You ever wondered what would happen if you don’t take care of your oral health? Except if you are one of those lucky ones who are fortunate enough to enjoy a good oral health with minimal effort, you might get sick and unhappy. Please read on what Dr Ionescu of Dentistry by Design, a dentist in Elk Grove CA has to say:

Genetics and lifestyle play an important role in oral health as it plays in overall health as well. My grandfather had all his teeth in his mid-eighties and I am not sure he visited the dentist many times. But at the time he was enjoying a fresh, healthy, chemical free and mostly sugar free diet, an active life in a clean environment and a content life, consequently he had great immunity. Not the case anymore for numerous people. Sugar is hidden in almost every food you can imagine and some you never thought about. Sugar is not good for your teeth and for your body, as you already know. There are a few actions one can take to protect himself from getting ill so his or her immunity will not be a challenge. Proper hygiene, will prevent the pathogens (that are all over the place) to attack our body, multiply and infect us. Thus, it is so important to stay clean. Washing your hands often, (mandatory before meals and after using the bathroom), disinfecting your mouth with a 3% Hydrogen Peroxide solution every evening, is the minimum one can do. Also, improve your eating habits, eat enough vitamins and nutrients (you can find them in whole foods like fruits and vegetables), avoid sugar in all its forms (read food labels), manage stress, get enough sleep, quit smoking, drink in moderation, live an active life.

Now, taking all these in consideration, I have to say that oral health plays a major role in your overall health. Think about it, your mouth is an entry portal. Viruses and bacteria go in your mouth via different channels (eating with dirty hands, consuming an infected food item). Infections can start in your mouth and spread to your whole body. Unhealthy gums (we call it periodontal disease) are a bucket full of bad bugs ready to spill. No wonder you get some nasty health issues like high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, respiratory infections and more that seems to not heal well in spite of taking a lot of medication. The reason is you did not eliminate your source of infection first, that is in your mouth. You have to eradicate the flow of germs primarily than focus on restoring the problems they created throughout the body. And that is not all! Until I forget, it is mandatory to replace your toothbrush every 3 to 6 months on a regular basis and if you get sick with any respiratory disease immediately after you feel better. You don’t want the nasty bugs to re-enter your system via that contaminated toothbrush. There are other issues an unhealthy mouth creates. Think about the loss of sleep due to tooth ache, missing school or work and increased costs related to dental care due to aggravating problems that might occur if you wait too long to fix them (instead of a small or moderate therapy you might need a root canal and a crown; instead of a deep professional cleaning you might need gum surgery). Long story short, your poor oral health can wreak havoc to your whole-body health. Visit your dentist regularly, make preventive visits, to see your dentist and your hygienist, a priority, it’s safer and cheaper than visiting your dental office only on a need basis. Make sure your mouth is free of disease, (gums and teeth); eat healthy, be active and be thankful for what you have. You might end up as my grandfather, with all teeth, and a happy camper in his mid-eighties.

Yours in good Dental Health,

Dr. Horia Ionescu

That time of the year again, beautiful, warmer weather, blossoming trees, green grass, and…Allergies

Allergy season and dental symptoms. Really!?

Allergies have really unpleasant symptoms: red, itchy and watery eyes and the endless sneezing and congestion. Well, sometimes may impact your oral health! Here are some dental symptoms to watch for when seasonal allergies strike.

Tooth Pain

Allergies might give you congested sinuses. Sinus pressure in the maxillary can sometimes cause the upper molars to ache.  Tooth pain should go away when you are treating your allergies. However, if the pain persists, make an appointment with your dentist. Just to make sure the aching teeth aren’t the result of tooth decay.

Bad Breath

All that mucus your body is creating can also be bad news for your breath. When you’re congested, mucus from the sinuses leaks into the back of the throat–we call this “post-nasal drip.” Not only can post-nasal drip lead to a sore throat, it can also be the cause of persistent bad breath.

Dry Mouth

Antihistamines are often used to keep your allergies under control. They are helpful but they can often lead to an unpleasant side effect: dry mouth. Saliva is our number one protection against cavity-causing bacteria, so when your mouth is dry, you have a higher risk of developing tooth decay.

Protect Your Mouth This Spring

We, at Dentistry by Design of Elk Grove, CA want your mouth to stay healthy, even during allergy season. Here are some helpful tips from Dr. Ionescu to help you protect your mouth this spring:

• Exercise good oral hygiene. Brush after meals, and floss on a daily basis!
• Drink plenty of water to compensate for dry mouth.
• Try rinsing with salt water to help with congestion. Dissolve half a teaspoon of salt in a full glass of warm water and gargle for a few seconds before spitting it out.

Don’t Let Allergies Get the Best of You

Spring can be difficult for some of our patients because of allergies. Doctor Ionescu and our team of dental professionals at Dentistry by Design are here to help. Call us if you need anything! We’re here to get you through allergy season with a smile on your face.

April Is Oral Cancer Awareness Month – 2022

Check your mouth

Oral cancer kills! Avoid this disease by learning to recognize early symptoms, talk to your dentist about any suspicions and have your dentist perform an oral cancer exam twice a year. Caught early, everything from treatments to final outcome, are reduced in severity.

The wise thing to do is to engage in a routine self-exam, easily done in about 5-10 minutes once a month. What you need:

• A mirror – use a handheld mirror that lets you to get the closest look, clearly inside your mouth.
• A light source – illumination is critical to be able to see any subtle changes in your mouth.
• Piece of gauze –to effectively examine the tongue; top, both sides and underneath. A small package of 2X2 gauze is available at any drug store.

Start by looking at yourself in the mirror. Both sides of your face and neck should look relatively symmetrical. If you are not, and an area is swollen and it stays that way, perhaps you have a reason to seek out a professional opinion.

Examining your neck. You’ll want to look and feel your neck, under your jawline, and even in the hollow above your collarbone. You’ll want to look and feel both sides of your neck, under the jawline, along the muscle that runs down each side of your neck, then ending with feeling the hollow above your collarbone.

There are many lymph nodes in these areas that give us a lot of information about our health. They tell us about the presence of an infection in our body, and also can be related to cancer. Most often they are related to an infection and this causes swelling and tenderness. But lymph nodes that swell and enlarge, are not tender to the touch and feel firm and fixated in place are a red flag. In general, painful means infection, not cancer (which if it does not go away still needs to be evaluated), swollen and not painful nodes, a warning sign that needs to be evaluated by a professional.

Using your fingertips, use a circular motion or rolling stroke to check the lymph nodes from the corner of your jaw all the way forward to under your chin. You likely will feel nothing, and that is good. It is the hard, painless, swollen ones we are concerned with. They are usually about the size and shape of a small almond.

Next with your fingertips on the inside of the muscle that runs down each side of your neck, roll your fingertips from under the jaw down to your collarbone. Turn your head one way then the other to feel the area occupied by the deeper nodes along this muscle. It is not unusual to feel a number of different lymph nodes in this area. Healthy ones are soft and move about easily when you push against them. Next check the lymph nodes above your collarbone. To do this, you will want to raise your shoulders and round them forward. This allows you to feel inside the hollow area above your collarbone.

What am I looking for?

There are 100’s of lymph nodes in your neck. From time to time, they may enlarge. This is often related to an infection, a cold, or a sore throat for example. If infection related, they will often be tender/sore, moveable, and will feel like a pea or blueberry. In contrast, if you find a hard lump like a small stone, first compare it to the other side. If it feels different from the other side, if it doesn’t move around, if it is not tender/sore, and persists for more than two weeks, have it checked by a dental or medical professional.

Now it’s time to look inside your mouth.

The examination of your mouth should include your lips, your gums, the inside of your cheeks, your tongue, the floor of your mouth, the roof of your mouth and back of the throat including your tonsils. It is best to follow a system each month when checking your mouth so you don’t overlook an area as you will have a routine. Here’s what you’ll need; a tongue depressor, light source, mirror, and a piece of gauze. We recommend the lit tongue depressor from Throat Scope because it combines full lighting to the area while working as a tongue depressor to move your tongue around. Look for any unusual sore, thickened area or lumps on your lips, discoloration, ulceration, sore or grows on your gum, tissue of a different surface texture, inside your cheeks and around your tongue including under your tongue (With a piece of gauze get a good hold on your tongue, pull it forward and move to the right and then to the left). Examine the floor of your mouth for discolorations or ulcerations. Examine the roof of your mouth to also be free from any sores or ulcerations.

Your job is to find things, it is the job of a professional to determine that what you discover, which has met the criteria of persisting for more than 2-3 weeks is dangerous or not. Out of hundreds of things that you may come across in your mouth, we cannot teach you enough to decide that something is cancer or not. The professional community itself is more than aware that from a visual exam, many times even they cannot with certainty definitively say what something is. This means that if they, like you, find it suspect, they will take a small piece of it (biopsy), and send it to an oral pathologist who will examine it under a microscope, and that person will come up with a gold standard, black and white answer as to what it is.

Catching a change early, and referring yourself to a professional to have them decide it needs to be removed, treated, or monitored, or not. Finding a precancer will likely save your life. Finding the very earliest stage of something that is already a cancer, will mean that your treatment to remove it and have it no longer part of your life, will be a much less invasive and difficult process, accomplished with a high degree of success and ultimately long-term survival.

Doctor Ionescu, here at Dentistry by Design performs thorough oral cancer exams every six months as part of our Professional Cleaning appointment. Oral cancer is a serious disease that can affect all parts of the mouth. We are taking it very seriously! Are you going to do the same?

Next Time You scorch Your Mouth on hot food…

You’ve probably burned your mouth before on pizza, coffee, soup, and other sizzling hot foods. Soon afterward, you may have noticed that the roof of your mouth, and maybe your tongue, is very tender. In some cases, you may even get blisters! Regrettably, your mouth will probably hurt for a few days. However, there are a few things you can do to relieve the pain and irritation.

How To Soothe Your Mouth and Help It Heal?

1. Rub on or sucking on ice can relieve the stinging. Rinsing with cold water or eating ice cream are other options.
2. Drinking milk can coat the burnt area.
3. An over-the-counter pain reliever can help, if the pain is really disrupting.
4. Avoid sour, crusty, and other burning foods, or even very salty and piquant dressings. This will stop the scorch from getting irritated further.
5. Squeezing Vitamin E from a capsule over the wound can speed up healing. It will restore new tissue and heal the wound.
6. Maintain good oral hygiene while your mouth is burnt, keeping it as hygienic as possible to encourage healing and stop further infection. Warm saline rinses can also be helpful.
7. Resist touching the burned area. This may be hard, but by touching the affected area, the lesion may become irritated further.

If It’s Not Feeling Better In A Few Days, Call Us

Hot food burns tend to heal within three to seven days. If discomfort and blistering continue beyond a week, please call us! In the meantime, have fun enjoying that delicious, cheesy pizza—that is, once it’s cool!