Episode 8 - The Ins & Outs of Dental Implants

Dr. Michelle explains how dental implants work and what they can do to restore your smile. Learn more about dental implants from Jax Beaches Family Dentistry at: https://jacksonvillebeachdentist.com/services/dental-implants/

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Kevin (00:05):
It's time for Dr. Michelle's Smile Cast where we talk about your smile and other interesting dental topics.

Dr. Michelle (00:13):
Smile.

Kevin (00:15):
And now here's Dr. Michelle DeFelice Hucke of Jax Beaches Family Dentistry. Smile

Dr. Michelle (00:22):
That's me

Kevin (00:26):
Dr. Michelle DeFelice. HKI has stopped by to help us play the music and to check and see if we have been flossing regularly. And indeed I have.

Dr. Michelle (00:38):
Of course you have. Yeah. And what's the best floss to use? Whatever works best for you.

Kevin (00:39):
That's a good answer. That's good. Flossing twice a day. Once a day.

Dr. Michelle (00:43):
Definitely once a day at minimum. I do have patients that floss twice a day.

Kevin (00:48):
How often do you floss, Dr. Michelle?

Dr. Michelle (00:50):
I floss once a day

Kevin (00:51):
Say that 10 times really fast. That's hard to say. You carry a toothbrush in your pocket all the time. I don't. You don't.

Dr. Michelle (00:58):
I work at a dental office though.

Kevin (00:59):
So Dr. Michelle also is a model of good eating behavior. So she's not sitting here munching on lifesavers all day long. Right.

Dr. Michelle (01:09):
Well it's funny, a lot of people say, oh, this, that, and the other about sugar. And they mess with me as if I don't really agree with or believe in not eating sugar. But I seriously hate sugar

Kevin (01:24):
Just

Dr. Michelle (01:24):
Naturally. It's not. I just really don't like it.

Kevin (01:29):
Dr. Michelle DeFelice Hucke with us from Jax Beaches Family Dentistry, but she lives right here with us in St. John's County. You can learn more by going to jacksonvillebeachdentist.com, Jacksonvillebeachdentist.com. If you're within the sound of my voice, you can be like me and you can just drive up there and get your teeth cleaned twice a year and other things, right?

Dr. Michelle (01:46):
All the things.

Kevin (01:47):
Yeah. My mouth has been totally redone. Not really. I just had new fillings put in. You're so proud of yourself. I'm very proud of myself. I'm proud of you too. I open my mouth all the time and say, look. Ah, because no silver fillings. That's right. It all matches.

Dr. Michelle (02:01):
Only we know that you've ever had a

Kevin (02:02):
Cavity. That's the great thing. I can lie to small children now and say, if you're like me, you'll never have a cavity. See, which is not a very good thing to say. So today I thought we would talk a little bit with Dr. Michelle about something we hear about on television. We see billboards all over the place. We get these things in the mail all the time about implants, dental implants.

Dr. Michelle (02:23):
Implants are awesome.

Kevin (02:24):
So implants are awesome. They are. She's reading off of her sweatshirt. She's wearing, today's implants are awesome. I want to give our listeners kind of a one-on-one basic understanding. So number one, what is an implant? Explain that to someone who's illiterate as myself.

Dr. Michelle (02:42):
So a lot of times, I mean I would say the most common thing that we do in the implant arena is somebody has had extensive treatment, say on their first molar and say they've had a root canal and a post in a crown when they were young and the tooth splits and we're losing an individual tooth. So we're losing, say the individual tooth on the lower left. And the amazing thing about implants is a lot of times what we can do is take that tooth out or if all that's left is the root of the tooth, we take that out and on that same day an implant goes in. And what an implant is, especially in that particular case, is it's a replacement for your natural root. So the root of the tooth and the tooth itself come out and right at that same appointment, the implant, which is a titanium, I call it a stud, a titanium stud is what I call it. That goes, it's root shaped. And instead of having the natural root of your tooth, you now have titanium in place of it.

Kevin (03:49):
Arguably, if they dug us up 200 years from now, that might all be, might all be that's left of us. The titanium stadium or Titan titanium. Yeah, that's right.

Dr. Michelle (03:58):
And then that titanium root integrates with the bone. And then once it's integrated, we attach a crown, which a lot of people know what a crown is to that titanium stud. That's where your root used to be.

Kevin (04:10):
I would think so often, Dr. Michelle, that it replaces a tooth that somebody has had trouble with for a while. Yes, it does. And the exciting thing from doing a little bit of reading to get ready for your meeting here today or being on the air with us today is that implants have a better than 95% success rate. What the heck out there has that kind of success rate?

Dr. Michelle (04:30):
Yeah, no, it's great. In fact, I was at a class not that long ago and what they were saying is that once it's been in your mouth for 12 months, it has a 98% success rate. The success rates are decreased by things like if somebody has longstanding periodontal disease, it really helps to get that under control prior to placing any implants. And also if you are a daily smoker, that can decreases the percentage of effectiveness. So that's good for people to know. And again, make sure people think, especially I would say 20 years ago when implants were really first coming on the scene, it was like, oh, this is great. We'll just take out any tooth that's questionable, put an implant in and it's going to be bulletproof. And it is bulletproof in a lot of ways. It can't obviously get a cavity. However, it is impacted by how clean you keep your mouth and your gum disease, especially as they relate to all your other teeth. So a lot of things in dentistry, I think it's yet another reason to keep your entire mouth as healthy as possible. Once you have implants in your mouth, you really want to keep a close eye on gum disease.

Kevin (05:47):
Some other things I saw that you can comment on, see if they're right or not, because they come from the internet, the source of all truth and light about implants. Number one, people love 'em because they mimic the look of your natural teeth.

Dr. Michelle (06:01):
Yeah, they really do. So back in the day, in, back in, when I started in dentistry way

Kevin (06:07):
Back then, way

Dr. Michelle (06:08):
Back then when we lost a tooth, really what we had to look at was a bridge. And what a bridge is, is if you're missing, again, you're like your lower left first molar. If you're doing a bridge, you're putting a crown on the teeth that are on either side of what is now a space. And then you're hooking those teeth together with a bridge externally. When you look in someone's mouth, it looks like teeth. However, it's stuck together. It's soldered together so you can no longer floss in between your teeth. One of the biggest complaints is that food gets up underneath there and you've got to get it out. So the coolest thing, of course, that

Kevin (06:52):
It's a relative term.

Dr. Michelle (06:54):
Yeah, the most awesome thing about implants is their individual teeth and nothing is relying on each other and nothing's hooked together. Less likely to get debris under there and get cavities from not cleaning it out properly. So yeah, it acts more like a tooth

Kevin (07:10):
If you're just hopping in your vehicle. We're just taking a little break from the music and we're speaking with Dr. Michelle DeFelice Hucke and she's one of the owners of course, of Jax Beaches Family Dentistry. Learn more at jacksonvillebeachdentist.com, including scheduling your initial appointments. You can do that very easily online. You can also follow them on Facebook and on Instagram as well. And this morning we're talking about implants. I thought this was pretty interesting that implants will prevent premature facial sagging. How about that for our friends out there? Huh? A problem you didn't know, you had to worry about that Dr. Michelle is going to help you avoid.

Dr. Michelle (07:46):
Yeah, I could. I play a bad elastic surgeon?

Kevin (07:50):
I can see where that would happen. Right? Yeah.

Dr. Michelle (07:52):
As you lose teeth, then your face has less support. And so yeah, because a lot of times people will say to me, ah, it's in the back. It's fine. I'll still be able to chew. Everything's good. The teeth are in bone and the type of bone that holds your tooth in is only there to hold the tooth in. So once you take the tooth out, that bone completely dissolves away and that part of your jaw erodes away. If you have that done over and over again, certain parts of your face prematurely stag.

Kevin (08:23):
Right. And the other thing of course that implants can help you with is just overall improving your quality of life. A lot of times people will slowly over time because of dental health issues, give up eating corn on the cob or certain types of foods. And so then your diet becomes limited.

Dr. Michelle (08:39):
You end up heading towards softer and softer foods. And again, that becomes another debate with people if they're going to be losing a tooth or they're missing their back teeth all on one side, they're like, it's okay. I have the other side to chew with. Or I just don't eat hard foods anymore. But there's a couple of things As we diminish the quality of what we're eating, then that impacts your health. You're not eating raw whole foods anymore. And the other thing that can happen, and it actually happened to a patient of mine who he had had, he had two of his remaining back teeth on one side extracted. He had the implants placed, but they were healing and he wasn't wearing his appliance that he was supposed to be wearing that gave him some additional chewing force. He didn't have it in. And he was at a cocktail party and he was one of those no smile parties where you're eating, eating. And so you got a drink in one hand and you're stick with meat on it in the other. And he pulled off a piece of meat, tried to chew it, couldn't chew it very well, got embarrassed, right. Talking and he tried to swallow it and he was having an actual choking event.

Kevin (09:56):
That's horrible.

Dr. Michelle (09:57):
So it, it's important to have teeth to chew and you can minimize that or you think, oh, she's just exaggerating that silly dentist, silly

Kevin (10:05):
Dentist

Dr. Michelle (10:06):
Lady on the radio, ineffective chewing is dangerous. Yeah.

Kevin (10:10):
Well, it just seems to me like overall quality of life that I guess diminishes over time, but with implants can be restored back to what you were experiencing both in terms of your physical appearance and your ability to eat. You can go back to what life was like maybe 10, 15 years ago.

Dr. Michelle (10:23):
Absolutely, yeah. I've known multiple people, especially if they've been struggling with full arch, like let's say all their upper teeth just haven't been in good shape for a long time. It changes your life to be able to smile confidently and talk and laugh and eat. Because as we mature, which such a good term opening to all of us, God willing, it's the simple things really in life that we find joy in going out with friends and laughing and talking. And I obviously interact with people all day long that are on the struggle bus when it comes to that and they don't like it. It's a great solution.

Kevin (11:01):
As Dr. Michelle DeFelice Hucke, because she is with us live here on the radio, and of course you can always connect with her very easily by just going to the website, Jacksonvillebeachdentist.com, Jax Beaches Family Dentistry also on Facebook and Instagram. And I guess the follow-up question to all that, I guess just about everybody, unless they're a child and their jaws still developing their candidates for implants, right?

Dr. Michelle (11:25):
As long as the tooth hasn't been missing for a very long time and the bone hasn't deteriorated. However, the great thing about technology, I mean we talk about it in all different realms and there's lots going on in medical technology in general. A lot of times, even if we're missing a lot of bone, the bone grafting technology has really come a long way too. So we sometimes can support people who've been missing teeth for a long time.

Kevin (11:51):
Dr. Michelle Deeply psychic course, she's been my dentist for many, many years, so she'll know that this next question is always attached and always comes from me. And it's attached to basically everything we talk about. Will it hurt? Hashtag big baby.

Dr. Michelle (12:08):
The implant placement itself has very few complaints from patients. Really, the most invasive thing can be taking the tooth out, especially depending on how broken down it is. The good news at most dental offices, including ours, is that other than implant technology, dental anesthetic has come a long way. So almost no one is sensitive to it anymore. We are able to get people really profoundly numb most of the time. And we also have a lot of sedation options, which again, most offices also do.

Kevin (12:41):
That is one thing for those of us who are fans of this music and maybe started listening to the radio in the 1970s and going to the dentist in the sixties and seventies, there's so little discomfort and virtually no pain now in a dentist office as opposed to what we would've experienced back then.

Dr. Michelle (12:57):
Absolutely. And a lot of it was just related to the fact that either dental anesthetic in the sixties, especially a lot of people were allergic to, so dentists stopped using it and it didn't work well. And the dentists are kind and caring people and they just want to help people. And so they don't want to hurt someone then have them be still in pain. It didn't work, or have them go into anaphylactic shock. So when you hear people talking about getting dentistry done without anesthetic it, the dentist was mean, it was because it honestly just didn't go well back then.

Kevin (13:36):
When I talk to people who are hesitant to still have dental anxiety, don't want to go to the dentist, and they revert back to the stories of their eighth grade orthodontist appointment during the Carter administration, I try to remind them that just like your cell phone, we've made some pretty good progress. It's not like only your phone and your TV have made progress. The profession of dentistry, even during Dr. Michelle's relatively brief tenure of being a dentist 40 years, I'm just kidding. Hush. No, but things have changed, right? Mean dramatically. Right? A lot. And don't do anything the same. Not all, but much of it in the name of patient comfort,

Dr. Michelle (14:14):
A lot of

Kevin (14:15):
It. Yeah. Because as I've learned from Dr. Michelle over the years, the more people are comfortable, the less anxiety they have, the more likely they are to take an active interest in their dental health,

Dr. Michelle (14:25):
And then the healthier your mouth is, it's a breeze to come in and get your teeth cleaned, taking everything's maintained. Yeah.

Kevin (14:33):
Boy, that's the truth, right? I mean, if you brush and floss every six months, dental cleaning is a lot much. It's a breeze. It's a much better experience. Right. Well, if you have any questions at all about dental implants, maybe there's somebody in your circle of friends, a family member spouse, and they have been considered a candidate for an implant and they've been hemming and hawing about it for a while, maybe procrastinating don't delay. That's one of our other messages. Right? Absolutely don't delay. It all starts with an initial consultation. You can do that by, once again, going to the website, Jacksonvillebeachdentist.com, Jacksonvillebeachdentist.com, and there you'll have an opportunity to meet with Dr. Michelle or one of the other doctors and ask all the questions you have about implants.

Dr. Michelle (15:14):
Absolutely. And anytime you have questions, feel free to hop on our website and shoot us a question.

Kevin (15:18):
Yeah. Dr. Michelle DeFelice, thank you for coming by. We learned a lot. Absolutely.