In this article you will find what is Dental fluorosis, how this will affect your teeth, different types of dental fluorosis, how you can prevent this and what treatments are available for dental fluorosis. Generally, Fluoride content in water is more in few places, so drinking this water may lead to dental fluorosis.
What is Dental fluorosis?
Dental fluorosis is the hypomineralization of tooth enamel and dentine caused by ingestion of excessive fluoride during enamel and dentine formation.
Dental fluorosis may lead to intrinsic staining of tooth structure which leads to discolouration of enamel and dentine. This mostly starts from pregnant ladies consuming too much of fluoride content in food and water.
And young childrens consuming too much of fluoride content, which would lead to disturbance in tooth development stages, As tooth development wll be present till the age of eight years in childrens.
Your dentist may diagnose fluorosis by the appearance of your tooth structure.
Types of Dental fluorosis
- Mild fluorosis: Light choky white patches would appear on enamel of the tooth surface.
- Moderate fluorosis: Slightly Brown stains would appear on all over the tooth surface.
- Severe fluorosis: Fully dark brown stains would appear on the entire tooth surface.
Is this a problem?
- It actually will not lead to any major problem, but would be not good from an aesthetic perspective.
- And sometimes it may lead to cavities.
How to Prevent?
- For children, make sure to have the right amount of fluoride content in water until they grow up for eight years. This may be possible with the help of your Dentist.
- For children, Use only Non fluoridated toothpaste till the age of eight years.
- For pregnant ladies, make sure to the right amount of fluoride content in water until the delivery.
- Check if your area water is having sufficient fluoride content in drinking water. Generally this will be managed and monitored by Government authorities.
Treatment for Dental fluorosis:
- Mostly in Mild and Moderate fluorosis conditions, bleaching would be helpful.
- In case of Severe fluorosis, having Veneers would be best.
Before going to bleaching or having Veneers, check out with your Dentist.
Thanks for reading the dentofacts article, for more such articles visit Dentofacts.
