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Are dental implants the ultimate chewing machine?


Well to quickly answer that question the answer is a big NO. A healthy natural tooth has an amazing design, created over millions of years of evolution. A tooth has an internal blood supply and a cushioning ligament joining it to the surrounding bone. This ligament also helps form a near perfect seal with the gum surrounding the tooth. So if you take nothing more from this blog, it is for me to urge you to keep your teeth and gums healthy as you can like there is no comparable backup. Because there isn't.

So when teeth are unhealthy then we have problems. A root canal process on a tooth, if it is required, can preserve the full external ligament structure of a tooth. The tooth can then continue to function for a lifetime, provided the gums are healthy. If the gums are not healthy then treatments exists and are well worth employing. So it is wise to do everything you can to preserve that original "nature's design" and not have an implant as your first choice.

So to be blunt about it, why would you then want a metal bolt in your jawbone and a porcelain tooth fitted to it? Well the answer to that is that is that you have run out of options. You have not managed to keep your teeth healthy and for one reason or another, the tradition denture or bridge designs are not working for you. But remember an implant is not a first resort, but a last resort.

Dental implants are not without limitations. There is a type of gum disease on implants that can force their failure. Even the best implant system and procedure can end in ultimate failure. But then there are more problems. There is a huge industry out there making near copy designs of the original or best implants. If there has not been time to do long term studies on these copy designs then they could easily not do what you hope they would do. "But they are cheaper" you say. But if they fail then it is a very complicated disaster. This is obviously a situation to be very weary and not allowing yourself to drift towards the cheapest option.

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