Don’t Take Your Oral Hygiene For Granted

Your dental health is of paramount importance, and visiting the dentist bi-annually or at least annually plays a vital part in maintaining a healthy mouth. The same level of care should apply where your oral hygiene is concerned, yet many of us fail to attend oral hygiene appointments, substituting them for a visit to the dentist. There is a marked difference between the roles of a dentist and dental hygienist – read on to learn more about how their roles differ and why the latter is as important as the former. 

Dentist vs. dental hygienist

Think of your dentist as a doctor for your teeth, possessing an arsenal of extensive knowledge surrounding the anatomy of your mouth and teeth. Dentists tend to cultivate a special interest in a particular area, which could be anything from cosmetic to implants, orthodontics to endodontics. Unlike hygienists, they have the authority to write out prescriptions and can carry out surgical work.

The role of a hygienist focuses on the health of your gums – without healthy gums, you cannot have healthy teeth. Offering preventative solutions and advice, a hygienist can perform treatments such as a scale and polish to remove deep staining that might be the cause of gum disease if left untreated for too long. Read on to find out more about scale and polish treatment below.

Your dentist and dental hygienist work as a team, exchanging information in their specialist areas to offer you the best level of care. A hygienist will often spot a problem and flag it up with your dentist, who can then make a diagnosis.

Hygiene therapy: scale and polish

A scale and polish is arguably one of the most important treatments you can undergo, removing deep staining that cannot be removed through brushing alone. This type of staining is in the form of plaque and tartar, which damages your tooth enamel irrevocably – once tooth enamel is gone there is no way of reversing the process, which is why the preventative side of a hygienist’s role is so important.

Here at Smile Up, our Airflow system is a speedy and comfortable way of removing discolouration and staining caused by smoking, red wine, and coffee. A blast of water, compressed air, and fine powder particles will cover your teeth, removing such staining – this method is more effective than the conventional ‘scrape’ method used by many practices. Airflow is free of any scraping tools that can make patients feel uneasy and the system is three times faster than other methods.

A scale and polish can help you feel more confident about your smile and set you on a better path when it comes to looking after your teeth at home. Why not combine your dental hygiene appointment with teeth whitening to maximise the effects of removing deep surface staining? You can read more about professional teeth whitening at Smile Up here. 

We are open 7 days a week, do you don’t have to worry about fitting your appointment in around the working week if this is not an option for you. We also speak a diversity of languages including French, Spanish, and Russian and our website is translatable into the latter as well as Portuguese, Italian, Polish, and Greek.

Contact our friendly team today to book your appointment with us here in Lewisham.