Hi, it’s Dr Michael Ghobrial here from Sure Dental here at Wavell Heights in North Brisbane.
We had one of our lovely long term patients, Susan from Chermside, visit us yesterday. She’s turning 65 next month, and so she asked me, “Michael, as I’m going to be a senior in a couple of months, are there things I should look out for about my oral health?”
Here at Sure Dental, we have a lot of aged patients and often they want to know what common problems associated with getting older are. So I thought I’d make this video to share a little bit of information about the common problems for seniors in terms of their mouth and their teeth.
Now, the problems as we get older often are associated with the change in our saliva. As we get older and we’re put on more and more medications, these medications can change our saliva and sometimes reduce our saliva, causing our mouth to dry. Now, this can cause an increase in the decay rate in teeth.
Another thing is as we get older, the gums can recede and expose more of the softer tooth structure. That mixed with the lower saliva, and you get an increased decay rate.
The other issues as we get older are often associated with teeth lost when you were younger and the associated bone and tissues that were lost around there. Often people are in dentures, and the stuff that supports the dentures has deteriorated, and so they can have issues around ulcers and sore points on their dentures, or even dentures putting forces on other teeth, causing them to be lost also.
In those scenarios, we like to see people assess whether we can get them out of dentures and look at other options or make their dentures a bit more stable. In terms of the high decay rate, we like to check in on the medications and talk to Doctors and Pharmacists to see if we can improve the saliva situation and more vigilant regular checks. Fluoride treatment cleans can help prevent some of that decay that develops. But they’re the two most common issues in seniors as we get older with our teeth.
Getting older is part of life, but that doesn’t mean we should look old too, right? One of the best ways to look younger is to always have that healthy smile. And we would love to help you look after and maintain your optimum dental health.
So if it has been a little while since you have visited a dentist, and you are based around Brisbane, we would love to look after you. Simply visit our website at www.suredental.com.au and fill out the enquiry form, you can also direct message us on social media or better yet give us a call on 07 3113 9698. We’ll be in touch to help you organise your consultation. I hope you found this video useful. See you at the next one.
