A Picture is Truly Worth a Thousand Words

Looking at the following three photos it is easy to say which smile looks the most esthetic.
Most people would say the top photo.  Why?

(First Picture)
This mouth looks good for a reason. The teeth are in line which means they not only look nice but function well.  By distribute the force of chewing across the mouth the teeth protect each instead of damaging each other during chewing.

(Second Picture)
In this mouth the teeth are crowded and because of the crowding the teeth function in a way that wears the teeth uneven. Also due to acid re flux her teeth have worn almost completely through the enamel.  So her teeth are going bad due to poor position and her acid re-flux despite her excellent brushing and flossing.

(Third Picture)

Now this is not uncommon to see.  Most of the time when I see a patient like this they say they had small chip on their tooth while playing sports when they were young.  However all there teeth have chips and over half of the tooth has been worn away.  This is mainly due to 2 things. First the position of the teeth biting on the edges and second teeth grinding.  

It is common for people to think that if they brush, floss and avoid candy all will go well.  While that definitely helps poor tooth position and anything acidic in mouth will still result in damage leading to early tooth loss. More information can be fond at leathamdental.com/occlusal-disease.

Dr. Paul Leatham DMD

P.S. I would like to thank the patients who allow us to use their photos so we can educate others.

Our New Web Site

We have recently launched a new web site leathamdental.com We are hoping this will help us to improve new patient experience for all of our new and existing patients.  We are still putting a few things together.  We don't have everyone's photos up yet, but we will soon.

Some of the exciting new features will a patient login.  This will offer some new services for our patients once they create a login.  If you are interested you can ask any of our team about starting an account in January 2015.

If you go to Meet Dr Paul Leatham on the web site there is now more information about me as a dentist.  Including the continuation education courses I have been attending. As well as some of my involvement in the community.

A cool feature is at the bottom of each page is a link to the organizations I participate in.  If you click on the logos at the bottom for each page it will take you to the webs sites for the American Dental Association (ADA), the Academy of General Dentistry (AGD) and Spear Education (SPEAR), This will also work for the Facebook, Twitter and Google plus logos, they will link you to our our social media sites.

We are all excited about the web site and look forward to continuing to provide better access to our office.

Dr. Paul Leatham DMD