 Hello, everybody. Andrea here. So a lot of patients ask me, or you might be wondering, how often should you really get dental x-rays? And this is coming from not a dentist. So I'm not making money by telling you either way. I'm not losing money by telling you either way. Unfortunately, a lot of people think, well, are they just out to make money? Like, do we really need the x-rays? Why do you take them? Why does it feel like they're taking them every six months? So let me shed some light. I've been a dental professional for 17 years and now I have my own mobile dental hygiene practice. So let me shed some light on why we would take the x-rays. How often you should be getting them done and some of my answers may surprise you and some dentists may not even like me saying this. So let me share my screen here. I want to show you guys, let's see here. I want to show you guys some different types of dental x-rays. Let me see. And if you guys have any questions, definitely comment below because I have a feeling like you might have some questions with this one. Okay, guys. So I'm going back to the front here. So how often should you get dental x-rays? So this isn't an easy answer. It is different for everybody, but the short answer here is at least once every three years. Okay. So I'm not saying every six months. I'm not saying every year with your dental checkup. I'm saying at least every three years in a perfect world because x-rays do show us things that we cannot see inside the mouth. If you're not having any pain with your teeth or your mouth, that is generally a good sign, but there could be something hiding that once you get that pain, it could have been avoided and prevented if we had taken the x-ray sooner. So let me explain what I'm talking about here. So I'm going to show you guys three different types of x-rays. This is called a panoramic x-ray. We would take this x-ray maybe once every five years and at certain ages. So if you haven't had this x-ray yet, it's called a panoramic x-ray. It's the x-ray that you actually stand up for and the machine goes around your head. Super easy, takes like 10 seconds. This is called a panoramic x-ray, as I had mentioned. As you guys can see, it shows all of the teeth at once. It's perfect for a 15-year-old, a 16-year-old. If you're looking to see, do you have the wisdom teeth? What do the wisdom teeth look like? So if you're age 18 as an example and you haven't had this x-ray yet, you should really go to the dentist to have this done and it's good to see all the teeth at once, but you don't need this every year. You don't even need it every five years unless there's problems. If you're having some pain in your mouth down here, there's no point taking like 20 different individual x-rays. We might as well take this one to see the full picture because as you guys can see, we can see upwards pretty high into your sinuses. We can see the sides of your mouth. We can see all of the roots of the teeth. It's a fantastic x-ray. Next one. This is called a periapical x-ray. This is meant to see a specific area. We would only take this x-ray if you're having pain or you're pointing to a tooth or you're pointing to a side of your mouth and then saying, well, it kind of hurts here, but I can't tell which tooth it is. That's okay. That happens more often than you would think. Then we would take an x-ray of that specific area, maybe even two x-rays, but as you can see, we can see quite a few teeth, but just not the whole side. Excuse me. If I just want to point out a couple of things here for you guys, do you guys see this black area here? When I'm looking at this x-ray, I'm guessing the patient was having pain in this tooth. This black area definitely means a cavity. This black area here is even showing. It's starting to eat away into the second layer of the tooth. Their root surface here, it's starting to eat away into that. This would probably be painful for the patient. If you look closely, the tooth behind it is even starting to get black, so it is starting to spread. This can happen. We might not see this inside the mouth because your root surface is typically covered up. Even if you weren't having pain, again, it's good to take x-rays every so often just in case we take the x-ray and then see this, we go, wow, we need to do something about this tooth quickly. Otherwise, it's going to spread into the tooth behind it. You never want that. The wisdom tooth all the way up here, we can see it poking through. Another x-ray. This is the one that you will be used to seeing. This is a bite wing x-ray. The bite wing helps to show the top arch and the bottom arch at the same time. We can see in between the teeth. This is the x-ray that we take to check for cavities. Cavities in between the teeth we cannot often see. We need to take the x-ray to really check and make sure we're not missing anything because inside the mouth, we cannot see cavities in between the teeth. We look for the same thing. This is an extreme example. This black area here, we look for black areas. I see a tiny one here, but that doesn't mean it's a cavity per se. It could just mean the enamel is starting to wear away. Then we look inside the mouth to compare the two things. Then this one here, same thing. There's a little black spot there, but it might not mean a cavity. If we see a large black spot, that means a cavity. We have to take care of that sooner rather than later. What do you guys think? Let me stop sharing my screen for a moment there. X-rays are important. You don't need them every six months. You don't need them every year. It really depends. If you have a sore tooth and you go to the dentist, we look inside the mouth. We can't necessarily see what's happening. Then we're going to want to take the x-ray because the x-ray can show us a lot. If you're going to the dentist and they're telling you you need x-rays every six months, that's not true. You do not. If they feel you need them every six months, just simply ask them why. Say, well, can I ask why? Because the last four times you said my teeth looked really good. Why are you taking them every six months? The only reason why we would be taking them every six months is if every time we take the x-ray, you have cavities. You have two cavities every time. We will want those x-rays every six months because we want to check to make sure that we're not missing any other cavities or any other issues. If you have your teeth cleaned once every 10 years, when you come in to see the dentist, we're probably going to take a few extra x-rays because we want to see all of the areas and we don't want to miss anything for you because the teeth are important. You don't want to lose them because once you lose them, you're not going to get them back. We look at the teeth. We look at the tops of the teeth, the bottom, the parts of the teeth that are covered. We look at the bone levels overall. We look at everything. X-rays are important. If you guys have any questions, please let me know this is a great topic that I do enjoy talking about because there's a lot of misinformation out there. But if you guys have questions, like I said, please let me know anytime. I hope you like the video. Please click like because it does help to support me and my channel. I look forward to talking to you guys soon in the next video.