To Ease Dental Anxiety So, many times I use small talk to distract my patient, and I find that it helps to reduce dental anxiety. Small talk may include asking about family, work, or school.
Having someone to carry on a pleasant conversation with can actually help relieve that anxiety, and distract you from the exam at hand. This is similar to the tactic some doctors use for children with fears of needles – they talk to them throughout the injection while carrying it out as quickly as possible.
It's important to remember that dentists don't go into their profession to judge people; they go into it to help them. No matter what your oral health condition is, a good dentist will not make you feel bad about it.
During routine dental examinations and cleanings, dentists can detect oral symptoms of stress, including orofacial pain, bruxism, temporomandibular disorders (TMJ), mouth sores and gum disease. If you're feeling tense or anxious, you should keep a watchful eye for signs of the following stress-related disorders.
Your dentist will likely smell both the breath from your mouth and the breath from your nose and rate the odor on a scale. Because the back of the tongue is most often the source of the smell, your dentist may also scrape it and rate its odor.
As health professionals, dentists aren't interested in judging you or making you feel bad. All they really care about is your oral health. Rather than worrying about what they might think of you on a personal level, think of dentists as partners who are on your side and working to protect your oral health.
Oral anxiety relieving (anxiolytic) medications (such as temazepam) are sometimes prescribed by dentists or doctors to help anxious patients relax. A short-acting, small, single dose is usually taken one hour before the dental appointment.
Your dentist may prescribe anti-anxiety drugs, such as diazepam (Valium), that you can take one hour before a scheduled dental visit. Your dentist may also recommend conscious sedation, such as nitrous oxide (or “laughing gas”), which can help calm nerves.
A dentist with empathy skills knows how his or her patient feels and is willing to provide emotional support. When the patient says, “I feel lousy because my friends ridicule me for my bad breathe or crooked teeth” and the dentist is able to respond by saying, “Well, I understand how you feel.
A lot of people are hesitant or afraid of the dentist because of bad teeth or chronic dental problems. If you're one of them, rest assured that there's nothing to be embarrassed about.
You don't have to blindly agree to any dental procedure, and you have the right to speak up and have your concerns addressed. And even if you don't need to have work done, you should never be afraid to ask any question about your dental health and history—even if it makes your dentist uncomfortable.
Keeping secrets from your dentist can prevent them from giving you the right treatment. Being truthful is critical to addressing the root cause of the problem to ensure that you have better oral and overall health in the future.
A dentist can tap on the problem tooth to determine whether pain appears when adequate pressure is applied. The painful feeling can mean that a root canal is required. With the same idea, a specialist can use thermal and electric testing.
Root canals are considered to be the most painful because they require removing the nerve tissue on a tooth's root. The removal of the nerve tissue is not only excruciatingly painful but also commonly leads to infection.
Crying or feeling the desire to cry is extremely common when you are experiencing high levels of anxiety. Pay attention to your emotions when you are thinking about a visit to the dental office.
There are many conditions we can identify during a visual examination of your oral cavity, even if you don't know you suffer from them. This includes mental health problems such as depression. Recent studies suggest that depression conclude depression is closely related to poor oral health.
The most commonly prescribed dental related drugs that treat anxiety belong to the “benzodiazepine” family. Drugs such as Valium, Halcion, Xanax, or Ativan. These drugs decrease anxiety by binding and toning down activity within “fear” receptors in the brain.
Fear of dental treatment is described in both ICD-10 classification and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-IV, in specific (isolated) phobias, a subgroup of anxiety disorders [9, 10].
If dental anxiety or fear has stopped you from seeing your dentist, you're not alone. An estimated 80% of Americans have some level of dental anxiety, with 9% to 15% avoiding the dentist entirely due to anxiety or fear.
Make sure to point out strange sensitivity, odor, pain or any change in your mouth. Sometimes your oral health can be a caution-light blinking a warning about serious disease, or a related health issue, and other times it may be that your body's battle with illness is affecting your oral health.
As odd as it might seem, just as you can smell the odor coming off of a rotting piece of fruit, you can smell the odor released from a rotting tooth. If you have bad breath that seems near impossible to get rid of, it's possible you have one or more rotten teeth.