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Could this new gel be the biggest dental breakthrough since the introduction of fluoride? THE GIST A new gel could soon eliminate painful fillings and root canals. The technology doesn't prevent cavities; it heals teeth by regenerating them. Although this is good news for teeth, the research could also be applied to heal bones and other tissues in the body. Dentists could soon hang up their drills. A new peptide, embedded in a soft gel or a thin, flexible film and placed next to a cavity, encourages cells inside teeth to regenerate in about a month, according to a new...

A Kitchener truck driver is facing a careless driving charge but on the bright side, his tooth doesn't hurt anymore. Lambton County OPP say they stopped a big rig driver doing some driving dentistry along Hwy. 402 on Wednesday... Cops determined the 58-year-old driver was driving so poorly because he was trying to pull out a tooth while he was driving. "The driver was very forthright with the officer," Reurink said. The amateur dentist of a driver had rigged a string around his hurting tooth and then tied the other end to the roof of the cab, police said. "One...

A US worker came within seconds of destroying Lincoln's copy of the Magna Carta after nearly spraying it with a chemical cleaner. The 800-year-old document is currently on display in New York, but almost met a sticky end thanks to an overzealous cleaner. Lincoln Cathedral's archive conservation consultant Chris Woods accompanied the document, spending hours making sure the inked sheepskin which contains the charter of freedom, was placed correctly into a £42,000 vacuum-sealed display case to keep it safe from the elements. And it was, until a lock briefly malfunctioned just as a workman tried to give it a last...

A DODGY accent and startling false teeth were all that was needed to turn Canadian actor Mike Myers into the British super-spy Austin Powers. In “The Simpsons”, a television show, Ralph Wiggum’s dentist scares him into brushing with the decaying snaggle-teeth of the (fictional) “Big Book of British Smiles”. And there is some truth behind the awful stereotype: the factory workers of Britain’s Industrial Revolution were fed on sugar from the colonies, and led the known world in dental caries. Early in the 20th century Americans were brushing and flossing while some British dentists still believed that chomping on hard...

The glittering "grills" of some hip-hop stars aren't exactly unprecedented. Sophisticated dentistry allowed Native Americans to add bling to their teeth as far back as 2,500 years ago, a new study says. Ancient peoples of southern North America went to "dentists"—among the earliest known—to beautify their chompers with notches, grooves, and semiprecious gems, according to a recent analysis of thousands of teeth examined from collections in Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (such as the skull above, found in Chiapas, Mexico). Scientists don't know the origin of most of the teeth in the collections, which belonged to people living...

Some years ago, when I was young and green in judgement, just graduated from college, I moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania, so as to be closer to aunts and uncles and cousins. I myself had been born and raised in Nebraska; the parents and older siblings had been born and raised in Pennsylvania and New York, before moving to Nebraska, a trek for which their families never forgave them. The parents and older siblings took to Nebraska like ducks to water, but I myself had always dreamed of, fantasized about, living among hordes of wonderful caring loving relatives. And so when...

Experimental chewy mint beats tooth decay 09th April 2008 A new chewable mint looks set to solve the worldwide problem of tooth decay. BasicMints is an experimental fluoride-free treatment designed to mimic a component in human saliva that neutralises acids in the mouth that can erode tooth enamel. US researchers tested the product on 200 children – aged between 10-and-a-half and 11 – over a year. The results show that children who were administered BasicMints had 62% fewer cavities in their molars when the year was up, compared to children in the placebo group. The research team, from New York's...

Dental fillings could become a thing of the past By Laura Clout  Last Updated: 12:23am BST 05/04/2008     Dentists will one day be able to dispense with fillings and help decaying teeth repair themselves, scientists believe.Researchers say they have developed a way of regrowing dentine, the yellow mineral substance in the middle of teeth that is most affected by decay. They hope that within a decade, dentists will be able to use the technique and eliminate the need for fillings.Prof Sally Marshall, of the University of California, said the technique involves painting a calcium solution onto the damaged dentine.This...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Chris Collier has been a patient of Dr. Dave Rummel for 30 years. When it comes to teeth, Collier is more concerned about his health than his smile. "The reason I come here is because I know I can trust the dentist I have," Collier said. "I know I can get good workmanship." SLIDESHOW: Images From Report Rummel is one of the few dentists in central Ohio who makes his own crowns, bridges and dentures, but most other dentists rely on outside dental labs, 10 Investigates' Lindsey Seavert reported. The labs can be down the street or...

When he was stopped at Heathrow, dentist Sohail Qureshi claimed he was flying to Pakistan to celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid with his family. The haul of weapons, cash and terror handbooks he was carrying however told a much more sinister story. An Islamic extremist, the 30-year-old was in fact on his way to fight for the Taliban against British troops. In an email to a contact before he left Qureshi wrote: "Pray that I kill many, brother. Revenge, revenge, revenge." Yesterday he became the first person to be convicted under tough new anti-terror laws. However it emerged he...

A recent Wealthy Dentist survey asked dentists who they would like to see win the upcoming US presidential election. Two out of three dentists responding to this survey said they would rather see a Republican in the Oval Office than a Democrat. Among the dentists surveyed, the Republican favorite was Mitt Romney, while Democrats prefer Hillary Clinton. Though this poll only surveyed dentists, the implications reach beyond the profession of dentistry. Dentists see over 30 million Americans each month, allowing them to both hear and influence people's opinions on a wide range of topics. Among the 71% of dentists who...

BARBOURVILLE, Ky. — In the 18 years he has been visiting nursing homes, seeing patients in his private practice and, more recently, driving his mobile dental clinic through Appalachian hills and hollows, Dr. Edwin E. Smith has seen the extremes of neglect. He has seen the shame of a 14-year-old girl who would not lift her head because she had lost most of her teeth from malnutrition, and the do-it-yourself pride of an elderly mountain man who, unable to afford a dentist, pulled his own infected teeth with a pair of pliers and a swig of peroxide. He has seen...

Cabbie pulls teeth out Oct 20 09:08 AM US/Eastern A man described how he pulled out seven of his own teeth because he was told to wait for an appointment to see an NHS dentist. Taxi driver Arthur Haupt used pliers and a technique he had learned in the army to carry out the DIY dentistry. He said he was forced in agony into taking the drastic action because he was given a three-week wait by staff at his local NHS dental surgery.

Falling numbers of state dentists in England has led to some people taking extreme measures, including extracting their own teeth, according to a new study released Monday. Others have used superglue to stick crowns back on, rather than stumping up for private treatment, said the study. One person spoke of carrying out 14 separate extractions on himself with pliers. More typically, a lack of publicly-funded dentists means that growing numbers go private: 78 percent of private patients said they were there because they could not find a National Health Service (NHS) dentist, and only 15 percent because of better treatment....

Patients turn to DIY dentistry as the crisis in NHS care deepensBy JENNY HOPE - More by this author » Last updated at 06:48am on 15th October 2007 Hard to swallow: Few can find an NHS dentist The parlous state of NHS dentistry was exposed yesterday.  Such is the shortage of state-funded dentists that one in 20 patients has resorted to DIY treatment, in some cases pulling out their own teeth.  One in five has gone without treatment because of the cost. And of those who have registered with a private dentist, three-quarters did so only because their surgery stopped...

ADA Distributing Misleading Information on Two Federal Fluoride Reports, Says Fluoride Action Network New York -- In a statement released August 9, 2007, over 600 dentists, physicians, scientists and environmentalists urge Congress to stop water fluoridation until Congressional hearings are conducted. They cite new scientific evidence that fluoridation, long promoted to fight tooth decay, is ineffective and has serious health risks. (http://www.fluorideaction.org/statement.august.2007.html) Signers include a Nobel Prize winner, three members of the prestigious 2006 National Research Council (NRC) panel that reported on fluoride’s toxicology, two officers in the Union representing professionals at EPA headquarters, the President of the International Society...

Opening King Tut's tomb brought to light treasures and curses hidden for thousands of years. One of the lat ter still haunts us -- the curse of King Tut's tooth. Tut, like many teenagers, needed a tooth extraction, in his case, an impacted wisdom tooth. Sadly, ancient Egyptian dentistry was unable to help the boy-pharaoh, as extractions were done only on very loose teeth, by the gentle touch of fingers. Even forceps (pliers) were probably not employed until long after Tut died. Astonishingly, modern dental extraction procedures are still mired in the technology of the an cient world. Recently, I...

Prankster dentist wins case against insurer27 Jul 2007, 0733 hrs IST,AP OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON: An oral surgeon who played a practical joke on his assistant by implanting fake boar tusks in her mouth while she was under anesthesia was sued for it, but ended up getting a last laugh. Dr. Robert Woo, who is originally from Hong Kong, took photos of her porcine dental work that later made the rounds. The employee, Tina Alberts, felt humiliated and quit, later suing her boss. When Woo's insurance company, Fireman's Fund, would not deal with the lawsuit, Woo settled out of court with...

---snip--- Americans travel to Mexico for stomach surgery, eye exams and routine checkups. But it is the dentistas - thousands strung along the border - who are in the vanguard in attracting U.S. health consumers. Mexican dentists often charge one-fifth to one-fourth of those north of the border. Their operating costs are substantially lower, and because the Mexican legal system makes it almost impossible to sue them, they don't have to worry about high malpractice premiums.

[A]ncient tartar-encrusted teeth may be a biological gold mine for scientists, thanks to a new technique for extracting food particles from teeth that once belonged to prehistoric humans. The method already has solved a mystery surrounding what early coastal Brazilians ate. In the future, similar studies may reveal clues about other ancient diets, particularly in areas with little plant preservation from earlier times... Eggers explained that ancient tartar could reveal what an individual ate in the days or weeks before death. Evidence suggests some prehistoric populations cleaned their teeth -- using fibrous foods and shell fragments as natural abrasives --...

A dentist who pulled out an elderly woman’s teeth without anaesthetic “to teach her a lesson” has been struck off. David Quelch left the retired nurse, who was 87, with blood pouring from her mouth from two extractions after she had complained to her doctor about the quality of previous treatment by the dentist. After a three-day hearing the General Dental Council found Mr Quelch, 54, guilty of serious professional misconduct and ordered his name to be removed from the register. The woman, referred to as Patient A, gave her evidence via a video link. She said: “Mr Quelch told...

Socialism is best because under socialism. No one has to worry about being poor or starving to death. No one is poor, unemployed, discriminated, everyone is equal reguardless or race or creed. Today such ideas are condemned as evil. Any attempt to protest against slavery and genocide and human rights violations are met with the cries of COMMUNISM! By the religious right and then they conjure up stories about Stalin, Gulags, tortue, police state etc. So therefore we must stick with the current system of sweat shop slavery, poverty and racism while rich people who already have all they will...

ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON -- Federal health officials are again examining what's known - and what's still to be learned - about the safety of a mercury mixture that's stirred controversy since dentists began using it to fill cavities in the 1800s. A joint panel of outside experts voted Thursday to reject a draft report that concluded that dental fillings used by millions of people are safe. Yet the panel did not go so far as to declare the mercury-laden amalgam a danger, only that more study is needed because of the risk it poses to some groups. "For the general...

AUSTIN, Texas, July 17 (UPI) -- A Texas company has reportedly started freezing stem cells taken from baby teeth pulp tissue in hopes the cells might some day lead to disease treatments. BioEden Inc., which opened for business last week, told the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman, it's betting the science eventually will catch up with its aspirations. "We are absolutely confident this will work," Jeff Johnson, president of Austin's BioEden, told the newspaper. "All indications are this is a wonderful source of stem cells." The company said it expects baby teeth stem cells might eventually be used for bone, teeth nerve...

Snaggle-toothed hockey players and sugar lovers may soon rejoice as Canadian scientists said they have created the first device able to re-grow teeth and bones. The researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton filed patents earlier this month in the United States for the tool based on low-intensity pulsed ultrasound technology after testing it on a dozen dental patients in Canada. "Right now, we plan to use it to fix fractured or diseased teeth, as well as asymmetric jawbones, but it may also help hockey players or children who had their tooth knocked out," Jie Chen, an engineering professor...

ASSOCIATED PRESS CHICAGO -- Two long-awaited, government-funded studies found no evidence that dental fillings containing mercury can cause IQ-lowering brain damage or other neurological problems in children. Children with such fillings were no more likely than other youngsters to suffer such problems, the researchers found. Some experts found the findings powerfully reassuring. But the studies are unlikely to end the fierce debate over the long-term effects of what are known as amalgam fillings, and some advocates bitterly accused the researchers of conducting unethical experiments on children. Amalgam fillings, also called silver fillings, are made of mercury and other metals and...

New York - January 16, 2006 - Fluoride, added to water supplies, is touted as a tooth decay preventive. Science increasingly shows fluoridation is ineffective, harmful and a waste of money. But the politics of organized dentistry keeps fluoridated water flowing. Last year, 2005, was a very successful year for the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) and their affiliated groups for getting the truth out and bringing negative fluoride science to the media’s attention. Voters rejected fluoridation in at least nine referenda including Bellingham, Washington, where fluoridationists spent $260,000 to lose against a small group of volunteers armed with the truth...

A two-year study in the latest issue of the Journal of Clinical Dentistry found that CaviStat, a calcium/arginine-based product, was more effective than fluoride in fighting tooth decay when used in toothpaste form. The study, involving 726 children, found the group using CaviStat had 58 percent fewer cavities than those using over-the-counter fluoride toothpaste.

PRODUCTS on sale over the counter that promise to whiten teeth can exacerbate gum disease and are illegal under European law, the British Dental Association (BDA) said yesterday. An increasing number of people want to polish their stained teeth to achieve whiter, brighter smiles. Private dental clinics are also smiling as the market for cosmetic dentistry in Britain has grown over a decade to be worth a reputed £1 billion. But products that contain high levels of peroxide dye can make teeth and gums painfully sensitive, the BDA warned consumers. Do-it-yourself tooth-whitening kits are available in high street pharmacies and...

STANTON, Ky. - With a silvery Airstream trailer as a dental office, Dr. Jeff Bailey goes about his work, brightening the often gapped smiles of people in a part of the country with the highest rate of toothlessness in America. Bailey, one of many volunteers who are bringing free mobile dental care to poor people in the hills and hollows of Appalachia, sees case after case of severe tooth decay and gum disease — the consequences of sugary foods, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, a lack of fluoridated water, and simple neglect.

Put a guy in a dental chair, and he turns into a wimp.In a new survey of 171 Chicago area dentists, 49 percent said males are more anxious when it comes to dental appointments, while only 15 percent thought females were the scaredy-cats. The survey is being released at the Chicago Dental Society's annual meeting at McCormick Place. "The bigger they are, the more they fear," said Niles dentist Alice Boghosian, who recalled one man who came in with a broken tooth. CHICAGO'S TOP SMILES Dentists chose the best smiles from a list of five local celebrities. Oprah Winfrey: 49...

A toothpaste has been developed that can rapidly and seamlessly fix little cavities without need for drilling. Dental paste of synthetic tooth enamel could revolutionise treatment of tiny early lesions, says the study published today in the journal Nature by Dr Kazue Yamagishi, of the FAP Dental Institute, Tokyo. Tooth decay is normally treated by removal of the affected part, then filling the hole with a resin or metal alloy. This is less than ideal because a lot of healthy tooth must be removed to make the fillings stick. Dr Yamagishi and colleagues developed a crystalline white paste of modified...

D.J., a hulking 25-year-old Chicago construction worker, has six new gold teeth in his mouth. No, make that eight teeth --- six gold and two platinum ones. Cost: $1,300. In hip hop parlance, they are called "grills" and "fronts" --- a fashion statement and a state of mind where the more the merrier and the gaudier the better. From Birmingham, Ala., to the Bay Area in California, multiple gold teeth are popping up in the nation's mouths --- to the delight of some, the dismay of others and the confusion of many. Once the province of moneyed rappers like Master...