Thanksgiving Food and Dental Health

Thanksgiving is almost here!  It’s my favorite holiday of the year as the tradition of giving thanks is uplifting, hanging out with friends and family therapeutic and the fact that we don’t have to run around getting gifts and decorating the house, the yard, and the kids very liberating.  And then, of course, there is the food… oh the THANKSGIVING FOOD:  turkey and all the trimmings, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green beans, pumpkin pie!

And the best thing from the dental stand point is that many of these foods promote good dental health. Surprised???  Well, here is the scoop of why the traditional foods served at Thanksgiving have been shown to prevent tooth decay and gum disease.

• Carrots and Celery: Often served alongside a roast turkey, carrots and celery are vegetables which are rich in fiber. Besides being great for your stomach, fiber stimulates your gums, which is good for your dental health.
• Sweet Potatoes or Mashed Potatoes: Potatoes are richly nutritious with a proper balance of vitamins and nutrients appropriate for oral health. They are loaded with carbs and proteins and rich in vitamin B and C. Potatoes do not stick on the teeth unlike other starchy foods which serve as haven for oral bacteria.
• Cranberries: Recent research indicates that cranberries hinder the oral bacteria from sticking to the teeth and forming dental plaque.
• Turkey: It is considered to help in remineralization of the enamel whose minerals are damaged by acid produced by bacteria.
• Greens and Winter Vegetables: Most Veggies are just great for health. They are a great source of vitamins and minerals such as vitamin A, vitamin C, flavanoids and coenzyme Q10. These prevent the gums against damage and promote their healing.

So have a safe and Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy your food!  Don’t forget however to brush and floss afterwards right before you fall asleep full of turkey, pies, and another year of wonderful memories.

Holiday time at Smiles For Kids

Happy New Year everyone!  We had such a fun and busy December and we were so excited to share much of it with our amazing patients and families!  We saw so many of our high school and college patients and learned all about the exciting things that they are doing.  Some of you are studying abroad this spring semester and some are getting their college acceptance letters as we speak.  What an exciting time of the year for our high school seniors!

On December 8th we went to Dr. Domann's annual open house and ate yummy Mexican food.  We love her event each year!  She does such a great job.  We even got a picture with the Ice Princess :)
On December 9th we had our staff Christmas Party.  Malgosia opened her house to us this year and we had fantastic catering by our friends from Spaghetti Western and lots and lots of fun.  Here are some pictures for you to enjoy from our party.  We love getting together every year to celebrate the season, each other and our office.

Dinner time!  Stefanie, Xochitl, Kasia, Yvette and Martina.

Presents!  Martina got new sunglasses and Carrie and Marie are celebrating with her.

Dr. Kasia enjoying the party

Our hostess Malgosia and Yvette exchanging gifts

All the girls!!!

On December 10th Dr. Kasia and Yvette took their families to the annual Lights in the Heights festival and had such a wonderful time with many of our patients walking the streets of brightly lit houses, listening to Christmas music in all sorts of version and enjoying the night.

Dr. Kasia and Luki hanging out with Santa Clause at Lights in the Heights

Dr. Lindhorst, Yvette and Xochitl also went to a fantastic party at Memorial Forest Club hosted by "absolutely! Memorial" magazine.  It was so much fun to celebrate with some of the moms in our neighborhood and to meet other vendors and advertisers from the magazine.
Finally we made it to our last week of work which was super fun and super busy!  We decided to work five days that week to accommodate all our patients because we wanted to have the following week off to celebrate the holidays and New Year with our families.  We had a contest for our patients to win yummy popcorn snacks as well.

Finally the break came and we all separated for the holidays. Yvette went to Florida and New York City to celebrate her wedding anniversary, Xochitl went to China (!!!), Dr. Kasia went to Lake Tahoe for a little skiing and the rest of the staff stayed around the Houston area and had a restful time with the families.

Dr. Lindhorst with Christoph (her oldest son) on the slopes of Lake Tahoe

Skiing with Christoph

We want to wish all of you a wonderful New Year and we are looking forward to seeing you soon!

4th Annual Patients Appreciation Party

Yesterday we had our annual Patients Appreciation Party and we had so much fun!

This is our favorite day of the year at Smiles For Kids.  This year, just like last, we rented out a movie theater and started out with a carnival of games and food.  We had a great time playing BINGO.  Stefanie did a wonderful job leading this game and many kids won gift certificates to Toys R Us for winning.

Meantime Morgan led many little ones in the game of Hullabaloo.  If you've never played this game, you should look for it!  It is so much fun.

Martina had the spinner game where kids could win all kinds of fun jumpy frogs, necklaces, tatoos and stickers.  And they sure did!  Malgosia and Michele were our face painting artists and so many kids walked out with rainbows, pumpkins, snakes, elephants, swans, hearts and flowers on their arms and faces.

Daniella was our master arts and crafts lady.  She helped kids color pictures and make picture frames.  She did a great job taming the crowd there!

Finally Yvette worked as a team with her son Alex and directed kiddos in the bean bag toss.  They had fun.

Carrie and Kasia welcomed everyone and distributed raffle tickets so that everyone had a chance to win some fabulous prizes such as Toys R Us giftcards, Children's Museum Membership, Houston Arboretum Membership and gift certificates to restaurants around town.

It was so fun to see all the smiley faces and to see all the kids have so much fun!  And of course you cannot have a party without pizza so we all ate tons of pizza!

After a little bit over an hour of all this fun we finally settled down into our seats and watched Chicken Little.  What a fun movie that is!  Everyone munched on popcorn and chilled out for the next hour and a half.  Thank you guys for coming to play with us!  It was so much fun and we hope to see you soon in the office and next year at the party again.

Smiles for Kids and Kids' Meals

Last week we got to participate in a really fun event right downstairs from our office at the Avalon Diner.  A wonderful organization called Kids' Meals was doing a fundraiser there to collect revenue to feed hungry children in the Houston area.  Here is their website if you'd like to find out more about them! http://www.kidsmealshouston.org/  We were so blessed to be part of this great effort!  And it was so much fun as 104.1 KRBE was there with music, fun and Roula and Ryan from the morning show. They were both serving meals at this cool event and certain percentage of all meals sold went to Kids' Meals.  Smiles For Kids sponsored this fundraiser, but we also came to Avalon Diner to have lunch and to contribute to this great organization.  Here are some pictures from the event and hope you will enjoy them a bit :)

At lunch at Avalon Diner with Roula and Ryan!

Dr. Kasia with the director of Kids' Meals, an incredible woman, Ruth Burrell.

Dr. Kasia and the kids helping the fund-raising!

Our promotional table at the event

Yvette and Dr. Kasia with Roula from 104.1 KRBE

Brushing and flossing as Michele would like you to do it!

When to Floss

For most patients, dental floss should be used before tooth brushing. The following reasons are why:

1. When the surfaces in between the teeth are flossed first and the plaque (biofilm) is removed, the fluoride from the toothpaste used while brushing reaches the surfaces in between the teeth to prevent cavities.

2. If brushing is accomplished first, flossing may not be carried out. This is because the mouth feels clean; the need for flossing may not be appreciated. Also time may be limited and flossing can be postponed.

How to Floss

1. Hold the floss between thumb & index finger or hold between thumbs. The ends of the floss can be tied together to make it easier to hold (circle of floss).

2. Grasp the floss firmly, allowing 1/2 inch length between fingers.

3. Work the floss slowly between the teeth in a short sawing motion. Avoid snapping through the contact area.

4. Curve the floss around the tooth in a C-shape.

5. Press the floss firmly against the tooth. Move gently beneath the gingiva until tissue resistance is felt.

6. Slide the floss horizontally and vertically with pressure to remove plaque.

How to Brush

1. Wet the toothbrush

2. Apply a smear of toothpaste across bristles

3. Start with the sides of the top right molars & work your way around all the fronts of the teeth until the top left side molars are reached. Then work the toothbrush the opposite from left to right brushing the tongue side of all the top teeth. Repeat steps for the lower teeth. As you are brushing the toothbrush bristles should be touching the teeth and the gums at the same time (the gums will blanch) moving in a soft circular motion. Roll & vibrate the brush slowly down over the rest of the tooth, making sure some of the bristles are reaching in between the teeth. Special angles with the toothbrush such as inserted up right or at a slight angle to reach the tongue side of the front teeth.

4. While brushing light pressure should be used, if the bristles are bending too much pressure is being applied.

 

Below is the link showing active ingredients of different toothpaste. If a patient is placed on Clinpro, they also need to use a TP with abrasive agents to continue fighting tartar buildup & excess plaque.

"This product is for once a day use in place of regular toothpaste for patients 6 years of age or older as recommended by a dental health professional." from the Clinpro website. Clinpro is only gently abrasive, patients with poor hygiene should improve OH before being placed on Clinpro; for the following reasons 1. They already have poor brushing skills and they will need to use two different toothpastes, you don't want to overwhelm someone that already has poor habits. They need to improve one step at a time. 2. If the patient with poor OH is given Clinpro by the DDS they will probably just brush with that and the toothpaste is not going to help them improve their OH.  

http://www.dimensionsofdentalhygiene.com/uploadedfiles/DDH/Magazine/2010/10_October/1010tpf.pdf

Halitosis

90% of halitosis originates in the oral cavity (poor OH) 10% has systemic or nonoral causes.

 

Tongue Cleaning

Brushing and cleaning the top of the tongue is a daily requirement. The tongue is a nice warm home for bacteria to live and cause bad breath. If brushing the tongue makes one gag, you can brush from side to side in a sweeping motion to help lesson the gag reflex.

New York City Conference

The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry puts on a wonderful conference each and every year over Memorial Day weekend.  This year was in New York City, the city that never sleeps.  And so neither did we!  But we learned a lot!

Our hotel was in Times Square, which is an amazing place!  It is light like daylight all day long.  Thank goodness for black-out curtains in the hotel.  But at the same time it was a wonderful place to stay in the middle of the heart of New York City.  I took several classes and so did Stefanie, our office manager.  On Friday we took what is called "Miniclinics", which is a bunch of small lectures condensed into one 3 hour class.  We learned about "Performance Management of the Dental Team" first.  It was a very interesting lecture about staff retention, measuring success of your staff and their interactions, figuring out the best ways to make your staff work well with one another and with the patients and other staff issues.  It was truly fascinating and wonderful. Second topic of discussion was "Clinical Tips for Successful Placement of the Bonded Resin Composite Strip Crown".  It was a very good clinical lecture on how to make front baby teeth look good in case they have early childhood decay.  I learned a lot from this portion of the class and hope to use the techniques on the little ones.  The third topic was "Etch, Bleach, Seal Technique: Alternative or Adjunct to Microabrasion". Many of our patients have hypoplastic (under-formed) teeth that are esthetically challenging and upsetting to both the patients and the parents.  This lecture discussed methods of treating them using simple bleaching and sealant techniques that could help our patients with overcoming these slight imperfections without aggressive treatment.  The final topic in this lecture series was "New High Tech Gizzmos That Every Pediatric Dental Office Needs to Increase Efficiency and Productivity".  I am always excited to learn about new advances in technology and inventions in pediatric dentistry and this was a very fast paced, information loaded session.  We learned that we basically use the latest and greatest technology for our patients and I was so excited to hear that!  It is so good to know that we are up on top of the innovations and that our materials, instruments, techniques and software are the cream of the crop!

After this class we went to visit the exhibits.  We purchased a few new things that will aid us is better dentistry.  We are trying new front teeth crowns, we purchased Isolite dental illumination system and we shopped around for toothbrushes, toothpaste and such.  We spent many hours talking to dental manufactures and exploring new ideas for pediatric dentistry.

After that we had a bit of entertainment and saw Jersey Boys musical after dinner with a bunch of fiends from pediatric dental field.  We also trotted over to the Empire State Building which is truly amazing!  And then found our way back walking to Times Square.

On Satruday morning we took the final class: "Fraud and Embezzlement in the Dental Office"
 It was a truly scary class as you find out exactly how mean and conniving people can be. It was sad to see the case studies and it made us want to only have good and honest people in our office as we hope we have now!  Stefanie and I appreciated thinking of our staff and how amazing they are!

This was our final class.  After that we enjoyed New York City for another day of musicals, walking tours, biking in Central Park and lots and of sunshine.  It was a great trip and such a wonderful learning experience.  I'm already looking forward to next year's class in San Diego!

Warm welcome to Melissa

Some of you might have been around Smiles For Kids to remember Melissa Vaikhman.  She started in our office about 4 years ago when she was still in high school.  She worked with us during holidays and summers and two years ago she went to school to get her dental assistant license.  This is such a big commitment!  It requires a test, learning how to take X-rays, mastering OSHA and few other skills.  She of course passed the test with flying colors and did a great job.  Then she started college at Trinity University in San Antonio and is majoring in psychology.  Last summer she wanted to try her newly acquired psychology skills as a camp counselor and we missed her dearly here.  But this year she decided to come back and take over for Natalie who went back to school full time and left us for now.  We are so excited to have Melissa here!  She now finished her second year in college and is doing a fabulous job for us!  She is a fully trained dental assistant and you might see her this summer taking x-rays, doing parent talks, sitting in on exams and helping the kids get from one area to the next.  Please say HI to her and warmly welcome her back!  We are also interviewing for a full time dental assistant as Melissa will eventually go back to school.  So stay in touch to hear more about our newest team member as we find someone perfect and special to see our wonderful patients!