Today I noticed that my upper, right gums on the inside of my mouth were a little swollen so I went to go inspect in the mirror and lo nad behold I see a large black speck/hole/object on the inside of my tooth… Now I found this to be rather complexing for a few reasons: first I feel no pain whatsoever other than my gum being slightly irritated and second, I just had a total dental checkup a few months ago involving x-rays, fluoride, the whole shebang. At that dental checkup the dentist said my teeth were perfect and I had no problems.
I took some pictures, well the best I could do after fiddling with camera and its flash, mirrors, etc. Sorry for the poor quality, they’re the best a one man show could produce:
Is this some massive overnight cavity? Or maybe a filling I just forgot about? I don’t think I’ve ever noticed before but then again I can’t say I regularly inspect my teeth so thoroughly.
I should probably also say I have some obsessive fear with causing permanent damage to my teeth in any way and this particularly freaked me out because it almost looks like the tooth could snap in half at any bite. Help!
IANADentist blah blah blah. Your pics look like something I had done when I was quite young as a preventative measure against what looked like might turn into a cavity. I think they called them fissures. Since it wasn’t yet an actual cavity, the procedure was not a big deal, so there wouldn’t necessarily be some big dental trauma to mysteriously forget.
You’ve had x-rays done recently? - just call the dentist’s office and ask which teeth have fillings.
That might answer my question. Years ago I recall a doctor saying I had the beginnings of something looking like a cavity and he “fixed it” and that might be it. Thanks for the info! After I looked at the pictures it did seem oddly reflective to be a cavity.
Now it appears I can sleep and eat breakfast in the morning and be a little less paranoid.
In the first picture, the large dark thing is obviously a filling, the smaller brown spot on the next tooth looks like an early carie (cavities are simply holes, caries are the dental disease)
It looks like you need to floss better too. The reddness around each tooth is an indication of peridontal disease. Do you see blood after you brush? Do you use an ultrasonic toothbrush?
I floss semi-irregularly and my gums may appear redder than normal in that picture because after feeling my gums swolen I dug some floss through the trenches right before taking the photo…
Bleeding only every once in a while if I brush real hard or floss a lot. Perhaps I should invest on a Sonic care toothbrush after all.
So, I am assuming it pulses? How hard do you find you have to press to really work the gums? Does it stop if you press too hard? One of my problems is pressing too hard and splaying out the regular bristles before their time.
It doesn’t so much pulse as vibrate really, really fast. I’m not sure it’s actually ‘ultrasonic’, but it’s pretty close. When you turn it on, the toothbrush head just turns into a blur. If you have water and toothpaste on it, it’ll spray all over the room - that’s why you turn it on and off inside your mouth.
You don’t have to press very hard - less than you do with a normal toothbrush. You just sort of apply light pressure and guide it around your mouth - no need to go up and down and forward and back. It will stop automatically if you press really hard, but you shouldn’t use that as your guide.
I don’t think you’ll have a problem, though. If you’ve never used one before, the first time you use it will be moderately uncomfortable, and you won’t want to push hard. That goes away after a day or two, but by then, you’ll be used to the right pressure.
I want to comment on the “I brush real hard” comment. So did I. And I was giving myself recessive gums. I thought I was being a champion brusher (woo-hoo! Bearing down to get them REALLY clean! Go me!) but I was doing harm.
I got an electric toothbrush on my dentist’s strong recommendation that I stop relying on my own elbow grease to make my teeth feel clean enough.
I believe it shoots the water and toothpaste through really hard and this disrupts whatever is going on with the bacteria. I basically told the dental folks I would never floss, and they recommended anything that would make it an unwelcome environment for bacteria: balsa poker things, the rubber-tipped poker thing…
MPSIMS hijack: I got the Elite 7300 over the weekend and it is pretty cool. I had to ditch all the manual brushes I had to force myself to use it and get used to the sensation. But my teeth do feel very clean! And the gums feel like they’ve been worked over, but not uncomfortably as with floss. Thanks for the advice!
