In my mind, biological dentistry follows a few key pillars. And what those key pillars are is no metals in the mouth. So whether that’s mercury amalgam fillings and having those removed.
It could be possible if someone did have titanium implants that needed to be removed because they were having a sensitivity to the titanium in the jawbone, that could be the case. So no metals. The other thing is no root canal treated teeth.
And I’m someone when it comes to root canals, root canals are a great way for people to get out of pain. If a tooth is hurting, we go in and the nerve is killed and the nerve is removed from the tooth. And that provides instant relief for the patient.
My problem is not with root canals. My problem is when things have gotten so bad that there’s an abscess from the tooth that has now damaged the bone. And when you have damage of the bone around a tooth, even if it’s had a root canal, a lot of times there’s still chronic inflammation and chronic low-grade infection around the root tip of a tooth that does not ever want to resolve.
That’s when on the biological dentistry side of things, we would remove the tooth and we would do a root canal alternative, which would be a zirconium implant. And so the ceramic or zirconia implants, they are white, they’re tooth colored implants. They are more biocompatible than titanium, but titanium has been the gold standard in implant dentistry for the entire time that dental implants have been around.
And I’ve placed thousands of titanium dental implants over the years. I have switched over to the ceramic implants for the aesthetics, for the biocompatibility of it. And it’s been fantastic.
The Swiss Dental Solutions implants I use, we’ve had tremendous success with them. The aesthetics are great. The working properties of them are great.
And that’s a really big part of biological dentistry. Other things as it relates to periodontal health and periodontal disease and how we are treating that, we also utilize ozone treatment in the office for periodontal disease. Also whenever we’re preparing teeth, that’s another part that we use because it’s a phenomenal disinfectant and it’s also anti-inflammatory.
So it’s a great way to desensitize teeth. And we’ve had very good success with that. As we move a little bit further down the road of implant dentistry and the extraction process on the biological side of things, we’re utilizing platelet-rich fibrin, which is blood concentrates from the patient.
And we use a centrifuge. We spin the blood into a tube and we’re utilizing the platelet-rich fibrin, which has all the growth factors. It’s got all the great things in our blood that help us heal.
And we use that in different ways when it comes to implant placement, when it comes to extraction of teeth and even in periodontal procedures. So utilizing the body’s way to heal is the most important part. And then also from the restorative side of things, utilizing non-metal restorations and utilizing either full zirconia or printed restorations.
We’re able to be very conservative and try to preserve as much tooth structure as possible. If a crown is necessary, then we would recommend a crown, but we also have the capabilities of doing inlays and onlays, which are partial coverage. Crowns are similar to a crown, but partially cover the tooth instead of an entire crown.
And so that’s a little bit more minimally invasive, but also very strong and works very well. Those are the main pillars of biological dentistry, along with really standardizing a treatment that is very specific to each individual patient. There’s not a set protocol for every single person.
We really look at everything on an individual basis and utilize the best modalities for that person.
