Can we maybe say goodbye to conventional drill and fill dentistry?

We recently came across two separate new advancements in the field of dentistry. Each of them shows quite a bit of promise to us. As many of you who have been following us for a while know, we tend to be pretty conservative when it comes to many of the ‘bells and whistles’ in modern dentistry. I really prefer the idea of something that has stood the test of time.

However, when new technologies are developed that could prove to be game changers, it behooves us to take a good look at them and determine if they are coming from an angle that supports both the health of the mouth AND the health of the whole body.  (We consider this to be one of the main myths in the field of oral health… Thinking that we can somehow treat the mouth separate from the rest of the body.) Many new advancements in dentistry and medicine are born from within this myth. We think that technologies that don’t take into primary consideration the health of the whole system are missing an opportunity to create truly remarkable advancements in their fields.

While the technologies vary in their approach, both of these new technologies are focused on stimulating the body’s innate ability within our teeth to repair tooth tissue. One of these new technologies is called Electrically Accelerated and Enhanced Remineralisation (EAER), which involves an electric current that spurs decayed teeth to repair themselves. In this strategy, using an electrical current into the tooth, researchers have been successful in stimulating the tooth to utilize minerals in the saliva (primarily calcium and phosphorus) to harden an existing filling. Here’s a link to the article in the Huffington Post about this new strategy.

This first strategy is definitely an improvement to the customary drill and fill dental model. However, given that the technology uses electrical energy to stimulate the healing process, we are a bit on guard for this. Since most of modern medicine and dentistry seems to be completely unaware that the body is full of low-level electrical impulses, a fact that is the basis of Traditional Chinese Medicine, using electricity in the mouth is slightly concerning. Even with this slight red flag, we still see that this strategy holds great promise when compared to the traditional dental drill approach.

The second new technology has us even more excited! From our laymen point of view, this second approach is looking to locally stimulate the stem cells in our teeth to repair the decayed area. This second approach uses a laser (concentrated light) to perform this stem cell stimulating strategy. Those of you who attended our HealThy Mouth World Summit in January 2013 will recall one of the experts there spoke about this potential of using stem cells from our own bodies to regrow teeth. This is a real potential and these two technologies are showing us that much of how we approach dentistry is set to change in the coming years.

Here’s a link to the article on the use of laser light to stimulate teeth to repair themselves.

If you’d like to know what questions to ask to find a dental team who will work with you on your journey to greater oral health, feel free to download our FREE Guide to Safe Dentistry.

What do you think? Would you choose to go with either of these strategies if you were told you had tooth decay? Would you like to see if we can arrange an interview with some of the creators of these strategies? Or would you prefer to simply learn how to avoid decay all together? 🙂

We would love to hear your thoughts on these new strategies in the comments below!

Thank you and Aloha!