 Hello everybody, Andrea Mayesky here with Dental Health. Let's talk about some of the common ways and how patients chip teeth. And believe it or not, there are about three things that are very, very common and we see it often. You know, I don't like to say it, but it's true. And how chip teeth usually work is you'll chip a tooth or teeth on a Friday evening before a long weekend so you can't see the dentist for a couple of days and then you have to go and live with this chip tooth. Or it happens when you're on holidays somewhere, you're out of the country and you have to wait to get it done. So the good thing, I mean, not if you're out of the country, but if you're in my area, since I do have my extra restorative hygiene skills, I can actually place a temporary filling for you. So I can't place a permanent one, no, but I can put in something temporary. So at least you don't have that sharp edge, your nerve isn't exposed, but hopefully it's not that bad and you don't have this big hole in your tooth. So if you need some emergency dental hygiene care, I can help you with that too because I actually travel to you. So, but if you're wondering what the most common ways to chip a tooth are and what we see most often. So number one is definitely people trying to use their teeth for things that they shouldn't, such as opening up cans, opening up a beer bottle seems to be common, opening up like soda cans, tomato cans, just anything that they're trying to use their teeth. You should not be using your teeth for anything other than eating, literally. Even if you're holding a bobby pin, if you're a hairstylist throughout the day, if you do hold it there constantly between your teeth, eventually it will chip. So if you're trying to use your teeth for something other than eating, that's where chips happen. And every time your tooth chips, obviously we do have to fix it for you, but any time we put something in its place, we have to take away a little bit of that tooth structure because we need to roughen it up to have something to actually hold on to, right? We can't just put in like something in its place if it's pretty smooth, like we do have to roughen it up. So you don't wanna chip your tooth. Obviously your enamel is the best thing to do, but if you do chip a tooth, don't worry, we can fix that, but just try to do things to not chip that tooth, right? So another one, and actually this might even be number one, but if we tell you guys that you have cavity, if you have a cavity or a cracked tooth, so I guess that's kind of two different things. So a cavity or a cracked tooth. So let's start with a cavity. If you have a cavity in the tooth, it's eating away at your tooth. So it is eating away at the enamel, making it a lot softer. If you don't get the cavity fixed, so getting the cavity fixed means we have to obviously take out the cavity first and then put a composite or a silver filling material in its place to keep it nice and strong. If you leave the cavity alone and let it go, it just keeps eating away at the tooth, making it weaker and weaker and weaker. So you could literally be eating mashed potatoes and have the tooth just chip. And patients kind of go, oh my goodness, my tooth chipped. I was just eating pudding or mashed potatoes. Well, that happened because it was going to happen any time then. So it doesn't really matter what you were doing. If the cavity has been left long enough, it will eventually just fall out. So that's another very common reason. So when that happens, you have to come in to see us. We have to take out the rest of the cavity and then put a filling in its place. And I mentioned a cracked tooth as well. So if we ever tell you that you have a cracked tooth or if you're eating something and you notice, anytime you bite down, it kind of hurts like over here, over there, that could be a sign that you have a cracked tooth. And cracks could only be a little bit in the tooth or could be all the way down the entire length of the tooth. So it's hard to say. Obviously, if it's down further, it's going to be harder to fix. And simply putting a filling in its place may not be enough. You might need a crown on top of that to kind of protect the whole thing. Because if you try to pitch or something that's cracked down the middle, you have to take off that piece that's cracked. There might not be a lot of tooth structure left. So even us trying to fix it, the tooth has nothing to hold onto. It's not very strong. So it makes sense to put a whole crown over top so that the entire thing is protected versus you having this like huge hole trying to put a filling here. Well, it's not going to be able to fit perfectly in there. So it's going to chip over time. So if we ever say you need a crown over a cracked tooth, it's just because we are trying to protect the entire thing. So that's a very common one too, is us telling us, or sorry, us telling you, you have a cracked tooth and you leave it alone and then all of a sudden it chips. So, and it does happen all of a sudden. It could be tomorrow, it could be two years later, but if we tell you you have a crack, get it fixed. And hopefully we're telling you that it's a small crack so we're able to put a filling in its place or if we're telling you, okay, now it's cracked so much, you need a crown over top because the only other alternative is if it cracks and chips even more, we might not be able to fix it. If you ever have a crack or a chip that's underneath, like all the way underneath the gum line, we can't attach anything to that. So then you have to lose the tooth. You don't want to lose a tooth. It doesn't matter if you're 20, 80, 99, okay, maybe 99 is not that big of a deal, but you don't want to lose a tooth because then there's nothing in its place. Okay, so I talked about a cavity and a crack being common for the teeth to chip and I've talked about, what else did I say? Oh yes, using your tear on teeth for something other than eating. So don't use your teeth for opening things. Last but not least, if you've had a root canal. So root canals always get a bad name to them. I believe in root canals because if the nerve is dead, if the nerve is damaged, you need to take that out and do a root canal. But I do talk more about that in another video. I believe I did it last week. So have a look if you would like to learn about that. But that's what happens when you have a root canal. It's not a bad thing. It is saving the tooth, which is a good thing. But it does make the tooth weaker because your nerve and the blood supply that's going through the tooth, isn't there anymore? Because the nerve had died because you had a large cavity, you could have had a tooth infection, you could have chipped the tooth. You know, there are many reasons why you might need a root canal, so be careful. But after the root canal, you need a crown on top of the tooth to protect the whole thing. If you say, well, I'll wait for now to get a crown, you know, we'll see what happens. Your tooth will likely chip because it's just a lot weaker. Your natural enamel just isn't there because the tooth has been opened up to fix and do the root canal and then closed up again, but it's not perfect, right? It's not perfect. But if you put a crown on top of the root canal, you have nothing to worry about, which is really nice. So I'd say that would definitely be the last reason why we see teeth chip. In fact, usually if a patient has a chipped tooth, we take an x-ray and like 80% of the time, we can tell, oh, the tooth has been root canaled. We look in the chart, oh, we did tell that patient they needed a crown five years ago, now it's chipped, we might not be able to do a crown now because again, if it's chipped underneath the gum line, you cannot put a crown over top because there's nothing to hold on. So hopefully the chip wasn't that bad or the crack and we are able to put a crown over top. So I hope this helped. If you guys have any questions, please let me know because we hear and see all kinds of things, but it does help to know though too because you probably didn't know all of those ways that teeth could chip and how to prevent that from happening to you because even the healthiest tooth could chip if you're using your teeth for something other than eating, right? So it could happen to anybody, so just be careful. But thank you guys for watching. If you need anything, let me know and I will see you guys in the next one.