#dental healthcare

[all-review-by-rk27]

ProDentim 

A Breath of Fresh Air: My Experience with ProDentim

Having struggled with gum sensitivity for years, I embarked on a quest to find a natural solution. While I maintained good brushing and flossing habits, I felt I needed extra support. That's when I discovered ProDentim. Read more..

A Unique Blend for a Healthy Smile

ProDentim intrigued me with its focus on oral probiotics. This daily supplement boasts a powerful blend of 3.5 billion probiotic strains, alongside beneficial vitamins and minerals. The all-natural formula appealed to me, as I try to limit unnecessary chemicals in my routine.Read more..

Seeing a Brighter Future for My Smile

Since incorporating ProDentim into my routine, I've noticed a positive shift in my oral health. My gums feel noticeably firmer, and I experience less sensitivity, especially when consuming cold beverages. While I religiously brush and floss, ProDentim feels like an extra layer of defence for my teeth and gums.Read more..

Would I Recommend ProDentim?

Absolutely! ProDentim has become a staple in my dental care routine. I appreciate the natural, science-backed approach to promoting oral health. If you're looking for a way to elevate your smile and experience the benefits of probiotics, then I highly recommend giving ProDentim a try.Read more..

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Children under 18 and people with disabilities will be eligible for the federal government's dental plan starting June 27, federal ministers said Monday.

Minister of Citizens' Services Terry Beech announced the date, adding the newly eligible group accounts for 1.2 million additional Canadians who will be able to access the program.

The government previously said that group would be eligible sometime in June, but had not provided an exact date.

The government is expanding the Canadian Dental Care Plan (CDCP) gradually. Starting May 1, coverage began for seniors 70 and older, and applications opened up for those aged 65 to 69.

Health Minister Mark Holland said Monday that more than 10,500 providers have signed up for the program, and more than two million seniors have been deemed eligible for coverage. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[boreal-sea]

"In a move last month that received little fanfare, the Biden administration finalized a rule that would give states the option of adding adult dental insurance coverage as part of their Affordable Care Act plans. In another attempt to bolster dental coverage, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. on Friday introduced the Comprehensive Dental Care Reform Act of 2024, a bill that would expand dental coverage through Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Administration and increase the number of dentists, dental hygienists and dental therapists nationwide." -USA Today

VOTE

[chronicallycouchbound]

If you have chronic nerve pain (trigeminal neuralgia) due to your broken wisdom tooth like I do, here’s my list of things to try for pain management. These things might help for other chronic or acute facial nerve pain issues, jaw pain, broken teeth, wisdom tooth pain, toothache, etc.

• Ibuprofen, Tylenol and most medications severely interact with my other conditions, especially my stomach conditions, so I avoid them as much as possible. Liquid versions aren’t as bad if I can find dye free, citric acid free, versions in flavors I’m not allergic to. These can help for a lot of people though, just ask your dr if you’re unsure.

• Brushing the broken area, gently, to clean out any food particles that might be stuck in it is hit or miss but can make a difference. It’s always sore for a while after brushing so that’s a con

• I make homemade clove tinctures with vodka and whole and ground cloves. I let it sit in a glass container in a cool,dark place for as long as possible and shake it when I see it (keep it with your spices you’ll remember it more). Then I take a gauze pad and get a dropper full and put it on it. Both cloves and vodka have anesthetic properties and can numb it for a bit. It’s a very temporary solution, also can cause soreness from pressure on the tooth.

• Hot pad on the cheek can cause soreness too (a running theme) BUT it helps a lot especially with cold sensitivity. After you remove the hot pad you can be extra sensitive to the cold or drafts in the air so that sucks too but it passes after a couple mins usually.

• Waterpik flossers are great for sensitive mouth issues, and clean out the tooth area with minimal soreness. Great but takes more spoons to do than toothbrushing and is less portable.

• CBD oil is hit or miss. I have other serious chronic pain disorders and just like many generalized pain management options, it can sometimes get rid of the headache I didn’t notice anymore or the joint pain I dissociate out of existence. Like yeah, glad thats gone but it just makes me focus on the other pain more. Some CBD options aren’t strong enough to do shit for me.

• Warm salt water gargle/rinse is helpful for me most of the time, and it is really important to keep any broken teeth very, very clean due to infection risk. The warmth and salt can help with the pain overall though and so far doesn’t have negative effects for me. It’s very mild in terms of managing the pain though, it’s like a soft gentle kiss on a boo-boo. Feels nice in the moment but when you’re done it usually just goes back to the pain your had.

• TENS units might work for you. I have several electrical abnormalities in my heart so I’m not allowed to use TENS but I’ve heard they can help. Definitely ask a dr first for this one though because I don’t know all the safety risks especially with facial pain

• Warm environments with no drafts or wind, ideal for this pain, for me is not ideal bc of my cardiac issues.

• Medical ultrasound machine, I’ve used these for other conditions in PT and they help a lot!! I don’t know if you can get these outside of a medical setting, especially for a reasonable price, but a provider might be able to help with this. There is the ultrasound goop they put on wherever they do it though so like, might not be fun and also might be a bit sore after?

• Last resort: adult beverages so I’m not paying attention to the pain. Works best for sleeping for me, but obviously has it’s drawbacks.

I avoid:

- Cold environments

- Drafts and wind on my face

- Cold foods

- Hard foods

- Sleeping on the side that hurts

- Chewing on that side

- Talking too much, chewing gum, etc.

- Going anywhere without at least one pain management option available

- Trying to sleep without a pain management option or plan ready to go

- Not brushing my teeth, at minimum I use mouthwash after meals

And some important reminders:

• Watch out for signs of infection and get treatment ASAP. Dental infections are no joke and can be life threatening quickly, especially if you have certain medical conditions such as heart valve disorders (like me).

• These recommendations are from personal experience, talk to your medical providers to see if they’re right for you. I am not a doctor just a humble chronically ill person.

• These are not a replacement for actual medical treatments for your condition, you should still see a professional if you can.

• Many insurances don’t cover dental, dental issues are more common amongst poor people, rooted in the idea that you can still work with fucked up teeth or without teeth . Hence why they’re called “luxury bones”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin In The Morning:

On Friday, numerous conservative accounts and news sources promoted headlines that the "American College of Pediatricians" had issued a statement against transgender care. A video accompanied the announcement featuring Dr. Jill Simons, who, wearing a white lab coat, states that there must be an end to "social affirmation, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones" for transgender youth. Despite the official-looking attire and name, the organization's name serves to mislead observers into thinking they are the much larger American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents tens of thousands of pediatricians. In reality, the ACP is a hyper-conservative Christian group of doctors created in 2002 to oppose gay parenting. In the announcement released on Friday, Simons called for an end to social transition and gender-affirming care for transgender youth. One video, which went viral, begins with a statement that the organization has released a "declaration" authored by the American College of Pediatricians, along with "hundreds of doctors and healthcare workers," opposing transgender care. It references the highly-politicized Cass Review from the United Kingdom, whose author controversially blames pornography for being transgender, as well as the Climategate-style leak of the “WPATH Files” to support the statement.

The video, which was viewed over 51 million times on Twitter, cuts off just before the next speaker is introduced: Dr. Andre Van Mol, who represents the Christian Medical and Dental Associations. Van Mol serves on the board of the Bethel Church of Redding, which made headlines in 2019 for attempting to pray a dead child back to life. He is followed by representatives from several other Christian medical organizations that also support banning transgender care. The website promoted at the event lists signatories to the statement, including the Catholic Medical Association, Genspect, The National Catholic Bioethics Center, the Family Research Council, and the Discovery Institute, an organization that promotes intelligent design over evolution in schools.

The American College of Pediatricians has been hugely influential in the promotion of anti-trans policy in the United States, relying in part to its misleading name. Members of the organization testify in state houses and courtrooms across the United States, misleading legislators into thinking they are the much larger American Academy of Pediatrics, the professional society that represents 67,000 pediatricians in the United States. In 2023, the organization inadvertently left a Google Drive public, leading to the leak of a massive trove of files showing their extremist roots. According to these documents, the group received significant donations from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing organization that has played a large role in the passage and defense of anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the United States. It also received free video production from Family Watch International, a group of Christian fundamentalists opposing homosexuality, birth control, abortion, and sex education. The American College of Pediatricians itself has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center since 2012, when the group’s leader stated that “homosexuality poses a danger to children” and that the group was “essentially a Judeo-Christian values organization.”

[...] Despite the widespread misinformation, every major medical organization in the United States supports gender-affirming care. In February, the American Psychological Association, the largest psychological association in the world, released a policy resolution stating that gender-affirming care is medically necessary and saves lives. The American Academy of Pediatrics currently recommends that transgender youth have access to gender-affirming care tailored to their unique needs. The Advocates for Trans Equality maintains a list of over 30 of the largest U.S.-based medical organizations that support transgender care, including the Endocrine Society, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, the American Public Health Association, and the American Medical Association.

Anti-trans extremists such as X owner Elon Musk and numerous right-wing and anti-trans pundits and websites are touting a video from American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) Dr. Jill Simons issuing a statement opposing gender-affirming care for trans children.

In contrast to radical right-wing whacko group ACPeds, mainstream medical organizations support gender-affirming care as a medically necessary.

ACPeds is a radical right-wing medical group that is opposed to abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and transgender rights, and has trafficked in COVID denialism and anti-vaxxer extremism.

[non-un-topo]

*Covered in blood and shaking* I finally got ahold of a new doctor

[morlock-holmes]

Catch-22

Now I'm looking at dental insurance.

As I understand the process from talking to a succession of harried and/or confused people, it works like this:

Each dentist has a contract with each insurer that they cover to provide services at a specific price, and then another price structure for out of network visits.

Dental insurance can, even post-Obamacare, have annual coverage maximums, and marketplace plans tend to be around $1,000- $1,500. They also function on a co-insurance model, meaning that instead of charging you a flat rate for, say, a cleaning, they pay some percentage of the cost of a cleaning, which is applied to your out of pocket maximum.

What this means is that the insurance company cannot tell you the price of a procedure unless you are asking about a specific dentist.

Meanwhile, the dentist cannot tell you the price of a procedure unless you tell them what specific insurance plan you have.

[studiohromi]

So many teeth. 🦷🦷🦷

I recently created this massive set of dental/periodontal illustrations depicting various dentoalveolar phenotypes from both soft tissue and hard tissue anatomical perspectives. The two scenarios at the top show an optimized periodontal phenotype (the one on the right is somewhat deficient, but still robust), and the four scenarios below are examples of intact, susceptible, and deficient bone and gingival phenotypes next to the anticipated impact of intervention; from top to bottom, the gingiva and bone get progressively worse after the teeth are straightened, which would lead to the need for additional intervention such as bone augmentation.

See more medical/scientific illustration work at hromibiomedical.com

[thelandofbritain]

Mouth-cancer deaths fear over NHS dentist shortage - BBC News

Britain no longer has a functioning dental care system for the WHOLE population. Underfunding by the Tory government for many years means that only higher-paid people in Britain can afford to go to the dentist any more. Even for a simple check-up.

This is a scandal in a supposedly civilised democratic society that cares for its people. A national disgrace and source of shame.

Then, of course, there's the GREED of dentists themselves. The greed fostered by a government that encourages selfish, money-grubbing "me first" attitudes rather than a caring community that supports all of us.

So now it's not just a problem of having bad teeth, it's the growth of mouth cancers, too.

When will Britain ever stop being a corrupt, selfish country that's only interested in the rich and their money?

[all-review-by-rk27]

PowerBite

PowerBite: A Delicious Way to Support Oral Health

I used PowerBite for a Brighter Smile and Fresher Breath

For years, I'd been looking for a way to improve my oral health routine. Brushing twice a day was a must, but I felt like something was missing. Then, I discovered PowerBite! This innovative dental health supplement has been a game-changer.Read more......

Natural Ingredients That Work

PowerBite boasts a unique blend of natural ingredients, including calcium carbonate, wild mint, and Mediterranean sea salt. These ingredients work together to strengthen teeth, freshen breath, and fight off bad bacteria. Unlike some harsh mouthwashes, PowerBite is gentle on the mouth and tastes great! The subtle mint flavour leaves you feeling refreshed and confident.Read more......

Easy to Integrate into Your Routine

One of the things I love most about PowerBite is its convenience. It comes in chewable tablet form, making it easy to incorporate into your daily routine. No more messy rinses or complicated steps – just pop a PowerBite in your mouth and chew! It's a simple yet effective way to give your oral health a little boost.Read more......

Overall, I highly recommend PowerBite to anyone looking for a natural and convenient way to improve their oral health. It's a great addition to your brushing routine and leaves your mouth feeling clean and refreshed. Read more......

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Canadian Dental Care Plan (CDCP) is set to start providing coverage next month — but it's not clear that enough dentists will enrol to provide care to the 1.6 million seniors that have signed up already. Health Canada would not provide CBC News with a figure for how many oral health care providers have registered for the CDCP since applications opened on March 11. The department will only say "thousands" have signed on. According to their national associations, there are approximately 26,500 dentists, 1,700 independent hygienists and 2,400 denturists practising in Canada — 30,500 in total. "I'm hearing that the sign-up is slow," said Dr. Heather Carr, president of the Canadian Dental Association. "I do not think it's as high as we would hope in order for this plan to be successful."

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

Solarpunk … orthodontics?

My jaw hurts.

It’s hurt for decades; I started clenching it at night when I was asleep when I was a preteen. This coincided with several factors, none of which I think are wholly the source but were probably contributors to the issue: we had just moved cities and I was under a ton of stress moving to a new neighbourhood and starting at a new school for the first time, I had just begun an orthodontics saga of many years which started with wearing headgear to forcibly shove my upper back molars further back into my skull in order to make room for the rest of my upper teeth to move backwards (with the eventual help of braces) to correct an overbite that was starting to affect my bite, and that I was an extremely anxious eldest child. Looking back, it’s clear I was on the spectrum and had a diagnosable anxiety disorder. But discovering that would be much further in the future.

All I knew at the time was that my jaw hurt. I told my dentist and orthodontist and they recommended I sleep on my back, so that I would have less chance of clenching. I did this, and still to this day must choose: do I sleep clenching my jaw, or with my mouth wide open? I have a choice between a) painful muscles or b) terrible breath in the morning + slowly yellowing teeth. Hoorah. I wasn’t given any other advice.

It is at this point that I would have liked any of the professionals involved in the process to have talked to me about the ramifications of seriously and irrevocably altering the shape of my jaw on the surrounding musculature but frankly, I’m not sure they were trained to do that. And by “that” I mean talking to children, communicating professional knowledge to a lay audience, and knowing about the muscles of the face all at the same time.

I would hope that in a future solarpunk society, there would be people with those skillsets employed by health professionals to communicate and emphasize a more holistic look at healthcare - in a way that meets people where they’re at. I was thirteen; I wasn’t ready to hear or understand even the little that dentists would tell me now in my late thirties. I needed someone skilled to discuss this with me. The braces and headgear needed to happen: my bite was getting painful, my overbite was growing so extreme. But even a knowledge of the side effects would have been empowering to me, as a child. I had very little say in any of this process, though I got to pick the colour of the elastics around my braces, yay.

My jaw still hurt.

In the early days of 2012, I woke up one morning and couldn’t chew my food without pain: not even soft foods such as pancakes were safe. I made an emergency appointment with my dentist at the time, who quickly assessed the issue and whipped up a mouthguard for me. I didn’t have insurance at the time (having aged out of my parents’ coverage, and none afforded by my college), and the dentist was sensitive to that, and gave me a discount. Bless him; I’m sure he’s long retired, but I hope that if that little family dentist office off the Danforth in Toronto is still in operation, that it’s seeing some good years.

Wearing a mouthguard every single night to bed wasn’t foreign to me, because I’d worn the retainer I was given after my braces came off religiously for many years until about two years before this. I still wear a retainer to this day: it not only makes it so that I am not clenching quite as hard, but it saves my teeth from the bone-cracking pressure. (I was informed by my current dentist that clenching my teeth is a major contributor to my receding gums, which is a current dental issue I have, yay again.)

My jaw still hurts now, though.

In that future solarpunk world, I’m sure young people wouldn’t wake up with debilitating pain in their jaw and be forced to think above all else about how this is a financial setback. In a future solarpunk world, I would hope that insurance coverage would be a thing of the past, as it would be unnecessary. I don’t know how the details of that would work out. I just know it would save so many young people from worsening the anxiety that was already so bad that it led to jaw pain.

When I moved to a new city and saw a new chiropractor, he would help me to mobilize and relieve the tension somewhat in those muscles at the end of each appointment. It helped, somewhat, especially to mitigate the damage caused by the stress of graduate school - and then a car accident, and then COVID.

I was finally diagnosed with an anxiety disorder several years ago, and though I’m mitigating it to my best abilities, I haven’t stopped clenching my jaw while I sleep, or during the day subconsciously. I’m still searching for some sort of relief other than constantly wearing my nightguard, which is just an automatic thing that I do after brushing my teeth every night. (I don’t think that this sort of wearable tech makes me a cyborg, just a boring responsible person.)

In a solarpunk world, many people are going to need dental surgery. Many people are going to need orthodontic interventions. It’s just a fact. But what can we do now to make sure that the dentists and orthodontists of the future actually work to make their patients’ lives better, not just their teeth?

This is my two cents’ worth. What do you think?

PS: I should mention that though I live in Canada, dental is not covered by our (ailing, politically besieged) social healthcare system.

[buccellato]

I really actually love this chapter specifically, mainly because you don't get many chances to see how little gung-ho guns actually care for each other, but this chapter involves not only that but also Legato having an Absolutely Terrible time

like, he's forced to eat food in some sort of straight jacket (due to, uh, spinal compression) and nobody else has cut his food for him, or is helping him with it in any way, but they are all watching him choke on it. And he is definitely not happy about it.

...And all of this seems incredibly cruel and fucked-up until you remember he can control people's bodies completely against their will (and we're reminded of it 2 pages later when he fucks up Midvalley for pointing a gun at him), which means he's doing this to himself on purpose? As some sort of weird self-harm??

Then, right after the world's worst work party, we have the world's greatest tone-shift by cutting away to Vash flipping the bike because he's over 100 years old but can't actually drive lmao

[asthevermincrawls]

this isnt said nearly enough, but dental is medical care and should be treated as such. regular cleanings, fillings--including ones that are visible--and root canals are not cosmetic procedures. dental is chronically left out of insurance plans or even "universal" health care even despite all the serious health conditions that can result from a lack of proper dental care. an abscessed tooth can result in sepsis, which can kill you. inflammation or infection can easily travel from the teeth to the heart, leading to endocarditis, something that requires open heart surgery to fix

[famewolf]

it's been over a decade since I've been able to get a same-week doctor appointment. idk what's changed or how my mom was managing it when we were kids, but it's super rough being any sort of unwell in america lmao