We’re expanding our Orthodontic Clinic in the new year, and have created some special offers to get started with.

The offers are outlined over here

The Invisalign and Inman Aligners have been extremely popular, for good reason as they do seem to tick all the boxes for people looking to improve their smile.

Please feel free to book and in with us and see which might be the best treatment for you, and in the mean time we wish you a great Christmas and a Happy New Year

Thanks to a recent programme featuring new cosmetic dentistry techniques and ‘instant’ veneers, our phone rang off the hook all day. Who’d have thought the show would have that much influence!

You’ve probably heard of porcelain veneers, they’ve been around for quite some time.  They’re the reason so many celebrities have perfect teeth and bright, white smiles.  Simon Cowell, Miley Cyrus, 50 Cent, Katie Price and Hilary Duff are all rumoured to have got themselves a set of veneers – and at a celebrity price.  A full set of porcelain veneers can cost thousands, and yes, we do still fit these when the occasion demands it.

However, ‘instant’ or ‘composite’ veneers, at a fraction of the cost, put a fantastic smile within the reach of the rest of us, which I guess is why Jeremy Kyle’s show provoked such as response.  But then, a dazzling smile, a more confident and youthful look – it’s a service that was always going to be popular, if only people knew it existed!

The flexibility of this new material does mean that Instant, or Immediate Veneers are the modern answer to crooked teeth, staining or gaps between teeth.  They are fitted quickly and easily over your existing teeth in just one visit to the surgery, and there’s no need for your own teeth to be filed down (as with porcelain veneers) so it’s pain-free too.  Yes, really.

If you think that sounds too good to be true – we thought that too, but there really isn’t a downside to this. Instant veneers do look great, they are long lasting, and easily repaired if chipped. The cost is just £350 per tooth, which is about half the price of the porcelain method.

When choosing instant veneers our main piece of advice is to find an experienced composite dentist. I know, we would say that, but not all dentists follow the same career path.

It is different, because whereas porcelain veneers are made in a lab by a technician, instant veneers are shaped by the dentist in the surgery so your dentist needs to have a good eye and a little artistic flair!

“Keep smiling – it makes people wonder what you’ve been up to.” Author unknown.

Before alignment, bleaching and bonding

After alignment, bleaching and bonding

Alignment Bleaching and Bonding vs Wall to wall teeth veneers

Here in Essex, Cosmetic dentistry is evolving. A decade ago when decent porcelain veneers came along cosmetic dentists were very keen on placing lots of veneers – in 2010 there are still a lot of veneers being placed by cosmetic dentists, but here at Winning Smile we believe that the Age of the Veneer is on the wane.

A colleague of mine Dr Tif Qureshi (www.dentalelegance.co.uk) recently addressed the profession with his ‘evolved’ concept of Cosmetic Dentistry – updated to reflect the progress in dental knowledge and treatments within the profession and changing attitudes among our patients. Tif brought the Inman Aligner to the UK from the States and combines this brilliant little brace with 2 other treatments to produce significant dental transformation without the need to grind away good teeth as is the case with veneers.

Tif’s concept is called ABB: ‘Alignment, Bleaching and Bonding’

Alignment

Using the inman aligner the front teeth can be lined up orthodontically in as little as 10 weeks

Bleaching

The cosmetic dentist’s best friend – professional teeth whitening to noticeably ‘lift’ the colour of all the teeth

Bonding

The addition of cosmetic filling material (like our Italian HFO system) where necessary to add the finishing touches.

Here at Winning Smiles we have been using the bleaching and bonding techniques for years and Michael Fennell one of our orthodontists has been doing the straightening. We are no strangers to these ideas. But Tif has put a label on it for us, and we think people will be hearing of this costmetic dental technique a lot more.

As always my regular readers will notice that I like to bullet point the pros and cons

ABB Advantages over Teeth Veneers

• No grinding off of the front surfaces of the teeth
• No porcelain veneers that can fracture easily and begin to lose their looks after a few years – ABB simply enhances your own teeth
• Cost – ABB costs around £2000 at Winning Smiles, 6-8 veneers cost £3600-£4800!
• ABB is one hit: veneers usually need to be replaced every 10 years or so (think of the cost implication of that)
• ABB is kind to the teeth – occasionally a veneered tooth will need a root filling because the nerve reacts badly to the grinding process

Disadvantages of ABB vs Veneers

• Very badly discoloured teeth or teeth with lots of visible fillings may be better treated with crowns or veneers
• Teeth that have always been the wrong shape (eg too small, or misshaped) usually benefit from veneers/crowns despite the drawback
• ABB will take on average 12 weeks – veneers can be done in 2-4 weeks
  Jodie Marsh lookalikes need porcelain veneers for that level of whiteness

If you look at the tooth to the left of the one with the grotty ‘white’ filling you may be surprised to know that 15 mins previous to this photo it looked exactly like the grotty one. We are replacing this chap’s ugly white fillings with nice shiny new ones that look their age (ie well into the 21st century)…

People often ask if we enjoy dentistry. But who wouldn’t like being able to take out that grotty old filling and replace it with a nice shiny new one. We can get this invisible effect using our beautiful italian white filling materials, and a little bit of technique to go with it!!

Ok here’s the rub:

Grotty white filling in the middle of the picture
Estimated cost £20
Estimated time involved 5 mins
No guarantees
Replace every 2 years?

Shiny new Italian composite filling on the left
Time involved 15 mins
Cost £70
Cost of filling material: at least double that of the cheap stuff
5 year guarantee.

Quality dentistry costs less over time and makes you feel good.

Winning Smiles spot the crown competition take 2:
Clue: there is one crown in this picture, can you tell which one?

Spot the crown

Some of the simplest jobs are the most satisfying.

This chap said he had been hiding his smile for years. His main issue was the general yellowness of his teeth and an old filling in the upper central incisor.

We carried out some (minor) bleaching and replaced that old filling with a new one using Enamel Plus HFO material with Dr Lorenzo Vanini’s technique – see our best white fillings blog article.

Not sure if these pictures do it justice (it may depend on your computer settings). The real-life difference was more remarkable, but I’m sure you can see the difference anyway.

Here at Winning Smiles we’ve been closing gaps between teeth for years, using our Italian composite-filling system (the same white filling system we use for tooth decay) – see our best white fillings blog article.

The beauty of using ‘Cosmetic bonding’ with a top class tooth-coloured filling system (like Enamel Plus) is that:

• the teeth don’t need to be cut or ground down;
• it’s over and done with in one visit (no waiting for crowns or veneers to come back from the lab);
• it’s painless, really, I don’t even use anaesthetic for this technique!

So what are the drawbacks?

Nothing too serious really, I recommend having them polished once or twice a year to maintain their ‘lustre’ and I usually do the polishing during routine 6 month examination appointments (at no extra charge).

They can get chipped/broken, but so can veneers, the difference is that these bonded build-ups can be repaired seamlessly (chipped veneers have to be replaced completely).

And all for around £400. Something worth talking about?  In fact, it’s such a popular treatment I don’t know why I haven’t mentioned it before!

Here’s an example of the before and after pictures:

There are times when the teeth are discoloured from within rather than from run of the mill red wine and coffee stains on the outside. It usually involves one or two front teeth (upper or lower) that have been root-filled in the past and have become severely discoloured (brown, yellow or orange).

When these badly discoloured teeth are combined with a generalised yellow appearance of the other teeth (from years of staining) this makes for the hand-over-mouth, or lip over teeth, smile that so many patients seem to put up with.

Standard dental bleaching involves either using trays at home or a special light source used in the dental chair (see my teeth whitening blog for views on which works best). However it is also possible to bleach the inside of these very dark (root-filled) teeth, and at Winning Smiles we use a technique that combines both bleaching the outside of all the teeth and bleaching the inside of those extra-orange ones. The results are quite spectacular and often avoids the need for drilling and crowning these individual problem-teeth.

In the photo, two of these front teeth were ‘off-the-scale’ orange, the rest were just a creamy shade of yellow from normal staining. The patient had 10 days to go before his dream wedding in the caribbean. This is how he looked after a week of Inside-Out-Bleaching. Can you tell which ones used to be orange?

If you look really closely, two of the teeth are whiter than the others – yep, you guessed it, those are the ones that were orange a week ago!

It reminded me that I should put ‘something on the website’ about this, as we’re really not here to judge anyone and people should not feel the need to be embarrassed (even if it is human nature).

You see, its only when people really need us that we get to make the most difference.

And if its not too selfish of us, we’d be delighted to see you.

Readers are invited to guess which one is the filling, and which one is the crown.

I would take the opportunity to mention that our white fillings are always guaranteed to stay in.