Should I get a dental crown?
This post is a continuation of a customer asking about damage to a crown due to jaw clenching. To understand teeth grinding and jaw clenching, click on the link to open a new window.
Crowns are caps for damaged teeth or sometimes dental implants. Biological dentists are not typically in the business of using crowns, because they consider it outdated technology and they are aware of the issues, like “cleaning” problems and other physical functional malfunctions that can occur over time.
The problem with the dental narrative might be that if you don’t take good care of your mouth hygiene, you might get infection under your crown. But crowns can physically be damaged a lot by chewing hard, jaw clenching, getting punched, falling or just AGE. There are different material that crowns are made of also, and they all come with pros and cons.
To put this into perspective, there are still dentists using amalgam fillings, while others have been schooled on the dangers for decades. The FDA, JUST (as in this month or so) issued warnings on silver fillings. This is pretty disappointing considering the evidence that has been presented for decades.
Other than BRUSHING YOUR TEETH, flossing daily and using a water pick (which is the main dental suggestion), what’s happening (my guess) is beyond this. It’s your jaw clenching and the type of work you have received.
The other question is what’s under the dental crown.
Is it a root canal? It is an implant?
There are different levels of “decay” or “wornness” of teeth. While a dentist can help you determine this, I would ALWAYS stick to the biomimetic work, where a tooth is actually rebuilt and looks and functions like the real thing. A porcelain “hat/crown” is put on top (sometimes). It’s the back to mother nature style.
Dental crowns are typically used in dentistry to:
- Protecting a weak tooth (possibly from decay).
- Restoring a broken tooth.
- Covering and supporting a tooth with a large filling and not much tooth remaining.
- Supporting a dental bridge.
- Covering misshapen or severely discolored teeth.
- Covering an implant.
- Covering a tooth that’s been treated with a root canal.
To recap the issues with dental crowns:
- Not all TYPES of treatments are the same. A root canal is not just a root canal. Every treatment has different operating procedures and materials, that have consequences.
- Not all treatments GIVEN are done equally. Human skill, error and judgement is a very large factor in medicine/dentistry. That just means humans are human.
You must do your homework and make the best decisions you can, without anyone making you feel forced and making you feel that it’s normal and your only real option! You would be surprised at how many options you might have. Sometimes the best option for a healthy body (long term) is to simply remove the tooth, not “save it.” Teeth can’t really be saved the way you might think, once a certain level of decay is present.
A blog post, written a while ago is here: about holistic dentistry.
We strongly endorse the HDA and IABDM. If you have serious dental work like dental crowns and root canals that need to be looked at, we lean towards the IABDM. Because dentistry IS medicine. It’s not just about looking good.
