* * Your dentist knows what you’ve been doing
Amy Hunter, DDS, has been my dentist for twenty years, having taken over the practice of the late Dr. Howard Stanton. She told me as she finished my exam a few weeks ago, “We can tell a lot by just looking into your mouth. Everything, actually. Habits, good or bad.”
I was intrigued by this, so I asked her to tell me more about it. We arranged a meeting where she discussed her practice and her patients in detail. “I can tell if you’re a soda drinker. Whether you suck on candy all day. Soda is worse because it has acid and sugar. There is a certain type of decay from that.
“Smoking. Smokers can get nicotine stomatitis. These are small red bumps on the soft palate. With smokeless tobacco, the body forms a callus wherever the user puts the dip. It’s a white, pre-cancerous area.
“Sodas: one liter of soda has one cup of sugar. So when the patients come in who drink a lot of soda, we can see lesions at the gum lines or between the teeth that we see on the x-rays.
“Drugs like crystal meth produce lesions. Meth users often have poor diets as well. We can see poor diets like iron deficiencies and anemia. Their tongue is fissured. They have dry mouth.”
“Are we a well-treated society from a dentistry standpoint?” I asked her.
“Yes. I know from doing extra work in the area helping kids to get off to a good start in dental and overall health. Joe and Margot Thompson of Thompson Tire have started a program for the children and we’re now doing screening at all the schools in the area. I’m involved with that. We look in each child’s mouth just with a pen-light and do a quick exam. We characterize each child as either having no decay, moderate decay, or serious decay. There are only a few that have serious decay in Montgomery County. And that’s wonderful!”
Amy is a trim, ageless woman with curly black hair and a dazzling smile and an occasionally salty tongue. Concluding her exams of me, she always says nice things about my teeth.
She continued, “Education. Diet. Fluoride in the water. These all contribute to better health. I started in dentistry in 1993 and the rate of decay has declined greatly. It’s exciting; it’s great, especially for the children.
“It is thought now that poor hygiene and poor dental health can cause heart disease or strokes or diabetes. Overall, when you look at somebody’s health that is immuno-compromised, they get sick easily. Problems do show up in the mouth. So dentists can see serious things perhaps more readily than other doctors.
She described that our bodily health and our mouth health are to be thought of like the skin’s reaction to a splinter. “It swells up and turns red. It’s the same response. Your body is constantly fighting the bacteria in your mouth and it can’t win until you get a cleaning and change your habits. Your body is always compromised because it’s using its energy to fight the infection.
“I got here in 1996. I have had the opportunity to follow lots of patients for two decades. I have watched them move forward in life. I see positive and negative things Oral health is a map of health. We can follow it. There are numerous red flags in dentistry.”
“Your patients become friends and family. I see the four-year old who (decades later) has graduated from college or gotten married. People become sick or they die. It’s not easy.
“When a young attractive female comes in with problems and we can get her fixed up and she looks in the mirror, it’s happy for all of us. When hygiene changes, everything changes. It’s usually a choice. Oral hygiene is a reflection of overall health. People should brush and floss regularly. If you limit your sugar, you won’t have cavities. And see your dentist regularly. Don’t suck on soda or candy all day; I carry a bottle of water with me and drink from that. I can tell if somebody drinks sodas or eats sugar all day; it’s black and white.”
Amy is from the Harrisonburg area that she considers similar to the New River Valley economically and culturally. “I feel very much at home here. This community has embraced me. I enjoy my job and my patients.
“When people have good dental health, they smile. That’s it in a nutshell.”
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