I found that getting the fluoride paste applied at the end of each cleaning actually helps reduce the tea staining. (My teeth used to stain pretty bad)
I've never understood this. I've had a lot of coffee and tea but have never noticed my teeth being "stained". What does this even mean? I hear people mention it all the time so its always been very confusing, how would you "stain" your teeth unless you're holding the drink in your mouth for long periods?
Some 20 years later I finally went to a dentist again, in a developing country no less, because I had a visible cavity - my first ever. It was quite scary given the elapsed time. $15 dollars, and about as many minutes, later all was said and done, with no other issues present.
Dentists are fucking psychopaths and we are literally cattle at their mercy. I have no idea how to continue, how to find a dentist I can trust with my stupid teeth. I am terribly afraid of them now.
If you are in pain, they either damaged the nerve which is bad as that could require a root canal eventually. Or they failed to clean out the cavity and it's infected. Either way, you should experiment with finding a dentist, perhaps go in for a cleaning every 6 months to check a dentist out.
At not point are you obligated to do a cavity filling unless you are comfortable with it. Just decline any additional services beyond the cleaning.
Also, try oil pulling and get some good higher end toothpaste. I had some sensitivity and after doing both everything is great.
But I went to a new dentist in FL a few months ago, and that guy told me to refill them because according to him, they are starting to crack (not sure how he saw them in grainy X-rays; he tried to show me one, but I couldn't see it) :D Anyway, I agreed to have them refilled since it's been a while and the cost was reasonable. Now one of the fillings he redid in my molar makes me feel uncomfortable when I chew things with it.
I wrote up a more detailed experience about this in another comment in this post. I hope people see it and learn from it to not trust their dentists easily (esp. the ones you are visiting for the first time).
I finally found a good dentist, but it was after I chipped one during the pandemic. It was never was done right in the first place, or the second place when I had it fixed. Lost that tooth unfortunately.
But after ten years with no dentistry, I had only one other cavity, and of course some light gingivitis. They did not have an idea I hadn’t been for over ten years.
I had great insurance at the time, and I was so shocked that I didn’t get a second opinion. After many years of retrospect, I have deep fissures which I got sealed years ago, and I suspect this hack saw shadows and assumed cavity instead of looking, because almost of the cavities she found were in the molars.
If the news is awful always get several opinions. One person may know better ways to handle it.
In medicine you treat the patient, not the picture. If your teeth seem fine, they probably are fine.
You will always hear a lot of differing opinions about this from health care professionals and there are of course exceptions, but exceptions are exceptions. You must keep in mind that HCPs are people that see a disproportionate number of very unwell people and they are not immune to bias.
Because of this bias, a common phrase in medicine is if you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras. It's a way of saying that most symptoms you see will be from ordinary ailments. I can think of too many cases where patients went through needless testing and anxiety only to eventually discover that it was all for nothing.
My new dentist says there is nothing wrong with my teeth whatsoever.
Maybe 10 years later, after countless people warning me that I was gambling with my health by never going to a dentist, I thought I'd try again. I went to the local university dental school, where they need problems to work on.
They told me I was totally fine.
I haven't been to a dentist in the maybe 15 years since that experience. It turns out there is almost no evidence to support routine cleanings or consulting with a dentist.
HN anecdotal data is not medical advice - but if you aren't suffering from any dental issues, it could be worth your time to do some research before you schedule your next dental appointment, and if you get a diagnosis of an issue it might be worth a second opinion. I highly recommend checking to see if your local dental school is taking appointments, because they have no incentive to push additional procedures on you (they can always find somebody who really needs it).
I hadn't been to a dentist in 10 years, not even for a cleaning. I chipped tooth and went in to get it fixed.
The dentist tried to upsell me on a ton of things that needed to be looked at.
Never once mentioned that it looked like I hadn't had a cleaning in a while.
I got my tooth fixed (just a bit of bonding), never had any of the other work he recommended done.
I went to a new dentist a few months ago because I was starting to get some sensitivity and exposure at a gum, which I thought was really bad. He said it wasn't a big deal, fixed it up, but then says he wants to cap all of my teeth!
Happy to be reading this and think I'll wait on getting any more work.
Once I saw a new dentist who also told me I had several cavities. Look, my teeth health isn't perfect, but any dentist that tells me I have so many cavities is a big red flag. I ended up seeing another dentist and that dentist told me I didn't have any cavities. The inconsistency between dentists is really off the charts (per TFA).
Also this quote from the article was telling:
> At a dental school, I heard about a newsletter, The Profitable Dentist, and became a subscriber. From this newsletter, I discovered that there’s a whole business devoted to telling dentists how to build up the “million dollar practice.” Dentists are flocking to courses on how to generate more profits by maximizing the use of hygienists, extending credit, stepping up collection practices, and persuading patients to accept expensive restoration work instead of fillings.
Look for any dentist trying to increase their bottom line: patients are not idiots. If a dentist tries to upsell me aggressively, I simply find another dentist. The reality is there are nearly endless dentists to choose from in my metropolitan area.
I got a second opinion, they fixed my tooth there and then. Been seeing this dentist on and off for ten years with insurance changes. I have had 2 cavities in ten years.
That was twenty-five years ago. Haven't been to a dentist since. My teeth are fine, and always have been.
Funny story about the 'no cavities' thing - when I was maybe 12 I went to a new dentist who found a cavity in a molar, drilled it out, and filled it with some sort of 'invisible' polymer filling and charged a whole bunch of money for it. Next dentist I went to, I mentioned the cavity and he said nobody had drilled on the tooth and there was no sign of a cavity or a filling of any type there.
Some years later, I was reading somewhere online and found out that the dentist who "filled" the "cavity" was a subscriber to a dental practice management program run by the Church of Scientology that, in part, taught that it was OK to rip off patients who weren't Scientologists. A few years after that, the dentist got arrested for molesting children and is probably still in prison.