How Can Dental Fillings Save Your Teeth?

You receive the dreaded news that you have been negligent with your dental hygiene and absolute cavities in your teeth during your visit to the dentist for a routine checkup. You wonder how the cavities managed to develop when you maintained proper oral hygiene as recommended by your dentist. Unfortunately, you overlook the dentist’s advice to have a hole filled right away, thinking it’s a minor matter you can deal with when it creates any problem.

Overlooking the dentist’s advice is a mistake you will regret throughout your life because you ignore a professional’s recommendations to have your tooth filled to save it. Instead, you adopt a strategy like many others, perhaps thinking the cavity will disappear by itself, which it doesn’t. On the contrary, your mouth bacteria begin working harder to burrow into your tooth until they reach the dental pulp and beyond.

Do you know the consequences of allowing your mouth bacteria to reach the dental pulp? You become prone to the fearsome root canal treatment needing more than just fillings. Even after undergoing the expensive and painful root canal therapy, you must restore the treated tooth with a dental crown costing thousands instead of hundreds. Under the circumstances, isn’t it beneficial for you to have your tooth filled soon after the cavity is detected? Hearing about the consequences of leaving the tooth untreated will undoubtedly alarm you and send you to dental fillings in Salem, MA, seeking fillers for the tooth.

How Do Dental Fillings Benefit You?

When you have a cavity in your tooth, it indicates that although you may have excellent oral hygiene regimens, you perhaps missed flossing as diligently as recommended by your dentist. The leftover plaque in your mouth deposits acids over your teeth that erode your tooth enamel. You may also have overlooked timely dental appointments for cleanings and exams, allowing the cavity to progress unhindered.

When bacteria in your mouth create cavities in your tooth, you develop permanent damage best restored with dental fillings. Your teeth have no mechanism to heal by themselves or hinder the progress of the bacteria. Left untreated, the cavity expands over time until the microorganisms infect the dental pulp. Getting a tooth filled in time prevents the advancement of the bacteria to inhibit the expansion of the hole. The timely treatment you receive ensures the filling saves you from unnecessary pain and considerable expenditure seeking treatments from emergency dentists and preventing tooth extraction, which becomes necessary eventually.

Dental fillings help preserve your tooth by hindering the progress of the cavity by stopping it in its tracks.

What Kind of Dental Fillings Can You Get?

The dental fillers you get in your tooth will depend on the size and location of the cavity, the extent of the damage, your budget, and the dentist’s expertise.

Various filling materials help make dental fillers. Some varieties of dental fillers include gold, silver amalgam, composite resin, ceramic, and glass ionomer. The materials mentioned are all suitable for filling cavities but differ in price and appearance and can confuse you into making the wrong choice of filler for the hole in your mouth.

If you have a cavity in the molars, you benefit by getting silver amalgam or gold fillings if you can afford them and schedule multiple appointments with your dentist when having them. Silver amalgam fillings don’t have an appealing appearance but are durable and last for nearly 10 to 15 years with proper dental hygiene. Gold is also durable but comes at an exorbitant cost requiring at least two appointments with your dentist. Therefore you can decide between silver amalgam and gold for your molars.

If you select the unsightly silver fillings, cavities on your anterior teeth impact your appearance. In such cases, your smile benefits by having a tooth filling made from composite resin or ceramic. Composite resin fillings have a tooth-colored appearance and look appealing on the front teeth. Unfortunately, they aren’t as durable as silver amalgam or gold and require replacements every five to seven years even after maintaining excellent dental hygiene. If you decide to choose ceramic fillings for your front teeth, the cost of the fillers is exorbitant, and the fillings require replacements in some time because no dental filler is permanent.

Dental fillings prevent the progress of the bacteria in your tooth to create additional damages. However, when you get the dental fillers from Mass Bay Dental immediately after receiving information about a cavity, you risk the health of your dental and overall health merely because you think holes are minor.