Don't Blush: Oral Sex and Oral Cancer

It's a bit of a tender subject, but one that needs discussing; oral sex. For decades, the practice of oral sex has been on the rise, with many people -- especially teenagers -- considering it 'safer' than 'normal' sexual intercourse. It's certainly less likely to result in an unwanted pregnancy, but scientists are discovering a link between oral sex and oral cancer later in life.

The link, some scientists theorize, is due to the Human Papillomavirus (HPV). HPV lives in the genital area of both men and women, and is known to cause cervical cancer in women (leading to the development of Gardasil and other immunizations against HPV). It turns out that during oral sex, HPV can take up residence in the mouth, where it lives for decades, eventually resulting in some form of oral cancer, most often in the tonsils or the base of the tongue.

How can you limit your risk of oral cancer due to HPV? Fortunately, the vaccines that work against HPV are starting to become available for men as well. As of this writing, only Gardasil is actually on the market for men, but other brands are following suit quickly. If you're under the age of 26, you can get the vaccine injection and dramatically reduce your risk.

Mount Sinai Medical Center came up with an excellent infographic that says it all:

If you see yourself somewhere in that chart above, feel free to ask us for an oral cancer checkup. We'd rather our patients be safe than find out too late that they need massive surgery to remove a deeply embedded tumor we could have found years earlier. 

Let's Talk About Oral Cancer

This year alone, nearly forty thousand Americans will be diagnosed with oral or pharyngeal (back of the mouth) cancer -- and more than eight thousand people will die from it. That's about one death per hour, twenty-four hours every day, all year long. Of the forty thousand Americans who receive the diagnosis, only half of them will be alive in five years.

Those are some powerful numbers, and yet oral cancer is one of those kinds of cancer that people most often discover too late -- after it's metastasized into the lymph nodes of the neck or some other area in the body. By the time that's happened, the primary tumor has had the opportunity to grow deep into the local muscle and bone structures, all without causing any real pain or discomfort.

Risk Factors

Cancer is a strange disease because it doesn't have one big risk factor. Rather, it's an accumulation of small factors that work together. Alcohol use, tobacco use, HPV, an unhealthy diet, heavy metal exposure, carcinogen exposure, and many other factors all contribute, as does the most obvious culprit; poor oral health.

Detection


Much like breast cancer and regular mammograms, almost the only way to detect oral cancer is to deliberately look and feel for it with your eyes and hands. Or, more likely, have your dentist or doctor look for it with his/her eyes and hands. If you have a sore or discolored area in your mouth and it doesn't heal within two weeks, have it examined by a professional. Similarly, any difficulty speaking, swallowing, or chewing that persists for more than 14 days needs professional attention.

If you have even the vaguest notion that you belong to a few of the risk-factor groups mentioned above, contact our office and schedule an appointment for an oral cancer checkup immediately.

Keeping Your Teeth Whiter Longer

One of the 'hidden dangers' in having your teeth whitened is that, no matter what method you use, your teeth are actually more susceptible to stains for a few days after they've been whitened. The reason why is simple and unavoidable.

Normally, your teeth are fairly smooth on the vertical surfaces, even on the molecular level -- but (as we discussed last week), almost every whitening method essentially amounts to a chemical attack on your stains, and those attacks can't help but cause microscopic levels of damage to your enamel as well. Now, tooth enamel is stubborn stuff, and it'll replenish itself quite quickly. Until it has, however, those extra-rough, freshly-whitened surfaces will accept new stains more easily than your church accepts offerings.

That means that for a few days after you get whitened -- no matter what the method, but with Zoom! this is especially true -- you'll want to avoid staining activities. That includes smoking, eating brightly colored foods like tomatoes, curry, and even chicken noodle soup (it has turmeric in it just like curry!) It also means avoiding coffee, tea, colas, and similar darkly-colored drinks especially, because drinks uniformly coat every surface of a tooth as they wash over it, virtually guaranteeing a loss of whiteness.

But what about the longer term? What about weeks after your whitening? Well, one of the big benefits of Zoom! over its competition is that Zoom! lasts for quite some time if properly maintained. Drs. Johnson and Risbrudt will give any patient who comes in for a Zoom! treatment their own personalized post-Zoom! stay-white regimen, usually consisting of a combination of at-home whitening kits, a daily routine of tooth-cleaning exercises, and sometimes even something unique like a new toothbrush that will help to keep those pearlies pearly.

If you follow the regimen and you avoid the obviously staining activities and foods when possible, you can expect your smile to stay bright and happy for about a year -- and even if you don't, six months isn't unreasonable with Zoom! That's why we at the office are proud to offer Zoom! whitening.

Unlocking the Mysteries of Zoom! Smile Brightening

It's one thing to tell our clients that Zoom! is a heat sensitive tooth whitening system. It's another to tell them that it uses a special whitening gel to make your teeth bleachy-keen in a matter of hours. But it doesn't really answer the burning question; what the heck is all that chemical and intense light power actually doing inside your mouth? Here's where you'll get your answer.

The Gel

The whitening gel is actually a mixture of hydrogen peroxide -- yep, the same stuff you buy at the drug store -- in a viscous fluid. It's designed to remain stable at room temperature, but to become reactive as it gets hotter. As it gets hotter, the hydrogen molecules break away from the oxygen forcefully, driving the oxygen molecules into and through the stains that sit atop your tooth enamel. It's actually much like using OxyClean, but instead of activating with water, it activates when hot.

The oxygen molecules are much smaller than the complex molecules that make up biological stains, and act like a tiny chemical sandblaster, with thousands of oxygen molecules pushed at a high rate of speed (at least, on a molecular scale) into the stain. They literally shatter the stain's molecules and separate them from the tooth enamel. The enamel, on the other hand, is dense enough and strong enough to withstand the oxygen barrage with zero noticeable damage.

Light Activation

The light activator, while it gets all the credit, is actually the least interesting part of the whole setup -- its function is to heat up the gel quickly and thoroughly without burning your lips or gums. In other systems, green intense lights are used to accomplish this goal (green being the type of light your tissues are least sensitive to), but in Zoom!, the light combined with chemical activation is much like the heat coming from your Nu-Wave oven. That makes it stronger than its competition, but requires that the dentist put a protective covering over your gums before turning the intense light on your teeth.

And that's that -- Zoom! is a mystery no longer.

What Whitening Is Best For You?

We actually get a surprising amount of requests for our Zoom! whitening service here at the office, and the one thing we never get tired of seeing are those occasional clients that we have to say 'no' to. Not because we like saying 'no' to people, but because they're always happy to have a less involved procedure suggested to them.

Why does this happen? It's simple, actually -- it has to do with how white your teeth already are. Tooth whiteness is measured on a common shade scale of 1 (just had fresh porcelain veneers put on) to 20 (seriously yellow or brown.) Even Austin Powers would come in at about a 13 -- twenty is really really dark. A typical client of ours comes in with somewhere between a 4 and a 10.

Here's the thing -- Zoom! treatments are powerful stuff. They're meant to take that 10 and make him a 3. If you walk in the door and your teeth are already at a 3, you're probably going to to go through everything the other guy did and walk out the door 1 1/2 to 2, because there's only so much whiter that your teeth can possibly get -- and you'll get about the same results from a different, faster, less expensive whitening procedure. (If you have a 3 and you insist on reaching all the way up to a 1, we're going to tell you that you may want to get porcelain veneers to achieve the optimum white color that you want.)

So what other whitening options do we suggest for people who already have near-perfect teeth, but aren't going to shoot for the perfection that is veneers? The classic; we'll give you a take-home kit that uses dental trays and a bleaching gel that you wear either overnight or for a short period each day that will give you the results you're looking for in a couple of weeks for a little less than Zoom!

Zoom! is awesome -- but it's not necessary for everyone, and we don't want to charge you for something you don't need.

Introducing Zoom! And Other Smile Brightening Options

Drs. Johnson and Risbrudt would like to help usher in the season by reminding everyone that spring is the season of new life, growth, and new friendships! It's time to shake off the winter blahs, do some spring cleaning, and get ready to reconnect with life. That makes it a great opportunity for teeth whitening (or 'smile brightening' as we prefer to call it around the office.)

Our office has recently gotten a brand new whitening system installed -- the Zoom! system by Phillips. Zoom! is a laser whitening system that takes about an hour. A special wax is placed on your gums to protect them, then put a whitening paste on your teeth. Finally, you'll get an implement in your mouth to keep your lips open and teeth slightly apart, and we'll shine a big old laser onto the whitening paste.

You repeat the processes a few times in a single visit, and then spend 48 or so hours avoiding foods and drinks that might stain your teeth. Once the new whiteness has 'set', you're good to go and you can resume eating and drinking normally (though we encourage you to continue avoiding the most staining foods and drinks like coffee, tea, curry, and so forth.)

Of course, Zoom! isn't the only whitening option that our office has to offer. We have a variety of whitening options that range from the industrial-strength versions of the kinds of kits you get at the local drug store all the way up to our porcelain veneers, which can turn almost anyone's teeth into pearly beauties.

If your smile is keeping you down this Spring, don't keep it locked away -- get it beautified and turn it loose! It's so much more fulfilling to smile with all your heart in it.

Why New Chairs?

In our newsletter this month, we mentioned several things that we've done around the office to improve the quality of our patient's visits, and the first thing we listed was 'new chairs'. We've had a few people inquire as to why, on a list that includes several high-end new dental machines and other improvement, we chose to put new chairs first on the list.

The answer is simple: it's a matter of dental ergonomics.

The Dentist's Perspective

For Drs. Johnson and Risbrudt and their hygienists, the difference in chairs is important for a few reasons:

• The headrests and narrower shoulder areas allow for better maneuvering around you during a procedure, keeping things moving during a longer, more complex operation.
• Height adjustment on the chair allows the dentist to sit comfortably and work without having to strain upward or downward.

The Patient's Perspective

While you only spend a few — maybe twice that at the maximum — hours in the chair vs. the thousands of hours the dentist will spend maneuvering around the chair, we nonetheless bought these chairs with your comfort in mind:

• Adjustable head/neck rests ensure that you're never supporting the weight of your head or contorting yourself to let the dentist get to whatever he's working on.
• Lumbar and pelvic support mean that you won't get up with a stiff back no matter how long you've been sitting — and even if your muscles do start to feel a little tense, the built-in massager will take care of that in a hurry.
• Highly adjustable head and footrests allow us to adapt our chairs for almost anyone (though if Sultan Kosen comes back for another visit, we'll probably still need a special chair for him.)

Sure, to a degree, it's "just" new chairs — but when you're striving to make your patients comfortable and calm, every difference counts.