Mercury Safe

Everything wears away, and your silver fillings are no different. They endure tense and significant biting forces every day, and as they get older, they can crack, leak and may contribute to fractures in teeth. After some time, metal amalgam fillings can actually absorb water, causing them to swell and even break free from the tooth. When this occurs, your tooth is far more susceptible to tooth decay and sensitivity.

With advanced technologies of dental adhesion, resins and state-of-the-art ceramics, the newest bonded restorations will be close to rivaling nature in durability, wear, functionality and appearance.

Mercury/Silver fillings share some negatives worth listing that need to be considered if it’s time for you to replace your restorations:

• Amalgam grows and contracts when exposed to hot and cold extremes in your mouth. The constant growth and contraction with temperature may initiate cracks and fractures in teeth. There may not be any kind of symptoms for a while, but these teeth could become hypersensitive as the crack expands or opens if you bite down or chew. It isn’t abnormal for patients to come in questioning how they broke their tooth when they were eating something soft similar to bread or a banana. What they don’t realize is that the tooth more than likely had a crack in it a long time before it ultimately came apart.

• Silver fillings under continual chewing stress are susceptible to metal fatigue or flexing and bending failure, a concept which is often understood and confirmed by continuously bending a metal paperclip until it breaks.

• Metal fillings are harder and far less flexible compared to the teeth they’re molded into. The more time they are on the teeth, the greater pressure they will place on the rest of the weakened walls of the tooth bringing about cracks and fractures.

• Metal fillings are not glued in the tooth cavity. They simply sit in the tooth and act under pressure to wedge the tooth apart, like a metal wedge is required to split logs for firewood.

• A minute space around the filling edge exists from the moment your silver filling is plugged into the tooth; and in this gap, normal corrosion and leakage occurs. This space is big enough to allow harmful bacteria and food particles to seep in over time and cause tooth decay at the border between the filling and the tooth. Composite fillings, however, are essentially bonded to the tooth surfaces and seal the margins closed from invading bacteria.

• In order to prepare a tooth for a composite filling, the tooth can be treated far more gently and with less healthy tooth structure needing to be removed. And for that reason, the dentist can maintain the highest amount of original tooth structure as is possible

• Silver fillings require drilling undercuts (think carving out a pumpkin) as well as removing more substantial good portions out of the tooth to be able to keep the mercury amalgam filling from falling out because it is not attached directly to the tooth. These types of undercuts can also compromise the tooth as fillings get bigger and doom that particular tooth to upcoming cracking at some point. These fractures might be significant leading to crowning the tooth to restore it and even catastrophic fractures bringing about removal of the tooth.

• Composites, with their opportunity to be conservative and implementing their gluelike attributes, may reinforce and guard against fracture. By intercepting the chance of fracture before experiencing the symptoms of hot/cold sensitivity and also biting pain, new conservative solutions such as natural-colored fillings or porcelain-bonded restorations are actually protecting against the side effects of toothaches and damaged teeth.

• Finally, a growing number of dentists believe that, bonded tooth-colored restoratives are likely to be safer than conventional fillings, because they don’t include any mercury. Although the American Dental Association (ADA) states using mercury in metal fillings is safe, there’s an ongoing debate in the dental industry in regards to the unwanted effects of these mercury amalgam fillings. Many European countries actually prohibited using mercury amalgam fillings to avoid any kind of risks associated with mercury.

Using a PROACTIVE in place of a REACTIVE approach to amalgam replacement is actually a choice many patients would expect to have our practice follow.

Contact Us

  • Mendota Dental Associates
  • 720 Main Street
  • Suite 213
  • Mendota Heights, MN 55118

  • (651) 209-9219
Monday 7:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Tuesday 7:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Wednesday 7:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Thursday 7:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Friday 7:00 AM – 11:00 AM

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