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Keeping shtum about your dental history

We Brits don’t like to shout about our personal stuff. Yes, there are a few of us who think it’s a badge of honour to go on a chat show and talk about very personal things, but mostly we like to keep private lives private. And especially for anything to do with our teeth.

So, with that in mind, why would anyone want to make it obvious that we ate lots of sugar as a kid and now have fillings in almost every one of our molars and pre-molars? Would you rather people didn’t know you had lots of fillings? Of course, you would.

Yet with amalgam fillings, there’s no way you can hide your dental misdemeanours from the world. Every time you throw back your head for a good laugh, all those times you didn’t brush your teeth properly and got decay are there for the world to see. Somehow, fillings are not something we boast about like we do with scars.

‘Yes, that one there I got from eating too much candy floss at the fair and only brushing for 10 seconds when my mum wasn’t looking,’ said no one, ever.

No. What we all want, as far as our mouths are concerned, is to look like we never ate a boiled sweet and actually, we are the only person in the world who doesn’t have plaque or decay.

And one way to do that is with white fillings. These are made from a mixture of glass and plastic and are coloured white to look like tooth enamel.

When white fillings became available, they weren’t very strong and people used to have to have them replaced more often. These days though, white fillings are much stronger. Also, because they are put in in layers that bond with your tooth, unlike amalgam, which is just packed in very tightly, there’s no chance of decay-causing bacteria sneaking in underneath.

The other thing about white fillings is that they can be sculpted once they are in place. This means your dentist here at Parbold Dental in Ormskirk can give you back your chewing surfaces and make your fillings look more realistic than ever.