How Poor Oral Hygiene Affects Your Mental Health and the Reverse

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Taking care of your teeth and mouth is generally more than just keeping your teeth clean and breath smelling good. Your mental health must allow you to take care of your oral health. Studies have shown that those who have poor mental health may end up losing their teeth at a much faster rate. If one is depressed, for example, even brushing your teeth is a hard task, which can lead to tooth decay. Poor oral health affects your teeth and can affect your mental health. A first way that poor oral health affects your mental health is due to affecting your confidence. If you have missing or rotting teeth due to poor oral health or because of tooth disease, it can definitely hurt your confidence. When you speak, the first thing people see is your teeth, and people can … Read more

The Effect of Opioid Prescription Limits For Wisdom Teeth Removal

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Recently it has been discussed how insurance companies have begun to limit prescriptions for opioids for teenagers due to recent studies suggesting that many young adults may later become addicted to opioids as a result of wisdom teeth removal, see Insurance Companies Limiting Access to Opioids After Wisdom Teeth Surgery. In addition to insurance companies taking action, some politicians in the U.S. have proposed legislation to limit opioid prescriptions for seven days. On March 15 2019, U.S. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (a Democrat from New York) and Cory Gardner (a Republican from Colorado) announced the John S. McCain Opioid Addiction and Prevention Act which would limit the supply of initial opioid prescriptions for acute pain to seven days. This bill would would create a seven-day prescription limit for opioids so that no more than a seven-day supply may be prescribed to … Read more

A Counseling Model for Dental Students

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An interesting article titled “The Embedded Counseling Model: An Application to Dental Students” written by David Francis Adams appears in the January 2017 edition of the Journal of Dental Education (vol. 81, no. 1, pp. 29-35). The article discusses a study performed at the University of Iowa College of Dentistry to study the impact of a counseling program. The study was motivated by prior studies that have shown that high rates of stress, anxiety, and mood problems are prevalent among dental students and and can lead to health issues and substance abuse. Similar types of issues were previously addressed in the post titled Designing a Predoctoral Dental Curriculum To Help With Therapy Issues such as Stress Management and Suicide Prevention. In the article, at the University of Iowa collaboration occurred between the dental school and the university counseling service that … Read more

Staying Upbeat when Facing Teeth Removal

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For those who are deciding to retain or to extract healthy impacted wisdom teeth or for those who have a tooth or teeth that has a clear indication for removal, you may find yourself at times feeling sad or experiencing sadness. Perhaps this sadness is from thinking about the costs and expenses needed to have great dental health and thinking about how people in other countries might have cheaper health care yet still have good outcomes. Perhaps this sadness is from looking over what seems to be countless complications occurring from wisdom teeth such as on the wisdom teeth complications page on this site and thinking about the negative effect it had on those lives. Perhaps this sadness is from thinking about all the time and effort that is required with a dental malpractice lawsuit and feeling sorry for those … Read more

Insurance Companies Limiting Access to Opioids After Wisdom Teeth Surgery

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Recently on this website, two articles were published discussing possible opioid abuse stemming from prescriptions given after wisdom teeth surgery, see 1) Persistent Opioid Use After Wisdom Teeth Removal and 2) Opioid Prescriptions From Dental Clinicians for Young Adults and Subsequent Opioid Use and Abuse. The first article discussed a 2018 JAMA article which found that that those who filled an opioid prescription from up to 7 days before until up to 3 days after wisdom teeth removal were 2.69 times as likely than those who did not to continue to fill opioid prescriptions weeks or months later after the wisdom teeth surgery. The second article discussed a 2018 JAMA Internal Medicine article which found that being given opioids by a dentist or oral surgeon for those who had never previously used opioids had higher rates of opioid use at … Read more