Preventive Care vs. Reactive Care

Keep your smile beautiful with regular visits!

All too often, many assume that a dental appointment is not needed because there are no real dental issues going on at the moment. Contrary to popular belief, your dentist is there for more than knocked out teeth and toothaches. The right dentist can help with proper preventive care to help keep your mouth healthy and to help prevent more serious issues from occurring.

Every 6 Months

At the very least, you should be visiting Dr. Aaron or Dr. Brandon Cooley every 6 months. This allows him to fully inspect your teeth and gums to ensure that there are no issues that you are not aware of yet. When you let conditions with your teeth get out of hand, the resolution can be rather invasive. By keeping your twice yearly appointments, you can keep your mouth healthy and your pain to a minimum.

Why Get A Baseline?

When you visit our office regularly, it allows us to have a baseline with which to compare your mouth to each time you visit. At your initial New Patient appointment, your Bellevue dentist will perform x-rays and other routine procedures to assess what is normal for your individual mouth. On subsequent visits, Drs. Aaron or Brandon Cooley will be able to determine if anything has drastically changed.

Immediate Assistance

Of course, if you have any issues that require immediate dental assistance, you should not delay in seeing your dentist. Anytime you experience pain, bleeding, a lost permanent tooth, a lost filling, or anything out of the ordinary, you should call us right away.

Flossing = Better Health!

Flossing = Better Health!

Our Bellevue Dentists, Dr. Aaron Cooley and Dr. Brandon Cooley recommend that you floss your teeth at least once per day. Whether you choose to make this a part of your morning or evening routine is up to you; it is how you floss that is important.

The Importance of Flossing

Flossing is the only way to get the debris that settles between your teeth as well as any bacteria. If food is left to settle, it turns into plaque and is a job that only your dentist can handle. Even extreme amounts of brushing your teeth will not effectively get rid of all of the debris between your teeth, which is why flossing is so important.

Choose Your Favorites

There is no hard and fast rule about the type of floss that you must use; whatever feels good to you is what you will be the most likely to use on a daily basis. You can choose between waxed and unwaxed floss and various interdental cleaners to get in between your teeth. The interdental cleaners can be brushes or sticks that easily get between your teeth.

The best products to purchase are those that have the ADA seal on them. These products tend to be safer to use in your mouth as well as the most effective at removing debris, bacteria and plaque. Each product will have a reason for the ADA seal, which will help you decide which product you are most comfortable using with your daily brushing and flossing routine. 

To learn more about your dental health and the types of family and cosmetic dental services that we offer at Cooley Smiles, please visit our website at www.cooley-smiles.com.

Chew Gum and Help Your Teeth!

Chew sugar-free gum with xylitol and help your teeth!

If you like to chew gum, you might be happy to hear that chewing sugarless gum can be good for your oral health. It is important to know the facts when it comes to chewing gum, however, because not all gum is created equal. In order to receive the oral health benefits, the gum should be both sugarless and approved by the ADA as is signified on the packaging. Another great benefit of gum that has xylitol added is that it can help prevent cavities as well.

How is Gum Good for you?

Research shows that chewing sugarless gum for 20 minutes after your meal can help to prevent tooth decay. This is possible because of the increase in the production of saliva that gum produces. The more saliva that is in your mouth, the more food residue and bacteria that gets washed away, instead of staying on your teeth and causing tooth decay. In addition, it helps to remove the acids that are on your teeth as a result of eating acidic foods. Too much acid can cause the enamel on your teeth to break down, which is another culprit in tooth decay as well as sensitive teeth.

Brushing is Still Necessary

Even though chewing sugarless gum is good for you, it does not mean that you do not need to brush and floss. You should still be brushing your teeth at least twice per day and flossing at least once. This will help ensure food particles and bacteria that are stuck between your teeth and in hard to reach places are removed, reducing the risk of tooth decay. 

Learn more about your dental health on our Bellevue, WA dental website!

Eating Disorders Can Harm Oral Health

The dangers of eating disorders are fairly widely known, but one aspect that is not as well-known is its danger to a person’s oral health. Dental health is highly dependent on the nutrition that the body receives. When a person suffers from an eating disorder, they are not providing their body with the required nutrients, which could result in swollen or bleeding gums, dry gums as a result of a lack of saliva being produced and damaged tooth enamel as a result of chronic vomiting.

It does not matter if you suffer from anorexia or bulimia; your teeth are at risk. In addition to talking to your doctor in order to get help to overcome the disorder, you need to stay in close contact with Dr. Aaron Cooley or Dr. Brandon Cooley and it is vital that you practice proper oral health. On a regular basis you should be:

• Practicing proper brushing techniques at least twice per day. This includes brushing all areas of your teeth and replacing your brush every couple of months.
• Flossing at least once per day in order to rid your teeth of harmful bacteria that the toothbrush cannot eliminate.
• Rinsing your mouth with baking soda and water after vomiting in order to neutralize the acid from the vomit.

It's important to keep your regular dental appointments. In general, you should see your Bellevue dentist once every six months, but if you are suffering from additional dental problems as a result of your disorder, it is essential to see him more often. 

Restoring Your Smile When You Are Missing Teeth

Restore Your Beautiful Smile at Cooley Smiles

Did you know that the average adult between the ages of 20 and 64 is estimated to have three or more decayed or missing teeth? Your dental care and oral health are necessary to maintaining your overall health and wellness. Untreated dental disease in decaying teeth can lead to more serious health issues, including infection or damage to your bones and nerves. Learn more about the importance of oral health.

If you are missing one or more teeth, or have teeth that need to be removed, there are many ways to restore your oral health and your beautiful smile. Two of the ways that Dr. Aaron Cooley and Dr. Brandon Cooley work to restore missing teeth are through the use of dental bridges and dental implants.

Dental Bridge - Dental bridges are literally used to "bridge" gaps in your teeth. At Cooley Smiles, we regularly recommend this restoration for patients with missing teeth who are not ideal candidates for dental implants.

Dental Implant - Dental implants are titanium screws secured directly into your jaw. A dental crown is then placed on top of your implant to serve as a prosthetic tooth. Dental implants provide you with the most durable and functional replacement for your missing tooth. To learn more about the dental implant process, click here.

Diabetes and Sleep Apnea

Since November is National Diabetes Awareness Month, we felt it was important to share another common companion of diabetes, obstructive sleep apnea. At Cooley Smiles Family Dentistry, we treat quite a number of patients with sleep apnea and provide dental devices and other therapies to help our patients with this common ailment.

As we have learned, obstructive sleep apnea is not a solitary ailment. It has a number of companion diseases (call comorbidities by experts) that vary in frequency among OSA patients. One such comorbidity is type 2 diabetes (the physiological inability to process sugar). In type 2 diabetes, production of insulin continues but the body's ability to utilize it is damaged. According to Naresh Punjabi, MD, type 2 diabetes occurs among 30 - 50 percent of OSA patients while 70 to 80 percent of type 2 diabetes patients also have OSA.

Read more about OSA and Diabetes here, and for more information about sleep apnea, visit our website.
 

November is Diabetes Awareness Month

Since people with diabetes are at a greater risk of developing some oral health problems, this is a good reminder of the importance of staying. Some of the common oral health problems associated with diabetes are: gum disease, fungal infections, infections and delayed healing. Periodontal (gum disease) is no laughing matter; it's also connected to heart disease and other health-related issues.

Our friends at www.perio.org tell us:

Diabetic patients are more likely to develop periodontal disease, which in turn can increase blood sugar and diabetic complications.

People with diabetes are more likely to have periodontal disease than people without diabetes, probably because people with diabetes are more susceptible to contracting infections. In fact, periodontal disease is often considered a complication of diabetes. Those people who don't have their diabetes under control are especially at risk.

Research has suggested that the relationship between periodontal disease and diabetes goes both ways - periodontal disease may make it more difficult for people who have diabetes to control their blood sugar.

Severe periodontal disease can increase blood sugar, contributing to increased periods of time when the body functions with a high blood sugar. This puts people with diabetes at increased risk for diabetic complications

For more information and to watch a video on how diabetes can impact your oral health, visit the MouthHealthy A-Z page on Diabetes.

Ready to learn more and schedule your appointment?
We are accepting new patients, and both of our doctors at Cooley Smiles Family Dentistry in Bellevue, WA have experience in treating patients with gum disease. Give us a call today at (425) 998-6998 or visit our website for more information!