgeon. Other than that, it's just been cleanings and checkups.

So yeah, you really need to vet your dentist. If a dentist ever tells you you have multiple cavities, get a second opinion. Drilling a hole in a tooth and filling it with epoxy is quick and nets them a couple hundred per hole.

“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.”

"Dentists" means very different professions around the world.

In Europe they're more like a health professional, concerned mostly with functionality and health.

In the U.S. and Canada they're sellers of "dental procedures" that can include things that European dentists might find horrendous: tooth whitening, dental cosmetic implants, etc.

Another profession and service distorted by the insurance economy.

Can't go in there without them trying to tell me to put a chunk of plastic in my mouth to stop the grinding. (As described in TFA).

Described as a diagnostic by them, a problem we discovered in you, mr porcupine... But strangely recommended to every other single person I've talked to. Very scientific.

Paid for by insurance of course.

I did this once years ago and the mouth guard was both annoying and disgusting. Never again.

Everything is priced exactly the maximum that your insurance provider will pay.

When I was (and am) contracting and didn't have insurance anymore... the plastic-pushing stopped, remarkably.

Regular cleaning and fillings are important. But so much of their business seems to have degraded into orthotics for the face.

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